ByMyReckoning

Following on from my thoughts yesterday about the ways in which langauges change or evolve. I read an entry in Evowiki about langauge speciation and divergence. The factors listed below contribute towards divergence.

• Isolation - I doubt that this is such a huge factor in the case of English, since it is now so widely used, and tele-visual media may have a homogenising effect. As I stated earlier the dominant culture at the moment is that of the US. Their idioms and modes of expression are spreading rapidly as a result.

• Time - Given enough time, a particular group will doubtless innovate and introduce new words and grammars.

• Conquest - Think of it as linguistic hegemony. This has occurred throughout the ages and although most change or adaptation will occur amongst the subordinate group. It is might also be a two way process, in which the dominant and group are influenced by their subordinates. This has been well documented inn the case of English which has absorbed words and concepts from Swahili, Arabic and various Asian cultures/languages, whilst at the same time requiring large numbers of native speakers to learn English.

• Migration - Migrants bring their languages and customs with them to their new home and these will naturally have some influence on their new neighbours.

• Technological discovery - New technologies spawn new terms and idioms.

• Contact – Interaction between groups with distinct languages which had previously been isolated suddenly allows these languages to influence each other, throiugh the borroweingv of words, grammar and morphology.

It seems to make sense (truthy even that languages are also subject to an evolutionary process very similar to that encountered in the opensource software world, namely Lamarckian (a now discredited theory of biological evolution) evolution. Unlike its Darwinian cousin, Lamarckian evolution allows an organism or entity to pass on characteristics to its offspring which it has acquired during its own lifetime.

After some browsing on the web, I discovered that the connection has already been made between Lamarckism, language and opensource software, by Jean Molino (2000). "Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Music and Language", The Origins of Music and Eben Moglen respectively

So it would appear that anyone fighting to hold back this tide of change is fighting a loosing battle. This probably applies to the French and their attempts via the Académie française to preserve and protect the French language from pullution by Anglicisms.

So.... I suppose the next question is where will all this change lead us?

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Eben Moglen, Jean Molino, Lamarckian, Lamarckism, opensource english, evolution, academie francaise, Académie française