How to Do Things with Junk: Exaptation in Language Evolution

Author(s): Roger Lass

Source: Journal of Linguistics, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1990), pp. 79-102
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4176037 .
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J. Linguistics 26 (1990), 79-102. Printed in Great Britain

How to do things with junk: exaptation in

language evolution1
ROGER LASS
Department of Linguistics, University of Cape Town
(ReceivedI5 May I989; revisedi3 SeptemberI989)

Eine ... wichtige Eigenschaft aller Lebewesen, die wir bei der Kenntnis der
Spielregeln des evolutiven Geschehens ohne weiteres verstehen, ist die groBe
'Konservativitat' ihrer Strukturen. Durch eine Veranderung der Lebensweise,
besonders wenn sie Anpassungen an einen neuen Lebensraum erfordert, konnen
alte Strukturmerkmalesinnlos werden. Konrad Lorenz (1978: 23)

i. EXAPTATION

One of the less rewardingof our commoninterdisciplinary pursuitsis lifting

theoreticalconceptsfrom subjectsnot our own, and using themin contexts
very distantfrom those they wereintendedfor. Suchborrowingsoften turn
fromtheoreticalclaimsinto sloppymetaphors,leadingto varietiesof 'vulgar
X-ism', the resultof overenthusiastic
appropriationwithinsufficientsenseof
the subtlety or precise applicabilityof the originals. Spencer's 'Social
Darwinism', vulgar-Freudianor vulgar-Marxistliterary analysis and
sociology are nice examples.Linguistics,being less unique than linguists
often think,is no exception:Praguianand neo-Praguianfunctionalismmay
be a kind of vulgar Darwinism, extending notions of 'adaptation' or
'selectivepressure'to the inappropriatedomain of languagesystems(see
Lass, ig80a). But every once in a while such transfersseem to work, like
Darwin'sborrowingsfromlateeighteenth-century Scottisheconomictheory;
if not alwaysthroughdirectapplicability,then by focusingon new ways of

[i] Oral presentationsof this material were given at the universitiesof Stellenbosch,
Cambridge,Manchester,Edinburghand Durham.I have profitedby commentsfrom
Rudie Botha, MelindaSinclair,GabrielDover, Bob Coleman,Nigel Vincent,Richard
Hogg,JimHurford,andCharlesJones.A preliminary versionwaspublishedin Stellenbosch
Papers in Linguistics (I988), unfortunatelybefore the oral deliveries,which helped to
straightenout somemistakesand unclarities.Nigel Vincentand two namelessrefereesfor
JL reada laterdraftandcommentedhelpfullyon mattersof substanceandstyle.I am also
gratefulto Roy Pfeifferfor adviceon mattersNetherlandic,and in an impersonalthough
no smallerway to the writingsof StephenJay Gould,who thougha palaeontologistand
not a linguistis pre-eminentlya historian,with a fine eye for the kindsof problemsand
ideasthatmakehistoriography worthwhile.Onenote on usage:the term'evolution'here
neverhas the vulgarprogressivistsenseof 'directionalchangewithincreasing"fitness"'';
the evolutionof a systemis simplythe storyof its changeovertime,normallythe product
of variationanddifferentialselectionof variants.It is in thissenseonly thatany biological
parallelsare to be taken(and see ? 4 below).

79
 ROGER LASS

interpretingold data, or providinga basis for linkingdisparatephenomena

as instancesof a new (putative)naturalkind.
The term'exaptation'comesfromevolutionarybiology;it was coinedby
StephenJay Gould and ElisabethVrba (I982) as, in their title, 'a missing
termin the scienceof form'. In a popularsummary,Gould writes:
We wish to restrict the term adaptationonly to those structuresthat
evolvedfor theircurrentutility;thoseusefulstructuresthatarosefor other
reasons,or for no conventionalreasonsat all, and werethen fortuitously
availablefor otherchanges,we call exaptations.New and importantgenes
that evolved from a repeated copy of an ancestral gene are partial
exaptations,for their new usage cannot be the reason for the original
duplication(I983: 171).
The referencehereis to the presencein the cellsof manyorganismsof large
amountsof redundantor 'junk' DNA, in the formof duplicategenes(often
hundredsof copies: Gould and Vrbanote that about a quarterof the total
geneticmaterialof fruit-fliesand humansexistsin sucha form).They argue
(I982: IO f.) that this surplusDNA is of immenseevolutionaryimportance:
it servesas a locus for changewhich- becausethe genesin questionare not
at the momentbeing expressed- is neutralwith respectto actual form or
function;it occursas a kindof backgroundprocess,whilethe originalDNA
goes about its business of coding for currentlyrelevant structuresand
functions. This mutated genetic materialhowever CAN at some point be
expressed- it is as it were covertly evolving. Most important from a
theore.ticalpoint of view howeveris the notion that- unlesswe areprepared
to invoke'backwardscausation'- it couldnot haveevolved'for the purpose
of' providingsuch a reservoirfor future genetic change. Its use for such
thingsis in Gould and Vrba'stermsan exaptation.
The conceptmay perhapsbe clarifiedby a macro-levelexample:consider
the developmentof feathersby the dinosaurlineageancestralto birds.Since
it now seems that Archaeopteryxwas eitherflightlessor a very poor flyer,
judgingamongotherthingsfromthe architectureof its shoulder-girdle, and
yet was fullyfeathered,it can be arguedthat feathersoriginallydevelopedfor
something else. One persuasive view is that this was to serve as a
thermoregulatorydevice for warm-bloodedproto-birds living in high
latitudes;this developmentwas lateropportunisticallycapitalizedon or co-
opted for flight (Bakker, I975; Ostrom, 1979). Exaptation then is the
opportunisticco-optation of a feature whose origin is unrelatedor only
marginallyrelatedto its later use. In other words (loosely) a 'conceptual
novelty' or 'invention'.
One consequenceof this view is that organisms- and, I suggest, other
historicallyevolved systems,like languages- may in their structureshow a
certainamountof bricolage;they are to some extentjury-riggedor cobbled
together,and the remnantsof old structurescan be recobbledinto new ones
8o
 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

(cf. Jacob, I983, on 'moleculartinkering').KonradLorenz(1978: 25) has a

lovely imageof an organismgrowingby evolutionaryaccretion:it startsoff
like a pioneer'sshack,whichservesas the nucleusof the grandnew structure
graduallyerectedaroundit. In the courseof time the originalshackbecomes
a kindof junk-room,andeventuallyalmosteveryroomin the growinghouse
gets used for some non-originalpurpose. An organism is 'eine Menge
Baumerkmale,die Uberbleibseleiner "Anpassungvon gestern"sind' ['an
aggregation of structuralfeatures that are leftovers from "yesterday's
adaptation"'].A typicalexaptationis the redeploymentfor a new purpose
of one of yesterday'sadaptations.
Gould and Vrba's important methodologicalpoint is that a totally
selectionist evolutionarytheory is constrainingand heuristicallyunpro-
ductive. By not insistingon the 'utility' of all parts of an organism,but
allowingfor 'nonaptations',featureswith no synchronicfunction,not doing
anything, they permit organisms the freedom to evolve: 'the path of
evolution- both the constraintsand the opportunities- must be largelyset
by the size and natureof this pool of potentialexaptations'(I982: I3).
I want to apply this kind of thinkingto languagechange. Rather than
viewinglanguagesin the classicalstructuralistway as systemswhere(almost)
tout se tient, let us consider the possibilityof looking at them as Gould
suggestswe do at organisms:as 'bundlesof historicalaccidents,not perfect
and predictablemachines'(I983: ioi). Languagehistorymay be largelya
matter of 'mosaic evolution'; as Gould says in a biological context, 'an
animal'sparts are largelydissociable,thus permittinghistoricalchange to
proceed'. I suggest that organicexaptationhas a linguisticparallel,which
may throw some light on the strategieslanguagesuse in theirdevelopment.
The idea may allow us to recognizea common strategicthread running
throughwell known but previouslynot relatedor relatablephenomena.I
think thereis a reasonablycommon kind of linguisticchange occurringin
diverseguises,that can insightfullybe seen as a sort of exaptation.I will use
the term, with a certain benign looseness, to highlight a particularkind
of historicalscenario. (For some methodologicalcomment see Section 4
below.)
My primary illustrationswill be two examples from the history of
Germanic;these have neithergenerallybeen recognizedas odd, whichthey
certainlyare, nor as similar, which they can be argued to be. The first
involves redeploymentof the morphological exponents of an original
aspectual opposition as markers of number concord; the second the
downgradingof a syntactic contrast to mark the morphophonological
propertiesof certainstem-classes.
A simpleabstractcase, whichwill be fleshedout in the next section,can
serve as an illustrationof the general principle. Say a language has a
grammaticaldistinctionof some sort, coded by meansof morphology.Then
say this distinctionis jettisoned, PRIOR TO the loss of the morphological
 ROGER LASS

materialthat codes it. This morphologyis now, functionallyspeaking,junk;

and there are threethings that can in principlebe done with it:
(i) it can be dumpedentirely;
(ii) it can be kept as marginalgarbageor nonfunctional/nonexpressive
residue(suppletion,'irregularity');
(iii) it can be kept, but insteadof beingrelegatedas in (ii), it can be used
for somethingelse, perhapsjust as systematic.
(Thenewusesmaybe purelystructuralor intralinguistic, whichis my main
concernhere; or they may have a pragmatic/sociolinguistic dimension:see
Section5 below and note 13.) Option(iii) is linguisticexaptation.The point
of courseis thatit is an option:languagesmay operate'wastefully',dumping
materialthat no longerdoes anythinguseful,or in a 'conservationist'mode,
by recycling.This might in fact be a useful parameterfor the typology of
change.
As presentlylaid out, the concept of exaptation is not really precise
enough;in particularI do not want to claim that ANY changein the use of
linguisticmaterialcan be seen as exaptive,whichwould reducethe concept
to triviality.First of all, prior coding of the categoryin questionis not a
preconditionfor exaptation:junk can be used for anything,sincecategories
as wellas usesfor old materialcan be inventedmoreor lessex vacuo.Second,
thereare manycases whereold materialis used for new categoriesthat are
not exaptive (this is the case with virtually all analogical transfers,for
instance). Perhapsa clear example of nonexaptivere-use or extra use of
existing, non-junked material will help to clarify the situation. The
developmentof the modernFinnish 'local' cases shows what seems to be
nonexaptivemorphologicalinvention. Proto-Uralichad a rather diffuse
locativecase with an */-n-/ formative,whichsurvivesin Finnishin reduced
function as the essive, coding 'time-in-which'and the like (td-ndpdivd-nd
'(on) this day') and certain locations (luo-na 'at the house of') and
temporarystates(poika-na'as a boy'). Morespecificlocationsin Finnishare
now coded by new cases, like the inessive (interiorlocative) or adessive
(exterior or surface locative). These cases in Balto-Finnic have been
constructedby means of the old locativeprecededby what is called a 'co-
affix': so *-na/-nd remains as the essive, but the inessive is -ssa/-ssd < *-s-
na/-nd, and the adessive is -lla/-lld < *-Ina/-l-nd. The coaffixes however are
not junk; the -1-formativein the adessive,to take one example,remainsin
the derivationalsuffix -la 'place where', as in ravinto'food', ravinto-la
'restaurant'.Thereis no genuine'novelty', only extensionof use, withinthe
samesemanticdomain.(For detailsof the historyof Uraliccase systems,see
Collinder I960: ??875-93.)

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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

2. FROM SEMANTICS TO CONCORD: THE STRONG VERB PRETERITE

One of the greatinnovationscharacterizingGermanicis the destructionof

the Indo-Europeanaspectsystem.This was replacedby a tense-system,with
no grammaticalizedaspects.In roughoutline,the IE presentcontinuesas the
Germanicpresent,whilethe two 'past' categories,perfectand aorist,merge
to form a new, conflatedpreterite:2
(I) Indo-European Germanic

PRESENT- PRESENT

PERFECT PRETERITE
AORIST

Germanicalso inventeda new type of verb, the weak verb, in which the
preteriteis markedby a suffixcontaininga coronal(usuallya stop); the other
Germanicverbtype, the strongverb,continuesa type of tense-markingthat
has - as we will see - certainconnectionswith the older IE aspectsystem.
In the weakverb,the aorist/perfectmergeris complete,both semantically
and morphologically,by the earliestrecords;all the originalmorphology
that coded both categorieshas been lost. Considerfor instance an early
NorthwestGermanicpreteritelike talgidai'I carved'(N0vlingclasp, c. 200
A.D.: Antonsen 1975: 30). This shows no sign of IE perfect or aorist
morphology:it consistsof a root with inherento-gradevocalism(/taly-/ <
*/dolgh-/: cf. Skr daldyati'he splits', L dolare'hew'), plus the usual weak
preteritemachinery:root+ thematicvowel+ tense-suffix+ personalending,
i.e. /taly-i-d-ai/. The only originalmaterialremainingis the root; the rest is
innovative.
The strongverbshoweverwere more conservative,and retained- if in a
drasticallyalteredcapacity- much of the originalcontrastivemorphology.
To see what happened,we have to look back at one importantpatternof
morphologicalcoding of aspect in Indo-European:ablaut. Many verbs
showeda standardpatternin whichdifferentvowel-gradesof the root were
associatedwith particularaspects:thus, the e-grademarkedpresent,the o-
gradeperfect,and the zero-gradeaorist- whateverothermarkingmightbe
present, such as reduplication,prefixed augments, etc. A representative

[2] Earlierscholarstried,often desperately,to derivethe whole strongpreteritefromthe IE

perfect;for technicaldiscussionand the standardargumentsfor the role of the aorist,as
wellas a good surveyof theearlierliterature,Prokosch(I938: 56 f.). WhethertheIE aspect
systemtakenas a baseis 'original'or a secondarydevelopmentis not germane;if the kind
of systemthatshowsup in Greek,say,is a latedevelopment,theloss of aspectin Germanic
is loss of a secondaryopposition,part of a cyclicpatternof loss and replacement(Lass,
I987: ch. 6).

83
 ROGER LASS

examplemight be the Greek presentindicativeactive i sg lei'p- 'I leave',

perfectke-loip-a,aoriste-lip-on.The 'abstract'root is clearly/1_ip/; thus e-
grade = /ei/, o-grade = /oi/, and zero-grade = /i/. The three root-forms
are therefore/leip-/, /loip-/, /lip-/. The last is a 'zero' gradein the sense
that the nuclear vowel has deleted, and the remaining/-i-/ represents-
morphophonemically - not a 'vowel' but part of the root. (For a perhaps
more transparentexample of 'genuine' zeroing cf. Latin pater 'father',
nominativesingular,with deletionof the secondvowelin obliquecases,such
as genitive singular patr-is.)
In additionto the zero-gradeaoristthereis anothercommontype, which
shows lengthened (usually e-) grade, and appears for instance in an
importantclassof Latinperfectswhichstemfromold aorists(cf. Buck, I933:
? 4I3). Examplesare presente-gradesed-o 'eat', ven-i-i 'come', leg-o 'read',
perfects ed-i, vin-T,leg-T.(These are distinct historicallyfrom secondary
lengtheningsin velar-finalstemswith old sigmaticaoristslike rEx-T < */re:g-
s-i:/, and stems in /-n/ like man-s-T,
presentsreg-o'rule', mdn-e-o'stay'.)
The importantthingfor our purposesis the existencein Indo-Europeanof
at leastone majoraspect-marking patternin whichpresenthas e-gradeof the
root, perfect.has o-grade,and aorist has eitherlengthenede-gradeor zero-
grade:
(2) PRESENT PERFECT AORIST

