DIPLOMSKO DELO - COnnecting REpositories · naloge ter Branki Žitnik za prevod povzetka v...

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

DIPLOMSKO DELO

Katja Mihelin

Maribor, 2010

UNIVERZA V MARIBORU

FILOZOFSKA FAKULTETA

Oddelek za anglistiko in amerikanistiko

Diplomsko delo

RAZLIČNE TEORIJE JEZIKOVNIH

SPREMEMB

Graduation thesis

DIFFERENT THEORIES OF LANGUAGE

CHANGE

Mentorica: Kandidatka:

red. prof. dr. Dunja Jutronić Katja Mihelin

Maribor, 2010

Lektorica:

Katina Tihomirović, prevajalka

Prevajalka:

Branka Žitnik, prof. angleškega jezika in slovenščine

ZAHVALA

Zahvaljujem se mentorici red. prof. dr. Dunji Jutronić za strokovno

usmerjanje in vsestransko pomoč pri nastajanju diplomskega

dela.

Zahvaljujem se Katini Tihomirović za lektoriranje diplomske

naloge ter Branki Žitnik za prevod povzetka v slovenski jezik.

Iskrena hvala moji družini, atiju in mamici, sestrici in Boštjanu, da

so me podpirali, verjeli vame in mi stali ob strani tudi pri nastajanju

mojega drugega diplomskega dela. Brez vas mi ne bi uspelo!

I Z J A V A

Podpisana Katja Mihelin, rojena 05. 10. 1986, v Brežicah,

študentka Filozofske fakultete, Univerze v Mariboru, smer

angleški jezik s književnostjo, izjavljam, da je diplomsko delo z

naslovom Different theories of language change pri mentorici red.

prof. dr. Dunji Jutronić, avtorsko delo.

V diplomskem delu so uporabljeni viri in literatura korektno

navedeni; teksti niso prepisani brez navedbe avtorjev.

_______________________

Bizeljsko, 28. 11. 2010

POVZETEK

V diplomskem delu so najprej naštete in opisane vrste jezikovnih sprememb:

glasovne spremembe, spremembe po analogiji, semantične spremembe,

spremembe v sintaksi in spremembe, ki so posledica jezikovnih kontaktov.

Sledi opis dveh različnih pristopov k jezikovnim spremembam. Najprej je

predstavljen zgodovinski pristop s pomočjo študija dela Rogerja Lassa.

Lassov pristop k proučevanju jezikovnih sprememb je konservativen in

temelji na analizi jezika kot abstraktnega objekta, neodvisnega od govorcev

in uporabnikov. Jezikovne spremembe je po njegovem mnenju potrebno

proučevati kot spremembe v notranjem sistemu in strukturi.

Drug pristop, ki je opisan v diplomskem delu, pa je jezikovni pristop, ki

zagovarja dejstvo, da je govorec, tj. uporabnik jezika, tisti, ki jezik spreminja.

Diplomsko delo vsebuje tudi različna mnenja o proučevanju jezika kot živega

organizma.

V zadnjem poglavju so navedene možne skupne točke dveh prej opisanih

pristopov.

Ključne besede: jezikovne spremembe, jezikovni pristop, zgodovinski pristop,

endogene spremembe, govorec.

SUMMARY

My diploma paper contains a list of language changes: sound change,

analogy, semantic change, syntactic change and change resulting from

language contact. Changes are listed and described.

Next, two different approaches to language change are presented. Firstly, the

historical approach is described through the work of Roger Lass whose

approach to the theory of language change is conservative and based on the

analysis of language as an abstract object independent of speakers and

users, and on the idea of language change as an internal to language

structure and systems.

The other approach that I present in my diploma paper is the linguistic

approach, which defends the fact that it is the speaker who changes the

language.

I also provide different opinions on seeing language as a living organism and

finally I present some parallels between biological and linguistic approach.

Key words: language change, linguistic approach, historical approach,

endogeny, speaker.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1

2. PURPOSE ............................................................................ 3

3. HYPOTHESES ..................................................................... 4

4. METHODOLOGY ........................................................... 5

4.1 RESEARCH METHODS ................................................. 5

4.2 USED SOURCES ........................................................... 5

5. LANGUAGE CHANGES ...................................................... 6

5. 1 TYPES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE ................................ 6

5. 2 SOUND CHANGE ......................................................... 6

5. 2. 1 ANALOGY .............................................................................. 7

5. 3 SEMANTIC CHANGE .................................................... 7

5. 4 SYNTACTIC CHANGE ................................................ 10

5. 5 CHANGE RESULTING FROM LANGUAGE

CONTACT .............................................................................. 11

6. THE HISTORICAL APPROACH OF EXPLAINING

LANGUAGE CHANGE

6. 1 THE HISTORICAL MODE ........................................... 13

6. 1. 2 DEDUCTIVE-NOMOLOGICAL EXPLANATION .................. 16

6. 1. 3 PROBABILISTIC EXPLANATIONS ...................................... 16

6. 1. 4 THE ASYMMETRY BETWEEN EXPLANATION AND

PREDICTION ........................................................................................... 17

6. 2 HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AS A THEORY OF

LANGUAGE CHANGE ........................................................... 18

6. 2. 1 LASS’S APPROACH TO LANGUAGE CHANGE................. 18

6. 3 ON THE ROLE OF THE SPEAKER IN LANGUAGE

CHANGE ................................................................................ 29

6. 3. 1 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS IN CHANGE ........ 29

6. 3. 2 ACTUATION ........................................................................ 32

6. 4 SPEAKERS CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE ................. 36

6. 4. 1 AN EXAMPLE OF SOCIALLY TRIGGERED CHANGE ........ 36

6. 5 THE DISCOURSE OF ENDOGENY – DOES LANGUAGE

CHANGE ITSELF? ................................................................. 41

6. 5. 1 CONVERSATION ERASES AMBIGUITY ............................ 45

7. DO LANGUAGES CHANGE LIKE LIVING

ORGANISMS? ....................................................................... 48

7. 1 SOME PARALLELS BETWEEN BIOLOGICAL

AND LINGUISTIC EVOLUTION ............................................ 54

8. CONCLUSION .................................................................. 61

LITERATURE ........................................................................ 63

Katja Mihelin DIFFERENT THEORIES OF LANGUAGE CHANGE

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1. INTRODUCTION

I decided to write my diploma paper on this subject because I have always

found changes in language quite a challenging topic. It is interesting to see

how different approaches explain reasons for language change. The topic of

language change is also very wide and provides enough material for further

research.

My diploma paper contains presentation of two different approaches to

language change. First I present the historical approach.

Historical linguistics, also called diachronic linguistics, is the study of

language change and has five main concerns:

• to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;

• to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their

relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative

linguistics);

• to develop general theories about how and why language changes;

• to describe the history of speech communities;

• to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.

One of the representatives of historical linguistics is Roger Lass. In this

diploma paper I present his work through the eyes of James Milroy.

J. Milroy, says that Roger Lass is one of the best historical linguists in the

world, and in particular, a brilliant historian of English. Milroy also thinks that

Lass is also one of the clearest and liveliest writers around, and can be

trusted to express challenging and thought-provoking views on most things.

Lass’s approach to the theory of language change is conservative in the

sense that it is based on the analysis of language as an abstract object

independent of speakers and users, and on the idea of language change as

an internal to language structure and systems. That is in tune with what might

reasonably be called the dominant tradition in historical linguistics and


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opposed to some more recent approaches that derivate from the tradition.

One aspect of a conservative attitude is that it requires very strong evidence.

The other approach that I present in my diploma paper is the linguistic

approach.

Conversation analysts are constantly demonstrating how conversationalists

use strategies for repairing miscomprehensions when they occur. In the light

of what we know about speakers’ ability to manage conversations,

arguments, it is impossible to say that speakers do not influence language

change.

Next I present different views on seeing language as a living organism.

The view of Bopp (1827), a German linguist who is known for his extensive

comparative work on Indo-European languages, is that languages must be

seen “as organic natural bodies that form themselves according to definite

laws, develop carrying in themselves an internal life- principle, and gradually

die off” (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 6).

But Gaston Paris says that all of these words (organism, be born, grow ...,

age and die) are applicable only to individual animal life ... (Richard D. Janda,

Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 7)

In the final part of my diploma paper I tried to draw some parallels between

biological and linguistic approach in order to sum up main characteristics of

both and to see if there are any aspects of language change common to both

approaches.


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2. PURPOSE

My intention in this diploma paper is to:

• Present what language change is.

• Show how linguists study changes in language.

• Present the role of speakers in language change.

• Present historical approach to language change.

• Present linguistic approach to language change.

• Draw possible parallels between biological and linguistic evolution.


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3. HYPOTHESES

• Historical approach defends the fact that language changes as an

object non-related to social factors.

• Linguistic approach claims that it is the speaker who changes the

language.


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4. METHODOLOGY

4.1 Research methods

I wrote my diploma paper with the help of various research methods and

literary sources.

Descriptive method

I used descriptive method when collecting data from the literature to test

hypotheses and answer questions concerning the subject of study.

Comparative method

I used comparative method for two different approaches (the historical

approach and the linguistic approach) for studying language change. I used

this method with the aim to detect similarities and differences between the

two approaches.

4.2 Used sources

I used written resources when writing my diploma paper. All resources are

quoted in Bibliography.


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5. LANGUAGE CHANGES

Language, like everything else, gradually transforms itself over centuries.

This is not surprising. In a world where humans grow old, tadpoles change

into frogs; it would be strange if only language remained unchanged. As the

famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure noted: “Time changes all

things: there is no reason why language should escape this universal law”

(Aitchinson J., 1991, 4).

5.1 TYPES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE

5.2 SOUND CHANGE

The most noticeable characteristic which distinguishes Old English (OE) from

Modern English (ME) is that the two are pronounced very differently, as

reflected in part by differences in spelling. In some words, the differences are

minor, as in the word for “father” where the major difference is Old English d:

Mod. Eng. th. In others, the difference is much greater. For example in OE

half ‘bread’ (with a vowel similar to the a in Mod. Eng. father) vs. its

equivalent, Mod. Eng. word loaf. The one lacks the initial h and has a

different vowel. In addition, of course, loaf has changed in meaning, no

longer referring to ‘bread’ in general, but to a certain quantity of bread. (This

is the reason that the word cannot be used in modern version of the Lord’s

Prayer.)

Linguists use the term `sound change` to refer to changes in pronunciation;

and like many other technical terms, it is defined more narrowly than in

ordinary usage, to refer only to certain types of change in the pronunciation

of words. Sound change understood in this sense has been claimed to be

completely regular, in the sense that all words that can undergo a given

change. Recent research shows this claim to be an overstatement; still,

sound change does turn out to be overwhelmingly regular.


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In this overwhelming regularity of sound change that makes it possible for us

to trace words through history, or across different, but related languages, and

to be confident that we are really comparing different versions of the same

word, rather than words which just happen to sound similar. Understanding

how sound change operates helps us explain otherwise strange facts about

language.

For instance, English has a number of words pronounced with initial n but

preceded in spelling by a “silent” k, such as knee, knight, and knave. The k of

these words was pronounced in early English (as in OE cneo, cniht, chafa)

and is still pronounced in the related German (e.g. Knie ‘knee’). It was lost in

English by a regular sound change that operated in an earlier stage when the

k was still pronounced.

