Language Dynamics

The objective of this paper is to establish the theory of win-win paradigms as a central tenet in twentyfirst century social sciences. This is something we had briefly touched upon previously, though we expand it suitably and thoroughly in the present paper, adding many more illustrative examples in the process. We suitably begin this paper by defining what paradigms are, and by examining and reviewing power structures. We also revisit other aspects such as critical theory, deconstructionism, and game theory, before proceeding to the essentials of our paper. We summarize our observations on win-win paradigms in a linguistic sense by extracting suitable sections from our paper on the origin of language and language dynamics. A large number of other cases and case studies are then added, and all of which are non-linguistic examples. Win win paradigms are then categorized into suitable types, and exceptions to the theory of win win paradigms are then presented. We hope this paper will hold immense benefits for many fields of social sciences, and will vitally and crucially aid in framework evaluation and decisionmaking.

This paper demonstrates that the status of Clitic LD in Xhosa is a result of the mosaic evolution of Xhosa grammar. It emerges as an accumulation and combination of two more individual, distinct and, at least, initially separated developments and characteristics -LD sensu stricto and Object Agreement. This view enables the authors to propose a possible solution to the problem of whether the Clitic LD structure in Xhosa (and Nguni) is an instantiation of LD (and its prototypical function as posited by Westbury ( )) or fronting (and its topical and focal functions). The Clitic LD structure is employed to accomplish the two tasks. The former is derived from the original LD construction, while the latter arose due to the Object Agreement cycle. The mosaic character of LD in Xhosa, in turn, demonstrates the situatedness of LD. LD is determined not only by its own evolutionary baggage (the source from which it has developed) but also by the dynamics of the environment in which it has been embedded (the properties of other constructions).

This essay investigates the complex area of linguistic interpretation through the lens of Jacques Derrida's seminal concept of "difference." It begins a journey from the pursuit of static unity to the embrace of static difference, in the process illustrating the paradoxical space between conformity and personal choice. Language is dynamic, subject to contextual changes and influenced by historical contingencies. In the pursuit of fixed unity, a resistance mechanism is triggered, leading to a proliferation of differences instead of conforming to predetermined axes. This resistance mechanism embodied by "difference" paradoxically intensifies the inherent complexity and ambiguity of language. This forces individuals to oscillate between their initial intentions and unintended consequences, often ending up with a unique fit within their chosen interpretive framework. "Difference" challenges traditional notions of fixed similarity and illuminates the nuanced interplay between conformity and difference in the complex web of linguistic coding. Ultimately, this study unravels the problem of interpretation and reveals that harmony can emerge beyond the boundaries of traditional unity shaped by individual motives and interpretive choices.

La mutevolezza linguistica come problema.
Le lingue naturali sono fra gli oggetti di indagine più impegnativi per lo studioso. Uno degli aspetti che da sempre ha destato maggiore attenzione è il loro carattere dinamico (language dynamics), ovvero la mutevolezza. Questa si manifesta nel tempo e nello spazio, è una proprietà intrinseca e non eliminabile. D'altro canto, essa è un problema da più punti di vista. Lo è dalla prospettiva generale della cultura, se è vero che la saggezza universale ha elaborato miti per spiegare la diversità linguistica (Torre di Babele nella tradizione ebraico-cristiana). Lo è per i parlanti, divisi tra la spinta a usare la propria lingua liberamente e la rigidità della norma che li limita. Ma è un problema soprattutto per gli studiosi, divisi tra chi pone al centro dell'attenzione l'invarianza e chi la varianza.

The lexicons of human languages organize their units at two distinct levels. At a first combinatorial level, meaningless forms (typically referred to as phonemes) are combined into meaningful units (typically referred to as morphemes). Thanks to this, many morphemes can be obtained by relatively simple combinations of a small number of phonemes. At a second compositional level of the lexicon, morphemes are composed into larger lexical units, the meaning of which is related to the individual meanings of the composing morphemes. This duality of patterning is not a necessity for lexicons and the question remains wide open regarding how a population of individuals is able to bootstrap such a structure and the evolutionary advantages of its emergence. Here we address this question in the framework of a multi-agents model, where a population of individuals plays simple naming games in a conceptual environment modeled as a graph. We demonstrate that errors in communication as well as a blending repair strategy, which crucially exploits a shared conceptual representation of the environment, are sufficient conditions for the emergence of duality of patterning, that can thus be explained in a pure cultural way. Compositional lexicons turn out to be faster to lead to successful communication than purely combinatorial lexicons, suggesting that meaning played a crucial role in the evolution of language.

