Piotr, our esteemed associate, is a linguist. I admire the discipline of linguistics on many levels and some of my professional work has been in formal languages (computer languages, DNA languages). Noam Chomsky was noted for his contributions to computers, languages and psychology. Chomsky’s work was my first and only formal introduction to linguistics.
Piotr and I have different views of origins, and creationists have viewed language as also a special creation. But I’ve always enjoyed his discussion of languages.
One thing I will admit, I’ve been astonished at how rapidly and radically the English language has evolved in the history of the language. For example, the battle records of the Battle of Agincourt in 1414 are written in a way that is completely unrecognizable to me.
The English in the time of the poet Shakespeare and the King James Bible in the 1600’s is a little more recognizable to me. The English of the 1800’s is noticeably different from the 1600’s. Even watching old movies, I can hear subtle changes in accents. So it seems to me, from my limited perspective, languages can evolve and change quickly.
Whatever one thinks of origins of language, I found this article compelling:
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/rapid-rise-human-language-0331
At some point, probably 50,000 to 100,000 years ago, humans began talking to one another in a uniquely complex form. It is easy to imagine this epochal change as cavemen grunting, or hunter-gatherers mumbling and pointing. But in a new paper, an MIT linguist contends that human language likely developed quite rapidly into a sophisticated system: Instead of mumbles and grunts, people deployed syntax and structures resembling the ones we use today.
“The hierarchical complexity found in present-day language is likely to have been present in human language since its emergence,” says Shigeru Miyagawa, Professor of Linguistics and the Kochi Prefecture-John Manjiro Professor in Japanese Language and Culture at MIT, and a co-author of the new paper on the subject.
…
Miyagawa has an alternate hypothesis about what created human language: Humans alone, as he has asserted in papers published in recent years, have combined an “expressive” layer of language, as seen in birdsong, with a “lexical” layer, as seen in monkeys who utter isolated sounds with real-world meaning, such as alarm calls. Miyagawa’s “integration hypothesis” holds that whatever first caused them, these layers of language blended quickly and successfully.
…
Miyagawa’s integration hypothesis is connected intellectually to the work of other MIT scholars, such as Noam Chomsky, who have contended that human languages are universally connected and derive from our capacity for using syntax. In forming, this school of thought holds, languages have blended expressive and lexical layers through a system Chomsky has called “Merge.”
petrushka,
The word is mightier than the sword!
Yeah, really good idea guys! (Sarcasm intended) Let the naturalistic evolutionist linguist escape from the questions because he appears stumped, while you guys talk emptiness.
No. Sorry. Piotr’s got simple questions to attend to that no one else here can answer with any sense of authority. Piotr can answer them, only if he chooses (as an agent!).
I’ve written on this, and have thought long and hard and debated with serious thinkers about it (not just computer scientist buffons who think they know everything just because they can search the internet), which is why the questions strike right to the bone. They are direct and they are simple and they hurt such ideologists because it confronts them (& they think it is personal – & complain about it – only because they are so personally invested in it), whereas they are scholarly questions.
Alan, please don’t address me in public until you answer my 97% claim. It took quite some time to write that message, full of juicy challenges to Piotr’s naturalistic & evolutionistic ideologies (including reference to ‘science studies’ – naukovedenie & nauka o nauce, which most likely no one here but Piotr and I are familiar with) which you think like an atheist partisan you have the power to frivolously reject based on some perceived wrong to Piotr.
State the wrong & let’s correct it. I just think Piotr can’t contend with challenges to his ideology. Likewise, he has no significant response beyond naturalistic & evolutionistic propaganda. I see through that & my questions expose his ‘linguistic history’ as highly partial, unintelligent and jaded. But I’m open to be surprised by Piotr’s inspiring words.
Gregory,
Anything that is heritable and variable is “evolutionary” by definition. For a change to be non-evolutionary, it would have to have no effect on variation, and it would have to be something that cannot (even potentially) spread in the population. But it’s in the very nature of language to be learnable and shared between users, so I doubt if any change actually affecting a living language qualifies as non-evolutionary.