5.2.1 ANALOGY

Sound change is not the only change that may affect pronunciation. Words

often change their pronunciation under the influence of, or by analogy with

other words. For instance, the early Modern English plural of cow was kine, a

form still found in nineteenth-century poetry. The present-day plural cows

came about in the seventeenth century under the analogy of the most

common, productive mode of plural formation, as we find it in pig - pig-s,

horse - horse-s. Unlike sound change, analogy is not normally regular; and

Modern English has preserved many irregular plural forms such as men,

women, children, feet.

5.3 SEMANTIC CHANGE

In addition to their pronunciation, words may also change in their meaning.

This type of change, referred to as semantic change, is notoriously

unpredictable and ”fuzzy”, probably because of the way in which we readily

stretch and extend the meaning of words to cover new situations. One of the

consequences of the fuzziness of semantic change is that semantic flip-flops


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may occur. As noted earlier, OE half ‘bread’ corresponds to Mod. Eng. loaf

through sound change, but the modern word designates a narrower semantic

range, namely a certain quantity of bread. Exactly the opposite happened in

the case of the modern word bread. This word can be traced back to OE

bread (probably different in pronunciation); but the meaning of the OE word

was narrower: ‘(bread) crumb, morsel’. One of the most remarkable flip-flops

of this kind is the relatively recent change in African American Vernacular

English of bad to mean its exact opposite, ‘excellent, cool, etc’.

Semantic change can lead to many other, quite radical and unexpected

results. Perfect examples for such changes are the words glamour and

verve.

Let us consider the word glamour first. The ultimate source of the word is

Greek graphein ‘to scratch’. By a fairly mundane change the verb came to

mean ‘write’ after the advent of writing. Once graphein had changed its

meaning, nouns derived from it, such as gramma and grammatike came to

refer to the products of writing: a letter of the alphabet, a letter of

communication, or letters ‘learning in general’ as in Arts and Letters, Doctor

of letters, etc. From Greek the word entered Latin as grammatical, with

roughly the same range of meanings.

In Old French, a new derivative was created, grammarie, whose meaning

underwent a certain amount of expansion, referring not only to ‘(Latin)

grammar’ and ‘philological learning’, but to all traditional learning, including

the occult sciences of alchemy and astrology. The latter meaning was

especially prevalent among the “unlettered”, those who were unable to read,

for whom the notion literacy evoked images of wizards poring over books on

alchemy, magic, and the supernatural. After all, being able to read and write

was itself an esoteric phenomenon in a society where literacy was limited to

just a small portion of the population. (In French, this popular understanding

of ‘grammar’ survives in the word grimoire ‘a book on magic’. Another

meaning, ‘scribbes’, reflects a different, less awestruck attitude.)

The word was borrowed as gramer into Middle English, with the same range

of meanings as in Old French and, again, with magical connotations mainly


9

among the unlettered. Along the way, the two meanings of the word, the

educated one - (Latin) grammar and learning in general - and the popular

magical interpretation, came to be differentiated in writing, giving rise to Mod.

Eng. grammar vs. gramary(e).

The word glamour is originally a Scots English variant of gramary(e) and was

introduced into modern standard English by Sir Walter Scott with the

meaning ‘magic’; magic charm’. The later semantic development to ‘charm’

and related meanings reflects a common metaphorical extension from ‘magic

charm’, similar to more transparent metaphorical use of words like

bewitching. In fact, the word charm, as well as enchanting, exhibit the same

development; the more original meanings are preserved in expressions like

cast a charm on someone and the somewhat archaic enchantress ‘female

sorcerer’.

Further on, the word grammar lost a lot of its earlier glamour, as it were, and

was increasingly used to refer to instruction in linguistic structure, often with

emphasis on “correctness”. It’s earlier, more general meaning remains in

fixed expressions like grammar school, a school which was indeed to

inculcate not just grammar in the modern sense, but learning in general.

The word verve can also be plausibly derived from a word dear to linguistics,

namely from Latin verba, plural of verbum ‘word’. The Latin word could by

extension also refer to general sayings or proverbs and to something like

‘mere, empty words’.

The early French outcome of verba was verve, whose meanings, ranging

from ‘proverb’ to ‘verbosity’, can easily be explained as specializations of the

Latin meanings. In later medieval French, verve came to be used in the

meaning ‘caprice, fantasy’, possibly an extension from ‘verbosity’ via

something like verbal exuberance, verbal liveliness.

From the later medieval connotations it is only a short step to the modern

French meaning ‘enthusiasm, vitality, etc’; and it is with this meaning that the

word was borrowed from French into English.


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5.4 SYNTACTIC CHANGE

In addition to different pronunciation, morphology and meaning, words can

also change in their syntax. This is the way they are put together into

sentences, and how these sentences, in turn, are related to each other. Let

us take, for instance, the order of subject, verb and object in sentences like:

The dog (subject) bit (verb) the man (object).

In Modern English the normal order places the verb in a “medial” position

between the subject and the object, not only in sentences like The dog bit the

man but also in more unusual sentences like The man bit the dog. By

contrast, “verb-initial structures” like Bit the man the dog or “verb-final” ones

like The man the dog bit do not qualify as well-formed complete English

sentences.

Old English had much greater freedom of word order and the Old English

counterpart of Bit the man the dog was perfectly acceptable. The most

unmarked sentence structure, however, would have been closest to the verb-

final type The man the dog bit.

The change from Old English verb-final syntax to the modern verbal pattern

was partly shared by German, a closely related language. However, in

German the development stopped in midstream, as it were: Only those verb

forms which have personal endings appear in medial position. If the verb

consists of more than one word, the elements without personal endings stay

at the end of the sentence. To make matters even more complicated,

German verb-medial syntax is limited to main clauses; dependent clauses

are verb-final. This accounts for the curious mismatch in word order between

English and similar languages with more or less solidly medial verbs on one

hand, and German on the other (Hock H. H., Joseph B. D., 1996. 3-15).


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5.5 CHANGE RESULTING FROM LANGUAGE CONTACT

The developments illustrated so far are major linguistic changes that affect

languages under all circumstances. A number of other changes take place

only when different languages are in contact with each other.

The most common development in contact situations is a process called

BORROWING, the adaptation or adoption of words from one language to

another. Modern English is full of such borrowings e.g. curry (from India),

frankfurter (from German), bagel (Yiddish), pate (French) and many others.

Extended bilingual or multilingual contact between languages (or more

accurately, their speakers) can lead to an increase in STRUCTURAL

similarities as well. Many areas of the world are notorious for developments

of this sort, for instance the Balkans, South Asia, Southeast Asian and the

Indigenous American languages of the north-western United States and the

adjacent areas of Canada. The idea that structural elements should diffuse

from one language to another often meets with incredulity. People are

prepared to accept the existence of lexical borrowings, since these

presumably go hand in hand with the borrowing of the objects, ideas, or

concepts expressed by the words; but why would languages borrow - say, a

“passive” construction –? Presumably, they were perfectly happy without it

earlier?

Actually, structural elements usually do not diffuse through borrowing but are

the cumulative results of a different, very common phenomenon. This is the

transfer of pronunciation and other aspects of linguistic structure that leads to

the “accent” with which people speak a foreign language, even after long

years of residence in the country where the language is natively spoken.

What is especially significant is that development does not seem to be

entirely unilateral. True, we tend only to notice the accent with which the

foreigner speaks our language; but when that foreigner returns home after

many years abroad, those who remained behind will notice a certain accent

in his or her speech as well. This is often considered an affectation, and to

some extent it may be. But to a certain degree the “foreign” accent in one’s


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native language is as natural and normal as the accent in one’s second, non-

native language.

Under certain extreme conditions, language contact can lead to yet another

result. One of the most striking is the development of PIDGINS, languages

with minimal linguistic structure and, perhaps even more importantly, with

minimal vocabulary (Hock H. H., Joseph B. D., 1996. 3-15).


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6. THE HISTORICAL APPROACH OF EXPLAINING

LANGUAGE CHANGE

Historical linguistics, also called diachronic linguistics, is the study of

language change. It has five main concerns:

• to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;

• to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their

relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative

linguistics);

• to develop general theories about how and why language changes;

• to describe the history of speech communities;

• to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.

(Adopted from: en.wikipedia.org, 05/09/2010)

6.1 THE HISTORICAL MODE

Roger Lass is one of the representatives of historical linguists. Like other

historians, linguistic historians engage in two basic types of activities: we

usually call them ‘reconstruction’ or ‘explanation’. Non-linguistic historians

might use term like ‘chronicle’ or ‘plain story’ for the first, and ‘interpretation’

for the second. But the distinction is clear:

I. What happened (and/or how?)

II. Why did it happen?

There is, particularly for linguists, a hierarchical ranking:

• type (I) questions are about mere matters of fact (‘natural history’,

‘bug-collecting’);


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• type (II) questions involve general principles, matters of theoretical

interest, etc., and answering them represents a higher mode of

achievement.

They are extremely complex, and the purpose of this kind study is to

consider some of the difficulties we get into trying to answer them, and

the nature of some of the answers we get.

There are two opposed, and superficially reasonable, views of what an

explanatory historian is really ought to do. One, which we may call the

‘positivist’ or ‘unified science’ view, is that there is only one ‘real’ kind of

explanation, and that historical explanation belongs to that type: ‘’the

historical concept of explanation is subject-neutral’.

The other view is that historians of all kinds are in essence myth-makers

(Lass R., 1980, 1-7).

Roger Lass says:

“The historian wades into the mass of disorder left by the past, and by an

inspired and disciplined rooting about imposes some kind of order and

intelligibility on it, through the construction of exemplary narratives” (Lass R.,

1980, 2).

Let us paraphrase that. Historian, as said before, tries to reconstruct all the

data he had collected and does his best to find the cause for all the changes

by constructing exemplary stories. This helps him to create new order.

There are two kinds of myths, like the questions they are designed to answer:

(I) genetic myths,

(II) ) explanatory myths.

The first are the province of reconstruction and the second offer different

answers to the question why things are as they are.


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In the particular area of explaining linguistic change, there seem to be three

types of clauses generally introduced by ‘because’, which lead to three

partially distinct types of understanding:

I. Causal: we understand X because we know the (lawful) mechanism

that brought it about.

II. Functional (or Teleological): we understand X because we know what

function it serves.

III. Genetic: we understand X because X because we know what came

before it, i.e. we know how it originated (Lass R., 1980, 7-8).


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6.1.2 DEDUCTIVE-NOMOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS

Dictionaries describe the term deductive as using knowledge about things

that are generally true in order to think about and understand particular

situations or problems. The deductive-nomological model (or D-N model) is

described as a formalized view of scientific explanation in natural language. It

characterizes scientific explanations primarily as deductive arguments with at

least one natural law statement among its premises (Hornby, A. S., 2000,

398).

From the explainee’s point of view, the most satisfactory explanation is surely

the one that automatically excludes all possible competitors. The ‘best’

explanation is ‘X, because it couldn’t have been otherwise (because Y)’.

Whether this is achievable or not is a moot point, but it is clear that at least

one important ‘school’ or aggregation of philosophers of science has thought

for some time that it is, and considerable energy has been expended on

debate and discussion. The explanation type that seems to come closest to

being achievable is now familiar ‘Hempel-Oppenheim’ or ‘Deductive-

Nomological’ schema, which characterizes the physical sciences (or a

particular vision of them). It is based on deductive inference, and its name

implies, ‘laws’, and is ‘ideal’ in the sense that a well-formed explanation has

the form of a deduction, and is in principle equivalent to a prediction.

6.1.3 PROBABILISTIC EXPLANATIONS

Unfortunately, we often do not have ‘laws’ of the requisite precision to allow

us to obtain D-N- explanations, and this prevents us from attaining our ideal.

In these cases, we instead have to rely on what are called ‘statistical laws’ or

‘probabilistic laws’. There is a weaker (but similar in principle) explanatory

schema which Hempel calls a ‘probabilistic explanation’. Here the

explanandum will not follow deductively from the explanans, but rather with

‘high likelihood’.


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6.1.4 THE ASYMMETRY BETWEEN EXPLANATION AND PREDICTION

In the ideal model of explanation considered above, explanation implies

prediction: an event is not explained unless we could have predicted it.

Therefore we have an important asymmetry here. Just because an event can

be predicted, that does not mean it can be explained; while any correct

explanation involves correct prediction, not every correct prediction involves

explanation.

Perhaps the simplest kind of non-explanatory prediction is the kind that

stems from inductive generalization over ‘normal’ properties and event-

sequences in the everyday world. Thus we ‘predict’ that today’s sunset will

be followed by tomorrow’s sunrise, that physical objects will retain their

shapes, that centipedes (in well-ordered houses) will not come out when we

turn the hot-water tap, the water will not become wine without any special

intervention, etc. (Lass R., 1980, 9-13).


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6.2 HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE CHANGE

In this part of my diploma, I am going to present language change through

the eyes of historical linguist, Roger Lass.

The author of the book called Historical Linguistic and Language Change, J.

Milroy, says that Roger Lass is one of the best historical linguists in the

world, and in particular, a brilliant historian of English. Milroy also thinks that

Lass is one of the clearest and liveliest writers around, and can be trusted to

express challenging and thought-provoking views on most things.

The book ranges from the elementary to the advanced – on the one hand it

incorporates clear elementary accounts of the kind of reasoning used by

historical linguists, and on the other, there are passages of argumentation

which are quite difficult to understand, drawing in learning from a variety of

fields outside linguistics – textual criticism, logic, and evolutionary biology

being but a few of them. Lass, says Milroy, has been prominent in bringing

vitality and intellectual richness to historical linguistics (Milroy J., 1997, 177).

6.2.1 LASS’S APPROACH TO LANGUAGE CHANGE

Lass’s approach to the theory of language change is conservative in the

sense that it is based on the analysis of language as an abstract object

independent of (for example) speakers and users, and on the idea of

language change as being internal to language structure and systems. That

is in tune with what might reasonably be called the dominant tradition in

historical linguistics and opposed to some more recent approaches that

derivate from the tradition. One aspect of the conservative attitude is that it

requires very strong evidence.

Lass’s position is summed up quite well in the comment that the view

advocated is ‘structuralist’ in the specific sense that its basis is neither

‘cognitive’ nor ‘social’; communication and meaning are not at the centre of

change, or at least of major structural change.


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Thus the basis of Lass’s approach is the principle of strict historical linguistics

as it has been built up in the last two centuries. The intellectual context within

which the case is argued is that of scientific reasoning and the philosophy of

science.

In particular, Lass chooses to treat language as an object analogous to living

things, rather than a set of resources drawn on by speakers, by using

arguments based on evolutionary biology. But his position is that the two

domains, biology and linguistics, “have certain behaviours in common by

virtue of evolving”, not that languages are actually part of the biological world.

And in order to follow his argumentation, we have to accept this reasoning as

basic.

But the question here is: Do we have sufficient time-depth on language

‘evolution’ to believe that it is always appropriate to treat language as an

object, similar to living things, and the essentials of language change as a

result of it’s evolution?

Many of Lass’s metaphors are biological/anatomical. Certain residual

features in language, for instance, such as the role of voicing the fricative in

the plurals of wife, mouth are the ‘male nipples’ (says Lass) of language: they

do not have a synchronic structural reason for being there, and the reason for

their existence must be sought in earlier states (as in biology). When Lass

gets into a complex argument about some difficulty in the subject (such as

‘functionalist’ explanations), he virtually always resorts to (broadly) biological

analogies – male nipples, wisdom teeth, the anatomy/physiology of the giant

panda, femurs and pelvises, the spread of viruses and so on. Despite his

claim that biology simply gives him better terminology for describing

language change, and his view that language is treatable as a historically

evolved system, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that historical linguistics, in

so far as it is a science, is seen here as (almost) a sub-branch of evolutionary

biology. Whether it is ‘the same as’ or ‘similar to’ biology, it can be seen as a

quasi theological quibble. Biological evolution is the model for all evolutionary

arguments. If language evolution is merely analogous to biological evolution

(but not the same thing), this matters greatly, because the argument thus


20

becomes partly metaphorical, and metaphors are not literally true, says J.

Milroy. Maybe language is not the kind of thing that can be shown or that can

present knowledge to evolve, even though parallels with biology may often

be very revealing.

The counterbalance to biology and other scientific disciplines comes from the

claim that historical linguistics methodology is both linguistic and

historiographic, but with a leaning toward the latter. That is how we can

understand what he is trying to say in the next few lines:

“It is the methods that are based on analysis of historical records, but not

(necessarily) the explanatory principles of the subject” (Milroy J., 1997, 179).

Historical linguistics, as Lass emphasizes, depend on inferences drawn from

very incomplete surviving data, and these data have to be treated with

respect, sophistication, background knowledge, and critical assessment of

textual sources. Amongst other things, Lass’s work helps to restore the

subject to its proper place as a branch of history as well as linguistics.

Historical linguistics cannot be merely an appendage to synchronically-based

linguistics, and Lass has been one of those who have insisted on the

importance of the historical dimension.

J. Milroy says: “Lass is at home in the analysis of obscure medieval and

ancient texts – he knows textual scholarship and its importance in

determining the quality of the data that we have to rely on – and he is equally

at home in dazzling accounts of cognates in dozens of ancient and modern

languages. He is a historian, textual critic, comparative philologist and a

‘modern’ linguist (Milroy J., 1997, 187).”

Lass’s view of history and historian will be presented next and a justification

of the use of metaphor (cf. Male nipples, above) will also be included.

Metaphor, Lass says, “can populate history with new objects and ideas.” An

example he uses is the English Great Vowel Shift. Once Jespersen (1907)

had described it as a unitary phenomenon, scholars were able to engage in


21

debates that greatly advanced our knowledge – regardless of whether it

really is, or was, a unitary phenomenon. Metaphors are everywhere in our

subject. Sound changes are triggered; they may move in chains; they come

about though mechanisms: we often forget that these are metaphors. If they

can sometimes populate history with new ideas, they also frequently reflect

the ideologies and fashions of the times in which they were conceived, and

they can be quite misleading. But whether the GVS is metaphorical, it is

largely independent of whether it is unitary or not.

The chain metaphor is arguably dead, and there are many more striking

metaphors that are derived from the comparison of language with anatomical

structure. The most generalized metaphor of all is of course the genetic one

– the Stammbaum metaphor, and this has been wonderfully productive, says

J. Milroy.

Lass also discusses myth, and there, it seems a bit careless to claim that “the

histories of languages are, like all histories, myths.” History is the converse of

myth in that it is linear and progressive whereas myth is cyclic, and historians

like to debunk myths.

Lass provides an extended discussion of “time and change”, which gives full

weight to cyclic thinking in historical accounts; yet the attitudes to change that

are listed next, are surely mythic (change as loss, or decline, or progress),

rather than a part of historical reasoning. There is a massive literature on

myth, which tends to agree that a myth is a religious story, and once we’ve

grasped that, we don’t make mistakes about what is mythic and what isn’t.

Although historians may sometimes mix myth and history (and quasi

theological dogma, which is different again), but that doesn’t make history a

myth.

There is much that could be mythic in historical language studies and in

popular beliefs about language – myths of origin and myths of decline or fall

being the chief ones. T.S. Eliot’s opinion on the deterioration of language is

not so much an instance of ‘romantic nonsense’ (as Lass claims), as it is an

instance of the myth of decline that feeds into the elitist ideology of the time.


22

The set of beliefs that linguists may have about historical states, (e.g. that the

vowels of meat and meet were once different), does not, however, have the

character of myth. These seem to be hypotheses that are accepted as long

as they are useful in explanatory reasoning and the uniformitarian principle:

they do not appeal directly to mysteries and miracles.

Task of historians is to roll back the frontiers of myth, but as mythic thinking is

universal in human affairs, we have almost an impossible job on our hands.

But Lass repeatedly emphasizes the uniformitarian principle: ‘there are no

miracles’, whether in real time or dream-time. A proto-language is not, in

these terms, a myth – although it could be.

Lass discusses the use of written documents in reconstructing the spoken

language of the past. He talks about difficult question of accessing phonology

through spelling conversion.

Lass discusses relatedness of languages, and there is a very clear account

of the methodology used to establish filtration, using biological terminology

(which is easy enough get used to). There is a list of characteristics of

internal (‘evolutive’) change that takes account of lexical diffusion and

sociolinguistic findings. He comments that it is likely that ‘all phonological

change starts with lexical diffusion and most ends up”. Lass says that is a

matter of language contact that biological analogy breaks down. Living

creatures do not pass on acquired characteristics, but languages do – often

in some quantity (and of course Lass says this among many other things).

Any language can in principle influence any other language, and any

language can borrow virtually anything from any other language (with

preference from certain things of course). Lass points this out, and treats

contact within the framework of many internal change that he believes in,

using, inter alia, his expert knowledge of dialectology and present day

varieties of English and Afrikaans. His position is summed in the statement

that it is in the nature of the beast to change internally, it is also seemingly in

the nature of the beast to borrow, and why should internal change be more

‘necessary’ than externally induced change? Contact arguments have not

had a central place in the genetic view of language relationships and in


23

backward projections to older states. Endogenous change has normally been

the default position: if there is no strong evidence of contact, then changes

are assumed to be internal. But we cannot verify either position empirically.

We cannot observe medieval Anglo-Danish speakers dropping inflections,

but we cannot observe a wholly spontaneous internal change either, and we

might not be able to distinguish the two types if we did observe them.

Lass uses logical argument to show that certain claims about Norse influence

on English may not be correct – there are other possibilities – but he hasn’t

shown that contact explanation must in general be unacceptable. More

generally, we cannot know for certain that the endogenous explanation is

preferable in principle, because no language or dialect that we have been

able to study has ever existed in a vacuum, insulated from outside

influences.

Lass discusses further stimulating discussion of comparative and internal

reconstruction and a very wide-ranging account of ‘time and change’. He

considers the characteristics of a proto-language, which is “an abstraction

over a range of historical types” and which must “adhere to a number of basic

uniformitarian conditions”. It can of course be suggested that Indo-European,

for example, was not a language in the sense that, as reconstructed it was

never spoken by anyone in any place, and that is no more than an

aetiological abstraction (literally a “fiction”) – a necessary construct for the

purpose of expounding the relationships of attested languages. In this view of

things, there is no point in assuming that there probably were relative clauses

in Indo-European: if we cannot reconstruct them, it does not matter one way

or another because they are of no reconstructive value. This may seem a

trivial point, but it shows up a difference in ways of thinking about proto-

languages.

