(slides) Intentional Language Change... Who is intending?

Robert NicolaïWorkshop Intentional Language Change

1

Changement intentionnel dans la langue...

Qui a l’intention?

Robert NicolaïWorkshop Intentional Language Change

Leyden, 27-28 September 2013

I thanks Alain Delplanque for his comments and his invaluable help with the English translation.

✤ Intentional Language Change...

Who is intending?

2

✤ « This workshop explores

intentional language change, that is

all language change (or non-

change) which is triggered or

carried out deliberately and with

clearly identifiable social

motivations. Combining theory and

case studies, we hope to provide a

coherent overview of, and shed light

on, intentional change. »3

Roger Lass...

« … hermeneutic or functionalist explanatory strategies are not very satisfactory. And this is so because of fundamental mistake about the nature of what is to be explained. This mistake is considering language change to be something that speakers ‘do’ (in any real sense, for any reason), rather than something that happens to their languages (whether or not through their utterance activities is irrelevant). »

« … neither language-users nor their internal states ought to be the main focus of attention, if our aim is to explain (or more modestly, explicate, characterize) change, since change itself is a built-in property of the kind of system that a human language (in one connection) happens to be. …The individual/social perspective is at best complementary to the system perspective, more likely the latter takes precedence. »

4

Sarah Thomason...

« I have argued… that the question of linguistic possibility of a change – in this case a deliberate change – is settled as soon as a single speaker produces a single instance of the change at a single time. Whether a deliberate change will become a permanent part of that one speaker’s idiolect or of the speech community as a whole is then a matter of social and linguistic probability, not possibility. »

« The circumstances under which speakers make deliberate changes in their language are not confined to a need for new words and need or desire to sound more like people of higher social class. There is a much broader range of circumstances, and a much deeper range of deliberate structural changes than has generally been recognized. »

5

✤ Intentional language change

✤ ‘natural and not imposed’

6

‘intentionality,

‘the invisible hand’,

‘posture dimension’,

‘actors’ (‘regular’, ‘secular’, ‘activity’ , ‘activism’),

‘splitting’

‘historicity’,

‘represented norm’, ‘interactional norm’,

‘cohesive fonction, ‘dialogic fonction’.

Seven conceptual tools

(1) ‘intentionality’ (2) ‘the invisible hand’

(3) ‘staging’ (‘le paraître’)

(4) ‘actors’ (‘regular’ - ‘secular’ - ‘activity’ - ‘activism’)

(5) ‘splitting’

(7) ‘historicity’

(6) ‘norms’ (‘represented norm’ - ‘interactional norm’)

7

(1) intentionality

✤ « When I say that I have the intention to paint my garden fence next week, I do not say anything about my purpose in doing so which will be served by my painting fence. » (R. Keller, On Language Change. The invisible hand in language.

✤ intentiona (purpose) : the intention with which something is done.

✤ >>> [to plan] : the intention to do something >> an intention turned toward a future action >> a wish.

8

✤ >>> [to achieve] : the intention with which something is done >> an intention manifested in and through its realization>>> an action.

✤ intentionb (plan) : the intention to do something.

(1) intentionality

✤ « the fact that something is intentional does not necessarily mean that it is planned. Language change could be intentional (which is not !) without being planned. It could even be planned (which sometimes is !) without being intentional. » (R. Keller)

✤ Three independant notions:

9

✤ intentional, planned, conscious.

(1) intentionality

✤ « The speakers change their language neither intentionnally, nor to a plan, nor consciously.»

✤ (R. Keller)

10

✤ (>>> Invisible hand)

(2) language

11

«There are things which are the result of human actions

but not the goal of their intentions (inflation, the makeshift path across the

lawn, our language)» R. Keller

«Natural languages are phenomena of the third kind»

(2) language✤ « An invisible-hand explanation explains its

explanandum, a phenomenon of the third type, as the causal consequence of individual intentional actions which are based on at least partially similar intentions.» (R. Keller 1994:71)

✤ « Mutual understanding is thus not ‘the function’ of language, but at best one among other (although an important one). If it were language’s only function, one would expect stasis rather than change.» (R. Keller 1994:98)

12

(3) staging (le ‘paraître’)

✤ Communication goes through resuming and rebuilding forms and representations that are available and potentially significant.

