by badboy 39 Replies latest jw friends
There is no evidence that all of the languages we see today came about from a supernatural mixing of a single language around four thousand years ago in the middle east.
Thanks, rem, this is the point I was trying to illustrate. I just love speciation, don't you?
GentlyFeral
evolutionist
And as the English/French/Spanish were very colonial look what happened. Yes Australian English is similar to Queens English and to American English but they are different and if we do not think in terms of human time spans but in terms of 100s of years American English in say 500 years will be quite a bit more different from Queens (English) English. It will have a number of Spanish, indigineous and Native American words and phrases. Similarly even today Mexican Spanish is different than Spanish Spanish - language evolves that is why the Old Testament is obviously not the work of Moses et al -- but the work of copyists and scribes and redactors
A good example is Shakespearean english and expressions compared to modern english. It's amazing just how much it's changed. Half the time when someone makes a study of Shakespeare they need reference works in order to understand it properly! Another example is in Canada. The french spoken of in Quebec is different than that spoken in France and other french speaking countries. They have picked up english words and expressions as well as their own slang and pronunciations.
Thanks, rem, this is the point I was trying to illustrate. I just love speciation, don't you?
You might be very interested in this book called The Ecology of Language Evolution by S. S. Mufwene which provides an evolutionary model of how languages change. The basic understanding that a language is not analoguous to an organism. Rather, we need to think of language as a species. Like a species, a language really comprises thousands or millions of slightly different idiolects that vary from person to person. The range of variation in language from person to person is analoguous to genetic variation in the gene pool. The development of languages such as French or Spanish from a proto-language like Latin (or really, Proto-Romance, also known as Vulgar Latin) are thus speciation events and instances of natural adaptations to changing ecological conditions. Isolation via migration and population movement, colonization, contact with speakers of other languages, the development of new situations or institutions of language use (such as writing, legal system, religious uses), etc. are examples of external language ecology. Language attitudes constitute one of the most important ecological factors. A language may be devalued for use in certain situations, or certain words may be deprecated and change in meaning. When two speakers of what used to be a single language can no longer understand each other (lack of mutual intelligibility), one could say that a speciation event has occurred and there are now two separate languages. However it is a gradual change and not an all or nothing thing. One of the basic axioms of linguistics is that what constitutes change over time is realized at any given moment as variation in the language.
Leolaia
A good example is Shakespearean english and expressions compared to modern english. It's amazing just how much it's changed. Half the time when someone makes a study of Shakespeare they need reference works in order to understand it properly!
I can recite the prologue to the Canterbury Tales from memory with Middle English pronunciation. It is vaguely understandable but quite obtuse. The language is still changing of course. Much of what you might think of "sloppy" or "poor" pronunciation or "bad English" is in many cases "change in progress".....changes which 100 years from now would not seem in any way unusual. It's always been the case. Lovely, elegent Shakespearian or King James Bible English was thought of as truly dreadful English just 50 years earlier. Many of the quaint endings (i.e. hast, comest, livest, etc.) were still somewhat new in the 1500s and were altering what had earlier been regarded as lovely, elegent English. The future auxiliary will as in He will go home originally meant "will" as in "intend" (that is, He wills to go home). But over the centuries, the meaning subtly shifted and what was a full verb became weaker and weaker until it is just an auxiliary without verbal meaning. That is happening right now with certain other words. In 18th and 19th century English, you would say They have to go home, They want to go home, and so forth. The verbs have and want are real verbs, though slightly weakened, and they introduce infinitive clauses. In formal English, they are still used in this way. But in informal English, in fact, in probably most spoken English, we now say They hafta go home, They wanna go home, etc. What we're now seeing is the emergence of a new auxiliary hafta, which means something close to "must". And wanna means something close to the medieval will (as in, He wills to go home), but it is already becoming an auxiliary -- and if things continue changing in the usual way, in 200 years or so, I wanna go home will mean "I will go home," so it would be totally natural in 2200 AD to say things like "I wanna go home, but only because you're forcing me." After all, saying "I will go home, but only because you're forcing me" would seem totally bizarre to Chaucer's ear.
Leolaia
What is the Ras Shamra group of literature?
It is a body of Canaanite literature discovered at Ras Shamra in Syria....contains myths about Baal, legends about ancient kings, stories about the Rephaim, etc. All written earlier than the Bible.
Leolaia
Leolaia,
You might be very interested in this book called The Ecology of Language Evolution by S. S. Mufwene which provides an evolutionary model of how languages change.
Thanks so much! I just picked up a copy at half.com, along with African-American English : Structure, History, and Usage, by the same author.
GentlyFeral
Jarred Diamond also wrote a chapter or two about the evolution of language in one of his books. I think it was in The Third Chimpanzee . Pretty interesting as an overview.
rem
Wow, cool....I hope you enjoy them! Have you also read Stephen Pinker? He writes to a general audience and has some very interesting and amusing anecdotes in his books. --Leolaia
Have you also read Stephen Pinker?
No. But, oh joy! My local library has several of his books. The Language Instinct -- I've always believed there was such a thing! Looking forward to reading that!
Thanks again,
GentlyFeral
