ABSTRACT
In complete agreement with the position taken here, Lüdtke’s theory stands in the tradition of methodological individualism. His explanations are explanations from the bottom up. He does not regard language as a thing, a given inventory, a sign system or such like, but as a ‘certain procedure’ adopted by human beings to communicate with one another. The instruments we use in communication have no logical existence prior to their use, but are the results of communicative enterprises. The type of language change he deals with in his theory ‘emerges as an inadvertent, unconscious by-product of the coupling of free decision and the search for optimisation involved in linguistic activities’.1
