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Typologies of language change
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Chapter Outline
Languages change on three levels: in acquisition, in use, and in the course of history. In this chapter, crosslinguistically recurrent patterns of these three processes will be discussed. How do articles come about in history? How does word order change? How are antonyms and spatial terms acquired by children? What characterizes the interlanguages of second-language learners? And what processes are evident in language use?
Introduction
So far in this book, we searched for crosslinguistically recurrent patterns in synchronic structure. However, languages keep evolving. Take, for instance, the phonemic inventory of today’s English. It has gaps: it does not contain certain sounds that other languages have. An example comes from fricatives: English has labiodentals (as the /θ/ in thick), alveolars (as the /s/ in seal), and palatals (as /ʃ/ in sheen) but velar fricatives (as /χ/ in the German word lachen ‘laugh’) do not occur. This was not always the case: Old English did have velar fricatives; their traces are preserved in the silent gh -s of the spelling of night or light . This shows that there has been a process of phonological loss spanning the centuries as Old English gradually morphed into the modern variety.
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