GG and change

[Isidore Dyen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
How about contemplating whether language change is inevitable. If it is
not, theren should be some stable languages somewhere, If it is, then it
must be inherent in all languages and thus a universal.
 
On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliff's last message.
> He states:
>
> >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the
> >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate,
> >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link
> >between historical and formal linguistics.
>
> I would like to offer a different perspective.  It is not about "severing
> the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus
> presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything else
> in language.  The "everything else" is what is relevant to historical
> linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across
> particular languages from one time to another.  Therefore, the search to
> isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves historical
> linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any particular
> language, which are subject to change.  The two programs complement each
> other, and work together.
>
> Stated differently, GG, and no doubt any serious synchronic framework for
> analysis which claims to be applicable to all observable (and "possible")
> human languages, seeks to provide the invariant parameters of language
> within which variation and change are possible -- and to which variation
> and change are *limited*.  This is quite different from severing the link
> between historical and formal (i.e., "universal") linguistics.  So, despite
> the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics continues its historic
> mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic change.  One
> need not be misled by what some GGists claim they are trying to do (not to
> mention what they claim is "important").  It is no different from what
> historical linguists are trying to do when they compare two changes and say
> they reflect the SAME process of change.
>
> Having said that, then, it turns out that virtually every substantive
> proposal that GG has made for something invariant in language turns out to
> be too concrete, and the exceptions in some language or other show that
> those features of language are indeed subject to change.  And so the search
> goes on, as proposals for concrete universals retreat into greater
> abstraction as the data from more and more languages accumulate.  Each
> failed universal is an opportunity for the historical linguist to
> contemplate and try to determine how it is that languages can evolve in one
> way or the other.
>