The uniformitarian principle is, of course, vital, and it is on this basis that

Grace (1990) has found that some Austronesian languages, although known

to be related to the others, are “aberrant” in the sense that reconstructions


24

based on them cannot fit into any kind of plausible proto-language.

‘Exemplary’ languages are those that fit.

Lass does not consider this problem of ‘aberrant’ languages, or its possible

implications for the genetic metaphor and theories of language relationship.

But clearly, a reconstructed language should be plausible language.

The careful discussion of when a change occurs deserves particular

attention, because the time-scale envisaged here is in such marked contrast

to the changes allegedly identified by sociolinguists – four centuries as

against a couple of generations. It raises the question of ‘competition’ of a

change. What does this mean? When can we say that a change includes its

diffusion from one variety to others, or is diffusion different from change? The

time-depth, in Lass’s account, of the loss of pre-consonantal /r/ in much of

British English suggests a considerable time-scale for the completion of a

change. In this case it took, according to him, over four centuries for /r/ loss

to get to the point where it can be said to be a ‘rule’ in the relevant varieties.

This is an excellent discussion, says Milroy, but we should notice that there

are still plenty of rhotic varieties, even in England. If it is complete in some

dialects, it is not complete in others; therefore, if we think of it as taking place

in a large abstraction called the ‘language’, it is not complete. So we can add

one or two more centuries to give it more time. On the other hand, if we think

of it as originating and completing in some quite small speech community

and then spreading from there, it could have occupied a short time-scale in

that community, and it may be the process of diffusion from that source that

has occupied the long time-scale. The stigmatization of intrusive [r], as in

law[r] and order, is clear to Alford who seems to think that one would expect

it primarily in ‘Cockney’. If this inverse change (which depends on loss of pre-

consonantal [r]) was established by then, [r] loss had been fully established

before that time in some dialect. Lass notes that some historians like to date

things early and others like to date things late, and that he is one of the latter.

“If you’re an early dater you may well think it is possible that [r] loss was

around for centuries in London vernaculars before anyone thought of

mentioning it” (Milroy J., 1997, 182).


25

The general question of what constitutes a change is vitally important, and

the question of internal change as against borrowing (by geographical or

social diffusion) always rears its ugly head in these matters. What is clear is

that loss of pre-consonantal [r] in English has a very long history – however

we choose to interpret that history – and we need historians such as Lass to

keep reminding us of the time-depth of change.

Lass’s favorite topic is the question of what counts as an ‘explanation’ of

language change, and whether language change in general can be explained

in any satisfactory or compelling way. The restrictions he places on what is to

be explained and that counts as an explanation are highly rigorous. After his

book on explanation, this was expected – there he stated (for example) that

he was concerned with ‘native languages of the usual type’, and not with

pidgins and creoles – and many side-comments here he makes it clear that

he is placing a number of restrictions of an essentially traditional kind on what

counts as our explanandum. Generally, speakers are excluded from the

show: what we have to explain is entirely language-internal and dissociated

from speakers. Lass’s position is clear in the following citation from a footnote

from his book.

[…] for certain purposes we don’t gain anything by invoking [speakers]

(whatever their role happens to be), and in fact muddy the waters. Another

way of putting this is that there are at least two complementary kinds of

historical linguistics: ‘structural’ and ‘psychosocial’, say, and this book is

about the first kind, which still remains privileged. Even if it can’t (yet?) be

understood (in terms of the second), it forms a coherent descriptive domain

(Milroy J., 1997, 184).

This is a careful statement, but it has the effect of legitimizing one kind of

inquiry, says J. Milroy, (‘privileged’ because it has developed rigorous

techniques), and appearing to judge other branches of inquiry in terms of the

privileged branch. If unprivileged branches appear to violate some of the

‘privileged’ principles of questions their findings, it is possible to dismiss them


26

as not ‘legitimate’. If you are playing for one side in the game, you are not

really entitled to blow the referee’s whistle, as Lass appears to do in the last

statement. It seems that Lass attacks, or critically judges ‘hermeneutic’ and

social approaches, with a particularly strong attack on ‘functional’

explanations for language change, and much of what Lass says is, within the

restrictions that he has laid down, highly logical and, essentially right. It is

also true that language changes are essentially arbitrary and contingent, and

that teleological notions (speakers change language on purpose, or language

changes because of an inevitable drift towards some future desired state) are

not demonstrably true on the basis of any firm knowledge or logical

reasoning and not necessarily relevant to argument about change. One of

the least satisfactory functional arguments in English historical linguistics is

the argument that the Old English masculine, feminine and plural personal

pronouns had become so similar that Middle English was forced to adopt the

‘new’ pronoun she, they to maintain the gender and number distinctions.

There is no proof that the masculine and feminine had actually merged in any

variety, and that there were inflections in OE that distinguished singular from

plural. Arguments that depend on maintenance of ‘functional’ grammatical or

semantic differences are, as Lass says, unsatisfactory. Arguments based on

idealized speakers are in these cases also unsatisfactory, as systematic

observation suggests that real speakers simply do not care much about

homophony and loss of grammatical distinctions. Lass is defending a

language-internal account of language change, and honestly saying that in

these terms, which he feels are the right ones, we do not know all the

answers, but we will not get the answers in any other way. Some of the

answers, or partial answers, that have been suggested are not acceptable to

him – often because he thinks they are logically flawed. Indeed, Lass is so

driven in his desire to show that certain approaches are not valid (and so

committed to an evolutionary perspective) that occasionally he goes too far

and, in Milroy’s view, falls into error himself.

Let us make two points in particular. First, in opposing “the mind shunts

purposeless variety (MSPV)”- principle espoused by what he calls


27

‘hermeneutic’ commentators such as Anttila (1989) - he argues against the

view that the history of English has been one of continuous morphological

simplification. He says:

[…] over some 500 years or so (c 1550-1650), there were two periods where

the general trend in the strong verb was an enormous proliferation of patterns

and variants more complex than was the case in Old English (Milroy J., 1997,

186).

It seems that it is possible to argue this only if we allow ‘proliferation of

variants’ meaning, multiplying of variants, to be the same thing as

morphological complexity. OE is by and large passed down to us in a

relatively standardized literary form in which alternatives possibly existing in

spoken language are suppressed. ME is passed down in a proliferation of

different dialects, many of which probably come closer to the spoken

vernaculars than OE normally did. There is much (apparently purposeless)

alternation within single texts. In fact, this superficial proliferation of

alternatives is entirely characteristic of present-day urban varieties (in which

the ancient morphology has of course been drastically reduced). While Lass

is right to argue that we must not invoke the MSPV principle uncritically, it

also seems to be true that speakers can and do use the alternants available

to them in a socially purposeful way, and we are surely entitled to consider

this seriously (whether this has anything to do with linguistic change is a

matter for further argument).

Next I will present Lass’s criticism of the use of quantification and statistics as

alleged underpinning for claims about social factors in language change. A

speech community in the Labovian method is not population of speakers (as

Lass suggests on p.362): “It is a population of linguistic variants and is

presented as such in the graphs and diagrams sociolinguistics. Speakers are

used as access points to the linguistic variants. The idea that the locus of

language is the single speaker is not characteristic of quantitative

sociolinguistics.” Therefore, Lass’s discussion of mistaken views of the

speaker’s role seems to be quite right and it is not convincing that the


28

speaker/hearer should be kept out of the argument (Milroy J., 1997, 178-

189).


29

6.3 ON THE ROLE OF THE SPEAKER IN LANGUAGE CHANGE

6.3.1 INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS IN LANGUAGE CHANGE

It has been assumed that languages change within themselves as a part of

their nature as languages. The external agency of speaker/listeners and the

influence of society on language change have tended to be seen as

secondary and sometimes, as not relevant at all. Roger Lass, as a historical

linguist, has been a prominent, but balanced, defender of the traditional view.

He has correctly pointed out that it had been traditionally assumed that it is

language that changes, not necessarily speakers who change their

languages. More recently, he has commented that language change is not

something that speakers do to their language, and that endogenous change

is a part of the nature of the beast. He has also largely correctly suggested in

various publications that speaker-based explanations have been

unsatisfactory because speakers are influenced by disembodied abstractions

and they can be made to ‘do’ almost anything the researcher wants them to.

Much more generally, however, the idea of endogenous or internally

triggered change is so deeply embedded in our subject that it feeds into what

can be called the discourse of historical linguistics. In this discourse,

individual languages are typically presented as changing within themselves

rather than being changed through the agency of speaker/listeners. The

language user is not incorporated into the discourse.

Since all languages change, it was natural to assume that endogenous

change is in the nature of the beast and one has to seek explanations

preferentially from within the properties of language. The priority of

endogenous explanation was greatly encouraged by the rise of comparative

linguistics in the nineteenth century, as this provided a model of languages

changing within themselves and either becoming other languages in the

course of time, or giving birth to other languages in and of their own nature,

with no central role for other factors, such as language contact. For clarity we

can break up this assumption of endogenous change into four related parts:


30

1. Change originates within ‘language’ as phenomenon;

2. change takes place within single languages unaffected by other

languages;

3. change is more satisfactory explained internally than externally;

4. change is not necessarily triggered by speakers or through language

contact.

What we need to notice here is that these views do not depend on observed

fact, because no one can directly observe the diachronic process of linguistic

change. Rather, they depend on a hypothesis that lies behind much of the

reasoning of historical linguistics – the hypothesis that language is the kind of

abstract object that can change within itself or perhaps bring about change

within itself. Although it is true that Neogrammarians paid lip-service to the

importance of speaker, they are chiefly remembered for the idea of

exceptionless sound laws and the claim that sound change is phonetically

gradual. Both of these positions are expressed as language-internal: in the

discourse, the abstraction ‘language’ is subject to laws, and it is languages

that change phonetically gradually – not speakers who change languages

phonetically gradually.

The assumption of endogeny, being generally the preferred hypothesis,

functions in practice as the default hypothesis. Thus, if some particular

change in history cannot be shown to have been initiated through language

or dialect contact involving speakers, then it has been traditionally presented

as endogenous, happening without obvious cause. Usually, we do not know

all the relevant facts, and this default position is partly the consequence of

having insufficient data from the past to determine whether the change

concerned was endogenous or externally induced or both: endogeny is

requiring less argumentation, and what Lass has called the more

parsimonious, easier, solution to the problem.

It is also the most accessible solution because linguistic facts from the past

may be accessible or reconstructable when social facts are not. We cannot,


31

for example, say much about the social embedding of the first Germanic

Consonant Shift. Yet, the simpler and most accessible solution may not

always be the right solution, and it does not follow from these points that, in

general, we do not need social and/or cognitive insights for the best

explanation possible. The prioritising of endogeny has lead to extremely

important insights into language change: it may be thought to have stood to

test of time and allowed historical linguistics to claim the status of science.

But we also have to notice that in the twentieth century this point of view has

been sanctified by the Saussurean internal/external dichotomy and the

exclusion of external descriptions from linguistics.