{e:}
With this as background,consider the vocalic patterns of the Old
Germanicstrong verb classes I-III, here illustratedfrom Gothic and Old
English. PRES = present system, exemplifiedby the infinitive,PRET1=
preteriteI, 3 singular,PRET2= preterite2 singularandplural(forthisusage
and discussionsee Lass & Anderson,I975: Ch. I):
(3) PRES PRET1 PRET2
I ' bite' Go beit-an bait bit-um
OE bit-an bat bit-on
II 'bid' Go biud-an baup bud-um
OE beod-an bead bud-on
III 'help' Go hilp-an halp hulp-um
OE help-an healp hulp-on
The importof these forms may be unclearto the non-Germanistreader;
some etymologicalcommentshould make the historicalrelationsapparent.
PRES.Gothicei = /i:/; both Go, OE /i:/ go backto IE */ei/ (Go steigan,
OE stfgan 'ascend' = Gr stei7ckd). In Class II, Go iu, OE eo reflect IE */eu/
(biudan, beodan = Gr peu'tomai 'inquire'). In class III, Go i represents a
generalraisingof IE */e/ (cf. Go itan 'eat', L edo). Thus the PRES roots
reconstructas havingnuclear*/ei/, */eu/, */e/ in these threeverbs.
PRET1. Except for the ea in OE healp, which represents a special

84
 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

developmentbefore/lC/, all the PRET1roots containobvious a (probably

a backvowel, but that is not relevanthere).Germanic*/a/ can reflecteither
IE */a/ (Go akkrs 'field' = L ager), or */o/ (Go ahtau 'eight' = L octo).
Herethe correspondenceis to */o/, whichallowsreconstructionof the roots
as */oi/, */ou/, */o/. OE a represents the normal development of */oi/, as
in wat 'he knows' (cf. Gr oida, Go wait).
PRET2.If the basicroots in classesI and II areof the shape*/Vi/, */Vu/,
then the PRET2-i- and -u- can be seen as residues,what one would expect
from deletionof the nuclearvowels. In this sense bit- say is exactlyparallel
to Greek lip-: the vowel that appearson the surfaceis morphonemically
part of the root and not part of the system of ablaut alternations per se -
thoughby virtueof its remainingafterdeletionit servesas a secondaryindex
of zero-grade.(Thereare parallelswith -u- as well: Gr pheago 'I flee', aorist
e-phug-on.) Class III is a slightly different matter, but the same in principle.
Germanic/uR/ (where R = nasal or liquid) typicallyreflectsan IE pre-
sonorantzero-grade,where the sonorantis syllabified:thus Go wulfs,OE
wuif 'wolf' < */wlkW-o-s/(cf. Sanskritvrk-d-h).Thus the -ul- in class III
PRET2is also a zero-graderelic,if of a slightlydifferentkind.
At this point then PRES in classes 1-111reconstructswith nuclear*/e/,
PRET1with nuclear*/o/, and PRET2with zero; i.e. they reflectthe old
present/perfect/aoristalternationwith some precision.The problemis that
the PRET1 - PRET2alternationdoes not correlatewith tense (the reflexof
IE aspect),but with number.Yet the PRET2zero-gradeis on the face of it
unlikelyto reflectanythingbut an aorist.Aside fromanythingelse, it's more
parsimoniousto keep everythingin the family.And since there'snothingin
Germanic(or IE for that matter)historicalmorphophonologyto supportan
alternation/a/ - /u/ (or /o/) 0 as a primarymarkerof number,the only
reasonablesourcefor the wholevocalicpatternis the old verbalablaut.This
is of course a handbook commonplace,since the strong verb classes are
typicallyreferredto as Ablautsreihen or 'ablaut series';but the argumentis
rarelyif ever made fully explicit,and it is even less often made clear that
'ablaut' is being used in a specificallyGermanic, not a general Indo-
Europeansense. At any rate, if what I am claimingso far is sound, behind
the class 1-111alternationslies an early Germanicarchetypelike this:
(4) PRES PRET1 PRET2
I -eiC- -aiC- -iC-
II -euC- -auC- -uC-
III -eRC- -aRC- -uRC-
And this in turn reflectsa pre-Germanicarchetype:
(5) PRES PERF AORIST
I -eiC- -oiC- -iC-
II -euC- -ouC- -uC-
III -eRC- -oRC- -RC-
85
 ROGER LASS

ClassI thenis directlyequivalentto the old alternationpatternseenin Greek

leip- - -loip- -lip-, and so on (the labels 'I-III' for IE do not of course
reflecta 'system' of verbclassesbut simplytheirorigintypes).The firstthree
classes then continue a classic ablaut series */e - o - 0/, with later local
changesgiving the attestedroot shapes.
Classes 1-111have roots with a heavy syllable,i.e. rhymesin /-WC/,
/-VCC/; the situationis differentwith classesIV-V, whichcontinuea type
with a lightroot syllable.3Thesealso showwhatwe can now recognizeas an
o-gradeperfectin PRET1,but havea lengthenede-gradein PRET2:giventhe
reasonablyunambiguouspairingof perfectand aoristin 1-111,and the clear
o-gradeperfectin I-V, this is a straightforward interpretation.4
Examples:
(6) PRES PRET1 PRET2
IV 'bear' Go bair-an bar ber-um
OE ber-an bir bkr-on
V 'eat' Go it-an at at-um
OE et-an at tt-on
Gothic <ai>= [F],a predictablereflexof */e/ before/r/; Go /e:/, Oe /m:/
continueIE */e:/, as in L ed-T,itself as we have seen an old aorist.We can
now add to the archetypes(4-5) the ones for classes IV-V:
(7)
Germanic Indo-European
PRES PRET1 PRET2 PRES PERF AORIST
IV -eR- -aR- -e:R- -eR- -oR- -e:R-
V -eC- -aC- -e:C- -eC- -oC- -e:C-
The developmentfrom Indo-Europeanto Germaniccan be diagrammedas
follows (class III as exemplar:only the phonologicaldetailswill vary from
class to class):

[1] I omit strong verb classes IV and VII, as their historicalroot structure(probably
containinga laryngeal)does not allow the old patternsto surfaceclearly.Both show the
same(long)vocalismin PRET1/PRET2, whichmakesthemhistoricallyuninformative. A
typicalcase is class VI 'bake', OE PRES bacan,PRET1boc, PRET2bocon,whereboth
length and qualitydistinctionshave been lost. This could in fact be referredto an old
patternlike */bHeg- - bHog-/, etc.; but the argumentsare too complexto go into here
(see Lass& Anderson,I975: 49 ff., wherewe try to resurrectthe laryngealas a synchronic
abstractsegment).
[41 It hasbeensuggestedthatthezero-gradeancestorsof classIIIPRET2in facthavea perfect,
not an aoristorigin:thereis a (lesscommon)zero-gradeperfectpluraltype,as in Sanskrit
kar-'make',perfectactiveI singularca-kar-a,pluralca-kr-md.Thisis takenas the source
by Krahe (I963: ? 6i). Certainly this is possible; but since an aorist is needed for the
lengthenedgrade of classes IV-V anyhow, and the whole system derives from an
aorist/perfectsyncretism,my scenariois simpler.However,the fact that the zero-grade
perfectis associatedin somecaseswithplural(if thiswas indeedthe case in the IE dialects
ancestralto Germanic)may of coursehave a partto play.

