Clasificación genética de lenguas

Models of Linguistic Change

Lyle Campbell

1. Introduction. ‘Models of Change’: the family tree model and the Wave Theory Welletheorie) model.

2. The family tree model (Stammbaum).

Linguistic Diversification: language> language with dialects> different languages (the result of the accumulation of changes in the various dialects). The family tree represents this diversification, a classification of the languages of a family showing their degree of relatedness with each other. The family tree model is typically associated with August Schleicher (1821-1868) [1853, 1860]

The Neogrammarian slogan of the: Sound laws suffer no exceptions. The comparative method is dedicated to what is inherited in related languages, and therefore it says nothing directly about things due to linguistic contact. For that we have techniques for dealing with loanwords and linguistic areas.

Theory of waves (Welletheorie)

A hypothesis introduced by Johannes Schmidt in 1872, to oppose the family tree theory of August Schleicher. It was subsequently shared by others, such as Otto Schrader and Anoine Meillet. The basic idea suggests that languages evolve such that traits diverge and converge, intersecting one another in different ways like the waves that form on the surface of a pond when a handful of stones is thrown in it.

Johannes Schmidt 1901 Johannes Schmidt 1868

Some scholaars, many of them dialectologists, did not accept the Neogrammarian position that sound change is regular and without exception, and they opposed the family tree model. The slogan associated with the opponents of the neogrammarian position was: each word has its own history (chaque mot a son histoire). (This slogan is often attributed to Jules Gilliéron, author of the Atlas Linguistique de la France (1902-1910), although credit goes to Hugo Schuchardt, a contemporary of the Neogrammarian founders, whom he criticized.)

The alternative to the family tree model that was presented was the “wave theory”. The wave theory is usually attributed to Johannes Schmidt (1872), although it too was developed a bit earlier by Hugo Schuchardt (in 1868 and 1870) (cf. Alvar 1967: 82-5).

Schuchardt and Schmidt were both students of August Schleicher, as were several of the Neogrammatic leaders. The purpose of the “wave theory” was to deal with changes due to contact between languages or dialects. The dialectologists slogan, that each word has its own history, reflects the thinking that the history of a word can be the result of influences from several directions, and these can be quite different from those that participate in the history of other words, therefore, each word has its own (potentially very different) history. This model would reduce historical linguistics to the study of etymology, since etymology is the study of particular idiosyncratic properties in the history of individual words.

The dialectologists believed that their findings contradicted the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis. However, this was not really the case. What is at stake is, in the traditional view, the difference between the regular sound change internal to a particular language or dialect and the dialect borrowing, that can be irregular and comes from outside the particular language or the dialect. Labov (2010:305) disdtinguishes between “transmission within the speech community and dissemination across communities”.

Both types of change are important. The first is subject to “the normal type of internal [regular] change, called ‘change from below’ (change from within the system), in contrast to ‘change from above’ (importation of elements from other systems) (Labov 2010):307) – in short, the distinction between transmission and diffusion.

This second type of change is traditionally called a dialect borrowing.

The dialectologists believed that their data contradict the Neogrammarian regularity hypoothesis. The case of Normandy with its exceptions to the change in French of k > š ilustrates the idea:

chaîne < cate:na ‘chain

chambre < camera ‘room’

champ < campus ‘field’

chandelle < cande:la ‘candle’

chanson < cantio:(n-) ‘song’

chanter < canta:re ‘to sing’

chat < cattu(s) ‘caat’

The dialectologists took this as evidence that the neogrammatic idea of sound change without exception had to be wrong. The dialectologist could say that each of these words has its own history. The words more characteristic of rural life such as ‘cat’ and ‘field’ could possibly resist more the wave of change that brought the change k> š which spread out from the center of prestige in Paris. On the other hand, the words for ‘candle’ and ‘sing’, associated with the Church where the most prestigious pronunciations were favored and encouraged by the Parisian pronunciation of priests assigned to the local parishes, did undeergo the change of k> š in larger parts of this region, keeping k only in small relic areas in the region. It is seen that this explains why the areas where ‘candle’ and ‘to sing’ still retain the k pronunciation are much smaller than those of ‘cat’ and ‘field’ with k – the words had different histories.

There are two things to recognize about this case. First, we can identify these words as exceptions only if we recognize the sound change of k> š - without recognizing the sound change, it would be impossible to recognize these few words in Normandy as exceptions. While these words are exceptions to the strict regularity of sound change, we cannot explain their individual stories [their exceptionalness] without reference to the sound change. Second, cases like this one teach us more about how sound changes take place, here apparently through diffusion of the prestigeous Parisian standard (with š) to more remote areas – i.e. due to dialectal borrowing.

In short, neither the family tree model nor the wave theory is sufficient to explain all the linguistic changes and all the types of relationships that may exist between the dialects or the related languages. Without recognizing the sound change, we could not identify these dialect forms as exceptions, and without the information from dialectology, our knowledge of how some changes are transmitted or disseminated would be incomplete. Both are needed.

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