Socilological vs natural selection (ex Re: The Neolithic Hypothesis)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

Robert Whiting <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

>On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

>> This is not unlike biological change, where the mutations are
>> brought about by various factors (both "internal" quirks in the
>> way DNA is structured and is copied, and "external" factors like
>> cosmic rays), and the mutations are then selected for by their
>> effect on the "fitness" or sex-appeal of the phenotype.

>On the other hand, I'm somewhat leery of drawing strong parallels
>between linguistic change and biological change, because so many
>people, particularly non-linguists, seem to take them literally
>(i.e., assume that languages change the same way that biological
>organisms do) or extend the analogy in ways that are not applicable.

>For one thing, forms can be taken over for reasons like prestige
>of the source language or dialect, or because the speakers find a
>word with a sound or meaning that they just happen to like in another
>language, and there is, as far as I know, no mechanism that duplicates
>this in biological change.

Sexual selection?

>Secondly, sociological change does not
>have to be survival-enhancing (people, especially as a group, don't
>always know what is good for them, and even if they do, they don't
>always do it), whereas biological change, because of natural selection,
>will preserve survival-enhancing mutations by its very nature.

True, although I think most biological changes are in fact
survival-neutral.  But there is indeed no "survival of the
fittest" about language change.  The emphasis of my analogy was
on the side of genetic/linguistic drift, occurring for "no"
reason (or at least not for reasons that have anything to do with
their being selected).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam