Latin and Slavonic for `moon'

[JoatSimeon at aol.com]

X99Lynx at aol.com writes:

>What does this mean?

-- that people usually aren't aware of the overall process of linguistic
change, and that it's not something they set out to do, generally.

>Intentionality is the difference.

-- and there's very little intentionality in the evolution of language.
Nobody said:  "I'm tired of Anglo-Saxon, let's invent Middle English".

Anglo-Saxon segued imperceptibly into Middle English, which merged by an
infinity of gradual steps into Modern English.  These are, to a large extent,
artificial categories, just as "homo erectus" and "homo sapiens" are.  There
was no point at which you could draw a line and say "this is AS" or "this is
Middle English".  It's a continuum.  That's how living languages change.

The acquisition of native languages is a childhood process.  Do you remember
learning to speak your native language?  No?  I didn't think so.

The closest linguistic evolution gets to "intentionality" is a decision to
adopt a slang term because it's "cool" or fashionable.  And this is, from an
individual p.o.v., the choice of a _word_, not a language.

Bilingualism sometimes promotes linguistic change precisely _because_
language is never completely under conscious control.  It's almost impossible
to shed an "accent" in a second language learned as an adult, because an
adult no longer has the linguistic plasticity of a child.  Those options have
been foreclosed.

Likewise, it's extremely difficult not to drop words from the original
language into the second, because that vocabulary -- the one picked up
unconsciously and spontaneously as a child -- is wired in at a more
fundamental level than that learned later.