LBT390-393

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.
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。
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.
跨語言界線的音韻特徵共現的情況，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。

(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。