Thursday, August 11, 2005
ON LANGUAGE
Some paleoanthropologists and evolutionary biologists once speculated that Homo Sapiens won the genetic arms race with their Neanderthal cousins because of the development of language by the former facilitated an enormous non-zero sum cultural revolution that the latter could not match. A one-sided linguistic advantage for Homo Sapiens may not have been true but language certainly represented the greatest innovation in human history and even today, often structures the core of our personal and collective identities.
I make mention of this because there were two very interesting posts today relating to language and its uses by Younghusband of Coming Anarchy, who is himself a linguist and also at NuSapiens ( hat tip to Dave ).
Younghusband lambastes the theories of George Lakoff, the Democratic Party's " framing" guru who I have blogged on previously. An excerpt from YH's post "Highjacking the American Language":
[On Lakoff's " Framing"] "Unfortunately this is pseudo-science at best, and is based on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which was effectively disproven by the cognitive revolutionaries of the 60’s, and absolutely demolished by my linguistic hero Steven Pinker. The point is, people don’t think in words, thus you cannot control their thoughts by controlling their language. Sorry Mr. Orwell! Ever knew what you wanted to say but couldn’t put it into words? Ever have an idea that you couldn’t explain? As much as the military says “collateral damage” everybody really knows what it means. A “Personal Hydration Engineer” is really just a “waterboy.”"
Over at NuSapiens, we have some speculation on the mechanics by which Indo-European languages replaced their indigenous predecessors in "Some Thoughts on Language Replacement":
"In a nutshell: I wonder whether Indo-European can be seen as an ideology associated with a technology, rather than a language associated with an ethnicity or culture. Many people associate the spread of IE languages with the spread of agriculture in Europe following the last Ice Age. But how did Indo-European replace indigenous European languages? Maybe old languages don't die, they just fade away. Reductionistic linguistic models might miss this by looking for the wrong things: maybe change happened gradually without anyone realizing they were "adopting a new language.
...Our model biases our view: we look at European languages, and see them as Indo-European. We look for common grammatical structure, common words, etc. But what about other variable elements, such as tonality or "accent"? A Spaniard once described Spanish to me as "Latin with a Basque accent." Well, what is this "accent," something linguistics might consider random or trivial? Remember, modern linguistics is part of the Indo-European linguistic-thinking system, so how can it objectively view itself? The parts considered trivial or invisible are most likely to maintain survivals of pre-IE influences. "
There's some logic here but being a certified outsider to the field of linguistics, I'm wondering how this hypothesis stacks up by looking for Indo-European's " invisible" connections with Uralic languages and Basque ? Any ideas out there from my learned and multilingual commenters ? ¶ 7:18 PM
Some paleoanthropologists and evolutionary biologists once speculated that Homo Sapiens won the genetic arms race with their Neanderthal cousins because of the development of language by the former facilitated an enormous non-zero sum cultural revolution that the latter could not match. A one-sided linguistic advantage for Homo Sapiens may not have been true but language certainly represented the greatest innovation in human history and even today, often structures the core of our personal and collective identities.
I make mention of this because there were two very interesting posts today relating to language and its uses by Younghusband of Coming Anarchy, who is himself a linguist and also at NuSapiens ( hat tip to Dave ).
Younghusband lambastes the theories of George Lakoff, the Democratic Party's " framing" guru who I have blogged on previously. An excerpt from YH's post "Highjacking the American Language":
[On Lakoff's " Framing"] "Unfortunately this is pseudo-science at best, and is based on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which was effectively disproven by the cognitive revolutionaries of the 60’s, and absolutely demolished by my linguistic hero Steven Pinker. The point is, people don’t think in words, thus you cannot control their thoughts by controlling their language. Sorry Mr. Orwell! Ever knew what you wanted to say but couldn’t put it into words? Ever have an idea that you couldn’t explain? As much as the military says “collateral damage” everybody really knows what it means. A “Personal Hydration Engineer” is really just a “waterboy.”"
Over at NuSapiens, we have some speculation on the mechanics by which Indo-European languages replaced their indigenous predecessors in "Some Thoughts on Language Replacement":
"In a nutshell: I wonder whether Indo-European can be seen as an ideology associated with a technology, rather than a language associated with an ethnicity or culture. Many people associate the spread of IE languages with the spread of agriculture in Europe following the last Ice Age. But how did Indo-European replace indigenous European languages? Maybe old languages don't die, they just fade away. Reductionistic linguistic models might miss this by looking for the wrong things: maybe change happened gradually without anyone realizing they were "adopting a new language.
