Prescriptivism and Descriptivism in the 18th Century

There are two opposing philosophies in the history of linguistics which can be summed up as prescriptivism and descriptivism. Should linguists write how the language ought to be spoken or written, or just record how, in fact, it is spoken or written?

The science of modern linguistics has come firmly down on the descriptive side. They realize that it is not only futile but fruitless to try to prevent a language from changing or to convert all dialects to a standard. But it was not always so.

During the Renaissance (16^th and 17^th centuries) the “correct” spelling and pronunciation of English words became an important class distinction differentiating between those of refined upper class from the “vulgar” masses. Significantly, it was during this time that the meaning of the word vulgar changed from simply “of the people” (eg Vulgar Latin) to its modern sense of crudeness and inferiority.

During the centuries to follow, linguists would fall into either of the two extremes. Robert Lowth (1710-1787) was a strong prescriptivist; Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) more of a descriptivist. Lowth wrote several books on English grammar in order to “teach what is right”. What he decided was “right” was based largely on his study of Latin. For example, it was Lowth who gave us the rule that sentences should not end with a preposition (now what did he have to do that for?).

Priestly on the other hand was an empirical scientist and understood the importance of observation (as well as a grammarian, he helped discover oxygen and founded Unitarianism in England and later in the United States). His book on grammar, published about the same time as Lowth’s, was based not on Latin principles but on “…a collection of observations on the structure of it…” Priestly had his personal grammatical biases too, however. Like most scientists of his day he had a strong attraction to the idea of simplicity and applied this to English grammar. While keeping English grammar rules simple is a noble objective, he also applied it to the vocabulary and strove to pare English down to its English roots. He particularly disliked what he called “Gallicisms”, that is words recently adopted from French. Priestly’s philosophy on language is summed up in this quote: “I think it not only unsuitable to the genius of a free nation but in itself ill-calculated to reform and fix a language”.

Another linguist of the 18^th century, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) started as a prescriptivist and then converted to a descriptivist. Johnson is most famous for his 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language, the significance of which I shall devote a later post to (sorry Lowth!). In his proposal for the dictionary to his patron Lord Chesterfield, written in 1747, Johnson describes his goal to bring rule and order to the English language. He compares himself to Caesar about to invade Britain, and expresses the hope that “…though I should not complete the conquest, I shall at least discover the coast, civilize part of the inhabitants, and make it easy for some other adventurer to proceed farther, to reduce them wholly to subjection, and settle them under laws.” He continues to explain “This, my Lord, is my idea of an English dictionary, a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened.” Johnson was proposing to single handedly reform the entire English language with his dictionary which he estimated would take him three years to complete.

Johnson’s dictionary was published in 1755, 8 years after the proposal. During this time his goals had shifted. In the preface to the dictionary, Johnson uses much different analogies to describe his work. He had come to recognize that language was continuously subject to change and that the goal of the lexicographer was “to register the language” rather than to fix it. Reforming a language would be like “trying to rope in a river”. He compared the immensity of this task to a story from Greek mythology: “...to persue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of Arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them.”

But of course Johnson’s 1755 dictionary did in fact serve to “fix” the English language by the very act of recording it. For 150 years until the publishing of the first Oxford English Dictionary, it was the standard reference in both the schools and the home for spelling, pronunciation and definition. In it he codified the spelling reforms made by grammarians during the previous two centuries. In Lecture 21 of The History of the English Language, 2^nd Edition [The Great Courses, 2008], Professor Seth Lerer describes the dictionary as “an arbiter of language and a guide to life”.

I maintain there is a place for both prescriptivism and descriptivism in English. In the short term, elementary and high schools must teach students the standard rules of the language – spelling, grammar and punctuation. This is essential for clear, unambiguous communication, not only with one’s neighbor but with speakers of the language around the world. However I also believe that grammarian authorities (whoever they be) need to be more willing to accept natural changes to the language. A case in point is who and whom, discussed in my post of 11 Sept 2011.

Let me finish with a quote from page 20 of Lynne Truss’ delightful book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”. She is writing about punctuation but I submit that her argument applies equally to spelling and grammar.