“Evolutionary” doesn’t mean “leaving no room for agency”. Deliberate language engineering is part of this process too. It’s one of the ways in which new variants are injected or a selective pressure is applied. If, for example, feminists protest against the use of gender-marking in names of occupations, policeman and policewoman will be targeted for elimination, making room for gender-neutral near-synonyms (like police officer). If the proponents of such a change can mobilise enough social pressure for long enough, they may succeed.
However, the vast majority of normal language changes are not deliberately planned. They are spontaneus and often go unnoticed until enough change accumulates. Do you seriously believe that the people of Norwich deliberately lost the nasal and glottalised the medial /t/ in twenty? What for? To be able to tell a tourist from a local? There are already enough shibboleths in Norfolk: strangers will never figure out how to pronounce most of the local placenames, such as Bylaugh, Costessey, or Happisburgh.
May we see this?
This is not a place where one argues by linking to other places. Or worse, asserting that such places exist.
Actually, I once followed a Gregory link and found nothing useful or comprehensible at the destination. Just a bunch of Sokalisms.
So something that is not ‘heritable’ or ‘invariable’ is therefore non-evolutionary? Copying error, for example, is non-evolutionary? Accident is not evolution? Anything that doesn’t ‘reproduce’ is non-heritable? And you haven’t even suggested yet Campbell’s standard social ‘scientific’ BVSR!
It almost sounds like you’re making the blanket claim that ‘anything that doesn’t change, doesn’t evolve’, which takes us right back to my point. CHANGE IS THE MASTER CATEGORY.
What then is ‘non-evolutionary change’?
You’ve now reversed on your ‘engineering’ claim in this thread.
If you want to defend variationism then by all means try to do it, but you’d have a different problem still with intentional, agent-ful choice. If I choose to stay the same, is that still ‘evolution’? What % of the English (or Arabic or Chinese) language then has ‘not evolved’ in the 20th century? You’re setting your ‘changeology’ up for serious defeat either way.
You still have not directly addressed my criticism; Piotr, why do you insist on being so dehumanizing to exclude agency, choice, purpose & intention; teleology from your ‘theory’? Is this Polish positivism 2.0? Your ideological evolutionism is sadly leading you into some serious black holes of inhumanity!
Note that I’m not an IDist, ok, so please don’t get your pants ruffled by my simple & clear questions.
I just don’t think the concept ‘evolution’ has the explanatory power across the disciplines that you seem to think it has. ‘Non-evolutionary change’ (of a wide variety in the humanities) is a legitimate scholarly and personal topic to consider. & I’ve spoken with top Polish scholars about it too. [Granted: USAmericans are pretty much the most confused about ‘evolution’ in the world (yet also the most confident they are right, right, perfect!).]
It seems that you are trying to opt ‘sharing’ under the umbrella of ‘evolutionary’. But did you actually read Darwin & his Victorian ‘struggle’ narrative? It is rather unambiguous (Hobbes & Malthus inspired). Did you read Kessler & Kropotkin on cooperation? Did you read Dobzhansky? Sure, 20c. & some current cultur/anthropologists have tried to co-opt cooperation and competition, biology & culture, based on scientistic ideology. In the cultural sphere they have largely failed, e.g. memetics.. This should be beyond doubt already along with the just-so stories & fraud by so-called ‘evolutionary psychologists’ (as if psychology needed their anthropocentric atheism).
Are you a proponent of memetics, Piotr? I hope you’re not that intellectually moronic.
The key questions I’ve posed to you are about ‘the CHARACTER of language, not simply about its ‘nature’. Just keep thinking PEOPLE. Language, specifically human language is used, co-created, invented, learned, adapted, adjusted, copied, taught, passed on, sometimes becomes extinct, etc. *by human beings*. Thus, it cannot be reduced to a naturalistic topic *by character.* You seem to forget this on purpose to suit your impersonal ateleological ideology of human life.
Oh, ok, so now ‘engineering’ is ‘evolutionary’ too!?!
And ‘feminist protests’ are also evolutionary? Guy, what lamp are you licking?
What then isn’t EVOLUTIONARY, Piotr? You haven’t yet given a coherent answer to this simple question and I’m curious to hear your sincere answer.
