ABSTRACT
Ontogeny, when referring to language, deals with language development and change in an individual person over a period of time that can span a few moments up to a lifetime, whereas phylogeny deals with language development and change in populations over part of a generation or over many generations, as well as changes in whole languages and language families. The last chapter dealt with ontogeny; this chapter deals with phylogeny. Although the OPM does not claim to account for all types of language change, the OPM does deal with change involving languages and dialects in contact, including loan phonology, isolation and assimilation of immigrant populations, bilingualism and multilingualism, pidgins and creoles, and dialects in contact. This chapter attempts to demonstrate how the types of phenomena that characterize the individual learner also characterize whole societies. An individual learning one or more second or foreign language is similar to groups of people with various language backgrounds coming into contact.
