ABSTRACT
There are many schools of linguists, and they can be quite sharp in criticizing each other, but they are as one in holding and propagating a view of language change of which the layman's version is a somewhat degraded copy. The standard response that one hears when any change is questioned is some variant of Language is a living, growing thing, and all living things change. And apart from the unexceptionable and linguistically uninteresting kind of change, innovations in language are almost always the result of one of six human traits or motives: simple ignorance, social climbing, semantic inflation, group solidarity, journalistic convenience, or effort minimization. Languages are self-regulating because their speakers want to understand each other and be understood. Quite a few of the skirmishes between academic language specialists and their critics might be avoided if the specialists were fully alive to the difference between change and changes.
