Indo European Origins (language mutability, efficiency)

Michael Motyka mmotyka at lsil.com
Tue Jan 14 14:48:29 PST 2003


"Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov> wrote :
>On Ken's
>> > 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.

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





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