HISTORIA - KULTURA - JĘZYK. O MECHANIZMACH ROZWOJU POLSZCZYZNY.

Interpreting the myth of the Tower of Babel enables us to capture the general mechanism of language development: an event / experiences / history > cultural changes > linguistic changes, i.e., an extra-linguistic phenomenon > external language changes > internal language changes. Among the most common extralinguistic phenomena are migrations, political events, supernatural and civilization-driven events. External factors affecting language change form an array of four divergent processes along two separate lines: democratization eliticization; ethnicization globalization. These factors also influence the emergence of language patterns, the repertoire of which boils down to five types of oppositions: conservatism - modernism, cosmopolitanism - nationalism, purism - liberalism, normativism - volitionalism, rationalism - emotionalism. The impact of extralinguistic and language-external factors overlaps with the internal linguistic mechanisms that balance the components of a linguistic system: completion, economization, unification, repartition, and nobilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]