13

✤ Interactionist perspective...

✤ When they are reinterpreted, they give the actors of the communication the opportunity to:


14

✤ - develop and attach essential or incidental meanings through their proposals,

✤ - show, or not, deviations from the normative knowledge shared in a given communicative framework which is always bound to be confirmed or renegociated.

I call ‘communicative framework’ the space which the interactors must share for their communication to be effective..., and in which the meaning is supposed to be passed without major distortion. It can be presupposed or posed, it can be established de facto or de jure; It can ‘go without saying’ or be imposed, it can be negotiated or not...


15

✤ Here, the question is :

✤ - An incidental message, implicit and suggested by the forms and concrete methods of its transmission.

✤ This correlative message can be conscious or not, intentional or not.


16

✤ - The correlative message of the formulated linguistic contents.


17

✤ Beyond its manifestation, it will persist and will enter the meaning of the sign, and be memorized together with the context of its utterance.

✤ So would it not through the agreement on the ‘language packaging’ that language takes shape and that some sense is created correspondingly? (Nicolaï, forthcoming.)

✤ What is relevant here is not the contents of the proposals but the methods of their transmission which take part in the control of the positions and the roles of the interactants in the locus where they are organized.

This agreement on packaging always supposes certain intentional choices.


18

(4) actors

✤ Role of the ‘secular actors’

✤

19

(4) actors

✤ Role of the ‘regular actors’

✤

20

(4) actors

✤ Activism implies an intentiona , in relation to a ‘project’ conscious or semi-conscious, that it is fulfilled or not.

Activity versus Activism

Activism (Nicolaï 2012) is a voluntary activity - intentional - a behaviour aiming at a target and therefore consciously (or semi-consciously) directed towards a goal, even if it is the preservation of the status quo.

Activism supposes the activity of the actors while the opposite is not true.

21

(4) actors

✤ The actors are playing >>> They have norms and they apply them, or modify them in their communicative strategies, which may - though not necessarily - involve deliberate intentions of code changing.

✤ The communication actors are operating >>> They have desires, wishes, they implement dynamics of rationalization.

✤ These actors are also subjects that present, represent and re - present themselves in their interactions. (Nicolaï 2011)

On the other side, they ‘are operated’ [ils ‘sont agis’], because they are taken in the course of various determinisms (historical, economic, cultural and political).

22

✤ They are oriented towards projects expressed or not.

(4) actors

✤ Now, what is important here is the activism of these actors and the effects of their voluntarism in the linguistic tagging or in the communication process (‘tagging’ in the sense of ‘appending its mark’).

23

(5) splitting

✤ This splitting permits the development of a historicity that marks the use of language and the representations which we have of it.

✤ The actors are not monolithic entities : this is the condition of their dynamism.

✤ An actor is an ‘splitted’ entity and, within the role play, we can distinguish ‘secular’ roles and ‘regular’ roles.

24

(5) splitting

The intentionality of the actors is likely to appear at the level of the secular actors (involved in the identification of codes, the question of the normativity of their practices and the development of related representations).

Hence, their intentionality appears through:

- the formal categorisation of what they talk about /say/ think they speak,

25

- the symbolic recognition of the code,

- the coherence or the difference in the forms of talk generally shared in the context of a particular use.

(5) splitting

because in that role:

- the point of view of the categorization of the code used is relevant for the description of languages;

It is also likely to manifest itself at the level of the regular actors,

26

- the point of view of normativity is relevant for the analysis of language and language practices;

- the point of view of the symbolic representations is relevant for the perception of de-contextualized representations.

(6) norms

✤ The interactional norm is built in (and from) the speech exchange and it expresses a conjunctural agreement on the conditions of consistency of the development of what is happening; thus it is contingent to the process of communication in which it occurs).

✤ The represented norm is an explicitly formulated and recognized norm. It results from a process of reification in which the ‘presentation’ of an interactional norm turns into its ‘representation’.

27

(6) norms

✤ The potentiality of an intentional attitude lies in the process of construction of these norms, their evaluation and their possible selection.

✤ >>> A process that has an effective impact on the form of speech and language.

28

(7) historicity

✤ Therefore, they are dependent on the historicity that we produce from the actualization of our lives, a historicity that can not be erased and is necessarily introduced in the forms used by the language.

