University of Virginia Library

Search this document 
Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  

expand sectionII. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionIV. 
expand sectionIV. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionIV. 
collapse sectionV. 
  
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionVII. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionVII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionVII. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionIII. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionVII. 
expand sectionVII. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionVI. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionI. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionIV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionII. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionV. 
expand sectionIV. 

6. Uniformitarianism in Recent Linguistics. In
1950 Morris Swadesh launched a method, glotto-
chronology, that deserves mention here because it


430

proposed a uniformitarian refinement of the compara-
tive method. It had two main postulates: (1) The
vocabulary of any language can be divided into two
parts, the basic vocabulary and the rest; languages may
differ in their nonbasic vocabularies, but all languages
agree in the meanings expressed in their basic vocabu-
laries. (2) Change in a language's basic vocabulary
(which consists in the replacement of one item by
another item with the same meaning) proceeds at a
more or less constant rate for all languages at all times.

It is postulate (2), uniform rate of change for re-
placements in basic vocabularies, that makes the
method uniformitarian. To determine this constant
rate, it was assumed that replacement, which is dis-
crete, could be represented without serious distortion as
a continuous process amenable to the differential and
integral calculus. Under that assumption, there resulted
as a corollary to postulate (2) a half-life principle just
as in the mathematical model for radioactive decay.
And actually it was the application to radioactive
decay, and especially its recent application in arche-
ology to radiocarbon dating, that inspired Swadesh's
method and aroused hopes for it (Swadesh, 1952).

After about a decade of discussion both postulates
came to be judged unrealistic (Hymes [1964], pp.
567-663, including pp. 622-23, a bibliography). How-
ever, the basic ideas of the method have not been
shown to be wrong in principle.