Population Movements and Contacts in Language Evolution

Abstract

I argue for uniformitarianism (Mufwene 2001) in accounts of language evolution. Below, after dismissing a few myths about the development of creoles, I show how what we have learned to date about this case of language speciation prompts genetic linguists to reopen the books about language diversification in general and as a concomitant of language death in many cases. I adduce various examples from distant and recent histories to illustrate how population movements and contacts have been a critical ecological factor even in the cases of so-called "internally-motivated" change. The distinction between "internally" and "externally-motivated" language change boils down to a mere sociological contrast once contact is situated at the inter-idiolectal level, where interactions and negotiations between linguistic systems take place, regardless of whether or not xenolectal features participate in the feature pool. Ultimately, the same mechanisms of competition and selection that apply to linguistic features also apply to languages and dialects. Driven by the ecology of language use, the mechanisms roll the dice not only on how a particular language evolves under specific ecological conditions but also on the vitality of languages.

Genetic Classification and Language Contact

“…Hybrid approaches are compatible with all the alternative models, namely a unitary organism model that supposes [or allows] sexual reproduction, and the various sorts of population models as a few scholars (e.g. Croft 2000, Mufwene 2001Mufwene , 2007 have made explicit.…”

“…Croft (2000) also discusses a sexual analogy in creation of mixed languages. Population models have been explored by various linguists in recent times [again by Croft (2000) and Mufwene (2001Mufwene ( , 2007], though the full consequences of models of this sort for language relatedness and our conceptualization of language generally have yet to be fully explored. In a population model, the gene pool, or its analog, could be considered variable, and new genetic material may be acquired by the species through hybridization, as well as by mutation and other means compatible with contemporary biological models.…”

Language Acquisition in Creolization and, Thus, Language Change: Some Cartesian‐ Uniformitarian Boundary Conditions

“…Many of the latter do not persist in the steady‐state grammar of the learners, and those that do persist may not get transmitted to the population at large. As for the creation of new language varieties via language contact among adults, such creation also happens outside of creolization, as in the history of Germanic and Romance, which are not usually classified as Creole languages (see Mufwene 2001: 139–144, 2007 for some discussion).…”

2016. Languages in Contact. 240 pages, written by Lisa Lim and Umberto Ansaldo

“…The authors, though of course like all of us regretting the speed at which languages disappear, support Ladefogeds adagium that linguists should not interfere with processes of language loss and revitalisation, but simply document and describe languages, since language death is a natural part of the process of human cultural development. Moreover, they argue, referring to Mufwene (2004Mufwene ( , 2007Mufwene ( , 2008 not all is lost when a language is lost, and something is even gained, namely a new contact language. This is again illustrated with numerous fascinating Asian examples, in which, again, the detailed account of the ecology (including, of course, historical developments) sheds a clear light on the linguistic outcome of the contact languages.…”