26.2506, Review: Historical Linguistics: Bowern, Evans (2014)

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Subject: 26.2506, Review: Historical Linguistics: Bowern, Evans (2014)

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Date: Fri, 15 May 2015 14:00:32
From: Monica Vasileanu [monica.vasileanu at gmail.com]
Subject: The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-2805.html

EDITOR: Claire  Bowern
EDITOR: Bethwyn  Evans
TITLE: The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Monica Vasileanu, Romanian Academy, Institute of Linguistics

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This volume gathers 34 contributions from authors with various backgrounds,
grouped in five sections, plus a consistent introduction, written by the
editors Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans. The first section, called
“Overviews”, contains three articles aimed at giving a wide perspective on the
subject. The second section, “Methods and models”, made up of five articles,
is concerned with presenting the main theoretical models that have dominated
historical linguistics. The third section, “Language change”, puts together 17
contributions that treat language change within specific linguistic
disciplines: phonology, morphology, syntax, etymology, semantics,
sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. The fourth section, “Interfaces”,
describes the connections between historical linguistics and other
non-linguistic disciplines. The last section, “Regional summaries”, contains
five articles dedicated to five linguistic families: Indo-European,
Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Pama-Nyungan and the area of the Northwest
Pacific.

The editors’ introduction, “Foundations of the new historical linguistics”
(pp. 1-42), is a survey of the state of the art in historical linguistics. The
two editors briefly summarize the evolution of this domain, with a special
emphasis on its connections with other linguistic disciplines and with other
sciences. The evolution of historical linguistics is seen as a series of
answers given to important questions regarding language change. The major
debates in historical linguistics are presented. A substantial bibliography,
most of it recent, sustains the idea of a “renaissance” undergone by
historical linguistics.

The first chapter, “Lineage and the constructive imagination: the birth of
historical linguistics” (pp. 45-63) written by Roger Lass, presents how
historical linguistics came into being. The author departs from Plato’s
“Cratylos” and continues with a brief summary of the discipline’s pre-history.
Two major themes are investigated: genealogy and the possibility of
reconstruction. Lass shows how the story of Babel triggered the idea of a
linguistic genealogy, with the dominating image of an arboriform structure.
Lass examines Grimm’s Law (plus its ulterior corrections) and the
Neogrammarians’ manifesto in order to show how reconstruction achieved
important results in the 19th century.

In the 2nd chapter, “New perspectives in historical linguistics” (pp. 64-102),
Paul Kiparsky summarizes the more recent development of historical
linguistics: new relationships have been proposed, old relationships have been
reassessed, unstudied languages have been documented, the comparative method
has been refined. The analysis of various phenomena such as language contact,
sound change, analogy, grammaticalization, syntactic and semantic change led
to the formulation of theoretical conclusions. Thus, historical linguistics
came to be integrated within theoretical linguistics, for instance in models
such as Optimality Theory and Constructionalization.

In the 3rd paper “Compositionality and change” (pp. 103-123), Nigel Vincent
discusses the relation between the principle of compositionality, formulated
by Fregge, and language change. Language change can be explained through a
re-analysis of a complex expression: the speaker picks as more relevant an
aspect of a complex construction that was formerly seen as less relevant, as
happened with the ‘aoristic drift’ (p. 106). Nigel Vincent discusses several
examples of complex verbal phrases made up of a finite and a non-finite form
and concludes that it is not enough to show how one form gets grammaticalized,
for language change lies in the complex relations between the two forms,
relations that can be understood through the analysability principle. 

The second section, “Methods and Models”, begins with Michael Weiss’s paper,
“The Comparative Method” (pp. 127-145). The author presents the history of the
comparative method, its main principles and achievements, but also its
limitations. The comparative method, although old, cannot be bypassed in
studies on language genealogy. This chapter contains many practical examples
to show how the comparative method works. A more theoretical approach to the
same theory is to be found in the next chapter, “The Comparative Method:
theoretical issues” (pp. 146-160), signed by Mark Hale. The chapter revolves
around the notion of a proto-language, with questions such as: is a
proto-language a real language? Does a proto-language have dialects? Does
sound change work with allophones or phonemes? Is syntactic reconstruction
possible? To these questions only partial answers can be provided, and Mark
Hale shows how these answers converge with those provided by modern
theoretical linguistics.

