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


"David Wright Sr." <dwrightsr@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns96768221CAFA7nokvamli@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[snip various interesting comments in response to Nathan Sanders]
> Do you have references to any studies
> that demonstrate that languages spontaneously and naturally change over
> time?
>
> I would be happy to study them myself.

I gave one example, although I don't have much by way of bibliography for
it: the development of phonemic tones in Panjabi. There is nothing at play
here other than a natural, spontaneous change - any conceivable linguistic
influence would have applied equally to any and all languages in the central
Indian-subcontinent language continuum, none of which developed tones, and
all of which preserved the voiced aspirate series intact.

A brief sketch of the situation is this: there are three tones in Panjabi,
namely neutral, high, and low. Most words and all unstressed syllables have
the neutral tone. However, in words which historically had, somewhere in
them, the distinctive feature [+ breathy voice], this feature disappeared
and the stressed syllable received a non-neutral tone; whether high or low,
and any further modifications to the consonant (whether it was devoiced as
well as deaspirated) was determined by the position of the breathy voice
relative to the nucleus of the stressed syllable.

As far as I can see, there is no way to explain this as anything other than
a natural, spontaneous change. Certainly, one may point out that the
production of breathy voice is not particularly easy, and so there is some
motivation for getting rid of it in that it would be 'easier' to pronounce
the language without it; however, why not then just let that consonant
series fall together with another? The introduction of phonemic tone is not
a particularly clear choice for replacing the other; it is arbitrary, and
the use of phonemic tone is not something that would lead to increased ease
of communication in a way that breathy voice would not.

This process, as I understand, is a rough parallel for what happened in the
course of the evolution of Chinese; the complex tonal structure there is the
result of all sorts of distinctive features being replaced by tones over the
course of several years. Again, I do not see how this change could be
considered something other than natural and spontaneous.

Another example of spontaneous change, which others here will be able to
provide better explanations and bibliography for than myself, is to be seen
in the development of Icelandic from Old Norse - I invite elaboration on the
changes by those who know the topic.

I would add just a few thoughts to your general comments, which I snipped
for reasons of space. On the whole, you were talking about the adaptation of
one's speech to the linguistic environment. As I see it, this personal
modification of a given idiolect is not the same as language change. Rather,
language change is what you observed as the differences between generations
when you were a child. You wrote that you asumed that these differences were
due to television and radio. I should hope that you would challenge this
assumption now, as a linguist. My assumption, which my study of linguistics
has given me, is that one should be able to see this sort of generational
difference between speakers of any society at any point in time, well before
the advent of radio, television, or even literacy. This is language change -
spontaneous, natural.

As I've said before, I wouldn't forbid that societal 'evolutionary'
pressures do contribute to language change; I feel, nevertheless, that this
is a small subset of change, most of which is natural. I suppose one
interesting example would be the Spanish development of 'a' used with
personal direct objects (like 'yo te veo a ti'). One theory I have heard (is
it the standard explanation?) is that this arose in situations involving
upper class individuals and thus in a prestige speech variety, and was then
consciously adopted by other speaker populations (because not using it was
likely to offend the sensibilities of upper class people with whom one came
into contact). While the starting point is still rather mysterious - whether
it just happened to be a spontaneous development in the prestige dialect, or
a conscious attempt to mitigate the perceived harshness of referring to a
nobleman directly - I think the generalisation of it is a societal
development.

Something similar seems to happen semantically in many languages to words
that are used to address women, where over time each word loses dignity and
is replaced by another expression (such as, for instance, 'dame' in many
types of English). These could perhaps be considered somewhat 'Darwinian' if
one really wanted to. I don't believe, however, that all language change
originates this way.

Neeraj Mathur


.

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