___The limits of synchronic approaches___________________________

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Synchronic analysis is unable to transcend the language/speech boundary that many sociolinguists seek to abolish--they can discuss how _language_ changes, but not how the speakers change it. Gumperz and Wilson are able to explain aggregate "communal" direction of change ("convergence") of all the Kupwar public varieties, but only because they have supplied the historical context for the language situation in the community. <[LINK]> As the authors themselves point out, they cannot directly observe the mechanisms of language change at any level more local than their _a priori_ definition of Kupwar village as the object of study, the "community." {<[LINK]> 269} Synchronic evidence cannot discern between the "re-syntactification" posited by Gumperz and Wilson and "relexification" because it cannot determine direction of change. <[LINK]> The two concepts are indistinguishable in such a model, with the result that Gumperz and Wilson can approach the actuation problem <[LINK] -actuatio> only from the same level at which their assumptions are made.