Continuity

A decline in disorder, more order

By the profound principle of entropy, order naturally declines. But by the natural process of language acquistion, natural disorder is lost. By a proposal originally due to Martin Atkinson (1982), then popularised by Steven Pinker (1984) under the name of ‘Continity’, no funtionality can be postulated in acquisition which is not evidenced in competent language.

But by the proposal here, this principle should be extended:

• Any principle invoked in relation to the evolution or acquisition of language comes at a cost;
• Only a principle applying from the start is cost-free;
• By a human-specific adaptation, the acquisiton of language is linear, losing disorder as it progresses.

In support of the continuity principle as extended here, there is evidence that the first phonemes are themselves defined on constituent features. The evidence is from disorder. By one severe disorder, the features treated as properties of words rather than their consituent phonemes. For instance, one child at the age of two had very little speech; but of the few words he had, he could say more with a lip articulation in the M and corresponding lip rounding in the vowel and knee with a tongue tip articulation in the N and a corresponding high front articulation in the vowel, but in me and gnaw the M and N sounds were seemingly unpronouncable.

The continuity principle is highly relevant to the proposal here.