Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Language and genes
Message-ID: <D03s7q.Cwv@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <634@percep.demon.co.uk> <D02y75.K2n@inter.NL.net> <3bihbv$40t@amy13.Stanford.EDU>
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 23:07:00 GMT
Lines: 50

In article <3bihbv$40t@amy13.Stanford.EDU>,
Nathaniel Michael Pearson <raindrop@leland.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>You express here a view of language change consonant with punctuated
>equilibrium, rather than gradualism.  

Yes.  I did not use the term, but I consider that a plausible
model.

>In P.E., many potential selective
>factors are not selective under most circumstances, deferring influence to
>over-riding "limiting" factors.  There are two problems with this theory:
>
>1) It too relies on negative evidence within the field of evolutionary
>biology; the absence of many intermediate forms from the fossil record has
>led people to say that such intermediate forms didn't exist and that
>therefore evolution proceeds quantally rather than gradually.  Linguists
>should remember that sound variation is pretty much agreed to be continual
>(gradual).

Agreed by whom?  I think that sound change, both synchronically and
diachronically, is not gradual at all.  As one goes from one dialect
area to another, phonological systems change abruptly (isoglosses).
The "Great English Vowel Shift" is a diachronical example of abrupt
system change...  I think it's futile to look for `causes' of the
Vowel Shift: there aren't any. Not in the social sphere, much less in
the biological/genetic sphere.

>One could set out to apply such reasoning to color term inventory sizes,
>for instance; consider that the photic environments of language groups differ 
>geographically and that, possibly as a result of this, red-green 
>colorblindness frequency tends to increase as one moves towards the poles 
>(this has been related to the increased efficiency of red-green deficients in 
>crepuscular food gathering in the increased twilight hours of polar latitudes)
>What are the effects of greater blue-yellow salience within language
>groups?

There was a posting about differences in colour terms between English and 
Welsh a few messages back. The English and the Welsh have been living
at the same latitude for as long as can be traced back...
In any case, I don't think color-blindness and deafness are very
"gradualistic" examples...  I still think that there is no significant 
relation between language and genetics beyond historical contingency.  
And the same historical processes that sometimes promote the correlation, 
at other times blur it beyond recognition.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
