Re: Language

In message <b79668ac-8fa3-4510-8bd7-f3937ecb6dbc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Occidental <Occidental@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
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.

One possible contributing factor is that groups can adopt linguistic novelties and in-group markers.

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?

Why need there be an adaptive advantage of constant change?

Note that humanity has adopted a strategy of behavioural flexibility in which a great number of behavioural traits are cultural, not biological. The details of language are among them. This is exaptive - it allowed us to use spoken, written or sign language, rather than just one predetermined mode. It also allows us to change our language to cater for new environment challenges and novel concepts. Constant change might just be a spandrel.

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.

You don't seem to have explained why you think it is problematic. Neither panadaptationism nor universal biological determinism are widely accepted as models of human nature.
--
alias Ernest Major

.

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