rate of change

[Larry Trask]

On Tue, 2 Feb 1999 manaster at umich.edu wrote:

[LT]

> > *First* we have to agree on what *exactly* it is that we want to try to
> > measure.  "Measuring the rate of language change" is every bit as
> > diffuse a concept as "measuring the rate of social change".

> But there is well-known work on specific rates of specific kinds
> of change, e.g., the rate at which words are replaced in the
> 100-item Swadesh list.  We know for certain, even Swadesh
> towards the end conceded, that this rate is not the same
> for all languages,  There are examples of the rate being
> much slower than Swadesh's norm (Icelandic) and ones of it being
> much faster (Eastern Greenlandic).  This much is or should
> be widely known.

Sure.  That was my point.

If we identifically *one specific type of change*, then we can at least
approach the problem of trying to measure the rate of that change --
though not necessarily successfully.

But this is utterly different from trying to measure the overall rate of
change -- which is the suggestion I was sismissing.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk