Module 15 Flashcards
Language History and Change
-“Change is one of the inevitable facts in the life of any language. The only language not in a perpetual state of flux is a dead language.” (Walt Wolfram)
-Important questions linguists ask about language history and change:
~Where do modern languages come from?
~Why do languages change?
~How do languages change over time?
~How can we measure and analyze language change?
-Many modern languages that are considered to be distinct languages are related in the sense that they evolved from a common ‘ancestor’ language
~For instance, Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh) evolved from Latin
Language Family Trees
-To represent the evolution of languages, and attempt to trace languages back to their original ancestors
~They operate the same way as human family trees, which trace back a person’s lineage or ancestry
*When one or more languages descend from another language, we call the original language the PARENT LANGUAGE
*The descendant language is the DAUGHTER LANGUAGE
*Languages which share the same parent language are SISTER LANGUAGES
*The entire group of languages related by a common ancestor is called a LANGUAGE FAMILY
*Example
**Indo-European language family
Indo-European Language Family
-Is the language family with the larges population and distribution in the world (although there are many other large language families)
-It consists of most of the languages native to India and Europe
~There are at least 400 living Indo-European languages today
*At least 400 living languages descended from one common ancestor
~About 45% of the world’s population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language
Proto-Indo-European
-Is the parent language of the Indo-European family tree
~We don’t have physical evidence of Proto-Indo-European
-There is a general idea of what Proto-Indo-European would have been based on the similarities between the members of the Indo-European family tree
~We often don’t know exactly what the original ancestor language of a language family is- but we know there is one, due to similarities in sister languages.
Indo-European Languages most popular around the world
-Linguistic research, in general, and the study of language history, in particular, has focused primarily on Indo-European languages
~Although this is starting to change
~3 out of 5 of the most widely spoken languages in the world are Indo-European languages
*“Widely spoken” in the sense that they have the most native speakers
Widely Spoken Language
-Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world
-Followed by Spanish, English, Hindi, and Arabic
-The most widely spoken Indo-European language are Spanish, English, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), Portuguese, Bengali, Punjabi, and Russian (over 100 million speakers each)
~German, French, and Persian also have significant numbers
-Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family
-Arabic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family
Indo-European Languages
-There are 10 widely accepted subfamilies within Indo-European:
~Albanian
*Albanian
~Anatolian
*Hittite, Palaic, Luwic, Lydian (extinct)
~Armenian
*Armenian
~Balto-Slavic
*Slavic: (Bulgarian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Montenegrin, Macedonian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Rusyn)
*Baltic: (Lithuanian, Latvian)
~Celtic
*Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Manx
~Germanic
*German, English, Frisian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Icelandic, Faroese
~Hellenic/Greek
*Greek
~Indo-Iranian
*Indo-Aryan: Hindustani, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Nepali, Odia, Marathi
*Iranian: Persian, Ossetian, Kurdish
~Italic
*Latin and the romance languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Romansh, French)
~Tocharian
*Turfanian, Kuchean (extinct)
-Spanish, French, Latin, and English are all Indo-European languages
Spanish
- nuestra
- casa
- tres
French
- notre
- chez
- trois
Latin
- nostrum
- casa
- tres
English
- our
- house
- three
Cognates
-Are words used in two or more languages which have a similar form and are or were used with similar meanings
~We look for cognates as evidence of language family connections
~You can see that the Spanish, French, and Latin words are more similar than the English words
*Those languages are more closely related
*In fact, Spanish and French evolved from Latin
Determining relationships between languages can be really tricky
-In addition to evolving from older languages, languages come into contact with each other and borrow words and structures
-Sometimes we find “false cognates”- words which sound similar but are not related
~English (Indo-European) / Mbabaram (Pama-Nyungan) “dog”
~Words like sound like “mama” and “papa,” with similar referents, are common in the world’s languages
*Just because two languages share a word doesn’t mean they are related
Language Change
-It take a lot of extensive historical research to determine if languages are related or not
-It is necessary to trace changes in a langue over hundreds or thousands of years
~Modern English is very different from Old English
There are two main sources of change in language
-External change
-Internal change
~Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a change is internal or external
External Change
-Change due to outside sources, such as when words are borrowed from other cultures
Internal Change
-Change due to linguistic processes like assimilation or grammaticalization, not caused by outside factors
Language Change
-All languages undergo constant change at all levels of linguistic structure ~Sound Change ~Morphological Change ~Syntactic Change ~Semantic Change
Sound Change
-There are many linguistic processes which change the sounds in a language ~Sound loss ~Metathesis ~Epenthesis ~Prothesis ~Vowel shifts
Sound Loss
-Sounds simply disappear ~Old English world-initial [h], [k], and [g] were lost over time *huld -> loud *hlaford -> lord *knee *gnaw
Metathesis
-Involves a reversal in position of two sounds in a word ~Old English *acsian -> ask *bridd -> bird *frist -> first **Metathesis can be modern variant in different dialects ***purty vs pretty ***aks vs ask
Epenthsis
-Involves the addition of a sound in the middle of a word ~In Old English *spinel -> spindle *timr -> timber **Like metathesis, epenthesis can be a differentiating factor in modern dialects ***sumpthing vs something ***filum vs film ***warsh vs wash
Prothesis
-Is the addition of a sound to the begging of the word
~This process occurred in the evolution of some forms from Latin to Spanish
*schola -> escuela
*scribere -> escribir
*sperare -> esperar
Vowel Shifts
-The “Great Vowel Shift”
-Occurred between 1350 and the 1700s
-Some vowels became diphthongs, other were raised
-Not all words underwent the shift, and other phonological processes occurred at the same time
~Words like “father” and “room” retain their Middle English pronunciations
~”Swear” and “bear” retained their Middle English pronunciations while “hear” and “dear” shifted
~The “oo” sound was whortened from /u:/ to /ʊ/, in many cases before k, d and less commonly t: book, foot, good, etc. Some words subequently changed from /ʊ/ to /^/: blood
Syntactic Change
-Involve change in word order, and the general form of sentences
~Old English allowed syntactic patterns no longer used in Modern English
*fered he “traveled he” -> he traveled
*he hine geseah “he him saw” -> he saw him
*Double negatives were also the norm in Old English- now they are considered ‘non-standard’
Morphological Changes
-Involve change in the use of morphemes
~Morphemes may lost, added, or change over time
-We still have remnants of the case-marking system in Modern English. Can you think of ways we mark case in English?
