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  1. #51
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    Isn't evolution the survival of the fittest?

    If a word, phrase or dialect is the fittest then it survives. If not then with the exception of a few holdouts, it falls into vernacular extinction.

    If a more apt word comes along then the battle of usage commences. The loser does not always fade into oblivion but the winner definately either obtains or maintains dominant usage.

    I don't mean to imply that linguistics are anthropomorphic, but given evolution as survival of the fittest, language certainly evolves.

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    Well ya see thee and thou got together, one thing led to another, and they had a babby. But the babby wasn't yer normal thee or thou,it was a horrible misshapen thing, it was a you. So as time went by you grew up lonely with no one to love. Except for ewes (this story takes place in the Scottish Highlands). So you found himself a ewe and had a bunch of babby yous. And with all the inbreeding that goes on in the Highlands yous have come to dominate now it's hard to find a thee or a thou in the wild.
    Welcome to Mellophant.

    We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dangerously Unqualified View post
    Isn't evolution the survival of the fittest?

    If a word, phrase or dialect is the fittest then it survives. If not then with the exception of a few holdouts, it falls into vernacular extinction.

    If a more apt word comes along then the battle of usage commences. The loser does not always fade into oblivion but the winner definately either obtains or maintains dominant usage.

    I don't mean to imply that linguistics are anthropomorphic, but given evolution as survival of the fittest, language certainly evolves.
    There's no "survival of the fittest", that's ridiculous. There is no "reproduction", which is central to biological evolution. There is no "competition" or "resources" and certainly nothing resembling "inheritance of characteristics", which is the central insight that underlies the theory of evolution.

    You may find it appealing to pretend that words are little rodents and birds and trees all growing in an ecosystem but that doesn't mean the metaphor is useful or helps describe anything about how language actually works.

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    Others seem to think differently.

    If human language is innate, then why is there such a variety of languages? Pinker devotes a chapter to exploring the ways in which languages vary, the ways in which they change with time, and some of the attempts at reconstruction of human linguistic history (including a reasonably even-handed appraisal of Greenbergian lumping). Separate chapters are devoted to language acquisition by infants, to the biological (genetic and ontogenetic) underpinnings of language, and to the evolution of language.
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 05:35 AM.
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    What we need to remember is that the world isn't a Harry Potter novel, where the planet's future is dependent on the survival of a quaint but barely decipherable mish-mash of vowels and consonants.
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    And just to hammer the point home. From an Amazon review of the above linked book "The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language".

    The first sections illustrate the key themes that Pinker will elaborate on throughout the rest of the book. He presents language as being an evolutionary adaptation that is unique to humans, just as much as a trunk is an adaptation for elephants or sonar for a bat.
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 09:39 AM.
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  7. #57
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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    There's no "survival of the fittest", that's ridiculous. There is no "reproduction", which is central to biological evolution. There is no "competition" or "resources" and certainly nothing resembling "inheritance of characteristics", which is the central insight that underlies the theory of evolution.

    You may find it appealing to pretend that words are little rodents and birds and trees all growing in an ecosystem but that doesn't mean the metaphor is useful or helps describe anything about how language actually works.
    Perhaps you are correct.

    Perhaps survival of the fittest is not the best way of looking at it.

    Perhaps it is more survival of the aptest.

    Although it is good to see that Jesus get's it.

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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And just to hammer the point home. From an Amazon review of the above linked book "The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language".
    The fact that you just cited something that doesn't say anything like what you're saying I think is the final nail in the coffin for your argument, Ivan. (By the way, have you ever even read the book you just cited? I have.)

    You obviously don't know anything about this topic. The thread is pretty much history because of this dumbass argument that languages act like biological species (or that words do, or that they act like individual organisms, or whatever, since all the people who've been saying this have said totally different things.)

    You want to yammer on about something you haven't ever bothered to learn anything about? Fine. You want to embarrass yourself by doing it in front of people who actually have some expertise in it? Fine. Whatever. If your point were valid, it wouldn't depend on bullshit, though.

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    I have not proclaimed anywhere in this thread that I have any expertise in linguistic studies; in fact, I've stated the contrary.

    I am just giving my thoughts from a layman's pov, and the only point I have tried to make is that languages evolve.

