Introducing English Linguistics Charles F. Meyer Chapter 1: the study of language Language Change

Is there a difference between synchronic and diachronic approaches to language study?

Other distinctions Language/dialect Pidgin/creole

How are the number of speakers of a language determined?

Most Widely Spoken Languages Language # of First Language Speakers # of Second Language Speakers Total Chinese (Mandarin) 873 (83%)178 (17%)1,051 English340 (25-40%)500-1,000 (60- 75%) 840-1,340 Hindi370 (76%)120 (24%)490 Spanish360 (86%)60 (14%)420 Russian167 (60%)110 (40%)277 Arabic (standard) 206 (90%)24 (10%)230 Portuguese203 (95%)10 (5%)213 Bengali207 (98%)4 (2%)211 Indonesian23 (14%)140 (86%)163 Japanese126 (99%)1 (1%)127 German95 (77%)28 (23%)123 French65 (57%)50 (43%)115

The two ways to classify languages Genetic Typological

The comparative method Genetic relationships between languages

The Indo-European language family

Ways of doing linguistic reconstruction Cognate vocabulary Grammatical similarities –E.g. case in Indo-European languages Historical/archeological information –E.g. interesting new work on DNA analyses to track migrations of people around the world

Words in Modern and Older Indo-European Languages Equivalent to Modern English foot Old English fót Modern English foot Modern German Fuß Modern Dutch voet Modern Norwegian fot Modern Danish fod Modern Swedish fot Modern French pied Modern Italian piede Modern Portuguese pé Modern Spanish pie Sanskrit pāt Latin pēs Greek peza

The Marking of Case, Number, and Gender in Latin and Modern English for the word girl LatinEnglish CaseSingularPluralSingularPlural Nominative puellapuellaegirlgirls Genitive puellaepuellarumgirl’sgirls’ Dative puellaepuellisgirlgirls Accusative puellampuellasgirlgirls Ablative puellapuellisgirlgirls Vocative puellapuellaegirlgirls

Verb Endings in Romance Languages

Language Typology

Morphology Isolating languages—Meaning is expressed by separate words. Chinese is a very isolating language. In the construction nuan-huo te yi-fu (‘warm clothes’), the separate word te is used to indicate that the first word (nuan-huo) modifies the second word (yi-fu).

Morphology (cont.) Agglutinative languages—Meaning is expressed by very complex internal structure. Turkish is a very agglutinative language. The construction çayiçtik means ‘We drank the tea’ (çay = ‘tea’; iç = ‘drink’; and tik = ‘we/past’).

Morphology (cont.) Fusional languages—Meaning is expressed by inflections dependent on such factors as the case, number, and gender of a noun. Modern German is a fusional language. In the sentence Das ist ein gutes bier (‘That is a good beer’), the inflection – es on gutes indicates that the gender of the noun Bier is neuter and that the noun is marked for the nominative case.

Morphology (cont.) These categories are not discrete but tend to grade off into one another. For instance, Modern English would be classified on a scale somewhere between Chinese and Modern German. Why?

Syntax (from a posting on the Linguist List by Fritz Newmeyer Dear Listers, There are 16 ways that languages can divide up according to the following 4 criteria: 1. VO vs. OV word order 2. Prepositions vs. postpositions 3. N-Genitive order vs. Genitive-N order 4. N-Relative clause vs. Relative clause-N order

Syntax (cont.) In Jack Hawkins' sample of 149 languages, 6 of the 16 possible combinations did not occur: VO Pr NG RelN VO Pr GN RelN VO Po NG NRel VO Po NG RelN OV Po NG RelN OV Pr NG RelN

Why is Old English so different from Modern English? Internal/External influences on language change

Is there one single source language for all languages?

Do languages change or evolve? Is there a difference?

Language Death