Language change

Abstract

In Chapter 2 we re-examined the notion of grammaticality, arguing that it was ultimately a projection or epiphenomenon of standardization. From that perspective, the grammar constructed by a professional linguist is simply an alternative codification to that provided by a normative grammarian, superior perhaps in terms of the quality of the analysis, but not fundamentally different in nature. The corollary of this view is that grammars themselves have no reality other than as analytical tools — an obvious point to many people, but one that is obscured in at least some approaches to language. In this chapter we examine the implications of this for diachronic linguistics. We start by considering the view that language change is intrinsically paradoxical. This perception, we argue, results from a false a priori assumption about the nature of language, an assumption stemming ultimately from the ideology of standardization. After that, in Section 4.3, we show how conceptualizing language change in terms of systemic change is problematic in a number of ways. As part of this, we examine the difficulties involved in reconciling the abruptness that is implicit in the notion of parameter resetting with the normally long timescales associated with diachronic change. In Section 4.4, we elaborate the notion that variation — and hence change too — is due primarily to the indexical nature of language; that is, the fact that it encodes social meaning for individual speakers.