    If you want to get all pissy and pedantic over a matter of semantics, and debate the actual meaning of the word "evolve", knock yerself out fella, but I wont be joining in..
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    I have not proclaimed anywhere in this thread that I have any expertise in linguistic studies; in fact, I've stated the contrary.
    Maybe that's why you should listen when someone who, compared to you at least is an expert, tells you you're wrong. Rather than blustering and coming up with cites that don't even support what you're saying.

    I can't even begin to imagine the mindset that would lead a person to simultaneously say that they don't have expertise on a topic and then insist, over and over, that they have some novel understanding of that topic, despite not knowing anything about it.


    I am just giving my thoughts from a layman's pov, and the only point I have tried to make is that languages evolve.
    And I have tried to explain to you that the "evolution" metaphor you and a couple other people keep making is completely wrong. There's no way in which language change resembles evolution because there are, for an obvious start, no little critters running around and reproducing. There's nothing going on here that's anything like evolution, so (1) it's totally incomprehensible to me why you and a couple other people here are so invested in pretending there is.

    And (2) if that were a valid way of examining language change, why can't you guys even employ it consistently? What's evolving? Languages? Dialects? Words? You say it's like evolution, but you guys can't even agree on what's evolving.


    If you want to get all pissy and pedantic over a matter of semantics, and debate the actual meaning of the word "evolve", knock yerself out fella, but I wont be joining in..
    Right. A dozen posts in this thread making loud statements about something you clearly don't know shit about and now you want to stop once you've drowned the thread in vacuous bullshit?

    You know, it's not my fault you don't know anything about this. It's certainly not my fault you haven't bothered to try to learn anything about it when you decided you were interested enough in it to fill the thread with your posts. And it's not my fault you always act under the assumption that anything you don't know, no one knows. (Which is particularly odd given how little you have ever bothered to learn.)

    You know, as someone who has taken the time and made the effort to actually learn something about this, I am annoyed when someone insists on something as nonsensical as "language change acts like evolution", insists on it over and over, and all the while can't even come up with some consistent explanation of what exactly you claim is "evolving", much less any kind of non-tautological definition for "fitness" in this context.

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    From a New Scientist article, languages-evolve-in-sudden-leaps-not-creeps.

    Language evolves in sudden leaps, according to a statistical study of three major language groups. The finding challenges the slow-and-steady model held by many linguists and matches evidence that genetic evolution follows a similar path.
    How much more wrong can you be, Exy? Or are you the trailblazer who is going to turn linguistic studies on its head?

    Salikoko Mufwene a linguist at the University of Chicago, however, says it may be misleading to characterise language evolution as "abrupt". "You don't go to bed speaking one way and wake up speaking another way," he says. "Languages may change over centuries, but that is not abrupt, that is gradual."
    Notice he didn't argue with the fact they EVOLVE!
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 01:42 PM.
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    So, when are we going to hear your groundbreaking new ideas on the development of language, Exy?

    I'm sat here with bated breath.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    From a New Scientist article, languages-evolve-in-sudden-leaps-not-creeps.



    How much more wrong can you be, Exy? Or are you the trailblazer who is going to turn linguistic studies on its head?



    Notice he didn't argue with the fact they EVOLVE!
    Well, of course he didn't. He had no way of knowing how the journalist would characterize the research when he was interviewed.

    Are you familiar with this type of study? Are you familiar with Salikoko Mufwene's work, since you quoted him? What have you read by the people they quoted in that article? Mufwene in particular has a convincing but non-mainstream theory of creole genesis that I used heavily in a paper I wrote.

    Did you notice that the words "evolve" and "evolution" were not actually used by the people they were quoting? They were only used by the journalist, who is probably not an expert in the field. (Of course, that's hardly a major screw up considering a lot of science journalism.)

    Did you notice that nothing about the "evolution" they were describing had anything to do with competition and survival of the fittest? They author of the article's inapropos word choice is clearly meant to mean that language changes over time. But you and Dangerously Unqualified, in this very thread, were specifically appealing to competition and survival of the fittest, neither of which can be justified by making reference to the fact that language changes.

    Now if you actually knew the topic, you'd know that this kind of work doesn't actually have a good reputation among linguists. A lot of people outside the field have purported to use tools adapted from other disciplines to look at the history of languages. None of them have come up with anything regarded by people in the field as convincing, since they usually involve claims that can't be checked against anything else, and assumptions about the rate in which language changes that are known to be false. (Google up "glottochronology" if you want to learn something about the granddaddy of this kind of nonsense.) Or did you not even bother to check and find out that Mark Pagel isn't even a linguist?

