🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1e59wB1w164w@cellar.org>, dbt@cellar.org (Marquis de Freud) writes:
> Tying a few threads together here -- dealing with "plausible" lingusitics -- 
> I wonder if anyone has tried to *predict* language change. I know many rules 
> exist for classifying linguistic drift, but have there been any notable 
> attempts to extend these observations into the future? (Even if they have 
> been *wrong*).

I don't know of any serious attempts to predict the entire future course
of a language.  However, we do find some predictions of a few changes.
For instance, it has been noted (I don't remember by whom) that English
[oi] is poorly integrated into out vowel system and really shouldn't
exist.  (See Chomsky & Halle, The Sound Pattern of English, to see just
how badly it fits and what they did with it.)  It is therefore supposedly
doomed.

Along the same lines, English verb agreement is very limited and poorly
integrated.  It supposedly is also doomed.

Both of these predictions are supported by popular tendencies in certain
kinds of English to merge [ai] and [oi] and to eliminate verb agreement,
so we can't really claim that they're just theoretical predictions.
So it don't matter if we bile the water, sez me.  :)

--Leo Connolly
I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.