JPN494/598: History of the Japanese Language

1
JPN494/598 History of the Japanese Language

• Basic concepts in historical linguistics

2
Basic Concepts in Historical Linguistics

• synchronic vs. diachronic studies
• dia- (through) chronos (time) -ic
• Diachronic linguistics is concerned with change
  in language or languages over time.
• Synchronic linguistics deals with a language at a
  single point of time.

3

• philology (i) historical linguistics, the
  historical study of language (ii) the study of
  old written documents, linguistic studies based
  on old writings

4

• etymology (the study of) historical origins of
  individual words
• ???? (?????)
• ??? (?????)
• glamour lt grammar
• cf. folk-etymology
• ?? (false rumor) lt ?????
• asparagus lt sparrow-grass?

5

• (???)
• ?????????????
• ??? (????), ???? (?????), ??? (????)
• ?? ?? (miru aku) ?
• ??? ?? (kouru aku) ?
• ?? ?? (kiyoki aku)?
• ?? ??????
• ???? (Mod J ????? to admire, to be attracted
  to )

6
Varieties of Linguistic Changes

• Domain Sound, Syntactic, and Lexical Changes,
  etc.
• Cause Analogy, Borrowing, etc. (or no obvious
  cause)

7
Sound changes

• Regular Changes
• conditioned or unconditioned?
• phonemic or not? (e.g. whether they lead to a
  change of the phonemic system)
• Sporadic Changes

8
Two major types of sounds

• Consonants speech-sounds produced when the
  speaker either stops or severely constricts the
  airflow in the vocal tract.
• Vowels speech-sounds produced with a relatively
  open vocal tract, which functions as a resonating
  chamber.

9
Consonants

• Place(s) of Articulation
• lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum
  (soft palate),
• Manner of Articulation
• stops (plosives), fricatives, affricates,
  approximants,
• Voicing (Phonation)
• voiced vs. voiceless

10
Vowels

• Three major parameters that characterize a vowel
• How wide the mouth is open (or, how high the
  tongue is) (open, open-mid, close-mid, close)
• How forward the tongue position is (front,
  central, back)
• The shape of the lips (rounded, spread)
• Simple vowels (monophthong) can be combined to
  form a diphthong (e.g. English a? as in I am )
  or triphthong.

11
Web resources

• The original IPA chart (http//www.arts.gla.ac.u
  k/IPA/fullchart.html)
• Pronounceable IPA chart with sound files
• (http//web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAl
  ab/IPAlab.htm) (U of Victoria)
• (http//hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguisti
  cs/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.ht
  ml) (UCLA)

12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14

• Plosives (Stops) complete closure of the
  articulators, which blocks the air stream through
  the mouth.
• Nasals the same as plosives but with airflow
  through the nasal cavity nostrils.
• Fricatives close approximation of two
  articulators the air stream is partially
  obstructed and turbulent airflow is produced
• Affricates continuous sequences of plosives and
  fricatives

15

• Taps (Flaps) a quick contact of two articulators
  (e.g. the tongue and the alveolar ridge)
• Trills repeated quick contacts of articulators
• Approximants A gesture in which one articulator
  is close to another, but without the vocal tract
  being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent
  airstream is produced.
• (Lateral the tongue is in contact with the upper
  structure of the mouth.)

16

• Regular sound change a kind of change that takes
  place whenever the sound or sounds which undergo
  the change are found in the circumstances or
  environments that condition the change.

17
Conditioned vs. unconditioned sound changes

• p gt b / V _ V (Latin to Spanish)
• capillus gt cabello, caput gt cabo,
• pater gt padre, professio gt profesión,
• ? gt j (in many dialects of Spanish)
• calle ka?e gt kaje, llamar ?amar gt jamar
• halla find vs. haya have (subj.)

18
Merger, loss, split of sounds (phonemes)

• Certain (regular) sound changes affect the
  phonemic system of a language, while certain
  others dont.
• Phonology vs. Phonetics
• Phonetics deals with linguistic sounds as
  physical objects (phones).
• Phonology deals with linguistic sounds as units
  of meaningful expressions (phonemes).

19
Phonetics vs. Phonology

• pin ph?n, spin sp?n, pop ph?p
• ph vs. p different or same?
• They are different from the phonetic perspective,
  but the same from the phonological perspective.
• ph and p are allophones of the same phoneme,
  /p/ (in English).

