In addition to the tendency to increase efficiency that occurs in the use of vocables in individuals, we propose a model that relies on short range interactions that we refer to as nearest neighbour interaction - and associated dispersive dynamics - to explain how differences can be more or less standardized across a population. It also accounts for how this dynamics furthers the process of attenuation. We will explain, in this thesis, the specifics of nearest neighbour interaction dynamics but for now, let us define it as the influence that linguistic neighbour have on each other, in this case, on their use of language. As we have previously mentioned, the erosion of effects in the use of vocables is the result of a tendency toward efficiency as we reuse specific vocables in association with similar contexts.
The loss of original perceptual cues, that we have mentioned earlier, make vocables susceptible to reinterpretation. In doing so, it augments their portability. As the perceptual cues of early contexts are lost the participants in a linguistic transaction are forced (or have the opportunity) to provide part of their own individual past experience to the new context. This furthers the process of decontextualization even more. What may have been shared originally by a small group of people using a contextually bound lexical (maybe even indexical) set of vocables, may have been reflected synaptically (as Rizzolatti, Fogassi and Gallese suggest). However, as vocables become extended beyond their original context and as original perceptual cues are forgotten, these synaptic resemblances may disappear as well. Hence vocables become attenuated.
There must be an aspect of language in which individual associations of sounds, objects and activities are compared and shared. It is not clear how this would happen, but negotiation and coordination between activities also establish common context. This would work as gradual synchronizing, akin to rhythmic improvisations in human tribes. The tiny adjustments that individuals do to keep up with a neighbour's beat soon give rise to a unified rhythm. This kind of synchronization is common in nature. The simultaneous firing of fireflies is one example and the synchronization of women's menstrual periods over prolonged contact is another [21]. There is an enormous leap between tribal rhythmic expressions and the kind of coordinating we achieve purely syntactically. However, we do establish common context by explaining to each other what we mean. The presence of jargons in different areas of work is a good example of how a negotiation and a coordination of activities can lead to specialized vocables and novelties. The Internet revolution has provided us with many such novelties; to go on-line, e-mail, google search, have all entered our daily speech.
We assume that all novelties arise out of a pre-existing base. Each new novelty hooks onto a familiar syntactic vocabulary. Thus, our individual experience of vocables and all they entail is in a sense compromised when they are shared. When we extend our use of particular vocables to other contexts we are actually involved in a linguistic transaction with another or a group of others in which we all bring forth our linguistic specificity in a quoting [33] of previous experience. A kind of competition may occur between individuals' own account of the uses of vocables. The competition resolves itself with the group's perceived overlap of common features. A crude account of neighbour interaction that leads to common context can be found in the following:
This example uses cultural metaphors but it may just be that cultural metaphors are the product of quoting past experiences. There are thousands of these idioms in the language: gone the way of the dodo, burning the midnight oil, nose to the grindstone. All of these are supposed to conjure up vivid imagery that a majority of the population can relate to, but eventually the events that are described by metaphors will not be shared. Generationally, it is doubtful that cultural metaphors can survive very long. What child today knows what midnight oil refers to? It is also doubtful whether cultural metaphors can be extended to other ethnicities. This is evident from the amusing, and not-so-amusing, problems that E.S.L. speakers have before they've learned English idioms.
The process of negotiation through neighbour interaction results in a furthering of the process of attenuation in idiosyncratic uses of vocables in individuals. This in turn, augments the portability of vocables. The requirements of efficiency and the propagation of vocables within a population lead to morphological changes in the use of these vocables. They tend to become shorter. There are many examples of this in English: or, for example has come from other; but from Old English butan; have and will in their auxiliary role take the form've and 'll and must've becomes must of in popular speech.
We suggest that the process of attenuation also erodes other aspects of speech such as morphology. It is reasonable to view the vocabulary of present languages as the result of the erosion of much longer strings of phonemes and morphemes that were culturally shared in previous times. It is not difficult to imagine the slow process of erosion of specific sounds over millions of years in the utterance patterns of hominids and how proto-language resulted from this. The next step involves offering a description of the dynamics that gave rise to modern languages, that is, how grammatical forms emerged. So far, we have confined ourselves to a conversational account of the dynamics that occur with language evolution. In order to describe the event of grammatical forms, we will need to invoke the idiom of statistical mechanics. We also use the event of functionalized vocabulary in present English language as a representative sample of the larger scale dynamics that gave rise to natural languages.