Historical Linguistics Flashcards
What are the different stages of English?
- Old English
- Middle English
- Early Modern English
- Modern English
What influenced Old English?
- The Saxon invasion (english’s Germanic roots)
What influenced Middle English?
This occurred during the Norman French invasion
What are some examples of Old Norse influences?
- Window
- They
- Angry
- Take
When was Old English?
450-1100 AD
When was Middle English?
1100-1500 AD
When was Early Modern English?
1500-1750 AD
When did Modern English begin?
1750 AD
What was an important development during Early Modern English?
- The printing press in 1450
What are the 2 classifications of Early Modern English?
- The Great Vowel Shift (1500)
- French Left
Who is Samuel Johnson?
He created the English Dictionary, which standardized the spelling and usage
When was the dictionary created?
1755
What was the most common word order is Older English?
SOV
Where was Old English’s complex morphology developed from?
Our saxon roots (Germanic)
What is an example of a Old English morpheme?
- an
- This indicated plural and past
What are 2 causes of sound changes in English?
- Analogy
- Contact
What is an example of analogy?
bring > brought > brung
sing > sung
What (now) english phoneme contrast is attributed to contact with the French?
/f/ and /v/
Initially fail and veil were homophones
What is a sequential sound change?
- A segment changes under the influence of another neighbouring sound
What is assimilation and an example of one.
When certain phonemes become more similar
i.e. inpossibilis > impossibilis
What is palatalization and an example?
Palatalization is the effect that front vowels and the palatal glide have on velar, alveolar and dental stops, making their place of articulation more palatal.
i.e. [k] to [t͡s]
[g] to [d͡ʒ]
What is umlaut and an example?
- It is vowel harmony
- [gōsi] > [gøsi] > [gøs] > [gus]
What is dissimilation and an example?
- This happens when segment become less similar
- arbor > arbol
What is epenthesis and an example?
It is an insertion of a phoneme.
The epenthetic sound is a bridge between two different phonemes.
i.e. ganra > gandra (gander)
What is metathesis and an example?
- This is the switching of segments
- Although not always obvious, it usually has to do with common cluster formations.
i.e. miRacuLum vs miLagRo (miracle)
What is vowel weakening (then deletion) and an example?
- The vowel is first reduced to a schwa and then it disappears
i. e. cura > cure (the the final “e” no longer being pronounced)
What is syncope?
This is the deletion of a phoneme within a word
i.e. [fæməli] vs [fæmli]
What is apocope?
This is the deletion at the end of a word
i.e. /bon/ vs [bõ]
What is an initial phoneme loss called?
aphaeresis
i.e. knee or knight
What is an example of deaffrication?
Modern French doesn’t have the affricates /d͡ʒ/ and /t͡ʃ/
So /chair/ and /chain/ are older borrowings than /chauffeur/ and /chandelier/
What is the auditory-based change when a sound replaces another to make it easier to hear?
Substitution
i.e. /læχ/ vs /læf/
What comes first, phonological or phonetic variation?
- Phonological change
- You start with 1 allophone, have 2, and then go back to one.
i.e. A – A+B – B
What is the general meaning of syncope and apocope?
Deletion
What is a rhoticism?
This is when a phoneme is changed into an /r/
i.e. was – were (becomes /r/ due to the fact that it’s intervocalic.
What is a split?
This happens when there are 2 allophones that eventually become separate phonemes.
i.e. /n/ and /ŋ/ (this form is now only used before /g/
What caused the great vowel shift?
The official causes are unknown but there are 2 possible reasons.
1) 1500, this was around the time of the black plague (reduced the amount of speakers so the ones that continued to be alive dictated the variants spoken)
2) The French left so the English royalty spoke English again and wanted to distance themselves from the French.
What is grammaticalization?
This is when your take a lexical item, weaken it and then use it as an affix
i.e. Quand parler-ai (avoir use to be a lexical item here before it became a morpheme)
What is a way to add affixes to a language?
One way is to borrow a word that already contains an affix and then start using that same affix for other words.
i.e. -ment (from government)
How can we tell that English use to have many affixes?