20
Notational Convention

• phonetic description (e.g. ph?n)
• phonological (phonemic) description // (e.g.
  /p?n/)

21
Complementary distribution

• Complementary distribution allophones do not
  occur in the same phonological environment
• OK pin ph?n, spin sp?n
• ?? pin p?n, spin sph?n
• Pairs of expressions that have different meanings
  and that differ in only one sound (phone) are
  called minimal pairs they can be used to show
  that two phones are not allophones of the same
  phoneme.
• pin bin
• hit heat

22

• Allophones in one language are not necessarily
  allophones in another language.
• p and ph are considered the same in
  English (phonologically).
• But they are not in some other languages
• ? pi rain vs. ? phi blood (Korean)

23

• The inventory of phonemes of a given language may
  expand or shrink through historical change.
• (Not all sound changes, on the other hand, affect
  the number of phonemes in the language.)

24

• /?/ and /j/ merged (into /j/) in many dialects of
  Spanish
• halla find vs. haya have (subj.)
• /?/ and /?/ merged (into /?/) for many speakers
  of American English (e.g. law vs. la, cot vs.
  caught)

25

• Sporadic (non-regular) sound changes
• E.g.
• ??? kemuri smoke lt ??? keburi
• ?? taki water fall lt ?? tagi

26
Syntactic Change

• The Wycliff Bible (14th century middle English)
• And a litil aftir, they that stooden camen, and
• seiden to Petir, treuli thou art of hem for thi
  speche
• makith thee knowun.

27

• The King James Bible (1611 early modern E.)
• And after a while came vnto him they that stood
  by,
• and saide to Peter, Surely thou also art one of
  them,
• for thy speech bewrayeth thee.
• The New English Bible (1961 modern E.)
• Shortly afterwards the bystanders came up and
  said
• to Peter, Surely you are another of them your
• accent gives you away!

28
Lexical changes

• The vocabulary (the collection of words) of a
  language may acquire new members through
• borrowing
• coining
• gas, smog
• (to) xerox, guillotine, canary
• radar (lt radio direction and ranging), VCR (lt
  video casette recorder) (acronym/alphabetism)

29

• Words may be lost sometimes they are replaced by
  new words sometimes they simply become obsolete
  along with the concepts associated with them.
• ???? (???????? motion picture)
• ?? (??? land tax)

30

• Meanings associated with words can change through
  time, with the phonetic forms unchanged.
• There are various types of semantic changes a
  complete/consistent classification is hard to
  come by.

31
Varieties of semantic changes

• widening narrowing
• degeneration elevation
• hyperbole, litotes
• euphemism
• semantic expansion by metaphor and metonymy

32
Widening Narrowing

• Widening
• dog a specific breed of dog gt dog in general
• salary (a Latin word for) a soldiers allotment
  of salt gt a soldiers pay gt wages in general
• Narrowing
• hound dogs in general gt a specific type of
  dog
• meat food in general gt meat

33
Degeneration Elevation

• Degeneration
• silly happy, innocent gt foolish
• putta girl gt whore (Italian)
• Elevation
• knight boy, servant gt mounted worrior,
  nobility
• pretty crafty, sly gt lovely

34
Hyperbole Litotes

• Hyperbole (Exaggeration)
• I am terribly sorry.
• Litotes (Understatement)
• meurtre to bruise gt to kill (Spanish)

35
Euphemism

• euphemism replacement of words regarded as
  unpleasant/obscene
• Terms for toilet frequently come to be
  considered indelicate, and substitutions lacking
  the distressing sentiments are made (Campbell
  99 263)
• water closet (WC) ? toilet ? bathroom,
  mens/ladies room, rest room, etc.

36
Semantic expansion

• polysemy (lexical) ambiguity
• A word (form) is called polysemous when it has
  multiple meanings (that are connected with each
  other)
• bank (i) financial institution, (ii) river side

37

• Expansion by metaphor
• grasp seize gt seize, understand
• to chill to cool down gt to cool down, to
  calm down, to relax
• leg, crane, ? (??)
• before
• Metaphor a process whereby one thing is
  conceptualized in
• terms of another, with a leap across semantic
  domains.
• A metaphor is based on the resemblance of two
  things. (e.g. Snow
• White)

38

• Expansion by metonymy
• dish tableware gt tableware, food
• timber room, building gt building,
  material for building (wood) gt wood
• ???, blonde
• Champagne, Toyota
• go to bathroom, ?????, ?????
• Metonymy a process whereby the name of one thing
  is
• substituted by the name of another, closely
  related object.
• A metonymy is based on the contiguity/relevance
  of two things.
• (product-place, person-attire, part-whole, etc.)
  (e.g. Little Red Riding
• Hood)

