Social evolution and language change

We propose substantive universals in the relationship between social evolution and language change. Social anthropologists have categorized societies into roughly four broad types by social organization: bands, tribes, chiefdoms and states. This classification is evolutionary in the sense that the society types arose in human history in the sequence given above. We compare these society types to a broad classification of types of language change: divergence and several types of interference (borrowing, convergence, and contact languages—lingua francas, pidgins, creoles and stable mixed languages). Divergence results from social fission and communicative isolation; it is found in all society types, though less so with states. Interference is a result of the three main loci of societal contact: marriage, trade and political integration. Extralinguistic exogamy can occasionally lead to significant borrowing. Trade involves different types of multilingualism depending on the society type; lingua francas and trade pidgins are associated with state societies and a few chiefdoms involved in long-distance riverine/marine trade. Intensive borrowing and stable mixed languages occur with incorporation into a state society in situ, and creoles with state-driven migration (including slavery); there may be examples in chiefdoms, where incorporation sometimes occurs. Thus, certain types of language change are a recent phenomenon in human history and the uniformitarian hypothesis for language change must be abandoned, at least for contact-induced change. The implications of comparing society types with respect to linguistic processes are explored for language history and language endangerment.