The reason it’s worth standing up for punctuation is not that it’s an arbitrary system of notation known only to an oversensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

The Proto-Indo-European Homeland Puzzle

The Indo-European Language Family

Indo-European was the first language family to be identified. This discovery, and the beginning of modern linguistics, can be dated to February 2, 1786 at a gathering of scientists and other interested men. Sir William Jones, speaking at the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, made this astounding statement:

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure: more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

Jones later added Persian and Celtic as likely members of this family of languages.

Jones was uniquely qualified to make this discovery. His parental language was Welsh; he was taught English at school; he learned classical Greek and Latin in university where he studied law; he wrote the first English grammar of the Persian language (which earned him a reputation as one of the most respected linguists in Europe); and when appointed a judge in India at age 37 set out to learn the Sanskrit language to better understand local laws. Thus by age 40 Jones was familiar with a language in 6 (out of a total of 12) different Indo-European language branches.

Indo-European languages are spoken today by over 3 billion people - about half of the world's population - as either a first or second language. These languages are divided into 10 or 12 language branches or subfamilies. See the attached graph (Figure 1.1 of The Horse, The Wheel and Language p.12) which is arranged more or less geographically. English is a member of the Germanic subfamily along with German, Dutch, Frisian, the Scandinavian languages (which includes Icelandic), Yiddish, and Afrikaans. Other languages to note include:

            Tocharian – two extinct languages found in western China, the farthest East branch

            Hittite – a member of the extinct Anatolian branch – the earliest branch to separate

            Romany – the language of the Gypsies of Europe, is a member of the Indic branch showing that they originated in northwest India (not to be confused with Rumanian which is a member of the Latin or Romance language branch)

Source: Figure 1.1 of The Horse, The Wheel and Language p.12

About 6,000 to 5,000 years ago the parent language, called Proto-Indo-European, was spoken by a semi-nomadic tribe of people in the southern Ukraine and Russia. How their language spread and evolved into all of all these languages could be the subject for a future lecture. Today I want to show how historical linguistics and archaeology were combined to solve the puzzle of who the speakers of Proto-Indo-European were, and where and when they lived.

Source: Figure 1.2 of The Horse, The Wheel and Language p.14

The Proto-Indo-European Homeland Puzzle

Since the discovery of the IE language family, the location of the homeland of the original speakers has been claimed by different people to be many different places: India, Pakistan, Syria/Lebanon, the Caucasus Mountains, Turkey, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, the Balkans and Germany. By the late 20^th century linguists only seriously considered two of these – Anatolia (modern Turkey) and the steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia. And as recently as 2000, Calvert Watkins in his essay “Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans” which introduces his book The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots stated “Archaeologists have not in fact succeeded in locating the Indo-Europeans.”

Colin Renfrew was a strong supporter of the other serious contender, Anatolia. Renfew's elegant proposal, published in the 1990's, had Proto-Indo-European migrant farmers carry their language along with agriculture from the Middle East to the westernmost part of Europe. But like many elegant theories, this one turned out to be not true. (I was greatly disappointed when linguistics and DNA analysis disproved Thor Heyerdahl's theories of Polynesian origins). There are, as we will see, serious problems with Renfrew's theory.

Before going further, I need to emphasize one point. Proto-Indo-European is a language. It is not a culture, nor is it a genetically-definable population. Language does not necessarily follow cultural boundaries, which can be determined by archaeology. Every first year archaeology student is taught “pots are not people”. But we know that someone must have spoken this language, and they must have lived in a particular place during a particular time. So while looking for the speakers of Proto-Indo-European we need to be careful of this constraint.

  

Clues from the Language

Since Proto-Indo-European is a language, let's look first at clues to the homeland from the language itself. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots published in 2000 contains 1350 reconstructed root words and several thousand more words based on these roots. These words have been painstakingly reconstructed by comparing similar words (called cognates) from the daughter languages over the more than 200 years since Jones' discovery. What can we learn about the people who spoke this language from their vocabulary?