✤ Languages are rooted in the interactions between individuals and between populations.

29

(7) historicity

✤ In concrete terms: the connotations and memories of past practices - collective or not - ‘charge’ the banality of words and transform the practice of language, contributing to its dynamism and its evolution.

✤ This historicity marks forms, it marks the idiom.

30

(7) historicity

✤ Norms are dependent of this historicity.

31

(7) historicity

So, historicity is developed through our ordinary linguistic practice and is partly built from it (out of it).

32

Because it depends on human actors, it always presupposes a process of resetting and transforming the signs, backed by an state prior whose contextualization is functionalized for the occasion.

(7) historicity

However, although it may have an impact on the determination of the intentionally introduced processes, historicity does not appear to be directly affected by the intentional linguistic change but appears at most as one of its conditions.

33

Who is intending?

34

Who is intending?

✤ Actors ? >>> Individual strategies.

35

✤ Communities? >>> Community strategies.

✤ (intentionality versus invisible hand)

✤ IS THERE A CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE TWO STATEMENTS ?

Empirical support: relexification

✤ Maarten Mous (the Ma’a Case): “The function of Ma’a is to express an identity that is different from the dominant Shambaa environment ”

36

✤ “ The fact that the lexicon of Ma’a and Mbugu is parallel is typically the outcome of lexical manipulation as it also results from avoidance or taboo phenomena and argot… These processes are typical processes of conscious lexical manipulation…”

“Lexical manipulation is the key process in the emergence of mixed languages and Ma’a is not exceptional in this sense; ... several authors have argued for an important role of relexification or lexical manipulation in the history of mixed languages (cf. Media lengua)... “Change by deliberate decision” is mentioned by Thomason (2001:149-152, 204) as one of the processes that play a role in the emergence of mixed languages.”

“Lexical manipulation occurs not only in mixed languages but in a variety of situations in which speakers attempt to exercise conscious control over their language.”


✤ Pieter Muysken (the Media Lengua case):

✤ «Why have these people relexified their language and created the Media Lengua ?»

37


✤ Le Page & Tabouret-Keller (the ‘act of identity’ issue):

✤ « the individual creates for himself the patterns of his linguistic behaviour so as to resemble those of the group of groups with which from time to time he wishes to be identified, or so as to be unlike those from whom he wishes to be distinguished. »(1985 : 181)

38

✤ Then, they propose descriptive and metaphorical concepts such as « focussed, diffuse. »

Two case studies

✤ Media lengua (P. Muysken).

✤ Northern Songhay (R. Nicolaï).

✤

39

1. Context.- W community members share a common, not necessarily formulated wish (intentionb): to differ

both from the X community who speaks X' and from the community and from the Y who speak Y'.

Scenario 1 : timely action(Media Lengua). ( 'Context', 'actualization' and 'stabilization')

40

- For historical reasons, the members of the W community speak X' as their first language and Y' as a lingua franca.

- They do not have the same commitment as the members of the X community with regards to the represented norm of X'.

- Consequence of their intentionb, they do not have the same propensity to take a regular role in their use of X'.

2. Actualization.- To materialize their intentionb (distinguish themselves from x) W use sporadically in their

speech in language X' lexemes of Y' (transformation of an intentionb in intentiona): which has symbolic value and does not interfere with their communication since they are bilingual.


41

- To put it otherwise: in their role of secular actors, W people use lexemes from Y' for their internal communication, and they develop an interactional norm capable of satisfying their desire for symbolic differentiation.

- Acceptance of the lexemes from Y' (loanwords) in X' provides the opportunity to act differently from X (see Poplack: nonce borrowing >>> loanword). Therefore it comes down to updating an intentiona.

- The historicity process that is growing can endorse this practice and it leads to the ongoing transformation of the represented norm that, at any time T, is the reference for further discursive exchanges, integrating this information.


42

It is simply to develop some formal evidences to demonstrate their difference from the community of X, and, in doing so, favor a different language practice.


43

- At the same time, it creates an invisible hand dynamics, since the aim of W people (differentiation from X) does not necessarily imply that they aim to transform their own language into another language Z, from X' and Y'.

However, this has a consequence not deliberately chosen (at level intentiona): the initiation of a process of relexification which led to the creation of a new language tool (language Z).

