Any such thing as "Cyclic Evolution?"

[Excalibre]

@Monty

Evidently language isn’t the be all and end all it should be. Otherwise, my posts wouldn’t be so misinterprete here. Let’s try this again.

It 's not only for me, but for quite a few (purt near all competent) linguists, languages are not evolving. There is no appreciable difference in complexity or use in the different languages of the world. That is not to say that there are not differences in languages, but rather that language manifests itself regularly and similarly across all languages–i.e. no counterpart to allele change.

Oh, and before I forget, I’m not talking about the non-specialist’s usage of the term “language evolution.”

I’m sorry, but “evolution” as a concept doesn’t require increasing complexity. That’s precisely what I attempted to illustrate earlier. And, in my experience, “evolution” is quite commonly used as a term to describe language change.

[Monty]

Here are some links on the matter:

Language | Encyclopedia.com

Origin of language

Language

[Excalibre]

@Monty

Here are some links on the matter:

Language | Encyclopedia.com
Origin of language - Wikipedia
Language - Wikipedia

Thanks, I’m actually already familiar with the concept of language.

[Frylock]

@Monty

Evidently language isn’t the be all and end all it should be. Otherwise, my posts wouldn’t be so misinterprete here. Let’s try this again.

It 's not only for me, but for quite a few (purt near all competent) linguists, languages are not evolving. There is no appreciable difference in complexity or use in the different languages of the world. That is not to say that there are not differences in languages, but rather that language manifests itself regularly and similarly across all languages–i.e. no counterpart to allele change.

Oh, and before I forget, I’m not talking about the non-specialist’s usage of the term “language evolution.”

I just did a google search on “language evolution” and found a long list of sites most of which appeared to be examples of linguists, talking to other linguists, referring to languages as evolving. I didn’t find any indication that these linguists saw themselves as being particularly radical or different from the norm for linguistics.

-FrL-

[Frylock]

@Frylock

I just did a google search on “language evolution” and found a long list of sites most of which appeared to be examples of linguists, talking to other linguists, referring to languages as evolving. I didn’t find any indication that these linguists saw themselves as being particularly radical or different from the norm for linguistics.

-FrL-

I’ll have to retract that. Most of those sites are talking about the origin of language, rather than an ongoing evolution of language.

I still have my memories of taking linguistics classes in college and learning that languages “evolve,” and of reading books by linguists (admittedly “popularizations”) which talked about languages “evolving.” But you can not share my memories so I’ll have to go look for something else…

-Kris