Africa is the continent of our species' origin and the deep history of humans is represented by African genetic variation. Through genetic studies, it has become evident that deep African population history is captured by relationships among African hunter-gatherers and that the world's deepest population divergences occur among these groups. In this review, we look back at a study published by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues in 1969 entitled "Studies on African Pygmies. I. A pilot investigation of Babinga Pygmies in the Central African Republic (with an analysis of genetic distances)". The study analyzed 19 classical polymorphisms and found that the deepest divergences in African populations were represented by hunter-gatherer groups such as the southern African San and the central African rainforest hunter-gatherers. We repeated the original analyses from Cavalli-Sforza et al. [1] with about 22 thousand times more genome-wide genetic markers in populations similar to those included in the original study. Our high-resolution analyses gave similar results regarding the relationships of early-diverging African populations compared to the classical polymorphism analyses. This finding, however, does not imply that research has stagnated and that developments in technology and genetic methods over the last fifty years delivered no additional information regarding African history

Africa is the continent of our species' origin and the deep history of humans is represented by African genetic variation. Through genetic studies, it has become evident that deep African population history is captured by relationships among African hunter-gatherers and that the world's deepest population divergences occur among these groups. In this review, we look back at a study published by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues in 1969 entitled "Studies on African Pygmies. I. A pilot investigation of Babinga Pygmies in the Central African Republic (with an analysis of genetic distances)". The study analyzed 19 classical polymorphisms and found that the deepest divergences in African populations were represented by hunter-gatherer groups such as the southern African San and the central African rainforest hunter-gatherers. We repeated the original analyses from Cavalli-Sforza et al. [1] with about 22 thousand times more genome-wide genetic markers in populations similar to those included in the original study. Our high-resolution analyses gave similar results regarding the relationships of early-diverging African populations compared to the classical polymorphism analyses. This finding, however, does not imply that research has stagnated and that developments in technology and genetic methods over the last fifty years delivered no additional information regarding African history

Africa is the continent of our species’ origin and the deep history of humans is represented by African genetic variation. Through genetic studies, it has become evident that deep African population history is captured by relationships among African hunter-gatherers and that the world’s deepest population divergences occur among these groups. In this review, we look back at a study published by Cavalli-Sforza and colleagues in 1969 entitled “Studies on African Pygmies. I. A pilot investigation of Babinga Pygmies in the Central African Republic (with an analysis of genetic distances)”. The study analyzed 19 classical polymorphisms and found that the deepest divergences in African populations were represented by hunter-gatherer groups such as the southern African San and the central African rainforest hunter-gatherers. We repeated the original analyses from Cavalli-Sforza et al. [1] with about 22 thousand times more genome-wide genetic markers in populations similar to those included ...

Trade, migration, and the increase and mixture of population must not only have opened people's eyes, but also loosened their tongues. It was not simply that tradesmen inevitably encountered, and sometimes mastered, foreign languages during their travels, but that this must have forced them also to ponder the different connotations of key words (if only to avoid either affronting their hosts or misunderstanding the terms of agreements to exchange), and thereby come to know new and different views about the most basic matters. Friedrich von Hayek The Fatal Conceit A language has economic value even when nobody benefits from it, or that its mere existence and use-not its studysomehow adds scientific value to the world. The only way to understand these statements is to say that languages are valued by individuals for the specific end of economic advancement or scientific progress.

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The complexity of human interactions with social and natural phenomena is mirrored in the way we describe our experiences through natural language. In order to retain and convey such a high dimensional information, the statistical properties of our linguistic output has to be highly correlated in time. An example are the robust observations, still largely not understood, of correlations on arbitrary long scales in literary texts. In this paper we explain how long-range correlations flow from highly structured linguistic levels down to the building blocks of a text (words, letters, etc..). By combining calculations and data analysis we show that correlations take form of a bursty sequence of events once we approach the semantically relevant topics of the text. The mechanisms we identify are fairly general and can be equally applied to other hierarchical settings.

Click consonants are one of the hallmarks of “Khoisan” languages of southern Africa. They are also found in some Bantu languages, where they are usually assumed to have been copied from Khoisan languages. We review the southern African Bantu languages with clicks and discuss in what way they may have obtained these unusual consonants. We draw on both linguistic data and genetic results to gain insights into the sociocultural processes that may have played a role in the prehistoric contact. Our results show that the copying of clicks accompanied large-scale inmarriage of Khoisan women into Bantu-speaking communities and took place in situations where the Khoisan communities may have had relatively high prestige. In the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier region, these events must have occurred at an early stage of the Bantu immigration, possibly because small groups of food producers entering a new territory were dependent on the autochthonous communities for local knowledge.

The Bantu expansion, which started in West Central Africa around 5,000 BP, constitutes a major migratory movement involving the joint spread of peoples and languages across sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the rich linguistic and archaeological evidence available, the genetic relationships between different Bantu-speaking populations and the migratory routes they followed during various phases of the expansion remain poorly understood. Here, we analyze the genetic profiles of southwestern and southeastern Bantu-speaking peoples located at the edges of the Bantu expansion by generating genome-wide data for 200 individuals from 12 Mozambican and 3 Angolan populations using $1.9 million autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms. Incorporating a wide range of available genetic data, our analyses confirm previous results favoring a "late split" between West and East Bantu speakers, following a joint passage through the rainforest. In addition, we find that Bantu speakers from eastern Africa display genetic substructure, with Mozambican populations forming a gradient of relatedness along a North-South cline stretching from the coastal border between Kenya and Tanzania to South Africa. This gradient is further associated with a southward increase in genetic homogeneity, and involved minimum admixture with resident populations. Together, our results provide the first genetic evidence in support of a rapid North-South dispersal of Bantu peoples along the Indian Ocean Coast, as inferred from the distribution and antiquity of Early Iron Age assemblages associated with the Kwale archaeological tradition.

That gives us a grand mosaic of three linguistic homelands : the Konkani, the Kānnadā - Tuḷu and the Teḷugu. To put it very simplistically, without any technical jargon of linguistics, Kānnadā - Tuḷu was the result of the effect of the Tāmiḷa on the vaḍukar substratum; Konkani was the result of the effect of the northern languages on the vaḍukar substratum, and, Teḷugu was the result of the effect of both the Tāmiḷa and the northern languages on the vaḍukar substratum. It is needless to say that it is this vaḍukar substratum which connects the three/four languages of Deccan.

The objective of this paper is to formalize and document observations on language spread in multilingual or polyglot societies as understood from a study of spoken and written language in various phases in Indian history starting from the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient India, the mature phase of which began in 2600 BC, to modern Post-independent India, and formalize them into principles wherever possible,so that these can be used as a basis to make further observations and draw further inferences from studies both in India and elsewhere, the ultimate goal being toprepare a dictionary of the universal principles of language spread in multilingual or polyglot societies, and the general principles of language spread for ready use anywhere in the world. Such an exercise can be carried out by collating the basic observations and principles as understood from this paper with observations culled from similar studies that have already been carried or may be carried out both in India and elsewhere in the world. Such a compendium would be a valuable heuristic tool for analysis and can be an indispensable tool for use by politicians, educationalists and others across the world for decision-making and policy-formulation, and as a part of the emerging discipline of Applied Linguistics. It will also be useful to the common man to help him understand the various seemingly mysterious forces that greatly impact his daily life. We also introduce several new concepts in this paper, such as the Theory of Win-Win Propositions, the Doctrine of Insubordination, the Theory of Linguistic Osmosis, Context and Role-based suitability, Context and Role-based indispensability, Yoyo model of cultural diffusion, Dynamic stability of multilingual countries etc. Thus, this paper delineates much of the theoretical framework that can be used for a formal study of the spread of languages in any multilingual society.

The expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples over large parts of sub-Saharan Africa is still a matter of debate-not only with respect to the propelling force behind it and the route(s) taken, but, also, in terms of the question whether there actually was a demographic expansion of peoples, rather than just a cultural expansion involving the spread of languages and technologies. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the extant linguistic and molecular anthropological data on Africa and discuss the insights they provide concerning the expansion itself as well as the demographic processes involved in it. Contrary to some assumptions by historians and cultural anthropologists, the genetic data speak in favor of an actual movement of peoples during the expansion of the Bantu languages over Africa, rather than a spread through language and culture shift. Furthermore, the molecular data indicate that sociocultural practices such as patrilocality and possibly even polygyny played a role in shaping the genetic diversity of Bantu-speaking peoples. These sociocultural practices might explain why, in Africa, there is a correlation between Y-chromosomal (i.e., paternal) lineages and linguistic affiliation, but not between mtDNA (maternal) lineages and language.