Grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon of language change

Synchronic and Diachronic Variation

This work will discuss the theory of grammaticalization, as it is defined within the current linguistic literature. The work will discuss the aspects of the term grammaticalization that allow it to be defined as an epiphenomenon of the physical neurological changes and language or grammatical changes that are consistent with the development of language, in both its form and in acquisition by individuals. Grammaticalization, historically has created a sense that the impetus for language change is one that is entirely driven by the immediate context, rather than by the diachronic or historical view of change. This creates the idea that language is structural, above all else, an error to be addressed in this work, by evaluating ideas by those who think that grammaticalization is an epiphenomenon of language.

Introduction:

Grammaticalization is a hot button topic in the study of linguistics, though it has been historically accepted as truth the dimensions of its linear construct leave many believing that there must be another way. The concept of Grammaticalization as it applies to linguistic theory indicates that the formation of language is fixed after a certain point in one language (diachronically) or individual as a secondary psychological phenomenon or epiphenomenon of the physical neurological changes that are cemented in the brain when one first learns language or when language is evolving, as it does eternally.

Natural languages are characterized by their unplanned purposefulness. They come into existence and change by an interaction of variation and selection. Their genuine mode of explanation is the invisible-hand explanation. It mirrors the three essential features of language: (1) Language is a dynamic process, (2) it consists of a micro and a macro level, and (3) it shares certain characteristics with artefacts as well as with natural phenomena. An invisible-hand theory explains the explanandum as the causal cumulative consequence of intentional actions. It is functional, reductional and individualistic. Every theory of linguistic change that claims to have explanatory force will be an invisible-hand theory. (Keller 113)

According to the various theories of grammaticalization the process of grammaticalization is not independent of other factors, which are not specific to language and/or language learning by the individual, thus making grammaticalization an epiphenomenon rather than and independent phenomenon.

In a sense of the grammaticalization of a language it is the diachronic representation of how language rules come to be, how words evolve into assumed meanings and well as how words are used in communications, grammatically and otherwise. "Everyone agrees that the term [grammaticalization] refers to the phenomenon in which forms that at one stage of a language have fairly concrete lexical meanings and functions come to have more abstract grammatical uses and meanings at a later stage. As Traugott and Heine (1991, p.2) note, Meillet (1912) defined grammaticalization "as the evolution of grammatical forms (function words, affixes, etc.) out of earlier lexical forms." (Joseph 164) the definitive answers about grammaticalization by most linguists also include a demonstrative agreement on the fact that such forms are linier through a diachronic view and irreversible, i.e. that they almost never return to previous understandings and usages once they have changed in usage.

Grammaticalization, the change by which lexical categories become functional categories, is overwhelmingly irreversible. Prototypical functional categories never become prototypical lexical categories, and less radical changes against the general directionality of grammaticalization are extremely rare. Although the pervasiveness of grammaticalization has long been known, the question of why this change is irreversible has not been asked until fairly recently. However, no satisfactory explanation has been proposed so far. Irreversibility cannot be attributed to the lack of predict-ability, to the interplay of the motivating factors of economy and clarity, or to a preference for simple structures in language acquisition. (Haspelmath 1043)

Though first learning can include a bilingual aspect the idea that such changes in the brain function will forever dictate the manner in which an individual or an entire language group utilizes language becomes fixed to the first linguistic learning they experience is well accepted and is the reason many individuals give to the difficulty learners older than say 3-5 years have in becoming linguistically and grammatically fluent in a second language and especially one that is linguistically different than the first language learned. "...grammaticalization is and everyday fact of language. It results in not only the familiar constructions of language such as be going to, but also many of the highly structured, semi-autonomous "formal idioms" of a language that make it unique, but are often regarded as peripheral." (Hopper & Traugott, 10)

Epiphenomenon:

In a sense the epiphenomenon of grammaticalization, as many would claim is the psychological response to the neurologically fixed brain functioning that creates workable mental shortcuts through the utilization of commonly occurring rules that are unique to individual languages and to some extent people. The brain functions to save the individual undue work in forming language, when common rules are oft repeated and in so doing, as the theory goes it leaves the individual capable of the creation of language in an easy almost non-thinking manner.

Anderson, and Lightfoot 162) Yet, when an individual attempts, once these shortcuts have been set, to learn a unique language, a variation of ones own language, say modern English as compared to Middle English or even the English spoken in another country in the present world, he or she is stymied by these shortcuts as they would need to be eradicated or altered (which theory claims is difficult if not impossible to do) to think in and become fluent in another language.

Healy 3)

The structure of a particular language elicits unique strategies that speakers utilize to process discourse information. We refer to this as the language-specific strategies hypothesis. The second hypothesis is that the strategies formed as a result of the native language structure are likely to influence speakers when they process discourse information in a nonnative language. We call this the strategies transfer hypothesis.

Anderson, and Lightfoot 40)

Language as a biological process is derivative of other ideas, but is not exclusively unique in any given individuals who, generally communicate within the same language.

In that way, the emergence of a grammar in an individual child is sensitive to the initial conditions, to the details of the child's experience. So language change is chaotic, in a technical sense, in the same way that weather patterns are chaotic. The historian's explanations are based on available acquisition theories, and in some cases our explanations are quite tight and satisfying. Structural changes are interesting precisely because they have local causes. Identifying structural changes and the conditions under which they took place informs us about the conditions of language acquisition; we have indeed learned things about properties of UG and about the nature of acquisition by the careful examination of diachronic changes. Under this synchronic approach to change, there are no principles of history; history is an epiphenomenon and time is immaterial.

Anderson, and Lightfoot 185)

Further the idea that grammaticalization of a whole language and also of the individual's language reflects the epiphenomena of the functional aspects of the mind as the language organ. Anderson and Lightfoot stress that there is a great deal more than simple issues of the utilization or change of the utilization of grammatical laws that determines the foundational changes that occur within language and the individual learning language, and therefore such changes are dependant upon other phenomena, i.e. epiphenomenon.

There is more to language change, a phenomenon of social groups, than just grammar change, a phenomenon of individuals. Grammar change is nonetheless a central aspect of language change, and it is (naturally enough) intimately related to other aspects of language change. The explanatory model is essentially synchronic and there will be a local cause for the emergence of any new grammar: namely, a different set of primary linguistic data. Time plays no role and there are no principles which hold of history.

Anderson, and Lightfoot 162)

Though there are many who would argue the grammaticalization and even language itself must be studied in the diachronic rather than the synchronic, as is suggested by Andersen and Lightfoot in the close of the last statement and yet, it makes little sense to discuss the changes of language individually without seeing language through the whole and therefore the historical.

Chomsky (1965) defined grammatical competence in terms of the language of (i.e. stringset generated by) an ideal speaker-hearer at a single instant in time, abstracting away from working memory limitations, errors of performance, and so forth. The generative research program has been very successful, but, one legacy of the idealization to a single speaker at a single instant has been the relative sidelining of language variation, change and development. More recently, Chomsky (1986) has argued that generative linguistics can offer a precise characterization of I-language, the internalized language or grammar of an individual speaker, but has little to say about E-language, 'external' language, which is an epiphenomenon of the I-languages of the individual speakers who comprise a speech community. Consequently, the study of language change within the generative tradition has largely focused on 'I-language change'; that is, the differences between I-languages or their corresponding grammars internalized by child language learners across generations. And within I-language change on the (parametric) properties of internalized grammars (e.g. Lightfoot, 1979, 1999). The generative approach to language change treats (major) grammatical change as a consequence of children acquiring different grammars from those predominant amongst the adults in the population, perhaps as a consequence of variation in the internalized grammars of these adults. However, theories of language variation, change and development will (minimally) require an account of how the E-language(s) of an adult population can be defined in terms of the aggregate output of these (changing) individuals.

Briscoe 3)

As the written form is a foundational part of every aspect of social studies, it would seem logical that the E-language equation must be entered back into the prime question and one way to achieve this is through the assessment of grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon that cannot be, and should not be isolated from the diachronic view.

On the other end of the spectrum from strong claims about unidirectionality are arguments that there are so many counterexamples to unidirectionality that is cannot be considered a defining characteristic of grammaticalization (e.g., Janda 1995, 2001; several articles in Campbell 2001a). In a chapter entitled "Deconstructing grammaticalization" Newmeyer has proposed that "there is no such thing as grammaticalization," at least as a phenomenon independent of other changes (1998: 226). Many of the researchers who argue from this perspective are concerned that, even if unidirectionality were irreversible, including unidirectionality in the definition (as we have) makes the claim of unidirectionality uninteresting from a theoretical point-of-view (see Norde 2001 for detailed discussion). Newmeyer (1998), Campbell (2001b), Janda (2001), Joseph (2001), and others use this argument to claim that, although there is extensive evidence fro regularly recurring directional changes, grammaticalization should not be thought of as a "theory," in the sense of an explanation of a subject of study. Instead, they suggest, it should be thought of as the descriptive name of a frequently occurring epiphenomenon that can be explained by other factors that occur in language change anyhow. Such other factors are variously thought of as reanalysis (I. Roberts 1993a) or "downgrading reanalysis, appropriate semantic change, and phonetic reduction" (Newmeyer 1998: 260). (Hopper & Traugott 132-133)

Foundational aspects of grammaticalization assume that the changes that occur are occurring individualistically among those who speak and write in a given language and the language itself. Marrying the two is essential to a full understanding of the formation of change and essential to creating a better understanding of how language may change in the future. Though there may not be a general historical rule, those that do exist and especially the irreversibility of grammaticalization is essential to understanding such phenomena and language change.

A language change is shown to result from the cumulation of countless individual actions of speakers, which are not intended to change language, but whose side effect is change in a particular direction. Grammaticalization is a side effect of the maxim of extravagance, that is, speakers' use of unusually explicit formulations in order to attract attention. As these are adopted more widely in the speech community, they become more frequent and are reduced phonologically. I propose that degrammaticalization is by and large impossible because there is no counteracting maxim of "anti-extravagance," and because speakers have no conscious access to grammaticalized expressions and thus cannot use them in place of less grammaticalized ones. This is thus a usage-based explanation, in which the notion of imperfect language acquisition as the locus of change plays no role. (Haspelmath 1043)

The foundational idea of grammaticalization, therefore must not be isolated to a single time and/or place, reducing the overall message of the concepts to a snapshot of the creative process that is at play in the foundation of language change. Context, culture, social exposure and many other issues must be assimilated into the concept.

It is a] strange way of looking at things... To think that a language and... [its] forms... lead a life to themselves, apart from... individual speakers, and... [to] permit... [oneself] to be governed to such an extent by terminology that... [one] regard[s] metaphorical expressions as reality... And even incorporate[s] into... language [certain] concepts which are only... ways in which... grammarian[s] look... At things. If someone could once and for all manage to get rid of these generally harmful expressions...!... [Many] in themselves quite innocent grammatical terms have so far been almost exclusively a curse, hardly a blessing. (Ostho• and Brugmann 1878, p. xv/1967, pp. 205±206.) (Janda 265)

Through the foundational reexamination of grammaticalization, there is a strong sense that exceptions are not only rare but require a standard set of explanations, and yet the new generation of linguists would disagree with the fact that language change can only be defined as grammaticalization and through its concepts and terminology. The entire concept of grammaticalization is under scrutiny by the group associated with Campbell.

The real explanatory power lies behind grammaticalization, not in grammaticalization itself, but in the kinds of linguistic changes that are at play in grammaticalization, in the factors and forces that drive phonological change, semantic change, and in particular in reanalysis. Grammaticalizations involve reanalysis, but reanalysis is a much more powerful mechanism of grammatical change and is not limited to nor co-extensive with grammaticalization. Similarly, sound change and semantic change apply to many things in addition to grammaticalizations. These "explain" instances of grammaticalization, but grammaticalization itself explains nothing without first calling upon these kinds of changes and the explanations they afford. Is grammaticalization derivative and therefore lacking a status of its own? I have argued in this paper that grammaticalization has no independent status of its own. Cases of grammaticalization are explained adequately by the other mechanisms of linguistic change, and grammaticalization explains nothing by itself but must rely on these other mechanisms and kinds of linguistic change. (Campbell 158)

Within this context there would seem to be a revolution afoot in the filed of linguistics that essentially reexamines the very foundation of language change, with grammaticalization as only one of many aspects associated with its cause. The determination of these linguists is to acknowledge the diachronic variation of language through a reassessment of the importance of historical change, within the holistic picture. When one only looks at the collection of modern language change, and especially that which is associated completely with one individual or a small group of language users he or she misses the point of the evolutionary concepts of language change as it is a much more dynamic process than can be seen by this simple assessment.

In a recently published volume on grammaticalization entitled the Limits of Grammaticalization (1998), the editors Giacalone Ramat and Hopper observe that the study of grammaticalization 'appears to be entering a new and significant stage' (p. 1). After a period of revived interest in grammaticalization in the 1980s and early 1990s, resulting in a constant flow of textbooks and case studies, 'there is a growing reflexive interest in integrating grammaticalization with theoretical work in descriptive and historical linguistics' (Norde 231)

Clearly the changes that are taking place within the field of linguistics will broaden the understanding of grammaticalization, as well as narrowing the scope of the theories surrounding it simultaneously. The hope is that these two aspects of the treatment of language change will create a better understanding of language change itself, rather than focusing all language change on one isolated synchronic situation.