The Northern Subject Rule and its origins

Introduction

This paper gives an account of the Northern Subject Rule

and its different manifestations throughout history. It

also demonstrates how different explanations for its

origin have their basis in competing ideologies within

the discipline of linguistics. This paper aims to review

the relative merits of these different accounts and to

see how they contradict or complement each other.

What is the Northern Subject Rule?

The Northern Subject Rule (NSR) is a grammatical rule

found in some dialects in northern England and southern

Scotland. According to this rule, any verb in the present

tense may take an –s suffix, even when in the plural, as

long as the verb is not directly adjacent to a subject

pronoun. For example: they sing and plays, but birds sings. Or,

to put it schematically1:

a: they sing [Spro – V-ø]

b: birds sings [SNP – V-s]

c: they sing and dances [Spro – V-ø – … – V-s]

d: they always sings [Spro – … – V-s]

The Northern subject rule has recently caught the

attention of scholars of different flavours: Anglicists

and Celticists alike wonder how it came to exist. One

1 Example taken from: De Haas, 2011, p. 14

reason for this interest is that the rule shows a shift

in agreement patterns: Standard English (like many

languages) uses verbal inflection to mark person and

number. NSR English uses verbal inflection to mark

subject type as well: -s endings are used with noun

subjects while zero endings mark pronoun subjects.

Another reason why the NSR sparks such scholarly

interest is its parallel with Brittonic verbal

morphology. Welsh verbs, for example, only take a plural

form in the 3rd person when they directly precede a

subject pronoun, or in a null-subject sentence. When a

plural NP is the subject of a clause, it takes a verb in

the singular. Moreover, a sentence in the Middle Welsh

‘abnormal order’, in which the subject pronoun and the

verb are separated, always takes a singular verb. Here

are some examples from Middle Welsh:

a: canant (wynt) ‘they sing’ [V-s – Spro]

b: can adar ‘birds sing’ [V-ø – SNP]

c: wynt a gan ‘they (that) sing’ [Spro – verb. part.

SNP]

It should be noted that the subject of the abnormal order

in (c) is historically not a pronoun, but rather a

relative clause containing a pronoun. In Middle Welsh,

this relative clause is analysed as a full NP, it

therefore takes a 3rd singular ending. This parallel of

subject-type agreement is not only interesting because

Cumbric Welsh is geographically close to Northumbrian

English, but also because a system in which person

marking in verbs occurs only with free pronouns, but not

with nouns, is a very rare phenomenon in languages: one

other language using subject type as a grammatical

constraint is the Nilotic Luo language2.

Discussion on the origin of this Northern Subject

Rule has been largely ideological. Many sides exist in

the debate: one claiming a Cumbric substrate in Old

Northumbrian as the reason for the Northern Subject Rule,

another claiming it can be accounted for completely

through language-internal processes, and even Old Norse

is said to play a part in its development. In this

essay, I will demonstrate how this divergence in

explanations is a result of a long-standing opposition

between two branches of linguistics. These branches are

the linguistics of those approaching language as a system

in which language-internal factors are given as

explanations for language change, and the linguistics of

those who rather analyse language in its social and

historical context. These different ways of approaching

the origin of the NSR make it hard to evaluate their

merit relative to one another. It is for this reason that

I will discuss several recent theories regarding the

origin of the NSR.

Context of the NSR

2 De Haas, 2011, p. 207, Cole, 2012, p. 239

To evaluate the merit of explanations involving any sort

of language contact, a clear picture of the general

social and historic background is indispensable. Genetic

evidence reveals that even now there is little Germanic

DNA in the British population. It is estimated that

between 90% and 100% of mitochondrial DNA – which is

passed down in the maternal line only – has been passed

on within Britain since Neolithic times. Y-chromosome DNA

is passed down in the paternal line only. In studies of

Y-chromosome DNA, the frequency of the haplogroup

connected to Neolithic, pre-Germanic, settlers turned out

to vary between about 50% in East Anglia to 70% in the

North of England to over 80% in Wales. These numbers tell

us that Germanic settlers were a group orders of

magnitude smaller than the native population and that

they were mostly men. Families with Germanic men and

British women must therefore have been widespread in the

Early Middle Ages.3

Historical sources also reveal an ethnically mixed

Northumbria. A British epic tale called Y Gododdin tells us

of a great battle in which the British kingdom of Rheged

lost many warriors. It must have taken place around 600

CE at a place thought to be Catterick in North Yorkshire.