86
 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

(8)
Indo-European: PRES - eRC - PERF - oRC - - RC - AORISTI

I PRET
Germanic: PRES - eRC - PRET1 - aRC - -uRC- PRET2

The scenarioencapsulatedhere would appearto be:

(i) loss of the (semantic)oppositionperfect/aorist;
(ii) retentionof the diluted semanticcontent 'past' shared by both (in
other words, loss of aspectbut retentionof distal time-deixis);
(iii) retentionof themorpho(phono)logical exponentsof the old categories
perfectand aorist, but divestedof theiroppositionalmeaning;
(iv) redeploymentof the now semantically evacuated exponents as
markersof a secondary(concordial)category;in effect re-use of the now
'meaningless'old materialto bolsteran alreadyexistingconcordialsystem,
but in quite a new way.
After the merger(i), the remnantsof the perfect/aoristablaut system,
divorcedfrom the oppositionthey instantiated,are historicaljunk; they are
pressedinto the serviceof a new linguisticfunction(whichwas in fact always
coded in any case, if mainly by suffixes), rather than being dumped
altogether.(The dumpingof the system comes later, when the redundant
vowel-grade+suffixcoding of pluralityis lost in most Germanicdialects,
with retentiononly of suffixas in Germanand Dutch, or completeloss of
number markingas in continentalScandinavian,English and Afrikaans.
OnlyIcelandicnow maintainsthe distinction,as in class I bi'ta'bite', PRET1
beit, PRET2 bitum, class II bjf6a 'offer', bau6, bubum, etc.)
What is of primeinteresthere is conceptualnovelty: ablautin the Indo-
Europeansense was neverused for this kind of thing before.Indeed,given
its originalconditioningfactors(positionof accent,majormorphosyntactic
category, etc.), it never could have been. With the breakupof both the
originalaspect systemand the functionof ablautitself, the old forms were
availablefor cooptation.5

[51The redeploymentof morphologyaftera categorybreakdowndoes not of coursehave to

be systematicallyexaptive.Whenthe IE nominalablautdeteriorated,therewas in certain
declensionsa near-randomredistribution of formerlyconditionedvowel grades,often on
a lexeme-by-lexeme basis.So the word'tooth' in Germanicshowsboth o-grades(OE top
< */tanO/ < */dont-/, OHGzand,OIc tQnnr) and zero-grades(GothictunAus< */tun0/
< */dnt-/. For discussionsee Lass(I986). Similarphenomenacan be seenin the survival
of IE locatives, instrumentalsand datives in the syncreticGermanicdative (Lass,
forthcoming).

87
 ROGER LASS

3. FROM SYNTAX TO (MOSTLY) MORPHOLOGY: AFRIKAANS

ADJECTIVAL -e

My secondcase is not so much one of massiveexaptationof an old system

as a new and conceptuallyinnovativeform of inflection,with no concordial
(andvirtuallyno semantic)function.Butit is stillexaptive,in thatthe surface
exponentsof an old contrast- if in ratherdegradedform- are retained,and
pressedinto a quite new service.
All Germaniclanguagesexcept Englishshow some remnantsof the Old
Germanicadjectivalinflection(Englishdiduntilabout 1400 - see Mustanoja,
I960: 275 ff.). Despitecomplexlocaldevelopments,suchas a dualdeclension
('strong' vs. 'weak'),6 the principlesare more or less the standardones of
Indo-Europeanadjectivalinflection:the adjectiveis an 'empty' category
with no inflectionsof its own, all its markingis concordial.The concord
triggersare syntactic: features of the whole NP such as definitenessor
quantification,or featuresof the head noun like (surface)case, numberand
gender.
The historicalbackgroundof the Netherlandicadjectivesystemis obscure;
in particularwe have only fragmentaryattestationof the declensionin the
one corpus that could be called 'Old Dutch' -the Old Low Franconian
(OLF)psalmglossesand laws.7But the generalinflectionalprinciplesof the
older-styledialects can be illustratedclearly enough with OLF examples
(texts from Markey,1976: Psalm I8: 4, 6):
(g) (a) an all-ero erth-on
to all-FEM.DAT. SG. earth-WEAK
FEM. OBL.
'to all the earth'
(b) fan ho-on himil-i
from high-MASC. DAT. SG. heaven-MASC.
DAT. SG.
'from (the) high heaven'
By MiddleDutch, the strong/weakdistinctionhad been lost (cf. van Loey,
[6] The strong declension has a rich paradigm, the adjective carrying some marking for case,
number and gender (cf. modern German gut, -er, -es, -em, -en etc.). This tended to appear
in collocations with no predeterminer, or where the determiner itself was inflectionally
equivocal or unexpressive. The endings derive mainly from nominal or pronominal
case/number suffixes (e.g. German -es for m/n genitive sg). The weak declension was much
less highly differentiated, and borrowed its morphology from the weak n-stem nouns (cf.
German des gut-en Mann-es, dem gut-en Mann). This was used most often where the
concordial/categorial information was carried by the determiner, and the adjective
inflection marked mainly nominative vs. oblique. The intricacies of this system (which
varied enormously from dialect to dialect anyhow) will not concern us here.
[7] There are a few other fragments as well: one famous West Flemish sentence in an eleventh-
century English MS (Sch6nfeld, 1932), and a handful of others (Sanders, 1972). Old Low
Franconian (ninth-tenth centuries) is the only substantial evidence for a 'Proto-
Netherlandic' ancestor of the cluster of text traditions arising in the late twelfth century
and conventionally called 'Middle Dutch' (cf. van Loey, I970a; Raidt, I980: Chs. 3-4).
This complex cluster, with its fuzzy antecedents, is the ancestor of the equally complex and
heterogeneous 'seventeenth-century Dutch' that formed the input to Afrikaans.
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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

197ob: 269f.). The adjectiveoften took its oblique form from the inflected
article,and both endinglessand inflectedforms could be used in the same
context. We can however extract a generalizedparadigmfor attributive
adjectivesof this type:
(I0) m n f pl
NOM -e -e -e -e
GEN -(e)s -(e)s -er -er
DAT -en -en -er -en
ACC -en -e -e -e
This is fairlyimpoverished(comparefor instancewhat was availablein Old
English or Old High German,or Modern Icelandicstill). But it was also
subject to a certain amount of variation in use; for instance, old weak
genitives (in fact homophonous with datives and masculine accusative
singularsin the strongdeclension)and stronggenitivescould be used in the
same context: des goed-en/goet-smans 'the good man's'. But despite this
messinessand variation,and even though the system(or lack of it) is quite
innovativewith respectto earlierGermanicmodels,it is still- and this is the
vital point- morphosyntacticallybased. The import of this will be clear
shortly.Even in modernDutch, wherethe control of adjectiveinflectionis
wildly differentin detail from anythingthat was possiblein Old or Middle
Germanicdialects,the triggersfor adjectiveinflectionare still roughlyof the
same type. That is, the controllersare by and large featuresof the head.
So muchfor background.My interesthereis in the specificdevelopments
in Afrikaans, which are quite late, beginning no earlier than the mid-
seventeenthcentury.I will thereforeskip over the decayand transformation
of the pre-seventeenth-century inflection, and focus on the pattern that
Afrikaanseventuallydeviatesfrom, and the nature of that deviance.For
seventeenth-century Dutch, despitean enormousamount of variation,8we
can extractsomefairlyclearprinciples,not too unlikethosestillin operation.
The old three-gendersystemhad brokendown, and collapsedto a two-way
opposition'common' vs. neuter,signalledprimarilyby the definitearticle:
common de vs. neuter het, as still in standardDutch. (On the history of
Dutch gendersee Dekeyser,I980.) Aside from survivalsof the old genitive
and dativeinflectionsin certaininstances,the adjectivewas essentiallyeither
endinglessor in -e.9 Since the Afrikaanssystem is built entirely on the
oppositionAdj-0vs. Adj-e, I will restrictmy remarksto this.

[8] It is hard to specify just what the Afrikaans input was like, since there were many regional
and social varieties of the not-yet-standardized seventeenth-century Netherlandic complex
involved. There is little point here in trying to reconstruct a systematized Early Modern
Dutch morphology; I give below only enough details to make the main points. Modern
standard Dutch shows an essentially cognate and conservative system. For the Afrikaans
input see Raidt (I983); another two-way zero vs. -e system can be seen in Frisian.
[9] The modern system is very much the same: zero vs. -e except for relics of old datives and
genitives in lexicalized expressions and archaizing styles (see Rijpma & Scheuringa, I969:
? I17).

