Introduction

This chapter describes how linguists realized they needed to study ongoing changes. In the early part of the twentieth century, language change was assumed to happen too slowly to be observable. In their grammars, linguists had unwittingly omitted the variations which indicated that changes were under way. The American linguist William Labov was the key figure in this twentieth-century linguistic breakthrough. He made a preliminary ingenious attempt to study current changes in a now-famous department store survey in New York. Later, he proceeded to other New York changes. He found he could reliably predict the percentage of the features he was investigating in the speech of different ethnic groups, sexes, ages and socio-economic classes, in different speech styles. In his later work, he has refined his early techniques and produced a solid methodological framework for future researchers. His later work in Philadelphia again proved groundbreaking. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, Jim and Leslie Milroy explored speech varieties in different social networks. These seminal studies, on each side of the Atlantic, kick-started work on ongoing changes, which are now a standard part of language change investigations.

1. Large streams from little fountains flow,

2. Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

3. David Everett, ‘Lines written for a school declamation’

Introduction

This chapter considers the linguistic progress of a sound change, where it starts, and how it makes its way through the language. Frequently used words often (but not inevitably) get affected early. But these words need also to be linguistically susceptible. Typically, the change follows an S-curve (slow-quick-quick-slow) pattern. It starts slowly, then speeds up; eventually it gradually fades away. But as the change happens, individual speakers tend to vary in their treatment of words: on one day, a speaker may use the new form, on another day the old. Neatness may happen in the long run, but not in the course of the change.

Language change spreads in two ways: outwardly through a community, and inwardly through a language. Let us now consider this inner linguistic burrowing. Like a seed, any change is likely to have small beginnings. But if it puts down firm roots, it can develop into a massive growth which affects the whole landscape. This spreading process is the topic of this and the next chapter. This chapter will deal with sound change, and the following with syntactic change.

Introduction

This chapter discusses reductions and abbreviations, known in more modern terms as grammaticalization and text messaging. The former used to be described as a previously autonomous word becoming an affix, as in spoon-full → spoonful. But this is oversimple. Grammaticalization covers the whole of language, taking in semantic attrition, grammatical reduction, and phonetic reduction, as well as some idioms. Meanwhile, phonetic cropping has long been in use for a few well-known sequences, such as PTO ‘please turn over’, RIP ‘rest in peace’. Recently such abbreviations have escalated in number, due to the use of text messaging in emails and on mobile phones.

Introduction

This chapter explains how language changes spread from person to person, a once mysterious process. As elsewhere, William Labov was the key innovator. His research papers on New York [r] and Martha's Vineyard diphthongs are considered linguistic ‘classics’, essential reading for anyone studying language change. He found that insertion of [r] in words such as bear, beard was considered a prestige feature, an item which speakers felt should be there in good speech. The lower middle class and upper working class had many more r-sounds in their careful speech than in their casual conversation. This over-insertion of [r] was a sure sign that a partially conscious change was in progress. Speakers were less aware of the ongoing change in Martha's Vineyard diphthongs. Subconsciously, those who wanted to remain on the island had been trying to sound more like some respected old fishermen, who represented traditional values: the change was less established in those who were planning to move away. These findings highlight the importance of social issues in the spread of change. In his most recent work, Labov has promoted the label ‘the curvilinear hypothesis’, which is a description of a diagram which shows changes radiating from speakers in the middle of the social scale.

This book has been written for people who are interested in language change, and enjoy reading about it. It is NOT written primarily for people who want to be tested on the topic in essays or exams. However, I have been told that some people have requested possible questions which might help them to see how much of the book they have remembered. So here, chapter by chapter, are some suggestions.

Chapter 1

1. Why in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were people so worried about language change?

2. Explain what is meant by the word ‘grammar’.

3. What is the difference between a prescriptive and a descriptive grammar?

Chapter 2

1. Suggest at least three types of clue which might help linguists to reconstruct the pronunciation of speakers in past centuries.

