Preface

This is a book of twelve chapters, divided into ten content chapters and two consolidation chapters. The organisation of each chapter is listed on its first page, in the content section. Throughout each chapter, activities encourage you to explore language yourself. Each activity appears in a box; and you should attempt to solve the activity before moving on with your reading. In many cases, we have answered the set questions in the chapter, but some are left for you to work out outside the covers of this book. Discussing these activities with colleagues in seminars or tutorials will give you an extra advantage in your learning. A fuller set of answers is provided on the webpages that accompany the book, available at the following URL: www.cambridge.org/eppler-ozon. Towards the end of each chapter, we give you a brief summary of the topics covered.

After the chapter summary, you’ll find a set of exercises. These are labelled ‘Exercise 1.1’, etc. but, unlike in-chapter activities, they do not appear within a text box. Some exercises include a commentary, but most of the discussion has been placed on the relevant webpages. When working through the chapters, you will be acquiring basic knowledge about English words and sentences. You can build on this with the help of the texts suggested in further reading sections. Full references for these resources are given at the end of the book.

The first three linked tasks of this consolidation chapter aim at helping you distinguish

• language use which is really ‘ungrammatical’ according to standard English, as opposed to ‘difficult to process’ or ‘nonsensical’ (Task 1.1),

• uses which represent regional and / or social variation (Task 1.2), and

• uses which are ruled out by prescriptivists only (Task 1.3).

Task 1.1

Take a close look at sentences (a) to (j) and decide which ones are grammatical, which ones are marginally grammatical (and should therefore be preceded by ‘?’ to indicate uncertain acceptability) and which ones are ungrammatical (and should therefore be preceded by ‘*’) in the variety of English you are most familiar with. Make sure you distinguish ‘ungrammatical’ from ‘nonsensical’ (which is a semantic concept) and / or ‘difficult to process’ (which refers to how easy / difficult it is to understand a sentence when you read / hear it).

1. a. I will try to give up smoking this year.

2. b. Give up smoking I will certainly try to.

3. c. To give up smoking, I will certainly try.

4. d. I never heard a green horse smoke a dozen oranges.

5. e. He’s muscular and a pretty good mat wrestler.

6. f. Go you to school.

7. g. Run youse to the telephone.

8. h. Clive promised Claire to shave himself.

9. i. Clive promised Claire to shave herself.

10. j. The claim that the link between convection heating and the time and energy which can be saved by baking biscuits in a convection oven rather than a conventional oven is not obvious at first sight is undoubtedly true.

Huddleston and Pullum et al. (2002: 11) suggest that, when judging grammaticality,

As you can see, English is not contained in any one’s brain, dictionary or grammar book, so we need to rely on many different sources of information when making grammaticality judgements.

1. Since ’tis Nature's Law to change.

2. Constancy alone is strange.

3. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, A dialogue between Strephon and Daphne

Introduction

This chapter notes that language change is inevitable, yet points out that there is a puzzling, long-standing custom of moaning about it. The complaint tradition is outlined and some reasons for it are pointed out, such as an admiration for Latin, and a long-lasting, but unjustified preference for written language forms over spoken. But finding that some complaints are groundless does not answer the central question: is our language progressing, decaying, or standing still? This is the topic of the whole book. The chapter then discusses the meaning of the word grammar, distinguishing between old-style prescriptive grammars which tried to lay down outdated ‘rules’, and modern descriptive grammars which describe actual usage. The main components of a modern grammar are outlined. Finally, the chapter explains the organization of the book, listing the main sections, and the outline content of each.

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.