You make it sound like ‘success’ = ‘evolutionary’, which isn’t much different than saying “my son or daughter is a good person, even if they are convicted for life in prison.” Evolution simply must be good for language too because of survival; the crudest of the tautologies.
But choices simply *are* planned every day by each person, Piotr. Can you really be that dysanthropic in your academia? Do you not have any children, friends (even opponents) or a spouse with which to confirm the inherent teleology of free will, of human choice?
And yes, NEOLOGISMS are usually intentioned, with plans, that have goals, aims & purposes; teleology. This is why I challenged Piotr with this right from the start. Notice he has not addressed it still?! So repeat is needed.
Look, it would seem best to get off your faculty lounge chair & talk straight. Tell us more about ‘non-evolutionary change’, since you at least started to acknowledge it before avoiding it. Why are you back-peddling now?
HINT: ‘Language change’ (which you use again in this most recent post) is *not* synonymous with so-called ‘language evolution.’ Why not?
What specifically distinguishes ‘change’ from ‘development’ from ‘evolution’ from ‘growth’ from ‘adaptation’ from ‘emergence’ from ‘creation’? Can you not be clear with your terms as a linguist?!
As I said, imo ‘language change’ is the norm, the standard, the accepted view. So-called ‘evolution’ of language is just the opinion of ideologists who embrace ideological evolutionism, whose worldview is naturalism, who are atheists and in the end anti-theists, unless agnostics. These people lack imagination about non-evolutionary changes.
Other options are more hopeful and interesting than what Piotr has shown so far, but he is the only one who can answer seriously here at TSZ b/c of his training. Is Piotr’s linguistic evolutionism the best naturalism has to offer? 🙁
Gregory, most people in biological evolution accepted neutral change decades ago.
Evolution is heritable change in populations over time. It makes no difference what the origin of neologisms is. The spread of change is outside the deliberate control of individuals.
I would have thought that “copying error” is synonymous with”imperfect replication”; one side of the coin that powers biological evolution.
Yeah, Gregory has worked himself into such a froth that he’s lost track of what he’s saying. He’s gotten 180-degrees turned-around backwards.
Copying intention:
Frankly, Piotr, I’m not surprised by your claims to ignorance as if you don’t understand English language by a native English speaking scholar who has lived in Poland, interacted with Polish scholars and calls out your anti-tradition, anti-theology ideology that is obviously hidden behind your ‘linguist’ talk here as if ‘evolutionism’ is a required worldview…because ‘SCIENCE’ dictates so.
If you knew anything about ‘naukovedenie’ or ‘nauka o nauce,’ Piotr, you’d perhaps try to elevate your argument. As it is, hiding behind English ‘Darwinism’ and/or ‘evolutionism’ as you do is a rather poor currency.
You are not a ‘man of straw,’ Piotr, admittedly. I treat you as a person (not an ‘object’ as you treat language). But you are also not a man the way you speak as if an ‘objectivist’ robot with no humanity. Please find a middle ground and rejoin humankind, which includes the universality of religious beliefs.
Your ‘ideological inclinations’ are quite obviously inseparable from *how you talk* about the ‘phenomena you study’. Let’s not kid ourselves, ok?
For you, Piotr, as it so far seems because of a pre-commitment to ideological naturalism and positivism, you do not allow perception that language is an artefact of human agency, that it is largely intentional and a product of choice. This view plays out in criticisms of your opponents:
That positivistic view, to me and many others actually *is* dehumanising. It is impersonal and empty of soul or spirit. Why try to sell this disenchanting slop as if it’s clever or correct? There is no ‘self’ possessed by [a] language; it is not a pure ‘object’ ‘out-there’ and separable from the people who use it.
It would seem that your naturalist (anti-theist mimicking) approach to linguistics sadly does not allow you to think any other way; but my anthropic reflexivity *does* allow for that, as it does for most human-social scientists who aren’t just aping natural-physical scientists. Honestly, Piotr, fellow scholar, please think carefully through what ‘dehumanisation’ might actually mean when you advocate anti-theist Polish-English linguistics.