Bede then mentions a British king called Cadwallon

attempting to drive out all Anglo-Saxons in Northumbria

around 634. Then, in Gildas’ Historia Brittonum, mention is

made of the Northumbrian king Æthelfrith who is presented

3 De Haas, 2011, pp. 35-38

as the king who drove out and conquered the native

Britons. However, even in his reign the British kingdom

of Elmet remained independent. His son Oswiu married a

British wife, Rhianmellt, giving historical support to

aforementioned DNA evidence and suggesting a peaceful

transition of power in part at least.4 All in all, the

historical background of northern England presents a

sociolinguistic scenario that would lead us to expect

plenty of Brittonic substrate influence in the local

varieties of English. However, the amount of Brittonic

loanwords in English is unexpectedly low considering

aforementioned evidence, and the degree of Brittonic

influence in English syntax is subject to heated debate,

one of the topics of debate being the NSR itself.

Consequently, the case for Brittonic and Germanic

intermixture is not reflected in linguistic evidence.

Criticism to explanations for the NSR involving a

Celtic substrate came from Graham Isaac. He argues that

‘contact between speakers of English and speakers of

Brittonic must be pleaded for in any period after the

sixth and the seventh centuries’.5 However, we have seen

that institutional violence continued well into the

seventh century with a more peaceful transition of power

afterwards. Moreover, the influence of Brittonic in Old

Northumbrian must have been typically substrate

influence, so speakers of Brittonic need not have had any

political significance. This very same fact made their

4 Laker, 2008, pp. 7, 165 Isaac, 2003, pp. 53-7

presence more difficult to detect through Anglo-Saxon

historical sources. This hypothesis falls in line with

appearance of words such as wealh ‘foreigner, slave’(cf.

the word ‘Welsh’), and wilisc ‘foreign, British, servile’

suggesting British females were taken as slaves,

housewives and concubines. Moreover, Scottish royal

charters recognised Cumbrians as a distinct group well

into the twelfth century.6

Another issue that requires explanation is why there

is such a thing as the NSR in the North, and not in the

West Midlands, for example. The West Midlands border

Wales, so one might expect this feature to appear there

as well if one considers it to be a Brittonic substrate.

One objection to this criticism is that Northumbria is

geographically more mountainous and was more densely

forested than the West Midlands. Research into Roman

Britain suggests that these British Lowlands which the

West Midlands were part of were culturally and

linguistically more distinct from Highland Britain (i.e.

Wales, Cornwall, the Pennines, Scotland) than they were

from Gaul. It is therefore unlikely that the British

spoken in this area was similar to the Highland British

that has survived. Moreover, it is even possible that

this area was Latin-speaking, as this area was highly

Romanised7.

From the ninth century onward, speakers of Old Norse

raided Northern England. By 869, Vikings even had control

6 Benskin, 2011, p. 1807 Schrijver, 2007, pp. 165-171

over East Anglia and Northumbria. In 878, the Danelaw was

established, marking Northeastern England as an area in

which Norse law was upheld. Danes started settling the

northeast of England at 876. Scandinavian settlers formed

a significant part of the population, encountering

British speakers in the Highland area and Anglo-Saxon

speakers in the Lowlands. Settlers mixed and intermarried

with these neighbors. Influence from Old Norse into

English has been adstratal rather than substratal.

Scandinavians and English commoners would speak to each

other on regular basis and on equal footing. Furthermore,

Old Norse and Old English had some degree of mutual

intelligibility, easing conditions of structural

borrowing. Speakers of Old Norse are generally thought to

have switched to English in the tenth or eleventh

century. Norse speakers in Northumbria are generally

thought to have maintained their language for the longest

time among Scandinavian settlers of Britain8.

NSR-like patterns in other varieties of English

Effects of subject type and adjacency on verbal endings

are not limited to northern and Midland dialects of

English. NSR-like patterns are found in more southern

dialects of Early Modern English. A pattern in which

endings were reduced in third-person singular endings

with an adjacent pronoun (i.e. it sing) is found in some

southern dialects. In southwestern England, a tendency

8 De Haas, 2011, pp. 50-57

exists to generalise –s across the whole paradigm, but

reduced variants may occur at times governed by subject

type. However, the variation between consonantal and

reduced endings is also used to denote habituality. Some

Irish, African American, and Canadian English dialects

have a NSR-like pattern that can be traced back to

settlement from Scotland or southwestern England.9

A pattern similar to the NSR developed independently

in several dialects of English, notably the English

spoken in Tristan da Cunha. In these dialects, the

distinction between was and were as markers of plural and

singular eroded. Additionally, a subject-type constraint

conditions the distribution of was and were. In the

English of Tristan da Cunha, was used to be the only

preterite form of be. Recently, were has been

reintroduced, but non-standard was continues to be used

and subject type seems to be the factor determining where

it occurs. The case of Tristan da Cunha tells us that the

English language has an innate capability of innovating

subject-type constraints for verbal inflection10.

Benskin: The NSR as a result of West Saxon Concord and

imperfect language learning

Michael Benskin11 (2011) presents a scenario in which a

phonological development called West Saxon Concord (WSC)

9 Cole 57-7610 Cole 90-9211 Benskin, 2011, pp. 158-185

provided a linguistic scenario in which Cumbrian learners

of Old Northumbrian could insert the Northern Subject

Rule. West Saxon Concord is a phonological development

which occurred when pronouns in the 1st and 2nd plural (we,

gie) directly succeeded verbal endings in -en, -on, and –aþ.

When this happened, the resulting consonant clusters

[nw], [nj], [θw], and [θj] would be reduced to [w] or

[j], resulting in a reduced verbal ending in this

context. Regular phonological development would dictate

the loss of the second consonant in the resulting

cluster. However, analogy with other uses of these

pronouns led to the disappearance of the first consonant.

Linguistic development in northern – and only northern –

English led to the spread of this rule to the 3rd person

plural. The result was two systems of verbal conjugation

in plural environments: one reduced ending in which the

final consonant was dropped before a subject pronoun, and

a full consonantal ending in all other environments.

This situation bears resemblance to the Welsh verbal

system in which a plural noun is coupled with a reduced

singular verbal suffix, whereas a plural pronoun

following a verb demands a full plural suffix. However, a

Northumbrian verb uses a reduced inflection when it

precedes a pronoun and a full inflection in other cases

while in Welsh the situation is reversed. How do we

account for this reversal? The crux in explaining this

reversal is to realise that reduced endings and full

endings did not correspond to plural and singular endings

as they do in Present Day English (PDE). After all, WSC

and its Northumbrian variant are a result of phonological

developments in Old English dialects. What requires

explaining about the NSR rule, then, is the -s ending.

Early Northumbrian had two verbal endings for the 3rd

person: -ð (later -s) for both singular and plural, and -e

for plurals preceding a pronoun. Brittonic had one zero

ending for all singular subject types, and for plural

non-pronoun subjects. It also had one plural suffix for

verbs with a plural pronoun. Moreover, in Brittonic, the

subject pronoun always directly followed the verb in the

normal word order. A Brittonic speaker learning Old

Northumbrian would thus reanalyse the northern version of

WSC according to Brittonic grammar. This meant that the

deselection of the -ð/-s ending was no longer a result of

phonological conditioning, but of application of

Brittonic morphology, thus grammaticalizing a formerly

phonological rule. This account of the NSR also explains

why the NSR spread to the more common subject-verb

sentences: for Brittonic speakers, verb-subject was the

unmarked word order, meaning they would base their

grammar on this word order. When a seemingly

unpredictable rule such as WSC occurred, learners of Old

Northumbrian would fall back on their native grammar to

account for the variation.

There is, however, a striking difference between

Brittonic verbal morphology and the NSR: the NSR is

restricted to the present indicative, whereas the

alternation exists throughout all Brittonic tenses and

moods. However, it should be kept in mind that Brittonic

never inserted new morphology into Old Northumbrian. It

merely provided a selection mechanism for different

variants. For weak verbs, Old Northumbrian preterite

plural suffixes ended in –Vdun, the –n of which could

optionally be dropped. Dropping the –n would yield a

suffix structurally similar to singular –Vdu. However, the

plural merger with the singular was not conditioned by

any variant of WSC resulting in no restraint which

Brittonic speakers could grammaticalise.

