“Research in language change is hard because it requires expertise from many areas within and outside linguistics. More than any other part of linguistics, it needs to connect with neighboring fields such as human genetics, archaeology, cultural and physical anthropology, history, and the philologies. Within linguistics, it is situated at a crossroads where almost all branches of the field meet. A historical study might draw on processing and pragmatics, morphology and corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics and syntax, phonetics and formal language theory. Such connections raise some of the deepest foundational issues in the field, and at the same time make the results exceptionally interesting and accessible to the public. The Saussurian firewall between synchrony and diachrony has been effectively breached in research practice, and it may be time to recognize that fact in the academic structure of the field as well. This would involve incorporating the historical dimension into regular syntax and phonology courses, and ultimately breaking down the conventional segregation of historical linguistics into a separate discipline within linguistics”.
Paul Kiparsky, "New perspectives in historical linguistics" (2014).
Foto: Paredones, Nazca.
