Re: Language

On Mar 8, 2:37 pm, Occidental <Occiden...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Not exactly; the OP was talking (by implication) about the slow
transformation of a word for a common thing into a different word for
the same thing. It would not be surprising if an occasional member of
a language group introduced an idiosyncratic pronunciation, but it is
surprising that such a new pronunciation would be generally adopted.

On Mar 16, 3:24 pm, Bea Mused <racgam...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why? Modern English "mother" is Middle English moder ("'mother'") is
Old English môdor. Changes in pronunciation are not "mildly
deleterious mutations." Speakers of English, for instance, can
pronounce even common words in very different ways. We still (usually)
understand each other, and our contemporaries are the only people we
need to communicate with.

Any change in pronunciation starts with a single person (where it is
not due to conquest, the merging of previously isolated groups etc).
Absent a general impulse to prefer new pronunciations, why would such
a change spread throughout the population? Why are pronunciation and
grammar not stabilized by the language community, as one would expect?
It's no use endlessly reiterating that "languages are observed to
change over time". That is not in dispute.

But what selective pressures would impel
contempory speakers to pronounce words so unchangingly as to be able
to converse with long-dead persons?

What is the adaptive advantage of constant change?

Perhaps you underestimate the rapidity with which language including
even common words changes, drifting in unpredictable ways.

No, that is exactly the point. It is just this rapidity that is
problematic.

Language
change including pronunciation is not occasional and idiosyncratic. It
is constant, ceaseless, universal.

You are effectively saying "Language changes because it changes"

The question is - why? Is change (not just individual words for common
things, but also phoneme sets, grammar) in some way essential to the
nature of language, so that language constancy over the generations
within (say) an isolated pre-literate community is in some way
logically impossible?

Have you read any of my other posts in this thread?

Linguist Geoffrey Pulliam writes of word meanings that they "are
imperceptibly shifting all the time in surprising ways. It's like
continental drift, only less predictable." The same applies to
shifting pronunciation.

...and presumably grammar. But this is just the observation of change,
not the explanation for it.

Linguist John McWhorter writes:

"Underlying the truth about dialects and casual speech is a
fundamental fact about human language, with which we must make a deep
and lasting peace:
<italics> Language is always changing. </italics>
...
"Sounds are always wearing off, other sounds are always evolving into
different ones; endings are constantly wearing off, new endings are
constantly developing; word meanings drift: and the order of words
changes. These things happen so slowly that they are usually barely
perceptible within a human lifetime. However, the changes are so
relentless and so profound that there is no society in the world in
which people could converse with their ancestors from more than about
a thousand years back. In this amount of time, and usually much less,
any language develops into a new one."

If this topic is of especial inserest

The topic of especial interest in an evolution newsgroup would be, is
this constant mutability an *inevitable* feature of language, or does
it have some adaptive significance?

, see John McWhorter's books "The
Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language" and "Word on the
Street: Debunking the Myth of a 'Pure' Standard English."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Language
    ... surprising that such a new pronunciation would be generally adopted. ... pronounce even common words in very different ways. ... Perhaps you underestimate the rapidity with which language including ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Language
    ... surprising that such a new pronunciation would be generally adopted. ... pronounce even common words in very different ways. ... The language community incentives individuals to conform their ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Language
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    (talk.origins)
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