rate of language change

[Larry Trask]

On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

[LT]

> >> Paul, Marie, elle a couche avec.
> >>you won't find this construction in any
> >>reference grammar of French.

> 	My colleague in French blanched when she saw this. She said this
> was the kind of French that "you heard in the Metro but that no one would
> admit to speaking."

Well, yes -- tremendous observation, and exactly my point.
Self-reporting and self-conscious judgements are not, in general,
reliable guides to the way a language is genuinely spoken.  Languages
change faster than we care to admit, and often in ways we don't care to
admit.

Recall the case of the Italian "personal a".  It's not described in any
grammar of Italian; Italian-speakers apparently often deny its existence
-- and yet observation has revealed that it is frequent.  Very likely
the Spanish "personal a" got started in the same way: as a vulgarism
that was beneath notice.  But today it's an established part of the
standard language, and omitting it where it's required constitutes "bad
Spanish".

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk