The Neolithic Hypothesis (Standardization)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/25/99 9:32:03 PM, mcv at wxs.nl wrote:

<<Not the language, the lack of change and variation is "optical".
The Romance languages seem to pop up practically ex nihilo
because of the masking effect of the standard language.>>

I understand that I misuderstood "optical."

I don't think I'm way out of line in seeing this "masking effect" as an
everyday occurence.  Dominant languages and dialects have their run of the
media  - pre-printing press writing in particular - that makes them "optical"
to later observers.

Governments, merchants, religions, military, scholars, scribes, bards and
skalds all need a language that stays stable in time, sound, form and meaning.
Various methods are used to create that stability - by standardizing language.

This need to standardize fights the natural tendency to change and splinter.
In those areas and layers of society where the power to standardize becomes
minimal, the dominant language
speakers and dialectical speakers are not subject to the controls that are
meant to prevent change.

Standardized languages, of course, tend to become archaic or specialized
because they generally cannot keep up with external changes (new ideas, new
things, new borrowings) as well as looser disciplined languages or dialects.
In the meantime, non-standardized versions become more vital and are picked up
by emerging social forces.

But because the dominant standardized tongue still has control of the
preserving media (writing, bards, clerics, etc.) during the process, the newly
emerging dialects and languages will in some circumstances appear full blown -
as it did in the case of the Romance languages.  In Comrie's TWMLs, the
commentator notes that Italian only appears for the first time in the official
records (otherwise Latin) as a piece of verbatim testimony by a witness in a
legal case in the 1200's.  This is a rather predictable way for a non-
standardized language to sneak into written records.

The interesting corrolary question to this is what is standardizing the non-
literate underlanguages and dialectics before they can get into writing.  This
is relevant because it might indicate what could have standardized *PIE or its
immediate daughter languages - if they were standardized, which they should
have been.

In pre-literate standardized languages, we see writing emerge as pretty much a
function of commercial and governmental record keeping (e.g., Linear B) or
diplomacy (e.g., stelae inscriptions, Rosetta stones, Hittite epistles).
However, broader textual examples seem to arise out of oral traditions that
preserve the language and meaning of cultural/religious matters (e.g., Homeric
Greek,  Gothic Skeireins, the Eddas, Sanskrit, Church Slavonic, Gilgamesh,
etc.)  It would seem that there are two different veins of standardization,
and the cultural/religious vein has a claim to stronger standardization
because it is more amenable to preservation by oral tradition than commercial
or governmental language.  In fact, the oral traditions are so strong that the
languages are already becoming "archaic" when they come into writing.  (Meter,
a memory aiding tool, also specializes these language examples.)

I wrote:
<<And finally I have searched in vain for ANY historical instance where the
adoption of agriculture resulted in a change of language in an indigenous
population.>>

mcv at wxs.nl replied:
<<What about Bantu and Austronesian?>>

Both suggest - from what I understand - much more than at work than
agriculture.  Both seem to have carried a bundle of new technology with them,
along with strong new trade ties and population advantages from the start.

Regards,
Steve Long