Alinei: Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Language Evolution
Darwinism, traditional linguistics and the new Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Language Evolution
‘Language is a social artifact with an
interface with nature, which is governed by the law of conservation and changes
only exceptionally.’ Language change is not organic as traditional linguists
claim. The change is an exception, not the rule and only occurs by external
influence.
Mario Alinei starts his article, Darwinism,
traditional linguistics and the new Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Language
Evolution with a description of the history of linguistics regarding to the
nature of language. He says that Darwinism had very little influence on the
linguists of the 19th century instead an influence by catastrophism
can be seen on linguistics. Catastrophic ideas had arisen like gigantic
language replacements or extinctions. Peoples like Indo-Europeans, Finn-Ugric
or Altaic were seen as unknown invaders coming from nowhere. When linguists
started to apply the Darwinian principle of gradual and constant evolution of
nature following specific laws, they assumed that language was a living
organism, consequently language changed organically. But it’s a misconception.
The author doesn’t say that languages don’t change, he says that they change
like other social artifacts such as clothes, money, laws, etc. ‘Language changes
in two distinct ways: lexically and grammatically. Lexical change is culture
dependent, grammatical change is history-dependent.’ ‘The only law inherent to
language is conservation.’
And what if the changes only are made by
society and that’s why language change has to be classified as a branch of
sociology, but the very nature of language origin has to be searched among
biological explanations?
‘The present is the key to the past.’
Linguists ‘consider the present as irrelevant for the study of the prehistoric
past.’ However, there are finds which support that areal distribution
corresponds to the history of certain language families. For example, the
Uralic continuity from the Paleolithic is already an accepted theory.
He gathers evidence of the continuity from
five different sciences that language has a pre-human origin which implies an
evolution of language: General linguistics, Paleoanthropology, Cognitive
Science, Genetics and Archeology. After the description of the continuity
theory he draws the main lines of the Paleolithic Continuity Theory’s
reconstruction for Indo-European language family.
Alinei’s theory seems to rewrite the
history of the Indo-European populations as he sees them not as an invading
people, but aboriginals. So, it means, we cannot ever be sure about our
knowledge. What is correct today, may turn out to be wrong tomorrow. Let me
know, what you think!