...Our model biases our view: we look at European languages, and see them as Indo-European. We look for common grammatical structure, common words, etc. But what about other variable elements, such as tonality or "accent"? A Spaniard once described Spanish to me as "Latin with a Basque accent." Well, what is this "accent," something linguistics might consider random or trivial? Remember, modern linguistics is part of the Indo-European linguistic-thinking system, so how can it objectively view itself? The parts considered trivial or invisible are most likely to maintain survivals of pre-IE influences. "
There's some logic here but being a certified outsider to the field of linguistics, I'm wondering how this hypothesis stacks up by looking for Indo-European's " invisible" connections with Uralic languages and Basque ? Any ideas out there from my learned and multilingual commenters ? ¶ 7:18 PM
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We look for common grammatical structure, common words, etc.
Oh man... that was the worst part of doing Linguistics in my undergrad... Historical Linguistics. I spent 3 grueling months reconstructing languages that may have never existed...
Anyways, modern linguists also look for phonological and morphological similarities when tracking the history of a language. I think "accent" falls into this category.
Secondly, language change is only really noticed by the first generation. So if the Japanese adopt the English word for X, the current generation uses the word knowing it is a foreign language. But if it becomes a common-use word, then the second generation assumes it is a "native" word, and only realizes it is borrowed if they learn the original word in a foreign-language class, or if it is pointed out to them.
My two cents...
Oh man... that was the worst part of doing Linguistics in my undergrad... Historical Linguistics. I spent 3 grueling months reconstructing languages that may have never existed...
Anyways, modern linguists also look for phonological and morphological similarities when tracking the history of a language. I think "accent" falls into this category.
Secondly, language change is only really noticed by the first generation. So if the Japanese adopt the English word for X, the current generation uses the word knowing it is a foreign language. But if it becomes a common-use word, then the second generation assumes it is a "native" word, and only realizes it is borrowed if they learn the original word in a foreign-language class, or if it is pointed out to them.
My two cents...
Interesting.
I would suspect that with the intervening thousands of years it is probably quite impossible to tease out pre-Indo European language with any certainty, given lack of evidence.
Regardless, I would as well suspect as a mere hobbyist in reading such things that indeed the point is well taken. As I deal with the living replacement of Berber by Arabic (by absorption) here in North Africa, it strikes me as fairly clear the North African spoken Arabic is "Berber Arabic." I shall not try to use linguistic terms (I think I might be able to, but as likely not) to describe this, but it strikes me - with my weak Berber (Chleuh) knowledge and far better Arabic - that much of the queerness in pronunciation patterns, odd grammatical usages here tie back to Berber influences. Small realisation that dawned on me while sitting with a Chleuh family in the Casa region some time back and suddenly realising I didn't understand a word. They had shifted to Chleuh, from derija, the local Arabic dialect, however it all sounded exactely the same.
I would suspect that with the intervening thousands of years it is probably quite impossible to tease out pre-Indo European language with any certainty, given lack of evidence.
Regardless, I would as well suspect as a mere hobbyist in reading such things that indeed the point is well taken. As I deal with the living replacement of Berber by Arabic (by absorption) here in North Africa, it strikes me as fairly clear the North African spoken Arabic is "Berber Arabic." I shall not try to use linguistic terms (I think I might be able to, but as likely not) to describe this, but it strikes me - with my weak Berber (Chleuh) knowledge and far better Arabic - that much of the queerness in pronunciation patterns, odd grammatical usages here tie back to Berber influences. Small realisation that dawned on me while sitting with a Chleuh family in the Casa region some time back and suddenly realising I didn't understand a word. They had shifted to Chleuh, from derija, the local Arabic dialect, however it all sounded exactely the same.
# posted by 
: Friday, 12 August, 2005
: Friday, 12 August, 2005
"Well, what is this 'accent,' something linguistics might consider random or trivial? Remember, modern linguistics is part of the Indo-European linguistic-thinking system, so how can it objectively view itself? The parts considered trivial or invisible are most likely to maintain survivals of pre-IE influences."
I'm very much an amateur linguist, better at questions than answers. I've been learning Estonian, a member of the Finno-Ugrian language family and probably one of the languages that was in Europe before the Indo-Europeans arrived.
I find the quote above quite unuseful. I suspect that the point being made is that linguists should look at other things than they've been looking at. But if something is genuinely "invisible," (as opposed to invisible because nobody's looking at it), then it can't be seen or studied. And trivial things may not provide much more evidence. Some clarification of this point is needed.
I will pose a question in this regard, to which linguistics may well have an answer.
One of the things that seems to be a constant in language evolution is that earlier languages have a complex structure of endings (declensions, conjugations) and later languages drop most of the endings.
