Your friend Mary thinks that languages normally stay the same forever; although people may sometimes need to create new words, she thinks that the sounds, the meanings of the existing words, and all other major features of the language should and do stay the same indefinitely. "Only slang changes," she says, and that is not really part of the language'

Is Mary right about this?

Question

Your friend Mary thinks that languages normally stay the same forever; although people may sometimes need to create new words, she thinks that the sounds, the meanings of the existing words, and all other major features of the language should and do stay the same indefinitely. "Only slang changes," she says, and that is not really part of the language'

Is Mary right about this?

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Languages are dynamic systems that undergo continuous change through sound shifts, shifts in meaning, grammatical restructuring, borrowing, and sociolinguistic variation.

1. Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Living language: a language actively used for everyday communication across generations.
- Mechanisms of change: sound change (regular shifts in pronunciation), semantic change (meanings shift over time), grammaticalization (words becoming grammatical markers), borrowing (loanwords), and analogical change.
- Historical evidence: Old English → Middle English → Modern English; Latin evolving into the Romance languages; the Great Vowel Shift in English.

2. Step-by-step reasoning
- Define “stay the same”: Mary implies phonology, lexicon meanings, and grammar remain constant across generations.
- Observe mechanism: Children acquire language imperfectly relative to their input; repeated small differences accumulate (misanalysis, simplification, analogy), producing systemic change over generations.
- Cite empirical cases: Latin’s phonology, morphology, and syntax changed sufficiently to produce Spanish, French, Italian; English lost many inflectional endings and underwent major vowel shifts; the word nice shifted from “foolish” to “pleasant” over centuries.
- Note that change affects all registers, not only slang: formal/educated varieties also show phonological and syntactic evolution.

3. Intermediate steps / calculations
- Not applicable (no numeric calculation). Intermediate evidential steps are the historic examples and mechanisms listed above.

4. Why the correct answer is correct
- The claim that only slang changes contradicts well-documented, regular linguistic processes and historical data showing systematic change in sounds, meanings, and grammar across generations in all living languages.

5. Why other options are incorrect
- Option A: Mistakenly treats classical languages (Latin, ancient Greek) as evidence of stability; in fact they are stages that changed and/or ceased to be spoken natively. “Educated forms” also evolve.
- Option B: Appeals to feelings rather than evidence; sentimental arguments don’t refute documented linguistic change.

6. Conclusion
All living languages change from generation to generation, at least to some degree. This confirms the correct answer: "She's wrong. All living languages change from generation to generation, at least to some degree."

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