This leaves open the question of the generalization of the normative process that is the link between individual strategies of the actors (characterized by intentionsa and intentionsb) and collective strategy (characterized by intentiona), culminating in the transformation of the represented norm recognized and followed by the whole community.

✤


3. Stabilization.

44

(i) a hypothesis concerning the range of the communicative framework of their exchanges,


3. Stabilization.

45

‘Humboldt’s maxim’ : (Keller 1994:99) « Talk in a way in which you believe the other would talk if he or she were in your place ».

It supposes that the interactors make two hypotheses:

(ii) another hypothesis on their specific requirements which accounts both the for generalization of normative processes and for the transition from an individual to a collective intentionality.

But this can also be explained by the combination of a dialogic function and a cohesive function.


3. Stabilization.

46

Two non-referential functions of language that are at work in the exchanges are affected by their normative development and contribute to the linguistic homogenization of what is happening in a given communicative framework.

The cohesive function is based on the recognition of a normative consensus about the form of a code and / or discursive productions, Its application derives into a represented norm which is potentially identified in the group of interlocutors.


3. Stabilization.

47

The dialogic function (see Bakhtin) which commands the development of interactional norm as it plays strategically on norms and linguistic register manifested in discourse, it is in the background of the effort to control (increase or decrease) the symbolic distance between the communication actors.

Whether the expansion strategy is explained by the application of the ‘Humboldt’s maxim’ or by the junction of dialogic and cohesive functions, the goal is always to account for both the spread of normative processes and the transition from individual to collective intentionality.

✤


3. Stabilization.

48

NO

The « relexification = lexical manipulation = intentional act »

equation

is it always true?

QUESTION

49

The Northern Songhay Case

✤ Berber tribes from the ancient migrations (11th century?).

✤ Inserted into the economic and cultural world of the Tuareg.

✤ They are bilingual.

50

✤ We made the assumption that they adopted a variety of former vehicular Songhay (the 'Songhay B', Nicolai 1987, 1989) which they have retained as their first language for indeterminable reasons today.


51

✤ From the sociolinguistics point of view, everything goes as if these populations had reversed the functions of the languages of their repertoire. (Nicolaï : 1987)

2) Process of relexification, because these tribes work in the same geographical space as Tuareg tribes, share the same cultural stocks, the same economico-social pressures and the same type of political organization.


52

Northern Songhay includes a composite lexical background:

- Basic Songhay + a very important Tuareg lexical stock.

This seems to result from two logically distinct processes:

1) ‘conservation’ of the Tuareg lexicon to refer to the realia of the nomadic world (Nicolaï 1990).

At the same time:

We observe a normative fracture which separates it from the Southern Songhay languages; resulting from the loss of contact with the communities of this Southern Songhay.


53

The presence and the continuous increase of the Tuareg lexicon in Northern Songhay (relexification) illustrates a particular embodiment of its ‘constitution’ without any apparent action or ‘logic’ of a particular intentionality.

Scenario 2: slow-actionNorthern Songhay.

Finding: a number of Ineslimen tribes and / or Berber populations living in the oasis adopt the use of Songhay B for their intra-community communication in undetermined historical and social conditions.

Context: coexistence of an important local vehicular language (Songhay B), a local language (Berber/Tuareg) and a p r e s t i g e v e h i c u l a r l a n g u a g e superimposed (Arabic).

Involvement: partial learning of the Arab superimposed by certain tribes (particularly the Ineslimen tribes), and correlatively, learning (or imperfect learning!) of the Songhay B (local vehicular language).

54

- Does this result from a self-identification process (?).


55

- From a need to stand out from the rest of the Berber world for politico-strategic and conflicting reasons forgotten (?).

- From a need of functional restructuration in a political-economic framework trans-Sahelian now defunct (?).

Question...

No way to decide.


56

This leads to a new language: the actual Northern Songhay – restricted to the vernacular usage of these tribes and communities.

Involvement: conservation of a bilingualism necessary to communicate with the ancient first languange (Berber, Tuareg) in the nomadic saharo-sahelien world.


Consequence: after an obvious break with the songhayphone world, the ancient Songhay B that these tribes adopted follows a separated evolution in the environmental context of Tuareg languages.

