Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk (Peter Christian)
Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
Reply-To: petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:03:00 +0000


> 
> However, if languages change as a result of some internal effort
> at some kind of an optimizing principle, then it should be an
> observable universal. It should be possible, then, to find this
> univeral principle since there are so many languages that 
> lingusists have studied.

I agree that the search for universal principles is a rational
pursuit in historical linguistics. The first problem is that there
are bound to be different principles for different levels of
structure and that these will interact in complex ways which will
depend to a great extent on the actual details of the linguistic
system.

> Thus methods can be devised, in principle, to
> distinguish between the two kinds of changes.

The second problem is that in spite of the impression given by almost
every book on historical linguistics, no historical change is fully
explainable (though it will still be describable) without reference
to the social environment of the change, which of course we have very
little knowledge of for earlier periods. In fact the work of Labov
and his followers seems to suggest that we haven't got good enough
evidence for *any* period where we can't accurately correlate
linguistic forms with the social categorization of the speaker on a
statistical basis. So there aren't really two distinct types of
change (though I admit, it is pragmatically a useful distinction), or
rather we can never be sure that `environmental' factors did not play
a part in some historical change. I remember collapsing with laughter
when I read the suggestion that the Second Sound Shift was caused by a
powerful leader with a speech impediment whose manner of speech was
imitated by his followers. It's ridiculous because it's pure
speculation (certainly not because the speech forms of the powerful
are irrelevant to linguistic change), but just supposing some such
`social' factor were discovered then all the explanations based on
`tensions within the system' would be seen to be seriously
incomplete. And since by definition we will never have adequate
sociological evidence for such periods (excluding time machines, of
course), self sufficient internal principles must be seen as the best
of a bad job. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't make them as explicit
and consistent as possible or that we shouldn't have sound criteria
for distinguishing better and worse accounts, we just shouldn't have
too much faith in the real historical accuracy of such explanantions.

Any universal principles derived from such explanations are probably
best treated as guidelines for what is likely rather than as
scientific laws, because of this absence of crucial information. For
example, a very reasonable `universal principle' would be that complex
consonant clusters tend to be simplified, but that wouldn't cover the
explanation of why it sometimes applies and sometimes doesn't, i.e.
why consonant clusters are not constantly being simplified in every
language that has them. What we are left with is a principle in the
sense of a statistically frequent and plausible type of change
(clearly better than `consonant clusters tend to become nasalized
diphthongs', for example) which can be appealed to as `explanations'
for change, (though they might be regarded as just high level
classifications of descriptions). This is in fact what historical
linguists do, but it inevitably falls short of what I take to be the
implication of `universal principle' in the original posting. The best
we can do in my view is have criteria for acceptability of
explanations, but not criteria for when or why a certain `universal
principle' operates in a particular language, i.e. not a true
`universal principle' as I understand the term.

Peter
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Peter Christian                         
  Dept of European Languages              peter@gold.ac.uk
  Goldsmiths' College, London.            petex@cix.compulink.co.uk
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