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 ROGER LASS

The primarycontrolson the presencevs. absenceof -e were(a) the gender

of the head noun (neuterfavouredlack of -e), and (b) the nature of the
determiner(if any): indefiniteand quantifiednouns favoured-e if common
and zero if neuter. Definites were (and still are) variable: preferentially
neutersare endingless,and commonstake -e, as do (tendentially)pluralsof
both genders.
Some characteristicseventeenth-centuryexamples (taken from texts
quoted in Raidt, I980: Ch. 6) will illustratethe commonesttypes:
(i i) (a) CommonSg
in een lang-ery 'in a long row'
hoog-ewaaternoodt'great water-famine'
(b) Neuter Sg
ons dagheliksbroed geeft ons 'give us our daily bread'
een zwartmantelken'a little black cloak'
(c) Plural
de groot-ehuizen'the big houses' (neuter)
onduitsch-etermen'un-Dutchterms' (common)
The system was obviously more complex and subtle than this, but the
neuter/commonand indefinite/definiteas well as singular/pluralcontrasts
make the point. The conditioningof -e vs. -0 is purelymorphosyntactic(or
lexico-semanticin the case of gender);but evenwhenan 'internal'property
of a noun, like gender, is involved, it is the syntagmaticor 'external'
environmentthat determinesthe shape of attributiveadjectives.Predicate
adjectivesin any case are endingless.
In earlyAfrikaans(KaapseNederlands,Proto-Afrikaansor whateverone
wishes to call the languagefrom I652 to about I750), the Dutch system
collapsedcompletely,and was replacedby somethingtotallynovel.The first
phase of this process was loss of grammaticalgender.The erosion of the
de/het distinctionwas alreadyunderway in the seventeenthcentury,both de
and het givingway to the generalizeddie by about 1740. The reorganization
of the adjectiveto be describedwas completeby aroundI775 (Raidt, 1983:
1490.
Now it wouldseemlikelythat once the basictriggerof genderwas lost, the
distributionof -e would for a time be close to random;each adjective'had'
a form in zero and one in -e, and the absenceof gender-specification
should
allow reasonablyfor either one surfacingin a given context. That is, one
mightexpectindefiniteneutersin -e likeeenkleyn-estuk'a littlepiece', witte-
water 'white water', and zero-ending commons like een ander plaats
' anotherplace', eenyzer harpoen'an iron harpoon',alongsidethe 'correct'
types een kleyn N (neuter),een ander-eN (common).And indeed, in the
'transition' period between the Dutch and Afrikaans systems, this is
preciselywhat we do find ('deviant' forms cited from Scholtz, I98I: 129,
whichgivesan excellenthistoricaloverview).This is the crucial'junk' stage.'
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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

This sort of distributionshould,if we go by the exampleof similarcases

like that of late Middle English,lead to a stabilizationof one form or the
other,i.e. loss of inflection.Oncethe primaryconditioningfactoris gone, we
would expect the exponentsof the contrastto go as well- especiallysince
there is good documentaryevidencefor a period of extremelymessy and
'senseless' (apparentlynon-deterministic)variation. But this is not what
happened.Afrikaansnot only did not lose the -e/-0 contrast,it restabilized
it and redeployedit in a new and complex (and more rigid) system, at a
differentgrammaticallevel. The now 'baseless' oppositionwas co-optedin
the serviceof a conceptuallynovel inflection-type,with no real Germanic
precedents.In particular,the new system is non-syntactic:definiteness,
number,quantification,presenceor absenceof predeterminers, case (and of
coursegender)play no role. I will look at the new systemin detailbelow;for
now it sufficesto give a summaryof the kind of developmentthat could be
claimedto lead up to the presentstate of affairs:

(12) Junk-deploymentin Afrikaans: idealized scenario

I. Gendermarkedmorphologically:

een kleyn-e Lharpoen een kleyn- [stuk

common neuter

II. Loss of gender

III. -e is now junk: een kleyn - kleyn-e harpoen

IV. Adapt or die: -e saved by redeployment(exaptation)

V. Result:any adjectiveis inflectedor not as a categorialproperty,regard-

less of the head noun it modifies,or any NP features.

It now remainsto flesh out the new system.Followingthe basic analysis

in Raidt (I983: I84 ff.), but not her specifictaxonomy,we can describethe
new system this way. First and foremost,the domain for inflectionis THE
PARTICULAR ADJECTIVE ITSELF, NOT ITS SYNTACTIC ENVIRONMENT. A given
adjectiveis generallyeitherinflectedor uninflectedin all attributivecontexts.
Thereare two majorclasses,then, categoricallyinflectingand categorically
non-inflecting.

9I
 ROGER LASS

3. I. Categorically inflecting adjectives

These may be dividedinto two main groups, (i) morphologicallycomplex

adjectives, and (ii) monomorphemicbut morphophonemicallycomplex
adjectives.
(i) Morphologicallycomplex.With one exceptionto be noted below, any
polymorphemicadjectivetakes attributive-e: so in this group are prefixed
itemslike ge-heim'secret', suffixedones like stad-ig'slow', compoundslike
open-baar'public',prefixedcompoundsor quasi-compoundslike be-lang-rik
'important',etc. The syntaxof the NP is irrelevant:so 'ngeheim-eresep'a
secret recipe', geheim-e resepte 'secret recipes', baie geheim-e resepte
'many/very secret recipes', die/hierdie/geheim-e resep(te) 'the/this/these
secretrecipe(s)',etc. The only relevantsyntacticfeature,here as elsewhere,
is that inflection occurs only in attributives:predicate adjectives are
endingless,as in die resep(te)is geheim'the recipe(s)is/are secret'.
Themainexceptionis also morphologicallyconditioned:comparativesare
endingless,regardlessof whetherthe base inflectsor not: 'ngeheim-erresep
'a more secret recipe', 'n groot boek 'a big book '/ 'n groot-er boek 'a bigger
book'. Comparativesin fact fall in with obscuredcomplex adjectiveslike
ander'other', lekker'delicious', which are non-inflecting(obscuredin the
sense that -er is not perceivedas a suffix,even if historicallyit might have
been).
(ii) Morphophonemically complex.The nextcut is betweenthoseadjectives
with variant stem-allomorphy(complex) and those with only one stem-
allomorph(simple).Adjectiveswith only one stem-allomorph(if theydo not
fallunder(i)) arenon-inflecting;thosewithalternantstake-e. As will become
obvious,this is rathera chicken-and-eggset-up;it is only the preservationof
the inflectedforms that allows the alternationsto persist,since they are all
conditionedby final vs. non-finalposition.The main groupsare:

alternators.Dutch alreadyhad a tendencyto

(a) Cluster-simplification
simplifysomefoot-finalobstruentclusters,as can be seenin vos, os compared
to theirEnglishcognatesfox, ox. Afrikaanshas carriedthis further,deleting
(inter alia) the stop in most coda-clusters containing a stop and a fricative (in
either order): thus pos 'post' vs. Dutch post, plaas 'place, farm' vs. Dutch
plaats,and so on. (Thereareexceptions,e.g. rots 'rock',fiets 'bicycle',many
of whichare late loans.) In Afrikaansthe deletionoccursonly if the cluster
is absolutelyfinalin the foot, that is if both obstruentsinvolvedbelongto the
coda of the same (strong) syllable.Thus vas 'fast', sag 'soft', reg 'right',
inflected vast-e, sagt-e, regt-e, i.e. /fas - fast-a/, /rex - rext-a/, etc. The
role of syllable position can be shown as follows (these representations
are indifferentlyeither historical or synchronically'underlying', as you
wish):

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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

(I 3)
vas vaste reg regte
BASE [fast] [fa[st]a] [rext] [rex[t]a]

DELETION 0
In vastethe /st/ clusteris ambisyllabic,since /st/ is a permissiblesyllable-
initial;in regt-ethe /xt/ is partiallysplit by a syllableboundarysince /xt/
is not a legal initial.But in both cases the clusteras a whole is not uniquely
in the coda of the first syllable in the disyllabic form, which is the
environmentfor deletion. (On the syllabificationmodel invoked here see
Lass, I984: ? IO.3.5f.; Anderson& Ewen, I987: ? 2.3.)

