From: revpk@cellar.org (Brian 'Rev P-K' Siano)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Linguistics and evolution
Date: 2 Sep 92 01:58:35 GMT
Organization: The Cellar BBS and public access system

weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener) writes:
> The question of the origins of the variety of language is turning into
> yet another glorious triumph for evolution.  Working independently,
> linguistic, dental, and genetic classification of people around the
> world were found to fall into almost the exact same patterns, with
> certain obvious exceptions (eg, American Blacks speaking English).
> The linguistic side is still highly controversial (the relevant work
> came to a head ~5 years ago), but the massive coincidences involved are
> just too implausible and important to ignore, and will probably do more
> (for now, anyway) than any purely internal linguistic deductions to
> establish the linguistic classification.
> 
> As an aside, contrast this with the paucity of linguistic research
> inspired by the tower of Babel story.
        Not to bring up a name that's got some bad memories for this 
newsgroup, but this business about the 'exact same patterns' is a a bit 
oversimplified. Rather, what languages do reflect is a kind ofset of 
meta-rules governing their individual grammars, a concept outlined by Noam 
Chomsky back in the 1950s.

        A language requires a grammar, a set of rules that determine the 
syntax of that particular language. What's been discovered is that the ways 
the grammars differ are by an as-yet unelucidated collection of meta-rules 
that used to be called 'deep grammar.' (They've since stopped using this 
term, afvoring instead 'universal grammar,' because the term 'deep grammar' 
misled a lot of laymen into thinking that it was what the sentences _really_ 
meant.)

        For example, if a language developed with the verb occurring before 
the noun in a simple sentence (say, 'Ran Bill fast') this would affect the 
rules that govern the transformations of this sentence into other forms. In a 
noun-verb arrangement, transforming the sentence "Bill Ran Fast" into "Did 
Bill run fast?" requires the application of a transformative rule. But 
transforming the sentence "Ran Bill fast" into "Fast did run Bill?" requires 
an analogous, but different, transformative rule. The grammars that have 
developed are sensitive to initial conditions, and vary according to these 
rules of 'universal grammar.'

        The consistency of human languages is attributable more towards a 
theory that langauge is an expression of a basic function of the mind; that 
these rules of universal grammar are sort of 'hard-wired' into the brain's 
development, and they are shaped through interaction with the world. A child 
born in America will learn English, or a variant; the same child born in 
China will learn Mandarin or Szechuan. But the property that enables that 
child to develop the capacity for language seems to be a constant among most 
people.


        I'd recommend, as an introduction to these areas, Jeremy Campbell's 
_Grammatical Man_, John Casti's _Paradigms Lost_, Noam Chomsky's (Language 
and Responsibility_ (a set of interviewswith Mitsou Ronat). I'm very much a 
layman on the matter, but these books were a terrific introduction.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian "Rev. P-K" Siano                                  revpk@cellar.org
Servo: "Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard."
Joel:  "Why is my life messed up? Page 74."
Servo: "When will this movie end? Page 155."
Crow:  "How much money can we get out of Tom Cruise? Page 85."

                                       "Mystery Science Theater 3000,"
                                       during a volcano scene in
Newsgroups: talk.origins