Re: Are Linguistic Changes Accelerated by...

On Sat, 5 Nov 2005 02:08:30 -0000, "Douglas G. Kilday"
<fufluns@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:436c586c_2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

> "Nathan Sanders" <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote ...

>> "Darkstar" <darkstar100@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

>>> Nathan Sanders wrote:

>>> > Two reasons that languages might change are to increase the perceptual
>>> > distinctiveness of acoustically similar sounds and to decrease the
>>> > articulatory difficulty of particular sounds or sequences of sounds.

>>> Okay, but this model predicts that all languages would finally come to
>>> rest after achieving 'perfection'?...

>> Absolutely not---it makes exactly the opposite prediction, because
>> perceptual distinctiveness and articulatory ease are in direct
>> conflict, since making sounds more acoustically distinct almost always
>> requires extra articulatory effort (more extreme articulations, more
>> precisely controlled articulations, or usually both).

>> For example, in order to keep their vowels distinct, languages with
>> lots of vowels have to make use of the periphery of the vowel space
>> (which requires more extreme articulation: tighter lip rounding,
>> higher high vowels, etc.) and keep their vowels in smaller portions of
>> the vowel space (which requires more precise control over the
>> articulation to prevent them from bleeding over into neighboring
>> vowels).

>> In contrast, languages with smaller vowel inventories can use more
>> centralized realizations (away from the articulatory extremes,
>> allowing for less intense rounding or vowel heights) and allow for
>> wider variation in the pronunciation of a given vowel (since there is
>> less crowding of the perceptual space).

>> (Compare the pronunciations of /i u a/ in French and German to the
>> pronunciations in Arabic, for example.)

>> You might then wonder why languages don't eventually settle on the
>> smallest inventory possible (say, just /@/). Then the language runs
>> into another conflict: with only one vowel, words will either be
>> longer or the language will have an inordinate amount of homophones.
>> Either way, the overall system would still be suboptimal, just in a
>> new way.

>> And so it goes, cycling endlessly: the language is suboptimal, but the
>> only way to correct that is to make it suboptimal in some other
>> dimension.

> Thanks for the clear exposition of Optimality Theory. As a non-member of
> the Pollyanna Leibniz club, however, I must look with some suspicion on the
> use of optimality to generate real-world models. I suggest instead
> Pessimality Theory as a first approximation to the mechanism of linguistic
> change. A given language acts spontaneously to maximize its capacity for
> ambiguity and miscommunication.

This is irrelevant to the point that the two proposed types
of change act in opposite directions.

[...]

> In reality, the notion of linguistic equilibrium is
> meaningless.

This is surely one of the sillier statements that I've seen
recently. 'Linguistic equilibrium' is obviously shorthand
for 'linguistic steady state', and while it seems a pretty
safe bet that such a steady state is unachievable, the
concept is certainly meaningful.

[...]

Brian
.

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