Lat /pater/ --> fader
Lat /frater/ --> brothor
Per Grimm's law we expect
in fader.
Grimm's law doesn't hold where the consonant begins a syllable following an unstressed syllable according to the original stress pattern. In that case, different correspondence:
IndoE /t/ --> Germanic /d/
Consonant shift and stress shift
1. 2 consonant shifts (vless stop-fricative, voiced - vless, 2nd P/T - pf/ts)
2. germanic changed all stresses to initial stress
We can tell order because if stress first, then father/brother same consonant change
Comparative reconstruction aka "the comparative method"
technique of recovering languages for which we have no or incomplete records, indicated by *. We use:
1. Phonemes (as in Grimm/Verner)
2. morphemes
3. other relevant information e.g. syntax, orthography
Steps to answer questions about systematic sound changes
1. Look at manner, place of articulation.
2. Is the change consistent? Is there a pattern?
No exceptions allowed - must exclude loanwords e.g. numbers, body parts
Other possible patterns in language change
Grammaticalisation:
1. Change from open-class to closed class
2. Verbs turning into aspect markers
1. Open-class to closed class
open = accept new words, express meaning independently
closed = don't really accept new words.
e.g.
oldE /lic/ (form or body) --> ly (meaning bleached)
/willan/ --> will (lost desire meaning, now just auxiliary)
meaning becomes broader or more abstract, e.g. will an - loses desire to be future marker. Can go with phonological reduction e.g. 'll
2. Verbs become aspect markers
For example "going to" semantic bleaching
Why do words grammaticalise
1. metaphorical thinking (physically passing similar to experience)
2. pragmatic inferences - e.g. I am going - implies future
3. morphosyntactic reanalysis e.g. will and shall -- used to be inflected, but lost over time.
4. language contact
Consequences of language contact
1. We may result in multiple ways to say the same thing e.g. lawful and legal (Germanic, Latinate)
2. Word order e.g. dative alternation only with certain words e.g. gave versus donated (X)
3. pidginisation, creolisation, language mixing, borrowing, code switching
Created to facilitate communication between speakers of two languages e.g. bazaar Malay - no native speakers, rule governed
combination of two languages, with native speakers and more elaborate grammars. The two parent languages may be otherwise totally unrelated
If a language contributes the majority of lexical items - superstrate
if a language contributes the grammarIf
if no obvious superstate or substrate - the two languages may be totally unrelated
correlations morphology and syntax
often, with simpler morphology, correlation with complicated syntax e.g. Russian - complex morphology e.g. case, gender, aspect, but free word order.
Three areas of sociolinguistics
1. Accents of English
2. Social stratification of speech (Labov and trudgill)
3. Negation in non-standard E
line we draw on a map to separate variants e.g. the foot/strut split in England
Arbitrary ascription of social value to pronunciation e.g. Britsh vs AmE different rhotic prestige
Labov (1972) on rhoticity
Saks (upmarket), Macy's and S. Klein (downmarket). Elicited 'fourth floor' Incidence of rhoticity reflected social cachet of department store - awareness of overt prestige and hypercorrection
Labov hypercorrection overt prestige
Overuse of prestige form - most common at Macy's the middle store - middle-class women show highest incidence of hypercorrection and therefore greatest sensitivity to overt prestige (i.e. women more conservative)
linguistic features associated with dominant group in a society
Speakers use low-prestige forms to distinguish their social or regional identity e.g. nonrhotic forms at S. Klein - most common amongst middle and working class male speakers
Norwich -ing as -in': found class more of a determiner of non-standard usage than gender, though women more likely to use overt prestige forms i.e. standard, esp. in careful speech
negation whereby several bits of the sentence are negated at once e.g. I ain't done nothing or je n'ai rien fait
Key purpose of sociolinguistics compared with e.g. CDA
Social distinctions detected (by applying scientific method) in language use (predictability)
Burnouts (working class) vs Jocks (tend middle) - students can switch between categories depending on occasion
vowel sound realisation change
Diglossia and diglossic language
Where there are multiple varieties of one language e.g. Japanese - low, med, high - there is never mixing of the features of these varieties They are used in certain occasions
realisation of features indexes certain stances and characteristics - when code switching, speakers emphasise certain stances, perhaps to index certain associations
study of how symbols are used meaningfully
language in action - no such thing as 'non-social' use of discourse.
Fairclough's distinctions (3)
1. Description of material
2. Participants' interpretation
3. REsearcher's explanation of interpretative procedures
Potential problems with CDA
Blommaert:
1. Fuzzy or weak theory
2. Might just demonstrate the obvious
3. Researcher biases in interpretation and analysis
4. Forgotten discourse - certain kinds of discourses not considered - focus on "North" societies lack of generalisability
complex with various definitions (Bakhtin 1981) Blommaert - the way people manage to make themselves understood or fail to do so - capacity to cause an uptake close to one's desired contextualisation
How can we categorise varieties of English
a) channel of communication e.g. spoken
b) geographically identified dialects
c) socially identified sociolects
d) situationally or domain-id varieties e.g. dinner table conversation
e) styles, genres, formats e.g. formal vs informal
5 key points of Blommaert
1. Focus on what language means to its users
2. Language operates differently in different environments
3. Focus is actual contextualised forms in which language occurs in society
4. users have repertoires
5. communication events are influenced by the structure of the world system
analysis of small phenomena is set against analysis of big phenomena
the ways people 'make sense' in interactions - become meaningful - considering something in relation to the real context in which it occurs - so misplacing utterances in contexts results in misunderstandings or conflict - performed by recipient - analysis is a form of contextualisation
2 processes: decontextualisation and recontextualisation - extract from context and re-set in a new context e.g. re-tweets with commentary
when we speak, we constantly cite and re-cite expressions.
evaluation of others according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one's own culture.
language disorders arising as the result of brain damage. Two types:
1. Broca's aphasia
2. Wernicke's aphasia
aka expressive aphasia / agrammatic aphasia has: 1. halting speech
2. functional categories missing e.g. auxiliaries and determiners
3. missing inflections and other morphology
4. disturbances to intonation and stress
5. Generative capacity for syntax is disturbed - confuse passives and actives
fluent and in control of grammar e.g. auxiliaries inflections. However, speech doesn't make sense
1. lexical words e.g. nouns missing (paraphrased in confusing ways)
2. trouble understanding others and their own speech
Neurolinguistic perspective of Broca and Wernicke's aphasics
Damage is to different parts of the brain:
1. Broca - Broca's area - structural
2. Wernicke - Wernicke's area - lexical
internal to the individual - property of the mind or brain - psycholinguistics
language property of societies and cultures - sociolinguistics
Ability to control aspects of language structure - pure linguistic abilities
Actually speaking and understanding e.g. memory, concentration, theory of mind etc.
Processing lexical ambiguity
Swinney 1979 - bugs - priming lexical decision experiment - we access multiple interpretations of an ambiguous word, then choose. We have expectations that come from preceding words in the sentence - process incrementally
negative wave observed 400ms after word is presented - indicates that brain processing something unexpected
your perception of sound is affected by what you see
measures blood flow and changes in oxygen levels - changes magnetic properties around the brain
neural activity -- electric current -- changes in magnetic field around brain
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