Your report back here on dehumanisation would be much appreciated. Maybe even start your own thread about it?
The ideological evolutionist approach, and certainly ‘literary Darwinism’ based on naturalism, is a prime example of dehumanisation. Perhaps the most disturbing one, in contrast with roboticism and post-humanism.
The ‘spontaneous’ and ‘unguided’, ‘accidental’ and ‘illogical’ schtick English linguist Piotr is pushing is actually rather silly in global agent-influenced realms because human beings live and act predominantly with purpose, plan, goals, intents, etc. It is thus completely reasonable and understandable for 90-95% of humanity to reject Piotr’s speculative ‘scholarship’ that is based on ideology opposed both to his religious countrymen and countrywomen, but also to most people’s theologies/worldviews worldwide. Trying to propagandise anti-theist evolutionistic linguistics as ‘good science’ when it is really just flimsy ideology brings a disservice to humanity. Poland should be no exception to this academic ethic.
But if you’re going to continue to act like an impersonal natural-physical scientist in a human-social realm ([English] linguistics), Piotr, like an irresponsible objectifier of human language, then no convincing you of the agency-orientedness of language will work. Perhaps others might think twice. You’ve nonetheless declared yourself immune to reasoning, even outside of Polish rationality. It is *only* ‘evolutionist’ ideology, even in linguistics, that arrests your attention. Or maybe that is a character (non-natural) oversight?
Only by taking a merely statistical approach to agents, which discounts their agency, does your approach make any sense…and still it is a very weak explanatory among decision-making people. Once agency is included, your agent-empty linguistic ideology simply must change (or face embracing unreality). For most people, everyday citizens, when looking at historical language change even today, intentional agency is not so easily discounted and for the responsible human-social scientist (in contrast with the naturalist poser), it simply cannot be denied.
In the previous post I twice mentioned neologisms. Piotr’s position seems to be that ‘they just happen’, i.e. by accident, chance or anomaly; ‘evolutionarily.’ In my perspective, that is nonsense; they are usually intentional, with inherent reasons by people in their choices to neologise.
I have already answered your “simple questions”, Gregory, and feel no obligation to continue this game. I don’t see a genuine willingness on your part to discuss anything. Your last comment is partly word salad, and the intelligible parts restate what you’ve said before. There’s also too much sound and fury, and I don’t like being shouted at.
[ETA link]
When the facts are with you, pound the facts. When the law is with you, pound the law. When the law and the facts are against you, pound the table.
In all of Gregory’s posts to this site, I’ve seen nothing buyt table pounding.
So far, not a single example of agent designed change to language.
Other than Piotr’s examples of attempts to eliminate sexist words. Which I haven’t seen take hold in common speech.
Yeah, he really GREGXed it.
You know what ‘petrushka.’ I’ve never hated you, even with lots of flack; only been saddened by the empty tunnel you push here.
Did you not ever open a business, fulfill a dream, make a choice that changed your life? These things ‘count’ in a non-evolutionary way.
Neologism is HUGE in the age of Twitter & Facebook. Boom shakalaka! ROFLMAOYSST. Crowdsourcing. Retweet. Webinar. MOOC. Social media. Bitcoin. Digital detox. Selfie. Twerc. Hackerspace. Digital footprint. Carbon footprint.
Do you seriously think these are just ‘evolutionary accidents’ without any intentional purpose or plan?!
As a sociologist, that is such an absurd notion, to even think it is self-contradictory; to deny one’s own choices, dreams, goals, etc.. And frankly, p. that’s what the anti-free will ‘philosophists’ are trying to teach you, even in your old age! 🙁
To me, a man of the computer-internet generation (in contrast, you’ve said you’re in your twilight years), this is something so obvious: HUMAN BEINGS EXTEND!
It is a function of choice, direction, aim, plan, INTENSITY; of teleology. It is non-evolutionary change (over time and space).
To subsume that notion and every other conceivable kind of ‘change’ under the whale-swallowing, no, the universe-swallowing label of ‘evolution’ is simply false. Every single young person I meet with and speak about this understands immediately. We live today in the electronic-information age of post-continuity, of leaps and M-D thinking and post-post-post-neo-modernism.
