1. Historical Linguistics
Spring 2017
Elly van Gelderen

2. 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

3. Early Migrations

4. MtDNA and Migrations

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

6. 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.

7. Other processes
Reanalysis Analogy lexicalization

8. Then: OE > Modern English

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

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

11. 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):

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

13. 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 ...)

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

15. 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

16. 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)

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

18. Dryer’s map on Case (WALS)

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

20. VO and OV

21. Macro and micro-cycles
A Macro-Cycle
synthetic analytic

22. 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

23. 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?

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

25. 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.

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

27. Rosetta
Stone
Hieroglyphic
Demotic
Greek

28. Ptolomis and Kleopatra

29. 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)

30. 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.’

31. 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.

32. 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).

33. 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.

34. 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).

35. 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

36. 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?

38. 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.

39. 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)

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

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

43. 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

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

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

46. Questions?