As historical databases are relatively impoverished, we might expect the

newer discipline of quantitative sociolinguistics on the matter. After all, it has

access to rich and plentiful data. If it is possible to detect changes in

progress, it should therefore be possible to examine them in great detail. But

again, it seems that the hypothesis of endogenous change cannot be verified

or falsified by these methods either. An important stumbling block is the fact

that when language in use is observed by empirical methods, social factors

are also observed at the same time, and language use in intricately –

perhaps inextricably – bound up with these social factors. The hypothesis

cannot be directly tested by laboratory methods either (although some have

tried this) because language change is not synchronic and does not take

place in laboratories. Neither can it be tested by studies. A speech

community in which it could be convincingly tested does not exist in real

world and further, no language or variety of language, ever exists in a

vacuum in which speakers of other languages, or other varieties, have had

absolutely no contact with the variety concerned. Languages in use do not

get sealed up in airtight containers. Similarly, there is no known society that

has no social and linguistic differentiation within it, and in which language

variation is never indexical of social differences. To test the hypothesis wholly

empirically, we would have to devise an experiment in which a community

with no social differences and homogenous speech is totally isolated from

other communities for perhaps a century, and then examine it for changes.


32

Yet, even if this were possible, we still might not be able to verify the reality of

endogenous change. Therefore, in view of all these things, we may

reasonably say that it is in the nature of language to resist satisfactory

explanations of how it can change within itself.

The idea that language changes independently of speakers and society is, it

seems, inference based, based on data comparison – not on direct

observation or identification of change. It also happens, however, that this

view is much encouraged by certain axiomatic positions, including the

genetic metaphor of language descent and the Saussurean doctrine

mentioned above – the methodological separation of internal from external

explanations and the exclusion of the latter from language theorising. These

are not trivial matters, and they have had the effect of privileging the doctrine

of independent, endogenous, internally triggered linguistic change within

individual languages, which are refilled as internally coherent structures

independent of other languages (Milroy, 2003, p. 143 – 150).

6.3.2 ACTUATION

Ultimately we are concerned with solving the actuation problem or at least

making progress in understanding it, and there is a serious empirical difficulty

with this also. We cannot observe an innovation – more correctly, we cannot

differentiate observed innovations that do not lead to linguistic changes – but

we have a great deal of evidence that suggests that some types of change

are more likely to happen and more frequent than others. One type of

frequent change arises from assimilation to place of articulation: for example,

velar consonants are frequently fronted in the environment of front vowels.

The question of causation naturally arises here.

The change seems to be ‘natural’ and frequently attested, and many linguists

seem to be quite happy to say that palatalisation of velars before front vowels

took place in some dialects because the front position of the following vowel

influenced the velar (back) consonant and moved it forward. It is true that this

is not enough for an internally based explanation because it does not explain


33

why the front vowel did not back the position of the preceding velar, but

sidestepping this for the moment, we have also noticed a difficulty arising

from the standard account of the actuation problem. The difficulty is that

completed linguistic changes which arose from palatalisation have taken

place at particular time, and not at other times at billions of moments

throughout the history when they could just as readily have taken place for

exactly the same articulatory reason.

Similarly, nasalisation of vowels before nasal consonants, or any one of other

the most common types of synchronic variation, can be present in uses of

language at virtually any time. Language is inherently, intrinsically variable.

That seems to be the key question for historical linguistics, and it implies that

many linguists who have pronounced on language have not actually been

talking about a change. They have often satisfactory shown how an

innovation can come about, but they have not explained how it can become

embedded in language as a change at some times and places, but remain

only a synchronic variant at others.

As an example, let us consider nasalisation of vowels. We can easily notice

that this is quite common in English, and it is audible in most varieties in the

environment of a following nasal consonant, and also in some varieties

elsewhere. Sometimes, in casual styles in certain environments, the vowel is

nasalised, and the nasal consonant is also deleted. In expressions like ‘I

don’t remember’, ‘I can’t remember’, negative auxiliaries are frequently

reduced to stop consonant + nasalised vowel – glottal stop: there is no [n]

and no[t]. To notice, that this quite regularly happens, might be considered

illuminating in explaining the widespread nasalisation in other languages

such as French, in which the vowel was historically nasalised and the nasal

consonant (with, possibly, a following consonant) deleted, exactly as it

variably is in English can’t and don’t.

What we have not explained, however, is why the nasalisation represents a

set of completed linguistic changes in French, but remains only a variant in

English.


34

It is doubtful if we will ever be able to explain this difference purely language-

internally, however many language-internal arguments we may produce, it

seems that we also require language-external information to explain why the

French changes took place at the times and places that they did, and not at

other times and places. As this lies so deep in history, however, we may

never collect sufficient information to explain exactly how a synchronic

variant became a diachronic change.

In practice, linguists who have worked language-internally have had to make

reference to external matters, but often without sufficient attention to the

analysis of these external matters – matters that ultimately depend on a

distinction being drawn between the speaker and the system, as Milroy

thinks, and which involve social matters, among others. If we consider how

Bloomfield’s explanation of the abruptness of the change from alveolar to

uvular [r] in north-west Europe falls down in this way. ‘Aside from its spread

by borrowing’, Bloomfield (1933) says, ‘[this] could only have originated as a

sudden replacement of one trill by another.’ The ‘sudden replacement’ is of

course a synchronic innovation, not (yet) a change, and the exclusion of

‘change by borrowing’ does not make sense in the context, because each

speaker’s - act of ‘borrowing’ must have involved the same ‘sudden

replacement’ as the putative original one. Borrowing must be speaker-based

(or user-based), and the ‘change’ itself must have involved what Bloomfield

calls ‘borrowing’. The axioms of the subject, however, and hence its

discourse, required Bloomfield to separate sound change from borrowing: at

that time they were by definition distinct phenomena that could not be

associated.

The distinction between innovation and change seems to help in clarifying

this variant of the actuation problem. In this account, speaker innovations

involving, for example, vowel nasalisation by speakers or the perception of

nasalised vowels by listeners would take place repeatedly in speaker usage

at any time largely below the level of conscious speaker awareness, but

innovation would feed into a language change only at a particular time. This

would be a linguistic change in the sense that future generations would use a


35

nasalised vowel where there had formerly been a vowel + nasal consonant,

and would not insert the nasal consonant in the relevant environments. Here,

linguistic change (change in the system) is defined as a separate issue from

speaker-based innovation, and the problem becomes one of explaining how

innovations that are constantly taking place feed into the system only at

particular times and places.

The actuation problem is the ultimate because problem, from which all

‘because’ statements ultimately derive. When linguists make statements

about velars being fronted in front environments and describe the change as

conditioned, they are making because statements, even if they claim that

they are not interested in the actual problem. Within traditional historical

linguistics, the conditioning environment – which is a language-internal

environment and not a situational social environment – is the cause of the

sound change. Thus, Verner’s Law voicing in Germanic is explained by

German accent shift: If accent shift had not happened, VL voicing would not

have happened; therefore there is some form of casual relationship between

accent shift and VL voicing, even if there were other factors involved that are

now irrecoverable. Thus, endogenous explanations are in themselves

proposed solutions to the actuation problem. The position we are arguing

here is that they may not be sufficient. Linguistic change is multi-causal and

the etiology, the study of change may include social, communicative and

cognitive, as well as linguistic, factors. Thus – seemingly paradoxically – it

happens that, in order to define those aspects of change that are indeed

endogenous, we need to specify much more clearly that we have to date

what precisely are the exogenous factors from which they are separated, and

these include the role of the speaker/listener in innovation and diffusion of

innovations. It seems that we need to clarify what counted as internal or

external more carefully and consistently than we have up to now, and to

subject the internal/external dichotomy to more critical scrutiny (Milroy J.,

2003, p. 143 – 156).


36

6.4 SPEAKERS CHANGE THEIR LANGUAGE

6.4.1 AN EXAMPLE OF SOCIALLY TRIGGERED CHANGE

I will present a research on African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in

Detroit, carried out by Bridget Anderson and Lesley Milroy (Anderson and

Milroy 1999). It is important to remember here that even within

sociolinguistics it has been repeatedly claimed that AAVE is invariant

throughout three million square miles of territory. These results show that

there is variation in AAVE. Underlying the interpretation of these results is the

view that has been expressed since 1980 or before, which says that to

understand how linguistic changes are implemented, we need to take full

account of the forces in society which encourage language maintenance or

resistance to change. The traditional discourse has been entirely about

change and not about maintenance; matters such as language focusing,

dialect levelling and language standardisation are not part of the central

discourse of historical linguistics (in that discourse, changes take place over

time in single continuous strands of development). Associated with the social

side of the question are the identity functions of language and the indexical

meaning of variants within social groups. To the extent that social function

remain the same – to the extent that there is little or no identity change – the

variants will retain their functions as markers of the group, and change from

outside the group will be resisted. This study concerns the

monophthongisation of the diphthong in e.g. right, wide in AAVE in inner-city

Detroit.

Monopthongisation of /ai/ is a well-known and well-researched characteristic

of Southern American English speech – both black and white. It is a very

salient geographical marker, and its history suggests that for at least a

century /ai/ has been monopthongized in following voiced contexts in both

white and black speech. Monopthongisation before voiceless obstruents as in

right life, however, is more recent and is not generally found among southern

black speakers (Wolfram and Schilling-Estes 1998). For white speakers,


37

however, the internal linguistics diffusion of the vowel change has worked

through the voiced environments and has finally encompassed the voiced

ones, much in the manner of C.J. Bailey’s ‘Wave Model’ (1973). The result is

that any threatened split in the system that might have taken place has been

cancelled, and the prior phonemic structure is maintained, with

monophthongal rather than diphthongal pronunciation throughout.

Retrospectively, it appears as an unconditional change: in reality it was

always subject to condition.

Therefore, changes in history that appear retrospectively to have been

unconditional may in fact have been subject to internal conditioning during

the process of change, and also to social conditioning. This relative

resistance of voiceless obstruent environments to change is attested

elsewhere in English: it is a prominent feature of Belfast English, where

phonemic splits in /a/ and /e/ in the fast have actually resulted from

resistance to change in the voiceless stop environment (J. Milroy 1981).

Failure of monophthomgisation of /ai/ in (especially) voiceless stop

environments is also attested in the language of North England where

monophthongisation is otherwise widely attested. What is important here,

however, is that AAVE speakers in the south have not shared the change

before voiceless obstruents. Southern AAVE is reported to retain the

diphthong in items of the type right, life and in this respect it is differentiated

from southern white English.

A purely linguistic description of the change toward monophthongisation

would state that the change has been spreading through voiced

environments and is now reaching the voiceless ones, and general

tendencies of ‘drift’ of ‘waves’ of change or ‘natural’ change might be argued

for as endogenous phenomena. We can hardly ignore the fact that the

pattern is sharply socially differentiated, in a social interpretation that

recognises the small linguistic differences can be sized on by social groups

as indexical and emblematic, the retention of the diphthong is indicative of

belonging to a group and differentiation of southern AAVE speakers from


38

southern white speakers. This is a case of language maintenance of exactly

the same socially functional kind that we studied in Belfast.

