How the English language has evolved like a living creature

Some linguists think of language as a living thing: It grows and changes, and every time a child learns it, the language reproduces itself. Now, a team of researchers is using the analogy of evolution to explain language change, arguing that key factors in biological evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—have parallels in how languages change over time. And it turns out that the random changes, known as “drift” in biology, may have played an outsized role in the evolution of the English language.

more…

Tau.Neutrino said:

How the English language has evolved like a living creature

Some linguists think of language as a living thing: It grows and changes, and every time a child learns it, the language reproduces itself. Now, a team of researchers is using the analogy of evolution to explain language change, arguing that key factors in biological evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—have parallels in how languages change over time. And it turns out that the random changes, known as “drift” in biology, may have played an outsized role in the evolution of the English language.

more…

Most things evolve, things like tools in particular.

evolved or devolved

innit?

Newspeak is the language of Oceania, a fictional totalitarian state ruled by the Party, who created the language to meet the ideological requirements of English Socialism (Ingsoc). In George Orwell’s world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak is a controlled language, of restricted grammar and limited vocabulary, a linguistic design meant to limit the freedom of thought—personal identity, self-expression, free will—that ideologically threatens the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who thus criminalized such concepts as thoughtcrime, contradictions of Ingsoc orthodoxy.

In “The Principles of Newspeak”, the appendix to the 1949 novel, Orwell explains that Newspeak usage follows most of the English grammar, yet is a language characterised by a continually diminishing vocabulary; complete thoughts reduced to simple terms of simplistic meaning. Linguistically, the contractions of Newspeak—Ingsoc (English Socialism), Minitrue (Ministry of Truth), etc.—derive from the syllabic abbreviations of Russian, which identify the government and social institutions of the Soviet Union, such as politburo (Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Comintern (Communist International), kolkhoz (collective farm), and Komsomol (Young Communists’ League). The long-term political purpose of the new language is for every member of the Party and society, except the Proles—the working-class of Oceania—to exclusively communicate in Newspeak, by the year A.D. 2050; during that 66-year transition, the usage of Oldspeak (Standard English) shall remain interspersed among Newspeak conversations.

Newspeak is also a constructed language, of planned phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, like Basic English, which Orwell promoted (1942–44) during the Second World War (1939–45), and later rejected in the essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), wherein he criticises the bad usage of English in his day: Dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which produce the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning. Orwell’s conclusion thematically reiterates linguistic decline: “I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this may argue that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development, by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime

http://www.zerothposition.com/2016/03/30/a-glossary-of-social-justice-warrior-terminology/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Tau.Neutrino said:

How the English language has evolved like a living creature

Some linguists think of language as a living thing: It grows and changes, and every time a child learns it, the language reproduces itself. Now, a team of researchers is using the analogy of evolution to explain language change, arguing that key factors in biological evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—have parallels in how languages change over time. And it turns out that the random changes, known as “drift” in biology, may have played an outsized role in the evolution of the English language.

more…

I came up with that idea back in high school, it later became known as “meme” and I tied it in with vowel and consonant sound shifts ween I became aware of them in 1980.

It’s nice to see linguistics catching up finally.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

How the English language has evolved like a living creature

Some linguists think of language as a living thing: It grows and changes, and every time a child learns it, the language reproduces itself. Now, a team of researchers is using the analogy of evolution to explain language change, arguing that key factors in biological evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—have parallels in how languages change over time. And it turns out that the random changes, known as “drift” in biology, may have played an outsized role in the evolution of the English language.

more…

I came up with that idea back in high school, it later became known as “meme” and I tied it in with vowel and consonant sound shifts ween I became aware of them in 1980.

It’s nice to see linguistics catching up finally.

The study of the evolution of languages is a lot older than 1980 let alone 2017.

mollwollfumble said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

How the English language has evolved like a living creature

Some linguists think of language as a living thing: It grows and changes, and every time a child learns it, the language reproduces itself. Now, a team of researchers is using the analogy of evolution to explain language change, arguing that key factors in biological evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—have parallels in how languages change over time. And it turns out that the random changes, known as “drift” in biology, may have played an outsized role in the evolution of the English language.

more…

I came up with that idea back in high school, it later became known as “meme” and I tied it in with vowel and consonant sound shifts ween I became aware of them in 1980.

It’s nice to see linguistics catching up finally.

You too. I did that in 1967.