Variation and Change in Our Living Language

Change in Progress One area in which linguists have made considerable progress over the past century—especially during the last 40 years—is our ability to study language change as it is taking place, usually through careful attention to variations in regional and social usage that are both the harbingers and manifestations of change. Much of this progress was made through the study of American English, so it is especially appropriate to share some of our findings with readers of The American Heritage Dictionary. Although our advances have frequently involved pronunciation and grammar rather than vocabulary, words themselves are markers of diversity and carriers of history, and they can sometimes provide crucial evidence about developments in other parts of the language system. The words go, like, and all, for instance, represent ongoing change in the ways in which Americans introduce quotations in speech. In place of the conventional say, some speakers began using go to report dialogue in the historic or narrative present, as in Then he goes, "You think you’re real smart, don’t you?" This usage now overlaps with and has to some extent been replaced by be like and (in California and on the West Coast, at least) be all, as in I’m like, "No, I don’t!" and She’s all, "You do, too!" One of the ways we can tell that American speech is undergoing change in this area is that younger people use the newer forms more often than older people do. When we have evidence that a linguistic feature is used at different rates by different age groups, we call it evidence of change in apparent time, using the terminology coined by William Labov, the leading figure in the study of language change in progress. Evidence of change in apparent time can be corroborated, however, by evidence of change in real time, by comparisons of speech and writing samples from earlier periods with those of today. 4 The note for as far as summarizes the corroborative evidence of change in apparent and real time quite clearly, change that involves syntax as much as vocabulary. That note draws, as this introduction does, on recent research by Tom Wasow, Norma Mendoza-Denton, Julie Espinoza, and myself published in the journal Language in 1995. The change taking place in constructions involving as far as has been demonstrated not only in America, where it seems to be most advanced, but also in England and other parts of the English-speaking world. The change is not in the as far as phrase itself but in the traditional requirement that the noun subject that follows it be followed in turn by a form of be concerned or go. This requirement is upheld for standard usage by the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary and exemplified by two public figures whose speech is represented here (the number immediately following the name gives the speaker’s age):

"As far as the organized resistance is concerned, that’s pretty much taken care of" (Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly, 60s, 1989).

"Results of this summit were positive as far as the Soviet desires went" (President George Bush, 60s, 1990).

5 But we also have hundreds of examples in our files, most from speech but many from e-mail and expository and fiction writing, in which the final verb is absent. For instance:

"As far as the white servants, it isn’t clear" (Stanford student, 22, 1987).

"The whole situation upset me, as far as the outcome of the verdict" (Unidentified young woman, 22, 1992).

6 How do we know that this is really a syntactic change in progress, that the as far as constructions are gradually becoming verbless? First of all, we have the evidence of change in apparent time, the fact that this usage is most frequent in examples from speakers and writers 19 years old or younger, somewhat less in speakers 20-39 years old, less again in speakers 40-59 years old, and least of all in speakers 60 years old or older. It is no accident that the examples of as far as followed by a verb cited above come from people in their sixties, nor that the verbless examples come from people in their twenties. The association between this linguistic variation and age is not absolute, for teenagers and young adults do produce some as far as sentences with be concerned and go, and over-60 speakers do produce some as far as sentences without these verbal finishers. But the statistical correlations with age are significant, indicating ongoing change. 7 Moreover, we have some evidence from real time. The as far as X goes/is concerned construction (or a variation using so far as) is an 18th-century innovation that eventually replaced earlier ways of restricting the topic of one’s discourse, such as (As) concerning X and As far as concerns X. In the 18th-century examples of the innovating construction, the verbal is concerned or goes part is always present. In the 19th century, the verbal part is almost always present, but in two examples from Jane Austen’s Emma ("so far as our living with Mr. Churchill at Enscombe, it is settled" and "he only means so far as your having some thoughts of marrying") and one from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick ("So far as what there may be of a narrative in this book"), we find our first evidence of the verbless construction. 8 In the 20th century, not only do attestations of verbless as/so far as become increasingly frequent, but usage books start commenting openly and disapprovingly on this usage, a good indication that it has become more common. H.W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), for instance, gives this example: As far as getting the money he asked for, Mr. Churchill had little difficulty. Fowler follows it with a stern rebuke against omitting the verb. In a 1961 article in American Speech, linguist Paul Faris notes that as far as occurs frequently in cultivated usage without any form of be concerned following it, and he provides 60 verbless examples. From 1960 on, the construction appears to have proliferated, attracting rebukes from almost every usage handbook. Of the more than 1,200 occurrences of the as far as construction that my colleagues, students, and I collected in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more than half were verbless. Even in the written examples, verbless constructions appeared in 32 percent of our sample, a significant increase from the 6 percent we found in texts written before 1959. 9 Thus, a profound and apparently inexorable change in our living language has been taking place—a grammatical change, really—making as far as more like a preposition (compare as for) than a clausal conjunction. Like many other instances of change in progress, this one began below the level of consciousness and overt comment. In fact, the general public appears to have remained oblivious to this change even at what is now a fairly advanced level. 10

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