Re: Is language development evolutionary, or designed by the culture?

David Wright Sr. wrote:

> I didn't say that all such would stay the same, but that in general, they
> tended to be more conservative than otherwise. Certainly, they could vary one
> from the other. I would maintain that there was *something* different in
> their environment which propagated the change. Conceivably, even the
> individual differences of a prominent individual could cause the surrounding
> speakers to adapt to his idiolect.

This is in fact what Labov has found in his minute longitudinal studies
of Philadelphia sociolinguistics.

> I strongly disagree that such wholesale change occurs spontaneously. I can't
> prove it, but I am of the firm opinion that *all* language changes have some
> causes, even though it might be very difficult to determine what they might
> be, if not impossible. Yes, there might be individual spontaneous changes,
> but I do not believe that they would become spread through the rest of the
> language group without some factor causing that to happen.

See your previous paragraph immediately above.

What causes languages to diverge is that, once communities fall out of
intimate communication with each other, different changes happen to
catch on and happen to spread.

> I admit that I can't prove any of this. Do you have references to any studies
> that demonstrate that languages spontaneously and naturally change over time?
>
> I would be happy to study them myself.

Two of Labov's three definitive volumes on his lifework are available:
Language Change: Social Factors and Language Change: Internal Factors.
The third volume, Language Change: Cognitive Factors, will be out any
year now.

But it might be simpler to start with the Blackwell Handbook of Language
Variation and Change.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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