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Anthropology (Linguistics) > Module 15 > Flashcards

Module 15 Flashcards

1
Q

Language History and Change

A

-“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

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2
Q

Language Family Trees

A

-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

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3
Q

Indo-European Language Family

A

-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

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4
Q

Proto-Indo-European

A

-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.

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5
Q

Indo-European Languages most popular around the world

A

-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

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6
Q

Widely Spoken Language

A

-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

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7
Q

Indo-European Languages

A

-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

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8
Q

Spanish

A
  • nuestra
  • casa
  • tres
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9
Q

French

A
  • notre
  • chez
  • trois
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10
Q

Latin

A
  • nostrum
  • casa
  • tres
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11
Q

English

A
  • our
  • house
  • three
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12
Q

Cognates

A

-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

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13
Q

Determining relationships between languages can be really tricky

A

-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

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14
Q

Language Change

A

-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

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15
Q

There are two main sources of change in language

A

-External change
-Internal change
~Sometimes it can be hard to tell if a change is internal or external

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16
Q

External Change

A

-Change due to outside sources, such as when words are borrowed from other cultures

17
Q

Internal Change

A

-Change due to linguistic processes like assimilation or grammaticalization, not caused by outside factors

18
Q

Language Change

A 
-All languages undergo constant change at all levels of linguistic structure
~Sound Change
~Morphological Change
~Syntactic Change
~Semantic Change
19
Q

Sound Change

A 
-There are many linguistic processes which change the sounds in a language
~Sound loss
~Metathesis
~Epenthesis
~Prothesis
~Vowel shifts
20
Q

Sound Loss

A 
-Sounds simply disappear
~Old English world-initial [h], [k], and [g] were lost over time
*huld -> loud
*hlaford -> lord
*knee
*gnaw
21
Q

Metathesis

A 
-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
22
Q

Epenthsis

A 
-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
23
Q

Prothesis

A

-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

24
Q

Vowel Shifts

A

-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

25
Q

Syntactic Change

A

-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’

26
Q

Morphological Changes

A

-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)

27
Q

Semantic Change

A

-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

28
Q

Word loss and word found

A 
-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
29
Q

Evolution of “dude”

A

-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

30
Q

Language Variation and Change

A

-Language change is commonly studied in the field of HISTORICAL LANGUUSTICS (or PHILOLOGHY)
~But language change is also relevant to SOCIOLINGUISTICS
*Why?

31
Q

Language Change and Sociolinguistics

A

-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

32
Q

Plural Morphemes in English

A
  • https://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-plural-word-s-john-mcwhorter
33
Q

Ways of Studying Language Change

A

-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

34
Q

Studies of ‘real-time’

A

-Real time methods
~Trend study
~Panel study

35
Q

Trend Study

A

-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

36
Q

Panel Study

A

-Follows the same individual or group of individuals, re-interviewing them over the period of the study

Anthropology (Linguistics) (15 decks)

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