Chapter 13: Historical Linguistics Language Change over Time NoTES: About exercising: it keeps you healthy: physically & mentally. We won’t cover the entire chapter here. Read pp Skim the rest.
Language Change Major Types of Change Phonological Semantic Grammatical (Review the meaning of these vocab words…)
Phonological
Semantic Starve (steorfan) Meant “die“ in 1000 AD Wicked Meant “mean” or “bad” in 1980 AD
Grammatical Goes the king hence today? Is the king leaving today? I might could do that. He be jammin’
Dialect Language Can happen if speakers are isolated Mountains oceans, (great) lakes, (uncrossable) rivers Social or political differences Tribe Religion Ethnic National
You Tell Me: English seems most like: French German Greek Hindi Which is really the closest relation? Latin Persian Russian Spanish
Language Families Adapted from:
Relative Distance Why do Hindi, Persian & Greek seem so much more different? Borrowing (enabled by) Geography Politics Culture
Proto-Indo-European Theorized in 1786 Sir Williams Jones Recognized similarities between Greek Latin Sanskrit Persian Gothic Celtic “inferred” or “theorized” language No direct evidence exists…
Working Assumption “A feature that occurs widely in daughter languages and cannot be explained by language typology, language universals or borrowing is likely to have been inherited from the parent language” pp
How Does It Work? Look for similarities and difference with “cognate” words
/o/ = same in all 5 languages * oProto-Polynesian oo oooSister Languages
Other Vowels in Proto-Poly’n?
What about /m/? * Proto-Polynesian Sister Languages
What about /k/? * Proto-Polynesian Sister Languages Always assume the LEAST possible change…
Always Check the Big Picture What’s special about “axe”, “louse”, and “lizard”?
Exceptions Exist * tProto-Polynesian ttttkSister Languages
Comparative Reconstruction Goal - Understand dead “mother” language Method - Examine related living languages Assume least possible change Look for groups & subgroups Change - Merge (two phonemes one) - Split (one phoneme two) Beware - Non-conforming changes Like *t > k in Hawaiian Recall - Proto-language is “theorized” - Exceptions happen
Now You Try It What other “correspondence set” can you see here? What is the variation between sister languages? What phoneme would you propose for Proto-Polynesian?
World Languages Thousands of languages Only 5 with > 200 million speakers Chinese1.2 billion English 325 million Spanish325 million Hindi-Urdu240 million Arabic205 million
Dying Languages: Homework Research a dying language of interest to you In 3-5 minutes or less tell us about it Geographic location How many speakers remain? What (if anything) is being done to save, record, or otherwise preserve it? Let us hear an audio clip if possible Show us a writing sample if it has an orthography You may want to start at one of these sites
Recommended Exercises Textbook Exercises 1a 2 5 – not covered in class, use logical thinking 6 – enough to be confident 7 & 8 – valuable whether you plan to teach or not