57

The ancient Songhay B therefore has evolved (for the linguist!) by becoming the Northern Songhay which keeps very broadly the structure of the Songhay B, although – subject to informed contradictory studies – its users, as individuals or as groups, never had intention to accomplish this mutation (>>> ‘invisible hand’ !).


Processing ‘back to the Berber’ seems to have occured over time, without having been induced by any intentionality, either at the individual or at the collective level. 58

First positioning

✤ However, the resemblance is only on the surface because, paradoxically, the Northern Songhay language, while being fundamentally transformed by contact with the Tuareg, seems to be a classic evolutionary configuration which - unlike the Media Lengua - does not require consideration of any particular intent to justify its development.

✤ So, Media Lengua and Northern Songhay represent both heavy cases of language contact and they show some superficial likeness since both languages accuse an important phenomenon of relexification and, in both cases, there is an obvious normative break between the initial language (Songhay or Quechua) and the transformed idioms.

59

First positioning

• an initial process of language shift (upstream intentiona) with maintained bilingualism, marked by changes induced by contact (source language agentivity);

• subsequent differentiation of the new first language of the community having changed its language, corresponding to the loss of connection with the Songhay world which their new first language come from.

✤ It can be described in two simple steps:

60

First positioning

✤ No rupture, no activism, no need to assume any intentionally directed dynamics.

61

First positioning

✤ Another important difference: the time taken for processing does not seem to be similar.

✤ >>> Perhaps two to three generations for the Media Lengua, but probably several centuries for Northern Songhay.

62

✤ There is some reason to believe that, after acquiring the Songhay B, if the speakers of these tribes applied the Berber/Tuareg schemata in their practice, that was not because they wanted to differ, but just because it could not be otherwise: owing to their bilingualism and the loss of link with traditional songhayphones communities which would have been likely to support the Songhay language represented norm >>> long process.

First positioning

The Northern Songhay is therefore simply a natural filiation of the Songhay B, made without any intentionnality, but compelled in a new environmental space.

63

First positioning

In their vernacular context, users of the Northern Songhay apparently never intended anything else but to continue to speak the language they appropriate!

64

The only supposed intentionality is the initial intentiona inducing language shift, and the important subsequent transformations result only from the loss of contact with the normative tradition of the Songhay language.

These transformations need no other intent, whether type a or b.

First positioning

The relexification simply occured as the expected result from the sharing of the same economic-socio-cultural niche of the Tuareg world, with which it is also likely that these tribes never lost contact.

65

First positioning

Analysis of the context of the emergence of the Northern Songhay language stresses the importance of the difference and suggests that the equation 'relexification = lexical manipulation = intentional act' is not valid in this case.

66

First positioning

Of course, one could ‘save the hypothesis’ through a circular decision, under the guise of ‘terminological rigour’, avoiding the name ‘relexification’ for the process attested in Northern Songhay, but this would probably not help the analysis, nor go into a better understanding of the phenomena.

67

Second positioning

✤ 1) Un-intentional and intentional changes illustrate dynamics that combine or act separately in the language evolution.

68

✤ 2) Some do not exclude others.

✤ 3) On the sole basis of the recognition of a particular type of linguistic change, we cannot deduce its intentionality without further consideration.

✤ 4) It was shown that it was not simply on the basis of the formal identification of the change (see relexification) that assumption about intentionality was made, but on account of the articulation of this type of change with 'historico-anthropological' context.

Now, let me conclude with seven key points !

Second positioning

5) Considering that linguistic evolution only as un-intentional change is certainly very reductionist.

69

6) Considering that all linguistic evolutions are necessarily determined by a intentional change is just as well inacceptable.

7) Anyway, today, it is the cogitation on the intentional change which is likely to improve Science (our knowledge) provided that we re-conceptualize its theoretical frames.

✤ The two scenarios compared account for the observed phenomena. They can do it more or less satisfactorily.

First conclusion

70

✤ I mean: accounting for what is supposed to have occured, presenting it in a manner more or less consistent with all the other produced knowledge.

✤ The important thing is:

First conclusion

71

✤ - that the explicandum be - momentarily - exhausted by the coordination of the various explicantia;

✤ - that this exhaustivity be reached without introducing internal contradiction;

✤ - that, in return, « the explained explicandum », either reinforce the game allowed by the explicans (possibly complex), or bring about its modification to give a better account of the explicandum.