- they knew four seasons with snow in winter

- they were not familiar with tropical plants or animals

- animals include: wolf, lynx, elk beaver, otter, mouse, fish

- birds include: crane, goose, duck, eagle, woodpecker

- insects: wasp, hornet, fly, louse, bee, honey (mead)

- domestic animals include: dog, cattle, sheep and horse

- horses play an important role in the culture

- they practiced spinning and weaving of wool

- they knew metallurgy - copper

- they knew of the wheel and used wagons or carts (weak link in Anatolian)

- they knew of boats and oars - words like nav (navigate, navy) and rowing.

- gift exchange is an important part of their culture

- the guest-host relation was important –  *ghosti is the root of both host and guest (ghost originally meant visitor or guest)

- they borrowed words from Proto-Uralic, another Eurasian language family, suggesting that the Proto-Indo-European speakers must have lived close to, and likely traded with, people who spoke Proto-Uralic who then, as now, live in northern Europe and Siberia (Hungarian is a member of this family found in Europe because of recent migration (~900CE).

The seasons and animals indicate a northern location either in or adjacent to a forest. The words for bee and honey place the homeland west of the Ural Mountains as honeybees do not occur east of there.

Clues to Dating Proto-Indo-European

Language can also help place the Proto-Indo-European speakers in time as well as location.

Agriculture was introduced to Europe between 6700 and 6500 BC while the wheel was not known until 3400 BC and woolen textiles sometime after 4000 BC. For the daughter language families to have similar words for the wheel and wool, they must have separated from Proto-Indo-European after their arrival. This effectively eliminates the Anatolian farmer immigrant theory. Besides, the two or three Anatolian languages were very similar to each other and spoken by only a small number of people in this area, which strongly suggests they are spoken by Indo-European speaking migrants to Anatolia, not by the ancestors of the language.

The domestication of the horse provides additional clues. Horses were hunted for meat by the people of the steppe for millennia before they were domesticated. They were first domesticated sometime after 4800 BC, a thousand years after cattle were introduced to the area. But they were raised for their meat only. During a cool dry period (4200-3800 BC) horses would have an advantage over cattle because they can forage for themselves during the winter. [Pioneer farmers in Saskatchewan like my grandfather often turned their horses loose for the winter to manage for themselves, rounding them up in the spring]. Riding of horses began on the steppes sometime before 3700 BC and had spread to Northern Kazakhstan, the Caucasus Mountains, and into Europe, by 3000 BC.

An important tool used in the dating of horse riding is bit wear on horse molars. The identification of tooth wear caused by bits of metal, bone, rope and rawhide, was pioneered by the author of The Horse, The Wheel and Language – David W. Anthony, and his wife, fellow archaeologist Dorcas Brown. There is an interesting Saskatchewan connection here. One of the experts they contacted was Hilary Clayton who began studying the mechanics of bits in horses’ mouths while working in Philadelphia, and then took a job at the Western Veterinarian College in Saskatoon. Anthony and Brown followed her to Saskatchewan in 1985 and viewed the X-ray videos she had made of horses chewing their bits.

Riding horses provided a significant benefit to herders in the steppes. A man on horseback could manage a herd of cattle or sheep much larger than a man on foot. With the much later advent of wheeled carts, about 3300 BC, the herders could carry with them tents, food and water allowing them to take advantage of the vast areas between the river valleys. This opened up the steppe much as the horse did to the plains of North America 5,000 years later.

Dating the Daughters

Language provides clues to timing in another way. Linguists can date, with more or less certainty, when each of the daughter language branches separated from the mother language. Here is a list of the branches, in the order of separation, with the approximate date (all BC) of separation (from Figure 3.2 The Horse, The Wheel and Language p. 57).

            Anatolian        4200

            Tocharian       3700 - 3300

            Germanic        3300

            Celtic / Italic   3000

            Greek / Armenian 2500

            Balto-Slavic    2500

            Indo-Iranian    2500-2200

Clues from Archaeology – The Kurgan Cultures

With the time line narrowed to the period 4000 to 2000 BC, it's time to look at the archaeological record and see who was living in the likely homelands and how well they fit with the linguistic clues. The archaeology of the Pontic-Caspian steppes was mostly carried out by Soviet scientists and published in Russian. These were not translated into English until the 1990s. Anthony was one of the first western archaeologists to study this work and relate it to the Proto-Indo-European homeland question.