(b) Medialsyncopealternators.In Dutch,andto a largerextentAfrikaans,

singleconsonants(preferentially/d/ and /x/ < /y/) tend to deletemedially
in the foot, that is when they are NOT exhaustivelyin the coda of the strong
syllable,but forman ambisyllabic'interlude'.Examplesare weer'again' (cf.
German wieder), voil 'bird' (cf. Dutch vogel). This syncope produces
alternationsin adjectivesthat retainfinal -e: droog/droax/ 'dry', inflected
droi /droa/, oud'old' /ceut/, inflectedoue /cu;)/. Syncopated/d/ usually
leaves a palatalizedresidue/j/ behind, as in goed /xut/ 'good', inflected
goeie /xuja/, so also dood /doat/ 'dead', inflecteddooie /doaja/. In cases
wherethe /j/ does not appear,the syncopatedformmay be relexicalized,as
in ouer'older' (cf. Dutch ouder),leadingto ouers'parents',ouerdom'(old)
age'.
Some items in this group tend to have theirsyncopatedformslexicalized
as full new attributiveswithout -e; two common ones are vroi 'early' -
vroeg, dooi 'dead' -, dood. The status of these forms is uncertain, but they
appearto be colloquial(probablynonstandard).

alternators.As a typicalcontinentalWestGermanic
(c) Auslautverhartung
language,Dutch shareswith Germanand has bequeathedto Afrikaansa
medievalruleof finalobstruentdevoicing- both the categoricaleffectof the
rule on surfacephonotactics,and a set of morphophonemicalternations
involving it. Typical instances are blind /blint/ 'blind', inflected blinde
/blfnda/, hard/hart/ 'hard', inflectedharde/harda/, doof /doaf/ 'deaf',
inflecteddowe/doava/ (cf. non-alternatinghart'heart' /hart/, pluralharte
/harta/). The representationshere are surface-phonemicin the simplest
sense, not 'underlying';Afrikaansspellingapparentlyvacillates,as we can
see from morphophonemichard/hardevs. phonemicdoof/dowe.
Thereare a few other items in the alternatinggroup that do not belong
specificallyto these major classes: a typical exampleis nuut /nyt/ 'new',
inflectednuwe/nyva/.

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 ROGER LASS

Taking this alternatinggroup as a whole, it is interestingto note, as a

theoreticalsidelight,that theirhistorypresentsa clearcase of changeacting
to MAXIMIZEallomorphy,in the most straightforward possibleway. It would
have been so 'easy' to drop the formin -e (as was done with so manyother
adjectives).It is curiousthat in a languagethat has done so much radical
hatchet-workon its paradigmaticstructure(losingall its verbinflectionsfor
person and number, for instance, and obliterating the nominative/
accusative/genitivedistinctionin the firstand thirdpersonpluralpronouns),
the simplification(or 'simplification')of the adjectivedeclensionshouldhave
led to the preservationof a host of minorityparadigm-types.

3.2. Categorically non-inflectingadjectives

The bulk of these are monosyllabic,ending in obstruentslike diep /dip/
'deep', los /los/ 'loose', vowels like vry /frEi/ 'free', blou /blceu/ 'blue',
sonorantsalone like geel /xeal/ 'yellow', or sonorantsin clusterslike dronk
/drosjk/ 'drunk'. A few of these non-inflectingadjectivesare polysyllabic,
eitherin -er like ander,lekker(see above), or comparatives.Raidt gives a
detailedstructuralsurveyof thisclass,but it is reallyonly necessaryto specify
two characterizing features:(a) morphologicallysimplex(non-comparative),
and (b) havingonly one stemform.This class thenis by and largea residual
defaultor 'elsewhere'category.
A few adjectives,mostlyin -el, do not fit comfortablyinto eitherclass,but
displayanotherkind of exaptivestrategy.In these, the domainis semantic:
two relatedmeaningsmay be differentiallycoded by presenceor absenceof
-e. A good exampleis enkel 'single'. In collocationwith man 'man' it can
have two senses: 'n enkelman 'a solitaryman' vs. 'n enkel-eman 'a single
(unmarried)man' (thanksto MelindaSinclairfor this example).This is a
marginalsemanticexaptation,whichis not widespread;other -el adjectives
seem to vary without semanticconsequences,though the conditioning- if
any- is obscure.It does seemhoweverthat -el, unlike-er, ratherfavours-e.
It may be that-el is optionallyinterpretableas a kindof pseudo-suffix,which
wouldallow enkelto be interpretedeitheras enkelor enk-el(on the modelof
the nominal -(s)el in words like stelsel 'system', mengsel 'mixture' - cf. stel
'set, suite', meng 'alloy, blend, mix').10
So the rules controlling-e (categoricalor variable)cruciallyinvolve the
following:
(a) morphologicalstructure(simplevs. complex);
(b) paradigm-structure (alternatingvs. non-alternating);
(c) lexico-phonologicalidiosyncrasies(-er disallowing -e regardlessof
morphology,doubletslike those for enkel).
[io] It is worth noting that the domain of exaptation does not have to be morphosyntactic
(though here it is at its most systematic). Semantic splitting of doublets (whatever their
origin), as in person/parson, kirk/church (in Scotland), skirt/shirt, and the like is also
clearly exaptive: if two forms code one meaning, one form is (potential) junk.
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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

This throwsinto reliefthe conceptualnovelty:the systemhereis as far as

I know unique in Germanic.All informationcontrollingadditionor non-
addition of -e is internalto the adjectiveitself as a word-formor to its
morphophonemicparadigm.11 In the earlier(syntacticallybased)inflectional
system,the informationcontrollingsuffixationwas essentiallysyntagmatic:
natureof determiner,featuresof headnoun, and so on. The exaptationhere
is the 'internalization'or 'introjection' into the adjective itself of the
inflectionaltriggers,using the inherited,formerlysyntacticallycontrolled-e
purely'locally', as a markerof adjectiveclass. Globally,one could say that
the inflectionallocus has shifted from syntax to lexicon. (That is, on the
assumption that morphophonemicalternationsare lexically coded, not
producedby 'abstract'derivationsfrom underlyingrepresentationsof the
usualkind. On an abstractanalysisclass I adjectiveswould still exertlexical
control, but this would be in terms of phonologicallycoded 'underlying'
properties,not paradigmaticones.)
The exaptivescenariobeginswith the loss of gender;when commonand
neuter nouns are no longer distinguished,the -e is free to be used for
somethingelse. In Middle English there was a somewhatsimilarbut less
innovativesolution,whichneverbypassedthe syntax;adjectival-e was first
bleachedof its old case/genderand definiteness/indefiniteness content,and
finallyexaptedas primarilya markerof plurality.In the fifteenthcentury,
partly as a consequenceof a generalizedloss of final /a/ (which did not
happenin Dutch or Afrikaans),the -e was lost, and the adjectivebecame
invariable.Englishis thus 'wasteful' with respectto this piece of inherited
structure,Afrikaansis 'conservationist'(cf. Section i).12

4. INTERLUDE: HEURISTIC METAPHOR VS. CRUDE TRANSFER

Readers with an interest in matters epistemologicalor methodological

could be a little worriedat this stage.Was I merelypayinglip-serviceto my
own caveats in Section I, and have I, in fact, done what I criticizedthe
vulgar-Freudian literarycriticsand the like for doing?That is, have I taken
a theoreticalconstructwhole-hogout of its matrix(whereit has a genuine
theoreticalinterpretation)and reifiedand misusedit? This is an important
issue, becauseevolutionaryand other biologicalconceptshave on occasion