In the current story, however, there is clear evidence that inner-city Detroit

AAVE speakers, in contrast to southern AAVE speakers, are adopting the

monophthong that they have hitherto resisted in voiceless obstruent

environments. Table on page 40 shows the generational progression of the

change.

The cells are uneven in numbers (there are 14 speakers in one of them), but

the trend is clear. There is reversal of preference for the monophthonging

between the older and younger age groups. There is also evidence that

Detroit AAVE speakers are adopting other features of southern white English

that they seem to have resisted in the south (for example, fronting of /u:/ in

e.g., boot). Thus, these southern changes are happening in the north. But

what is interesting here is that there is a population of southern white

speakers in Detroit also, and they are monophthongising, they are not

maintaining the symbolic differences that were socially functional in the south

in differentiation from white southerners. Their social and geographical

situation has changed, and the indexical functions of language differentiation

have also changed. What is important now is no longer differentiation from

southern white groups, but differentiation from northern speakers. Ultimately,

the reasons for these particular configurations of change.

Diphthongal /ai/ is rather interesting in this aspect, as Michigan speakers

share the phenomenon known as Canadian Raising to a great extent, and

the centralised nucleus in voiceless obstruent environments is extremely

salient. The vowel is most definitely a diphthong, and the differentiation from

the low vowel mnophthong could hardly be clearer. The indexical situation

has changed. It is no longer important that the AAVE speakers should

differentiate themselves from southern white speakers. The important out-

group now is the northern majority, and participation in this last stage of

southern shift – hitherto resisted – is now allowed, assuming the function of

an identity marker in terms of the ethnic and social make-up of a northern

city. In endogenous terms, all that we could say is that the long-term change


39

toward monophohongisation is going towards completion. But the social

information here enables us to say much more.

Of course it might not have happened in that way. The change toward

monophthongisation might never have happened at all, but – more relevant

here – it might have failed to spread the voiceless obstruent environment,

and a phonemic split would have ensued For this to happen, however, the

argument here is that there would have had to be a configuration of socially

based identity factors that favoured a particular outcome. The history of the

English vowel system is full of splits, mergers and changes that have halted

at some point, and residues that are not easy to explain in purely linguistic

terms. The most famous of these are the words great, break and steak in

mainstream British and American English, which have been stabilised in the

/e:/ class rather than the /i:/ class, but there are many other intransigent

cases. Although the social conditions of these changes are not directly

recoverable or recoverable only in very general terms, it seems likely that

changes in social conditions led to the circumstances in which these

configurations of variants were stabilised in particular phoneme classes.

Thus, it may have been social, rather than internal linguistics, factors that

resulted in phonologically unpredictable residues of the kind mentioned

(Milroy J., 2003, p. 143 – 156).


40

Table 1: Detroit AAVE /ai/ monophthongisation before voiceless obstruent by

the age group (F. Female; M: male)

a: Ai: % monophthong

1 M (age 79) 0 14 0

2 F (60-80) 38 14

2 m (25-45) 8 89

14 F (20-40) 65 76

4 M (14-17) 13 75

4 F (14-17) 4 87

(Milroy J., 2003, p. 143 – 156)


41

6.5 THE DISCOURSE OF ENDOGENY – DOES LANGUAGE CHANGE

ITSELF?

Historical linguists suggest that there are two complementary kinds of

historical linguistics:

• structural

• psychological

The first kind is being privileged. It is true that the basis of the subject is

structural – it aims to explain how language structures and systems change,

and not exclusively how cognitive and social factors (relating to speakers)

change them. It is perhaps relevant, though, that Lass here names the

subject as historical linguistics and not the study of linguistics change: seen

as subject these two could be somewhat different and this may make a

difference to the kind of question we ask about them. The methodology of

traditional historical linguistics did not primarily address a theory of language

change, and, at the risk of some over-simplification, we may say that it asked

the question: ‘How do we compare states of language in the past with a view

of reconstructing even more ancient states?’ It was at first about a discovery,

not theory, and was explicitly devoted to comparative reconstruction of past

structural states of language. Sociolinguistics methodology remains

comparative, in that language of different social groups is compared, and

real-time data may be used comparatively to help to determine what changes

are in progress, but the immediate focus is exclusively on how and why

particular linguistic change takes place and not on how languages have

changed through history. That is to say that the focus is on a dynamic

process rather than on the products of change in the past and the

reconstruction of such products. We may rephrase the overriding aim as:

‘How do we describe the process of linguistic change?’ But notice that we

cannot actually observe this process: we cannot observe language change in

progress (even though it is sometimes claimed that we can). This is because

we cannot observe dynamic processes directly in abstract objects: we can


42

observe the products of change, as historical linguists always have. The

claim can therefore be rephrased as a claim that we can detect change in

progress in synchronic states by comparing outputs or products of variation

in present-day states of language. Here non-random nature of variation is

crucial.

Milroy says it should also be noticed that quantitative sociolinguistics

remains, for the most part, structuralist. Perhaps it should not be, but it is.

The methodology is in many ways an outgrowth of mid-twentieth century

structuralism and is focused on phenomena usually internal to languages –

phonological mergers, splits and chain shifts. It is particularly devoted to

gaining access to variation in language by studying the speech of a real

speaker, and it is claimed that much of this variation is in some way

structured and regular within language systems – that some form of

organisation lies behind the superficially unpredictable patterns of variation.

The graphs and diagrams that are used to display distribution of variants

within language systems: speakers are the access points to the system and

not in themselves the main object of inquiry. Thus, the aims of quantitative

sociolinguistics are just as intra-linguistic as any other approach. They do,

however, contemplate social input to change. According to Labov, a change

arising from social factors will feed into the system with internal structural

consequences, e.g. the implementation of a phenomenon called a chain shift.

Chain shift is a phenomenon in which several sounds move stepwise along a

phonetic scale. The sounds involved in a chain shift can be ordered into a

"chain" in such a way that, after the change is complete, each phoneme ends

up sounding like what the phoneme before it in the chain sounded like before

the change.

This is language-internal structuralism and it is hard to draw the line between

socially triggered changes and internal structural ones. But before 1960s,

there was little or no systematic study of the possible role of speakers in

social interaction as initiators or carriers of change, and it is reasonable to

hope that sociolinguistic studies may help us to understand how language

systems move from one state to another. Change in language is change in


43

linguistic systems, not change in speakers. But it is possible that processes

of systemic change may be detectable by comparative methods in

communities of speakers through study of innovation and diffusion of

changes in speaker/listener interaction, and to that extent, it can be

described as social. One thing that was demonstrated is that linguistic

change is socially gradual and the Neogrammarian axiom that sound change

is phonetically gradual may be reinterpreted or modified in these terms.

As it is noticeable, over the last two centuries historical linguistics has

developed a discourse by means of which its findings and theories are

communicated. This discourse is based on assumption about monolinear

development in single languages, the capability of a particular language to

become another language, and quasi-genetic relationship to sister

languages. Social and cognitive factors are largely excluded from the

discourse, and the sparseness of the historical data-base further encourages

this. It may be that sociolinguistic and speaker-based approaches, being

based on synchronic data-bases, need to be expressed in a subtly different

kind of discourse derived from a partly different set of underlying axioms.

One characteristic of a discourse is that certain underlying assumptions are

shared by the participants and not questioned: they are not immediately

available for critical scrutiny and may not be always make sense to outsiders.

The discourse of historical linguistics is still very much set in traditional

mould, in which languages bring about changes within themselves, without

the immediate agency of language users. Examples are easy to find.

Let us take the example how velars front to palatals. Actually, velars cannot

do anything except be themselves as products of the organs of speech. It is

not literally true that they cab front or do anything else – it is speakers who

can move their tongues from one position to another – but such an

expression is accepted as a part of discourse. But how can velar become

anything else?

Similarly, how can Old English [a:] become Early Modern English [o:]? How

can one sound become a different sound? Sound changes are not literally


44

changes of sound: they are structural correspondences between one sound

and another sound that appears in its place at a later date.

The discourse of endogeny can lead us into great difficulties when we talk

about speaker-based assumptions without acknowledging them.

In this next quotation, the image suggested is that of language which

changes in order to make itself les liable to ambiguity:

‘Good heavens!,’ says the language. ‘I am becoming ambiguous. It’s better

using my prepositions to make myself clearer!’

(Milroy, 2003, p. 151)

What is important is that the agency in this discourse is the language, and

not the speakers of the language. It is the language, not the speaker that

carries out the repair or the therapy. Putting right some presumed damage

that has come about through language change, and the appeal here to

functional load is again characteristic – as it also is in arguments about the

avoidance of phonological merger. It seems illogical to argue about function

in this way in a discourse that elevates the language and not the speaker to

prominence, because ambiguities that are dysfunctional must surely arise the

speaker usage (pragmatic ambiguity is a speaker/listener phenomenon) and

can only be found to be dysfunctional when speakers misunderstands them.

But it is the language-based mode of the discourse here that interests us.

We can think here that when linguists make statements like this, they must

really have in mind the speaker of the language, but choose to put it in terms

of the language – as a kind of shorthand that stands for ‘speakers of the

language’. That is why some linguists call it a discourse. Perhaps we are

intended to assume that it was really the speakers who wanted, for example,

to resolve an ambiguity. Some historical linguists do appear to mean that it

was indeed the language that carried out the repairs and modifications.

It is difficult to imagine that an abstract object like language attempts to repair

a malfunction in itself or allows the malfunction to come about in the first

place. It is also very difficult to see how speakers can be adduced in certain


45

kinds of functional argument. Perhaps the speakers, and not the language,

carried out the repair of ambiguities arising from the merger of three cases.

Plausible – but not as straightforward as it appears, because an appeal to

speakers in cases of what are described as functional changes can stir up a

hornet’s nest of difficulty. There is no reliable evidence that speakers are

much bothered by structural or lexical ambiguities, as the situational context

of conversation virtually always resolves any theoretical ambiguity that may

be present. When it doesn’t, strategies of conversational repair are always

available: thus, we might speculate that the speakers of Latin supplied

prepositions in acts of conversational repair – not language repair, in

everyday discourse (Milroy, 2003, p. 143 – 156).

6.5.1 CONVERSATION ERASES AMBIGUITY

Chomsky had the assumption that technically structural ambiguities are

usually immediately and unconsciously disambiguated by conversationalists,

and so they do not matter very much. In the practical conduct of

conversations in monolingual situations, structural ambiguity may be

common, but pragmatic ambiguity is rare. Speakers do not normally have

problems with my aunt’s murder and flying planes can be dangerous,

because these structurally ambiguous sequences virtually always occur in

contexts that disambiguate them. Nor – for the same reason – do speakers

commonly have problems with wholesale mergers of vowels that were at one

dime distinct (Milroy, 2003, p. 143 – 156).

