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Author
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Topic: lost signature of design
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fish
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Member # 213
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posted 30. March 2002 19:24
A majority of linguists hold that language evolution happens so fast that within a rather short period of separate evolution (definitely less than 20,000 years), all evidence on evolutionary similarities between a pair of languages is effectively lost.
Under this premise:
(1) since there are several language groups that have been separated for longer than this, are we effectively sampling several points from the space of all possible evolvable human languages?
(2) What could the hypothesis that the original language (s) were designed add? Could it ever be demonstrated, and using what information?
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William A. Dembski
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Member # 7
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posted 30. March 2002 21:44
I have no expertise in linguistic, but I did study classical Greek for a number of years in high school and college. What I've always found amazing is that, yes, the language evolved, but no, the language did not get more complex over time. In studying classical Greek, one usually starts with Plato's Apology or Xenophon's Anabasis (5th-4th century BC), and then works one's way back to Homer (8th century BC) or forward to the koine Greek of the Mediterranean basin at the time of Christ. The Greek of Homer is richer than the Greek of Plato three to four hundred years later which in turn is richer than the Greek of the New Testament. In Homer, for instance, verbs not only have 7 tenses, 3 voices, and 4 moods, but they also come in 3 numbers depending on whether the subject of the verb is singular, plural, or dual (the dual largely drops out in classical times and I don't recall ever seeing it in Koine Greek). From what little I know about the Mycenaean Greek of Linear B (which is earlier than Homer), that seems even more involved than the Greek of Homer. So with the Greek language we have an example of diminishing complexity as the language evolves. To be sure, there were "environmental conditions" that facilitated the simplified Greek at the time of Christ -- the koine Greek of that time was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean basin, so there was "pressure" for the language to simplify so as to be more commonly accessible. But that still doesn't answer how one got so beastly complicated a language as the Greek of Homer in the first place. All our historical evidence seems to point to simplification over time. How did the language become so complicated in the first place?
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fish
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Member # 213
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posted 31. March 2002 07:56
Thank you for a stimulating reply.
I am no expert either (although I can consult one if necessary), but I believe that predictable, generational increases in complexity have been documented at least for pidgin languages. However, the seemingly unreasonable complexity and rigour of languages like Latin and Greek do indeed stand out - that is given that they show a marked tendency to degenerate in rather predictable ways, how did they arise in the first place?
Social factors do seem to be a promising explanation; that is to say rigour and complexity seem most likely to arise as a result of social competition within a ruling elite. I wonder for example whether the number of Chinese characters in active use correlates with the wealth and leisure time of the ruling court. [I know for example that Japanese has changed so radically that even those with a university education get a headache trying to read works 90 years old. This came about through administrative fiat, but nevertheless the same sorts of factors may be involved - in this case the increasing size and decreased leisure time of the literate class.]
One could therefore propose a sort of punctuated model of language evolution - where languages tend to degenerate towards an intermediate level of complexity and high degree of comprehensibility, but are periodically swept out by more a complex language whose advantage is simply that it is spoken by the elite.
To slowly try and turn this back into a question, one way we could demonstrate that an evolutionary model was inadequate might be indeed to show that change has a particular direction (e.g. steady decrease in complexity). This method would work even if one was not able to say much about the original language. However, we would certainly have to be careful, because even if most languages were degenerating in this way the total dynamics of the system might lead to a stable level of complexity. It might also be that things were different back then to how they are now, althought this is in general does not seem to me to be a satisfactory statement to make; one should be able to find at least some system today that mirrors the situation in the past when complexity was increasing.
An alternative model to an evolutionary one is that languages like Latin really are made by administrative fiat ( esperanto + political will = complex, non degenerate language). The Korean alphabet, for example is entirely designed.
How would we best demonstrate this? By a detailed
study of the dynamics of (non-planned) change? By a comparison of old languages with new ones? By identifying the languages that are (or were recently) designed?