2. Outline two basic assumptions of comparative historical linguistics.

3. Name two other types of reconstruction, and explain what they involve.

Introduction

This chapter considers ways in which languages may disappear. In some cases, forms are imported from a related, socially dominant language in the region, so that effectively the original language ceases to be used by its original speakers. This I have labelled language suicide. In other cases, languages at the lower end of the social scale cease to be used, because there is simply no obvious use for them, as the dominant language takes over. This I have labelled language murder.

In the nineteenth century, scholars frequently talked about languages as if they were organic entities, like plants, which went through a predictable life cycle of birth, infancy, maturation, then gradual decay and death. In 1827, the German scholar Franz Bopp claimed that ‘Languages are to be considered organic natural bodies, which are formed according to fixed laws, develop as possessing an inner principle of life, and gradually die out because they do not understand themselves any longer, and therefore cast off or mutilate their members or forms.’

Introduction

This chapter outlines how human language maintains its patterns. Language has an inbuilt self-regulating capacity which restores and maintains a patterned equilibrium. The most obvious examples of patterns are in the sound system, where sounds are often organized in pairs. Word endings tend to neaten themselves up in the morphology. Syntax also tends to keep itself neat, though this is sometimes via misanalysis,when difficult-to-interpret patterns are smoothed away. Finally, it shows how language can invent uses, and patterned rules, for apparently useless bits and pieces.

Many people believe, like Sherlock Holmes, that the human brain has a finite capacity. Recent work on memory, however, suggests that such a view is mistaken. A healthy person’s memory is indefinitely extendable provided that the information it contains is well organized, and not just a jumbled heap of random items.

Introduction

Language changes rarely happen in isolation, and sometimes sequences of linked changes occur in a kind of chain, especially sound changes. But the relationship between the changes is often disputed. Are the sounds pushing or pulling one another? This chapter discusses the controversy. It also briefly mentions the unsolved question of whether such changes affect the syntax also.

Sometimes changes affect languages in a relatively minor way. Natural tendencies, exaggerated by social factors, cause disruptions, then the language restores the equilibrium again. The situation is reminiscent of day-to-day house cleaning or simple weeding in a garden, when minor problems are quickly eradicated.

Introduction

This chapter looks at ways of collecting evidence for studying language change. How old pronunciations are reconstructed is explained. Then other methods of finding out about the linguistic past are described. Comparative historical linguistics builds up a picture of a ‘proto-language’, the parent language from which a group of related languages are descended. Internal reconstruction deduces facts about the previous history of one language by looking at irregularities in structure which have been brought about by change. Typological reconstruction is based on the insight that languages can be divided into a number of different types, and knowledge of the characteristics of these types enables gaps in the evidence to be filled. Population typology explores constructions which diffuse across different language types via contact. Computerized text corpora can now provide reliable evidence for all these historical methods. (A corpus – plural corpora – is a body of spoken and/or written language for linguistic study.)

Introduction

Syntactic change typically creeps into a language via optional stylistic variants. Particular lexical items provide a toehold. The change tends to become widely used via ambiguous structures. One or some of these get increasingly preferred, and in the long run the dispreferred options fade away through disuse. Mostly, speakers are unaware that such changes are taking place. Overall, all changes, whether phonetic/phonological, morphological, or syntactic, take place gradually, and also spread gradually. There is always fluctuation between the old and the new. Then the changes tend to move onward and outward, becoming the norm among one group of speakers before moving on to the next.

To a superficial observer, alterations in syntax attack without warning. Like a hidden spider’s web, they lie in wait and stealthily catch on to pieces of language, which are suddenly entrapped in inescapable silken threads.

Introduction

This is the first of four chapters on the causes of language change. This chapter begins by discounting the oldish idea that changes are purely random. It then discusses the infiltration of foreign elements and borrowing, and, finally, explores the notion of linguistic ‘need’.