Taming Chaos. Chance and Variability in the Language Sciences

Abstract

This paper focuses on chance and variability in language, and how the language sciences have dealt with that variability. After describing four types of variability found: (a) Inter-species variability, (b) Inter-language variability, (c) Variability in the linguistic signal within a given language, and (d) Inter-individual variability, the paper discusses the work of two pioneers who have tried to deal with this variability: Joseph H. Greenberg and William Labov. These near-contemporaries have tried to grapple with variability of types (b) and (c), as two separate enterprises. Thus these researchers have tried to separate pure chance or randomness from meaningful variability in two different ways, and in doing so have tried to tame the chaos. For them indeed the mission of linguistics as a discipline is to eliminate chance as much as possible, as the target of any scientific enterprise by definition is to isolate, separate or exclude what cannot be explained or understood. Nonetheless, chance and variability are key elements in language, and a proper understanding of language will take these as the point of departure. What does it mean to say that chance is an inherent property of human language? The paper outlines the beginning of answer to this question.