Anthony found a close fit with the western steppe peoples who built huge burial mounds called kurgans. Their culture varied somewhat over the Proto-Indo-European time line and also geographically from place to place within this large area, but their overall cultures were similar, especially compared to the foragers to the north and east and to the sophisticated farming cultures to the west and south. They were semi-nomadic, raising cattle and sheep. Horses were important both for meat and for riding to manage their growing herds. They used wheeled carts. They mined their own ore and made their own tools and weapons of copper, tin and bronze.

Even more compelling is the evidence, from archaeology, of known migrations out of the steppes in the right directions and at the right times to account for the birth of the daughter language families.

1) to the west 4200-3900 (Anatolian)

2) to the east 3700-3300 (Tocharian)

3) to the west - several waves (Germanic, Celtic, Italic)

4) to north (Baltic, Slavic)

5) to the east and south (Iranian, Indic)

I should explain that by migration I do not mean large scale movement of people displacing existing populations along with their culture and language. This may have been the case with the Pre-Tocharians who made a remarkably long migration in one jump to the Altai Mountains 2000 km to the east (equivalent to the journey made by my grandparents from southern Ontario to Saskatchewan, but without the advantage of trains). Most if not all the other migrations were by small groups who, through some combination of trade or intimidation, became rulers of existing populations. They brought with them enough of their culture to be recognized archaeologically; and they brought their language which, for a variety of reasons, was adopted by the others and continued to spread long after they were gone.

  

Puzzle Solved

While there may be a few objections to his theory not yet satisfactorily answered, Anthony is convinced that the Proto-Indo-European Homeland puzzle has been solved.

Source: Figure 5.1 of The Horse, The Wheel and Language p.84

I want to finish with a quote from The Horse, The Wheel and Language  p. 464

Understanding the people who lived before us is difficult, particularly the people who lived in the prehistoric tribal past. Archaeology throws a bright light on some aspects of their lives but leaves much in the dark. Historical linguistics can illuminate a few of those dark corners.

Eastern American Dialects – an example of migration and ethno-linguistic frontier formation

In Chapter 6 “The Archaeology of Language” of his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, David W. Anthony uses the colonization of North America by English speaking people as an example of ethno-linguistic frontiers [1] formed by migration. In many cases the first people to settle a region put their language and cultural stamp on the area which is copied by later migrants. In the Eastern USA example, the language and cultural boundaries coincide almost exactly.

Between about 1620 and 1750 what is now the eastern United States was colonized by four different migration streams from different areas of Britain. These formed distinct ethno-linguistic patterns which are still very much visible today. They are:

• New England (Yankee) – East Anglia
• Mid-Atlantic ( Pennsylvania Quaker) – English Midlands
• Virginia Coast (Royalist Anglican) – Somerset and Wessex
• Appalachians (“Hillbillies”) – Scotch Irish

New England, centered on Boston, was first settled by the Pilgrims from East Anglia. The Yankee dialect is a variant of the East Anglia dialect and the New England folk culture (church, house, barn and fence types; town organization type; food and dress preference; and religion) is a simplified version of East Anglian folk culture.

The Virginia coast was settled by Anglican royalists escaping anti-royalist sentiments of the English Civil War. These settlers gave Virginia a distinct linguistic and folk culture based on the tobacco plantation.

Similarly Quakers from the North-Midlands, Lancashire and Yorkshire emigrated to avoid persecution following the Restoration. Most settled in Pennsylvania. Their distinct dialect and folk culture was later added to by German-speaking settlers from Switzerland and southern Germany (Pennsylvania “Dutch”) [2].

The Appalachian dialect was touched on in an earlier post http://www.englishcowpath.blogspot.com/2011/10/hunting-we-will-go.html

Migration of other people from Britain, Europe and other countries, and movements of people within the country, all added to or modified the regional dialects of America.  Despite the complexity from these other sources, these original four ethno-linguistic cultures can still be observed. Besides the regional accents and architectural styles of old buildings, Anthony claims that even modern presidential voting patterns can be discerned and traced back to these original folk cultures.

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[1] Frontier in this discussion refers to a boundary between two discernable cultures or languages.

