From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the emerging study of language shared with geology certain metaphors - co-existing but mutually incompatible - to describe theories of change. The Tower of Babel, Rise and Fall, Line and Branch were ideas that fed both disciplines; and linguistic study sometimes drew its imagery directly from geology, comparing varieties of language to fossils marking layers of development. At the same time, tension arose between the concept of language as a fixed sign and the wish to endorse it as a tool for change, an unpredictable maker of history.
Metaphors...
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the emerging study of language shared with geology certain metaphors - co-existing but mutually incompat...
