LINGUISTIC ( THE TRADITIONAL VIEW OF LANGUAGE CHANGE )

I what I will call the traditional view of language change, the only changes that are important in a language are those that can be demonstrated to have structural consequences. Consequently, over a period of time a distinction between two sounds may be lost in a language, as occurred historically in most varieties of English in the vowels meet and meat or horse and hoarse. In most dialects these vowels have fallen together. Alternatively, a distinction may be gained where there was none before, as in a house with an {s} but to house with a {z} or finally in thin and thing, the [n] and [n]. In this case singe phonological unit became two : there was a structural split. So we can find instances of phonetic coalescence, situations in which a contrast existed at one time but later was lost and instances of phonemic split situations in which was no contrast at one time but contrast developed. According to this view of change, that is all you can really say because it is structural consideration alone that are all important. Variation is either controlled by circumstances, e., allophonic or it is free, i.e random. Internal change in a language is observed through its consequences.

Such change, of course, is not restricted to phonology. The morphology and syntax of a language in the same way. It is possible, therefore, to write internal histories of languages showing the structural changes, that have occurred over periods of time through use of this principle of contrast vs lack of contrast.

A second kind of change in a language is external in nature. This is change brought about through borrowing. Changes that occur through borrowing from other dialects or languages are often quite clearly distinguishable, for a while at least, from changes that come about internally. They may be somewhat idiosyncratic in their characteristics or distributions and appear for a while at least, to be quite marked in this way i.e the schl and schm beginnings of Schlitz and schmuch or Jeanne with the j pronounced like zh. There are often good social or cultural reason for borrowing and the items that are borrowed are usually words used to describe exotic objects.

Speakers of different language may have different views about borrowing. English speakers borrow almost indiscriminately from other languages, but speakers of French, German, Modern Hebrew and Icelandic are far more discriminating.

The traditional view of language change also favors a family tree account of change and of the relationship among languages. Linguist tend to reconstruct the histories of related are made between those language r varieties so that at one point in time one thing or a variety or splits into two or more or it lost. More rarely, two or more word such things is much less easy to work with. In this account of change and relationship is much less easy to work with. In this approach the various changes that occur must be seen as flowing into and interacting with one another. It is not all easy contrast with the desire to maintain fluidity in boundaries. A third view of change is that particular changes throughout a language, sometimes in rather idiosyncratic ways.

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