Karim & Sultana 1

Discussion on how synchronic description has been

prioritized over diachronic description of linguistics
 Karim & Sultana 2

Table of Content:

1. Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………… 1

2. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………... 2

3. Literature review……………………………………………………………………… 3

4. Discussion on how synchronic description has been prioritized

over diachronic description of linguistics……………………………………………… 5

5. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………. 8

6. References……………………………………………………………………………. 9
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Abstract:

In this paper, it will be examined the prioritization of synchronic over diachronic in order to
understand how that synchronic linguistics was considered to be prior to diachronic linguistic.
This paper is about how a language can be changed over a period. However, its rules do not
change but the interpretation can be changed. In this paper, it will be showing how generation,
culture and most importantly Etymological Fallacy are the causes of language changes, they are
the main causes of the prioritization of synchronic description, and synchronic description only
talks about a certain period of time, not the history of that specific word. A word, as well as a
language can have historical background but with time speakers tend to avoid the original word
and replace it with evolved version of that word.
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Introduction:

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in
which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation
and use of words involves a process of free creation.”

This is Noam Chomsky’s famous line and it is used here to show how synchronic
description has importance in any language. However, grammatical rules are fixed but the
interpretations of words are not fixed and they are changing as time passes by. Language is the
preferred as a method of communication in a culture. Language has immense power, its impact
depends entirely on how we use it and the most important power is how we say it. We are using
words or sentence structure according to time. For example now most of the people sat “going
to” as “gonna” or “want to” as “wanna” which was not applicable in past times. From these
changing styles of language, synchronic description appears.
Synchronic description is known as a study of language at one period in time, which
usually refers to present time. Synchronic description is the comparison of languages or dialects.
There are also many differences in one language which is used within some defined spatial
county and during the same period (Donnelly, 1994). On the other hand, diachronic description
is known as the study of a language through different era in the past.
It is said that synchronic linguistics was considered to be prior to diachronic linguistics.
Historical linguists were expected to assemble some collective descriptions of a language at
various points in time, relying largely on the earlier work of synchronic linguists. Then they
studied the changes, which had taken place by comparing the various synchronic states.
Therefore, they came up with the thought that synchronic description has more priority than
diachronic one (Aitcheson, 2001).
Therefore, going through many arguments and statement, we came up with this topic as
our term paper. When we take a synchronic point of view, we are looking at a language as we
find it at a given period in time and when we see the diachronic point of view, it gives us the
historical angle over a period along with changes that happened in it. Linguistics gives priority to
synchronic study because all linguistics interested in details and it is very difficult to do
diachronic study with keeping details (Saleh,A, 2).
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Literature review:
According to Joseph H (1996, 508) “Synchronic data concerning about morphophonemic
alternations that lead to diachronic conclusions about earlier sound changes.” There is also some
important observation in this article done by Martinet (as cited in Joseph H, 1996,598) “the
importance of synchronic structure in understanding sound change, and also contains numerous
observation regarding factors in diachronic phonology which are implicitly equivalent in some
instances to universal changes.” However, Anthony Rodrigues (1991, 1) pointed out “diachronic
description have failed because of the lack of a convincing explanation of the process by which
apparently unrelated diachronic operations can conspire to produce the visible synchronic
patterns.”

Differentiating these two aspects, Karen.P (2010) pointed out in an article :Diachronic
linguistics views the historical development of a language. Through diachronic linguistics, we
can travel in past and present watching the language with all its features change. Synchronic
linguistics views a particular state of a language at some given point in time. This could
mean Modern English of the present day

Ferdinand de Saussure (2007) at wikipedia.org claimed:

“The dichotomy of synchrony and diachroniy is often explained by the metaphor of time
slices. If you were to cut time into slices, with each slice being a certain moment in time,
then a synchronic approach would look only at a single slice, whereas a diachronic one
would look at several slices and compare them to each other.”

