ABSTRACT
In the scientific study of the causes of language change one can find two polar positions. One says that language change is caused in the same way as change in other domains of human social behaviour, namely as a matter of fashion. There are, as always, positions between the two polar ones, saying that language change is sometimes a matter of fashion, sometimes a matter of function, or that certain types of language change are a matter of fashion, others a matter of function. The antithetic character of language changes is evident at other levels as well. The potentially antithetic nature of language changes on different parameters has been well known to linguists for a long time. This chapter considers the special meaning the word cognitive has recently acquired in linguistics, that person was undoubtedly trying to say something. Apparently the adoption of the word cognitive by linguists into their linguistic jargon is a matter of both fashion and function.