~Pronouns
*He (subject)
*Him (object)
*His (possessive)
Semantic Change
-Many languages undergo or change involving the meaning of words
~Words may have their meanings broadened
*Holy day – religious feast vs holiday - general celebration or just a break from work
~Words may have their meanings narrowed
*Hound- any kind of dog vs hound- a specific kind of dog
*Mete- and kind of food vs meat- a specific kind of food
Word loss and word found
-Words may fall out of use if their meanings are no longer relevant ~Foin "thrust of a sword" -New words may be added to a language ~Recall the word-formation processes we talked about in the first half of the semester *Borrowing *Bending *Backformation *Acronyms *Compounding *Clipping *Conversion *Derivation *Calque *Hypocorisms *Coinage
Evolution of “dude”
-The word “dude” was first noted in the 1800s as a mocking word directed towards men overly concerned with fashion
~Believed to be derived from “doodle” as in “Yankee doodle dandy”
~What type of language change process is exemplified by “doodle” -> “dude”?
*SOUND CHANGE (SOUND LOSS)
-This is a sound change involving sound loss
-“dood” later came to refer to clueless city folk
-Then is cam to be used as slang for a ‘laid-back guy’
-What type of language change is exemplified by the change from
~Man overly concerned with fashion -> clueless city folk -> laid-back guy
*Semantic Broadening
-Is “laid-back guy” the modern definition of “dude”?
-How would you define “dude”?
~Nowadays, “dude” may no longer be restricted to laid-back men- can refer to women or children as well, and doesn’t always have a “laid-back” connotation
*What type of change is that?
**SEMANTIC BROADENING
-What about when someone adds -ette, as in “dudette,” to refer to a female ‘dude’ … What process is that?
~This is the word-formation process called DERIVATION
Language Variation and Change
-Language change is commonly studied in the field of HISTORICAL LANGUUSTICS (or PHILOLOGHY)
~But language change is also relevant to SOCIOLINGUISTICS
*Why?
Language Change and Sociolinguistics
-Sociolinguists study language change because:
~Sociolinguists must understand language change to combat prescriptivism
*Prescriptivists often argue that language change is detrimental to a language, and is the result of laziness, sloppiness, or lack of education or intelligence
*Sociolinguists show, empirically, that language change is regular and systematic and occurs in all languages and language varieties
~Language variation and language change go hand in hand:
*Variation precedes change (although not ALL variation leads to change)
*By studying variation, we can see the seeds and pathways of language change
*Language change is also mediated by social factors
**Things like gender, class, ethnicity, etc. can influence the way a change is propagated through a language
Plural Morphemes in English
- https://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-plural-word-s-john-mcwhorter
Ways of Studying Language Change
-How do we analyze language change?
-Compare use of language over long periods of time -> DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS
~Example
*Compare documents from Middle English to Modern English to Present Day English
**Can be challenging if there aren’t adequate records
**Difficult to analyze sound change in this way- written records don’t always represent sounds consistently
-Compare differences in language use across different generations at the same point in time -> SYNCHRONIC ANALYSIS
~Example
*Compare speech patterns to people in a community who are age 70+ to people who are age 20
**Called APPARENT-TIME ANALYSIS
-The “apparent time” method
~Study a community at ONE POINT IN TIME -> SYNCHRONIC ANALYSIS
~Community divided into age groups
~Where older speakers show low use of a variant and younger speakers show increasingly greater use, we ASSUME change is going on
*It is APPARENT that change is happening in the community
-Compare a certain person or group of people’s language use at different points in time -> DIACHRONIC ANALYSIS
~Example
*Compare recordings of someone talking at age 15 and again at age 45
**Called REAL-TIME ANALYSIS
Studies of ‘real-time’
-Real time methods
~Trend study
~Panel study
Trend Study
-Also called “replication study” the same POPULATION is studied again at a later point in time using the same data collection methods and analysis techniques as in the original survey
~Not the same people - just the same population
Panel Study
-Follows the same individual or group of individuals, re-interviewing them over the period of the study
