Historical Linguistics Spring 2017 Elly van Gelderen

What is Historical Linguistics? What: Typical (phonological) change Why: due to language acquisition or external influence and socioling factors Methods: CM, IR, OED, DOE, etc Interdisciplinary: genetics, language families, migrations. Greenberg, Cavalli-Sforza, Bickerton

Early Migrations

MtDNA and Migrations

Pre-Lg > Proto-Lg Argument structure Demonstratives Merge Language of thought > externalization Function words < grammaticalization

Grammaticalization H&Tr: Grmmz is the “process whereby lexical items and constructions come in certain linguistic contexts to serve grammatical functions, and, once grammaticalized, continue to develop new grammatical functions”. (2003: xv) EvG: Grmmz is reanalysis by the language learner of lexical items in a more economical way.

Other processes Reanalysis Analogy lexicalization

Then: OE > Modern English

Ormulum 1200, lines 3494 > (both B and O from wiki)

Main changes Demonstratives > articles V > Aux Loss of Case Loss of verb endings Loss of ge- > more phrasal verbs EMOD:

Grammaticalization is unidirectional on the cline in (1). (1) lexical phrase/word > grammatical item > clitic > affix > zero Andersen (2008: 15) points out that this clines contains semantic change (lexical > grammatical), morphological (word > clitic > affix), and phonological change (especially in the later stages):

Other possibilities (morphosyntax vs argument hood): (2) a. phrase > word/head > clitic > affix > 0 b. adjunct > argument > (argument) > agreement > 0

Examples of grammaticalization in English On, from P to ASP VP Adverbials > TP/CP Adverbials Like, from P > C (like I said) Negative objects to negative markers Modals: v > ASP > T To: P > ASP > M > C PP > C (for him to do that ...)

Chinese bei ‘cover’ liao > le ‘finish’ gei ‘give’ lai > le ‘come’ mei ‘die ba/jiang ‘hold’ shi D>T

V>AUX P>AUX P>C go motion > future to direction>mood for location>time>cause have possession>perfect on location>aspect after location>time

The Linguistic Cycle - Hodge (1970: 3): Old Egyptian morphological complexity (synthetic stage) turned into Middle Egyptian syntactic structures (analytic stage) and then back into morphological complexity in Coptic. - “today’s morphology is yesterday's syntax“ (Givón 1971)

Synthetic (Hodge sM) is: Dependent marking or Head marking

Dryer’s map on Case (WALS)

Analytic (Hodge Sm) is: Word order prepositions rather than case

VO and OV

Macro and micro-cycles A Macro-Cycle synthetic analytic

Some Micro-Cycles Negative (neg): neg indefinite/adverb > neg particle > (neg particle) Definiteness demonstrative > article > class marker Agreement emphatic > pronoun > agreement Auxiliary V/A/P > M > T > C Clausal pronoun > complementizer PP/Adv > Topic > C

Negative Cycle in English a. no/ne early Old English b. ne (na wiht/not) after 900, esp S c. (ne) not after 1350 d. not > -not/-n’t after 1400 How renewed?

The Linguistic Cycle, e.g. the Negative Cycle HPP XP Spec X' na wiht X YP not > n’t … Late Merge

Hodge, Jespersen, and Sapir focus on macrocycles, though they do not use that term. Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer (1991: 246) argue that there is “more justification to apply the notion of a linguistics cycle to individual linguistic developments” rather than to changes from analytic to synthetic and back to analytic.

History of Egyptian Old Egyptian: 3000 BCE – 2000 BCE Middle Egyptian: 2000-1300 BCE Late Egyptian: 1300 BCE – 700 BCE Demotic Egyptian: 600 BCE – 400 CE Coptic: 300 -1300 CE

Rosetta Stone Hieroglyphic Demotic Greek

Ptolomis and Kleopatra

Older to later Egyptian (1) rmc `the man’ snt `a sister’ (2) pʔ rmt wʕ(t) sn(t) (3) p-romə wə-sonə (adapted from Loprieno)

Early > Late > Coptic (1) jw scm-n-j xrw indeed hear-PRET-1S voice (2) jr-j-stm wʕ xrw do-1S-hearing a-voice (3) a-i-setm-wə-xrou PRET-1S-hear-a-voice `I heard a voice.’

Spiral or Cycle: Spiral is another term for cycle (see von der Gabelentz 1901: 256; Hagège 1993: 147); it emphasizes the unidirectionality of the changes: languages do not reverse earlier change but may end up in a stage typologically similar to an earlier one. Jespersen (1922: chapter 21.9) uses spirals when he criticizes the concept of cyclical change.

vd Gabelentz 1901 immer gilt das Gleiche: die Entwicklungslinie krümmt sich zurück nach der Seite der Isolation, nicht in die alte Bahn, sondern in eine annähernd parallele. Darum vergleiche ich sie der Spirale. "always the same: the development curves back towards isolation, not in the old way, but in a parallel fashion. That's why I compare them to spirals" (my translation, EvG).

Criticisms Not precise Jespersen Newmeyer (2006) notes that some grammaticalizations from noun/verb to affix can take as little as 1000 years, and wonders how there can be anything left to grammaticalize if this is the right scenario.

Hopper & Traugott (2003: 124) The cyclical model is “extremely problematic because it suggests that a stage of a language can exist when it is difficult or even impossible to express some concept” (p. 124).

Unidirectional and overlap always something around to express, for instance, negation or the subject. usually not the same element, e.g. ne > not if the same element, this is due to layering

Sapir (1921) on drift P. 150: “a current of its own making”. Even if there is no split into dialects, languages drift. P. 154: what is drift/change? P. 155: “The linguistic drift has direction”. e.g. who did you see?

Sapir, 158 ff. Loss: who/whom are “psychologically related to when, what, etc. the only one to show Case in its group Scale of hesitation (162) Three drifts: loss of Case, fixing of WO, invariable word.

The Copula and DP Cycles (1) dani (hu) ha-more Hebrew Dani he the-teacher ‘Dani is the teacher.’   (2) hu malax 'al jisra'el Hebrew ‘He ruled over Israel.’ (Katz 1996: 86)

Synthetic-analytic Cycle Greenberg, Hodge, Schwegler, Haselow, Szmrecsanyi, and others. Issues: calculation word+morph/word Clitics Pronouns Derivational unmarked

Sapir (1921: 128) “the terms [analytic and synthetic] are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters”.

Szmrecsanyi 2012 and Haselow 2011 Szmrecsanyi Both analytic and synthetic One word can be both Pronouns not counted as synthetic Change is cyclic Haselow Synthetic > analytic but `interrupted’ by language contact

Complexity As language changes/spreads: Trudgill + Nichols How to define across linguistic subfields?

Argument structure Similar to all languages Pre-linguistic Change is systematic Intransitives Psych-verbs Copulas

Questions?