In Old Northumbrian strong verbs, no plural suffix

in the preterite was identical with the singular, not

even in a 'West Saxon' reduced form. The plural ending is

-un, -on, the singular ending is zero. Brittonic could

technically produce a new, reduced suffix for the plural

(-u, -e), but there was no reason for doing so since it would

not equal the singular, and would thus not correspond to

Brittonic grammar.

De Haas: The NSR and its geographical distribution

Nynke de Haas focuses on Middle English manifestations of

the NSR. Her research uses a corpus of Middle English

texts to create a geographical distribution of the NSR

and its many manifestations. Her corpus study reveals

three patterns.

The Middle English NSR is represented most strongly

in the heart of the Northern dialect area. It centers in

Yorkshire, while in the Midlands at its southern border,

the NSR competes with a pattern in which plurals end in –

en/-e/-ø, all of which are allophones. In the north, the

NSR competed with a regular –s ending.

Furthermore, subject type was found to have a

stronger effect on verbal ending than adjacency. Even in

the core NSR area, its subject type effect would at times

occur in non-adjacent context. This implies that subject

type effect is a more essential part of the NSR than

adjacency effect. Subject type effect also spread further

in fringe Northern dialects than adjacency effect did. An

explanation for the less categorical spread of the

adjacency condition may be that non-adjacent contexts

were infrequent, leaving learners with little material to

adopt the adjacency condition.

A third pattern that emerged from the corpus study

is that the NSR was not bound to any specific surface

morphology in Middle English. Old English provides a

version of the NSR with opposition between -s and -th while

later dialects showed that an –n ending could serve as a

variant of a reduced ending12.

Her research confirms that the NSR can be studied

apart from its surface morphology in the Middle English

period, and that surface morphology may be a dead end

when explaining the NSR’s ultimate origin.

12 De Haas, 2011, pp. 106-108

Cole: Verbal morphology in the Lindisfarne gospels and

the NSR

Marcelle Cole has written a thesis on verbal endings in

the Lindisfarne glosses aiming to shed light on early

stages of development for the NSR. Her dissertation

carried out a quantitative review on verbal endings in

the Old Northumbrian Lindisfarne Gospels. She analysed

the interchangeable -s and -ð endings and furthermore

analysed instances of reduced verbal morphology. Her

research demonstrates that the diffusion of -s/-ð endings

shows a correlation with subject type and adjacency. In

the Lindisfarne glosses, the ending in -s was more likely

to be used with a pronoun subject, whereas when the verb

was adjacent to the subject while -ð was more likely to be

used. Cole claims Old Northumbrian to be the first

instance in English where subject category and adjacency

marking are a feature of its verbal morphology. Her

analysis of -s/-ð variation is of special interest for

theories on the origin of the NSR because it shows that

the mechanics underlying the NSR do not necessarily

involve the opposition of inflected forms and uninflected

forms, may also manifest itself in different

inflections.13

The origin of the ending in -s is difficult to account

for because any theory explaining its origin must also

account for the survival (from a synchronic point of

13 Cole, 2012, pp. 245-246

view) of its counterpart in -ð. One possible origin for

the ending in -s is substrate influence from Norse. Norse

speakers often pronounced final [θ] as [ð], which was

then transformed to [s] by English speakers. Other

possibilities are explored which involve phonotactic

considerations, but these gain little ground as they fail

to explain variations within a lexeme. Another

explanation involves analogy: -s spread from second-person

singular forms to third-plural, and then into all persons

of the plural and finally into the third-person singular.

This type of change could indeed lead to a situation in

which variant forms compete (Cf. Present Day English dived

vs. dove), but second-person endings are less common than

third-person endings, which makes them less liable to be

the basis for analogy. An alternative theory is that -s

spread from the second person singular to the third

person singular. This is an attractive theory considering

these endings were both pronounced [z] in Old Norse14. In

any case, the ending in -s spread to all persons and

numbers in Old Northumbrian. This caused a complete loss

of distinctions for person or number in Old Northumbrian.

It is to this loss of distinctions that a constraint for

subject type was created, Cole argues.

