LB390-393T

LB390-393T
Language geography is further complicated by the fact that the territories of peoples speaking languages of entirely different stock abut. Roman Jakobson noted that it is common for entirely different but adjacent languages to be contaminated by each other in terms of certain phonological features. For instance, clicks are found in many African languages which by their grammar and lexicon cannot be considered as cognate. The distribution of the interdental spirant (th) in Europe is not restricted to cognate languages but is apparently the result of diffusion in the recent past across boundaries of languages of different origin. Some American Indian languages along the pacific and around the Gulf of Mexico have a characteristic sound-cluster, usually transcribed as /tl/, even though the languages are of very different types.
使用全然不同語言的民族聚集在鄰接的領域，這使得語言的地理學更加地複雜。
Roman Jakobson注意到，就音韻特徵而言，全然不同但地域相鄰的語言之間會相互感染。例如，許多非洲語言都有吸氣音(click)，而根據其語法及詞彙，這些語言不能認定為同源語。 舌間擦音(interdental spirant)(th)的在歐洲的分布並不限於同源語之間，這樣的分布反倒是導因於晚近不同源的語言跨越語言界限的擴散。某些太平洋、墨西哥灣沿岸的美洲印地安語言有一個特有的輔音串(通常轉寫為(tl)，儘管這些語言分屬相當不同的典型。

The crazy-quilt pattern of language – and dialect-maps can be accounted for quite well by the resonance theory. The language-acquiring child does not merely resonate to his own family but to the social group at large. This is best seen in immigrant children in America whose parents speak English with a heavy accent but whose own language is standard American. The child’s language is patterned after that of the individuals with whom he comes in contact. Face to face contact in human populations is regulated by certain social institutions and mechanisms. There is no true randomization in individual contact, not even among those individuals who occupy the same territory. This is due to such factors as national and ethnic affiliations and even social class distinctions. Because of these political and social boundaries, language differences do not become gradually more and more accentuated in direct proportion to geographic distance, but instead we find sudden, discontinuous changes; that is isoglosses are sharp boundaries clearly marking dialectal differences. The discontinuities are, of course, much more dramatic in regions where languages from entirely different stock make contact.
語言及方言地圖的瘋狂拼布被模式，採用共鳴理論(the resonance theory)可以適當的解釋。習得語言過程中的兒童，不僅對自己的家人共鳴，同時對整個社會群體亦然。最好的例子可見於美國的移民兒童，其父母操著濃厚口音的英語，但自己說的是標準美語。兒童的語言以其所接觸到的個人為榜樣。人群中面對面的接觸受到某些社會制度、機制的規範。個人和他人的接觸並不真正的隨機，即便是與自己周遭的個體接觸時也是這樣。這歸因於像是國族和種族聯繫甚至是社會階級區別這樣的因素。由於這些政治和社會上的界線，語言差異不會與地理距離成正比而漸漸變得顯著，反之，我們可以看到驟然、不連續的改變，亦即等語線斷然地界定方言差異。在這樣不連續的情形在不同語系的語言接觸的區域當然更加劇烈。

The sharing of phonological features across language boundaries may result from children’s resonating to large numbers of individuals in their vicinity who speak with the same foreign accent. This may occur, for instance, along language or national borders. The feature can then penetrate into the language territories through further and further resonance.
音韻特徵在跨語言界線同時出現的情況，可能的原因是兒童共鳴於其周遭大量具外國口音的個體。舉例來說，這種情形可能會出現在語言或國家的邊界上。音韻特徵因此得以經由一再地共鳴而穿透語言的領土。

