Chapter 13 Historical Linguistics Language Change over Time

Chapter 13: Historical Linguistics Language Change over Time No. TES: n About exercising: it keeps you healthy: physically & mentally. n We won’t cover the entire chapter here. Read pp 420 -436. Skim the rest.

Language Change n Major Types of Change n n n Phonological Semantic Grammatical (Review the meaning of these vocab words…)

Phonological

Semantic n Starve (steorfan) n n Meant “die“ in 1000 AD Wicked n Meant “mean” or “bad” in 1980 AD

Grammatical n n Goes the king hence today? Is the king leaving today? I might could do that. He be jammin’

Dialect Language n Can happen if speakers are isolated n n n Mountains oceans, (great) lakes, (uncrossable) rivers Social or political differences n n Tribe Religion Ethnic National

You Tell Me: n English seems most like: n n n French German Greek Hindi n n Latin Persian Russian Spanish Which is really the closest relation?

Language Families Adapted from: http: //www. alphadictionary. com/articles/ling 007. html

Relative Distance n Why do Hindi, Persian & Greek seem so much more different? n Borrowing (enabled by) n n n Geography Politics Culture

Proto-Indo-European n Theorized in 1786 n n Sir Williams Jones Recognized similarities between • • • § Greek Sanskrit Gothic • Latin • Persian • Celtic “inferred” or “theorized” language § No direct evidence exists…

Working Assumption n “A feature that occurs widely in daughter languages and cannot be explained by language typology, language universals or borrowing is likely to have been inherited from the parent language” pp. 423 -424

How Does It Work? Look for similarities and difference with “cognate” words

/o/ = same in all 5 languages *o o Proto-Polynesian o o Sister Languages

Other Vowels in Proto-Poly’n?

What about /m/? * Proto-Polynesian Sister Languages

What about /k/? * Proto-Polynesian Sister Languages Always assume the LEAST possible change…

Always Check the Big Picture What’s special about “axe”, “louse”, and “lizard”?

Exceptions Exist *t t Proto-Polynesian t k Sister Languages

Comparative Reconstruction n n Goal - Understand dead “mother” language Method - Examine related living languages n n Assume least possible change Look for groups & subgroups n Change - Merge (two phonemes one) n Beware - Non-conforming changes - Split n n Recall (one phoneme two) Like *t > k in Hawaiian - Proto-language is “theorized” - Exceptions happen

Now You Try It n What other “correspondence set” can you see here? n n What is the variation between sister languages? What phoneme would you propose for Proto-Polynesian?

World Languages n n Thousands of languages Only 5 with > 200 million speakers n n n Chinese English Spanish Hindi-Urdu Arabic 1. 2 325 240 205 billion million

Dying Languages: Homework n Research a dying language of interest to you n In 3 -5 minutes or less tell us about it n n n Geographic location How many speakers remain? What (if anything) is being done to save, record, or otherwise preserve it? Let us hear an audio clip if possible Show us a writing sample if it has an orthography You may want to start at one of these sites n n http: //www. ethnologue. com/web. asp http: //www. omniglot. com/index. htm

Recommended Exercises n Textbook Exercises n n n 1 a 2 5 – not covered in class, use logical thinking 6 – enough to be confident 7 & 8 – valuable whether you plan to teach or not