First conclusion

The empirical testing is therefore fundamental, but correlatively, refining the conceptual tools is fundamental too because one must learn how to ‘tell’ the phenomenon properly.

72

We can ‘tell’ it a priori, thanks to some simple (simplistic?) images which describe things as much as they mask them.

This is the case of some metaphors that transfer the explanation to other epistemic areas. We then reach some generalizations - satisfactory for the mind - but without being sure that they reflect the prehended phenomena.

We can also ‘tell’ it by refining the conceptual tools and restricting the risk of semantic traps through the analysis of implicit contents followed by the return to the inventory of the empirical characteristics of the object constructed from phenomena.

Second conclusion

The two scenarios presented are aiming at this last approach.

Thus, if proposing scenarios is a useful practice so as to better seize the observed dynamics, it is essential to refine the conceptual tools which enable us to build them.

73

Second conclusionFrom the vague notion of intentionality to its

refinement in intentiona or intentionb.

74

From the intuitive notion of norm to its consideration as represented norm and interactional norm.

From the metaphorical notion of actor to its development into regular or secular roles.

From the observation of the dynamics of the actors to the distinction between activity and activism.

From the consideration of referential and pragmatic functions of language to the assumption of the staging.

Second conclusion

T h e s e t o o l s c o n t r i b u t e t o t h e

consistency between the description, the

opacity of phenomena and the development

of general knowledge about them.

75

No end, of course...76

References.Bakhtine, Mikhaïl. 1970, La poétique de Dostoïevki, Paris, Seuil.

Keller, Rudi, 1994, On Langage Change. The invisible hand in langage. Routledge : London & New York.

Lass, Roger, 1997, Historical linguistics and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Le Page, Robert & Andrée Tabouret-Keller, 2006 [1985]. Acts of Identity : Creole-Based Approaches to Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2ème édition augmentée. 2006. EME).

Mous, Maarten. 2003. The linguistic properties of lexical manipulation and its relevance for Ma’á. In Yaron Matras & Peter Bakker (eds.). The Mixed Langage Debate. Theoretical and Empirical Advances, pp. 209-235.

Muysken, Pieter. 1996. Media Lengua. In Sarah G. Thomason (ed.). Contact Languages, a wider perspective, 366-426. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.

Nicolaï Robert. 1978, Sur la phonologie des « langues mixtes » du songhay septentrional, Comptes-rendus du Groupe Linguistique d’Études Chamito-Sémitiques (GLECS), tomes 24- 28 (2), 395-412.

Nicolaï Robert. 1987, Is Songay a Creole Language?. In Gl. Gilbert (ed.), Pidgin and Creole Languages: Essays in Memory of John Reinecke, Hawaii, University of Hawaii Press, 469- 484.

Nicolaï Robert. 1989, Revernacularisation et déterminismes évolutifs : les exemples du songhay septentrional et du dendi. In I. Haik & L. Tuller (eds.), Current approaches to African Linguistics Vol. VI, Dordrecht, Foris, 100-114.

Nicolaï Robert. 1990, Songhay septentrional et touareg: contacts de langues et contacts de population, Proceedings of the Fifth International Hamito-semitic Congress 1987, Wien, vol1, pp: 147-162.

Nicolaï, Robert. 2011, La construction du sémiotique, L’Harmattan : Paris.

Nicolaï, Robert. 2012. Du contact entre les langues au clivage dans la langue. Vers une anthropologie renouvelée. Journal of Language Contact 5.2

Nicolaï, Robert. (sous presse), Espace de variabilité, dimension du paraître et dynamique des acteurs. In G. Siouffi (éd.),Modes langagières dans l’histoire. Processus mimétiques et changements linguistiques, Paris, Champion (http://www.academia.edu/3644747/Espace_de_variabilite_dimension_du_paraitre_et_dynamique_des_acteurs).

Thomason, Sarah G. 2007. Language Contact and Deliberate Change. In Robert Nicolaï (ed.) Contact: Framing its Theories and Descriptions / Contact : descriptions, théorisations, cadrages.: 41-62. Journal of Language Contact. Thema 1. 77

(slides) Intentional Language Change... Who is intending?

Documents

Transcript of (slides) Intentional Language Change... Who is intending?