Introduction

This chapter considers how languages begin. It outlines how pidgins, embryo languages, start out, and then how they evolve into creoles, full languages. Pidgins are simpler than full languages; they have fewer vocabulary items, fewer sounds and relatively little morphology or syntax. But a creole gradually acquires vocabulary, word endings, and syntax. Eventually, it is indistinguishable from a ‘full’ language. This chapter outlines how it all happens.

Most people are quite puzzled about how languages might come into being. When they think about language birth, their thoughts are led inevitably to the fascinating problem of the ultimate origin of language. Various bizarre hypotheses have been put forward over the past hundred years or so. The ‘ding-dong’ theory claimed that the earliest words were imitations of natural sounds such as bang!, cuckoo, splash!, moo. The ‘pooh-pooh’ theory suggested that language arose from cries and gasps of emotion. The ‘yo-he-ho’ theory proposed that language was ultimately based on communal effort, with essential instructions such as Heave! and Haul! being the first words spoken, and numerous other speculative ideas were put forward. For example, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen argued that ‘We must imagine primitive language as consisting (chiefly at least) of very long words, full of difficult sounds, and sung rather than spoken . . . His musings on ‘the courting days of mankind’ are given in the quote at the top of the chapter.

Language change is a topic which, perhaps more than most others, spreads itself over a wide range of areas. For this reason, the literature often seems disjointed and contradictory, since many scholars, like Jane Austen, prefer to polish their own square inch of ivory, rather than tackle the whole vast subject. This book is an attempt to pull the various strands together into a coherent whole, and to provide an overview of the phenomenon of human language change. It discusses where our evidence comes from, how changes happen, why they happen, and how and why whole languages begin and end. It does this within the framework of one central question. Is language change a symptom of either progress or decay?

The study of language change – often labelled ‘historical linguistics’ – has altered its character considerably in recent years. Traditionally, scholars concerned themselves with reconstructing the earliest possible stages of languages, and with describing sound changes as they unrolled through the ages. In this, they paid relatively little attention to changes currently taking place, to syntactic change, to meaning change, to pidgins and creoles, to dying languages, or to the sociolinguistic factors which underlie many alterations. In the second half of the twentieth century, these neglected topics rose one by one to the forefront of attention. This book is an attempt to draw together the old and the new into an integrated whole. In short, it tries to combine old-style historical linguistics with more recent approaches, so as to give an overview of the field as it stands at the moment.

Introduction

This chapter deals with word meaning. Fears about meaning slippage were common in the nineteenth century. In the mid twentieth century structural linguists suggested that words were assembled like a patchwork quilt, each patch having its place in the overall pattern. But this turned out to be a mirage. Prototype theory was a key model of language change in the 1970s, when it was realized that humans do not rank all members of a category equally: they regard some exemplars of both nouns and verbs as better (more prototypical) than others. In fact, multiple meanings (polysemy) are the norm, and different meanings co-exist for most words, sometimes for centuries.

1. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;

2. Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is…

3. T. S. Eliot, Four quartets

Introduction

This chapter explores conflicting social pressures, cases in which different dialect features collide and briefly cause an uneasy calm, in which neither appears to win out. In Norwich, England, an older style walkin’, talkin’ with covert prestige used mainly by men contrasted with standard walking, talking usually in women's speech. In Belfast, Ireland, two vowels were moving in different directions, again with men and women tugging against one another. A third linguistic battle of the sexes was between a non-standard -s, as in you knows, versus the standard form you know in the speech of teenagers in Reading, England. A somewhat different linguistic battle was found in Detroit, USA, where teenage Jocks (followers of a conventional lifestyle) contrasted with Burnouts (non-conventional breakaways). A struggle between norms was that of new immigrants trying to adapt their Canadian speech patterns to a British yardstick. Vocabulary adaptation was relatively easy, but pronunciation adjustment depended on the age of the adopter, with the younger ones being more successful. Overall, linguistic conflicts are an important indicator of social attitudes: in each case, a linguistic struggle reflected a social situation.

1. Thou wilt not with predestination round

2. Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

3. Edward Fitzgerald, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Introduction

This chapter deals with inbuilt causes of language change. Sounds are made with the human vocal tract, mainly the mouth, throat and lungs. These sounds are obviously restricted by the nature of the apparatus which produces them, and this causes some inevitable changes. The human mind also contains a number of natural tendencies, which also affect language. Once these tendencies creep in, they can also cause ensuing disruptions. This chapter will outline these inherent causes of change.

