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Author Topic:   Comparing the Evolution of Language and Biological Evolution
Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 1 of 34 (251539)
10-13-2005 6:30 PM


Is the evolution of human language truly analogous to biological evolution?
I have begun a very tentative comparison of evolution in language and biology, and - bearing in mind I am not a biologist or a historical linguist - there seems to be a large degree of agreement between the two fields. So these are my musings on the issue so far:
I think that the syntax and vocabulary that each individual speaker uses are comparable with an individual organism's genes. Sure, a person's accent and vocabulary are subject to much greater pressures to change than an organisms genes, but I don't think that breaks the analogy.
If a language is the equivalent of a species (say French), and the genus/group of languages which it belongs to (Romance languages) has a common ancestor (Latin), everything seems to fit quite nicely. Going back into prehistory (the fossil record ends 35 centuries ago with the creation of the first alphabets), ancestors are postulated (Indo-European language), and their ancestors are postulated (Eurasian language).
Are dialects sub-species? (that is, a Geordie can probably understand what an Aussie is saying and vice-versa)?
Where biological entities genetic compatibility might be put to the test by seeing if they can produce viable offspring, language compatibility is all about making yourself understood. If we have to make up an equivelent arbitrary boundary for language, why not say you have to be able to satisfactorily communicate an abstract idea to have two languages sufficiently compatible?
Are languages - or more accurately, individual speakers - ever in competition with one another in the same way that individuals are in the biological world? It seems quite difficult to stop thinking about speakers as biological entities whose existence is based on their DNA and instead start to think of them as vehicles for language. I'm not sure if individual speakers ARE directly analogous to individual organisms. I was wondering if anyone could help me out here?
My hunch is that the speaker actually isn't directly comparable to the organism. Perhaps the language they use is the direct counterpart. Or perhaps an individual speaker is directly comparable, but their DNA must be regarded as a separate environmental factor. God, my brain's hurting just at the thought of all this.
Moved here by AdminBen
This message has been edited by AdminBen, Thursday, 2005/10/13 03:31 PM

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by crashfrog, posted 10-13-2005 6:57 PM Tusko has replied
 Message 12 by RAZD, posted 10-14-2005 10:16 AM Tusko has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 2 of 34 (251552)
10-13-2005 6:57 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tusko
10-13-2005 6:30 PM


Perhaps it would help you to consider that every speaker of a language speaks in a way that is unique to them; every individual has their own "idiolect".
Those idiolects may be what you're looking for as an analagous construction to the "organism" in biology.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Tusko, posted 10-13-2005 6:30 PM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 7:06 AM crashfrog has replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 3 of 34 (251663)
10-14-2005 7:06 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by crashfrog
10-13-2005 6:57 PM


That makes perfect sense. An individual's idiolect is unique, as an individual's genetic makeup is unique. (Idiolect is also a great word! Thanks!)
I guess the idea of the meme is relevant here. Whereas DNA resides primarily in cells' nucleii, language resides in... well, brains, I suppose. It is written in the relevant portion of a brain. That way, it makes more sense if we consider someone who speaks many languages - the different languages reside in different parts of the brain. In this way, a speaker's brain is more of an environment in which a language can live.
I don't think it can be described as something that sexually reproduces, instead, it appears to reproduce asexually, in way that bacteria do.
Every heard speech act is promiscuous, in that it has the potential to take root in the listener's brain, for them to utter it, and for a ripple effect to take place through a population of speakers. I suppose if you want to keep running and running with the analogy, each utterance is equivalent to the moment when a single-celled organism undergoes binary fission.
This may all seem a bit random, but I think that it would be quite interesting if we could assertain whether language is directly comparable with DNA.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by crashfrog, posted 10-14-2005 7:51 AM Tusko has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 4 of 34 (251672)
10-14-2005 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by Tusko
10-14-2005 7:06 AM


This may all seem a bit random, but I think that it would be quite interesting if we could assertain whether language is directly comparable with DNA.
I think you're starting at the wrong end. Instead of trying to draw comparisons between language and a specific mechanism of heredity (bottom up), start from the top. Remember that Darwin formulated a mostly-correct theory of evolution totally ignorant of the true mechanism of heredity. So what I would do is see if the mechanisms of mutation and selection can be said to apply to language; and if so, if they result in the same patterns of language relationship that we see in living things.
I think they do. All we're doing is crafting an analogy, and possibly a useful new way to look at language change, so I don't think its necessary to try to line up language change and the specific biochemical structure of DNA. Remember that DNA is just a means to an end in the organism - its a way to catalyze the formation of proteins. It's enough, I think, to recognize that languages are passed from individual to individual, mutating as they go, in the same way that asexual organisms reproduce imperfect copies of themselves.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 7:06 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 5 of 34 (251687)
10-14-2005 9:05 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by crashfrog
10-14-2005 7:51 AM