Patrick Pricken (2007) showed an image to describe how synchronic and diachronic explained
with the time slice.
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Source: SynchronyDiachrony.gif

According to William F. Mackey (1970,8) “The synchronic description, which has served
so well in generating the abstractions of descriptive and transformational grammars, becomes
quite unreal when used to describe the unstable evolving system.” In addition of this, John E.
Cort (2004,800) pointed out “the opposite danger of tilting scholarly opinion towards what is
called the " etymological fallacy ," by which origins and the earliest historical strata are unduly
privileged in the interpretation of subsequent historical development”. In the support of
synchronic description JA Black ( 2008, 1) said, “systematic description of the language should
take into consideration the likelihood that documents from different periods and places, or
different manuscripts of the same literary composition, will reflect different or changing usages”

Discussion on how synchronic description has been prioritized over diachronic description
of linguistics:
Synchrony and diachrony, two different term but interlinked with each other coined by
Swiss linguists Ferdinand de Saussure. Both terms emphasizes on linguistics, words origin and
how it has been changed throughout time. These two terms are come from ancient Greek words,
“chronos” that stands for “time”. “Syn” stands for “with” or “bringing things together” and “dia”
stands for “across time”. According to Saussure, these two terms can be understand in the field
of English where synchronic means “coexistent” and diachronic means “successive”. These two
terms is presented in reference of geometry where vertical line represents diachronic description
and horizontal line represents synchronic description of language change. These two lines often
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overlap with each other as they are interlinked. (Bouissac, 2010).

Source: http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/theory/saussure.htm

Diachrony refers to language use where it contains the historical background of the
language. It is also known as “historical linguistics”. Diachronic description focuses on how
language changes its forms throughout time, what was the origin of certain word and language
units, how and why it has changed its form, it talks about the transformation of words as well as
language. Language has changed its form from different language such as French, Italian
language has evolved from Latin language and Hindi, Bengali language comes from Sanskrit and
many more.

On the other hand, synchronic description only talks about a certain period of time, not
the history of that specific word. A word, as well as a language can have historical background
but with time speakers tend to avoid the original word and replace it with evolved version of that
word. Along with this, people are using the evolved version of the word in a new context or
change the meaning for the context. It may not be the literal meaning of the word.
Synchrony is coined by Saussure where he made a connection with diachronic
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description of language. It is found that speakers from present day and linguists have always
considered the historical fact behind different words and language only to learn what was the
origin of a word. But both speakers from this days and linguists have always preferred and use
synchronic description of certain words in their daily life rather than using origin of words in
every context while speaking. Synchrony deals with this type of mixture of meaning, word forms
in some cases done by the people over time. And people are comfortable with this overlapping
rather than using the origin of a word. There are some fundamental reasons that draw lines
between these two terms and explain why synchronic description is prioritizing over diachronic
description.

Etymological fallacy: Etymology is the study of the origin and development of words (Lyon,
1981). And etymological fallacy refers to false impression of certain word or phrase that contains
actual meaning. Synchronic description talks about how both native and non-native speakers are
prefer the new meaning of words rather than preferring the actual meaning.
Time: Time is the most important issue for speakers choosing synchronic description of
linguistics. Throughout time linguists and speakers of every language are only using linguistic
features of language that is used in present era. Many speakers does not even know the origin of
words, they do not even know whether they uses the original meaning or man-made changed
meaning. This controversy may blame the speakers but different situations, long time duration
has made the speaker chose the new version of words. Since this new version of word meaning is
chosen by almost everyone to communicate, the original meaning is being used in very few cases
such as books only to make people the history. For example, the history of the fruit “orange”
came from Old French where it was “orenge”, from Medieval Latin “ pomum de orange”, from
Italian “arancia”, originally “narancia”, From Arabic “naranj”, from Persian “narang” and from
Sanskrit “naranga-s”. if we look at the changes over time it is clear that gradually the word
“naranga-s” changes to “orange” which is known to everyone throughout the world and only few
people will tell from which word “orange” has evolved.
Formal-informal use: Diachronic description is more formal than synchronic description
which may consider as informal in terms of using language while speaking. This changes effect
not only on words, it effects on units of language, chunks of words as well. For example, in
Bengali the formal version of “moon” is “chondro” and “chad” is the informal version which is
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used by both formal and informal situations, in daily purpose.