So that "Basque-accented Latin" has lost most of the Latin endings. Likewise, Estonian is a simplified version of Finnish, and the colloquial versions of both drop many of the endings. We are even dropping the last few endings in English. As I've gotten into Estonian, I've become much more conscious of the need for "whom," which seems to be disappearing or used incorrectly.
Now, if languages start with grunts and hoots, how do they get to the elaborate structures of Latin or Finnish? In those languages, the endings tell you so much that word order is mostly irrelevant, although custom provides guidelines. And then why are those elaborate structures abandoned?
CKR
I'm very much an amateur linguist, better at questions than answers. I've been learning Estonian, a member of the Finno-Ugrian language family and probably one of the languages that was in Europe before the Indo-Europeans arrived.
I find the quote above quite unuseful. I suspect that the point being made is that linguists should look at other things than they've been looking at. But if something is genuinely "invisible," (as opposed to invisible because nobody's looking at it), then it can't be seen or studied. And trivial things may not provide much more evidence. Some clarification of this point is needed.
I will pose a question in this regard, to which linguistics may well have an answer.
One of the things that seems to be a constant in language evolution is that earlier languages have a complex structure of endings (declensions, conjugations) and later languages drop most of the endings.
So that "Basque-accented Latin" has lost most of the Latin endings. Likewise, Estonian is a simplified version of Finnish, and the colloquial versions of both drop many of the endings. We are even dropping the last few endings in English. As I've gotten into Estonian, I've become much more conscious of the need for "whom," which seems to be disappearing or used incorrectly.
Now, if languages start with grunts and hoots, how do they get to the elaborate structures of Latin or Finnish? In those languages, the endings tell you so much that word order is mostly irrelevant, although custom provides guidelines. And then why are those elaborate structures abandoned?
CKR
# posted by : Friday, 12 August, 2005
: Friday, 12 August, 2005
Well, all of you had far more substantive contributions than I could have made.
My understanding of old Yugoslavia was that about every ten miles, on a North-South line, the Serbo-Croat dialect shifted slightly. Not sure if that is true for Italian to the same extent
My understanding of old Yugoslavia was that about every ten miles, on a North-South line, the Serbo-Croat dialect shifted slightly. Not sure if that is true for Italian to the same extent
One of the things that seems to be a constant in language evolution is that earlier languages have a complex structure of endings (declensions, conjugations) and later languages drop most of the endings.
Based on my impoverished understanding, that is a false proposition. Rather, per my understanding, a constant of langauge evolution is that langauges cycle through sets of grammatical tools, adding and losing. Simplification is a bit of an illusion.
I think, overall, your understanding of the grammar is incorrect.
In re language origin, as far as I can tell it is not at all clear how language started, but there seems to be (if my impoverished understanding of the literature is correct and up to date) a widespread view that there is strong evidence that basic grammatical capacity is innate and that whatever langauges may have emerged after that threshhold was passed (genetically) may have been born "in full flower" - I recall reading articles in re the spontaneously generated grammar among Nicaraguan deaf children in an orphanage as a case study.
Based on my impoverished understanding, that is a false proposition. Rather, per my understanding, a constant of langauge evolution is that langauges cycle through sets of grammatical tools, adding and losing. Simplification is a bit of an illusion.
I think, overall, your understanding of the grammar is incorrect.
In re language origin, as far as I can tell it is not at all clear how language started, but there seems to be (if my impoverished understanding of the literature is correct and up to date) a widespread view that there is strong evidence that basic grammatical capacity is innate and that whatever langauges may have emerged after that threshhold was passed (genetically) may have been born "in full flower" - I recall reading articles in re the spontaneously generated grammar among Nicaraguan deaf children in an orphanage as a case study.
# posted by : Friday, 12 August, 2005
: Friday, 12 August, 2005
Collounsbury, if my "understanding of the grammar is incorrect," then please give some examples where languages became more inflected. I've given several where the inflections were or are being lost: Latin to the Romance languages, Finnish to Estonian, both of those to colloquial forms, and English.
CKR
CKR
# posted by : Friday, 12 August, 2005
: Friday, 12 August, 2005
Weeelll. The “hidden connections” between the Indo-European language family and Basque are tenuous indeed.
Warning: we're getting into the realms somewhere between hypothesis and fantasy here.
There are some who posit language super-families (families to which language families belong). IIRC the three posited super-families are Nostratic super-family (which includes the Indo-European and Turkic families and Japanese (!) inter alia), the Dene-Caucasian super-family (which includes Basque, the Chinese language families, the Caucasian languages, and some North American Indian language families), and the Afro-Asiatic super-family (which is composed of some African language families, and others). Sheesh. I haven't thought about this in a long time.
Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Turkic would have differentiated 8,000 or more years ago. And some claim that the three super-families differentiated from each other 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. This stuff is all highly speculative and controversial.
So any relationship other than a few borrow-words here and there and other such between Indo-European languages and Basque would be very, very old.
Warning: we're getting into the realms somewhere between hypothesis and fantasy here.
There are some who posit language super-families (families to which language families belong). IIRC the three posited super-families are Nostratic super-family (which includes the Indo-European and Turkic families and Japanese (!) inter alia), the Dene-Caucasian super-family (which includes Basque, the Chinese language families, the Caucasian languages, and some North American Indian language families), and the Afro-Asiatic super-family (which is composed of some African language families, and others). Sheesh. I haven't thought about this in a long time.
Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Turkic would have differentiated 8,000 or more years ago. And some claim that the three super-families differentiated from each other 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. This stuff is all highly speculative and controversial.
So any relationship other than a few borrow-words here and there and other such between Indo-European languages and Basque would be very, very old.
Hey Dave,
Upping the ante to linguistic inside baseball I see :o)
Ok, I get grouping Indo-European and Turkish together - Turkish is a great "base" foreign language to learn as a springboard to others, but why Japanese ?
Upping the ante to linguistic inside baseball I see :o)
Ok, I get grouping Indo-European and Turkish together - Turkish is a great "base" foreign language to learn as a springboard to others, but why Japanese ?
I agree with Dave that this is largely in the realm of fantasy, and thank him for reminding us of the superfamilies.
Here's an article with a little bit about why Japanese might be included as an Altaic language. I compare Estonian to a friend's Japanese, and we find some small similarities. But you can do that with almost any two languages. Presumably the linguists are doing a more systematic job.
CKR
Here's an article with a little bit about why Japanese might be included as an Altaic language. I compare Estonian to a friend's Japanese, and we find some small similarities. But you can do that with almost any two languages. Presumably the linguists are doing a more systematic job.
CKR
# posted by : Saturday, 13 August, 2005
: Saturday, 13 August, 2005
"Collounsbury, if my "understanding of the grammar is incorrect," then please give some examples where languages became more inflected. I've given several where the inflections were or are being lost: Latin to the Romance languages, Finnish to Estonian, both of those to colloquial forms, and English."
Apparently Mongolian and Manchu as I understand, and as I understand it, the IE languages added inflections and those that did are losing them; I also understand that Indian subcon languages deriving from Sanskrit developed inflections after losing the Sanskrit inflection systems, and now are losing them again. I seem to recall reading something along these lines in re West African Atlantic lang but my memory may be off.
A cycle, then, as I understand it, with the information being coded in a different way. Looks simpler to you because you're used to a word order system with less inflection.
You're mistaking then, again per my impoverished understanding through hobby reading, a stage for a final lesson, and the IE trees for the world language forest.
As far as I can tell the idea that languages are getting "simpler" is rejected and represents an analytical error that, if I understand the situ, resembles "money illusion."
Apparently Mongolian and Manchu as I understand, and as I understand it, the IE languages added inflections and those that did are losing them; I also understand that Indian subcon languages deriving from Sanskrit developed inflections after losing the Sanskrit inflection systems, and now are losing them again. I seem to recall reading something along these lines in re West African Atlantic lang but my memory may be off.
A cycle, then, as I understand it, with the information being coded in a different way. Looks simpler to you because you're used to a word order system with less inflection.
You're mistaking then, again per my impoverished understanding through hobby reading, a stage for a final lesson, and the IE trees for the world language forest.
As far as I can tell the idea that languages are getting "simpler" is rejected and represents an analytical error that, if I understand the situ, resembles "money illusion."
# posted by : Saturday, 13 August, 2005
: Saturday, 13 August, 2005
Okay, as someone who actually has 4 years of theoretical linguistics under my belt, let me tell you that the first thing you learn is not to compare the complexities of langauge. Who cares if one language has more words than another, or one has 16 types of case and 800 possible prefixes and infixes. It is red apples and green apples.
The amazing thing is that language is an instinct or a growth that you are born with. Like your arm, it grows for a while, then stops. So we can learn language for while, then we can't.
And for the record, I was never really convinced that what we were doing in historical linguistics was valuable. I thought there were too many possible historical/cultural variables to track the development of the languages over such a broad timeframe/geographical space.
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The amazing thing is that language is an instinct or a growth that you are born with. Like your arm, it grows for a while, then stops. So we can learn language for while, then we can't.
And for the record, I was never really convinced that what we were doing in historical linguistics was valuable. I thought there were too many possible historical/cultural variables to track the development of the languages over such a broad timeframe/geographical space.
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