Due to the fact that German has many affixes, and English is a Germanic language, we much have lost them some time or another.
What are ways that English lost it’s complex affix system
- There was final consonant deletion
- Vowel reduction leading to vowel deletion (with the loss of gendered affixes)
What is an egg corn?
This is an umbrella term for the misanalysis of a words morphology.
i.e. hamberg-er vs ham-burger
What’s another name for folk etymology?
reanalysis
What type of word order did Old English have?
It was relatively free language
i.e. SVO or VSO (negation) or SOV (becoming quite dominant indicating embedded clauses)
What evidence of SOV in compounding in modern English?
MANslaughter, DEERhunter or WINEdrinking
Why do we use french words for cooked meat?
The french ate the already prepared cook whereas the english dealt with the chores.
What are some ways to get new lexical items in a languages vocabulary (6)?
- Compounding i.e. midnight (2 roots)
- Deriving Words i.e. friendship (root + affix)
- Borrowing
- Substratum
- Adstratum
- Superstratum
What is the difference between substratum, adstratum and superstratum groups?
Substratum - The lesser group
Superstratum - The dominating group. These borrowings are more about the local nature lexicons that they don’t have before.
Adstratum - occurs when neither group dominates
What is broadening?
This is a semantic change that happens when a word encompasses more that it originally did.
i.e. Barn meant only barely strange before
What is the semantic process in which a word gain negative connotation and an example?
Pejoration
i.e. Silly use to mean Happy
What is narrowing?
This is a semantic change in which a word encompasses less than it originally did
i.e. Meat use to mean all food
What is Amelioration?
This happens when word loses it’s negative connotation
i.e. Pretty use to mean tricky or sly
What do you call it when there is a semantic change that cannot fit in one of the usual categories?
Semantic Shift
i.e. Immoral meant unusual
What is lexical diffusion?
This is a phenomena what start with 1 or two words then gains popularity
i.e. English people started using differences stresses to specify verbs and nouns – rebel vs rebel and record vs record.
How do certain changes catch on (2 ways)?
- It helps if the word isn’t frequent
- Helps if it is “promoted” by the prestigious
i. e. this is how /r/ dropping caught on in the midlands dialect.
What is the comparative method?
This is comparing languages and their lexicon. If we can determine a correspondence, the case for genetic relatedness is strong.
What are cognates and what type of words to we look at to find them?
These are words with a shared origin. We look at common words such as body parts, kinship, and time words.
What re the two reconstruction strategies and what is it trying to find?
- Phonetic plausibility
- Majority rules
They are trying to find the original etymon. Both strategies point us in the right direction, it’s just narrowing it down.
What is majority rules?
- This trumps phonetic plausibility
- If 3/4 words are similar, the 4th one is the one that changed
What is phonetic plausibility?
- This is when you link 2 words to 1 common etymon
- It’s also the use of certain phonemes in different places and if that’s plausible.
Is palatalization or depolarization more common before front vowels?
Palatalization
i.e. /s/ to /ʃ/
What is internal reconstruction?
- This is finding the protolanguage form within one language.
In what century was it discovered that Sanskrit is related to Latin, Greek and German and how was this determined and who was the key player is discovering this?
- 18th Century
- This was found out by looking at phonological similarities.
- Rask
What is Grimm’s Law?
This is the name given to the special set of consonant shifts that affected the Germanic Languages.
Who were the neo-grammarians and what was their main belief system?
- They were 19th century German Philologists who believed that “sound laws operate without exception”
- They paid no attention to cultural/social aspects of language change.
Give an example of natural sound change/structure.
- Children use the syllable structure CV first and is found to be the most natural. This is produced historically but not removed historically
i. e. Why children say [ti] rather than [t ɹ i]
What does analogy reflect?
It reflects the preference of speakers for regular patterns over irregular ones. Both phonological and semantic characteristics can serve as a basis for analogy.
What is hypercorrection?
This occurs when a speaker (usually attempting to speak another language or dialect) overgeneralizes particular rules.
i.e. When we pronounce both ladder and latter as [læɾə], non-canadiana english speakers will also pronounce prodigy and prodigy (the person) the same where in reality we pronounce them differently.
