Re: [tied] The Dravidian Salesman

----- Original Message -----

From: x99lynx@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 7:33 AM

Subject: [tied] The Dravidian Salesman

> One of the best models of functional analysis is the construct of biological evolution, but without the element of intentionality.  Every biological mutation is "purposeless" - mutations are random.  But nevertheless most mutations have some actual effect on an organism's ability to survive.  They also may corner that animal if the outside world changes.  An animal-type that has mutated into a highly successful citrus-fruit eater may be in trouble if the climate changes and citrus trees disappear.  The ability to "fall back" to another way of making a living promotes survival. 

> In the same way, there may be a functional communicative value at some point in "falling back" on another way of "saying the same thing."  (E.g., "Let me put it another way...")

Here I fully agree, and the evolutionary model is also my favourite one. Language change is purposeless in itself, but the results can be "exapted". Redundancy is useful, since it gives the language users some extra flexibility and a surplus of resources that can be utilised if need be.

> Piotr also wrote:
<<If only one survives, greater sociolinguistic prestige may often prove to be the crucial selective factor.>>

> Often? Prove? How would you support that?

 

With studies of current linguistic fashions and ongoing changes. Most of the research to date has concentrated on phonological and morphological social variables, but the lexicon probably changes in a similar way.

> If Dravidians were selling raw materials to I-A's, it would just be effective business to at least partially communicate with your customer in his language.  And those kinds of partial borrowings would (and do today) back up through the distribution pipeline.  It's the buyer who writes the specs, EVEN if the buyer is a unprestigious slob who just happens to have money to spend. 

> On the other hand, I don't see many Dravidians trying to impress their friends and neighbors by counting from four to ten in Indo-Aryan.

This explanation has been invented ad hoc. Were the early Dravidians full-time traders, selling things to the Indo-Aryans? Were they so obsessed with numbers and the raw-material trade that they spoke to each other as they would have spoken to their non-Dravidian customers? I wonder why the Polish Jews' Yiddish didn't absorb the Polish numerals, then. Why, come to think of it, did Crimean Gothic borrow the Iranian numerals '100' and '1000' (Cr.Goth. sada, hazer)?

 

By the way, whatever the reason, the Iranian numerals were highly borrowable. The Proto-Finno-Ugric speakers took a handful (including '100', but I don't know if such a high numeral is reconstructible for Proto-Uralic), and later the Slavs probably borrowed Old Iranian *sata '100', though they kept their North European word for '1000' (shared with Baltic and Germanic).

 

Piotr