Interaction between competition & environmental pressure in evolution/ecology & language change

[u0050685]

Hello,

 

For the revision of a monograph on grammatical change (to appear with Oxford UP), I was invited to add a chapter on parallels between natural evolution and linguistic change. One of my most essential claims as far as grammatical constructions go, is that the decline and eventual loss of a construction may depend primarily on global changes in the grammatical system, rather than on the outcome of its competition with a functionally overlapping construction (as e.g. I'll do it vs. I'm gonna do it). Overall, I argue that competition as a mechanism of change is overrated in linguistics and that it is often only part of a linguistic item's uses that compete with part of another item's uses, making it hard to explain why either one would disappear entirely.

 

In the biological literature I stumbled across the following quote which immediately appealed to me in this respect: “A realistic view of interspecific competition must acknowledge that it often proceeds not in isolation, but under the influence of, and within the constraints of, a patchy, impermanent or unpredictable world”. (Townsend et al. 2003. Essentials of ecology, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell, 201.)

 

What I would like to know, then, is:

 

1. Do you know any case studies (preferably recent & of high quality) where interspecific competition and changes in the environment/ecosystem are weighed against each other in the observation of the decline of the population of a certain species vs. the thriving/stability of a second one? (E.g., what I already found: 2010. Species interactions in a changing environment: elevated CO2 alters the ecological and potential evolutionary consequences of competition. http://www.cedarcreek.umn.edu/biblio/fulltext/Evolutionary%20Ecology%20Research%202010%20Lau.pdf))

 

2. Are there influential handbooks/articles of a more general nature where similar views (catchy quotes) are expressed?

 

3. What is currently the dominant view on the respective weight of environment/ecosystem vs. interspecific competition (or the interaction of the two); is this an important debate or not (currently or in the past)?

 

All help will be greatly appreciated!

 

Regards,

 

Peter Petré (http://www.arts.kuleuven.be/ling/fest/members/peter-petre/)

 

[jp255]

I think you are taking the wrong approach here, and I don't really see why the publisher or whatever wants a piece written on the parallels between natural evolution and grammar change. I don't really see how such parallels could be meaningful, and I don't think they could be used to explain the changes of grammar. If anything, it would be more appropriate to study memetic evolution rather than genetic/phenotypic evolution (as you suggest) since grammar usage as a trait can be considered as a meme.

 

Even that might not be so useful. Whilst I do not know very much about this topic, I think that the outcome of competition is dependent on many factors and competition itself is dependent on many factors. So I do not think there is such a debate and I do not think that specific case studies of competition will help you write a paragraph on grammar change as the situations are both very different.

 

I will offer some comments concerning grammar change though. You mention global grammar changes and competition. Are these two categories separate? i.e is it possible that a global change to the grammatical system is, at least in part, caused by competition itself? How do you measure the global change in grammar and grammar usage?

 

It is hard to write something other than an opinion piece on such a topic, but that is what I expect your paragraph will be.