Anticipating the beginning of classes...

I've always thought August and April were two of the worst months in academic life: in April, we're all scrambling to figure out everything that we need to teach our students before the term ends, remembering everything we were supposed to complete during the academic year, and thinking hopefully toward everything we're going to accomplish in the summer, which we've inflated in time three-fold. Once August first arrives, academics are consumed with anxiety and regret, wishing we were Doctor Who and could turn our internal clocks back.

I know I always think, "If only I had only slept three hours a night all summer, I could have finished every project that I'm behind on. I could have made every missed deadline." As the middle of the month arrives, the prospect of incomplete syllabi looms on the horizon just as my babysitter goes on her yearly vacation. So here I am, with two kids home until the college opens, with two unrealized syllabi in my mind.

But all this angst isn't really as bad as the two preceding paragraphs would suggest. The big regrets of the summer so far are really 1) failing to see more movies and 2) failing to complete Darwin's Origin of the Species. I promised myself I would read the whole book before returning to school so that I could arm myself with textual evidence to use against those who doubt the reality of evolution, since the term inevitably comes up in the history of the English language. I'm not entirely sure how applicable the term "evolution" is to the study of language, necessarily, since the same processes of natural selection don't really apply to linguistic phenomena, but I am certain that evolution really happens and that we see it every day.

So my new strategy, as a professor, is to ask doubters two questions: 1) Do you have a dog? If so, what "breed" is it? and 2) Do you think that bacteria can become drug-resistant? If so, why would that happen? Darwin begins his discussion of evolution with reflections on animal breeding and the "unnatural selection" of farmers and breeders for particular traits in their animals. If breeders can select for traits that don't confer an advantage in terms of survival, other than the advantage offered by increased human protection and nurture, why shouldn't nature (the most fickle and cruelest guardian of all) confer some advantage on animals best suited to their environments?

What, then, is the relationship between language and evolution? I guess the question we have to ask is this: what advantage does language confer upon us, the organisms who use it? No particular language itself would seem to confer more advantage to one particular group than another, but certain linguistic behaviors may; we might want to think of borrowing as an adaptive behavior or other sorts of contact phenomena as adaptive. Or we might want to look at periods of dramatic social, environmental, and cultural change as periods that might encourage linguistic diversity that allows competing forms to develop. Are those features best adapted to new circumstances, or that confer the greatest advantage to particular groups (or that are associated with groups that have the greatest advantages overall), the features that survive?

These will all be questions I'll be thinking about this semester--when it comes. Until then, I'll try to catch a movie or two.