The diversity of language

We are different looking,ie,races why not languages too?

Here's the deal Caroline. Assuming," and it is an assumption", that we as a species may have come from a single point of origin, how come we speak in several different languages? I think it is a valid question.

Elmud,
Language evolves in a way that is somewhat analogous to biological evolution, as in it adapts to fill a niche. In a very simplified example, lets take a mother language proto-world its spoken in a place with a specific set of geographical features, animals, plants etc? that require a specific skill set. At some point a group leaves the main group sets up shop in another location with different geography, climate, animals etc? This creates a whole new lifeway for the new group requiring a new skill set and often new material culture the vocabulary and many of the grammar features change to adapt. Do this over and over again and you get lots of languages. It's not an accident that the places in the world with the most biological diversity also have the most native linguistic diversity. C. Fowler (1983) used a method of working backwards from current Native American vocabulary regarding geographical feature names, plant species, and animal species to a common geographical location that shared the most common cognates for those names to propose a motherland for the Uto-Aztecan super family.

Interestingly enough, much like in biology, the smaller a group is the quicker its language evolves in its natural state and more often than not the more complex its grammar is. In effect it becomes highly specialized. It's also no coincidence that romance languages, and English have relatively simple grammars. They must stay simple to correlate the large number of people who use them in their diverse out territories among people who have different cultures. Whereas a language like Shoshoni, spoken by maybe 1000 people in isolated pockets of the US has 18 grammatical spatial-deictic ranges. It may not be coincidence either that most of the world's Imperial/Colonial languages have isolating morphology (one morpheme per word), and most of the world's languages with the most complex morphology have never been systematically documented and are spoken by groups in most cases of fewer than 100 people. The need for easy understandable structured legal/education/business communication, especially in language families with a long tradition of writing requires an easily standardized system to do it. Anywho a linguist named RMW Dixon writes an interesting book that runs direct correlations between biological/genetic evolution and language evolution you might find an interesting read (The Rise and Fall of Languages).

There are other things as well but I don't want to make a term paper out of it.
Cheers,
Russ

I think it's a valid qustion too. I have often wondered myself. Sometimes Elmud i'll just throw in random thoughts, thoughts that pop into my head when reading a thread. Your question is a good one.

It is a good question, I think I might know but it's hard to put into words.

Words are just sound-packets we assemble to represent something; in other words, what specific sounds are used doesn't have any correlation to reason or utility. They are - I believe - for the most part just arbitrary. The word "Milk" has no intrinsic reference to the white liquid that words represents to me. It could just as well have been Tsi, Irre or Jokal.

It makes sense that as different languages evolved, there'd be no single pattern for such representations. Now, where languages overlap in their word-set due to 'bleed-over', that's another issue.

So yea, I could be way off here. But to me, it just makes perfect sense that there's no direct correlation: They're just representations.

Thanks

I think you would have to look back into history, (colonization), and research the origins of language. I say this because words in different languages can be similar to each other and alot of words stem from latin.

Goshisdead is exactly right. It's statistically almost the same story as genetic evolution. Take a million people who speak the same language; then isolate half of them in the Arctic and the other half in the tropics for 1000 years -- when you get them back together their languages will be mutually unintelligible, but you'll be able to discern some commonalities.

Language evolution happens in front of our eyes. Look at the incorporation of foreign words into English (like kamikaze, or jihad, or schmuck). Look at the formation of pidgin languages like Hatian Creole (or how English was after the Norman Conquest).

I started a post about this recently:

http://www.philosophyforum.com/forum/philosophy-forums/branches-philosophy/philosophy-religion/3716-linguistic-fundamentalism.html