    Stick "language" and "evolution" into Google all day, Ivan. But I actually know something about this topic and you're not going to snow me by throwing up irrelevant citations.

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    As I said before this stupid double posting/deletion problem ate my post, I'm not trying to snow you, merely offer counters to your assertions.

    I can't help it if there are so many of them on Google.

    Here's another. http://www.spanishlinguist.com/spani...sed_words.html

    And as with living things, Dr. Pagel added, that kind of variation “is the raw stuff that evolution acts on.”
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    And Mark Pagel is a professor of biological sciences, so I imagine he'd know a little bit about evolution of stuff and be able to apply it to linguistics, if he's smart enough.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    As I said before this stupid double posting/deletion problem ate my post, I'm not trying to snow you, merely offer counters to your assertions.
    You're offering up "citations" from someone who is not an expert, whose work is not impressive to experts, and who is not making any claims about survival of the fittest, like the ones upthread that started this stupid hijack.

    None of these things you find support the relevant claims here. Copy-pasting a bunch of stuff you haven't even begun to evaluate that you found by googling "language and evolution" does not prove your case.

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    And another. http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/...r.langacq.html

    2 The Biology of Language Acquisition
    Human language is made possible by special adaptations of the human mind and body that occurred in the course of human evolution, and which are put to use by children in acquiring their mother tongue.
    2.1 Evolution of Language
    Most obviously, the shape of the human vocal tract seems to have been modified in evolution for the demands of speech. Our larynxes are low in our throats, and our vocal tracts have a sharp right angle bend that creates two independently-modifiable resonant cavities (the mouth and the pharynx or throat) that defines a large two-dimensional range of vowel sounds (see the chapter by Liberman). But it comes at a sacrifice of efficiency for breathing, swallowing, and chewing (Lieberman, 1984). Before the invention of the Heimlich maneuver, choking on food was a common cause of accidental death in humans, causing 6,000 deaths a year in the United States. The evolutionary selective advantages for language must have been very large to outweigh such a disadvantage.

    It is tempting to think that if language evolved by gradual Darwinian natural selection, we must be able to find some precursor of it in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. In several famous and controversial demonstrations, chimpanzees have been taught some hand-signs based on American Sign Language, to manipulate colored switches or tokens, and to understand some spoken commands (Gardner & Gardner, 1969; Premack & Premack, 1983; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). Whether one wants to call their abilities "language" is not really a scientific question, but a matter of definition: how far we are willing to stretch the meaning of the word "language".

    The scientific question is whether the chimps' abilities are homologous to human language -- that is, whether the two systems show the same basic organization owing to descent from a single system in their common ancestor. For example, biologists don't debate whether the wing-like structures of gliding rodents may be called "genuine wings" or something else (a boring question of definitions). It's clear that these structures are not homologous to the wings of bats, because they have a fundamentally different anatomical plan, reflecting a different evolutionary history. Bats' wings are modifications of the hands of the common mammalian ancestor; flying squirrels' wings are modifications of its rib cage. The two structures are merely analogous: similar in function.

    Though artificial chimp signaling systems have some analogies to human language (e.g., use in communication, combinations of more basic signals), it seems unlikely that they are homologous. Chimpanzees require massive regimented teaching sequences contrived by humans to acquire quite rudimentary abilities, mostly limited to a small number of signs, strung together in repetitive, quasi-random sequences, used with the intent of requesting food or tickling (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, & Bever, 1979; Seidenberg & Petitto, 1979, 1987; Seidenberg, 1986; Wallman, 1992; Pinker, 1994a). This contrasts sharply with human children, who pick up thousands of words spontaneously, combine them in structured sequences where every word has a determinate role, respect the word order of the adult language, and use sentences for a variety of purposes such as commenting on interesting objects.

