On Thu, 03 Jul 2003 13:32:58 -0700 (PDT), Juha Savolainen
<
juhavs@...> wrote:
>What does count is the selective neutrality of the evolution. And unless
>you spell out how the "error termr" lay rest the (chronologywise) disturbing
>selective forces in (a) genetic evolution and (b) memetic evolution, I am still
>asking what might play the role of "junk genes" in memetic evolution.
I don't want to get into memes in general, but in the specific case of
language I'd say there is nothing but junk.
Whether one, say, pronounces "whether" with /w/ or /hw/ makes not a bit of
difference either for their survival as a biological entity, nor for the
chances of survival of the speech variety (i.e. meme) itself. The success
of Latin, Chinese or English, or the eventual lack of success of Sumerian,
Etruscan or Huron have nothing whatsoever to do with any property of those
languages themselves.
So if everything is junk, why doesn't the molecular clock work for
language? Well, I suppose it would work if all the languages of the world
had only four possible phonemes to choose from (/c/, /g/, /a/, /t/). This
is not the case.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...