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HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AU ·Rights· Reserved DIRECTIONS FOR Libciry ClE Congress Catalog Card No. 68-8399 Copyright ® 1968 by the {Tniversit)'of Texas Press HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS AU ·Rights· Reserved Printed by The University of Texas Printing Division.l~u$tin Bound ·by Universal Bookbindery, Inc.• San Antonio A Symposium Edited by W. P. LEHMANN and YAKOV MALKIEL 0-:---.-.----- - ---- UNIVERSITY ·OF TEXAS PRESS, AUSTIN & LONDON URIEL WEINREICH Uriel Weinreich died on March 30, 1967. Those who knew ~ friends and colleagues in many.fields of research, nnd it diffimlt to contain their grief. He was not yet forty-one years old. In the last weeks of his life be devoted his major e1fort to the final revision of this paper, and worked actively on it until two days before his death. This paper emerged when, after several years of research and dis­ cussion on problems dealing with language chan~ the three authors felt it opportune to attempt a joint formulation of certain ideas on which their thinking had been converging. It was Weinreich who pre­ pared the original draft incorporating appropriate materials submitted to him by the second- and third-named authors. He was, at the time, an NSF Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences; the first dr.lft, for presentation to the Sym­ posium in April, 1966, was produced aaoss a geographic distance, and • under a schedule which ruled out the possibility of full discussion. Thereafter, some conclusions remained to be hammered into more mutually agreeable form. This process of revision began after Wein· reich's return to New York in the fall of 1966, and proceeded actively despite his illness. Weinreich's personal editing of the.final draft comes to an end with Section 2.4. The final formulation of the remainder, from 2.41· on, is the work of the second·named author. The third section of the paper was sketched out only lightly in the draft presented at the Texas con­ ference. Though many of Weinreich's formulations and evaluations appear here, and the overall framework is a product of our joint think· ing in the early months of 1967, there are undoubtedly many details 98 URJEL WEINRBICH. WILLIAM LABOV. MAB.VIN I. HERZOG A Th~o", of LAngllAge Chtlnge 99 which would have taken a different form if he had shared in the final win trace the hardening of the paradox in the Saussurean period, when editing. homogeneity of language-assumed to be found in the idiolect-was Whatever revisions have been introduced, the basic orientation of drawn upon as a prerequisite for analysis. We will show the fresh the paper remains unchanged. It thus largely reHects Weinreich's con­ opportunities for explaining language change that came with the ef­ ception. The historical perspective, especially the sections on Paul and florescence of linguistic desaiption afler World War n, and comment Saussure, are exclusively his. The Introduction is also Weinreich's also on the limitations that developed in viewing language states as work: it emerged after our frequent meetings during the last few weeks determinants of their own further development. We will review a of his life. In this final version, after many revisions, Weinreich fused number of attempts that were made to see the language of a community the several themes of the paper into a single statement. His coauthors as a differentiated system and to reconcile the observed facts of lin­ are honored that he deliberately chose this means of preparing a final guistic heterogeneity with the theoretical desiderata of finding order statement of his views on the structure of language and the nature of and structure. We will, finally, suggest that a model of language which linguistic change. accommodates the facts of variable usage and its social and stylistic determinants not only leads to more adequate desaiptions of linguistic o. INTRODUCTION competence, but also naturally yields a theory of language change that The present paper1 is based on the observation that stIuctural bypasses the fruitless paradoxes with which historical linguistics has theories of language, so fruitful in synchronic investigation, have been struggling for over half a ceutury. saddled historical linguistics with a duster of paradoxes which In referring to theMf in the title of the paper, we have been con­ have not been fully overcome. Ferdinand de Saussure, in laying the scious of the new connotation which this term has acquired in the dis­ foundations of synchronic study, was aware of the corresponding in­ course of linguists of the past decade. When Chomsky in 1957 pro­ tractability of language change, and was apparently resigned to it. But posed to view the grammar of a language as (t) a theory of its with the majority of linguists after Saussure, the choice between study­ sentences, and linguistics as (2) a theM' of correct grammars, he gave ing either the structure