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Article published In: Historiographia Linguistica
Vol. 37:3 (2010) ► pp.321–340

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William Dwight Whitney and the Social Dimension of Lexical Diffusion

 | Gordon College
Published online: 17 November 2010
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.37.3.02alt
Summary
The paper traces how the American linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) and his intellectual descendants anticipated, and in part influenced, modern-day discussions of ‘lexical diffusion’, the piecemeal spread of phonological changes both through an individual speaker’s word-inventory and speaker-to-speaker through an entire community. Whitney regarded these two processes as inextricably linked; he also stressed comparison between different speech communities in search of locally distinct diffusionary patterns that challenged the Neogrammarian regularity hypothesis. Recent discussions of these and other aspects of lexical diffusion suggest that comparative-local studies, such as Whitney pioneered, remain essential for working out the explanatory nexus between lexical diffusion’s internally-phonological and social contexts.
Résumé
Cet article retrace comment le linguiste américain William Dwight Whitney (1827–1894) et ses disciples ont anticipé et partiellement influencé les discussions actuelles sur la ‘diffusion lexicale’, c’est-à-dire l’expansion, petit à petit, des changements phonologiques, à la fois à travers l’inventaire lexical d’un locuteur individuel et de locuteur à locuteur dans l’ensemble d’une communauté. Whitney considérait ces deux processus comme inextricablement liés. Il a également mis l’accent sur la comparaison entre différentes communautés linguistiques, dans la recherche de structures de diffusion localement distinctes, ce qui constitue une alternative à l’hypothèse néo-grammairienne de la régularité. Des débats récents sur ces aspects et d’autres aspects de la diffusion lexicale suggèrent que les études comparatives locales, telles que celles dont Whitney fut le pionnier, restent essentielles pour comprendre le lien explicatif entre contexte phonologique interne et contexte social.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag wird nachgezeichnet, wie der amerikanische Linguist William Dwight Whitney (1827–1895) und seine Schüler die heutigen Debatten um die ‘lexikalische Verbreitung’, d.h. die allmähliche Ausbreitung phonologischer Veränderungen über das Lexikon eines individuellen Sprechers bis hin zur Gesamtheit einer Sprechergemeinschaft vorweggenommen bzw. beeinflusst haben. Whitney sah beide Prozesse als unlösbar mit einander verbunden an. Ferner hat er dem Vergleich verschiedener Sprachgemeinschaften besondere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet, um so regional unterschiedliche Verbreitungsmuster herauszuarbeiten, welche als Alternative zu der von den Junggrammatikern propagierten Gesetzmäßigkeit gelten können. Debatten der jüngeren Zeit über diese und weiter Aspekte der lexikalischen Verbreitung legen es nahe, räumlich vergleichende Untersuchungen wie die von Whitney immer noch als entscheidend für das Verständnis der Zusammenhänge zwischen phonologischem und sozialem Kontext anzusehen.
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