jmzezhd: Not sure what you mean by clade in this context. Compilation, to my mind, means that not only is there an agent (doing the compiling), but a will to, and language, to me, seems an unconscious event, at least at the meaning level.
Yes you do. Your comment suggesting that language is an unconscious creation tells me that you do indeed understand my use of the term "clade" in that context.
Language, as well as the rest of evolution, can only be interpreted as being Deterministic.
Whether it is or it is not.
zmjezhd: Again, far be it from me to defend Chomsky's linguistic theories, but I feel he is at least genuine in his interest in language. Is it just Chomsky's passel of grad students or is it all linguists in general? While I agree with Saussure that the linguistic sign, taken in isolation, is basically pretty much arbitrary, as soon as you get context and the will to mean something that arbitrariness is not so evident. What I mean here is that while the word for the concept of "tree" in any given language is arbitrary, the word for "trees" is not: it consists of the first word / sign plus another arbitrary sign for plural number. Language is a rule-based activity or at least a pattern-based one.
I guess I need a definition of "language experts". All linguists, just Chomskians, all theoretical syn tacticians in the generativist vein? All speakers, all normative grammarians? etc.
Really now, zmjezhd, what cognizant lifeform would think that all trees are alike just because they are all called trees? And as we know, all self described "language experts" are not experts in language.
Our words only have value if they give insight to that which is.
