Re: Is language development evolutionary, or designed by the culture?

In article <Xns9675D219128C8nokvamli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"David Wright Sr." <dwrightsr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "Neeraj Mathur" <neemathur@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:d8nsdn$hh8$1
> @news.ox.ac.uk:
>
> > Phonological changes and syntactic changes are not molded by eolutionary
> > forces in a Darwinian sense (that the most useful variations sruvive - I
> > suppose that's what you meant), nor are they designed consciously by any
> > people.
>
> Wouldn't you think that both phonological and syntactical adaptations would
> occur in mixed language[1] environments and that what survived would be
> that which came easiest, (i.e. the most useful for both groups[2])?

One might think that, but language change doesn't work so simply.
Isolated languages can change drastically on their own without
influence from other languages, and languages in contact with each
other can change very little or in ways that have no direct connection
to any of the other contact languages.

And of course, language change can work in the way we might naively
expect them to: isolated languages can remain relatively stable, and
languages in contact can spread features from one to the others (from
either dominant languages or subordinate langauges).

But given a particular geographic/cultural configuration of languages
now, it's basically impossible to predict precisely how they will
change in the future, because the forces at work transcend geography
and culture and are largely random (within certain limitations).

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program nsanders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Williams College http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders
Williamstown, MA 01267
.

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