A Thought Experiment on Linguistic Change (1)

I was basically doing a little thought experiment, and noticed something interesting. I was thinking about how much english has changed over the span of 250 years, and then how much it has changed over the span of 500 years, and how after 1000 years its unrecognizeable. Then I wondered, is there a pattern behind this?

I'm not a fan of glottochronology, nor glottochronological methodology, but I did notice a fairly consistent pattern. I noticed that phonological change seems to occur generationally in steps, and that, it becomes noticeable after about 4-5 generations. So if I were to divide that 250 years up into 125 years.

The assumption made here, is that isolated or not, two areas where a language is spoken, will undergo slightly different changes. Those changes may or may not be regular, that is, if language A underwent 3 sound changes, language B might not also undergo 3 sound changes, but they would at least be noticeably different as a requirement after 125 years in some way. I'd say that it'd be the latest time span before language B would resemble exactly the ancestral form of both language A and B, if it hadn't already gone through some change.

Essentially, my point is, if we were able to hear a voice recording of Abraham Lincoln speaking while still living in Illinois, he'd have a slightly different accent than someone today living in that same part of Illinois.

Now, since the settlement of North America, and even the spread westward in the 1860's onward, we actually do see dialectical differences. The map posted by the Washington Post below could be subdivided further, but it shows the basic outline:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/02/what-dialect-to-do-you-speak-a-map-of-american-english/

Now, at the borders of these dialects, there tends to be merging of differing dialects. For instance, as someone from Upstate New York, my own speech seems to obey some sound changes for both New England Western and the Inland Northern dialects, and sounds quite similar to the south eastern parts of Ontario and Quebec.

The basic idea is, if you trace your way backward, from dialect to language to language family, to language superfamily, etc.... you can get a somewhat reliable most recent possible date a given language was spoken. While far from finished. The basic idea, before I run through in more depth, is that based on the internal relationships between dialects, you can work your way backward to get an idea as to how long ago a language would have been spoken:

2000-1875 CE Dialectical differences between American English - 125 years
1875-1750 CE Dialectical differences between American and British English - 250 years
1750-1625 CE Dialectical differences in Early Modern English in England - 375 years
1625-1500 CE Modern English developes from Middle English -  500 years

Now, for our purposes, we're counting Middle English as a seperate language. I think that it is sufficiently different from modern english to be counted as such, in the same way that as similar as Portuguese and Spanish are, they are different languages still. Or to make a more time similar comparison, Dutch and Afrikaans.

1500-1375 CE Dialectical differences occur within Middle English, compare Yola and the dialect that gave us Modern English, that are subclassifiable (as say American and British English are subclassifiable).
1375-1250 CE Dialectical differences occur within Middle English.
1250-1125 CE Middle English evolves from the clash between Old English and Norman French. Old English being a seperate language for the same reason Modern and Middle English are being considered seperate.
1125-1000 CE Start of that developement of Middle English from Old English.

1000-875 CE Old English shows multilevel dialectical differentiation
875-750 CE Old English dialects show dialectical differentiation
750-625 CE Old English shows dialectical differentiation
625-500 CE Old English developes from West Germanic. (450 CE is given for the start of Prehistoric Old English according to wikipedia.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English

It's important to note, that the dates given above are approximate, and they don't coincide perfectly with that given by linguists. A language can be divided up arbitrarily at any point, the point here is utilitarianly.

The basic idea that I came up with, is that after:

125 years dialects begin to emerge from a language. (at this stage, the language itself is still a dialect of a previous language).

250 years dialects form within dialects of a given language. Forming a cluster of related dialects.

375 years a full blown family of dialects emerges within a language, as it begins to split into different languages.

500 years, dialects that began to differentiate 125 years ago, begin to form into seperate languages.

For instance, Latin was brought to Sardinia in 238 BCE.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/524166/Sardinian-language

Almost immediately, dialectical differences between Vulgar Latin and Sardinian began to occur, as the two began to develope along different trajectories. By about 600 CE, Vulgar (Nonclassical) Latin, had split into nonmutually intelligeable dialects, or languages.

If we were to measure this time distance based on the present, we'd measure our way backwards in intervals of 125 years. Vulgar Latin would exist in Sardinia from about 250 BCE to 125 BCE when it became the Sardinian Dialect of Vulgar Latin.

125-1 BCE would see the rise of dialects within Sardinian Vulgar Latin on the island.

1-125 CE would see multiple level dialectical differentiations in Sardinia.

125-250 CE would then have Sardinian develope into a seperate language.

Now, whether a group of dialects developes into one or multiple languages, depends on whether those dialects end up forming a coherent group. The same process that brought English to being similar to Norman French, is the same process that would've developed Sardinian and Icelandic into languages. The speakers of the dialects in those groups commonly communicated with one another, as they lived on the same island or same country, so there was a high degree of linguistic exchange between their communities.

You could do the same by comparing the spread of words like tea~chai into and into and through Europe from East Asia. You have communities of speakers with a method of communication (between Europe and East Asia, the oceanic and silk road trade routes).

Basically, in a nutshell, the process by which one language would develope into another, seems to take about 500 years. We'll explore this more in further posts.