Divergence And Diffusion: An

Analysis Of The Wave And Family

Tree Models For Linguistic Change
While languages may appear to be a rather static phenomena to the outside observer,
those who have looked into the intricacies of a language as it was written and spoken over a
period of centuries will find that not only do languages change, but they often change drastically,
absorbing new words from other languages and other dialects as contact, trade, and the
advance of technology bring in new ideas and new goods that all require their own unique way
of being expressed. Theoretical models like the Wave Model and the Family Tree Model have
been put forward for predicting and describing the changes that occur in individual languages,
but even these products of research and observation have their own unique advantages and
disadvantages. Despite the fact that the Wave Model was originally devised in response to the
earlier Family Tree Model and the two were at one time sharply divided by strict party loyalties,
“most linguists since the end of the nineteenth century have considered them to be
complimentary.” (Smith 38) Can the two models stand alone as solid opposites? Is one more
suited than the other at predicting language change, or should they in fact be used in tandem,
combined into a stronger, more coherent theory that better explains both the divisions that
languages undergo and the way in which new traits are diffused geographically?

Proposed by Johannes Schmidt in 1872, the Wave Model is the keystone of a theory in which it
is stated that language change spreads in waves outward from central points of initial change in
a series of concentric circles. (Clark 328, Fox 129) The Wave Model implies that the evolution of
each individual language into its modern form is the product of the spontaneous appearance of
new dialectal features (within a given language or as traits of other languages) in a given area
combined with the subsequent spread of these features through contact in a wave form. It
incorporates the borrowing of words that happens between languages, (such as when one
culture introduces new concepts or trade goods to another) the borrowing of new linguistic
features by children from their peers, and the spread of those children (with their modified
dialects) to other areas (Smith, 38). Taken at face value and employed exclusively, the Wave
Model ignores direct lineage and instead focuses entirely on the component parts of a
language. Instead of drawing a hard line that shows one language leading to another in an
unerring progression that ignores dialects and borrowings from other tongues, the Wave Model
describes each language in much more detail, creating a map or diagram which tries to show
the interrelationship of tongues without resorting to the direct lineage tactics of the Family Tree
Model. This map of change and influence would appear at first glance as a mass of intersecting
circles merging together and sliding apart, but each blending illustrated in such a map indicates
a change that has occurred over time between any given language and another, creating new
languages and new dialects from the blending of multiple parent tongues. These “blends” are, in
truth, the strongest testaments to the statement that a language like English is in fact the
“daughter” of not just a West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Dialect, but of a whole mess of unique
languages and dialects within that category as well, including Central French, Norman French,
Old Norse, and countless other tongues which have worked their way into any particular dialect
of our current English over time, even if only in the form of a single word (like boomerang, which
is from an Australian Aboriginal dialect, or karaoke, which is Japanese.) In our modern
environment of rapid, global information exchange and a regular force of travel and tourism all
over the world, Schmidt’s Wave Model still functions in part, but it begins to fall apart when
faced with the displacement of dialectal traits that happens when one person visits or moves to
a foreign country, or with the seemingly random way in which changes spread over the internet,
emphasizing the fact that, in truth, not all change occurs in concentric circles or waves. As it
stands, the Wave Model cannot explain the means by which some changes spread from
multiple sources or stop short in the face of natural boundaries (rivers, lakes, mountains, etc.) or
the way in which changes in dialect which occur through the medium of the internet (which
features both written and spoken information) effect individuals in a completely random fashion
(geographically speaking) and may or may not transcend from a written form to a spoken
medium or vice versa. True, it could be said that, if we were to draw up a network map of
cyberspace, (featuring “linguistic continents” like Myspace, Facebook, and AOL,) it might be
possible to track linguistic changes to find that they do spread in a fashion similar to that of the
Wave Model, but across a completely different topography with its own natural boundaries, walls
between minds, walls created by a difference of language, by shyness, censorship, and
intellectual bias that kill the spread of new dialectal changes before it can even occur.
When comparing what we know of the historical record in regards to language change (that
which we have sufficient information to track and analyze) to the expected outcomes that we
can formulate using Schmidt’s Wave Model, we find that the idea of diffusion between
languages to build new languages by a sort of blending actually holds a fair amount of water on
its own. Not only is language contact a constantly-occurring process, especially in today’s world
of quick, electronic communication between people worldwide, but new words are continuously
being introduced into other languages as these contacts lead to a transfer of concepts or
products that must be named (consider the Spanish: Computadora for “Computer” or Blog, short
for Weblog, which has found its way into a number of other languages from English.) The
Satem/Centum division (a division between languages that pronounce an [s] consonant or a
harder [k] sound in the same place, as in Satem and Centum, two words for “hundred”) while
originally noted as evidence for the Family Tree Model, as it originally created a neat division of
the languages of the east from the languages of the west, has ultimately become strong
evidence for the Wave Model with the discovery of languages that do not conform to this neat
divide. (Renfrew 107) The fact that there are a number of shared traits between IE language
groups that occurred after language division occurred (such as the fact that the past tense is
based on the original perfect in both Germanic and Latin or the fact that some case-endings
with -m instead of -bh occur in both Germanic and Baltoslavic tongues)(Fox 132) presents a
significant argument, as does the widespread overlapping of isoglosses (Fox 129) which clearly
indicates that not only do linguistic traits spread independent from one another, but they can
come together to effect the same area in their steady march outward, creating areas that feature
both dialectal changes while areas beyond feature only one or the other of the two. “We do
know,” Says William Labov in his book, Sociolinguistic Patterns “that the growth of the affected
area [i.e. the area affected by the dialectal change] may be checked by linguistic factors
(Herzog 1965) or by social factors or historical discontinuities (Bloomfield 1934:344) or by the
negative prestige of the group as a whole (as in the case of New York City.”(Labov 319)
 In 1871, one year before Schmidt’s Wave Model was first formulated, a German Linguist by the
name of August Schleicher proposed a model for language evolution that follows a similar line
as the work of Charles Darwin by creating a sort of family tree to show descent and
relatedness, with branches ultimately leading back to the trunk of an extinct common ancestor
whose diversification gave rise to all of the many daughter forms we know today. (Clark 326) It
is an overly simplistic model composed of “successive comparisons, creating proto-languages
as we go, until we have grouped all the languages together, creating a hierarchical tree of
relationships” (Fox 122-123) and in its over simplification, it makes a number of faulty
assumptions, including what is probably the most grievous– that the Proto-Indo-European
“trunk” of the tree existed in only a single, uniform dialect with no prior ancestor form. (Fox 133)
Unlike the Wave Model, the Family Tree Model focuses wholly on direct, one way relationships,
and tends to lump all dialectal forms of any given language into one single language category if
the dialects are all more or less mutually intelligible. “It implies that language change is
essentially a matter of language or dialect split, so that a language may have more than one
descendant, but only one parent” (Fox 123) whereas the Wave Model implies a sort of diffusion
or bringing together, an intermeshing of traits from numerous languages and dialects that
proves, much as the flesh under any given skin color does, that there are many more similarities
between us as people than there are differences.

