Further analysis of language economy

In the previous post, I dissected the levels of language change from 1 to 4 in order of severity. The first category is a relatively mild amount of language export from one language to the other. In the first category, a language will borrow words only to fill a void: such as English borrowing the word 'cilantro' from Spanish. The reason why we added the word cilantro is easy to imagine: a Spanish merchant sells a new product to a chef, who uses it in his meal to his master who, impressed, asks the chef what the name of the new plant is. "The merchant said 'cilantro', sir."

But before we begin analyzing language exchange we must continue splicing. We have seen the levels of moderation in a language exchange, but now we must categorize the psychology on a broad level. For my examinations that will follow in later posts, I think it useful to dissect the reasons for language change into two categories. Of course, many categories - perhaps an infinite number - can be created to explain why languages change or don't, but I think we can make do with two which I will call normative and unitive forces.

Normative. This may also be described as the conservative force of the mind, the interior resistance to language change. Normative forces maintain language laws within our mind and resist the replacement of words and grammar structures with new versions.

Unitive. The liberalizing, largely external force that encourages us to add or modify existing words or grammatical structures to the way we speak. This may also be described as an ongoing desire to speak appropriately. For instance, though the normative forces encourage me to speak colloquially with my friends in a simple manner, college simply will not accept simple talk - and in order to be accepted I have had to add thousands of new words to my vocabulary and even change existing grammar structures.

Normative forces are directly linked to language-economy supply. A US tourist that does not want to learn how to converse in Portuguese will try to get by in as much English as possible. The Portuguese waiter, in order to make him or herself more hirable, will be quite responsive to unitive forces (which are directly linked to language-economy demand) and picks up quite a bit of restaurant English, maybe even more. Will the Portuguese waiter retain the English and use it in everyday scenarios? In category 1 or even category 2 situations, usually not. Perhaps a phrase or two slips in, but in general the demand for English is not high enough to permanently change the Portuguese waiter's interior vocabulary.