Two types of
language change
Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistic ...
can be characterized as
linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
drift: a
unidirectional short-term and
cyclic long-term drift.
Short-term unidirectional drift
According to
Sapir, drift is the unconscious change in natural language. He gives the example ''Whom did you see?'' which is grammatically correct but is generally replaced by ''Who did you see?'' Structural symmetry seems to have brought about the change: all other ''wh-'' words are monomorphic (consisting of only one
morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
). The drift of speech changes dialects and, in long terms, it generates new languages. Although it may appear these changes have no direction, in general they do. For example, in the English language, there was the
Great Vowel Shift, a
chain shift
In historical linguistics, a chain shift is a set of sound changes in which the change in pronunciation of one speech sound (typically, a phoneme) is linked to, and presumably causes, a change in pronunciation of other sounds. The sounds invo ...
of long vowels first described and accounted for in terms of drift by
Jespersen (1860–1943). Another example of drift is the tendency in English to eliminate the ''-er'' comparative formative and to replace it with the more analytic ''more''. Thus, in some dialects one now regularly hears ''more kind'' and ''more happy'' instead of the prescriptive ''kinder'', ''happier''. In English, it may be the competition of the ''-er'' agentive suffix which has brought about this drift, i.e. the eventual loss of the Germanic comparative system in favor of the newer system. Moreover, the structural asymmetry of the comparative formation may be a cause of this change.
The underlying cause of drift may be
entropy
Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the micros ...
: the amount of disorder (differences in probabilities) inherent in all linguistic systems.
Another underlying cause of drift may be
crosslinguistic influence (CLI) in situations of language contact. For example, in Shanghai Chinese (Shanghainese) it has been reported that vowel sounds have gradually changed over time due to the influence of Mandarin Chinese (Yao & Chang, 2016). At a shorter timescale (weeks of intensive exposure to a second language) as well, phonetic changes have been observed in an individual's native language; these changes, termed 'phonetic drift', generally approximate properties of the second language.
Long-term cyclic drift
Cyclic drift is the mechanism of long-term evolution that changes the functional characteristics of a
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
over time, such as the reversible drifts from
SOV word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...
to
SVO and from
synthetic inflection to
analytic observable as typological parameters in the
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
of
language families
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term ''family'' is a metaphor borrowed from biology, with the tree model used in historical linguistics ana ...
and of
areal groupings of languages open to investigation over long periods of time. Drift in this sense is not language-specific but universal, a consensus achieved over two decades by universalists of the typological school as well as the generativist, notably by
Greenberg (1960, 1963),
Cowgill (1963),
Wittmann (1969),
Hodge (1970),
Givón (1971),
Lakoff (1972),
Vennemann (1975) and
Reighard (1978).
To the extent that a language's
vocabulary
A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...
is cast into the mould of a particular
syntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
and that the basic structure of the
sentence is held together by
functional items, with the
lexical items filling in the blanks,
syntactic change is no doubt what modifies most deeply the physiognomy of a particular language. Syntactic change affects
grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...
in its
morphological and
syntactic
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...
aspects and is seen as
gradual
The gradual ( or ) is a certain chant or hymn in liturgical Christian worship. It is practiced in the Catholic Mass, Lutheran Divine Service, Anglican service and other traditions. It gets its name from the Latin (meaning "step") because i ...
, the product of
chain reaction
A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events.
Chain reactions are one way that sys ...
s and subject to cyclic drift.
[See Henri Wittmann's 1983 state-of-the-art article.]
See also
*
Phonological change
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change that alters the distribution of phonemes in a language. In other words, a language develops a new system of oppositions among its phonemes. Old contrasts may disappear, new ones ...
*
Phonemic differentiation
*
Sound change
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
*
Syntactic change
Notes
References
*Chang, Charles B. (2012). Rapid and multifaceted effects of second-language learning on first-language speech production, ''Journal of Phonetics'', 40.249-68
*Chang, Charles B. (2013). A novelty effect in phonetic drift of the native language, ''Journal of Phonetics'', 41.520-33
*Chang, Charles B. (2019a). Language change and linguistic inquiry in a world of multicompetence: Sustained phonetic drift and its implications for behavioral linguistic research, ''Journal of Phonetics'', 74.96-113
*Chang, Charles B. (2019b). Phonetic drift. The Oxford handbook of language attrition, Monika S. Schmid and Barbara Köpke (eds.), 191-203. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
*Cowgill, Warren (1963). A search for universals in Indo-European diachronic morphology. Universals of language, Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), 114-141 (2nd ed., 1966). Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press
The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...
.
*GivÓn, Talmy (1971). Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: an archaeologist's field trip. Papers from the Regional Meetings of the Chicago Linguistic Societv 7.394-415.
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1960. A quantitative approach to the morphological typology of language, International Journal of American Linguistics, 26.178-94 (Reprint of a 1954 article).
*Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), 73-113 (2nd ed., 1966). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
*Hale, Mark. 2007, Historical linguistics: Theory and method, Oxford, Blackwell
*Hodge, Carleton T. 1970. The linguistic cycle. Language Sciences. 13.1-7.
*Jespersen, Otto (1909–1949). ''A Modern English grammar on historical principles''. London: Allen & Unwin. Chapter 7.
*Martinet, André (1955). ''Économie des changements linguistiques: traité de phonétique diachronique''. Berne: Frannke.
*Reighard, John. 1978. Contraintes sur le changement syntaxique. Cahiers de linguistique de l'Université du Québec 8.407-36.
*Sapir, Edward (1921). ''
Language: An introduction to the study of speech''. New York: Harcourt.
*Vennemann, Theo (1975). An explanation of drift. Word order and word order changes, Charles N. Li (ed.), 269-305.
*Wittmann, Henri (1969). "The Indo-European drift and the position of Hittite." ''International Journal of American Linguistics'' 35.266-6
*Wittmann, Henri (1983). "Les réactions en chaîne en morphologie diachronique." ''Actes du Colloque de la Société internationale de linguistique fonctionnelle'' 10.285-9
*Yao, Yao, and Chang, Charles B. (2016). On the cognitive basis of contact-induced sound change: Vowel merger reversal in Shanghainese, ''Language'', 92.433-67
*Zipf, George Kingsley (1935). ''The psycho-biology of language''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
*Zipf, George Kingsley (1949). ''Human behavior and the principle of least effort''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drift (Linguistics)
Historical linguistics