[Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals

Thu Jan 23 13:53:01 UTC 2020

However, the two scenarios seem compatible with description by a single model that predicts rate of change on the basis of population size and a variable capturing degree of multilingualism (which in its turn might be mathematically complex, since it would represent in some way a distribution of multilingual usage frequencies across the population). For small population sizes and low degrees of multilingualism (relatively isolated populations), this would predict low rates of change as per the Cysouw/Evans & Levinson scenario, while for high degrees of multilingualism, it would predict accelerated change rates in line w/ Evans (2017). Surely there was a place and time for both of these scenarios in human prehistory. — Juergen

> On Jan 23, 2020, at 6:24 AM, Haspelmath, Martin <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de> wrote:
> 
> There is an interesting tension between one passage in Evans (2017):
> 
> “widespread multilingualism should increase the rates of language change, in particular the rate at which new typological features appear.” (Evans 2017: 930) 
> 
> and one passage in Evans & Levinson (2009):
> 
> “The structural properties of language change on a near-glacial time scale. ... a structural feature within a single large language-family like Austronesian changes on average just once about every 50,000 years. What that implies is that all the languages we now sample from are within structural spitting distance of the ancestral tongue! It is quite surprising in this light that typologists have been able to catalogue so much linguistic variation.” (Evans & Levinson 2009: 477)
> 
> So did prehistoric small languages change fast or slowly?
> 
> If they changed as slowly as suggested by Evans & Levinson (and also by Michael Cysouw in his recent Lingtyp post), then Proto-World may perhaps indeed be responsible for some current distributions (i.e. we may not have reached a stationary distribution yet, to use the Maslova/Croft terminology).
> 
> But if they changed as fast as suggested by Evans (2017) and the (more recent?) idea that there was a lot of multilingualism in earlier times, then it seems that the Proto-World/bottleneck founder population is not relevant for explaining universals (as also suggested by Mark Dingemanse in his recent Lingtyp post).
> 
> Best,
> Martin
> 
> On 23.01.20 05:24, Nicholas Evans wrote:
>> Sorry all about the missing attachment earlier – must have failed to load when I was out bush on a dodgy line. Here it is now. And you'll see that it also takes seriously the hybrid origins of language (both speech and gesture), with initial contributions from each according to their affordances, subsequently transferred across modalities by multilingual contact
>> 
>> Best Nick
>> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Nicholas Evans <nicholas.evans at anu.edu.au>
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 9:24 PM
>> To: Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu>; David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals
>>  
>> Dear Colleagues
>> 
>> In connection with this, you might be interested in the attached article where I argue that the old battlefield of 'monogenesis vs polygenesis' should be reconceptualised to one of 'polysemigenesis', where language arose by putting together various semi-languages, developed in separate places, and pooling their 'inventions' in a multilingual environment. That has obvious consequences for Martin's question.
>> 
>> Best, Nick Evans
>> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Ian Maddieson <ianm at berkeley.edu>
>> Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 12:50 PM
>> To: David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>> Cc: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Proto-World explains universals
>>  
>> I agree with David that monogenesis of human language is unlikely for various reasons, but I think Martin’s
>> original question had to do with whether an argument had been presented in the linguistic literature with the
>> specific form of claiming that a universal exists because it was in the prototype of all languages. An argument
>> of this basic form could be made without assuming monogenesis if the hypothesis was that each episode of 'language
>> creation' started in similar ways.
>> 
>> Ian
>> 
>>> On 20/01/2020 19:45, Haspelmath, Martin wrote:
>>>> Dear all,
>>>> 
>>>> Does anyone know a case where it has been proposed (or suggested) concretely that an observed universal tendency (or absolute universal) is due to inheritance from Proto-World?
>>>> 
>>>> Cysouw (2011: 417) has suggested this as a possibility:
>>>> 
>>>> "It is possible that there are still founder effects available in the current distribution of the world’s languages, i.e., that there are preferences in the current world’s languages that go back to incidental events during the spread of languages over the world (Maslova 2000)."
>>>> 
>>>> But while this is logically possible, are there any concrete suggestions with a global scope?
>>>> Word order universals such as the Greenbergian correlations, or phonological universals such as vowel dispersion cannot be due to Proto-World (or some other founder effect), because the universality lies in the implicational patterns, not in specific structures that all languages share. Has anyone suggested that any other universal properties (e.g. the fact that all languages can express negation or questions, or that agent-patient organization is universal, or that all languages have recursion) may be due to Proto-World inheritance?
>>>> 
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Martin
>>>> 
>>>> ************
>>>> 
>>>> References:
>>>> Cysouw, Michael. 2011. Understanding transition probabilities. Linguistic Typology 15(2). 415–431.
>>>> Maslova, Elena. 2000. A dynamic approach to the verification of distributional universals. Linguistic Typology 4. 307 – 333.
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> Martin Haspelmath (
>>>> haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
>>>> )
>>>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>>>> Kahlaische Strasse 10	
>>>> D-07745 Jena  
>>>> &
>>>> Leipzig University
>>>> Institut fuer Anglistik 
>>>> IPF 141199
>>>> D-04081 Leipzig  
>>>> 
>>>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Martin Haspelmath (
>> haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
>> )
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10	
>> D-07745 Jena  
>> &
>> Leipzig University
>> Institut fuer Anglistik 
>> IPF 141199
>> D-04081 Leipzig  
>> 
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