summary: major recent developments in historical linguistics

[Lyle Campbell]

Dear HISTLING members,

In December, I requested advice on major developments in historical
linguistics for the last 10 years or so.  I apologize for taking so
long to post this summary of the responses [it's been impossibly
hectic].

Many thanks to all who sent comments (some in multiple messages).
Responses came from Marianne Bakró-Nagy, Vit Bubenik, Werner Abraham,
John Hewson, Jack Hoeksema, Carol Justus, Robert Rankin, Malcolm
Ross, Gonzalo Rubio, Larry Trask, Wim Vandenbussche, Elly van
Gelderen, and Roger Wright.  In the summary that follows, I just give
the major ideas that were expressed, without attaching individuals'
names to them ... it wasn't clear to me whether the opinions should
go in with names attached, but in the end it became clear that some
would prefer not to be identified directly in this way.  Several
ideas were repeated by several different individuals, and therefore I
group them into categories.  I apologize for any misrepresentation of
any views that might come from this attempted brief summary.  There
was agreement on major areas of activity, but not on what was
considered significant contributions.

Historical linguistics' "health".  Some reported a downturn in
historical linguistics activity (conferences with little historical
linguistic representation, universities which offer no historical
linguistics, institutes with little in historical). Others report
increased public interest, citing media attention to long-range
relationships, evolution of language, decipherment of ancient writing
systems; vigorous historical linguistic activity is reported in other
conferences, books, etc., including that 4 of 6 winners of the LSA
Bloomfield Award have been on historical linguistics.

Time-honored research. Advances in the history of individual
languages and  families was pointed out; especially mentioned were
Austronesian, Semitic (and Afro-Asiatic), Uralic, Old Chinese, and a
number of Native American language families, plus Indo-European,
Germanic, and the history of English.  The family tree model has been
challenged, though most respondents who mention this work defend the
model and criticize the criticisms.

Language contact.  Many mentioned language contact; some attributed
this upsurge to Weinreich (1953), to Emeneau (1956), to Thomason &
Kaufman (1988), and to Dixon (1997). Areal linguistics is important,
though somewhat controversial. Convergence comes in here, exciting
some, criticized by others.

Work on kinds of change
Sound change.  Works Durie and Ross (1996),  Milroy (1992), and Labov
(1994, 2001) were cited; principles of vowel shifting and the debate
lexical diffusion were mentioned.
Semantic change. Traugott and Dasher (2002) on directions and
pathways of semantic change was commended.
Morphosyntactic change.  Several mentioned diachronic syntax; Harris
and Campbell (1995) was recommended; the debate about whether syntax
can be reconstructed by the comparative method was mentioned. Also
mentioned was the reconstruction of content systems (such as
tense-aspect of IE).

Grammaticalization.  Grammaticalization was mentioned as a "hot"
topic by many. Questions of unidirectionality and lexicalization were
brought up; the connection between grammaticalization, language
contact, and creole studies was also cited. Some cite formal
approaches involving "economy" and learnability as of major
significance for grammaticalization, and mention the coming together
of formalism and functionalism. The importance of historical
pragmatics, in connection with both grammaticalization and semantic
change, was also noted.

Typology and change.  Many mentioned typology in one connection or
another.  Several share Watkins' (2001: 60) opinion that "the most
important development in historical linguistics in the last decade or
so has been the confluence between historical and typological lines
of study."

Distant genetic relationships/"macrofamilies".  Proposed remote
linguistic relationships and methods for investigating them have
received much attention.  "Macrofamilies" mentioned were "Amerind,"
"Nostratic," "Eurasiatic,", "Austric," "Altaic," and "Proto-World."
Multilateral comparison as a method was explicitly rejected. (I note
that the usual supporters of these proposals were not among the
respondents, and therefore this report may not be representative of
the full range of opinion in the field.)

Other approaches.  Both Nichols' (1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997) and
Dixon's (1997, Aikhenvald and Dixon 2001) approaches were mentioned
as influential, though some criticisms were also mentioned,
particular of Dixon's views about "punctuated equilibrium." As one
respondent put it, "Johanna Nichols' work and that of her critics
merits mention."

Sociolinguistics and language change.  The importance of
sociolinguistics to historical linguistic investigation was mentioned
a number of times, how change and variation relate (especially Labov
1994, 2001).  Also works involving social motivations/identity were
cited, in particular work by Ross (1996, 1997, 2001, as well as
implications from social network theory (J. Milroy 1992, L. Milroy
1987, Milroy and Milroy 1992), and historical sociolinguistics, plus
"sociophilology" in the history of literate languages.

Corpus linguistics.  The use of corpora (in particular in the study
of the history of English) was recommended for its importance and for
the contributions it has made.  Computerized reconstruction of
vocabulary was also mentioned.
        (2) The reconstruction of content systems

Linguistic prehistory. Historical linguistic intersection with
cultural evolution was mentioned.  The language-farming dispersal
model was criticized, as was ecological determinism in general.
Significant advances of other sorts, however, were defended,
involving the correlation of historical linguistics with findings
from other fields.

In a class of its own.  One person mentioned Trask's (2000)
dictionary of historical linguistics as a major contribution.  It is
indeed a valuable reference for the field.