    This lack of homology does not, by the way, cast doubt on a gradualistic Darwinian account of language evolution. Humans did not evolve directly from chimpanzees. Both derived from common ancestor, probably around 6-7 million years ago. This leaves about 300,000 generations in which language could have evolved gradually in the lineage leading to humans, after it split off from the lineage leading to chimpanzees. Presumably language evolved in the human lineage for two reasons: our ancestors developed technology and knowledge of the local environment in their lifetimes, and were involved in extensive reciprocal cooperation. This allowed them to benefit by sharing hard-won knowledge with their kin and exchanging it with their neighbors (Pinker & Bloom, 1990).
    I'm getting really excited about hearing your alternate theory, Exy.
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    And another. http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/...r.langacq.html

    2 The Biology of Language Acquisition
    Human language is made possible by special adaptations of the human mind and body that occurred in the course of human evolution, and which are put to use by children in acquiring their mother tongue.
    2.1 Evolution of Language
    Most obviously, the shape of the human vocal tract seems to have been modified in evolution for the demands of speech. Our larynxes are low in our throats, and our vocal tracts have a sharp right angle bend that creates two independently-modifiable resonant cavities (the mouth and the pharynx or throat) that defines a large two-dimensional range of vowel sounds (see the chapter by Liberman). But it comes at a sacrifice of efficiency for breathing, swallowing, and chewing (Lieberman, 1984). Before the invention of the Heimlich maneuver, choking on food was a common cause of accidental death in humans, causing 6,000 deaths a year in the United States. The evolutionary selective advantages for language must have been very large to outweigh such a disadvantage.

    It is tempting to think that if language evolved by gradual Darwinian natural selection, we must be able to find some precursor of it in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees. In several famous and controversial demonstrations, chimpanzees have been taught some hand-signs based on American Sign Language, to manipulate colored switches or tokens, and to understand some spoken commands (Gardner & Gardner, 1969; Premack & Premack, 1983; Savage-Rumbaugh, 1991). Whether one wants to call their abilities "language" is not really a scientific question, but a matter of definition: how far we are willing to stretch the meaning of the word "language".

    The scientific question is whether the chimps' abilities are homologous to human language -- that is, whether the two systems show the same basic organization owing to descent from a single system in their common ancestor. For example, biologists don't debate whether the wing-like structures of gliding rodents may be called "genuine wings" or something else (a boring question of definitions). It's clear that these structures are not homologous to the wings of bats, because they have a fundamentally different anatomical plan, reflecting a different evolutionary history. Bats' wings are modifications of the hands of the common mammalian ancestor; flying squirrels' wings are modifications of its rib cage. The two structures are merely analogous: similar in function.

    Though artificial chimp signaling systems have some analogies to human language (e.g., use in communication, combinations of more basic signals), it seems unlikely that they are homologous. Chimpanzees require massive regimented teaching sequences contrived by humans to acquire quite rudimentary abilities, mostly limited to a small number of signs, strung together in repetitive, quasi-random sequences, used with the intent of requesting food or tickling (Terrace, Petitto, Sanders, & Bever, 1979; Seidenberg & Petitto, 1979, 1987; Seidenberg, 1986; Wallman, 1992; Pinker, 1994a). This contrasts sharply with human children, who pick up thousands of words spontaneously, combine them in structured sequences where every word has a determinate role, respect the word order of the adult language, and use sentences for a variety of purposes such as commenting on interesting objects.

    This lack of homology does not, by the way, cast doubt on a gradualistic Darwinian account of language evolution. Humans did not evolve directly from chimpanzees. Both derived from common ancestor, probably around 6-7 million years ago. This leaves about 300,000 generations in which language could have evolved gradually in the lineage leading to humans, after it split off from the lineage leading to chimpanzees. Presumably language evolved in the human lineage for two reasons: our ancestors developed technology and knowledge of the local environment in their lifetimes, and were involved in extensive reciprocal cooperation. This allowed them to benefit by sharing hard-won knowledge with their kin and exchanging it with their neighbors (Pinker & Bloom, 1990).
    I'm getting really excited about hearing your alternate theory, Exy.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And another. http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/...r.langacq.html



    I'm getting really excited about hearing your alternate theory, Exy.
    If you think that even begins to support the "languages evolve like living things" stuff people were saying above, that means you didn't even read what you just posted.

    Which is it, Ivan? Are you trying to snow me with bullshit citations, or are you arguing a point despite not having even a germ of awareness of what you're arguing?

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    No, I'm waiting to hear your startlingly alternative theory, that seemingly contradicts everything I have encountered, which, me not being an expert, probably is nowhere near as much as what you have read.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    No, I'm waiting to hear your startlingly alternative theory, that seemingly contradicts everything I have encountered, which, me not being an expert, probably is nowhere near as much as what you have read.
    You haven't come up with one single source that supports the claim that language varieties "evolve" and "compete". In fact, you haven't even come up with a clear exegesis of the point you're arguing so vociferously. How can I argue against a non-argument? You keep coming up with random-ass shit from Google searches that doesn't even have anything to do with the claim under discussion here. What do you want me to say in response? I mean, the fact that you can't come up with any actual evidence (here, that would constitute a citation that was actually germane to the discussion) would be enough to dismiss your blustering in any academic context.

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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And another. http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/...r.langacq.html



    I'm getting really excited about hearing your alternate theory, Exy.

    If you'll allow someone who has no dog in this particular fight to point out the startlingly obvious, your site is discussing the "evolution of language" as it evolved in the human race from ancestors who didn't have a spoken language.

    That's a different subject then "evolution" in the sense of change of languages that already exist, which is what most of the rest of this thread has been about.

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    Again, not even related to the point under discussion.

    Why aren't you even bothering to make sure the things you link to actually have something to do with what you're arguing so passionately about?

    Why are you arguing on, and on, and on, on a topic you've admitted not knowing anything about, against someone who has repeatedly demonstrated his knowledge of the topic? Why, if you want to argue this, aren't you even bothering to make sure that the shit you have found with Google has something to do with what's being discussed? You're plainly not even reading these things, or you would know they don't support your point.

    Ivan, I'm not stupid. You can come up with all the unrelated links you want, but you will not succeed in snowing me with bullshit, unrelated links.

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    Quote Originally posted by Laughing Lagomorph View post
    If you'll allow someone who has no dog in this particular fight to point out the startlingly obvious, your site is discussing the "evolution of language" as it evolved in the human race from ancestors who didn't have a spoken language.
    And language has changed a great deal since then.

    Wow, it's almost like it evolved!
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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    < SNIP - a lot of words >
    You haven't demonstrated fuck all, except that you disagree as to whether languages evolve. What was your counter-explanation again?

    Don't just say "I know about this shit, believe me!", offer me an alternative explanation.

    And what's this bollocks about me arguing passionately? Self-project much, Exy?
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 03:00 PM.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And language has changed a great deal since then.

    Wow, it's almost like it evolved!
    Ivan, seriously, why don't you ever just shut up when you don't know anything about what you're talking about?

    Seriously. Shut up and listen to what people who actually know about the topic have to say. You're not going to make yourself be correct by posting a bunch of unrelated bullshit links. You're not going to make anyone think you're correct. What is the point of this? You just don't know dick about this subject. There's plenty of things I don't know about, and I try not to embarrass myself the way you're embarrassing yourself. What the hell is the point of your tactic of trying to drown out people who actually have relevant knowledge or insights with your endless nonsense?

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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    Ivan, seriously, why don't you ever just shut up when you don't know anything about what you're talking about?

    Seriously. Shut up and listen to what people who actually know about the topic have to say. You're not going to make yourself be correct by posting a bunch of unrelated bullshit links. You're not going to make anyone think you're correct. What is the point of this? You just don't know dick about this subject. There's plenty of things I don't know about, and I try not to embarrass myself the way you're embarrassing yourself. What the hell is the point of your tactic of trying to drown out people who actually have relevant knowledge or insights with your endless nonsense?
    You keep saying I know fuck all and you know everything regarding this topic, but you haven't offered up any of your own hard earned and well respected opinions yet.

    So put up, or STFU yourself.

    If you can explain it clearly enough, or point to someone who can, I'll be able to understand it.
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 03:08 PM.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    You haven't demonstrated fuck all, except that you disagree as to whether languages evolve. What was your counter-explanation again?

    Don't just say "I know about this shit, believe me!", offer me an alternative explanation.

    And what's this bollocks about me arguing passionately? Self-project much, Exy?
    I'm not somehow obligated to offer up an "alternative explanation" when you can't even formulate a coherent explanation of your point, Ivan.

    Fuck, you can't even bother to read if the pages you're linking to have anything to do with the topic, what am I supposed to offer a counterpoint to? You still haven't come up with a debatable argument.

    All I said was that you can't explain the way languages change by comparisons to evolution. And as I already said, that's obvious, because evolution requires reproduction and genetic inheritance, something with no parallel (or at least none that you have come up with) in language change. You obviously can't come up with a response to that; a hundred more unrelated links won't make a difference.

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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And language has changed a great deal since then.

    Wow, it's almost like it evolved!

    Maybe, but your cite that language evolved among humanity's ancestors doesn't mean that language has since evolved within the human race.

    The nuclear family (a pair-bonded couple and their offspring) seems to have evolved among humanity's ancestors-as far as I'm aware none of our closest living relatives have an analogous structure. It doesn't automatically follow however that the nuclear family has changed since then.

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    Moderator Note: ivan, if you're going to use links to try to back up your claims in the thread, you should be reading them and actually ensuring they apply to your claims. Posting unrelated links repeatedly isn't actually aiding debate. Please ensure your future posts contain content that can be debated.

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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    I'm not somehow obligated to offer up an "alternative explanation" when you can't even formulate a coherent explanation of your point, Ivan.

    Fuck, you can't even bother to read if the pages you're linking to have anything to do with the topic, what am I supposed to offer a counterpoint to? You still haven't come up with a debatable argument.

    All I said was that you can't explain the way languages change by comparisons to evolution. And as I already said, that's obvious, because evolution requires reproduction and genetic inheritance, something with no parallel (or at least none that you have come up with) in language change. You obviously can't come up with a response to that; a hundred more unrelated links won't make a difference.
    And you haven't come up with an alternative argument that discounts the idea that languages evolve... and you are the supposed expert on linguistics. If you are trying to teach me something, your tactics are piss poor.
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    Quote Originally posted by ivan astikov View post
    And you haven't come up with an alternative argument that discounts the idea that languages evolve... and you are the supposed expert on linguistics. If you are trying to teach me something, your tactics are piss poor.
    All the evidence I've seen points to you being ineducable, Ivan.

    My goal here is to point out how fucking stupid your posts are in the hopes of embarrassing you enough that you'll stop posting in the thread, and maybe it can get back onto a topic that's worth discussing. I have no fantasy that I can teach you anything -- you won't even read the things you're trying to use to support your nonsensical argument. How in the world would I compete against such determined ignorance?

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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    But then, you're talking about people who are largely illiterate. It's ridiculous to talk about the limited use of a language in writing as something wrong with the language, when the problem is that some places have almost universal illiteracy. It's not any better in places where the population is largely illiterate but speak a major world language.
    If you can spare a minute once you're done taking the belt sander to ivan, I'd like to revisit this.

    It seems to me there's a fundamental (and significant) difference between these two situations:

    1) You're illiterate because you're dirt poor. Your parents are probably illiterate, and if you went to school at all, it was a shitty school and you weren't there long; and

    2) You're illiterate for all the above reasons plus the fact that the language you first learned to speak isn't really a written language.

    It seems that situation #2 is much, much more limiting in terms of opportunities for the people in question. The reason I used the example of Ecuador, aside from being personally familiar with it, is that growing up indigenous in a Quechua-speaking household seemed like a severe handicap.
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    Quote Originally posted by Zuul View post
    Moderator Note: ivan, if you're going to use links to try to back up your claims in the thread, you should be reading them and actually ensuring they apply to your claims. Posting unrelated links repeatedly isn't actually aiding debate. Please ensure your future posts contain content that can be debated.
    All of my links relate to the idea of whether languages evolve. If anyone wants to argue the content though, they need to contact the authors, as I am just a layman, and do not have the expertise to argue the minutae.

    Exy supposedly has the expertise, but he just seems content to say my opinions suck, without adding anything of substance as to why.
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    Quote Originally posted by OneCentStamp View post
    If you can spare a minute once you're done taking the belt sander to ivan, I'd like to revisit this.

    It seems to me there's a fundamental (and significant) difference between these two situations:

    1) You're illiterate because you're dirt poor. Your parents are probably illiterate, and if you went to school at all, it was a shitty school and you weren't there long; and

    2) You're illiterate for all the above reasons plus the fact that the language you first learned to speak isn't really a written language.

    It seems that situation #2 is much, much more limiting in terms of opportunities for the people in question. The reason I used the example of Ecuador, aside from being personally familiar with it, is that growing up indigenous in a Quechua-speaking household seemed like a severe handicap.
    This seems completely logical to me. But it also seems like a rare exception.

    How many languages are left that have no real written version and how few people use these languages as their primary language?

