Explaining Language Change

by William Croft

Explaining Language Change presents the first integrated theory of all aspects of language change which builds on the pioneering ideas of Richard Dawkins and David Hull in biology and philosophy of science.

Genres: Linguistics

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book approaches language change in an evolutionary framework. Croft looks at language as a variable and dynamic thing, in contrast with structuralists and generativists who look at language as more of an isolated object for study. I've heard grunts and groans form linguists about trying to fit language change into an biologically evolutionary paradigm. Croft himself admits that there is not one-to-one correspondence between biological and linguistic evolution/change. Given the convincing argument that Croft provides, I would say that his framework is a handy and useful approach, leaving open the possibility that another, better one is yet to be determined. That is, linguistic change might need its own non-derivative framework.

In any case, in this book are some useful ways of addressing language change. For one, Croft discusses language change in terms of the general theory of selection, naming the speaker as a unit of selection and the lingueme (linguistic structure, or form) as a unit of replication. He also includes a nice section on how language change might happen in the context of social networks, citing seminal work by Milroy and Milroy.

The book includes a glossary of key terms typically associated with both linguistics and biology, and a lengthy reference list that I've already made use of. While I am not entirely sold on all of the ideas therein, I value this book and would buy a copy for reference if I could find one that fit my budget.

[Katja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Croft addresses both the why and how of language change using the biological evolution as a metaphor. In his theory, linguemes -- lingustic structures embodied in utterances (constructions?) -- are replicators and speakers are interactos responsible for lingueme selection and propagation. Language change happens with any unconventional use; possible reasons for unconventional usage are social identity as well as under-/over- interpretation when analyzing form-function pairs. Being more familiar with the generative P&P approach to language change (e.g., Lightfoot) I learned a lot from this book although it seems that many ideas have been articulated before. One weak point is that, as far as I understand, there is no clear idea about how to adequately represent the network of linguemes (this is true for most construction grammar theories). E.g., at some point Croft mentions "activation propagation" among linguemes but does not give any example of how they are related to each other.