39
Borrowing

• Lexical borrowing (loanwords) is very common in
  Japanese as well as in English.
• Japanese words can be classified by their
  origins
• ?? (??) ??? (????) native words
• ?? (???) Sino-Japanese words
• ?? (???) foreign words
• ??? (?????) hybrid words

40

• Motivation for (lexical) borrowing
• need coffee, tobacco ????, ???
• prestige ?????? (????, ??), ????? (???), ??????
  (???),
• English could have done perfectly well with only
  
• native terms for pig meat and cow meat, but
  for
• reasons of prestige, pork and beef were borrowed
• from French. (Campbell 9964)

41

• Sound borrowing is less common than lexical
  borrowing, but may happen after
  extensive/intimate language contact.
• /?/ (as in leisure, vision) became an English
  phoneme through French loanwords.
• (cf. leisure vs. ledger)
• ??? ?a?, ??? ti

42

• Syntactic borrowing is much more frequent and
  important than some scholars have thought in the
  past (Campbell 99)
• (From Spanish to Pipil)
• Esa mujer es más linda que tú.
• ne siwat mas galána ke taha

43
Analogy (analogical change)

• Analogy has been considered one of the most
  important factors in linguistic change (along
  with regular sound change and borrowing).
• The definition of linguistic analogy, however,
  tends to be quite vague.
• E.g., Analogy is a process whereby one form of a
  language becomes more like another with which it
  is somehow associated.
• ex. January, Febuary,

44

• Analogy is a wastebasket category of
• linguistic change, and includes various
• subtypes, such as
• proportional analogy
• analogical leveling
• analogical extension
• metanalysis
• hypercorrection

45

• A proportional analogical change can be
  represented in an equation of the form
• A B C X
• where one solves for X.

46

• A proportional analogical change that makes the
• paradigm simpler/more uniform is
• called analogical leveling.
• ex 1
• old-elder-eldest gt old-older-oldest
• late-latter-last gt late-later-latest
• new newer old x

47

• ex 2
• Standard English
• I was We were
• You were You were
• He was They were
• Some dialects (e.g. Smith Island English)
• I was We was
• You was You was
• He was They was

48

• A proportional analogical change that makes the
• paradigm more complex/irregular is
• called analogical extension.
• ex 1
• ride rode dive x

49

• ex 2 ????? (??????)
• Type 1 - verb
• ?? ???? ???
• ?? ???? ???
• Type 2 - verb
• ??? ????? ????
• ?? ???? ???

50

• Type 1 - verb
• kak-u kak-are-ru kak-e-ru
• yom-u yom-are-ru yom-e-ru
• Type 2 - verb
• tabe-ru tabe-rare-ru tabe-re-ru
• mi-ru mi-rare-ru mi-re-ru
• are rare e X

51

• Hypercorrection involves an attempt to change a
• form in a less prestigious variety to make it
• conform to how it would be pronounced in a more
• prestigious variety.
• lawn gt lawned, across gt acrost (in analogy with
  han vs. hand, firs vs. first)
• umbrella gt umbrellow (in analogy with fella vs.
  fellow)

52

• Metanalysis involves a change in the structural
• analysis (by the speakers).
• amalgamation
• all most gt almost do on gt don
• reanalysis
• a norange gt an orange a napron gt an apron

53
Models of linguistic change/diversification

• The family tree model vs. The dialectological
  model (the wave theory)
• The family tree model attempts to show how
  languages ( dialects) diversify and how language
  families are classified (typically using the
  comparative method).

54

• The family tree model emphasizes on the
  regularity of sound changes.
• Sound laws suffer no exception.
• Thanks to the regularity of sound changes, we are
  able to reconstruct extinct, ancestral languages
  (proto-languages), using the comparative method.
• Many scholars believe that the comparative method
  is effective for the reconstruction of the syntax
  of the proto-language as well (as opposed to the
  sound system only)

55

• The wave theory (the dialectological model)
• Each word has its own history.
• Linguistic changes spread outward concentrically
  like waves, which become progressively weaker
  with the distance from their central point.

56

• k gt ? / _ a (from Latin to French)
• candela gt chandelle candle (?)
• cantare gt chanter sing (?)
• cattu(s) gt chat cat (k)
• campus gt champ field (k)

57

• regular sound changes borrowing analogical
  changes
• Neither the family tree model nor the
  dialectological model (the wave theory) is
  sufficient to explain all of linguistic change
  and all the sorts of relationships that can exist
  between dialects and related languages.
• The wave theory deals with changes due to contact
  among languages and dialects.

58

• Excerpts from Campbell (2004)
• Excerpt from Shibatani (1990)
• IPA chart
• Assignment 1