[iI] The structureof a paradigmmay serveas a triggerfor or a brakeon change.For instance,

one of the majorconstraintson final/-a/ deletionin Yiddishnounswas the pluralization
classtheybelongedto. Most nounsin /-a/ lost it in late medievaltimes(e.g. harts'heart',
cf. OE heorte,GermanHerze);the mainexceptionswerethose nounsbelongingto the s-
pluralclass, like kacke'duck', pl kackes(< Polish kaczka).Otherinstancesof retained
/-a/ formed(partsof) morphologically non-rootmaterial,as in the diminutivesuffix-ele
(ges-ele'little street').For details,see Lass(ig80b).
[I2] Thevariationin some-el adjectiveswithrespectto -e suggeststhat Afrikaansmightin the
end go the way of English,and level all adjectivesto zero-inflection.Aside from noun
plurals,adjectival-e is theonlyproductiveinflection(asidefromthege- prefixon mostpast
participles,whichalwaysco-occurswith an auxiliary).
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 ROGER LASS

(at least since the days of Pott and Bopp: Wells, I987; MorpurgoDavies,
I987) been transferredto linguisticsin a rathergross fashion;and the worst
examples,if takenas typical,mighttendto discreditthe enterprisein general.
Let me clarifywhat I have been tryingto do by indicatingwhat I am not
doing. In no sense do I advocate a (serious)'biological model' (Stevick,
I963; Dimmendaal,I987) for languagechange.All I am doing is takingup
what MaryHesse (I966) calls the 'positiveanalogy' betweenbiologicaland
linguistic evolution in the exaptation metaphor, and leaving aside the
(probablylarger)'negativeanalogy'.In otherwords,whileclaimingthat the
notion of exaptationseems useful in establishinga name and descriptive
frameworkfor a class of historical events, I remain fully aware (even
insistent)that languagesare not biologicalsystemsin any deep sense- even
if they are used and transmitted(andwereultimatelyinvented)by biological
systems.The cultural/symbolicis ontologicallydistinctfrom the biological,
not least by virtueof being non-physical.Thereis as far as I am awareno
storageor codingmechanismfor linguistictransmissionequivalentto DNA.
If I am sayinganythingof generalimport(and I thinkI may be), it is about
properties common to historically evolving systems regardlessof their
substrates;ratherthan extendinga notion from biology to linguistics,I am
suggestingthat the two domains (and others as well, probably,like the
evolution of art styles or political institutionsor sartorialfashion) have
certainbehavioursin commonby virtueof evolving.
If, say, one wereto conceivea languageat a giventime ti as a population
of variants whose next state ti+1is the result of 'selection' of certain
individualsratherthan others, one is not makinga categorymistake,and
necessarilylikeninga languageto a biologicalpopulation/speciesin any way
- insofaras mechanisms,mode of beingand the like are concerned.In other
words, given ANY population of individuals that show some variation
(aspectsof styles, constructions,geneticconstitutions),and some (unspeci-
fied) conditions that prevent all of them from survivingand predispose
to the survivalof certain individualsor types, the 'Darwinian' mode of
talking becomes an appropriateone (cf. Dawkins, I982, on 'universal
Darwinism'). And once this happens, the metaphor-spacein which the
originalwas conceivedand now operatesbecomesan appropriateone to
explorefor furtherheuristics,taxonomicclues, and so on.
The point is worthmakingbecausetherearewriterswho havenot avoided
the category mistake that I have tried-maybe in what looks like a
pussyfooting way - to steer clear of. Perhaps the most striking recent
exampleis the theoryof 'linguisticpaedomorphosis'proposedin a number
of publicationsby BernardBichakjian(I984, I987, I989). Bichakjianstarts
from the now familiar idea that humans are somewhat neotenous or
paedomorphicanimals:they carryinto adulthoodmorphologicalor other
characteristicsthat are typicalof the pre-adultstages of their ancestors,or

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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

becomesexuallymaturewhile still in what (historically)can be conceivedas

a partly 'larval' or 'foetal' state. Typical featuresin which human adults
resemble foetal apes are their relative hairlessness, domed forehead,
downward-facing foramenmagnum,ventrallydirectedvagina,unrotatedbig
toe, very high cranium-to-body-size ratio, and delayedskeletalcalcification
(cf. Gould, I977: Ch. 9; I983: Ch. 7 for discussionand references).
Bichakjian'stransferconsistsof the claim that linguisticevolutionhas an
inherentbias for proceedingso that the outputsof changetend to move 'in
the direction of earlier-acquired features and strategies' (I987: 99). For
instance,he argues that the Indo-Europeanlanguageshave been steadily
evolvingtowarda preferencefor right-branching ratherthan left-branching
syntax,and that right-branching structuresare typicallyacquiredearlier.(I
do not know if this is trueor not, but his evidenceis sketchyenoughto raise
doubts.)This claimis bolsteredwith an elegantblocking-clauseto the effect
that only 'inherent'ratherthan 'contingent'changesproceedthis way, so
that no counterexamplecan in fact be damaging(I987: 98 f.). He suggests
(ibid.)that 'this ongoingevolutionaryprocess,whichcloselyresemblesman's
biological evolution', has in fact the same source as the physical
manifestations: it 'should probably be traced back to the action of
regulatorygenes on the cellularcorrelatesof speech'.
The problem is of course that we know nothing about 'the cellular
correlatesof speech'; indeed,it is not at all clearunless one happensto be
a pretty devout Chomskyanthat there are, or are likely to be, any such
things. Further,since in its respectableform the theoryof paedomorphosis
is a theory of adult physicalresemblancesto non-adultphysicalforms of
evolutionaryancestors(of coursecontrolledby regulatorygenes, since the
whole thing is a matter of relative timing), the transferto the cultural
products of adult humans is at best bizarre,at worst irresponsible.No
biologisthas ever claimedthat we THINK like foetal apes. The transferhere
is crude and literal, based on terms and concepts that have proper and
conventionalinterpretations in an ontologicallyspecific(andhighlydifferent)
domain; the transferhas been effected in the terminology(without the
substance,but embodyinga claim about substance)of that other domain.
It should be clear that I have avoided this kind of thinking,even to the
extent of using termslike 'strategy', 'cooptation', etc. with no ontological
specificity.Bichakjian'sclaims are scientistic,in that they purport to be
hypothesesabout (ultimately)physical evolution, but merely ape (!) the
structuresthat biologists have erected on totally differentgrounds. Even
many hard-nosedphysicalist(neo-)Darwinianbiologists would cheerfully
admitthat culturalevolutionis extrasomatic.WhatI have attemptedhereis
not 'hypothesis-formation'in the strict sense at all, but somethingmuch
more modest: a kind of exegetical re-examinationof certain types of
linguisticchange,with initiallyno higheraim than namingas a taxonomic

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orderingdevice.Whilethe claimis weaker,it is also safer,and may therefore

be moreuseful.At leastit escapessilliness,evenif it is not a properfalsifiable
hypothesis.