Okay - that's really helpful. I hadn't been able to properly put my finger on what was making me uneasy about this idea until your last post. Now you've given me a much clearer idea, but I think there's a way through it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I'm going to try to provide a direct answer to your two "top down" questions:
Mutation - That definitely applies, as far as I can see. You just have to look at some written English from four hundred years ago, and some written English from eight hundred years ago to see that it has been undergoing what appears to be an ongoing process of change. The linguistic commonality between, say German and English, or French and English points to a "common ancestor". I don't buy that Tower of Babel business, unless God was really trying to cover his tracks (as usual!).
Selection - This is the bit that I thought at first might be problematic. What selective pressures are there? What if language change is just arbitrary and without selection?
It doesn't seem as clear cut as organic natural selection. In the simplest terms - if an organism lives long enough to reproduce, and if it reproduces more than the average member of its reproductive community, then its going to be a success.
Our task here is to try to understand if there are selective pressures against words and syntax, not DNA. After some reflection, I think there are some.
An obvious one (if we assume that the human brain is wired to produce certain kinds of language, especially grammar, more readily than others) is that if something is overly complex or not easy, for whatever reason, for most human brains to process, is going to be selected against. Clearly there is loads of scope for variety of vocabulary and grammar that isn't difficult for the brain to remember, but that parallels organism evolution well.
Additionally (and this is off the top of my head), there might be other reasons as well that would result not from neurological reasons but from cultural circumstances. I can't quite think what they would be though.
Like a reproductive community of organisms, a community of speakers and listeners is where evolution takes place. No-one can readily decide to change how language works in a community in the same way that I can't decide to give birth to an otter.
Right, I'm just rambling now, but just this last point: its quite fun. It just occured to me that linguists have already made Chimeras! Klingon and Esperanto are good examples. Ah! And Klingon in fact gives us a really interesting example of a language where a cultural force (Trekkiness) makes a language that was deliberately made difficult to learn, very popular.

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 6 of 34 (251699)
10-14-2005 9:40 AM
Reply to: Message 4 by crashfrog
10-14-2005 7:51 AM


Humping Language?
Okay - here's a really wacky idea. It may be totally irrelivant, but it might be interesting. If we were going to slavishly continue the analogy between the evolution of life and the evolution of language, how might language SEXUALLY reproduce? I can't quite figure it out.
It might be useful because if it can be imagined, it might make the relationships clearer.
In case you are wondering, I'm not going to keep slavishly tying language evolution back to organic evolution. If evolution can be observed in different things like language, life (I'm certain it applies to stories too), then maybe we can start to see a broader picture, and even get a better understanding of the forces involved in evolution generally.
This message has been edited by Tusko, 10-14-2005 09:42 AM

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Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Yaro, posted 10-14-2005 9:50 AM Tusko has replied
 Message 8 by Parasomnium, posted 10-14-2005 9:51 AM Tusko has replied
 Message 9 by Chiroptera, posted 10-14-2005 9:56 AM Tusko has replied

  
Yaro
Member (Idle past 6496 days)
Posts: 1797
Joined: 07-12-2003


Message 7 of 34 (251701)
10-14-2005 9:50 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Tusko
10-14-2005 9:40 AM


Re: Humping Language?
every time we sexualy reproduce
Every generation has its own sland, lingo, etc.
This message has been edited by Yaro, 10-14-2005 09:50 AM

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Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 8 of 34 (251702)
10-14-2005 9:51 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Tusko
10-14-2005 9:40 AM


Re: Humping Language?
How about this?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 9:40 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 10:18 AM Parasomnium has replied

  
Chiroptera
Inactive Member


Message 9 of 34 (251703)
10-14-2005 9:56 AM
Reply to: Message 6 by Tusko
10-14-2005 9:40 AM


I think that you might be trying to make too much out of an analogy.
The evolution of languages is similar to biological evolution in that we have descent through slight modifications and we have common descent. This allows some interesting analogies in terms of heirarchical classification and reconstruction of ancestors.
However, the mechanisms are completely different. In biological evolution individuals live or die depending on whether they have "better" or "worse" heretable characteristics, and so may or may not pass these characteristics to the next generation. In language, we do not have natural selection, at least not anything like the way natural selection works in biology.
So be careful of the analogy. There is a limit to how far its usefulness extends.

