Comrie: Languages and genes - review
How do languages
relate to genes? Does cultural transmission of language match the biological
transmission? Well, Bernard Comrie in Languages and Genes, makes a clear
distinction between languages and genes. Languages are transmitted culturally
unlike genes which are transmitted biologically.
In his paper, he
makes suggestions for reconstructing human pre-history with reference to
archeology, anthropology, genetics and especially linguistics.
Analogies were
made between languages and genes by modelling tree structures. Language families
were drawn designing family trees as an analogy with genetic trees. These
family tree models form the basis of the comparative-historical linguistics.
However, according to the author, there are a couple of problems with the
method. First of all, the method is a gross oversimplification. To establish a
branch of a language family, the model indicates innovations and not inherited
features. Second, in some cases it is very hard, if not impossible, to
distinguish vertical transmission from horizontal transmission, in other words,
to distinguish inherited elements from borrowings. Think of mixed languages
like creoles.
He summarizes
the main concepts of comparative linguistics and draws attention to its problems.
He deals with the reasons why languages may share properties in common. There
are four main reasons: language universals, inherited properties, borrowings
and chance resemblances. However, the well-known linguistic methods fail to
distinguish these four categories in several cases.
As far as the
borrowability is concerned, there are some elements of the language which are
more likely borrowables than others such as the basic vocabulary against
cultural vocabulary. It was widely believed among linguists that grammatical
structure was hardly borrowable, however when language shift happens, the
grammar is also transmitted, so similarities in grammatical structure is not enough
to form genetic relationship. To establish a genealogical relatedness between
two languages, linguists use a certain criteria: the inflectional morphology of
the compared languages should be related. However, what happens if the
inflectional morphology is not available? Vietnamese does not have inflectional
morphology. How to classify this language then?
In his opinion,
one of the major problems is that linguists believe if a method is applicable
once, it will be applicable for ever. He argues the reliability of the
regularity of sound laws (which approach is the foundation of historical
linguistics), and he reveals the problems of glottochronology (which is a
method of dating the replacement of certain words).
As you can see,
there are many problems with comparative-historical linguistics. Comrie’s paper
is a good summary of the most important issues in this field.