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Mr tiktaalik
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 Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 11:02 am Post subject: evolution of language etc & YEC |
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errrr I thought the tower of babel was the cause of mans confusion,
different types of languages, and the flood killed everybody and that
the world was only 6,000 years old?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6669569.stm |
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Ken Shackleton
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 8:57 am Post subject: Re: evolution of language etc & YEC |
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On May 21, 7:59 pm, Pfusand <a...@szczesuil.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
On May 21, 4:23 pm, Greg Guarino <g...@risky-biz.com> wrote:
On Mon, 21 May 2007 10:12:40 -0700 (PDT), amor...@xenon.Stanford.EDU
(Alan Morgan) wrote:
Many
years ago someone bought my (Italian) grandmother a bible they thought
was in Italian. It was only some months later that one of my aunts
looked over her shoulder and noticed that the bible she had been
reading after dinner each night was in Spanish. She shrugged and said
she knew, but it was OK.
That surprises me. I suspect that either your grandmother had been
exposed to a variety of different languages
Probably just her native (Barese) dialect of Italian, some standard
Italian in a few years in school (She was born in 1888. Her husband,
my grandfather, was proud to have finished the seventh grade. She
probably had less schooling) and the English of her new home. (NY
City). In her later years she may have come in contact with some
Spanish in New York.
Not necessarily. Not once, but twice, I have heard about Spaniards
vacationing in Italy, and determinedly speaking only Spanish. Both
times, they had no problems understanding and being understood. Each
time, at the end of their vacation, they was asked, "You accent is
unfamiliar to me. What part of Italy are you from?"
(This just re-inforces the claim that "A language is a dialect with a
navy.")
Pfusand
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I worked with a woman whose parents were born in Spain. She insists
that in Spain there is no such language as Spanish.
Her parents are from Barcelona, the language spoken there is
Catalan....which sounds decidedly un-Spanish to me. She insists that
the "other" language of Spain is not Spanish, but Castillian; which of
course gave birth to the "Spanish" which is spoken throughout Latin
America and other former Spanish colonies.
I suspect that at least part of her insistance in this regard comes
from a sense of nationalism for Catalonia, but she insists that people
who live in Spain do not refer to their own language as "Spanish", not
even the Castillian speaking ones.
Perhaps there is someone here from Spain who can comment? |
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nmp
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| Posted: Tue May 22, 2007 11:00 am Post subject: Re: evolution of language etc & YEC |
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Op Mon, 21 May 2007 20:57:29 -0700, schreef Ken Shackleton:
| Quote: |
I worked with a woman whose parents were born in Spain. She insists that
in Spain there is no such language as Spanish.
Her parents are from Barcelona, the language spoken there is
Catalan....which sounds decidedly un-Spanish to me. She insists that the
"other" language of Spain is not Spanish, but Castillian; which of
course gave birth to the "Spanish" which is spoken throughout Latin
America and other former Spanish colonies.
I suspect that at least part of her insistance in this regard comes from
a sense of nationalism for Catalonia, but she insists that people who
live in Spain do not refer to their own language as "Spanish", not even
the Castillian speaking ones.
Perhaps there is someone here from Spain who can comment?
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I'm *not* from Spain, but I think you may be right about the Catalan
nationalism thing. One can make bitter enemies in Catalonia by calling
their language "Spanish". Or even by just asking a polite question in
Spanish (castellano) without making profuse apologies for your linguistic
shortcomings, and would they please forgive you for asking them something
in Spanish for once? They will, of course, still reply in Catalan :)
As usual, Wikipedia seems to offer somtheing on the subject too:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_%28language%29#Naming>
"Spanish people tend to call this language Español when contrasting it
with languages of foreign states, such as French and English, but call it
castellano, i.e. Castilian, the language of the Castile region, when
contrasting it with other languages of Spain (such as Galician, Basque,
and Catalan). In this manner, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the
term castellano to define the official language of the whole State, as
opposed to las demás lenguas españolas (lit. the other Spanish
languages). Article III reads as follows:
El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado. (...) Las demás
lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades
Autónomas...
Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. (...) The other
Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Autonomous
Communities..." |
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TomS
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 11:01 am Post subject: Re: evolution of language etc & YEC |
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"On Wed, 23 May 2007 09:40:03 +1000, in article
<1hyk7hz.1yhen82ioyvdmN%j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au>, John Wilkins stated..."
| Quote: |
AC <mightymartianca@gmail.com> wrote:
On 21 May 2007 10:06:15 -0700,
backspace <sawireless2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
On May 21, 5:27 pm, amor...@xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Morgan) wrote:
I suspect they are willing to allow micro-evolution of languages but
not macro-evolution
And until you define Micro Evolution and Macro Evolution you are not
even wrong.
Well, in linguistics, I would imagine "micro-evolution" means dialectical
change (ie. Quebecois French as opposed to Parisian French). Macro-evolution
would be change of the language to the point of mutual unintelligibility.
As with biological evolution, it's not quite that simple. Though modern
mass communications has seen the death of quite a few dialects, a century
ago there was a steady stream of dialects from the Netherlands to Bohemia,
each neighboring one having a high degree of mutual intelligibility, while
more distant ones become increasingly difficult, until finally you had
quite literally separate languages (Dutch vs. German).
In fact, I think language evolution is a rather neat analogy of biological
evolution. The same basic rule; descent with modification applies to both.
Language and living populations are both imperfect replicators, though
unlike most living organisms, language can be much more directly affected
by neighboring or invading populations (Old English being transformed by
Old Norse and Norman French due to invaders importing vocabulary).
Intercomprehension in language is like interbreeding in biology. Once it
has largely ceased, you have a new language or species, respectively.
And in both cases it is not entirely about the endogenous properties of
the language or gene pool.
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And people do argue about what makes for a "language" - as
distinguished from a "dialect", while the experts aren't much worried
about the lack of a definition. A language is, like a species, a
collective, something distinct from the individuals. Language change
is not a change in what individual things a person says.
The disappearance of languages has a sad similarity to the disappearance
of species.
There is one more thing that I find interesting about language change,
which relates to evolution. Language change is also "random". And
non-experts get worried about the "degradation" of language due to
these random changes, while the experts realize that the complexity
of language can arise from these random changes. It seems to be
difficult for people to comprehend just how complexity can arise
spontaneously from random change, whether the topic is language
or biology.
--
---Tom S.
"When people use the X is not a fact or Y is not proven gambits it is a tacit
admission that they have lost the science argument and they are just trying to
downplay the significance of that failing."
BK Jennings, "On the Nature of Science", Physics in Canada 63(1) |
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with me begins the univer
Guest
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| Posted: Wed May 23, 2007 11:01 am Post subject: Re: evolution of language etc & YEC |
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on second thoughts does intercomprehension ever cease in language?
interbreeding does though.....somewhere i think comprehension and
language got separated...i mean they are related but are not
interdependent.....
just my reasioning....i am not sure if its factual, though.
perhaps..can be modelled
On May 23, 4:40 am, j.wilki...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
| Quote: |
AC <mightymartia...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 21 May 2007 10:06:15 -0700,
backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On May 21, 5:27 pm, amor...@xenon.Stanford.EDU (Alan Morgan) wrote:
I suspect they are willing to allow micro-evolution of languages but
not macro-evolution
And until you define Micro Evolution and Macro Evolution you are not
even wrong.
Well, in linguistics, I would imagine "micro-evolution" means dialectical
change (ie. Quebecois French as opposed to Parisian French). Macro-evolution
would be change of the language to the point of mutual unintelligibility.
As with biological evolution, it's not quite that simple. Though modern
mass communications has seen the death of quite a few dialects, a century
ago there was a steady stream of dialects from the Netherlands to Bohemia,
each neighboring one having a high degree of mutual intelligibility, while
more distant ones become increasingly difficult, until finally you had
quite literally separate languages (Dutch vs. German).
In fact, I think language evolution is a rather neat analogy of biological
evolution. The same basic rule; descent with modification applies to both.
Language and living populations are both imperfect replicators, though
unlike most living organisms, language can be much more directly affected
by neighboring or invading populations (Old English being transformed by
Old Norse and Norman French due to invaders importing vocabulary).
Intercomprehension in language is like interbreeding in biology. Once it
has largely ceased, you have a new language or species, respectively.
And in both cases it is not entirely about the endogenous properties of
the language or gene pool.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text - |
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