Bill,

 

Thanks for that link.  There’ve been a number of similar studies in the past few years looking at language relationship and language change through the lens of fairly coarse data, like vocabulary change.  It’s certainly true that a language’s vocabulary may change very rapidly, as the vocabulary of English did at least a couple of times during the Middle English period and a number of times since.  Vocabulary is the part of language most susceptible to cultural influence and to changes in the environment it’s spoken in.  The 20^th c. saw more rapid periods of vocabulary change in English.    What’s more questionable is whether such periods of rapid change occur as readily in phonology, morphology, and grammar. 

 

I question the article’s contention that American English appeared when Noah Webster produced his dictionary and speller.  Webster’s influence grew slowly from 1784 through the first third of the 18^th c., and he did have some effect on the spelling of American English.  However, there is good evidence that American English was identified by people in Britain as a distinct dialect as early as 1750.

 

Herb

 

 

Dear All:

 

There’s a science news site called Science Daily that serves as a kind of one-stop press release service for university researchers. I read over it every day or two to see if anything is listed that would be of interest to my students; today, there’s an interesting one on language change:

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080206154123.htm

 

 

The site’s articles range from way-too-technical all the way to way-too-cute, but this one’s not at either extreme.

 

Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University

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