Linguistic supertype and the English grammar: a historical perspective
Junichi Toyota
Lund University/University of Belgrade
The way we communicate can be classified into different types according to different
disciplines. In semiotics, stemming from the Saussurian tradition of langue and parole, theprinciple of a ternary distinction of languages based on a semiotic triangle has been used, first
proposed by Bühler (1934) and recently revised by Durst-Andersen (2011). According to thistriangle, world languages can be classified into a situation-oriented type, a speaker-orientedtype and a hearer-oriented type. These types are termed linguistic supertype by DurstAndersen (2011). According to this classification, English is considered as a hearer-orientedlanguage. What is unique, and often overlooked from a typological perspective, is that
English grammar is full of peculiarities, in a sense that the formation of the English grammar
is so unique that it is rarely found elsewhere in the world (cf. Toyota forthcoming). In thispresentation, it is argued that the grammatical peculiarities in the English grammar are largely
due to its historical development through contacts among mutually intelligible languages,including dialects. Contact-induced replications have been claimed to be a crucial force
behind grammaticalisation (e.g. Heine and Kuteva 2005, 2006), but mutual intelligibility isalso an important factor in contact, which can turn a language into a grammatically uniqueform.
Languages spoken in Europe have gone through dramatic changes after the 15th century.
This is largely due to the social changes, initially triggered by the Renaissance and in the 15thcentury and followed by the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century (e.g. Heine and Kuteva
2006; Toyota 2010; p.c. Bernd Heine). This is because such social changes created a groundwhere people interacted more frequently, largely through trading but also intellectual
exchange after the invention of mass printing. Like other European languages, English saw
many grammatical changes after the 15th century, which seems to suggest that Great Britain
also underwent the influence from the continental Europe. However, this timing is deceptive
and it is a mere coincidence. Great Britain had its own social events, such as Enthronement ofJames I and Richard III and the Industrial Revolution, and did not experienced much effects
from the continental Europe. Such events caused migration of people within Great Britain andas a consequence, mixing of dialect. Throughout the history of English, important contacts
have been made among the mutually intelligible languages, e.g. Old Norse and different
dialects. It can be stated that the formation of the Present-Day English grammar is a result of
mixing different dialects, including Old Norse.
This is in part similar to koineisation, and some previous works have dealt with Middle
English or Early Modern English as a type of koiné, dialect levelling or a standardised
language (e.g. for instance, Wright 2000, 2005). However, dialectal levelling may not suffice
to explain the whole developmental pattern found in the history of English. What is importantis that the grammar was altered so that hears can understand a statement better. This lead tosimplification of grammar in many parts (such as the loss of cases and gender, the fixation ofword order, reliance on tense, not aspect, etc.), but some parts became more complex, e.g. thearticles. All these shifts were made so that hearers can retrieve messages more easily. Thus,
there is not much use in using articles from a speaker’s perspective, but it is very useful for ahearer to decode a reference to a specific object in discourse. Thus, English grammar is not a
simple dialect levelling, but historical changes were directed to turn the grammar into ahearer-friendly system.
The grammar of earlier English was more speaker-oriented, i.e. the system was better
suited to express subtle differences in a speaker’s mind. This required a more complex

system, as observed in the Old English grammar. After the Middle English period, thisspeaker-oriented grammar started to turn into a hearer-oriented one. In the whole sequence ofchanges in the history of English, it is clear that the underlying function of grammar has
shifted. This is one of the major factors often neglected in explaining the historical changes ofEnglish, i.e. English has shifted the linguistic supertype. In order to achieve this, contacts
among mutually intelligible languages or dialects are required, and this partial intelligibility
made speakers aware that they had to express themselves clearly discarding subtle
differences, which may not be so crucial in conveying an overall statement. The shift of thelinguistic supertype is also responsible for grammatical peculiarities in English, since not somany languages have the hearer-orientated grammar. There are similar cases in the rest of theworld (e.g. Malay in South-East Asia, Swahili in East Africa, Quechua in the Andes region ofSouth America and Scandinavian languages in Northern Europe, cf. Toyota 2010), and suchcases all demonstrate a similar developmental pattern and they normally went throughcontacts among different languages, most of which are mutually intelligible. It is alsosuggested from these languages that the grammar has shifted into the hearer-oriented type inthese languages. Thus, the linguistic supertypes and shifts among them seem to be a very
crucial, but normally neglected, factor in the historical linguistics. By incorporating the shiftof orientations, it is easier to explain the history of the English grammar morecomprehensively.
References
Bühler, K. 1934. Sprachtheorie. Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Stuttgart: Gustav
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Durst-Andersen, Per 2011. Linguistic Supertypes: A cognitive-semiotic theory of humancommunication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva 2006. The changing languages of Europe. Oxford: Oxford
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Toyota, Junichi 2010. ‘Language and identity in historical change.’ In Lopičić, Vesna andMišić-Ilić, Biljana (eds.): Language, Literature and Identity. Newcastle upon Tyne:
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Toyota, Junichi forthcoming. English Grammar through Time: a typological perspective.
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