Abstract
This work is a well-designed, thorough, and insightful analysis of the principles underlying the interaction among language evolution, language contact, and language change. Mufwene highlights the importance of speech communities in helping us understand the social dynamics that condition language choices and how such choices lead in turn to distinct linguistic outcomes. As a result, this book offers one of the best models of language evolution and change by demonstrating that the way that linguistic variants compete and are selected actually reflects the social dynamics that are at the source of the surviving variants. This review focuses on the explanatory nature of the competition of linguistic features in the ecological environment in which they emerge and examines the factors that regulate the selection of specific features over others.
The book is composed of fourteen chapters divided into three main sections. Part 1 examines the interface between population dynamics and language evolution. Subsequent to the general introduction, chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6 adopt a biological and ecological approach to language evolution; they show that linguistic features compete much in the same way that genes do, and they draw parallels between population genetics and language evolution. In contrast, chapter 5 focuses on the development of creole languages more specifically. In all five chapters, language and biology are tightly connected, as the agency of speakers in language evolution and the unconscious ways in which they converge in their linguistic choices are reminiscent of how selection operates cumulatively in biological evolution: some genes are favored while others are discarded, and the cumulative effect of this selection at the individual level ends up affecting an entire community.
In part 2, chapters 7, 8, and 9 relate to the linguistic outcomes of population contacts, substrate hypotheses, and grammaticization, respectively. Chapter 10 is concerned with factors involved in the development of creole languages, including language shift, socioeconomic status, and language diversification in a multilingual setting.
Finally, in part 3, chapters 11, 12, and 13 bring a wider perspective on language vitality in general, as it relates to issues of language birth, death, maintenance, and shift. Chapter 14 narrows the focus of the book to the future of a particular creole language: Gullah. The volume ends on an optimistic note, predicting the survival of Gullah due to the sense of identity, solidarity, and loyalty that the language conveys to its speakers.
Although some of the topics in this book (the analysis of languages as species, the correlation between linguistic ecology and linguistic outcomes, and the relevance of population genetics to language evolution) are reminiscent of Mufwene’s (2001) The Ecology of Language Evolution, the methodological approach, angles of investigation, and foci are quite distinct in the two works. More precisely, Mufwene (2001) developed key concepts such as the Founder Principle and language ecology, both of them stating that, to some extent, original source languages dictate properties of newly emerged linguistic systems. In that work, he elaborated on issues such as the development of the American and British Englishes and their distinct properties resulting from different histories of contact and ecological settings, and he presented how creole languages represent a particularly informative platform to study genetic linguistics. Complementing the 2001 volume, this book includes brand-new chapters (4, 6, and 13) and asks a number of related but independent questions: Is L2 acquisition involved in creole formation or should one make a distinction between L2 acquisition and strategies of L2 use? Are the ecologies in which creoles emerge identical or distinct, and what is the impact of such ecologies on their linguistic properties? How can one best characterize the concept of the “invisible hand” in language evolution? What are the nuts and bolts involved in the process of competition and selection? While the framework of competition and selection is a concept that Mufwene already introduced in his 2001 book, this new volume displays the maturation of his thinking on the topic, as he elaborates and fine-tunes the precise mechanical processes involved and provides definitions of the key concepts underlying the framework of selection and competition.
Mufwene makes it explicit that competition involves the participation of features from both substrates and superstrates to the feature pool. As he puts it,
In the case of creoles, features of the substrate languages that new appropriators of the target language had spoken before were also contributed to the feature pool. The presence of these xenolectal features in the pool changed the balance of power among the native variants, making it possible for the selection into creoles of features other than those of non-creole varieties. (118)
Such statements clearly assume that both substrates and the lexifiers have a role to play in the emergence of new varieties, reconciling the divided camps in creolistics that have argued that substratal and superstratal sources play distinct and separate roles in the genesis of specific creoles.