In the next chapter, “Trees, waves and linkages: models of language
diversification” (pp. 161-189), Alexandre François investigates the process of
language diversification. After listing the limitations of the Tree Model, the
non-cladistic approach is presented: data from dialectology and
sociolinguistics show that language change lies in the diffusion of a new
speech habit across idiolects. Such a view is encapsulated in the Wave model,
first proposed in the late 19th century as an alternative to the Tree Model.
More recently, both models have been integrated in the wider concept of
Linkage. The last section of the chapter illustrates Historical Glottometry, a
model arising from the combination of the Comparative Model and the Wave
Model; this model is applied to the northern Vanuatu linkage.

Michael Dunn’s paper “Language phylogenies” (pp. 190-211) relies on the
concept of ‘phylogeny’, imported from biology to other domains: phylogeny is
the scientific investigation of the descent of organisms, but is applied also
to social sciences, arts and linguistics. In linguistics, most phylogenetic
analyses seek to infer language history from the behaviour of lexical cognate
sets, represented in standardized lists of meaning (p. 191). The article
illustrates several quantitative phylogenetic methods of analysis, such as
lexicostatistics, ‘the Levenshtein distance’ measure, and likelihood methods.
All these are used to measure the distance between two languages. But these
quantitative analyses have to be interpreted and Dunn presents a recent
approach, the Bayesian model, which can assess the probability of genetic
hypotheses. Quantitative phylogenetic analyses complete the Comparative Method
and much work is still needed to complete existing databases and develop other
programs.

Søren Wichmann, in his paper “Diachronic stability and typology” (pp.
212-224), turns his attention towards a more abstract domain: typology seen
from a diachronic perspective. The findings of this domain are not individual
facts, but formulations of tendencies. Wichmann reviews the literature on the
topic and the models that have been proposed, and then opts for the model
developed by himself and Eric Holman in 2009, by which the stability of
several features (e.g. gender, politeness distinction, distance contrast in
demonstratives) was calculated and several tendencies were observed (e.g.
basic morphosyntactic features are more stable than pragmatically oriented
features).

The third section, entitled “Language change”, opens with the article “Sound
change” (pp. 227-248), signed by Andrew Garrett, which tackles phonetic
change. The topics under debate are the definition of sound change, its
preconditions, its embedding (i.e. the phonological, morphological and lexical
contexts in which sound change occurs), and the actuation of sound change.
Although much research has contributed to a better understanding of sound
change, the question of actuation – why does sound change occur in a language
at a certain time – has not received an answer yet.

The debate continues in the next chapter, “Phonological changes” (pp.
249-263), by Silke Hamann. The main issues of the paper are: detecting
phonological change, distinguishing it from a mere phonetic change, the
conditions of a phonological change, its formalization and the modern
techniques of detecting and describing such a change. Phonological change
occurs at the level of mental representations, therefore it can be detected
indirectly, with the emergence or the disappearance of a phonemic contrast or
with rephonologization (i.e. a change in the phonological dimension of a
contrast). Formalization of phonologic change seeks to integrate this type of
change into theoretical linguistics and more specifically into the Generative
framework. Experimental methods such as acoustic measurements and perceptual
experiments are useful tools in detecting phonological mergers and splits,
while computer simulations are useful in testing the acquisition of phonologic
systems.

Stephen R. Anderson’s contribution, “Morphological change” (pp. 264-285),
takes into account both derivational and inflectional morphology, covering a
wide array of changes. Some sources of morphological change can be found in
phonological changes and in syntax. But in other cases, the sources of change
lie in morphology itself, as in the case of analogy and its many subtypes.
Grammaticalization is discussed and refuted as an overall pattern of change,
since, according to the author, each particular type of change assigned to
grammaticalization can be studied in its own right (p. 281-282).

In the next chapter, “Morphological reconstruction” (pp. 286-307), Harold Koch
explores the process of undoing changes and tracing earlier morphologic
structures, in a way similar to the Comparative Method; he illustrates the
problems discussed with examples from the Pama-Nyungan family. Morphological
features can be reconstructed by analysing reconstructed words, and by
comparing attested words (usually the attested words contain traces of a more
complex morphology). Some morphological features have originated from syntax
or from phonological change. Analogy has triggered changes inside a paradigm
and across paradigms. In the section dedicated to conclusions, Koch formulates
some predictions about morphological change in several types of languages.

Zygmunt Frajzyngier’s contribution, “Functional syntax and language change”
(pp. 308-325), contains a longer introduction, since the present model of
functional syntax is recent and original and is applied in historical
linguistics for the first time. Syntax is understood as a set of coding means
and their interaction. The coding means encode a semantic or pragmatic
function. Their realisations include lexical categories, free grammatical
morphemes, linear order, inflectional morphology, serial verb constructions,
prosodic and phonological features. Syntactic change occurs either in the
coding means or in the functions encoded by them. Other causes of syntactic
change are functional reanalysis (i.e. a coding means is associated with a new
function), a change in the frequency of use, the action of indirect coding
means, and language-external factors such as political and social factors and
language contact. In the end, Frajzyngier illustrates the interaction between
functional historical linguistics and other linguistic disciplines and
approaches, and raises some questions that need further research.

A complementary approach is presented in the next chapter, “Generative syntax
and language change” (pp. 326-342), focusing on formal syntax. Elly van
Gelderen presents first the tension between generative grammar and historical
linguistics, and then some considerations about Universal Grammar. The
evolution of generative grammar is summarized with respect to its growing
interest for historical linguistics. In the end, the author presents the
advantages and the pitfalls of formal historical syntax.

In the next chapter, “Syntax and syntactic reconstruction” (pp. 343-373),
Jóhanna Barðdal presents an overview of past and current research aiming at
syntactic reconstruction: although more difficult than phonological,
morphological or lexical reconstruction, it can be performed, especially in
the framework of Construction Grammar: changes in case marking, case functions
and in argument structure have been documented. Syntactic reconstruction is
illustrated with two case-studies: the verb ‘lust’ in Proto-Germanic and the
emergence of new case-frames in Indo-European languages.

The next chapter, “Lexical semantic change and semantic reconstruction” (pp.
374-392), is dedicated to a classic field of historical linguistics: lexical
semantics. Matthias Urban summarizes the traditional cases of semantic change.
Modern approaches emphasize the role of polysemy and of conversational
implicatures. Cognitive linguistics relies on prototype theory to explain
semantic change. Various generalizations about semantic change have been
formulated (e.g. from concrete to abstract), but, scepticism persists over the
finding of some ‘laws’ of semantic change, or at least some general
principles. However, corpus-based analyses and semantic reconstruction
performed in a cognitive framework have led to interesting conclusions.

In the following chapter, “Formal semantics/pragmatics and language change”
(pp. 393-409), Ashwini Deo tackles the interface between semantics, pragmatics
and grammar, illustrating some notions invoked in studies on
grammaticalization, such as conventionalization of pragmatic inferences,
generalization of semantic meaning and inflationary weakening. A recent
approach, game-theoretic pragmatics, is presented as a formal tool that can be
used in modelling grammaticalization.

Alexandra D’Arcy focuses in her contribution (“Discourse”, pp. 410-422) on the
problem of embedding. The starting point of her article is variationist
theory: linguistic change begins with language variation and this variation is
to be found in discourse, more precisely in the vernacular. The variationist
approach can indicate the pathways to grammaticalization, whilst other
approaches only see the starting point and the end point. Lexicalization (i.e.
the institutionalized adoption of forms into the lexicon) can also be
accounted for in this approach, and the author illustrates her claims
analysing the evolution of the ‘be like’ marker of direct speech.

The starting point of historical linguistics is the subject of Robert
Mailhammer’s contribution, “Etymology” (pp. 423-441). Etymology is a quest for
the origin of a linguistic item, be it lexical, phonological, syntactical or
even phrasal; it is a useful tool in all fields of historical linguistics,
since it leads to formulating sound laws and asserting genetic relations.
Mailhammer shows how etymological research works and how a good etymology
should be,warning against the Internal Development Bias, i.e. preferring an
internal etymology to a contact-induced one.

Susan D. Fischer discusses, in her contribution “Sign languages in their
historical context” (pp. 442-465), the changes undergone by different sign
languages – American, Chinese, Taiwanese, German, etc. These sign languages
can display instances of phonological, morphological and syntactic change, but
most obvious is the case of borrowing. Sign languages are very young, just
like creoles, but they are changing quickly and their study can thus be
fruitful for historical linguistics.

