Contributions by Steve Long

[Larry Trask]

Stanley Friesen writes:

[on my Yugoslav example]

> This actually accords with what one book on linguistic change suggested is
> the *main* cause of language change: a social desire to differentiate one's
> group from some other group.  (Unfortunately I cannot locate the book right
> now).

I don't know of any book or article which makes such a strong claim as this,
and I must confess I find it implausible.  But there *has* been some recent
work showing that this desire for linguistic distance has been a major factor
in certain cases.

[on the contunuity-plus-change in English]

> There is another way out of this dilemma.  At least in many cases
> substantial language change occurs in a *single* generation.  In the
> history of English, one such case occurred during the Wars of Roses, and
> separates Middle English from Modern English.

Perhaps, but I find it very hard to believe that *most* linguistic change
occurs over a single generation.  The evidence seems to be clearly against
this.

By the way, what was there that was so dramatic during the Wars of the Roses?

> And it is occurring right now for the Blackfoot language, with older tribe
> members speaking Old Blackfoot, and the younger ones speaking New
> Blackfoot.  The changes are quite substantial, and include replacement of
> vowel+glottal stop with a long/creaky vowel.

I have encountered comparable cases elsewhere.  But, again, it seems doubtful
that language change mostly occurs in sudden and dramatic jumps, or
saltations, to borrow a term from evolutionary biology.

[LT]

>> Take a real case in this vein.  Is modern Greek "the same language" as
>> ancient Greek?  If not, where's the cutoff point?

> One of two places:
> 1. at some historical point where there was a major break between
> successive generations.

At what point?

Standard histories of Greek, in my experience, present a history of constant
change, with few if any dramatic discontinuities.  The conventional division
into historical periods (Mycenaean, Homeric, classical, Hellenistic, New
Testament, Byzantine, and what not) is presented as a convenience, not as an
objective fact.  The only observable discontinuities lie in those periods
during which Greek is not attested.

> 2. at the point where any older dialects are not easily comprehensible to
> someone knowing the modern literary standard language.  (Choosing the
> literary standard here  deals with the issue of the subtle changes over
> time in modern Greek).

Well, to be honest, I think it's out of order to appeal to a written literary
language, which need bear little or no relation to speech -- and it's speech
we're interested in.

Anyway, I think it's improper to pick a contemporary speaker as the judge.
Everybody at every stage can normally understand the speech of the two or
three immediately preceding or following generations.  My grandparents would
probably have understood their own grandparents better than I could have, had
I ever been able to meet them.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk