ABSTRACT
In Haugen’s analysis of standardisation, the ‘selection of norms’ (whereby one variety is singled out to serve eventually as the linguistic standard across wider geographical and social space) is essentially a social process, bringing enhanced status for one dialect and consequential disparagement for its neighbours. ‘Elaboration of function’, which we shall consider next, is in contrast a linguistic process bearing upon the ‘corpus’ of the variety involved, and transforming it from an ‘undeveloped’ oral vernacular into a ‘developed’ language. As a vernacular assumes functions over and above those of everyday conversation (for example in writing, government, learning, etc.), it has to graft on to itself new linguistic mechanisms to enable it to perform its new functions. During the early period of the history of French the only ‘developed’ language in use in western Europe (with the notable exception of Irish, and, up to a point, Anglo-Saxon) was Latin; it was uniquely equipped to perform the H functions in society. Gradually, however, leakage of function occurred between the H language (Latin) and the vernaculars, obliging French to make significant additions to its lexicon and syntax to cope with its new role in society. The period in the history of French when developments like this were particularly in evidence was between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, but, of course, the process of ‘elaboration of function’ is an on-going one, for, even in our own day, the language is constantly adapting itself to new conditions of use (e.g. on radio and television and on the telephone). As Haugen says, ‘there are no limits to the elaboration of language except those set by the ingenuity of man’ (1966: 108).