or the history of languages did not sit well It a new serioumess to linguistic investisatiOD and reached out for a would not be unfair to say that the bulk of theoretical writing in his­ fresh alliance between linguistics and the exact sciences. To be sure, toricallinguistics of the past few decades has been an e1fort to span Chomsky's second use of theory has tumed out to be more utopian the Saussurean dilemma, to elaborate a discipline which would be than it seemed originally. But the first application of the term has structural and historical at the same time. already brought about such significant advances that it is worth con­ We would like here to depict the origins of the structure-history sidering the bearing which this strong sense of theory may have on antinomy in Neogrammarian theory; we will dwell particularly on language change. Hermann Paul, who apparently was the nrst to isolate the language of A .. theory" of Janguage change in the rigorous sense can be visual­ the individual as the most legit~mate object of linguistic study. We ized in a relatively strODg form and in a weak form. In its strong form, the theory would predict, from a desaiption of a language state at 1 The researd\ on which the paper is based has enjoyed support from sev· some moment in time, the course of development which that language eral sources. The Lansuage and Culture AtJas of Ashkenazic Jewry. of which the first author was director until bis death, is currently being compiled under would undergo within a specified interval. Few practidng historians the direction of the third author with aid of Public Health Service Research of language would be rash enough to claim that such a theory is pos­ Grant MH 08106 from the National Institutes of Health to Columbia Univer­ sible. t In a more modest version, a theory of language change would sity. Research on New York City English is being continued by the second· named author as Project ~288 of the Cooperative Research Branch. U.S. Office I Coseriu (19'8). in his monograph on structuralist theories of language of Education. change and their philosophical foundations. distin8uishes between the tora• 100 URIEL WEINREICH, WILLIAM LABOV. MARVIN f. HERZOG A Theor1 o/LttnglidgeChdng, 101 merely assert that every language constantly undergoes alteration, and pressures do force a language to change, and if communication is less it would formulate constraints on the transition from one state of a efficient in the interim (as would deductively follow from the theory), language to an immediately succeeding state. It might predict further why have such inefficiencies not been observed in practice?3 that no language wHl assume a form in violation of such formal princi­ nus, it seems to us, is the fundamental question with which a theory ples as are postulated to be universal in hwnan languages. Without of language change must cope. The solution, we will argue, lies in predicting positively what will happen (except that the lanBUage will the direction of breaking down the identification of structuredness somehow change), such a theory would at least assert that some with homogeneity. The key to a rational oonception of language change changes will not take place. -indeed, of language itself-is the possibility of describing orderly Our own view is that neither the strong nor the modest version of differentiation in a language serving a oommunity. We will argue that such theories of languaBC change, as they proceed from aurent gene­ native1ike command of heterogeneous structures is not a. matter of rative grammar, will have much relevance to the study of language multidialectalism or "mere" perfonnance, but is part of uniIinguaI history. We will argue that the generative model for the description linguistic competence. One of the ooroIJaries of our approach is that of language as a homogeneous object (see §2,1) is itself needlessly in a language serving a complex (i.e., real) OODl1Dunity, it is abJence unrealistic and represents a backward step from structural theories of structured heterogeneity that would be dysfunctional. capable of accommodating the facts of orderly heterogeneity. It seems The problem of constraints on immediately succeeding language to us quite pointless to coostmct a theory of change which accepts as states, to which we alluded above, is in our view subsumed under the its input UDnecessarUy idealized and counterfactual descriptions of broader theoretical question. Of course, we too want to inquire into language states. Long before predictive theories of language change the set of possible changes and possible conditions for changes which can be attempted, it wiD be necessa'Y to learn to see language-whether can take place in a structure of a given type. Nor do we want to dis· from a diachronic 0" a synchronic vantage-as an object possessing miss the l1'anJition problem: it remains entirely relevant to ask about orderly heterogeneity.
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