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1 results

  • Chapter 2 - A Linguistic-Historical Model

  • Kevin T. van Bladel, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    Ancient Persian
    Published online:
    10 April 2026
    Print publication:
    30 April 2026, pp 51-115
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  • Summary

    Linguistic history requires reliable models that correlate varieties of grammatical change with social factors. The composite model presented here considers scenarios of intergenerational monolingualism leading to stable language transmission, intergenerational multilingualism leading to areal features, and mass nonnative acquisition leading to grammatical reduction. It considers the agency of the individual in the transfer of features from one language to another according to patterns of linguistic dominance. These factors allow the linguistic historian to diagnose social changes from specific kinds of grammatical change and, vice versa, to predict some kinds of grammatical change within known historical upheavals of population. Terms from contact linguistics, such as pidgin, creole, and semicreole, are adopted after thorough explanation and contextualization.