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

In article <Xns9675E90C447D2nokvamli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"David Wright Sr." <dwrightsr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Nathan Sanders <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
> news:nsanders.DIE.SPAM-5F6728.20594414062005@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
>
> I agree with all of your comments, especially, that it is impossible to
> predict how language will change, but in response to the original question,
> I do maintain that it is various societal pressures that cause the changes
> whatever they may be.

Why would you think that? Which societal pressures do you think cause
which linguistic changes, and what natural, explainable, inherent link
do you propose exists between them?

A preponderance of social classes is linked to aspiration of voiceless
stops? A sudden childhood plague causes agglutinative morphology? A
high marriage rate correlates to SVO word order?

Note: in case this is the source of our disagreement, when I talk
about linguiistic change, I'm talking about regular, systematic
changes that indiscriminately affect every elligible utterance, not
sporadic changes to a limited subset of utterances.

> I have always considered that immigrants in isolated language groups who
> experience a similar environment to that from which they came, will
> generally maintain the language without as much change as the parent group.
>
> Can you think of a case where this didn't happen? Not criticising, just
> wondering if you have a counter-example.

The American South. As a native Georgian, I can usually tell the
difference between the speech of native speakers from Alabama,
Georgia, and Tennessee (to within about an hour or so from their
hometown), but their cultural histories are pretty similar, so there's
no cultural/social explanation for why these states have different
dialects. They just do, because languages naturally change
spontaneously over time.

Nathan

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

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