Posted on 02/01/2008 2:46:03 PM PST by blam
Languages evolve in sudden leaps, not creeps
18:31 01 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Phil McKenna
Language evolves in sudden leaps, according to a statistical study of three major language groups. The finding challenges the slow-and-steady model held by many linguists and matches evidence that genetic evolution follows a similar path.
Mark Pagel from the University of Reading in the UK and colleagues applied statistical tools commonly used in biology to the analysis of three of the world’s major language groups: Indo-European, Austronesian, and Bantu.
By comparing commonly used words within each language group, they were able to identify the extent to which languages within a group diverged from the others. This enabled them to build a family tree, charting the divergence of one "mother tongue" into hundreds of daughter languages.
If languages change at a constant rate, the length of any branch back to the root of the language "tree" should be of the same length. But the researchers found that languages that are very different from the common root had longer paths. This suggests that, each time they split, an abrupt spurt of evolution occurs.
They found that up to a third of all vocabulary changes result from "punctuational bursts of change" when one language splits from another.
In 2005, Pagel performed a similar analysis of genetic variation in species of trees. He found that 22% of evolutionary change came during similar periods of rapid development in some species. "In one case its words, in the other case its genes," Pagel says.
Pagel says languages may diverge suddenly when a subgroup separates from a larger population, to create a unique social identity. Similarly, genetic change may occur suddenly as genes try to adapt quickly to a new environment.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
I get sudden urges to yell also!
The English language has taken a nose dive so the article makes sense what with all the breeding going on.
Probably has something to do with migration and war.
Fo’ shizzle.
Fer shizzle, my RightWhizzle.
Damn you sir!
Whoa! This is hugh, really hugh. I’m series. My beeber is stuned!
Nonsense. The language that the Brits speak evolved very gradually from whatever the Celts spoke to what BBC announcers use now. The romans, saxons, vikings, and normans who moved in and set up shop over the years had nothing to do with it.
This fits with Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium.
I said, 'What thing is that?'
She said, 'Its some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us. Its looking out thru our eye hoals. May be you dont take no noatis of it only some times. Say you get woak up suddn in the middl of the nite. 1 minim youre a sleap and the nex youre on your feet with a spear in your han. Wel it wernt you put that spear in your han it wer that other thing whats looking out thru your eye hoals. It aint you nor it don't even know your name. Its in us lorn and loan and sheltering how it can.'
I said, 'If its in every 1 of us theres moren 1 of it theres got to be a manying theres got to be a millying and mor.'
Lorna said, 'Wel there is a millying and mor.'
I said, 'Wel if theres such a manying of it whys it lorn then whys it loan?'
She said, 'Becaws the manying and the millying its all 1 thing it dont have nothing to gether with. You look at lykens on a stoan its all them tiny manyings of it and may be each part of it myt think its sepert only we can see its all 1 thing. Thats how it is with what we are its all 1 girt big thing and divvyt up amongst the many. Its all 1 girt thing bigger nor the worl and lorn and loan and oansome. Tremmering it is and feart. It puts us on like we put on our cloes. Some times we dont fit. Some times it cant fynd the arm hoals and it tears us a part.'
All your language are belong to us.
I sure did develop different speach patterns shortly after joining the military! JHC, some of that was so FUBAR that one would want to go AWOL. Know what I mean?
ping
ping
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