(Washington, DC) – Languages are continually changing, not
just words but also grammar. A recent study examines how such changes happen and
what the changes can tell us about how speakers' grammars work. The study,
"The course of actualization", to be published in the September 2012
issue of the scholarly journal Language, is authored by Hendrik De Smet of the
University of Leuven /Research Foundation Flanders. A preprint version is
available online at:
http://lsadc.org/info/documents/2012/press-releases/de-smet.pdf
http://lsadc.org/info/documents/2012/press-releases/de-smet.pdf
Historical linguists, who document and study language
change, have long noticed that language changes have a sneaky quality, starting
small and unobtrusive and then gradually conquering more ground, a process
termed 'actualization'. De Smet's study investigates how actualization proceeds
by tracking and comparing different language changes, using large collections
of digitized historical texts. This way, it is shown that any actualization
process consists of a series of smaller changes with each new change building
on and following from the previous ones, each time making only a minimal
adjustment. A crucial role in this is played by similarity.