LING001

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LING001

• Historical linguistics
• 4-8-2009

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Change in Time

• The rate of change varies, but they build up
  until the "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily
  distant and different (cf. difficulty in
  understanding some Brits or even Appalachians)
• After a thousand years, the original and new
  languages will not be mutually intelligible (cf.
  English and German and Dutch, and even more
  distantly English and Pashto (language of
  Afghanistan))
• After ten thousand years, the relationship will
  be essentially indistinguishable from chance
  relationships between historically unrelated
  languages.
• Some changes take place in one generation (recall
  the cot-caught merger last time), some take over
  hundreds of years (word order change in Classic
  Chinese)

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Historical Reconstruction

• When considering whether languages are related,
  we look for systematic correspondences between
  vocabulary items in different languages
• Since the relationship between sound and meaning
  is arbitrary (dog-chein-gou), these differences
  arent expected accidentally

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A Note of Caution

• Chance resemblance is possible, just not common
• English bad, Persian bad bad
• Dutch elkaar each other, Basque elkar each
  other
• Examination of the rest of the vocabulary of
  these languages reveal that these are accidental

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Another Note of Caution

• Borrowing
• We need to consider if the word is a new addition
  to the language or if it is vocabulary that is
  native to the language
• e.g. we dont want to conclude that English and
  Mandarin are related based on
• English /k?fi/ coffee, Mandarin /k?fe/
  coffee
• Btw, the English term came from Arabic, by way of
  Turkish and then Dutch

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Classifying Languages

• These systematic correspondences (well look at
  them more in a moment) are used to classify
  languages according to their origins.
• Languages are put into families (and
  sub-families)
• the relationships between languages are described
  using female terms most often daughter (and
  mother)

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Indo-European (IE)

• An early sketch from the late 1800s, more or less
  accurate even today

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Italic

• The Romance languages descended from Latin are
  the only Italic languages spoken today
• Ibero-Romance Portuguese, Spanish
• Gallo-Romance French, Catalan, Romansch
• Italo-Romance Italian, Sardinian
• Balkano-Romance Romanian

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Germanic

• English is part of the Germanic family.

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Clear Cognates

• English Dutch Danish
• one een en
• two twee to
• three drie tre
• four vier fire
• five vijf fem
• six zes seks
• seven zeven syv
• eight acht otte
• nine negen ni
• ten tien ti

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Classifying Languages Indo-European

• We also notice that there are similarities
  between Latin (Romance), English / German
  (Germanic) and yet other languages Greek and
  Sanskrit, for example.
• Sir William Jones, in the 1780s, was the first to
  notice them.

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More Distant Relatives

• English Lithuanian Greek
• one vienas heis
• two du duo
• three trys treis
• four keturi tettares
• five penki pente
• six sheshi heks
• seven septyni hepta
• eight ashtuoni oktô
• nine devyni ennea
• ten deshimt deka

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Classifying Languages Indo-European
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Language Classification How?

• We rely on two things
• the Uniformitarian Principle
• The regularity of sound-change

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The Uniformitarian Principle

• knowledge of processes that operated in the past
  can be inferred by observing ongoing processes in
  the present
• or, for language
• Language must work now in the same way as it
  ever did

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Regularity of Sound-Change

• Most of historical linguistics relies on the
  assumption that
• sound-change is regular and exceptionless
• That is, any sound-change will affect all the
  words that contain that (combination of)
  sound(s).

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regular and exceptionless

• Consider
• OE cnafa /knava/ gt ModE knave /nejv/
• OE cniht /knixt/ gt ModE knight /najt/
• So whats the rule?
• And whats the ModE reflex of OE cyning /kyni?/?

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regular and exceptionless

• OE /kyni?/ gt ModE /k??/
• Why not /n??/?
• Because the rule that deletes initial /k/ only
  applies before /n/.
• So, the rule getting rid of initial /k/ is
  exceptionless, but it has a specific environment
  when it applies, just like phonological rules

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The Comparative Method

• If we assume that sound-change is regular and
  exceptionless in this way, we can use systematic
  comparison of languages to see the relationships
  between them.
• This is known as the Comparative Method.

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Grimms Law

• Important result of the comparative method
• Grimms Law consonant changes between
  Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic

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Grimms Law

• p t k gt f ? x
• became fricatives in Germanic, but stayed same in
  Latin Greek
• b d g gt p t k
• devoiced in Germanic, but stayed same in Latin
  Greek
• bh dh gh gt b d g
• deaspirated in Germanic, but fricatives in Latin
  (f, f, h), devoiced in Greek (ph, th, kh),
  retained in Sanskrit, Hindi

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p gt f

• Sanskrit pita padam
• Greek pater poda
• Latin pater pedem
• Gothic fadar fotu
• English father foot
• PIE p?ter- ped-
• (majority rule here in the inference about PIE)

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Completed Chain Shift

• e.g. The Great Vowel Shift

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Chain Shift in Progress

• e.g. The Northern City Shift (around the Great
  Lakes, esp Syracuse, Rochester, Detroit, Chicago)
• ? gt ej (?j), ? gt a (?), ? gt ?, ? gt ?, backing of
  ?

