"Just thinking"... #1: Complexity and Junk DNA
I have a lot of thoughts and ideas but I always like to fact-check and double check before I say anything. I thought I'd share some of the stranger ones with you for the sake of entertainment. These are not serious thoughts, just strange thoughts. This one is one of the strangest and might fit better in an edition of the Speculative Grammarian. What can we learn by comparing mature /complex language features and junk DNA in biological organisms? I.e. something entities that have been around for a long time acquire and have a hard time to get rid of. Mature features or frills in languages can be things that take a long time to evolve and sometimes bleaches down so much that it barely has any function anymore, except to mark group membership. Complex features is a umbrella term for lots of things, they're not necessarily the same. I don't know a lot about Junk DNA/non-coding DNA, but I do know that you can get it from not deleting copies (bleaching..?) and retrovirus...