[2] There were Dutch settlers in America, centered around New York from which some place names like Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn originate as well as a few other words like waffle and poppycock (from Dutch pappekak meaning “soft dung”). The Pennsylvania Dutch however were German-speaking people from Switzerland and southern Germany – the Amish, and Mennonites. Here Dutch is an Anglicized form of Deutsch (the German word for German).

Grimm’s Law

In linguistic circles Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) is better known for his discovery of phonetic changes in the development of Proto-Germanic than for his German folk tales.

Jacob was trained as a lawyer but was more interested in history and language – early German literature in particular. He authored many scholarly books including Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache (History of the German Language), Deutsche Grammatik (German Grammar), and the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch (German Dictionary). In 1812 and 1814 he and his younger brother Wilhelm published their collection of old German folk tales as Grimms Märchen (Grimms’ Fairy Tales) Volumes 1 and 2.

Grimm’s Law was first published in the second edition of his German Grammar in 1822. It is considered significant in linguistic science for introducing “…a rigorous methodology to historic linguistic research.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Grimm].

Sometime during the progression from Proto-Indo-European (about 2000 BC) to Proto-Germanic (about 500 BC), certain sound shifts in consonants occurred which were nearly universal (occurring to all words). These changes did not occur in any other PIE daughter languages such as the Proto-Romance language, so are observable with comparisons between English words taken directly from Latin, French or other Romance languages and those from its Germanic roots.

Greatly simplified, the changes are (with examples):

Labials (sounds made with the lips)

p changes to f: ped / foot; pater / father

f changes to b: fund / bottom

b changes to p: labial / lip

Velars (sounds made mid-palate)

k changes to h: canine / hound

h changes to g: host / guest

g changes to k: genuflect / knee

Dentals (sounds made with the tongue and teeth)

t changes to th: triple / three

th changes to d: thyroid / door

d changes to t: duo / two

Note that in all three groups, the changes go full circle, sort of like musical chairs.

Verner’s Law, developed by Danish linguist Karl Verner, explains further changes that occurred later to certain consonants in certain conditions (depending on the accent of the preceding syllable).

These sound changes are evident in all of the modern Germanic languages: German, Frisian, Dutch (and Africaans), Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, Luxembourgish, and of course English.

Sound changes like this are common in language history and take several generations, often a few centuries, to complete. A more recent example in English is known as the Great Vowel Shift which occurred between 1400 and 1600 (between Chaucer and Shakespeare). That’s a subject for a future post.

PIE in the Steppes

On a whirlwind visit from Ukraine to his family in Canada, my big brother of Blog Fodder fame returned yesterday a book I had loaned him a few years ago: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David W. Anthony (2007).

Anthony is an archaeologist who, with his wife – fellow archaeologist Dorcas Brown – did extensive field work in the southern steppes of Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Although not a linguist, he learned enough about linguistics to understand and appreciate what can be learned about ancient people from their language. His unique understanding of both steppe archaeology and linguistics [1] enabled him to make a persuasive case for the homeland of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language-speaking people as the western Eurasian steppes (grasslands) of more than 5,000 years ago.

In the 200 years since PIE was first discovered, historical linguists have reconstructed more than 1500 roots (and several thousand more words based on these roots) of this proto language. Anthony devotes a chapter of his book explaining, in simple terms, how the process of word reconstruction – both sounds and meaning – works so that non-linguistic readers will have some confidence in the results. From this lexicon (vocabulary) much information can be gleaned about its speakers that can’t be learned from archaeology alone. Anthony writes: “If we can combine the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary with a specific set of archaeological remains, it might be possible to move beyond the usual limitations of archaeological knowledge and achieve a much richer knowledge of these particular ancestors.” (p.5)

Here are some of the things learned about the environment, social life and beliefs of the PIE speakers from their reconstructed lexicon:

• They had words for otter, beaver, wolf, lynx, elk, hare, mouse, goose, crane, eagle, bee and honey
• They raised cattle, sheep, pigs and horses
• They wove woolen cloth
• They drove wagons or carts
• Their society was patrilineal (rights and duties were inherited from the father)
• They likely had formal warrior bands (armies)
• They recognized a male sky deity

Some of these could be discovered through archaeology (bones of animals hunted for food, bit wear on horses indicating domestication for riding, and possibly cart artifacts); the other “practices and beliefs are simply unrecoverable through archaeology.” (p.15)

It seems incredible to me that the English language can be traced back with a fair degree of confidence to a language spoken 5-6 thousand years ago. Note that even though, as explained in my last post, only about 26% of English words are of Germanic origin, most of the borrowed words are from other Indo-European languages, particularly French and Latin but also Old Norse, Spanish, Italian and even Hindi.