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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    How in the world would I compete against such determined ignorance?
    Certainly not by banging on and on about my stupidity, without even offering a linkypoo or something that might make me change my mind, Mr-I'm-So-Smart-I-Make-Einstein-Look-A-Tard.

    Moderator note: This user was caged for continuing to derail this discussion. The caging is for five hours, at which point I hope the discussion will be back on track again. - Zuul
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 05 Apr 2010 at 03:25 PM.
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    Quote Originally posted by What Exit? View post
    This seems completely logical to me. But it also seems like a rare exception.

    How many languages are left that have no real written version and how few people use these languages as their primary language?
    Well, there's Quechua, a heaping double handful of indigenous African languages, and to a slightly lesser degree, Haitian Creole, which is what made me think of this in the first place.

    I admit it's not the most common situation, but it is the situation of millions of people. I remember living in Ecuador and thinking geez, growing up in a Quechua-speaking household is like growing up with one hand tied behind your back, even compared to the poorest Spanish speakers. Why don't they just make them all learn Spanish?

    Now obviously a lot of that is attributable to my being a 20 year old arrogant American, and my frustration at bring fluent in Spanish but not Quechua, but I stand by the observation.
    Last edited by OneCentStamp; 05 Apr 2010 at 03:39 PM.
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    Quote Originally posted by OneCentStamp View post
    If you can spare a minute once you're done taking the belt sander to ivan, I'd like to revisit this.

    It seems to me there's a fundamental (and significant) difference between these two situations:

    1) You're illiterate because you're dirt poor. Your parents are probably illiterate, and if you went to school at all, it was a shitty school and you weren't there long; and

    2) You're illiterate for all the above reasons plus the fact that the language you first learned to speak isn't really a written language.

    It seems that situation #2 is much, much more limiting in terms of opportunities for the people in question. The reason I used the example of Ecuador, aside from being personally familiar with it, is that growing up indigenous in a Quechua-speaking household seemed like a severe handicap.
    Warning: embarrassingly long effortpost follows.

    Well, Haitian Creole and Quechua, which are the languages we were talking about, are both written. In fact, there are at least a few people attempting to encourage formal use of both languages -- they both have (AFAIK thus far very small) Wikipedias. It's true that most people who speak them natively don't read and write them, but that doesn't mean there aren't any native speakers who do.

    Realistically, minority languages like these won't ever be used in every context; for instance, even native speakers of Haitian Creole who do academic research on it do it in English or French. There's not much chance of that changing. But that doesn't mean they're not useful in some contexts.

    And the fact that a language isn't widely written now doesn't mean it won't ever be -- I mean, if you think about it, every natural language was used only in speech before people began writing it. We know that from historical observations of language change. People definitely had a sense of the Romance languages as distinct from Latin by the time written works appeared in them. In fact, the first known real written work in French was sort sort of proclamation or another from the king (I can't remember exactly what ) that was drafted in the "rustic language" (i.e. Old French) of the peasantry precisely because it was so different from the Latin that was still being used formally that the regular folk wouldn't have understood the Latin. Every (natural human) language that's now written existed before people started writing it down. And illiteracy was near universal practically everywhere until recently.

    If you're goal is to help improve development in Haiti by educating the populace, I wouldn't agree that your better bet is necessarily to teach them to read and write French (although I assume that's what the schools do. I don't really know much about the situation there 'on the ground'.) Learning to read and write in a foreign language, even one that's related, like French, is not easy.

    I get the impression that the choice some people in this thread have imagined is somehow getting all those people to start speaking French instead of Haitian Creole, but trying to do that deliberately is probably not all that realistic, at least not without resorting to the kinds of oppressive government actions that aren't really popular nowadays. There's not some way to just switch a population of people to speaking the language you want. (Especially since, for each individual speaker, that's a lot of wasted effort, since for a typical Haitian being able to speak easily with one's family or at the market or with co-workers is more important than being able to read books. Individual Haitians who are motivated by utility aren't gaining much by learning French.)

    I don't know anything about the current situation with regard to written works in Quechua, but there are at least some newspapers and things like that in Haitian Creole. It's true that for a single individual who has the luxury of being able to study, it makes more sense to learn French (or, for that matter, English) to have access to the much greater amount of literature available. Whether or not it makes sense to do that as a matter of government policy, I couldn't say.

