Comments Welcome
George W. Grace
University of Hawaii

Ethnolinguistic Notes

Series 4, Number 5

LINGUISTIC CHANGE
4. MORE ON THE LOCUS OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE

[I'll continue the hypothetical dialogue with myself]

QUESTION: Let me attempt to sum up where we've gotten so far. This all began when we asked the question: What is a linguistic change? First, we discovered that a linguistic change has been defined as a difference between successive states of a language (états de langue). We then set out to formulate rules for applying that definition to actual cases.

Our first setback came when we were forced to acknowledge that languages--and, therefore, their states at any point in time--were fictions.

Then we considered the possibility that a minor modification in our definition--so that it would no longer require us to assume the reality of languages--might resolve the problem. Therefore, we looked at the possibility that there was some other entity--something different from languages as commonly conceived--that might serve as the locus of what we'd been calling the état de langue. The most obvious candidate seemed to be the so-called "variety", but we were eventually obliged to conclude that the variety was as fictive as the language.

Is there any way to salvage our definition of linguistic change? What other revisions might we consider?

ANSWER: We can presumably consider all of the possibilities by examining the definition piece by piece.

The possibility that we've already tried was substituting something for "language", to give "a linguistic change is a difference between successive states of X". The only possibility that we've so far found for "X" was "a variety", which proved unsatisfactory, but we could make a more diligent search for candidates.

Another possible way to revise the definition would be to get rid of "successive". For example, it might say that a linguistic change was a difference between earlier and later states of X" (but now without the implication that one immediately succeeded the other).

An additional possibility would involve rejecting the implicit presupposition that linguistic change takes the form of discrete events by replacing "a linguistic change" as what is being defined by, simply, "linguistic change". That would give us something like "linguistic change consists of differences between earlier and later states of X.

QUESTION: That's too much to deal with at one time. Let's consider these possibilities one by one. To begin with, what might be gained by eliminating "successive"?

ANSWER: Speaking of "successive states" seems to imply that states are discrete, that there is a sharp boundary separating the earlier state from its successor. The idea of discrete states seems to imply that the changes that presumably are what differentiate the states are saltatory--that is, instantaneous leaps from one state to another. The idea that linguistic change might be instantaneous is entirely at odds with all of the recent studies of change in progress. Any description of a linguistic state should be thought of as analogous to a snapshot that artificially "freezes" what is actually an ongoing activity.

QUESTION: That change of wording seems to be well motivated then. Now what about changing the definiendum from count to mass noun, "a linguistic change" to simply "linguistic change"?

ANSWER: The motivation would be essentially the same: to free ourselves from what Martin Joos once (Joos 1950: 702) called the "discrete (or discontinuous) mathematics" of linguistics. To speak of a change implies the possibility of distinguishing whatever is part of a change from whatever is not.

QUESTION: You mean from anything else that might be going on at the same time?

ANSWER: At the same time or at any other, including immediately before and immediately after. There'd no longer be the implication that there must be boundaries marking the beginning and end of the (process of) change, separating it from everything in the earlier and later states of the language (or whatever the "X" is that we want to say has undergone the change).

QUESTION: Should we say, then, that both of these last rewordings are well motivated and that we should keep them?

ANSWER: It's a question of what our objective is. If our objective is to come up with a model to guide research, maybe we shouldn't. A model to guide research will almost certainly require oversimplifications, that is, fictions based on as-if reasoning. However, if our objective is to try actually to understand how linguistic change works, it would seem that we should keep them.

QUESTION: I think our objective should be to understand as much as we can, at least to begin with. I believe that understanding should give us a better basis for designing our fictions.

With that settled, we're now saying that linguistic change consists of differences between earlier and later states of X. Are there any other problems to deal with before turning to the question of what X is?

ANSWER: Only perhaps that speaking of "differences" (count noun again) may suggest that the differences themselves are discrete. No doubt they're likely to be discrete in our descriptions of them, but not necessarily in their actuality.

QUESTION: Then how about: "linguistic change is the difference between earlier and later states of X"?

ANSWER: That should be a good enough basis to work from.

QUESTION: But now we come back to the question of "X". What can it possibly be?

ANSWER: I think the answer is that "X" is not one thing, but many. By that I mean that language can be looked at from many different perspectives, and from each perspective, there is change to be observed.

To begin with we should recognize that, despite the fact that the concept "language state" doesn't refer to anything very precise in the real world, a large body of work based on this concept exists--that is to say, based on the comparison of linguistic descriptions. There's much to be learned from this literature, and from adding to it where that's feasible. It's feasible where appropriately related linguistic descriptions exist or where data suitable for such descriptions exist or could be obtained.

QUESTION: Certainly that tradition shouldn't be overlooked, but it doesn't answer the question before us now. What are some of the other perspectives from which language can be looked at?

ANSWER: Well, the object of attention might conceivably be human language as a whole--the linguistic resources of the world and/or how they are being used.

It might be the linguistic resources, or the uses made of them, of a particular continent, nation, village, neighborhood, or any precisely defined set of people.

It might even be the linguistic repertoire of a particular individual.(1)

QUESTION: Is there any one possibility--any one possible interpretation of "X"--that is more basic than the others, so that understanding how it changes might eventually serve as a basis for examining changes in the others?

ANSWER: Well, of course it seems that the locus of language must be in the individual--language can exist only as long as there are people who know and use it. All linguistic change must ultimately be realized as changes in individuals' knowledge of language.

QUESTION: But haven't we already considered that option and found it unsatisfactory? In the preceding Note (Grace 1996) we pointed out that the individual's knowledge of language (there we used the term, "idiolect") isn't a homogeneous system, that a typical individual regularly uses and understands different varieties.

ANSWER: It's unsatisfactory if we believe that X must be a homogeneous system--something that will be a suitable object for linguistic description of the traditional kind.

QUESTION: Then. it seems to boil down to this. If we choose the individual's knowledge of language as our X, we'll apparently find ourselves adrift from our moorings in the sense that we'll no longer be able to use the traditional technique of linguistic description.

ANSWER: In any case we won't be able to make traditional linguistic description our starting point--the basis of our work. We might hope that eventually we'll find a way to connect our results with the results of work done in that tradition.

QUESTION: By the same token, the only choices for X that would permit us to continue to work with traditional linguistic description seem to be fictive entities such as the language or the variety, which have the disadvantage of not corresponding to anything very precise in the real world. Is that essentially the situation?

ANSWER: That seems to be pretty much the dilemma we face.

QUESTION: Let's attempt to avoid the dependence on fictions for as long as possible. That means choosing the first option and working with the following definition: "Linguistic change is the difference between earlier and later states of individuals' knowledge of language".

But now, what's the next step? If the individual's knowledge of language isn't a suitable object for linguistic description of the traditional kind, what kind of description is it a suitable object for? That is, what form does it take?

ANSWER: These questions are very much to the point. We need to be able to say what it's like in the first place before we can properly talk about how it changes. But that's too big question to deal with here; we'll have to take it up in a separate Note.