Diachronic vs. synchronic universals/tendencies

[Scott DeLancey]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Alexis brings up two different points, and I'm going to split
my reply to his post into two.  First:
 
> In the discussion of this topic, which started with
> Scott Delancey's defense of the idea that many or
> even all (?) synchronic universals or tendencies
> have a diachronic explanation,
 
Whoops.  No, I'm absolutely not suggesting that *all* of the robust
tendencies we find across languages are to be explained diachronically.
I think that linguistic structures start out motivated, not (at least
for the most part) by any specifically linguistic prewired structure,
but by various functional strategies of the kind often lumped together
in functionalist writing under the rubric of "iconicity" (which term I
quite agree, before anyone bothers to jump on it, is so broad and
vague as to be of little real use).
    My original post was in response to a couple of messages that I
took as suggesting that somehow real, "scientific", synchronic linguistics
need not have any diachronic dimension.  This is refuted by any
demonstration that there are *any* cross-linguistically robust synchronic
patterns which can only be satisfactorily explained in terms of diachronic
mechanisms, and that was all I was trying to argue.  (Though I did, it's
true, make reference to Paul Hopper's argument which can be interpreted
as implying that all is diachrony, I wasn't intending to endorse it).
 
> as suggested by Richard Janda, there is a case to
> be made (I am being deliberately conservative) that
> all linguistic universals or tendencies ultimately
> depend on our biological endowment and hence are
> "synchronic".  But as far as I can see this does not
> detract from the force of Scott Delancey's observation,
> since it is logically possible that the way these
> innate mechanisms manifest themselves is precisely
> in the kind of language effect that Scott was talking
> about.
 
There is an issue here.  If some "universal" pattern
can be completely explained by some universal aspect
of diachrony, e.g., N-Adposition order by the fact
that adpositional phrases diachronically develop from
verb phrases (not that that's absolutely true, but let's
take it as a hypothetical example--I'll say a little about
the empirical question in another post), then why do we need
any kind of story about "biological endowment"?  The
innatist story becomes superfluous.
 
And there's an important difference in empirical prediction.
Any innatist story about, for example, word-order "universals",
founders on the fact that the universals are not universal.
That is, and story based on X'-theory *as a theory of some
innate human linguistic endowment*, or any similar story based
on notions of "harmonic" order of dependent and head, can
account for the rather significant number of "disharmonic"
patterns attested in languages only by one or another sort of
special pleading.
   The diachronic account, in contrast, only says "X is a very
common pattern, because it is the result of a very common diachronic
tendency".  That of course requires separate diachronic accounts
for less common patterns -- but to the extent that such accounts
can be found, then "disharmonic" patterns are not "exceptions" to
some "universal".
 
 
Scott DeLancey
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403, USA
 
delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/prohp.html