    The choice, as I see it, is either promoting literacy in people's native languages and the production of works in those languages, or else promoting universal literacy in a foreign language. Which of those options makes more sense isn't really for me to say (not that they're mutually exclusive, of course. I certainly wouldn't ever expect to see the day where a Haitian university graduate would only be able to speak Haitian Creole; realistically the situation is going to remain that there is at least SOME degree of bilingualism.)

    But people's heritage and cultural identity shouldn't be discounted. A strictly utilitarian viewpoint that says there's not much point in being able to read and write Haitian Creole is not necessarily going to make any difference in regard to people's willingness to abandon their native language, even if there were a practical way to make that happen. People everywhere place a lot of value on their culture, and language is a huge part of that; for that reason, minority language issues are often hugely political. People will get into acrimonious arguments over minute issues like whether dialect X and dialect Y are the same language or not, because people's identification with their language is really important to them.

    But as it is, certainly Quechua and Haitian Creole both exist in written form today. They may not be widely used but then, a century ago you probably could have said about the same thing in regard to written Chinese -- and in that case there's real, practical difficulties in promoting widespread literacy! It hasn't stopped the Chinese government from successfully achieving a pretty high degree of literacy, though, even in its huge population. Or for another example, fifty years ago, literacy in the minority Spanish language of Catalan was uncommon (although it was still widely spoken), but now it's nearly universal in Catalonia. Shouldn't they have done that? I don't know, it's not really up to me. It's up to them.

    And of course, I'm biased -- I come to this as a linguist, so asking me if it's okay if a few languages die here and there is like asking a biologist if we really need every single species of owl.

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    Quote Originally posted by What Exit? View post
    This seems completely logical to me. But it also seems like a rare exception.

    How many languages are left that have no real written version and how few people use these languages as their primary language?
    It's normally claimed that the great majority of languages aren't written. I think maybe I remember sometime hearing a statistic of 90%? And that statistic would actually lump Quechua or Haitian Creole in the written category.


    This photo from Cuzco shows a poster written in Quechua. I got it from Wikipedia and I can't seem to find any information about what it says. But I doubt they would have put it up if no one could read it.

    ETA: Okay I'm like retarded because I notice now that the poster itself has a translation (into Spanish). It says "All of us are very important people."
    Last edited by Exy; 05 Apr 2010 at 04:03 PM.

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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    This photo from Cuzco shows a poster written in Quechua. I got it from Wikipedia and I can't seem to find any information about what it says. But I doubt they would have put it up if no one could read it.
    It means "we are all very important people," and it looks like a campagin against anti-Quechua discrimination.
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    Quote Originally posted by Exy View post
    Warning: embarrassingly long effortpost follows.

    ...
    It occured to me after reading that excellent post that if one makes the argument that minority languages are less useful and therefore should be allowed to die out then the natural conclusion of that line of thinking is that every single person on earth should be reading and writing in one language.


    When you start to think about the practical and political ramifications of that idea (which language? English? Mandarin Chinese? Some other one? Who would get to decide which language we all speak, and on what basis would they make that decision?) you begin to realize how strongly people's language affects how they think of themselves, and how decisions like that could easily have a political basis.


    (I'm somewhat familiar with some of these arguments because my son is hearing impaired so I have some familiarity with ASL even though my son doesn't use it. It was a huge political victory for the Deaf community to get people to realize that ASL was in fact an actual living language in every sense of the word, and was worthy of preservation and even serious academic study).

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    Quote Originally posted by Laughing Lagomorph View post
    (I'm somewhat familiar with some of these arguments because my son is hearing impaired so I have some familiarity with ASL even though my son doesn't use it. It was a huge political victory for the Deaf community to get people to realize that ASL was in fact an actual living language in every sense of the word, and was worthy of preservation and even serious academic study).
    You could fill a book with people's wacky ideas about ASL. I think there's a not insignificant number of people who have the impression that it consists of just fingerspelling English words. And all the people who imagine it's just English, with English grammar and just gestures replacing spoken words. (For the record, the grammar of ASL isn't similar at all to that of English.) Over at the SDMB there was one particular poster who, for reasons I can't explain, insisted repeatedly that ASL is descended from English, on the basis of the fact that a few signs make reference to the first letter of the corresponding English word.

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    wrong thread
    Last edited by ivan astikov; 06 Apr 2010 at 11:57 AM.
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