Conversation analysts are constantly demonstrating how conversationalists

use strategies for repairing miscomprehensions when they occur. In the light

of what we know about speakers’ ability to manage conversations,

arguments, for example, about whether language practise therapy seem to

me meaningless, and this is because of the presuppositions of the discourse

within which these arguments are carried out. Why should there ever be a

time in which, as a result of merger, rule loss etc., the language functions so


46

inadequately that it must somehow be repaired? Can we confidently specify

such a time in the history of English, for example? If so, when exactly was

this time? Certain socio-political events that lead to massive language

contact and code-mixing may indeed cause difficulties for speakers in

massive language contact, and code-mixing may indeed cause difficulties for

speakers in making themselves understood in day-to-day matters and may

lead to substantial linguistic changes (despite speakers but also because of

them). But such matters are airily ignored my certain theorists: for them

language change is monolingual and unidirectional, and, except for the

occasional re-setting of a parameter, continuous. Language contact is

excluded, and endogenous explanations are preferred, Whatever the

imperfections of a language may be at any or all times, why – in a discourse

that assumes unidirectional and continuous descent of languages – can it not

be assumed that language users make sure that language resources always

remain adequate for the purposes of carrying out conversations? Where are

these dysfunctional monolingual states that we hear so much about?

Of course, it is not true that all language situations are monolingual or that

language descent is always unidirectional or continuous. There are

population movements, and there is language and dialect contact, which is

contact between speakers or users of different language and dialects. People

have to make adjustments in such situations, and important language

changes seem to have been triggered because of this necessity. But

speakers are not interested in bringing about language change for its own

sake. They are more interested in resisting changes. As for the argument in

which languages bring about changes within themselves, it is difficult to

demonstrate that speakers look after the language that they use. However, it

is more plausible to assume that they do something like this than to assume

that languages allow themselves to generate and then carry out acts of self-

medication. However speculative it may seem, it is more plausible to

assume, in the Latin example discussed at the beginning of this part of the


47

diploma paper, that it was the speaker (and perhaps writers), rather than the

language, who extended its use (Milroy, 2003, p. 143 – 156).


48

7. DO LANGUAGES CHANGE LIKE LIVING ORGANISMS?

In this part of my diploma paper I am going to present different opinions on

language and its changes as living organism.

The view of Bopp (1827), a German linguist who is known for his extensive

comparative work on Indo-European languages, is that languages must be

seen “as organic natural bodies that form themselves according to definite

laws, develop carrying in themselves an internal life- principle, and gradually

die off” (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 6).

In this, Bopp followed Friedrich von Schegel’s treatment of Sanskrit, whose

own positive use of “organic” – roughly meaning “innately integrated but able

to develop” – was due less to his admiration for comparative anatomy than it

was to his familiarity with German romantics, like Herder, and the natural

philosopher von Schelling. Going even further, August Schleicher advocated

treating linguistics as literally a branch of biology parallel to botany and

zoology:

“Languages are natural organisms which, without being determinable by

human will, came into being, grew and developed according to definite laws,

and now, in turn, age and die of; they too, characteristically possess that

series of manifestations which tends to be understood under the rubric “life”.

Glottics, the science of language, is therefore a natural science, in total and

in general, its method is the same as that of the other natural sciences.”

(Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 6)

Yet one immediately wonders how such pioneering figures of historical

linguistics could overlook the ineluctable fact that, that was already pointed

out by Gaston Paris (1868) in an early critique:


49

All of these words (organism, be born, grow ..., age and die) are applicable

only to individual animal life ... Even if it is legitimate to use metaphors of this

sort in linguistics, it is necessary to guard against being fooled by them. The

development of language does not have its causes in language itself, but

rather in the physiological generalization of human nature ... Anyone who

fails to keep in mind this fundamental rule falls into obvious confusions.


De Saussure (1916) reacted to the organicism of Bopp and Schleicher in a

rather similar style. De Saussure’s words were:

“The right conclusion was all the more likely to elude these comparativists

because they looked upon the development of languages much as naturalist

might look upon the growth of two plants.”


But Bonfante (1946) expressed matters even more trenchantly:

“Languages are historical creations, not vegetables.”


While we are here constrained to extreme brevity, present-day diachronicans

can draw an important moral regarding cross-disciplinary analogies from the

organicism of many nineteenth-century linguistics. It is certainly the case that,

during von Schledel’s and Bopp’s studies in Paris, and during the period of

their early writings on language through such natural sciences as biology,

palaeontology, and geology were quite well established and abounded with

lawlike generalizations, whereas such social sciences as psychology and

sociology either had not yet been founded or were still in their infancy. Von

Schlegel’s and Bopp’s formative experiences at this time were thus set

against a general backdrop which included the wide renown and respect

accorded to, for example: Cuvier’s principle de correlation des forms, usually

translated as principle of the correlation of parts. It stressed the


50

interdependence of all parts of an organism and thus functioned as both to

guide and to constrain reconstructions of prehistoric creatures. Thus it is not

surprising that, lacking recourse to any comparability scientific theory of

brain, mind, personality, community, or the like, such linguists as von

Schlegel, Bopp and Schleicher were irresistibly tempted to adopt an

organismal (or organismic) approach when they found lawlike

correspondences across languages (or across stages of one language) and

began to engage in historical reconstruction (Richard D. Janda, Brian D.

Joseph, 2003, 9).

This trend can be seen as growing from a variation on a corollary of Stent’s

assertion that a scientific discovery will be premature in effect unless it is

“appreciated in its day” (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 9).

In this context, for something to lack appreciation does not mean that it was

“unnoticed ... or even ... not considered important,” (Richard D. Janda, Brian

D. Joseph, 2003, 9) but instead that scientists “did not seem to be able to do

much with it or build on it,” (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 9)

so that the discovery “had virtually no effect on the general discourse”

(Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 9) of its discipline, since its

implications could not be “connected by a series of simple logical steps to

canonical ... knowledge” (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 9).

In the case at hand, the relevant corollary is that scholars tend to interpret

and publicize their discoveries in ways which allow connections with the

general discourse and canonical knowledge of their discipline. More

particularly, however, scholars in a very new field – one where canons of

discourse and knowledge still have not solidified or perhaps even arisen yet –

are tempted to adopt the discourse and canons of more established

disciplines, and it is this step that nineteenth-century organicist

diachronicians of language like von Schlegel, Bopp, and Schleicher seem to

have taken. Seen in this light, their actions appear understandable and even

reasonable.


51

What remains rather astonishing, though, is the fact that, even after the

scientific grounding of psychology and sociology later in the nineteenth

century, a surprising number of linguists maintained an organicist approach

to language. As documented in detail by Desmet (1996), a “naturalist

linguists” who was pursued in France from approximately 1867 to 1922 by a

substantial body of scholars associated with the Ecole d’anthropologie and

the Societe d’anthropologie de Paris, publishing especially in the Bulletins

and Memories on the latter in the Revie d’anthropologie or L’homme, and the

Revie de linguistique et de philogie compare (RdLPC), a journal which they

founded and dominated. Thus at the same time as Societe de linguistique de

Paris continued to enforce its ban on discussion concerning the origins of

languages, a cornucopia of lectures, articles, and even books on issues

connected with the birth and death of languages as viewed from an organical

perspective followed from the pens of such now little-known scholars as

Chavee, Hovelacque, de la Calle, Zabrowski, Girard, da Rialle, Lefere,

Regnaud, Adam and Vinson (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 8-9).

Still, while this moment itself died out in France, one can still document

occasional instances of explicitly organicist attitudes toward a language and

language change within the scholarly literature of the last decade of the

twentieth century on into the first decade of the twenty-first. Yet this is an era

when the increasing solidity and number of accepted cognitive and social

psychological principles leave no room for a Bopp-like appeal to biology as

the only available locus for formulating lawlike generalizations concerning

linguistic structure, variation, and change. Still, for example, Mufwene

suggested that, in pidgin and creole studies, there are advantages to viewing

the biological equivalent of language as being not an individual organism, but

an entire species – which, expanding on Bonfante’s above-mentioned

aphorism, we may interpret as implying that rather than being a vegetable,

each language is an agglomeration of vegetable patches.


52

More provocative have been various organicist-sounding works by Lass,

especially with this earlier abandoned beginning from the

“psychologistic/individualist position:

“ ... that change is explicable ... in terms of ... individual grammars.”


Instead Lass claims that:

“Languages ... are objects whose primary mode of existence is in time ...

historical products ... which ought to be viewed as potentially having

extended (trans-individual, trans-generational) ‘lives of their own’.”


More recently, Lass has reiterated and explained this glottozoic claim,

suggesting that:

“We construe language as ... a kind of object ... which exists (for the

historian’s purposes) neither in any individual (as such) ... nor in the

collectivity, but rather as an area in an abstract, vastly complex, multi-

dimensional phase-space ... and having (in all modules and at all structural

levels) something like the three kinds of viral nucleotide sequences.”


This sort of approach has already been compellingly and eloquently

countered by L. Milroy’s response to Lass’s characterization of languages as

making use of the detritus from older systems via “bricolage,” whereby bits

and pieces left lying around get recycled into new things. After first asking

how we can “make sense of all this without ... an appeal to speakers,” L.

Milroy further doubts:

“If there is bricolage, who is the bricoleur? Does the language do the

bricolage independently of those who use it? If so, how?”


Lass comes perilously close to suggesting that:


53

“It is no individual speakers who change grammar, bur grammar changes

itself”.


So, given the human speakers (and signers) are the only known organisms

which/who come into question as plausible agents of change in languages, it

is incumbent on historical linguists to avoid the trap of reacting to their

potential disillusionment with current research findings in psychology,

sociology by giving up entirely on psychology and sociology – and along with

them, on speakers – and so turning too wholeheartedly to the “better

understood” field of biology. It is the latter move, after all, which has lured

scholars like Lass into treating languages as organisms, or at least pseudo-

organisms. Learning a lesson from what can now be recognized as needles

wrong turns in the work of K.W.F. von Schlegel, Bopp, Schleicher, and the

later linguists naturalists, we can conclude that it is better for diachronic

linguistics if we stand for an embarrassingly long time with our hands

stretched out to psychology and sociology than it is for us to embrace the

siren of biological organicism (Richard D. Janda, Brian D. Joseph, 2003, 6-

10).


54

7.1 SOME PARALLELS BETWEEN BIOLOGICAL AND LINGUISTIC

EVOLUTION

In this section I am going to display possible parallels between biological and

linguistic view of language change.

Dawkins, the defender of linguistic evolution, says:

The “transition” from ancestral ... to descendant species appears to be abrupt

..., the reason may be simply that, when we look at a series of fossils from

any one place, we are probably not looking at an evolutionary, but a

migrational event, the arrival of new species from another geographical are.a

... The fossil record ... is particularly imperfect just when it gets interesting ...

when evolutionary change is taking place ... This is partly because evolution

usually occurred in a different place from where we find most of our fossils ...

and partly because, even if we were fortunate enough to dig in one of the

small outlying areas where most evolutionary change went on, that

evolutionary change (though still gradual) occupied ... such a short time that

we ... need an extra rich fossil record in order to track it.

(Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 6-10, 59)

Palaeontology, then – diachronic biology, so to speak – provides essentially

no direct evidence (as opposed to inferential considerations – so-called “how

else?” arguments -) regarding the crucial role of innovating/innovative

individual organisms in evolutionary change. But is there some way in which

synchronic biological studies of rapidly reproducing organisms can perhaps

compensate for this gap?

It is not difficult to compile a solid list with documented cases of rapid

contemporary evolution. We have in mind here more than just instances like

Goodfriend and Gould’s (1996) demonstration that evolution of shell-ribbing

in the Bahamian snail Cerion rubicundum occurred via a geologically

punctuational “ten-to-twenty-thousand-year transition by hybridiation,” or


55

Lenski and Travisano’s (1994) meticulous recording of increases in average

cell-size over 2000 generations of replications (slightly different in each case,

despite maximally identical experimental conditions) by each of 12 different

populations of the human bacterium (Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 60-61).

