"is the same as"

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

> Stanley Friesen

> A) language is a biological phenomenon, and behaves like other such.

Wrong.  Language is not a biological phenomenon, but a cognitive one.  The
physical structures which allow complex human language evolved along
biological lines, but language change is note like biology.  When two
species diverge, they can no longer influence each other.  A Grevy's Zebra
cannot interbreed with a Plains Zebra no matter how many times they try.
However, Basque can (and has) borrow words from its unrelated and mutually
unintelligible neighbors.  Morphology and syntactic structures can also be
borrowed as well as sound systems (I'm thinking in terms of areal features
here).  This ability to mix varieties even after differentiation is a
fundamental difference between biological descent and linguistic descent.

> B) language differentiation acts *very* much like biological speciation,
> except for happening much faster.

See above.  The speed factor is, indeed, a critical one.

> C) the 'mutual comprehensibility' definition of separate languages is
> almost exactly equivalent to the biological species definition as a
> criterion for recognizing species.

But, as stated above, once species have differentiated they can no longer
influence one another.  Languages retain that ability no matter how long
they've been separate.  We even have examples of languages which are half
one language and half another (mixed languages like Michif) as well as
languages (creoles) that are created from stumps of other languages and
sprout into complex human languages like every other.  Species cannot arise
from the leg of one animal and pieces cropped here and there from others.

> D) as others have been pointing out here, the similarities are so close
> that it is even useful to apply cladistic methodology in the study of
> historical linguistics.

There are just enough similarities to allow this on a limited scale, but
tree diagrams have difficulty expressing relationships within a dialect
chain and cannot show features due to geographic proximity.

> In other words, the two sets of phenomena are so extremely similar that it
> is ineffective to try and treat them very differently.

While there is similarity, there is no "extremely similar" here.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
(435) 797-3797 (fax)