It would be cool to have an understanding of why some changes get generally accepted (whether for a while or for a long time) and why some disappear, but I don't know whether such understanding is possible.
I think it's definitely possible, but it would be a lot of work! On a micro-level, William Saffire does part of that work, but only with contemporary phrases, in his page in the NYTimes Magazine. Yes, a lot of speech is lost, but its fossils are in newspapers, advertising, novels, etc. This is mostly in terms of phrases; grammar rules are usually in books, and linguists trace them in any written language. I don't know of one book that generalizes about sources of change over time.
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Date: 2009-06-21 04:14 am (UTC)I think it's definitely possible, but it would be a lot of work! On a micro-level, William Saffire does part of that work, but only with contemporary phrases, in his page in the NYTimes Magazine. Yes, a lot of speech is lost, but its fossils are in newspapers, advertising, novels, etc. This is mostly in terms of phrases; grammar rules are usually in books, and linguists trace them in any written language. I don't know of one book that generalizes about sources of change over time.