Mufwene also elaborates on the nature of the feature pool in which competition takes place. In one of his clearest definitions, he argues that the variants that are in competition in the feature pool may differ not only lexically (choice of one word over another) but also phonologically, morphologically, syntactically, or semantically. Distinct ecologies of interactions between learners lead them to selecting different subsets of variants into their idiolects (117).
However, Mufwene’s explicit definitions of both feature pool and competition still do not enlighten us about how an idiolectal variant gets selected and spreads out through the speech community. Indeed, two questions remain pervasive in this book: How do linguistic features get diffused from single individuals to the entire speech community; and what principles and constraints influence the selection of specific features in idiolects over others? In an attempt to answer the first question, Mufwene uses the concept of the “invisible hand,” which refers to “how individual patterns spread into populations-wide patterns” (119). It remains, however, elusive as to exactly how the diffusion of features to a larger scale takes place.
In response to the second question (What factors trigger and constrain the selection of specific feature variants over their competitors in the feature pool?) Mufwene considers the range of plausible factors that may allow some features to win over others; then he elaborates on a specific cognitive process that may play a significant role in that selection, the process of congruence.
Regarding the factors influencing the selection of specific features, Mufwene focuses on markedness and saliency. The concept of markedness is notoriously difficult to tackle given the multiple definitions it has received in the field. However, irrespective of one’s stance, some of the questions Mufwene astutely poses remain unanswered: For instance, given the past tense inflection -ed versus the free periphrastic marker been, why is ben/bin selected as past anterior tense marker in many creoles over -ed (129)? What would make the marker ben/bin less marked? Why is gone favored over went and run and bring over ran and brought in English-based creoles? If saliency is also to be taken into account, Mufwene points out that it is unclear why the forms dead and broke are selected over die and break. As Mufwene correctly observes, these verbal forms not only are perceptively less salient but also have a wider morphosyntactic distribution. No theory of markedness or saliency can really account for why some forms are favored over others. Although Mufwene does not offer nor subscribe to any theory of markedness himself, his concept of relative markedness is pertinent. According to this definition,
Markedness factors must be assessed relative to the ecology in which a language is spoken, articulating those factors that matter to speakers, such as what option is the most common, or the most transparent, or the most regular, the most salient, not semantically empty. . . . Thus what may be unmarked in a particular ecology may be marked in another and only subsets of those factors apply in different cases. (131)
On the one hand, this concept makes room for the fact that one’s L1 determines what is (un)marked. Its limitation, however, is that the concept of markedness becomes language-specific, and the marked status of each feature in a language must be determined based on frequency, transparency, and saliency, among other factors.
Then, Mufwene highlights the process of congruence that may be relevant in creole genesis and that, compatible with his vision of competition and feature pool, allows for the participation of both substrates and superstrates to the genesis of creole languages. This process is all the more important, as it may provide a potential explanation for why some features are selected. According to Mufwene’s definition of congruence, it refers to “a situation where similar features reinforce each other. The features are thus favored to be dominant by the ecology in which the new idiolects develop” (118).
For the first time in his discussion of selection and competition, Mufwene illustrates how the process operates by using concrete examples. For instance, in the domain of copulaless constructions, he attributes the presence of structures like Katie she pretty in some English-based creoles to two facts: First, a number of substrates display absence of meaning associated to the copula; second, there are English congruent structures without the copula as in The chief wanted him alive. Hence, the presence of a similar copulaless construction in English and in the substrates may have favored its selection in the newly formed creole. To this extent, the process of congruence may potentially have the explanatory power to account for which features get selected. However, it remains a monumental task to analyze each “selected” feature individually and gauge whether its survival is the result of congruence within the source languages or just the result of some general pattern of language development.
In conclusion, Language Evolution is a welcome and necessary supplement to Mufwene’s (2001) Ecology of Language Evolution. This volume features the work of a leading figure in the field whose research has consistently affected the study of language development and evolution. Mufwene is a mature, thoughtful scholar who takes the time to challenge preconceptions, as well as to confront and dare to revisit his own past assumptions while boldly building bridges across disciplines. Indeed, Language Evolution is a must-read not only for linguists but also for evolutionary theorists, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, and sociologists.