As the previous chapter showed, Brugmann opened, with his own hand, a door toward the human force of “analogy.” In 1922, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen steps decisively through that door.
Not “decay,” but “progress” — a direct reversal
As Chapter 3 showed, Schleicher called the process of losing complex inflection “decay” (Verfall) — the historical period, in his view, a long decline after language’s peak had already passed. In his book Language, Jespersen looks at exactly the same phenomenon — simplification of word forms — and delivers the opposite verdict.
…in all those instances in which we are able to examine the history of any language for a sufficient length of time, we find that languages have a progressive tendency… so that the structure of modern languages is nearer perfection than that of ancient languages. (Article 097)
Facing the identical observation — inflection simplifying — Schleicher calls it decay, Jespersen calls it progress. At the heart of this clash is a difference in values: what standard makes a language “good”? For Jespersen, a language that can convey more with fewer forms is a better tool for communication — complexity itself carries no inherent value.
A direct assessment of human adaptability
Jespersen’s reversal doesn’t stop at this one point. He reads a child’s speech errors not as “evidence of immaturity” but as evidence of an active intelligence, working out the patterns of language on its own (Article 098). Likewise, he treats pidgin languages — simplified languages that arise from contact between speakers of different tongues — not as “broken language,” but as evidence of humans reshaping language to fit their circumstances (Article 099).
What both claims share is a view of language change not as a natural process, like an oak tree growing, but as an accumulation of human judgments, made by individual speakers responding to their circumstances. The human force Brugmann acknowledged only partially, as “analogy,” Jespersen extends into a principle that explains language change as a whole.
Summary
| Point | Detail |
|---|---|
| Reversing Schleicher | Reads the simplification of word forms not as “decay” but as “progress through efficiency” |
| A child’s speech errors | Evidence of active intelligence, not immaturity |
| Pidgin languages | Evidence of human adaptability, not broken language |
In a nutshell — Jespersen stepped decisively through the door Brugmann had opened. Language change was no longer something nature “causes” — it became something humans “do.” The next chapter looks at how this human-centered view was corroborated by actual archaeological evidence.