Synchronic and diachronic variation in language

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.

Healy 5)

It is clear that second language learners utilize first language strategies because the functional utilization of language is specific to different languages and are also required for any language acquisition. It is therefore clear that the acquisition of a second language is inherently difficult, as a result of the epiphenomenon of grammaticalization in the individual. As a general understanding of the grammaticalization theory the same can also be said, as linguistically the formation of most language is irreversible, due to the fact that those utilizing the language do not have easy psychological access to earlier grammatical information, a synchronic view, which will be reiterated later in this work.

Newmeyer attempts to explain the prevalence of grammaticalization over degrammaticalization as a "least-effort effect": Functional categories require less coding material -- and hence less production effort -- than lexical categories. As a result, the change from the latter to the former is far more common that from the former to the latter.... All other things being equal, a child confronted with the option of reanalyzing a verb as an auxiliary or reanalyzing an auxiliary as a verb will choose the former (Newmeyer 1998: 276). (Haspelmath 1053)

As Haspelmath has made clear in the above statement there is a reiteration of the idea that language to some degree must be viewed synchronically when dealing with individuals and can only be discussed diachronically in theory or academic assessment of the possible causative factors of language change, often used to determine the potential future changes associated with any given language.

The invisible-hand explanation allows us to reduce the observed regularities at the macro-level of language change to the speech behavior of individuals at the micro-level. The macro-effect of grammaticalization need not be attributed to some mysterious external "law of history" that inexorably pushes languages down a certain path. As Lightfoot (1999: 220) notes correctly, "a historical law [cannot] be anything other than an epiphenomenon, an effect of other aspects of reality." (Haspelmath 1063)

Recreating the concepts of language, based on the idea that it is not an independent living entity, as has been explained repeatedly in the history of linguistics, but rather a creation of man creates an opening of the possibilities of how interconnected language is with its creator and environment, i.e. context.

Grammaticalization Defined:

There are several differing, yet similar definitions of grammaticalization and one that serves to answer for many of the technical aspects of grammaticalization is offered by Heine, and Kuteva:

Technically, grammaticalization involves four main interrelated mechanisms. a. desemanticization (or "semantic bleaching") - loss in meaning content, b. extension (or context generalization) - use in new contexts, c. decategorialization - loss in morphosyntactic properties characteristic of lexical or other less grammaticalized forms, and d. erosion (or "phonetic reduction") - loss in phonetic substance. (Heine, and Kuteva 2)

The foundational concepts of grammaticalization are further explained by Heine and Kuteva and help to develop the mostly linear aspect of grammaticalization, which is most accepted.

While three of these mechanisms involve a loss in properties, there are also gains. In the same way that linguistic items undergoing grammaticalization lose in semantic, morphosyntactic, and phonetic substance, they also gain in properties characteristic of their uses in new contexts. Grammaticalization requires specific contexts to take place, and it can be, and has been, described as a product of context-induced reinterpretation. Accordingly, context is a crucial factor in shaping the structure of grammatical forms - to the extent that they may express meanings that cannot immediately be derived from their respective source forms. (Heine, and Kuteva 2)

Grammaticalization as Epiphenominon:

Anderson and Lightfoot, further develop the concept of grammaticalization as an epiphenomenon when they discuss the essential nature of grammars, rather than the entire language concept.

From the perspective sketched here, our focus is on grammars, not on the properties of a particular language or even of general properties of many or all languages. A language (in the sense of a collection of things people within a given speech community can say and understand) is on this view an epiphenomenon, a derivative concept, the output of certain people's grammars (perhaps modified by other mental processes). A grammar is of clearer status: the finite system that characterizes an individual's linguistic capacity and that is represented in the individual's mind/brain, the language organ. No doubt the grammars of two individuals whom we regard as speakers of the same language will have much in common, but there is no reason to worry about defining "much in common, " or about specifying precise conditions under which the outputs of two grammars could be said to constitute one language. Just as it is unimportant for most workin molecular biology whether two creatures are members of the same species (as emphasized, for example, by Dawkins 1976), so too the notion of a language is not likely to have much importance if our biological perspective is taken and if we explore individual language organs,

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)