Language Change: Inheritance vs. Diffusion

Inheritance vs. Diffusion

• Languages may become similar or dissimilar due to various factors including borrowing, inheritance, and adaptation.
• Borrowing involves the diffusion of cultural and linguistic elements between languages or cultures in contact.
• Inheritance refers to the transmission of attributes from a common ancestral language.

Diffusion

• Defined as a horizontal transmission where different language speakers acquire information from each other.
• Diffusion can weaken original linguistic patterns and may lead to a loss of structural features.
• Evidence of diffusion noted in studies of geographic language changes:
  • The New York City pattern of tensing short-a diffuses to communities like northern New Jersey and Cincinnati, losing structural constraints.
  • The Northern Cities Shift spreads from Chicago to Saint Louis, demonstrating borrowing of sound changes rather than structural diffusion.

Family Tree and Wave Models

• Family Tree Model: Traditional comparative method defining languages as branches from a common ancestor.
• Wave Model (Wellentheorie):
  • Proposed by Hugo Schuchardt and Johannes Schmidt in the 1870s as an alternative to the Family Tree Model.
  • Language change spreads like waves, originating from a central point and extending to adjacent groups.
  • Changes may overlap, and distinct branches of languages can influence one another in bilingual contexts.

Bilingualism and Pidgin/Creole Formation

• Extended bilingualism can lead to change, fostering the development of pidgins and creoles.
• Major Sprachbund areas are characterized by shared features across unrelated language families.

Lexical Diffusion

• Refers to how sound changes affect the vocabulary of a language.
• Lexically Abrupt Change: All words change at the same rate.
• Lexically Gradual Change: Individual words change at varying rates over time.
• Deretroflexion in South Dravidian languages likely involved diffusion, noted similarly in Indo-Aryan languages.

Inheritance

• Defined as vertical transmission of language attributes through generations.
• Linguistic similarity decreases over time as groups diverge from a common ancestor, indicating possible migration.
• Language transmission occurs through an unbroken sequence of child language acquisition.

Adaptation

• Promotes similarity among cultures in similar environments, typically in geographic proximity.
• Adaptation influences both diffusion and inheritance, as well-adapted traits are more likely to be borrowed or inherited.