When placed side by side, it becomes clear that both the Wave Model and the Family Tree
Model have their uses, their strong points, and their inevitable pitfalls. While the Family Tree
focuses primarily on the divergence and downward division of languages, drawing hard,
unswerving lines that chart the descent of what has occurred in the most simplistic of
approaches, Schmidt’s Wave Model is oriented more toward tracking the diffusion of traits
outward from a central source, following how they migrate, change and interrelate, creating
hybrids that are recognized for their numerous and mixed parentage.(Bynon 194) It is the Model
not of what has already happened (in the broadest sense), but rather of how it happened and of
how it may happen again. It is a tool for predictions, showing us how the new dialectal changes
of today or the as yet unimagined traits of tomorrow may spread and change our languages,
whereas the only prediction you can really draw by using the Family Tree Model is that any
given language may one day sprout its own daughter forms, if it does not go extinct first. “We
could easily prefer a combination of the two models” says Colin Renfrew, “where there was
some splitting from an original proto-language, involving some displacement of people, followed
by the addition of subsequent effects by the wave mechanism”(Renfrew 106). Together, the two
models can be used to offer a feasible way to explain exactly how the divisions we see in the
Family Tree Model might have happened, what separated one tongue from another so much
that the two became no longer mutually intelligible, indeed how the very diffusion of changes
triggered the division between dialects into new daughter tongues of a parent language.
There is certainly proof that languages evolve and spawn in a linear fashion very much like a
Family Tree pattern, one feeding into another, and although I find myself most convinced by the
much more in-depth way of looking at things incorporated into the Wave Model, I feel that it’s
safe to say that only when the Wave Model and the Family Tree Model are put together in a sort
of hybrid do they explain and allow us to predict (to a degree) the features of language change
in the most reasonable fashion. What I would like to propose is a new Model, one that charts
language change in depth (as per the Wave Model) in a three dimensional form which describes
not only geographical information, but also the passage of time, down to the level of dialects, so
that we can see exactly who talked how and when, similar to what William Labov mentions
when he suggests a “new version of the wave model of linguistic change” which “would show
symmetrical distributions through time, space, and society.(Labov, 266) Granted, a lot of the
data necessary for such a detailed Model has been lost over time, but with technology where it
is now, I could easily see this model going into effect with our current level of information and
paired up with widespread observation and data collection to map out and retain a list of the
changes that take place in our languages today, tracking how change develops and spreads in
an attempt to be able to draw new and more flawless predictions about the future of each
language spoken in the world today.