"Major Variola (ret)" <mv@cdc.gov> wrote :

On Ken's

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All contemporary natural languages, like all biological species, are the same age.

At first this parsed because I was thinking in the sense of "all organisms have ancestries going back the same amount of time". (And humans aren't the 'goal' of evolution.) Not sure if non-bioheads got this. Anyway others' complaints clarified "speciation" --if you are willing to identify a bifurcation point then you *can* age a species or any other fork --Linux 2.4, Latin, Corvettes, etc.

I guess bifurcation points and speciation seem very clear because of the aliasing problems in our sampling methods. The speciation exists but is prolly ( probably ) often fuzzier than we think. Almost everyone would say that an American Bison and a Scot's Highland are two different species but they can hybridize. Maybe we non-Biologists measure the distance between "species" inaccurately.

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An interesting question that arises out of the observation that some languages are relatively static and others - like English - have been changing steadily. Is there any connection between the evolution behavior of the language and

At 10:36 AM 1/14/03 -0800, Michael Motyka wrote: the

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vitality of the culture? I think so.

"Vitality" is fuzzy.

Choose your measure : population? power? innovation? environmental impact? rate of change? The US seems more vital by some measures. Less so by others. More dangerous to the species by others.

Clearly America admitting everyone (cf Japanese) helps. Clearly not having an Acadamie Anglaise helps (cf surrender-monkeys). Electronic media probably help.

There's an even more interesting technical evolution: English is also undergoing "entropic refinement" or Hamming-like coding, as speakers prune or invent for efficiency.

As it is, it takes fewer letters in English to say something than every other common language. Look at the instruction manuals for your domestic appliances.

That is interesting.

Forms (memory requirements) get simpler ---can you believe that the surrender-monkeys retain a gender-bit for every friggin object-- and phonetically simpler too. The sounds get more orthogonal. Also the influence of immigrants and children and lazy native speakers who can't tell a "v" from a "w" or "d" from "th", or remember the 150 irregular verbs.

Some of this is natural. I've adopted the southern "y'all" because English has no plural third person and this ambiguity is annoying when you're emailing to several people. Note also the efficiency of the contraction. You hear "data" used as singular enough times, you say fuck it, I'll have a beer, or several beer [sic]. Talk to Eastern Europeans long enough, you'll start dropping your articles, though you may miss the FEC/prompting and flash back to Boris & Natasha cartoons...

Is the evolution towards a more efficient language an active or passive process? Is it driven by an internal inclination towards expansion, freeing up system resources as it were, or is it a coping mechanism for sensory overload? Mike