Languages (that is, communities of speakers who use a language or a form of
it in communication) in their current state of play (parole, collective
performance) have to balance competing but not negating, for want of a
better word, 'principles' of 'redundancy' and 'efficiency'. Without
redundancy, too much is lost in transmission (since the listener or reader
must 'perceive' a message by sampling it sufficiently and then re-encoding
it). Without 'efficiency' the message's producer (speaker, writer) can be
cognitively over-strained and/or the message's perceiver can be overwhelmed.
The term 'evolution' is popularly associated with an idea of driven
development towards some higher level or even end goal. That idea is not
supported in even the most reactionary branches of academic linguistics
since the influence of the structuralists from a 50-100 years ago.
Linguistic nationalists still drag it out--with notions that this or that
language is superior to another--we even see a disguised form of it in
arguments for 'global English' (which, as I am well aware, always runs smack
hard into issues of 'learnability').
I think the one post about evolutionary linguistics fits with the material
CB earlier posted about cultural evolution.
But you are right, CC, that such terms do not easily cross disciplines, and
more importantly, into the vernacular without much potential for misleading
or misunderstanding.
CJ
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