(4) A note on Adaptive Value
If the fundamentals of language have evolved in response to natural selection pressures, would it be fair to assume that the present nature of language constitutes in some sense an optimal solution? Such claims have been made, particularly in connection with measurements of the redundancy and information-transmission capacity of natural languages. But the explanations are always post hoc; languages are optimal, given the nature of man. But if the nature of language is partly the nature of man, as is suggested in the present thesis, these assertions become tautological. Is the nature of man, including his language, in any sense optimal? This becomes a question of religion rather than science. Our present era is not the final goal toward which evolution has striven, and we are merely at one stage in the continuity of life. Evolution of man has not stopped, and we cannot say whether the past, present, or future is in any way optimal.
如果語言的基礎是演化自對天擇壓力的回應，那麼假定語言目前的本質在某個意義上構成了最適的解決方案是合理的嗎?的確有人提過這類的主張，特別是就人類語言剩餘性和訊息傳遞能力的測量有關的情形而言。但這樣的解釋總是事後的(post hoc)；考慮人類的本質，則語言是最適的。但是，倘若語言的本質如同本文所提議，在一定程度上也是人類的本質，那麼，這些主張就會變成套套邏輯。人類的本質(包含語言)是否在任何意義上是最適的呢?這成了一個宗教的，而非科學的問是。我們當前的時代並非演化長久以來奮鬥的終極目標，我們僅僅是處在這生命的連續上的一個階段。人類的演化尚未終止，因此我們無論如何不能判定過去、現在或未來是最適的。

There is a more interesting question, however. What might be the adaptive value of the resonance phenomenon? Resonance is not unique to man as pointed out previously in (v). it is a feature of a specific type of social mechanism out of a collection of many other types in the animal kingdom that are also linked to critical period of development. Apparently, the combination of mechanisms for cohesion with simultaneous development of a critical period evolved independently many times over. The physiological and behavioral details that make resonance possible need not be the same in different species. Perhaps man is unique only in the particular way in which he has achieved resonance and the peculiar behavior to which it is relevant.
然而，有一個更有趣的問題。共鳴現象的適應價值是如何呢?如同先前於(v)中指出的，共鳴並非人類所獨有。 在動物王國之中的一堆社會機制裡，共嗚是其中特定的一個類型，這些機制都和關鍵期有關聯。顯然，為了結合關鍵期中的同步發展而來的各項機制間的組合已曾經獨立的一再發展了。使得共鳴有可能的生理和行為上細節，在不同的物種上不一定相同。也許人類之所以獨特在於以下兩點：人類達成共鳴的特殊方式，以及究竟對哪種行為而言，共鳴是攸關的。

The evolutionary recurrence of resonance leaves little doubt that it must harbor some selective advantages. What could they be? An examination of acoustic signaling systems among mammals gives us some scanty clues. The noises that most other mammals make can develop ontogenetically in the absence of social contact. Even though communicative behavior may not yet be present at birth, it will develop inexorably according to the species’ immanent laws of maturation (given an adequate physical and social environment), and the adult animal will have a species-specific signal repertoire available to it. The development of communication in man (as well as in some bird species) has a different ontogeny. Here the propensity matures as inexorably, but the actualization is linked to an adaptive feature towards environmental circumstances. It is a two-stage developmental course: at the first stage there is little tolerance for replicative variance, but at second stage there is very high tolerance. It is this splitting of the tolerance levels that may have important consequences for the evolution of behavior.
由於在演化過程的一再出現，共鳴無庸置疑地具有某些天擇上的優勢。這些優勢會是什麼呢?檢視哺乳類動物的聽覺傳訊系統可以得到一些蛛絲馬跡。大多數其他哺乳類動物所發出的聲音，可以在缺乏社會接觸的情況下，在個體上發展出來。即便在出生時也許尚無溝通行為，溝通行為也勢必會按其物種內在的成熟法則發展出來(在適當的自然和社會環境下)，而成年的動物會擁有其物種特有的訊號庫。在人類當中溝通的發展(在某些鳥類亦然)有不同的個體發生。在此，這種傾向勢不可擋，但其實現可連結到一項對於環境的適應性特徵。這是一個二階段的發展過程：在第一階段，對於複製性變異的容忍度不大，然而，在第二階段，容忍度卻相當高。容忍度等級的分裂可能對於行為的演化造成重大的影響。