Conclusion.  The range of opinion and the disagreements were almost
as informative as the areas of agreement and overlap.  Thanks to
everyone for responding.

Some references
Campbell, Lyle.  2001. "What's wrong with grammaticalization?"
Language Sciences 23: 113-61.

_____. 2003. "Areal linguistics: a closer scrutiny." Paper presented
at the 5th NWCL International Conference: Linguistic Areas,
Convergence, and Language Change, 22-23 November 2002, University of
Manchester.
[http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/areal_linguistics.pdf].

_____. In press a. "How to show languages are related: methods for
distant genetic relationship." In Handbook of historical linguistics,
Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (eds.). London: Blackwell.

_____. In press b. "Beyond the Comparative Method?" In Selected
papers from the International Conference of Historical Linguistics,
Barry Blake and Kate Burridge (eds.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

_____. In press c. "What drives linguistic diversity?" In Examining
the farming/language dispersal hypothesis, Colin Renfrew and Peter
Bellwood (eds.). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research.

Campbell, Lyle and Alice C. Harris. 2002. "Syntactic reconstruction
and demythologizing 'myth and the prehistory of grammars'."  Journal
of Linguistics 38: 599-618.

Dixon, R. M. W. 1997. The rise and fall of languages. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Durie, Mark. and Malcolm Ross (eds.). 1996. The Comparative Method
Reviewed: regularity and irregularity in language change. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

Emeneau, Murray B. 1956. "India as a linguistic area." Language 32: 3-16.

Garrett, Andrew. 1999. "A new model of Indo-European subgrouping and
dispersal." Berkeley Linguistics Society 25: 146-56.

Gordon, Matthew J. 2002. "Investigating chain shifts and mergers." In
The handbook of language variation and change, J. K, Chambers, Peter
Trudgill, and Natalie Schilling-Estes  (eds.), 244-66. Oxford:
Blackwell.

Harris, Alice C. and Lyle Campbell. 1995. Historical syntax in
cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Joseph, Brian and Joe Salmons (eds.). 1998. Nostratic: sifting the
evidence. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change: internal
factors. Oxford: Blackwell.

_____. 2001. Principles of linguistic change: social factors. Oxford:
Blackwell.

Milroy, James. 1992. Linguistic variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell.

Milroy, Leslie. 1987. Language and social networks. (2nd edition.)
Oxford: Blackwell.

Milroy, Leslie and James Milroy. 1992. "Social networks and social
class: toward an integrated sociolinguistic model." Language in
Society 21: 1-26.

Nichols, Johanna. 1990. "Linguistic diversity and the first
settlement of the New World." Language 66: 475-521.

_____. 1992. Linguistic diversity in time and space. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

_____. 1995. "Diachronically stable structural features." In
Historical linguistics 1993: selected papers from the 11th
international conference on historical linguistics,  Henning Andersen
(ed.), 337-56. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

_____. 1996. "The geography of language origins." Berkeley
Linguistics Society 22: 267-78.

_____. 1997. "Modeling ancient population structures and movement in
linguistics." Annual Review of Anthropology 26: 359-84.

_____. 1998. "The Eurasian spread zone and the Indo-European
dispersal." In Archaeology and language II: archaeological data and
linguistic hypotheses, Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs (eds.),
220-66. London: Routledge.

Renfrew, Colin. 2000. "At the edge of knowability: towards a
prehistory of languages." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10, 1:7-34.

Ringe, Donald A., Jr. 1992. "On calculating the factor of chance in
language comparison". Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society 82.1:1-110.

_____. 1996. "The mathematics of "Amerind." Diachronica 13: 135-54.

Ross, Malcolm. 1996. "Contact-induced change and the comparative
method: cases from Papua New Guinea." In The Comparative Method
Reviewed: regularity and irregularity in language change, Mark Durie
and Malcolm Ross (eds.), 180-217. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

_____. 1997. "Social networks and kinds of speech community events."
In Archaeology and language I: theoretical and methodological
orientations, Roger Blench and Matthew Spriggs (eds.), 209-61.
London: Routledge.

_____. 2001. "Contact-induced change in Oceanic languages in
North-West Melanesia." In Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance:
problems in comparative linguistics, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.
M. W. Dixon (eds.), 134-66. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomason, Sarah G. 2001. Language contact: an introduction.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Thomason Sarah G. and Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact,
creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.

Trask, Larry. 2000. The dictionary of historical and comparative
linguistics.  Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in
semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Watkins, Calvert. 1990. 2001. "An Indo-European linguistic area and
its characteristics: ancient Anatolia: areal diffusion as a challenge
to the comparative method?" In Areal diffusion and genetic
inheritance: problems in comparative linguistics, Alexandra Y.
Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon (eds.), 44-63. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in contact: findings and problems.
New York: Linguistic Circle of New York.


Best,
Lyle


--
Professor Lyle Campbell,
Dept. of Linguistics
University of Canterbury
Christchurch, New Zealand
Fax:   64-3-364-2969
Phone: 64-3-364-2242 (office), 64-3-364-2089 (Linguistics dept)
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