From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2750
Date: 2000-07-03
----- Original Message -----
From: "Danny Wier" <dawier@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 1:52 PM
Subject: [TIED] A theoretical Proto-World phonology (way off
topic)
> This post is just a matter of speculation. Piotr did
correct me in matters
> where there were exceptions to my guess that languages
become phonemically
> simpler. It does indeed go both ways. I was only
thinking that since the
> second (or first) law of thermodymanics states that order
breaks down toward
> chaos.
Danny,
You can't apply this reasoning to language: first, because
the Shannonian kind of information that enters into
thermodynamic equations (measured, roughly, as the number of
bits necessary to define a state) cannot be identified with
*meaningful* information (such as the *meaning* of this
sentence as opposed to the space it occupies on the disk);
secondly, because language, however you idealise it, cannot
be regarded as an isolated system. It interacts with the
external world in a number of ways, compensating for the
inevitable erosion of its information media. If you need a
good analogue, look at the evolution of living organisms:
they accumulate meaningful information (e.g. as encoded
directly in DNA strands or "wired into" the structure of
their increasingly complex phenotypes) without violating the
laws of thermodynamics.
Piotr