The Lindisfarne glosses also show that the ending in

-s was already in the process of becoming more common than

-ð. Cole argues this point citing statistics showing that

verbs occurring less frequently were more likely to take

14 Cole, 2012, pp. 35-42

the innovative ending in -s. This correlation is explained

by the term ‘lexical diffusion’. Lexical diffusion

describes a lexically, rather than phonetically motivated

sound change. It predicts that a phonological rule

gradually extends its scope throughout the lexicon,

starting with the least frequent words. More frequent

lexical items are more likely to resist sound change or

grammatical change while less frequent items are more

likely to adopt innovative forms. Seeing this change in

operation does indeed give a correlation between

persistence of the archaic form and frequency of the

lexeme15. These data also point out that the variation

between these endings was unlikely to be a prestige

feature suppressing a stigmatised feature. Instead, the

data point towards change from below, which is

‘[…] a gradual shift in the behavior of successive generations, well below the level of conscious awareness of any speakers. In most cases, the shift begins with a particular group in the social structure and is gradually generalized in the speechof other groups. Usually the initiating group has low status in the social hierarchy – otherwise the change would be transformed into overt pressure fromabove.16’

Thus, the Lindisfarne glosses suggest that the source of

the ending in -s is a (formerly) marginalised social

group17.

15 Cole, 2012, pp. 155-17616 Labov, 2006, p. 20617 Cole, 2012, p. 129

Cole also demonstrated that in the Lindisfarne

glosses, indicative present and preterite endings

alternated between a consonantal suffix (-s/-ð for present,

-n for preterite) and a vocalic suffix (-e). These endings

generally follow the pattern of WSC, with the exception

that they work for all plural contexts, not just 1st and

2nd plural contexts18. This alternation also differs from

the WSC pattern in that it applied in verb-subject order

as well as subject-verb order19. These findings

corroborate Benskin’s theory of a WSC origin for the NSR.

Cole, however, argues that reduced endings spread from

the present subjunctive and the preterite indicative to

the present indicative, which already had an alternation

between vocalic and –n endings20. This simple analogy also

explains why this alternation of endings works in both

verb-subject and subject-verb environments.

Discussion

These two sets of alternation (vocalic-consonantal, -

s/-ð) operating under a similar constraint of subject type

and adjacency were levelled into one system in the Middle

English period, alternating a vocalic and a consonantal

form, but expressing the consonantal form with -s. One

problem persists: why is the ending in -s mostly used with

an adjacent pronoun subject in the Lindisfarne glosses?

Later, ‘proper’ NSR dialects dictate the ending in -s to be

used in combination with nonadjacent pronoun subjects or 18 Cole, 2012, pp. 245-24619 Cole, 2012, pp. 202-20320 Cole, 2012, p. 225

with NP subjects. What caused this reversal? It is my

contention that when -ð was in the process of gradually

being supplanted by -s, the need to mark subject type

required a new distinction in its surface morphology. The

Northern WSC system as described by Benskin provided the

necessary surface morphology by introducing the

distinction between vocalic and consontantal endings.

This statement is backed up by De Haas’s observation that

different types of variation in morphology can adopt the

constraints the NSR gives.

The innovation of the –s ending in Old Northumbrian

is arguably a result of Norse speakers shifting to

English and adopting the English language in an imperfect

form. There is no evidence that Norse had subject type as

a grammatical marker. This means that –s/-ð variation is

unlikely to be the first morphological manifestation of

NSR patterns, since it does not explain the NSR. Rather, -

s/-ð variation must have adopted an already existent

grammatical marker. If we accept these observations, we

must conclude that this variation will tell us nothing

about the NSR’s ultimate origin.

This presents a problem. The NSR and surface morphology

showing the NSR are not necessarily related, so how can

morphology serve as an explanatory mechanism for the NSR

when it is demonstrated to operate independently of

morphology?

It is at this point that discussion becomes

influenced by ideology. Benskin’s theory of a Brittonic

reanalysis of WSC as the source for the NSR gives a

plausible explanation. Empirical data from the

Lindisfarne glosses support Benskin’s hypothesised spread

from the first and second person plural to the third

person plural. Moreover, historical evidence presents

little objection to a hypothesis proposing a Brittonic-

driven account of the NSR. What his theory does not

explain, however, is why the English of Devon or Tristan

da Cunha developed subject type as a grammatical marker.

These cases unrelated to Northumbria tell us that there

is an inherent drive in the English language to adopt

subject type as a grammatical category. This fact cannot

simply be glossed over since grammatical markers for

subject type are barely ever found in languages across

the world. A strictly language-external explanation for

language shift would thus leave any question about

subject type markers unanswered.