The next chapter is dedicated to a topos of historical linguistics: “Language
acquisition and language change” (pp. 466-483). James N. Stanford discusses
the one-century-old theory that language change lies in the process of first
language acquisition and more recent approaches which emphasize the role of
adolescents and adults in language change, suggesting that peer influence is
usually stronger than parent influence. Finally, the author discusses some
special cases of language acquisition in special communities in which a strict
exogamy leads to great differences between matrilect and patrilect.

Lev Michael’s contribution, “Social dimensions of language change” (pp.
484-502), is an account of the variationist approach to language change.
Language change arises from the propagation of linguistic variants across
repertories. This process of variant selection takes into account mostly
social factors: class, gender, social networks, ideology, and other cultural
facts in language change. 

Joan Bybee and Clay Beckner, in “Language use, cognitive processes and
linguistic change” (p. 503-518), discuss the cognitive processes that explain
language change: categorization, the chunking process (leading to phonetic
reduction, semantic bleaching, grammaticalization, loss of compositionality
and analysability), priming, inferencing. All these processes can be subjected
to analogy. The analysis shows how language change occurs in adults’ minds,
and thus complements the child-based theories of language change.

Christopher Lucas, in his chapter “Contact-induced language change” (pp.
519-536), focuses on linguistic change determined by language contact, a
subject that has received much attention in descriptive works but has not been
integrated into theoretical models of language change. The author identifies
bilingualism as the cause of contact-induced change. The dominance (understood
in cognitive terms) of one language over another, either the source or the
recipient language, determines four types of change that can occur at various
levels in language: restructuring (no straightforward transfer, usually refers
to syntactic restructuring), imposition (when the source language agents
become dominant), borrowing (with the recipient language agents dominant), and
convergence (for native bilinguals).

Language change implies that an old way of talking becomes obsolete and dies.
This topic is explored by Jane Simpson in the paper “Language attrition and
language change” (pp. 537-554). Language attrition can be defined in more
common terms as forgetting or loss of a language or of some item of it,
identifiable at any level in language (phonology, morpho-syntax, lexicon) and
applicable to native languages and learned ones. Social, individual and
linguistic factors determine this loss, and linguistic contact is the first
trigger.

The fourth section is opened by Simon J. Greenhill’s contribution,
“Demographic correlates of language diversity” (pp. 557-578), aimed at
describing the connection between demographic factors and linguistic
diversity. Statistical methods, simulations and phylogenetic methods are used
for measuring the tempo of linguistic change and to make predictions about its
causes. Language diversity has been associated with the age of a language, the
size of the speaking population, its technological progress, and geographical
and ecological factors such as resource availability, the facilities/barriers
to human contact, the area covered by the speakers, the continental axis, and
geographical latitude. Social factors influence linguistic diversity: the
emblematic function of a language (i.e. language is an emblem of a social
group), the difference between an esoteric language and an exoteric one, and
political complexity. Each factor has been analysed, but further large-scale
studies on the tempo of change are necessary, and also studies that would
integrate all these factors in one theoretical approach are needed.

The next chapter, “Historical linguistics and social-cultural reconstruction”
(pp. 579-597), signed by Patience Epps, explores the methods of reconstructing
social and cultural aspects of a community by means of historical linguistics.
The lexicon is the most salient tool: a reconstructed vocabulary shows how
speakers of a protolanguage lived and can give clues about the homeland of
that protolanguage; but reconstructing meaning is many times problematic.
Loanwords and aspects of grammar and discourse indicate population contact.
Semantic change blurs reconstruction, but might indicate some cultural
practices. 

Paul Heggarty’s contribution, “Prehistory through language and archaeology”
(pp. 598-626), seeks to identify the links between historical linguistics and
archaeology. Putting together data from both domains would bring new
information about the chronology and the geography of language prehistory, but
also about the causes of linguistic diversity. Archaeology corrects, in many
situations, the inferences drawn from historical linguistics.

