Talk:Drift (linguistics)

Missing meaning
The article doesn't currently discuss linguistic drift as the somewhat parallel evolution of two related but quite separate languages. Thus house/Haus and ice/Eis are pronounced almost identically in English and German, even though the words didn't have a diphthong in either language until roughly 500 years ago, while English (Anglo-Frisian) and German ("Irminonic") have been separate languages for probably almost 2500 years, and have had little direct influence on each other for most of the last 1500 years.

This somewhat parallel evolution was actually the main meaning of the term "drift" in Sapir's original use of it in Chapter VIII ("Language as Historical Product: Phonetic Law") in his 1921 book Language. AnonMoos (talk) 06:29, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Removal of "catastrophism" statement
I've removed the following text as it doesn't make sense:


 * The view that the genesis of creole languages or other natural languages may be the product of catastrophism is heavily disputed.

The text first appeared in this article on | 30 August 2007, apparently merged from another page, so I can't see if the word "catastrophism" is the result of vandalism or not.

A previous editor removed the link to "catastrophism" on | 23 July 2013, noting that it is about geology, not linguistics. If you believe it should be restored, please add to the statement to explain how catastrophism (a different meaning perhaps?) is related to language. Danielklein (talk) 20:34, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

comparative system calqued on French
The article tells:
 * [...] the eventual loss of the Germanic comparative system in favor of the newer system calqued on French.

However, I don't consider it proven that this shift is in fact calqued on French. The article itself talks about entropy as reason for these developments towards analytical structures, so why shouldn't this analytical comparative system have evolved without influence? The more so as it happened also in the development from Latin to Romance, without calque. I don't claim that it was like this, but the article presupposes that said development is based on French, without source and without proof. --Galtzaile (talk) 14:19, 12 February 2019 (UTC)