Much more convincing is the better-known example involving persistent

changes – as a response to rapid climatic alterations – in the size and

strength of the bills of Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos Islands. No less

deserving of close attention, though, is the research of Reznick et al. (1977),

who traced changes in Trinidadian gruppies’ maturity rates (and in other

reproduction-related behaviours known to be highly heritable) over eleven

years, for females, and as little as four years, for males. Losos et al. (1997),

on the other hand, were able to document an adaptation of Bahamian lizards’

average leg length (ecologically conditioned according to whether the

dominant local flora consisted mainly of trees and other vegetation with thick

perching places or of bushes having narrow twigs) over 20 years (Richard D.

J., Brian D. J., 2003, 60).

Gould summarizes this as following:

Biologists have documented a veritable glut of rapid and measurable

evolution on timescales of years and decades, in spite of the urban legend

that the evolution is too slow to document in palpable human lifetimes.

Although that the truth has affirmed innumerable cases of measurable

evolution at this minimal scale still to be visible at all over so short a span,

such evolution must be far from rapid and transient to serve as the basis for

major transformations in geological time. If you can see it at all, it is too fast

to matter in the long run (Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 60).

Even if the fast track evolution among individual creatures that can be

currently observed is assumed also to have been characteristic among the

prehistoric organisms now preserved only in fossils, the associated rates of


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change are not slow enough to explain the glacial pace of broad trends in the

fossil record. Indeed, says Gould:

These measured changes over years and decades are too fast ... to build the

history of life by simple cumulation ...gruppy rates range from 3,700 to 45,00

darwins ( a metric for evolution, expressed as a change in units of standard

deviation - ... measure of variation around the main value of a trait in a

population – per million years). By contrast, rates for major trends in the fossil

record generally range from 0.1 to 1.0 darwin ... the estimated rates ... for

gruppies ...are...four for seven orders of magnitude greater than ...fossils

(that is, ten thousand to ten million times faster).

(Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 60)

Far from being disappointing, however, this finding actually provides a

number of reasons for students of language change – and not just biologists

– to be especially content. For one thing, the above-mentioned examples of

rapidly trending but not lasting directions of variation present linguists with a

crucial warning to remember in their diachronic studies. Namely, some

variation is stable. Occasionally for surprisingly long periods of time. In

connection with the age-grading example of a youngster’s Mommy yielding to

an adolescent’s Mom, so that variants which one encounters for the first time

– and this takes to be innovatory harbingers of future developments – may

well be neither recent in origin nor likely to win out the future. We emphasize

this point because of our own experience as speakers of English. After living

for a considerable period of time without any feeling that much linguistic

change was occurring, we later became convinced that many diverse trends

had just started and were surely proceeding rapidly toward their endpoint,

maybe even to be completed during our lifetimes. Yet caution directs us to

admit that perhaps very little of the variation which is currently known will

survive for very long, much is undergo strengthening and expansion across

most or all varieties of our native language. Gould draws remarkably similar

conclusion regarding the rapid but ephemeral biological-evolutionary


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phenomena here summarized further above, incidentally implying that their

reversibility is largely responsible for the equilibrium part of the punctuational

two-step (Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 60-62).

Elredge had argued that the geographically limited, single-population locus of

most evolutionary phenomena plays a major role in promoting stasis – in

regarded to both “habitat tracking” and the isolation of populations within a

species.

But of course all this only goes to strengthen further the conclusion that the

primary mechanism of spectation really is peripatric in nature, this necessary

involving one or more peripheral, isolated populations.

Using this notion heuristically, we can then further ask whether population-

based (i.e., population-constrained) stasis in evolutionary biology has any

close analogues in the domain of language change – a question which

appears to have a decidedly affirmative answer. The most appropriate

linguistic equivalent of a biological population would seem to be either a

speech-community or – more probably – a social network of interacting

speakers; research on the linguistic role of networks has been pioneered by

Lesley and James Milroy. Crucially, network studies reveal that, despite the

frequent observation that language changes tend to start in the most

populous and most culturally important urban areas and then to filter down

from there to successively less populous cities, towns, and, lastly, rural

villages – each time skipping over smaller intervening populations – the

prerequisite for such spread of linguistic innovations is a network structure

which includes people with loose ties to many social groups, but strong ties

to none; that is, a typically urban characteristic. But, in populations with

dense, multiplex social networks involving frequent and prolonged contact

among members of small peer groups across many social context, these ties

promote greater resistance to the adoption of linguistic innovations: in short,

dense, multiplex social networks promote relatively greater (but by no means

absolute) linguistic stasis. It is worth stressing that networks of this sort seem


58

to have been overwhelmingly given that the origin of writing seems roughly to

have accompanied the rise of urbanization.

Here in juxtaposing not human languages and biological species, but instead

small, close-knit social networks (to which the Milroy’s have rightly drawn

linguists’ attention) and local populations of organisms - we might initially be

tempted to think that we have indeed found a factor which can and does

promote punctuated equilibrium in human languages. The very last, treating

social networks as crucial element in language change provides a useful

corrective for anyone tempted to speak monolithically about changes (in

English”, or even just “in American English” or “New York City English,”)

since all of these agglomerations not only consist ultimately of individuals, but

also are highly reticulated. Moreover, it appears accurate to conclude that,

when one simply compares all of the dialects of a language, probably the

majority of linguistic features which are shared by all varieties represent traits

jointly inherited from their common linguistic ancestor, rather than innovations

which arose in one variety (or a sprinkling of varieties) but were then

eventually diffused from there to all other varieties of the language at issue.

Individual linguistic networks (and even larger speech-communities and

dialects) really can be surprisingly resistant to certain changes.

Nor should we forget that, ever since the initial rise of city states in ancient

Mesopotamia several millennia ago, urban centres have exercised a counting

magnetic attraction on rural populations that leads to a kind of mobility

among humans which strikes us as quantitatively quite different from the

situations of other biological species. For instance, one occasionally hears

bandied about, in informal discussions of linguistic change such statements

as the allegation that, until 1900, most people in the world never travelled

more than 50 miles from their birthplace during their lifetimes.

Moreover, quite apart from the fact that Milroy(i)an network studies have

stressed the importance, alongside denser groups, of looser-knit social

groupings – which tend to counteract static equilibrium in language – even

biologists have been quick to point out that (most of) language and other

aspects of human culture are transmitted across time (and space) vie non-


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genetic mechanisms which endow linguistic and other cultural “evolution”

with a decidedly non-biological character.

(Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 63-66)

Goud has been explicit about the true nature of the parallels under

consideration – and, unlike Dawkins, he does not fail to mention the

important additional role played by such convergence-promoting phenomena

of direct cultural contact as borrowing:

“Comparisons between biological evolution and human cultural or

technological change have done vastly more harm than good – and

examples abound of this most common of all intellectual traps. Biological

evolution is a bad analogue for cultural change because the two are different

for three major reasons that could hardly be more fundamental. First, cultural

evolution can be faster by orders of magnitude than biological change at its

maximal Darwinian rate and timing is of the essence in evolutionary

arguments. Second, cultural evolution is direct and the achievements of one

generation are passed directly to descendants, thus producing the great

potential speed of cultural change. Biological evolution is a system of

constant divergence without subsequent jointing of branches. In human

history, transmission across lineage is, perhaps, the major source of cultural

change. Europeans learned about corn and potatoes from Native Americans

and gave them smallpox in return.”

(Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 63)

These considerations, though, do not ineluctably obligate us to believe that

episodes of language change should be primarily brief and abrupt, rather

than continuous and gradual, and they certainly do not appear to favour

stasis over innovations. On these grounds alone, we are surely justified in

concluding that (based on the present sifting of diverse available evidence) a

maximally close analogue of punctuated evolution in biology has not so far

been established as the general case within the set of phenomena often


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referred to as linguistic evolution. Yet this conclusion is actually not very

different from the situation in biology, where it turns out that the most

illuminating question to ask is no longer “Does punctuated equilibrium exist?”

(since yes, it does), or “Does the evolution of all species seem to be

punctuated in nature?” (since no, although this is true for many species), but

instead “Which aspects of the evolution of which species appear to be

punctuational in nature?”

Thus, linguists can most assuredly profit from investigating which particular

aspects of which specific languages subject to which external circumstances

seem to have undergone the most rapid changes or to have shown the

longest periods of stasis – this last notion more often being referred to by

linguists as “stability.” That a solid start and some progress along these lines

have already been made is demonstrated by growing body of research that

includes such pioneering studies as Fodor and Mithun (1965). Mithun (1984),

for instance, compared “functionally comparable but formally different

devices” across six Northern Iroquoian languages and, on that basis,

suggested that morphosyntax is more stable than lexicon, with syntax being

functionally more stable than morphology and predicates being more stable

than particles. The “hierarchy of stability across these interlocking domains”

therefore seems to be, “in order of increasing volatility,” as follows: syntax,

morphology, predicates and particles (Richard D. J., Brian D. J., 2003, 6-10,

55-74).


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8. CONCLUSION

In my diploma paper I presented the following:

• What is language change.

• How do linguists study changes in language.

• The role of speakers in language change.

• Historical approach to language change.

• Linguistic approach to language change.

• Possible parallels between biological and linguistic evolution.

Before writing the diploma paper I stated two views:

• Historical approach defends the fact that language changes as an

object non-related to social factors.

• Linguistic approach claims that it is the speaker who changes the

language.

Through studying the work of Roger Lass I presented the first view.

Lass’s position is summed up quite well in the comment that the historical

approach is ‘structuralist’ in the specific sense that its basis is neither

‘cognitive’ nor ‘social’; communication and meaning are not at the centre of

change, or at least of major structural change. Speakers have nothing to do

with linguistic change.

I presented the second view, which says that linguistic approach claims that it

is the speaker who changes the language. I have looked into this with the

study of the monophthongisation of the diphthong in e.g. right. This study

confirms that changes in history appear retrospectively and may have been

subject to internal conditioning during the process of change, but also to

social conditioning.

The second view is much more plausible.


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Lastly, I have tried to draw some parallels between biological and linguistic

approaches and came to the conclusion that we cannot study language

change considering only one approach. In my opinion, language does not

exist without the speaker and speakers need language of some kind in order

to communicate. It is the speaker and also internal linguistic changes that

contribute towards the whole picture of language change throughout history.

In other words, we have to take them both into consideration


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LITERATURE

Aitchinson J. (1991). Language Change. Progress or Decay? Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

Hock H. H., Joseph B. D. (1996). Language History, Language Change, and

Language Relationship. New York. Mouton de Gruyter.

Lass R. (1980). On Explaining Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press

Milroy J. (1997). Historical Linguistics and Language Change by Roger Lass.

Pp. Xxiii, 423. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Milroy J. (2003). On the role of the speaker in language change In Raymond

Hickey, ed., Motives for Language Change, 143-157. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Richard D. J., Brian D. J., (2003). The handbook of historical linguistics, 6-10,

55-74. Oxford. Blackwell Publishing.

http://www.en.wikipedia.org (adopted 05/09/2010)

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