Discussion Details
| Title: | Re: 16.970: Historical Ling: Punctuated Equilibrium Model |
| Submitter: | Ahmad Reza Lotfi |
| Description: | Dear linguists,
Marinus van der Sluijs wrote: Dixon's discussion offers much food for thought, but I believe his model is fundamentally flawed. In terms of Dixon's model, the global community is currently in a period of punctuation, as rapid changes in communication take place and the English language spreads its influence abroad. Dixon also claims that in times of punctuation, languages split into family trees. This is at odds with the observation that languages are seen to converge now, rather than to diverge Not necessarily! As languages coverge, they go through INTERNAL drastic changes in order to pay for the EXTERNAL linguistic conflicts inevitably occurring between two converging languages (see Jespersen's account of changes introduced in English as it came in contact with French in the 11th century under William the Conqueror: such changes, according to Jesperson, are not what English has BORROWED from French, but the simplifications it had to make in order to avoid the conflict beween these two systems). Split, however, is inevitable as such internal changes are not uniform within either of these speech communities. The logic here is dialectics: assimilation (between languages in order to satisfy certain needs whatever they are: communication, prestige, etc) and split (within them in order to afford accommodation) go hand in hand. Anyway, each language loses its original long-established equilibrium in a short period of time, but may be finally back to a new state of equilibrium over time. in many parts of the world where English is spoken in a bilingual context, local languages assimilate themselves to English, sometimes modifying the English language itself to the effect that creoles or pidgins are produced. You see! The production of such creoles/pidgins is the very split we were looking for in this phase of punctuation. Ahmad R. Lotfi English Dept. Azad University (IRAN) REFERENCE Jespersen, Otto. (1993). Progress in Language with Special Reference to English. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Ahmad R. Lotfi, Ph.D Assistant Professor of linguistics, English Dept. Graduate School Azad University at Khorasgan (IRAN) http://www.webspawner.com/users/ahmadrlotfi/index.html |
| Date Posted: | 07-Apr-2005 |
| Linguistic Field(s): | Historical Linguistics |
| LL Issue: | 16.1087 |
| Posted: | 07-Apr-2005 |
