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Old October 1st 05, 07:40 PM
Jan Böhme
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Nostrobino skrev:

Evolution of language is inevitable and
natural up to a point, but it's not evolution when a perfectly sensible
technical term is, through misunderstanding and/or ignorance, redefined i=

n a
nonsensical manner. Evolution implies improvement, not deterioration.


This is a misconception, both with respect to Darwinian evoloution of
species, and with respect to the evolution of language. Evolution does
_not_ ipmly "improvement", which is a pretty subjective term.
Evolution, both biological and, linguistic, is a combination of
stochastic change - what evolutionary biologists call "neutral drift" -
and adaptation.

And adaptation isn't the same thing as "improvement". One can easily
see the new meaning of "prime lens" as an adaptation to the fact that
today's photogs know less about the history of photography than
photographers uesd to.

Jan B=F6hme