"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 9:40 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by Tusko, posted 10-14-2005 10:06 AM Chiroptera has replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 10 of 34 (251704)
10-14-2005 10:00 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by Yaro
10-14-2005 9:50 AM


Re: Humping Language?
Ah okay - maybe that was a joke, so forgive me! But if it wasn't, then perhaps you have slightly misunderstood.
Each new generation of humans does have its own "lingo"... but language can be learned from young people by old people, so it works in a different way from the transmission of genetic material from parents to children.
As far as I can see, language reproduces asexually. For a laugh, I wondered if it was possible to push the analogy of language evolution even further an envisage how the DNA of language (words and syntax I guess) might recombine to make a linguistic "offspring". Perhaps two people would have to come together and combine their idiolects and teach it to a third party? But perhaps thats being too human-centred. Perhaps it wouldn't be like that at all. Just a silly little though experiment really.
This message has been edited by Tusko, 10-14-2005 10:00 AM

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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 11 of 34 (251707)
10-14-2005 10:06 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Chiroptera
10-14-2005 9:56 AM


I'm very aware of this problem. This enquiry could all could be very silly, I know. But it would be really cool if it did, in some weird way, correspond.
I was just thinking how it could be that (as I think you may be suggesting) the change in the language of different speaking communities is due entirely to random shift with no selection to speak of. This would make it fundamentally different from biological evolution. I certainly think there is a much greater degree of random shift in language (and at a much faster rate) than in biological evolution.
But it is just possible that there is some selective element operating on language, which would make it analogious to biological evolution. I postulated one (though its not that convincing) a couple of posts ago.

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 Message 9 by Chiroptera, posted 10-14-2005 9:56 AM Chiroptera has replied

Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 12 of 34 (251709)
10-14-2005 10:16 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by Tusko
10-13-2005 6:30 PM


Interesting presentation Tusko,
there is one place where the analogy breaks down and that is horizontal transfer.
horizontal transfer of some DNA between bacteria is observed, but this has not been observed in more complex organisms
horizontal transfer of words\concepts though can be see in all languages where there is some interaction between the languages
perhaps this is more like {incipient speciaztion \ ring species with hybreds}: all languages can interbreed but usually choose not to, and the closer the languages the more likely the interbreeding.
{abe}This gets into pidgins and creoles as mentioned by Parasomnium{/abe}
This message has been edited by RAZD, 10*14*2005 10:23 AM

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 13 of 34 (251711)
10-14-2005 10:18 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by Parasomnium
10-14-2005 9:51 AM


Re: Humping Language?
Brilliant thinking! I hadn't made the connection.
Perhaps creoles are, in a fashion, the result of a kind of linguistic sexual reproduction.
Perhaps its a tangential point, but the first thing of interest that springs to mind is the two step process needed for the creole to be "born". First a pidgin must be arrived at between adults, but because they haven't got the necessary brain structure to push it to a fully fledged language, the pidgin has to be learned by a human sufficiently young to turn it into a "proper" language.
Perhaps that compares with haploids and diploids a bit?
I am terribly aware that I'm pushing the analogy to breaking point, but for the purposes of this thread I want to keep going with it until it crashes into the mountain, burns, oxides and gets into the ground water.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Parasomnium, posted 10-14-2005 9:51 AM Parasomnium has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 14 by Parasomnium, posted 10-14-2005 10:31 AM Tusko has replied

  
Parasomnium
Member
Posts: 2224
Joined: 07-15-2003


Message 14 of 34 (251713)
10-14-2005 10:31 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Tusko
10-14-2005 10:18 AM


Memes?
You could also apply the idea of memes to language. Languages are meme-complexes, (populations of) human minds are habitats, avant-garde creativity provides mutation, fashions and peer groups provide natural selection, et cetera.
I don't know if the analogy allows for a mapping of all features of biological evolution - like haploidy/diploidy - but I think that the essential mechanism of mutation and natural selection is certainly applicable.
Just an idea.
This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 14-Oct-2005 03:40 PM

"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further." - Richard Dawkins

This message is a reply to:
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Tusko
Member (Idle past 101 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 15 of 34 (251714)
10-14-2005 10:35 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by RAZD
10-14-2005 10:16 AM


Perhaps I'm getting the wrong end of the stick - but can you explain again why that breaks the analogy?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by RAZD, posted 10-14-2005 10:16 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
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