Acceptance of young generation: Young generation preferred synchronic description as it
appears to be easy going, well expressive for them, easy to understand. Since they are not
exposed to the original meaning of words practiced by everyone, fresh faces tend to avoid using
those meaning in context. They also overlaps meaning just make easy to understand and
straightforward. For example now-a-days using the word “cool” in almost every sentence and in
different context is very common and people understands the meaning of the word “cool”. The
literal meaning of “cool” is neither warm nor cold or something fashionable whereas this word is
using a replacement of “awesome”. If we look at the history behind of the word “cool” in the
dictionary.com, it says “cool” as adjective in old English “not warm”, of persons,
“undemonstrative”,from ProtoGermanic *koluz (Middle Dutch coel, Dutch koel, Old High Germ
an kuoli, German kühl "cool,"Old Norse kala "be cold"), from PIE root *gel-“cold, to freeze”
and as verb, in old English colian, “to lose warmth,” “to lose ardor” from the root of “cool”.
Meaning to cause to lose warmth” is from late 14c.related to “cooled, cooling”. In the history
there is no mention of being smart or beautiful, wonder, very good or admiration as a meaning of
“cool” whereas the meaning of “awesome” says these. Synchrony deals with this type of mixture
of meaning, word form in some cases done by the people over time. And speakers are
comfortable with this overlapping rather than using the origin of a word.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, it is very clear that synchronic description is being prioritized over

diachronic description over time even though both these terms are core component of language.
At the beginning of the journey, language were being polished by this two terms nevertheless all
the way through time, the use of the words are changing even though they still carry out their
history with them. It is a one way cycle where linguistics is constantly evolving from one form to
another and choosing over synchronic over diachronic description is one of them.
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Refernces:
1. Aitchison,J.(2001) Language Change: Progress or Decay? 3rd ed. Cambridge University
Press.
faculty.ksu.edu.sa/haldayel/DocLib/Linguistic%20.pp

2. Bouissac, Paul. (2010) Saussure: A Guide for the Perplexed (illustrated). Edinburgh:
A&CBlack.
http://books.google.com.bd/books/about/Saussure_A_Guide_For_The_Perplexed.html?
id=f3S2FaquumUC&redir_esc=y

3. Donnelly,C.E, (1994).Linguistics for Writers. State Univ. of New York Press.

4. Greenberg, J.H. 1966. Synchronic and Diachronic Universals in Phonology, language, 42(2),
508-517. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/411706

5. Lyons, John. (1981). Language and Linguistics: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.
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6. . (n.d.). December 9, 2014. Retrived from 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cool?s=t

7. Online Etymology dictionary. (n.d) retrived from December 9, 2014.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?
allowed_in_frame=0&search=orange+fruit&searchmode=nl

8. . Pricken,P (2007). Retrieved from

SynchronyDiachrony.gif

9. Rodrigues,A. (1991). On Diachronic Sources and Synchronic Pattern: An Investigation into

the Origin of Linguistic Universals. Language, 67(1), 1-33. Retrieved From
http://www.jstor.org/stable/415537

10. Rybicki, Jay. (2003) Saussure. Retrived from

http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/theory/saussure.htm

11. William, F, M. (1979. Language Policy and Language Planning, 29(2), 48-53.
6. (n.d.). December 9, 2014. Retrived from 
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cool?s=t

12. Wentersdorf .K.P. (1971). Beowulf's Withdrawal from Frisia: A Reconsideration. Studies in
Philology, 68(4), 395-415. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173735
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