I’ll share more from this book in future posts – I’m only on chapter 3 of 17.

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[1] Typically historical linguists and archaeologists share a high degree of distrust of each other’s work. Anthony explains: “Both linguists and archaeologists have made communication across the disciplines almost impossible by speaking in dense jargons that are virtually impenetrable to anyone but themselves. Neither discipline is at all simple, and both [appear confusing] to an outsider… Historical linguistics is not taught regularly in graduate archaeology programs ... nor is archaeology taught to graduate students in linguistics.” (p.5). Anthony gives credit to a colleague James P. Mallory as “…perhaps the only double qualified linguist-archaeologist in Indo-European studies”. Mallory’s 1989 book In Search of the Indo-Europeans was unable to come to any firm conclusion as to the PIE homeland. Anthony explains that it was recent archaeological discoveries that enabled him to confidently locate the homeland in the steppes.

Borrowed Words

All languages borrow words from languages with which they come in contact; English is unique in the extent to which it has done so. Henry Hitchings in his book The Secret Life of Words estimates that English has borrowed words from 350 different languages. This book deals extensively with this phenomenon [1] of the English language. Wikipedia estimates that only 26% of the current 700,000 to 1 million English words come from its Germanic roots, the rest are borrowed from other languages. Words of French origin actually exceeds German, making up 29% of English vocabulary and Latin (including technical words) ties with French at 29%, with the remaining 16% coming from all the other languages [wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_French_origin].

There are different levels to which borrowed words become assimilated into English. Some words like ensemble or bratwurst are obvious borrowings and partially retain their foreign spelling and/or pronunciation. At the other extreme are words like marmalade [2] or mayor that have become Anglicized to the extent that we can't tell from the words themselves (pronunciation or spelling) where they are borrowed from, or even that they have been borrowed. The level of assimilation depends on time and usage - the longer since it was borrowed and the more it is used, the greater its degree of "Englishness" and the more familiar it appears to us. For example, words from Greek like area and problem are  more familiar than euphoria and persona; and from French marriage has been Anglicized while montage retains its French pronunciation.

Many borrowed words result from the age of exploration in which new things were discovered from around the world and named from words taken from the local language. Chimpanzee is from the West African language Tshiluba, geyser from Icelandic, sauna from Finnish, and futon from Japanese. Closer to home, Saskatoon berries and pemmican are from Cree words, as is the name of my province Saskatchewan [3].

Similarly words may be borrowed because there is no English equivalent, even though the object or notion is well known. My favorite example of this is the German word Ohrwurm (literally "ear-worm") for that tune you just can't get out of your head. Other loanwords may already have an English word for it, but the new word is more descriptive (entrepreneur) or adds a particular shade of meaning (scarlet and vermillion from French).

The terms "borrowing" and "loanword" seem rather odd in reference to words, as the loaning languages don't have to give up their words and there is no expectations of having to pay them back (sort of like your teenager "borrowing" $20 to go to the movies). English however has returned the favor many times and loaned words to languages from which it has previously borrowed. French now has le weekend and cool, Japanese intanetto and wado purosessa [4], and German has die bluejeans and der blogger.

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[1] from Greek
[2] from Portuguese
[3] A story goes that some American hunters pull into a gas station and ask the attendant where they are. The attendant replies "Saskatoon, Saskatchewan". One hunter then turns to the driver and says "I told you we went too far north - the natives don't even speak English".
[4] Try saying them out loud without the final "o".

The Forces of Language Change

Modern linguistics accepts that all languages are constantly changing and considers this a normal process. But if normal, then what are the forces behind language change?

Guy Deutscher in The Unfolding of Language devotes several chapters to answering this question. First he lists and dismisses three "obvious" reasons for languages to change. 