5. EPILOGUE: THE JOYS OF IDLENESS

I returnnow to some less philosophicalconcerns.The patternsof change

discussedhere displayan importantpropertyof evolvingsystems(not only
linguisticones): uselessor idle structurehas the fullestfreedomto change,
becausealterationin it has a minimaleffecton the usefulstuff.('Junk'DNA
maybe a primeexample.)Majorinnovationsoftenbeginnot in the frontline,
but wheretheir substratesare doing little if any work. (They also often do
not, but this is simply a fact about non-deterministicopen systems.)
Historicaljunk,in anycase,maybe one of the significantbackdoorsthrough
which structuralchange gets into systems,by the re-employmentfor new
purposesof idle material.
Crucially,however,mere 'uselessness'is not itself either a determinate
precursorof exaptivechange,or - conversely- a precursorof loss. Historical
relicscanpersist,eventhroughlong periodsof apparentlysenselessvariation,
and it is impossibleto predict,solelyon the basisof suchidlenessor inutility,
that ANYTHING at all will happen.(That such predictionscan be made if we
get the right theory is an endemicdelusion of historicallinguists:see the
arguments in Lass, ig80a: Chs. 2-3.)
Two examples,of somewhatdifferentkinds,may be usefulas illustrations
of the rangeof acceptablebehaviours.First, the fate of i-umlautin various
West Germanicdialects. This change (of ancient date) was provoked by
suffixal*/i, j/ whichfrontedthe vowelsof root syllables;whenthesesuffixes
were lost or neutralized, the vowel-alternationsthey produced were
phonologized:so OHG gast 'guest', pl gast-i, MHG gast/gest-e, Modern
German Gast/Gdste, etc. With phonologizationcame the possibility of
morphologization:umlaut could be interpretedas an (opaque) mode of
pluralformation,with no phonologicalconditioning.At this stage,it could
be treatedessentiallyin one of two ways: either(since it was very much a
minoritytype),it could be droppedin favourof one of the more'regular'or
morestatisticallycommonpluralizationstrategies;or it couldbe analogically
extendedto nouns whichhistoricallyused a differentstrategy.
The first tack was taken by Netherlandic;in modern Afrikaans, for
instance,virtuallyall the classicalumlaut pluralshave been reassignedto
other declensions(pretty much as in Dutch): so German Gast/Gdste=
Afrikaans gas/gaste, Fuss/EFisse= voet/voete, Buch/Biicher = boek/boeke,
etc. The only umlautnoun that appearsto be in commonuse is stad 'city',
pl stede. (Otherpluralsinvolvingvowel-alternationshave differentsources,
e.g. skip 'ship', pl skepe,which is a reflexof open-syllablelengtheningand
lowering,and irrelevanthere.)
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 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

Germanon the otherhand indulgedto some extentin the secondoption:

e.g. Baum 'tree', pl Bdume < OHG boum/boum-e. Yiddish did this even
moreextensively;not only nativewords,but loans fromall periodscould be
reinterpretedas umlauting.So toxes 'arse', in additionto its (rarer)Hebrew
plural txosim has the remodelled texes-er; and English sweat-shop was
borrowedas the half-calquesvits-s'op,with the second element subjectto
umlaut: p1 svits-sep-er.
English steered a kind of middle course: a large number of the old
umlautingnouns were reassigned(book,nut, cow for instancenow take -s
plurals, instead of expected *beech, *nyte, *kye < OE bec, hnyte, cy); a small
number remain (man, tooth, foot, mouse, louse); but no new ones have been
added.(Thoughumlauthas in a sensebeenexaptedas a minorjoke-strategy,
as in meese for pl moose, etc.)
Umlaut plurals are a slightly peripheralexample, since they are not
functionlessor totally idle; still, they illustratethe general point about
strategicoptions,whichis an importantone. A morecentralexampleof the
persistenceof genuinely idle and unexapted structure- but with some
interestingpossibilities- is the -s endingof the Englishpresentindicative3
singular.In the course of its evolution, Englishhas lost all the non-tense
morphology of the verb except this suffix; it now has none of the
'informative'concordial function that verb suffixeshad in earlier times
(actuallybeforeit was, exceptin the North, -s, but was still the ancestorof
-th).Englishonce had a muchfreerword-orderthanit does now, and subject
pronounswerenot obligatorilyexpressed.Now howeverthis relicinflection
not only has no 'communicative'functionin the senseof servingpotentially
to underwrite the parsing of ambiguous structures; it is a systemic
excrescence.(Otherlanguageswith similarexcrescencesor asymmetriesmay
clean them up; Afrikaansdid by dumpingall its verb morphology,and
Swedishand Danish did by extendingone ending- originallythat of the
presentsecond person singular- to the whole paradigm.)But the exaptive
impulse is strong; we might note that the -s ending can be exapted for
sociolinguisticpurposes,as an indexicalmarkerof vernacularityin some
dialects,whereit is extendedto all personnumberforms(see Cheshire,I982:
Ch. 4 on this use in nonstandardEnglishin Reading).
We shouldin fact not be surprisedat the retentionof historicaljunk over
long periods. Despite neo-Praguianclaims (e.g. Martinet, 1955: 49 f.: cf.
Lass, ig8oa: 9I f.) that there is a kind of 'expense of energy' in the
maintenanceof oppositions that predisposesto loss of items with low
functionalload, thereis reallyno evidencewhateverthat linguisticsystems
have 'thermodynamic'propertiesof this kind. It does not take any 'energy'
(even the image is inept) to maintain historicalresidues,no matter how
uselessthey may be at a givenmoment.The zero option is easy: do nothing,
and the objectsin questiondo no harmby just lying there.
The often bizarre and seemingly motiveless complexity of linguistic
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 ROGER LASS

systemsis, like many of theirotherproperties,simplya matterof historical

inertia. Nonaptations persist because there is no particularproblem in
keepingthem,and theremay even be 'work' to do in gettingrid of them.If
thesenonaptationsor adaptationsfalleninto desuetudecan be laterexapted
for somethingelse, well and good; but there is no particularreason ever
eitherto do this or not to.'3 Like so much else in so many domains,this is
a matterof the 'creative'freedomavailableto historicallyevolvedsystems,
preciselybecauseof theirenormouscomplexityand innateconservatism.As
Lorenzremarksin his discussionof thejunkroom-in-the-mansion alludedto
in Sectioni, one of the reasonsthat ancientmaterialpersistsis that it is very
hard to dismantlea house while you are still living in it:
Die also solche erkennbarenhistorischenReste bleiben schon deshalb
erhalten,weil derBaunie ganzabgerissenundneu geplantwerdenkonnte:
das warGeradedeshalbunmoglich,weil er dauerndbewohntund intensiv
beniitztwurde.
['The recognizablehistoricalremainsare retained,because the structure
can'tbe entirelytorndownandplannedanew;thiswouldbe quiteimpossible
so long as it was being continuallyinhabitedand intensivelyused'.]
With luck, however,you can redecorate.
Author's address: Department of Linguistics,
University of Cape Town,
Rondesbosch 7700/RSA.

[I3] One of JL's refereesobjectedstronglyto this: 'it is reallyoutrageousto say... that the
seeminglymotivelesscomplexityof languagesis a productof theirhistoricalinertia... Since
Weinreichet al. surelyit has been prettywell acceptedthat alternation/variation of a
systematically pointlesstypeis an importantmechanismof linguisticchange'.I agreethat
it is; but to attributeit to a 'function'of beingthereto enablechangeto take placeis to
invokebackwardscausationin the sameway that Gouldand Vrbacarefullyavoiddoing
in theirdefinitionof exaptation(see SectionI). It is verydifferentto say that something
can serveas a substrateof changethanto say that it is thereBECAUSE it is an 'important
mechanism'.The refereefurtherobjectedto the postponingof any considerationof
exaptationfor sociolinguisticreasonsuntil the end of the paper:sociallyrelevantuse of
junk is important,and 'apparentlypointlessvariationis sociallyfunctional'.Firstof all,
not 'is' but 'may be'; it wouldbe an extremeexampleof whatI like to call the 'semiotic
fallacy'to claimthat everythingin languageis in some way 'meaningful'.My particular
interestherehappensto be withlarge-scalestructuraleffects,not sociolinguisticones,and
thatis a perfectlylegitimateconcern.Butthe objectionas a whole,likethefirstone, misses
a (chrono)logicalpoint:thejunkhas to be thereFIRST to be usedat all, andmy aimhereis
to clarifysome of the ways in whichjunk is generatedin the firstplace:in particularthe
roleplayedby systemiccollapsewithnon-functionalresidue.Whathappensto the residue
lateris, I maintain,open: if exaptationoccursit may be purelystructural,with no social
relevance,or it may be aimedat somethingsociallyindexical.Thereare no necessities
involved,only possibilities.

IOO
 EXAPTATION IN LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

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