I just won a ‘tablet’ this past weekend!
The big question (admittedly to me also!) is: what’s next for HUMAN EXTENSION?
Piotr’s also of an older generation; he didn’t grow up with personal computers. I can understand his Eastern European distance because I’ve lived here and seen it. But something better awaits us that his ‘evolutionist linguistics’ simply doesn’t know and cannot comprehend. No traps. Just be honest and speak about a wide variety of changes, including non-evolutionary ones.
Don’t be one of the hollow men, petrushka (http://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men). The ‘skeptics’. Good luck.
Gregory,
One: you have absolutely no justification for suggesting that fellow posters are not being honest.
Two: it’s against the rules.
That’s just encouragement, Alan. It doesn’t imply dishonesty. You’ve still got 97% to answer to (and if you were consistent, you’d send well over half the comments to me here to Guano!). Stop being such a skunky ‘skeptic’ in France!
Richardthughes:
For the latecomers, Rich is referring to this:
…which in turn is referring to this:
Gregory on how to reconcile evolution, creation and intelligent design
Hi I’m going to Geographically stereotype everyone!
We (the technorati) are all PoMo and shit. Your pigeon-holing makes us laugh.
Well, that’s one example of taboo — strong selection against an item prohibited for cultural reasons. Even taboos, however, are more often effective in official written communication than in colloquial language. The C and F tetragrammata were the only English words excluded from the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (the entries were reinstated in 1972). The taboo, though totally irrational, is still so strong that I decided not to quote them here in full lest the moderators should feel forced to react. Nevertheless, even during the “prohibition era” they were among the most frequently used words in spoken language.
Some are accidents. I listed several, which you ignored. But you have missed a key point. the origin of neologism, whether new words or biological mutations, doesn’t matter. The fixation of changes is outside the control of agents. The examples you gave are equivalent to valley girl speak. Most are passing fads.
How about grody, tubular, totally, whatever? Who is in charge of which changes or additions survive more than a year or two. What agent designs lasting changes?
Well, truth be told Piotr, you are 1) not being shouted at, and 2) probably don’t like being whispered to either if the words that are said would destroy your precious (by that I mean Gollum) ideology of ‘linguistic evolutionism.’
You have not answered my questions with any perspicuity, Piotr. Your naturalism is in question to which you have given little backbone. Your evolutionism is in question and you’ve even (partially, then withdrawn) recognised of alternatives!
In this rare case, I take the side of stcordova, though he naively supports ‘language evolution’. He ‘knows not what he does’, but the pace, speed, timing question remains. When is it too fast or too slow to be properly called ‘evolution’?
‘Non-evolutionary change’ is left largely unanswered (and also by others too) by Piotr, the only one qualified here to speak with any authority. So that imo scores a point.
Sadly, ideological naturalist, evolutionist, anti-theist, minority among Poles, Piotr has failed to mount a challenge or present a viable case for intentionality, agency, purpose plan, aim, goal; teleology. This is his ‘linguistic’ legacy.
His is imo a very weak position to build a linguistic career on. Evolve where? What a silly question.
And written language follows the spoken. Usually with a lag.
Less replaces fewer. Infinitives split.
Tell us more about racial stereotypes, Greg!
Greg,
Speaking of Szymborska, this could have been written especially for (or at) you:
petrushka, you disenfranchise yourself too often.
Neologism does matter on the social, economic, political, cultural & religious scales, even if only for the few decades of a human life. If all you’re saying here is that ‘we all die’ and even Earth doesn’t matter, it’s just a depressing ‘skeptic’ expression.
Agents *do* have some choice and control, to say otherwise is either insanity or irresponsibility.
Are you saying you have not done that *at all* in your 70+yr life?!?
Your self-denial, self-erasure of choice is highly saddening p. Has your life made no difference? It’s the same question, in the end, once one takes co-creation into their perception.
I’d suggest the diminutive “Greg” is intended to be pejorative. Two-way street, guys?
