Retropost (22 de junio de 2008): Integrationalism, Hindsight Bias, and the Pidgin Primordial Soup

A comment on a post in Babel's Dawn on pidgin languages, language origin and Derek Bickerton's Bastard Tongues. Link-enhanced and expanded.

Also, from the standpoint of integrational linguistics, one might consider pidgin-like babble (nongrammatical, nonregularized, nonChomskian, and with lots of signic interaction) as the primordial soup from which language arose. Grammar, regularity, a fixed vocabulary, etc., are invented later. Which is also a way of saying perhaps that the notion that Indo-European was a "language" in the sense that Greek or Latin or English are languages is a retrospective fallacy, one more version of the hindsight bias.

It would seem that in the origin and evolution of languages, as in the origin and evolution of biological species, hybridity is the rule rather than the exception. Purity—relative purity—comes later, strange as it may sound. Grammatical purity, racial purity, etc.—are constructions, some are planned and man-made (as in pedigree dogs, academic grammars, etc.); others are the spontaneous result of historical isolation and community dynamics. On the primordial hybridization of genetic lineages, see this article by Carl Zimmer.

Neanderthal language

 

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The Indo-European Controversy

The Indo-European Controversy: http://newbooksinhistory.com/2015/07/21/the-indo-european-controversy-facts-and-fallacies-in-historical-linguistics-cambridge-university-press-2015/
Posted by Narratología evolucionista - Evolutionary Narratology on Jueves, 30 de julio de 2015

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Más controversias:

Heggarty, Paul, et al. "Language Trees with Sampled Ancestors Support a Hybrid Model for the Origin of Indo-European Languages." Science 382.6667 (13 Oct. 2023).*

         DOI: 10.1126/science.abg081

         https://www.science.org/stoken/author-tokens/ST-1344/full

         2023

 

Schulte, Kim. (U Jaume I). "¿Dónde y cuándo nacieron las lenguas indoeuropeas? Un nuevo estudio concilia las dos hipótesis principales." The Conversation 17 Oct. 2023.* (Heggarty et al.).

         https://theconversation.com/donde-y-cuando-nacieron-las-lenguas-indoeuropeas-un-nuevo-estudio-concilia-las-dos-hipotesis-principales-214177

         2021

Writing and the Mirage of grammatical genealogies

A commentary on "Comparative Philology and Proto-Languages" in Language Continuity— which discusses Andrew Garrett's paper "Convergence in the formation of Indo-European: Phylogeny and Chronology" (2006).

Quite interesting references, and I look forward to your discussion. It seems to me that the "mirage of Indo-European" as well as the more general mirage of language trees, etc., is due to a great extent to the ignorance of the role of writing in giving a coherence to language— actually "making" a language out of a diversity of dialects and speech varieties. The assumption that there is "one" correct grammar for each language has had far-reaching consequences in linguistic study. Of course, once you see a Latin grammar bound in leather, you immediately assume that its Platonic equivalent for other languages must be in existence somewhere!

The critique of traditional linguistics from the standpoint of a theory of writing—understood as an autonomous active principle in language-making, and not a mere transcription of speech—can be pursued in the writings of Roy Harris and other integrationalist linguists.

Integrationalism, Hindsight Bias, and the Pidgin Primordial Soup

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