The first is to keep up with new technology and ideas. While this accounts for many new words, especially during the last few decades, it utterly fails to account for the vast majority of seemingly random changes which have occurred over many millennia. Language change has been recorded, over the space of one or two generations, among stone age tribes whose technology hasn't changed in over 30,000 years.

The second "obvious" theory is that languages change from contact with neighboring tribes by borrowing or imitating vocabulary and grammar. As I showed in the previous post, the French speaking Normans and later Latin speaking clerics and clergy had a significant influence on the English language. But change happens even in isolated peoples. The island of Papua New Guinea has 850 indigenous languages (about 14% of the world's 6,000) precisely because the tribes live in isolated mountain valleys.

The third theory is that people seek novelty and like to change things just for the sake of changing them. But most people actually fear change and try hard to prevent it from happening. This explains why, even though pronunciation of English has changed much in the last 400 years, spelling has changed little, resulting in the problems discussed in my last post.

So if these theories don't explain language change, then what does? It's only in the last few decades that linguists have developed satisfactory answers. Before providing three motives for change, Deutscher  addresses the question of who does the changing. The answer of course is that we all do, albeit unintentionally. I refer you to the quote on my blog header. One cow wanders off the path a little - perhaps to crop a fresh bunch of grass, or to follow a butterfly - and the one behind follows. As an example, I've noticed people lately using the word "perfect" at the end of a transaction as a new way of saying "thank you". I overheard a really absurd situation in the bank last week when the teller apologized to a customer for not having enough American dollars to complete the requested cash withdrawal for her planned holiday to the States, and asked her to come back in a few days. The customer answered "perfect" as she turned away empty-handed. My point here is that as silly as this expression seemed to me the first few times I heard it, I now catch myself using it sometimes. I admit it - I am a human cow. In summary, we all are the modifiers of our language, unintentionally and often unknowingly. Now - what motivates us to make changes?

Deutscher lists three motives for language change: economy, expressiveness and analogy. Economy refers to the human propensity for energy conservation - especially our own. In other words, we are just plain lazy. We pronounce words and phrases with the least effort possible to still be understood. "I don't know" comes out as "dunno"; "what's up?" something like "tsup?". These examples, from my youngest son's telephone conversation earlier this evening, involve omitting one or more syllables from a phrase. The words "don't" for "do not" and "what's" for "what is" are examples of the very same thing which have become formalized as proper English.

A countering motive to economy is expressiveness where we add more words for emphasis. Instead of replying with a simple "yes" we might say "by all means" or "I'd be delighted". I explained in the August 25 post on Grammaticalization how this led to the development of the French word "pas" to mean "not". As words become overused (an "awesome" salad), the intensity of their meaning is reduced (similar to the value of money with inflation) and new words must be found to replace them.

The third motive, analogy, is a force that returns order to language. Irregularities in grammar over time become more regular. Children learning to talk do this unintentionally, and are usually quickly corrected. Classic examples are "I goed" or "two foots". Sometimes these "mistakes" catch on. Deutscher gives the following examples: the plural of "book" used to be "beek" but changed to "books" in the 13th century; "eyes" replaced "eyen" as the plural of "eye" in the 14th century; and "kine" was replaced by "cows" for the plural of "cow" in the 16th.

These changes do not occur everywhere at once. They start at a particular place and time - perhaps with a 4 year old! Others copy and it starts to spread. Both versions would co-exist, for several generations, with one gradually growing in popularity until it becomes the standard. Sometimes we can find in literature examples of two versions co-existing. Chaucer in "The Merchant's Tale" uses the word "maked" referring to God's creation of Adam (chosen to rhyme with "naked") and four lines later uses "made" for God's creation of Eve (chosen to fit the line's meter). Note - this is an example of economy, not analogy. A word which uses the regular past tense form ("maked") is in the process of being changed into an irregular one ("made") just because it's easier to pronounce. A similar current situation is "dove", the past tense of "dive", which, at least in North America is replacing the regular "dived", perhaps following "drive" and "drove". Both forms are in current use.

Different languages change in different ways, which has resulted in the 6,000 extant languages today plus the tens of thousands of extinct and intermediate languages of which we can only surmise.