Seeing linguistic systems as intellectual, aesthetic, and expressive achievements

Linguists in the last century have asked how lexico-grammatical systems may or may not vary, due perhaps to their origins in human biology or sociality; as well as how they may reflect their genetic relationships or geographic distributions. But alongside seeing linguistic systems as instances of principles we may posit, it is also important to leave room for local contingency, and that includes seeing linguistic systems, to the fullest extent possible, as people's intellectual, aesthetic, and expressive achievements. Four steps are proposed in that direction: (i) striving for perspicuous descriptions of linguistic systems on their own terms in order to identify pervasive design or ‘genius’ across suites of features; (ii) exploring cases where unusual suites of features persist over time, where consistent choice and continuing intellectual, aesthetic, or expressive engagement with those features stand among possible explanations for their persistence; (iii) investigating speakers' creative engagement with lexico-grammatical features in verbal art and elsewhere, emphasizing dialectical relationships that tend to form as creative practices and suites of features affect each other, and then gauging how these relationships might shape linguistic systems over time; (iv) examining degrees of awareness, attention, and purpose when considering people's creative engagement with lexico-grammatical systems and their implications for how we understand linguistic systems as creative achievements. Two extended examples are considered: the multimillennial persistence, across all of its branches, of an unusual lexico-grammatical design or genius in the Unangan-Yupik-Inuit language family, suggesting the ongoing renewal of a particular set of aesthetic or expressive sensibilities; and the work of Eastern Chatino speakers to gain and teach awareness of the extraordinary systems of tonal lexico-grammar across Eastern Chatino varieties and how that awareness, helped in part by their work as linguists, has led to intellectual and aesthetic engagement with tone in the context of an ongoing social and political struggle for Indigenous language recognition and maintenance.