LYELL’S THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

LYELL’S THEORY OF LANGUAGE EVOLUTION

  Thirty years after Lyell had introduced uniformitarian principles into geology (cf. Lyell 1830–3), uniformitarianism started to exert some influence on linguistics, and this especially through Lyell himself who devoted chapter 23 ‘Origin and development of languages and species compared’ of his Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (1863) to language.

  One can find a good summary of Lyell’s conception of language in Tort (1980:22–30). The leading thoughts are that (1) there are various analogies between

  languages and biological species as regards mutation, splitting of one species (or language) into two, arrested development, competition among different species (or languages), and so forth and (2) sometimes we can see more clearly what happens to species, sometimes to languages. Lyell was looking for light on what happened to species, and he thought that some light might come from what happened to languages.

  (Wells 1973:425)

  Given the relative immaturity of human language and its rapid evolution, Lyell thought that philologists had some advantages over naturalists in studying change (cf. 1863:506). But these advantages are compensated by some very specific problems that linguists have to face. First, they have to prove that incessant variation exists (1863:506f.). This seems to be a truism today, but was not accepted wisdom in the early nineteenth century, when linguists had to fight against views of the divine origin of language. Incessant variation once accepted, they have to find documents of intermediate dialects, they have to prove the continuity of variation and transformation, and finally, and most importantly, they have to define the difference between languages and dialects (cf. 1863:507), if they want to show the soundness of the ‘theory of indefinite modifiability’ (ibid.). Lyell proposed a solution to the last problem. Languages can be distinguished from dialects by invoking the principle of mutual comprehension between speakers. Another related problem is that of the limits of the variability of language (cf. 1863:512). Once variability is accepted as existing in language, one is amazed by the incredible creativity witnessed ‘almost daily’ (ibid.). Speakers of all classes, professions, and groups coin new terms, new words are

  Change in language 44

  constantly created in science and literature, and this creativity seems to be unlimited. But not all new words are accepted and used, only a small proportion. Lyell is therefore forced to ask the questions that every linguist dealing with language-change should ask, and it is here, in the few pages that follow, that we find the soundest conception of Darwinian linguistics proposed to the present day. It is untainted by Hegelianism or organicism. The only thing one can detect is a little Lamarckian progressism, but Darwin himself could not avoid that (cf. 1859:459). It might therefore be appropriate to quote some paragraphs in extenso:

  It becomes, therefore, a curious subject of enquiry, what are the laws which govern not only the invention, but also the ‘selection’ of some of these words or idioms, giving them currency in preference to others?—for as the powers of human memory are limited, a check must be found to the endless increase and multiplication of terms, and old words must be dropped nearly as fast as new ones are put into circulation.

  (Lyell 1863:512)

  Patterson summarized Darwinism in these terms: ‘(i) Geometrical rate of increase + limited resources → Struggle for existence, (ii) Struggle for existence + variation → Natural selection, (iii) Natural selection + time → Biological improvement’ (Patterson 1987:237). If this is Darwinism in a nutshell, Lyell had obviously cracked the nut.

  Although the speakers may be unconscious that any great fluctuation is going on in their language,—although when we observe the manner in which new words and phrases are thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result of mere chance,—there are, nevertheless fixed laws in action, by which in the general struggle for existence, some terms and dialects gain the victory over others. The slightest advantage attached to some new mode of pronouncing or spelling, from considerations of brevity or euphony, may turn the scale, or more powerful causes of selection may decide which of two or more rivals shall triumph and which succumb, among these are fashion, or the influence of an aristocracy…, popular writers, orators, preachers,—a centralised government organising its schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. Between these dialects, which may be regarded as so many ‘incipient languages’, the competition is always keenest when they are most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them destroys some of the links by which a dominant tongue may have been previously connected with some other widely distinct one. It is by the perpetual loss of such intermediate forms of speech that the great dissimilarity of the languages which survive is brought about. Thus, if Dutch should become a dead language, English and German would be separated by a wider gap.

  (1863:512–13)

  Evolution, transformation, or 'the life and Growth of language'? 45

  There are two major forces that keep language in a state of continuity in alteration, forces that Whitney calls the conservative and alterative force (cf. Whitney LGL: ch. 3), and that Darmesteter, whose theory of semantic change sounds strangely Lyellian, calls the conservatory and the revolutionary force (cf. 1886:6). Lyell calls them the ‘force of inheritance’, or the tendency of the offspring to adopt without change the inherited vocabulary of the previous generation, and the ‘inventive force’, through which we coin new words, modify old ones, and adapt them to our needs. Given these two forces and the progress of the human mind, the progressive improvement of language is a necessary consequence (cf. 1863:517).

  Lyell mentions certain procedures used by this inventive force, procedures that Bréal would later call the ‘intellectual laws of semantic change’ (we don’t know if he ever read Lyell):

  As civilisation advances, a great number of terms are required to express abstract ideas, and words previously used in a vague sense, so long as the state of society was rude and barbarous, gradually acquire more precise and definite meaning, in consequence of which several terms must be employed to express ideas and things which a single word had before signified, though somewhat loosely and imperfectly.

  (ibid.: 617)

  This is what Bréal and Whitney would call the restriction of meaning.

  The farther this subdivision of function is carried, the more complete and perfect the language becomes, just as species of higher grade have special organs, such as eyes, lungs, and stomach, for seeing, breathing, and digesting, which in simpler organisms are all performed by one and the same part of the body.

  (ibid.)

  This is similar to Bréal’s explanation of the evolution of ‘parts of speech’.

  This progressive uniformitarianism is completely in line with Whitney’s and Bréal’s theories of language-change. One has only to read Whitney’s chapters on dialect variation and semantic change in LSL and LGL to become convinced of the profound influence that Lyell must have had on him. These chapters are in a sense nothing more than the fleshing out of the sketch quoted above of Lyell’s theory of language-change. Bréal never appears to mention Lyell, but he must have read him during a period when almost no linguist could escape the references to his work (and he had read Whitney’s OLS, where he refers to Lyell on p. 316, and Schleicher [1863] 1868, who refers to him on p. 11).