The causes of language change are double-layered. On the top layer, there are social triggers. These set off or accelerate deeper causes, hidden tendencies which may be lying dormant within the language. The gun of change has been loaded and cocked at an earlier stage. In this chapter, we shall discuss this notion of underlying tendencies. Many of them appear disruptive. We shall therefore examine, in particular, changes which arise seemingly out of the blue to disrupt the language system.

Introduction

This chapter summarizes the conclusion reached in this book on the question raised in the title, as to whether language change is progress or decay. The answer is neither. Disruptive and therapeutic tendencies vie with one another in a perpetual stalemate. There is no evidence that language is evolving in any particular direction. Activists who try to control language are unlikely to be successful. Standardization can be useful, but cannot be imposed legally. At the most, we should try and recognize attempts to manipulate language, and avoid being affected by them.

Predicting the future depends on understanding the present. The majority of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who argue that language is disintegrating have not considered the complexity of the factors involved in language change. They are giving voice to a purely emotional expression of their hopes and fears.

The early Saṅgha

The Saṅgha (Skt Saṃgha), in the sense of the ‘Community’ of monks and nuns with the Buddha as its teacher, originated as one of the groups of Samaṇas. These suspended their wandering existence during the three months of the rainy season, and for the Buddhist Samaṇas this ‘rains’ (Vassa, Skt Varṣa) period became a time of intensified religious practice, with greater contact with the public at large. They also tended to return to the same places at Vassa, such as parks donated by wealthy lay patrons, and these locations then became the basis for a more settled communal way of life. In this way, the Buddhists invented monastic life, which was a middle way between the life of the solitary Jain renouncers, and that of the Brahmin householders.

The monastic discipline (Vinaya) developed by the Buddha was designed to shape the Saṅgha as an ideal community, with the optimum conditions for spiritual growth. Its sustaining power is shown by the fact that no human institution has had such a long-lasting continuous existence, along with such a wide diffusion, as the Buddhist Saṅgha. The Buddha advocated frequent meetings of each local Saṅgha, with the aim of reaching a unanimous consensus in matters of common concern (D.ii.76–7). If necessary, there was also provision for voting and majority rule (Vin.ii.84).

What are generally known as the four ‘Noble Truths’ (Pali ariya-sacca, Skt ārya-satya) are the focus of what Vin.i.10–12 portrays as the first sermon of the Buddha: the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta. As found in the early Sutta (Skt Sūtra) collections known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas, the ariya-saccas are subjects of an advanced teaching intended for those who have, by the ‘step-by-step’ discourse (see p. 48), been spiritually prepared to have them pointed out. If the mind is not calm and receptive, talk of dukkha (Skt duḥkha) – the mental and physical pains of life, and the painful, stressful, unsatisfactory aspects of life that engender these – may be too disturbing, leading to states such as depression, denial and self-distracting tactics. The Buddha’s own discovery of the ariya-saccas was from the fourth jhāna (Skt dhyāna), a state of profound meditative calm (M.i.249). The Mahāyāna later came to see the teachings on the ariya-saccas as themselves preliminary to higher teachings – but there is none of this in the Nikāyas or Āgamas. In these, they are not teachings to go beyond, or unproblematic simple teachings, but about deep realities to be seen by direct insight (S.v.442–3 (BW.362–3)), and then responded to in appropriate ways.

The translation of ariya-sacca as ‘Noble Truth’ (e.g. Anderson, 1999), while well established in English-language literature on Buddhism, is the ‘least likely’ of the possible meanings (Norman, 1997: 16). To unpack and translate this compound, one needs to look at the meanings of each word, and then how they are related. The term sacca (Skt satya) is regularly used in the sense of ‘truth’, but also to mean a ‘reality’, a genuinely real existent. In pre-Buddhist works, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.15.3 sees the universal Self as satya, and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.3 talks of two forms of Brahman: sat, which is mortal, and tyam, which is immortal, with 2.3.6 implying that the latter is ‘the real behind the real [sayasya satyam iti]’ (Olivelle, 1996: 28), that is, satya encompasses all reality, which is twofold in its nature. There is also a connection to sat, meaning existence.