Tolerance for variance is probably inversely related to the complexity of the communication system and, consequently, to the repertoire of the messages available to the species. If the communication system is very complex but there is no adaptive feature and the whole behavior pattern emerges in the course of a single-stage rigid development, any small biological deviation from the mean is likely to alter the receptive and productive capacities for patterns, thus rendering individuals that are not perfectly replicated incommunicado, and this difficulty in communication might bar them from interacting with the group. Therefore, perfect maintenance of a very complex system demands very low tolerance bringing with it waste due to exclusion of individuals. The waste can only be reduced if tolerance is raised, but since this will admit individuals with lower capacities, the general level or standard of complexity of behavior would be reduced and leveled out until a stage is reached in which communication can be accomplished by any rough approximation to a given sound pattern. Thus, communication systems that mature in a single stage process have their level of complexity balanced against risk of waste and loss of individuals to the reproductive community.
對於變異的容忍度很可能與溝通系統的複雜度是呈反向的關聯，於是，與訊息庫間的關係亦然。如果溝通系統相當複雜，但卻沒有適應性特徵，而且整個行為形態在一階段的精確發展的過程中浮現，那麼，在生物學上任何一點偏離平均值都可能會改變這此形態的接收及產出能力，於是使得非完美複制的個體完全的孤
立，如此溝通上的困難會阻止他們和團體互動。因此，完整的保存一個非常複雜的系統必須要有極低的容忍度，而低容忍度帶來了排除一些個體的浪費。這樣的浪費只有在容忍度提高時才能減少，但是，因為這樣會允許低能力個體的存在，行為複雜度的一般程度或標準會降低直到某個階段，在此階段之中溝通可以經由初步地逼近給定的語音形式而達成。於是，經一階段即成熟的溝通系統，其複雜度和個體折損的風險取得平衡。

The two-stage development, through introduction of the resonance phenomenon, circumvents the problem to a certain extent. Latent structure is merely a propensity (still lacking form). Language readiness is a primitive stage with final differentiation yet to come. Perhaps accurate replication at this stage is more easily attained because of this primitivity, and, therefore, tolerance for variance, although low, is not yet a critical problem. As the individual matures, the last stages of differentiation approach, and the process of actualization transforms latent to realized structure. But tolerance for variance in this secondary process is very high; through resonance the individual can adapt to a great variety of situations, and shape the realized form after the forms surrounding him. Through this increase of tolerance, the risk of losing individuals is lowered, whereas, at the same time, there are fewer limits to the complexity of the system. A wider range of variance is allowed to remain, and out of this communication systems may evolve with special mechanisms that generate virtually unlimited repertoires of messages to the great advantage of social cohesiveness and organization of the group structure.
經由引入共鳴現象，二階段的發展在某程度上繞過了這個問題。潛在的結構僅是一種傾向(尚缺形式)。語言發展潛勢(language readiness)只是一個初始階段，尚待最終的分化。或許精確的仿製，因為其原始性，所以在這個階段較容易達成，因此，對於變異的容異，儘管不高，也還不是個嚴重的問題。隨著個體成熟，分化方法的以及實現過程的最後階段將潛勢轉化為具現的結構。但是對於變異的容忍
在這第二階段的過程是非常高的；經由共鳴，個體可以適應許多差異很大的情況，而根據其四周的形式來形塑本身具現的形式。經由這種容忍度的增加，折損個體的風險降低，同時，就系統的複雜度而言，限制也更少。

Notice that the resonance phenomenon in man is actually an aspect of his peculiar and species-specific ontogenetic history. Resonance is linked to a postnatal state of relative immaturity and a concomitant lengthening of infancy and childhood, so that environmental influences (the molding after patterns available in the environment) can actually enter into the formative processes. In Chapter Four we have pointed out how man is unique is this respect. Here, then, we have a highly suggestive chain of reactions. Genetic alterations may lead to a peculiar developmental history in which the communication readiness becomes separated from the actualization process, so that latent structure comes to be distinct from realized structure, each with its own level of tolerance for replicative variance. Although the tolerance for the first level is lowered, that for the second level is heightened, thus opening up new possibilities for the development of zoologically unprecedented complexities in the system of communication.
要注意人類共鳴現象，實際上是其特殊且物種特有的個體發生史的一個面像。共鳴 相對不成熟性和集體嬰兒期的延長的出生前狀態 所以環境影響( )實際上可以進到形成過程。在此，我們接著有一個具高度啟示性的反應鏈。基因改變可能導致特殊的發展歷程，在此歷程中，溝通潛勢變得和實現過程分離， 所以潛在的結構和具現的結構變得有區別，而各自對於複製性變異容忍度有不同的容忍度。雖然第一個水平下降，於是使得在溝通系統中，動物學上前所未見的複雜性有了新的可能。