Origin & Evolution of Languages (was: Sociological Linguistics)

[Nik Taylor]

"Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton" wrote:

> I briefly scanned half a dozen other texts on historical linguistics and
> found the same situation.  The words "evolve/evolution" are never used with
> respect to the change over time from one fully modern, complex human language
> to another.

But I've frequently heard expressions like "the Evolution of English",
or "Latin evolved into Spanish, French, etc."  Besides which, I rather
like the term.  Evolution implies a general, widespread change, one
which occurs by the accumulation of small-scale changes, which has
certain tendencies (such as the tendency for inflections to be eroded
away, or particles to be gramaticalized), while simple "change" implies
none of that.

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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