Furthermore, claiming language-internal development

to explain language change is preferable to claiming

language-external processes as the source of language

change, De Haas claims:

It can been [sic] argued that whenever there is a choice between language-internal developments and contact to explain a pattern, a language-internal explanation will be preferable because language-internal factors must always be taken into account and influence from language contact presupposes extra assumptions, although abundant evidence for

language contact will make these extra assumptions more likely to be correct.21

To counter this argument: contact explanations may offer

a more complicated solution to a purely language-internal

problem, but when accounting for language change,

analysis of language-internal structures serves only to

make sense of them in hindsight. There is still the need

to explain how an innovation developed in a society in

which the language is used. Propagation of language

change cannot be explained from a language-internal point

of view. Sociolinguistic research convincingly argues

that propagation of change is driven by language-external

factors. Language change is propagated by social

interactions. Linguistic differences parallel differences

in social structure, this is the origin of linguistic

variation. Social structures, however, are subject to

change. An example is that formerly marginalised groups

may become emancipated, and with them their language.

Labov formulates this in the following way:

‘one cannot understand the development of a languagechange apart from the social life of the community in which it occurs. Or to put it in another way, social pressures are continually operating upon language, not from some remote point in the past, but as an immanent social force acting in the livingpresent.22’

21 De Haas, 2011, p. 17422 Labov, 1972, p. 3

This means that any explanation for language change

involving language-external factors such as its social

and historical background gives a more complete

understanding of linguistic change and the multiple

stages through which it goes. Language-internal

developments, by contrast, do not account for the

propagation of language change.

Within this theoretical framework of language change

through social interaction, it may even be argued that we

can not only infer a linguistic reconstruction from

history, but we may also infer a historical

reconstruction using linguistic arguments. Therefore,

adopting a language-external explanation for linguistic

change is favorable from a historic point of view: by

adopting a substrate hypothesis for the NSR, our

linguistic evidence would fall in line with our

historical view of Northumbria as a region of

intermixture between Brittonic and Germanic inhabitants.

Adopting a language-external hypothesis would answer

questions such as: what linguistic trace does the

overwhelming genetic evidence for interbreeding leave?

Or: what remnants are left of a pidginised English we

would expect to find in the period prior to language

shift?

Harmonizing these two contradictory trains of

thought is the challenge linguists face. To do this, it

is important to be aware of how language-internal and

external explanations do not necessarily contradict one

another: a language-internal explanation for the NSR

shows how development of an agreement system based on

subject type is an innovation easily adopted within the

English language. A contact-based hypothesis, by

contrast, is a better explanatory mechanism to explain

the stage after the original innovation: its propagation.

Explaining other types of English such as the Tristan da

Cunha dialect can only follow the NSR’s lead as far as

internal explanations are concerned. Finding a language-

external explanation for the propagation would be a

different matter altogether, but just because these

dialects have not undergone the same language-external

processes as the NSR does not mean these processes cannot

explain the NSR itself. Citing these dialects as a proof

against a substrate hypothesis for the NSR, however,

would be no more than a projection of failure to give

these dialects adequate explanations of their own.

In the end, the ideal of explaining the development

of the NSR, or any development for that matter, through

either language-internal or language-external factors is

an erroneous one, Cole argues:

drawing a strict dichotomy between internally-motivated change and contact-induced change fails tofully account for the linguistic scenario witnessed in ONrth. The contact dynamics that characterized the North during the OE period would most certainly have been conducive to triggering the processes of generalization found in ONrth.23

23 Cole, 2012, p. 248

A good theory, by contrast, is modest. It does not

purport to explain its object of study in a be-all and

end-all manner. To do so would be to deny the complexity

the society in which language change is propagated.

Benskin argues that such claims are counterproductive to

the field of linguistics:

The discipline is ill-served by claims like ‘The Celtic hypothesis hasn’t gone away’ as if there were— as if there could be — some overarching and non-vacuous hypothesis to be accepted in its entirety ornot at all24.

Does this mean that the study of language change should

not aim for an elegant all-encompassing principle

governing language change, then? No. Discovering general

laws behind language variation and change is still a

noble goal, as these laws are the basis of any account

for specific instances of language change. It is only in

accounting for specific cases of language change that I

would argue modesty and a broad view to be a merit,

because it is only then that the historical background of

the language undergoing change becomes an object of study

in all its complexity.

24 Benskin, 2011, p. 182

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