Author Topic: Article on language change in Scientific American (Read 2441 times)

Jonathon · « **on:** October 10, 2007, 01:48:12 PM »

This article mentions a couple of recent studies on language change that seem to conclude that the core vocabulary in a language changes the slowest. Well, from what I understand, yes and no. It depends on what kind of change you're talking about, and the article doesn't make it clear if they're talking about phonology or morphology or both.

It seems like they're talking mostly about morphology, because they talk about verbs becoming regularized, but then they throw out the example of the word three, which appears not to have changed much in most Indo-European languages. But it's a bad example, because the number four, which is presumably only slightly less frequently used than three, has changed tremendously in those same languages.

More specifically, frequent words are subject to more phonological changes, but they're more morphologically stable. It's the opposite for less-frequently used words. The weird thing is that the conclusions they reach seem to be ones that linguists have known about for years. I don't quite understand why evolutionary biologists and applied mathematicians are researching the subject in the first place. Maybe I'll just chalk it up to a poorly written article.

rivka · « **Reply #1 on:** October 10, 2007, 06:21:44 PM »

An article from SA that oversimplifies and has scientifically inaccurate statements? Say it isn't so!

Jonathon · « **Reply #2 on:** October 10, 2007, 06:24:54 PM »

I'm afraid it's so.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure if they're scientifically inaccurate. The Harvard study about verb forms seems fine (though not exactly news). The other one I'm not sure of. Maybe I'll try to track down the new issue of Nature so I can check it out.

rivka · « **Reply #3 on:** October 10, 2007, 06:44:01 PM »

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I'm afraid it's so.

It's not the first time. SA has an unfortunate tendency to oversimplify studies and misstate their details. (I didn't mean that the studies weren't accurate. The article didn't give nearly enough information to come to a conclusion one way or the other.)

pooka · « **Reply #4 on:** October 11, 2007, 06:58:40 AM »

Linguistics is one of those areas where only the Sith deal in absolutes.

Jonathon · « **Reply #5 on:** October 11, 2007, 10:51:10 AM »

Well, here's the abstract for the second paper. No wonder the Scientific American summary confused me—the abstract is a little confusing, too. It sounds like they're studying lexical replacement rates, not phonological or morphological changes. But then they keep referring to words' "evolution." In my mind, lexical replacement is definitely not evolution.

And for those of you who don't know what "lexical replacement" means, it's when one word is simply replaced by another, for whatever reason. For example, the Old English word for "they" (in one dialect, anyway) was hie. This word was replaced by an Old Norse word, giving us "they." Again, it's not news that more common words are more resistant to replacement (which makes "they" an interesting example). Maybe all they've done is quantify the factors involved.

pooka · « **Reply #6 on:** October 11, 2007, 11:20:00 AM »

Depends on if you mean micro-evolution or macro-evolution.

Jonathon · « **Reply #7 on:** October 11, 2007, 11:26:39 AM »

You mean like "I believe that modern-day English is descended from Old English, but I don't think it evolved from Germanic?"

Actually, I don't think there's anything approaching a good analogy between lexical replacement and biological evolution.

Primal Curve · « **Reply #8 on:** October 11, 2007, 11:46:43 AM »

Because biological evolution is the belief that increasingly complex organisms evolve from simpler organisms and language doesn't necessarily become more complex, but rather, stays relatively complex but merely changes the way the same concept is communicated?

Something like that?

pooka · « **Reply #9 on:** October 11, 2007, 11:51:51 AM »

Something more along the lines of "I refuse to believe English shares an ancestor with Arabic!"

Though I am trying to process Primal's analogy as well. I should point out I was being somewhat self-deprecatingly humorous.

Jonathon · « **Reply #10 on:** October 11, 2007, 11:55:12 AM »

Well, you have to figure that at some point in the distant past, language was a very simple thing that evolved in complexity. So there's still a parallel there. And I should point out that Darwin got his idea of common descent with modification from the field of linguistics.

But lexical replacement is more like snipping out a bit of DNA and splicing in something else, either from another organism or from another part of the same organism. I'm not sure that really happens in nature.

pooka · « **Reply #11 on:** October 11, 2007, 12:00:23 PM »

Well, I guess it depends. If you consider a word to be like an organism, then sure there are instances (at least in Classical Darwinian evolution) were an organism invades the territory of another and drives them into extinction. At least, that was what I thought it was about. Wallace was more about the idea that the forces of evolution must do as much to keep things the same as they do to make them change, and tiny shifts in that balance have create huge changes. Maybe. That was the thought I had after reviewing some of Wallace's ideas recently.

But there was a time when the very concept of extinction was kind of mind-blowing, at least for people who didn't believe in dragons, unicorns, and leprechauns.

Jonathon · « **Reply #12 on:** October 11, 2007, 12:14:19 PM »

I think it makes more sense to say that the whole language is like an organism. Though I did think about one species moving in, driving another to extinction, and taking its niche.

rivka · « **Reply #13 on:** October 11, 2007, 07:35:16 PM »

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But lexical replacement is more like snipping out a bit of DNA and splicing in something else, either from another organism or from another part of the same organism. I'm not sure that really happens in nature.

Actually, it does. But I'm pretty sure only in bacteria.

Jonathon · « **Reply #14 on:** October 11, 2007, 08:30:18 PM »

I've read that DNA from viruses sometimes becomes adopted by other organisms, but I have no idea how frequently that happens.

Porter · « **Reply #15 on:** October 11, 2007, 08:42:17 PM »

I have read that as well.

rivka · « **Reply #16 on:** October 11, 2007, 09:30:31 PM »

Side effect of reverse-transcription viruses. They hide (in practical terms, they all but disappear for weeks, months, or years) by stuffing their genetic code into the cells of their host. Sometimes, the host actually adopts some of the stowaway code for its own uses.

Most viruses are not reverse-transcription (HIV is, though). And it's much rarer for a cell to adopt code from other types of viruses.

But, yeah, that would be another example. And perhaps more analogous to the language one -- since it's accidental, and the bacteria is more deliberate.

Porter · « **Reply #17 on:** October 11, 2007, 09:59:28 PM »

That plot of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio centers around such reverse-transcription viruses.