Brigitte Pakendorf brings up a surprising topic in her paper “Historical
linguistics and molecular anthropology” (pp. 627-641). Two models combine
genetic and linguistic data: the ‘coevolution’ approach, which states that
linguistic distance is correlated with genetic distance, and the ‘contact’
approach, which considers that population contact can be analysed with tools
pertaining to genetics. A case study from Fwe (a Bantu language) supports the
latter claim. In the end, the author explains in an accessible language the
main concepts and methods used by molecular anthropology.

The fifth section opens with an article on the most studied, but still
problematic linguistic family, Indo-European: Benjamin W. Forston IV’s
“Indo-European: methods and problems” (pp. 645-656). The author summarizes the
current theories on the subgroups of the family and their branching off. The
main outcomes of phonologic and morphologic reconstruction are presented,
along with the still existing problems.

Ritsuko Kikusawa, in her contribution, “The Austronesian language family” (pp.
657-674), presents the problems of subgrouping and reconstructing the ancestor
(spoken about 5000 years ago in Taiwan) of some 1200 late-attested languages
in the Austronesian family. The tree model is not sufficient to represent this
family. Contact-induced changes have resulted in some specific phenomena, such
as ‘indirect inheritance’ (i.e. borrowing from a closely related language) and
‘metatypy’ (i.e. reorganization of an emblematic language of a community on
the model of an unrelated language which functions as an intercommunity
language). Morphosyntactic reconstruction has focused mostly on argument
structure and case-marking.

More problems arise when discussing the Austroasiatic family (Paul Sidwell,
“The Austroasiatic language phylum: a typology of phonological restructuring”,
pp. 675-703), which groups about 150 languages with a discontinuous
geographical distribution and heavy influences from non-related languages. The
chapter focuses on phonological change, relying on data sets which indicate a
preference towards monosyllabic words. Augmentation and reduction, syllable
structure and tonogenesis are discussed along with other phenomena related to
sound change.

Luisa Miceli tests the Pama-Nyungan hypothesis (“Pama Nyungan”, pp. 704-725),
which proposes a genealogical relation between most of the Australian
languages – approximately 160. The author presents the arguments and the
problems raised by such a theory, based mainly on lexical similarity and
shared innovation. Counterarguments propose an explanation of shared
vocabulary through linguistic contact, especially since there is a great
degree of phonological similarity. Thus, the relation between the 160
languages remains an open debate.

Sarah G. Thomason turns her attention to a linguistic area in North America,
“The Pacific Northwest linguistic area: historical perspectives” (pp.
726-736), an area that contains three language families. The genealogic
relation between them has not been clearly established. Sarah Thomason
presents the shared features and the hypotheses that might explain them.
Area-wide features seem to be older than limited-range common features, but a
common ancestor cannot be postulated with a high degree of certainty.

EVALUATION

The present volume is aimed at reflecting the state of the art and future
directions of historical linguistics (p. XVIII). The two goals are achieved in
this impressive volume. Each chapter undertakes a certain theme and discusses
it departing from the first insights on that topic until present-day debates,
offering indications for further reading and a view of the most recent works
in the domain. Most of the time, the final section of the chapter suggests the
further development of the discipline. 

The structure of the volume illustrates the current state of historical
linguistics: in spite of being the oldest discipline, etymology seems to have
become an obsolete field (with only one paper dedicated to it), whereas
grammar seems to be now the main domain investigated from a diachronic
perspective. Grammaticalization is one of the main topics discussed in the
book, with serious pros and cons on considering it a particular force driving
language change. 

All the papers use an appropriate language for a handbook: terminology is
explained. Thus, the volume is accessible not only to specialists, but also to
undergraduates or merely curious readers. 

In conclusion, this volume represents a great introduction for anyone
interested in historical linguistics, as well as in other connected
disciplines such as history, archaeology, and molecular anthropology. Also, it
represents a good starting point for research and an impressive testimony to
the progress achieved in historical linguistics.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Monica Vasileanu is a scientific researcher at the 'Iorgu Iordan - Al.
Rosetti' Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest, Romania, where she is
currently working in projects such as 'Dicţionarul limbii române' (the
comprehensive dictionary of Romanian) and 'Dicţionarul etimologic al limbii
române' (the etymological dictionary of Romanian). She defendend her PhD
dissertation in 2012. Her main interests are in the fields of historical
linguistics and of critical text editing. She also teaches Romanian language
to non-native speakers at the University of Bucharest.





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