PROGRESS AND DECAY IN LANGUAGE

PROGRESS AND DECAY IN LANGUAGE Two kinds of assumption are commonly made about languages: that they move from worse to better states (progress, amelioration); that they move from better to worse states (decay, deterioration). The Stoics of ancient Greece took the view that languages decay, whereas some social Darwinians in the 19–20c have held that languages improve as they evolve. A mixed viewpoint is also intermittently found: that some aspects of a LANGUAGE are deteriorating while others are improving. However, language change is an inevitable process and is the result of many factors, both linguistic and social. The interpretation of such change in terms of the improvement or deterioration of a language appears to be more a matter of social standpoint than linguistic observation.

Life cycles in language

In the 19c, it was widely believed in Western society that languages have a life cycle like animals and plants, in which they progress to a mature stage, then gradually decay. An inflected language such as classical Latin was a favoured example of a mature language, and English was thought by some to be in a state of disintegration because it was gradually losing its word endings (‘English has no grammar’). This view, once held by scholars and lay people alike, is currently regarded as mistaken by most linguists. A later view, endorsed by Otto Jespersen, held that a fairly analytic language such as English represented the best and most evolved type of structure. This view is also now regarded as unfounded by most linguists.

States of language

There appears to be no reason for supposing that any one language is inherently superior to any other, either socially or structurally. PIDGINS and CREOLES, which are languages in the process of development, are linguistically ‘impoverished’ in that they do not initially have the range of vocabulary and constructions found in ‘full’ languages. Some languages are widespread for political or social reasons, rather than because of any intrinsic superiority. Over the centuries, very different kinds of languages have held dominant cultural positions and had high prestige. See CLASSICAL LANGUAGE. Conversely, languages which decline and die out do so when they become subject to powerful social pressures, as with GAELIC, which has declined in Scotland because English has for many years been the dominant language of the United Kingdom.

The decline of English?

The view that English is ‘going to the dogs’ is widely held, especially by older people with conservative views. It is frequently expressed in newspapers, both in letters to the editor and feature articles, which often assert that change arises from lack of care and proper education (‘slovenly language’, ‘sloppy speech’, ‘illiteracy in the classroom’). The changes referred to, however, appear to be continuous and inevitable. Sometimes, changes occur which happen repeatedly in the languages of the world, such as loss of the final consonant in a word. At other times, the need to maintain patterns may cause large-scale restructuring: vowel changes in English obscured the connection between many singular and plural words, such as cow/kine and brother/brethren, so new plurals (cows, brothers) replaced the old ones. These either fell out of general use (kine) or acquired a specialized sense (brethren), though two of the old -en plurals remain in general use (children, oxen). At other times, changes take place under the influence of other languages, or other varieties of English: at an early stage, English borrowed numerous Latin words, and currently BrE is heavily influenced by AmE. In such changes, however, there is nothing either progressive or decadent. They simply occur.

Features of change

A social group with overt or covert prestige usually initiates a change, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, though it can only bring about an innovation that was liable to occur in any case. There are usually several directions in which a language can move at any one time, and social factors can push it towards one rather than another. Currently, BrE and AmE are adopting different paths over intervocalic /t/, which is inherently unstable. In a word such as bitter, the /t/ is increasingly being replaced by a glottal stop in BrE, but by /d/ in AmE, where the words bitter and bidder can be indistinguishable. Some people are indifferent to such changes. Others regard them as reprehensible and a symptom of a wider malaise in society, even though the changes are independent of social conditions. Disapproval of a change may therefore be more indicative of the disposition of the commentator than the state of the language. Such disapproval may, however, influence individuals in their response to changes, if they are aware of them. Occasionally, social pressure may postpone or reverse a change: for example, initial /h/ is an unstable element in some varieties of BrE, but is preserved by a popular belief that it is ‘wrong to drop aitches’. See AESTHETICS, LANGUAGE CHANGE, SEMANTIC CHANGE.