historical explanation of language structure

[Robert R. Ratcliffe]

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This relates loosely to a discussion initiated, I believe, by Scott
Delancey, a few months ago about the extent to which diachronic
explanations are necessary to explain synchronic structures.
 
It strikes me that there is a fundamental contradiction between the
de-facto use of diachronic explanations in generative theory and the
'orthodox' generative assumptions about language change. It is
well-known and uncontroversial that the underlying forms of classical
Generative Phonology are often identical with reconstructed forms. Many
critics of GG in the 60s and 70s saw this in itself as problem.  But I'm
willing to allow that ontology may recapitulate phylogeny as long as the
theory of change and the theory of acquisition can be reconciled.  But
in GG they are not.  Acquisition is assumed to involve simplification--
the child contructs the simplest grammar possible-- while the adoption
of reconstructed forms as underlying forms implies a theory of change as
grammar complication-- addition of rules.
 
I'm particularly disturbed by the way in which non-linear or 'process'
morphology (ablaut, reduplication, etc.) is handled. Many generativists
seem to be powerfully attracted to a theory of language as consisting
only of words or morphemes (which must be conventional, thus
artifactual, acquired) and syntactic relations which are presumably
universal. But in order to sustain this view process moprhology has to
be explained away. (Hence we have books like the recent ones by Lieber
or Stonham showing how all process morphology can be reduced to linear
morphology). The conventional way of dealing with an ablaut (like
man/men) in this kind of theory is by postulating a zero affix which
triggers a phonological change. This is a de facto historical
explanation. It is often (not always) the case that ablaut or apophony
develops from affixational morphology, because an affix (which may later
be lost) triggers a phonological change in the stem. But this type of
de-facto historical exaplanation in a synchronic account is really a
non-explanation or an anti-explanation. If the assumption is correct
that the simplest, most natural grammar (the one closest to UG) is one
which involves morphemes and linear order relations only, and if the
assumption that language change is simplification is correct, then
ablaut type change should be impossible.  A child confronted with a pair
like man/maener (or whatever it was in OE or Proto-Germanic, I am not a
germanist) should simply factor out the 'noise' of the vowel change,
identify the -er as a plural suffix and produce man/maner according to
universal rules for combining morphemes. But in actual cases of language
change it seems as often as not that it is the suffix which is factored
out and the vowel contrast identified as the marker of plurality (or
whatever semantic category), hence Eng. man/men. Thus either the theory
that language change is simplification is incorrect, or the assumption
that the simplest grammar is one which involves morphemes plus syntactic
relations only is incorrect. (Of course both may be wrong.)  If the
latter assumption is incorrect then there is no motivation to search for
deep-structure de-facto-historical explanations of process morphology.
 
    Thus while I am not yet ready to side with Paul, and say that there
are no explanations of language phenomena except diachronic
explanations, it seems to me there really hasn't been much progress in
the direction of finding synchronic 'explanations', as opposed to
synchronic descriptions, of language phenomena. Generative theory has
failed to provide an adequate explanation of  language change, yet
generative theorists contiune to rely on explanations based in language
change to explain synchronic language structure.
 
 
 
 
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Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan