Automatic Simulation of Historical Change

0.0 Purpose. One of the principal reasons for studying the history of a language has been to explain the system of its modern reflex, the contemporary language. This has been especially true in attempting to deal with certain anomalies in the modern language. But the role, if appropriate, of utilizing information concerning diaehronie processes in a synchronic description is not a~ all i clear. Recent studies describing contemporary languages, based purely on synchronically motivated grounds, suggest a much more intimate relation between a synchronic grammar and what has been 2 previously posited as a dlachronic description of that language. The two major problems involved in historical studies have been the statement of the sound change (or, as this has been reinterpreted, the grammar change) and the relation of this change to other diachronic changes, that is, its relative chronology. A great deal of attention has been paid to the former but very little to the latter, whose significance has g-oatly increased