I have a friend who is a retired English teacher. If I want to see frothing at the mouth, I can invoke the argument: “well, there’s no such distinction in French and they manage perfectly well without it.”
Alan,
Yes. I do not think very highly of Greg and his ideas.
Yes. Greg is free to disapprove of me and my ideas, and he does so quite often.
Gregory,
Wow!
What a steaming pile of horse manure.
That’s the end of this thread for me. Like ‘walto,’ I just really don’t like ‘keiths’; too full of hatred and malice, disrespectful anti-theist. Not attractive. Not inspiring. Dull. Is that the hoped ‘skepticism’ Elizabeth sponsors here? 2 other commenters have already been ad hom insulting in this thread to me yet un-guano-ed. Neil Rickert platitudes without content. Alan Fox is a bigot moderator (but thanks finally for the long belated diminutive comment, even if not enforced) who doesn’t explain his censorship (& expects private groveling). Piotr hasn’t significantly faced pointed questions and likely won’t due to his myopic naturalistic (linguistic) evolutionism. Backwards voice in Poland. Done. Not worth the time. Thanks and good wishes. – Gregory
Neil:
I think that is also intended to be pejorative. 🙂
Gregory,
Bye Greg! Please pop in if you have any new TedX content!
keiths,
Off-topic but you don’t see the advantage in trying to bridge that gap?
Yes, but not ad hominem. It’s a comment on the post, not on the person.
Neil:
Neil, earlier today:
I think you’re right, Neil. And I think that there is no point in pretending that we think highly of Greg.
Alan,
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘bridging the gap’.
I have always been — and still am — quite willing to have substantive discussions with people I personally dislike, even when they use pejoratives. Otherwise I would have stopped commenting at UD a long time ago!
The problem with Greg’s posts is not that they’re pejorative — it’s that we can’t get him to make a substantive argument. Neil’s assessment from earlier in the thread:
Nobody is asking you to pretend other than what you think. Your thoughts are your own business. What Lizzie is asking of everyone is observance of the rules which are intended to facilitate free discussion. It is easy to shout people down. There are many sites where you can do that. Not so many where we try to allow a plurality of view.
keiths,
We’re cross-posting Give me a minute to catch up
This is all off-topic. I suggest we move to “moderation issues”.
Keith writes:
I don’t doubt it. I find it great fun to spar with people who express views that I genuinely can’t comprehend. Lizzie has persuaded me that perhaps having fun is less satisfying than taking the longer road of understanding where others are coming from and possibly widening their horizons
keiths,
I wonder if Gregory realises that Szymborska was an atheist, and that a streak of fascination with evolution (and the human condition in the light of it) runs through her poetry. Among the book reviews she wrote one finds, for example, one devoted to a handbook of mollusc evolution (which she’d read from cover to cover). Many of her poems are about animals. She made the tarsier the (first-person) hero of one of them — probably the only poet ever to have done so.
Well, that’s trying to see it from another perspective!
Yes, that particular remark might be seen by some as ad hominem. On the other hand, Greg provides pretty convincing evidence of pedantry. He acts as if he owns the meaning of “evolution”. But nobody owns that. He can only own his personal meaning. And the worst of it is that, in spite of requests, he fails to adequately explain what is his personal meaning.
For Gregory’s benefit: Technology evolves. Computer operating systems evolve. Computer programming languages evolve. Yet all of these are the product of human intentions. Use of the word “evolution” does not preclude that intention plays a role.
Thank you so much.
It had been quite interesting apart from your mudslinging.
Darwin gave partial credit to Adam Smith for the idea of evolution directed by the invisible hand, and yet few human endeavors are as carefully designed as businesses. Evolution is not a respecter of individuals. It does not care about individuals. It is a concept that can only be applied to populations. It is a statement about change over time in aggregates.
Gregory wants to steer the conversation to some other topic.
Promise?
Edit to delete snarky comment. Sory, y’all — I’ll try to restrain myself preemptively next time.
Adapa:
Maybe Lizzie is like the absentee slumlord who appeals to her absence as a defense for the conditions of the slum she owns.
Slums are made by the tenants they believe in.
I see what you did there. 🙂