?
?
? ?
a
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Northern Cities Shift

• ? gt ej laughs at it
• ? gt a on
• ? gt ? all
• ? gt ? seventeen
• ? gt ? fund

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Phonological and Morphological Change

• Old English had rich case inflection
• Modern English has almost none
• Phonological change led to morphological change

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Case

• Nominative subject marker
• Accusative object marker
• Dative indirect object marker
• Genitive possessive marker
• Se cniht geaf gief-e þ?s hierd-es
  sun-e
• the youth.NOM gave gift-ACC the shepherd-GEN
  son-DAT
• The youth gave the shepherds son a gift.

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Old English Case
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Sound Changes

• Dative consonant deletion results in loss of
  plural m
• All cases unstressed vowels reduced to schwa
• All cases schwa deleted
• So, whats left?

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Modern English

• SG PL
• NOM hound hounds
• ACC hound hounds
• GEN hounds hounds
• DAT hound hounds

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Morphological Change

• Reanalysis (folk etymology) speakers provide a
  morphological analysis that doesnt correspond
  (historically) to the derivation of the word
• e.g. hamburger

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Morphological Change

• Reanalysis
• e.g. earwig
• Old English earwicga earinsect
• would have been earwidge in Modern English
• widge is lost as an independent word
• Middle English arwygyll earwiggle
• Modern English earwig

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Morpho-Syntactic Change

• e.g. Latin had no pronounced determiners
• the distinction between a and the (new vs old
  information) was marked through word order
• latrâvit canis a dog barked
• canis latrâvit the dog barked

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Morphological Change

• Over-regularization irregular morphology
  becomes regular
• e.g. Old English Comparatives
• Adjective ra, with stem change (similar to
  certain irregular past tense, e.g., say-said)
• long lengra
• Adjectives ra, no stem change
• wearm wearmra
• Expected in Modern English
• warm warmer, long lenger!
• Instead, overregularization yielded longer

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Semantic Change

• Other examples of semantic change
• Broadening dogge used to be a specific breed
• Narrowing
• meat used to be food (flesh was meat)
• deer originally meant animal (cf the related
  German word Tier animal), but became restricted
• Shifting nice used to mean ignorant

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Syntactic Change

• Modern English
• auxiliary verb raises to Tense
• main verb stays in VP
• result main verb follows adverbs John often
  went skiing.
• French
• auxiliary verb raises to Tense
• main verb raises to Tense
• result verb (aux or main) precedes adverbs John
  went often skiing

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Syntactic Change

• Old and Middle English
• Here men vndurstonden ofte by this nyght the
  night of synne
• here men understood often by this night the
  night of sin

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Syntactic Change

• Modern English
• I to C in questions
• result aux verb to C in questions
• French
• I to C in questions
• result verb (aux or main) to C in questions

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Rise of ModE Patterns
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Why do Languages Change?

• Natural processes in language use
• rapid or casual speech produces assimilation,
  vowel reduction, deletion
• this pronunciation can become conventionalized,
  and so end up being produced even in slower, more
  careful speech

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Child Language

• Whats natural for kids was natural for our
  ancestors as well.
• scant was skamt m became n in the
  neighborhood of t (assimilation K.I.S.S.)

history
bug-gug child
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Why do Languages Change?

• Language Learning
• The child must construct their language based on
  the input received
• This process is imperfect
• Bias towards regularization learning an
  irregular form requires more input
• Also random differences may spread, especially
  through a small population

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Why do Languages Change?

• Language Contact
• Through migration, conquest, trade
• Adults may learn the new language as a second
  language
• Children may be fully bilingual
• Results in borrowing of words, sounds, even
  syntactic constructions

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Borrowing

• Borrowed words with sounds not in the borrowing
  language may be nativized
• e.g. Russian does not have h
• German words with h borrowed into Russian
  change to g
• German Hospital -gt Russian gospital

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Borrowing

• Or, the borrowed sounds may be incorporated into
  the new language (Bach x)
• If the borrowing is extensive enough, a new
  phoneme may be added to the borrowing language

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Language change good or bad?

• Not an aesthetic question!
• All stages of language are valid expressions of
  our language instinct (Universal Grammar)
• Just as all languages and dialects are valid
  expressions of our language instinct