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Art
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Member # 179
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posted 31. March 2002 08:54
quote:
But that still doesn't answer how one got so beastly complicated a language as the Greek of Homer in the first place. All our historical evidence seems to point to simplification over time. How did the language become so complicated in the first place?
I'm sure I know even less about languages than most anyone else here, but this "paradox" would seem to have a simple "solution". There are, and probably always have been, a fairly constant number of concepts that we use language to describe. Early in the course of language "development", it seems to me that there would be a relatively small number of words. This would require that each word (or symbol, or whatever) would take on a puzzling, intricate myriad of meanings - giving a distinct impression of complexity compared with extant language. With the passage of time, more and more words would be invented, leading to a seeming simplification as far as usage and meaning are concerned. Hence the situation as related by Bill.
Just a thought.
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Stuart Harris
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Member # 152
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posted 01. April 2002 15:06
Bill,
I'm not so sure that your example is pertinent to whether languages evolve toward simplicity or complexity. You said that there was pressure for Greek to simplify during the period of Christ and hence the easier to read koine Greek of the New Testament. This is true, but the exegisis of the NT Greek can of course be very difficult and that led to the more complex Greek writing of the Church Fathers that can sometimes be as hard to read as Aristotle. Much of the Church Fathers' writing was expository unlike the Gospels.
The context of writing dictates its complexity. Writing based on oral work is more nuanced and complex. Read the transcriptions of sermons like the homilies of St. John Chrysostom and you'll see that so-called "koine" Greek gets complex like the oral-based Homer.
This doesn't mean that simpler language can't convey deep meaning. John is arguably the simplest Greek of the four Gospels but it depth and compact theological messages are incredible.
Greek is rather amazing in its stasis. I wonder why it resisted change more than other languages. A student of ancient Greek is usually able to read a simple article in modern Greek and get the basic gist of it. Imagine Chaucer brought forward in time and trying to read an article in, say, USA Today.
Stu
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James A. Barham
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Member # 50
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posted 01. April 2002 16:14
Bill and Stu:
My impression is that in general the languages of traditional peoples are more complex grammatically, and that over the course of the rise of civilization and recorded history during the past 5,000 years or so, the general trend has been toward grammatical simplification everywhere. Certainly, Greek is not unique in this respect.
Regarding Greek, I think Stu exaggerates the stasis. The difference between Homer and Koine is pretty great, and the difference between Koine and Modern Greek is considerable, as well. Modern Greek has lost most of the ancient moods (optative, etc.) as well as the dual number; the tense system is considerably simplified; and the nominal cases are now vestigial in the same way that they are in English. It is kind of subjective to compare the history of Greek with that of English, but in my opinion, the difference between Homer and Modern Greek is quite a bit greater than that between Middle English and Modern English (although not as great as that between Old English and Modern English).
On the other hand, while grammatical changes seem to be uniformly in the direction from more complex to simpler over time, such a trend is less evident in lexical changes. Certainly, in most modern languages of industrialized societies there are a great many borrowings and neologisms, although to be sure vocabulary is lost, as well. Modern Greek, for example, retains 50% or less of the ancient lexicon, if I am not mistaken, but it has added a great deal of Italian, Turkish, Slavic, etc. On balance, I don't know for sure, but I suppose the trend toward simplification is more ambiguous than in the case of the grammar. Probably the same is true of English.
I doubt that any robust trends will be ever be found in language evolution beyond these very vague generalities. Certainly, there is no uniformity, even in closely related languages, since the Slavic languages have retained their full complement of nominal cases to the present day.
It seems to me that local historical factors, or even just chance, will turn out to be the most important determinant of these changes.
In any case, it seems clear that there is nothing analogous to the upward arc from bacteria---protists---metazoans---encephalized metazoans---human beings, in the case of language.
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Drosera
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Member # 139
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posted 01. April 2002 19:27
It's all Greek to me...
(Ouch. Sorry, I really am, but it *is* April 1)
Drosera
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