Volume 05, Spring 1979

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Browsing Volume 05, Spring 1979 by Subject "Atsina language"

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    Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 5, Spring 1979
    (University of Calgary, 1979-05) O'Grady, William D.
    This issue is the fifth in the series of working papers published by LOGOS, the Student Linguistics Society at the University of Calgary. The series provides a vehicle for faculty members and students to publish current research. These papers represent research in progress and are not to be considered final statements by the authors. The appearance of these articles in the current issue does not preclude their publication in altered form elsewhere.
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    Causes of rapid phonological change: the case of Atsina and its relatives
    (University of Calgary, 1979-05) Pentland, David H
    The cause of change has always been one of the great unanswered questions of linguistics. It is easy enough to describe the effects of a particular change, but the theories that have been advanced to account for the change's arising in the first place range from the laughable to the merely inadequate. Istvan Fodor (1965) suggests a distinction between internal and external factors. Internal causes of change are the "inherent laws" of a language which cause it to change in a particular way. Fodor observes (15) that the nature of such laws has not been elucidated; nor can it be -- the question is circular: Language X has changed in a certain manner because it was the inherent tendency of that language to do so. Among the external factors examined by Fodor are the effects of history, culture, society, geography, neighbouring peoples, and the national character. Some of these are undoubtedly major conditioners of phonological and other linguistic change, but others are merely coincidental and unrelated to linguistic developments.