Introduction to Linguistics Language Change YunPi Yuan 1

Introduction to Linguistics Language Change Yun-Pi Yuan 1

I. Introduction: change=a fact; attitudes towards change II. Examples of change at all levels A. sound (phonetic and phonological) B. morpho-syntactic C. lexical changes III. Reasons for change A. External (social) reasons) B. Internal reasons: natural linguistic processes a. child language acquisition b. speaker errors c. preference for regular systems d. competing pressures IV. Historical linguistics A. comparative reconstruction a. cognates b. non-cognates c. general principles B. results of comparative reconstruction: lang. families C. language classification: a. genetic b. typological Yun-Pi Yuan 2

I. Introduction (1) Language change is an undeniable fact: look at ancient Chinese, at Beowulf, at rapid changes in slang. Some people object to language change; they want to protect and preserve “pure” and “correct” language. Examples (Nash 105): French law (in 1975) prevents the use of borrowed words (especially from English) in advertising: le club, le bar, le hit parade, le weekend, les hot dog. But, fighting a losing battle, since fighting a natural process Yun-Pi Yuan 3

I. Introduction (2) All languages change; all parts of the grammar can and do change: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, semantics, sociolinguistic rules, etc. Change can involve Addition, Loss and Shift (including individual elements— e. g. a word added, lost, or shifts meaning; and rules, too). Yun-Pi Yuan 4

II. Examples of Change We’ll talk about changes at three levels: sound, grammar, and word. A. Phonetic and Phonological Changes Post vocalic r Addition of /ʒ/, /v/ phonemes Loss of /x/ Great vowel shift Mandarin consonant split B. Morpho-Syntactic Changes C. Lexical Changes Addition Loss of words Change in meaning Yun-Pi Yuan 5

Phonetic and Phonological Changes (1) A. Phonetic & phonological changes 1. post vocalic “r” (Labov 1972; Yule 240 -41) British: no post vocalic “r”; American: with post vocalic “r” in general Some British and American varieties— British (high class; also Boston, parts of NYC, parts of the south in the US): “pronounce /r/ only when it comes before a vowel” e. g. : car, farm ↔ red (spelling shows it “was” there before) Yun-Pi Yuan 6

Phonetic and Phonological Changes (2) 2. Addition of /ʒ /, /v/ phonemes (Nash 106) a. Before the Norman French invasion of England in 1066, there was no /ʒ / in English. /ʒ /―added to English through the influence of borrowed French. e. g. pleasure, measure, vision b. Also before the Norman invasion, Old English had no /v/ phoneme. French words that were borrowed into English (e. g. very, vain, vacation) stimulated the split of /f/ into two phonemes, /f/ and /v/. Yun-Pi Yuan 7

Phonetic and Phonological Changes (3) 3. loss of sound /x/: (Nash 106) voiceless velar fricative /x/ was in English, but disappeared between the times of Chaucer and Shakespeare. e. g. night /n. Ixt/, saw /saux/ Yun-Pi Yuan 8

Phonetic and Phonological Changes (4) 4. great vowel shift: (~1400 -1600) (Yule 220) e. g. mouse /maus/← /mus/; house /haus/ ←/hus/; /u/ /au/ out /aut/ ← /ut/ Regular vowel sound change: changes in a system are not haphazard, but regular—they occur not in isolated words, but in all words in a certain environment (i. e. , /u/ /au/) Yun-Pi Yuan 9

Great Vowel Shift (1) The seven long or tense vowels of middle English underwent the following change: a. I au i o e ɛ u Yun-Pi Yuan 10

Great Vowel Shift (2) Examples from Yule 220: Old Eng. Modern Eng. hu: s wi: f spo: n brɛ: k h : m /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ / / /e/ haws wayf spu: n bre: k hom geese goose name Yun-Pi Yuan (‘house’) (‘wife’) (‘spoon’) (‘break’) (‘home’) 11

Phonetic and Phonological Changes (5) 5. Mandarin consonant split (see Nash 106) Six of each of the Mandarin consonants split into two phonemes. This split can be described by rule: before /i/ and /y/ (namely, “ㄩ”), (high front vowel), each of the original phonemes became the corresponding + palatal, - retroflex consonant. Yun-Pi Yuan 12

A Local vs. Widespread Change (1) These examples are all of widespread changes—the change spreads throughout the language; there also local changes—which don’t spread so far—thus regional varieties. Examples of local change: Parts of NYC: /з/ /oi/ e. g. , third, bird, heard, first thoid, boid, hoid, foist 台灣國語 Yun-Pi Yuan 13

A Local vs. Widespread Change (2) § a local change vs. a widespread change These two examples, great vowel shift & 台灣國語 example, can help to show that regional sound differences (accents) are not bad in any way, but are only examples of the results of natural sound changes which did not spread beyond certain areas. Thus, no dialect or variety of a language can claim to be superior to or purer than some other variety. Yun-Pi Yuan 14

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (1) Question formation Negative sentence formation Case endings Verbs Other examples Mandarin Yun-Pi Yuan 15

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (2) B. Morpho- syntactic changes (Nash 108 -11; Yule 221) 1. Q formation (Nash 108) 2. negative sentence formation (Nash 109) 3. case endings (Nash 109 -110) Nouns (marked with suffixes) who/ whom questions: (Nash 108) e. g. I don’t know who/whom to give it to. (“whom”: mainly in formal speech and writing) § § A remnant still in the process of changing Other remnants: other pronoun forms (e. g. , I/me, he/ him, she/her), plural forms. Yun-Pi Yuan 16

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (3) 4. verbs: examples: (from Elgin 211) ic cepe ðu cepest he heo cepeð hit we cepað ge cepað hi cepað “I keep” “you keep” he she keeps it “we keep” “you keep” “they keep” Yun-Pi Yuan Note: Historical development of English Old English: ~7 th century to end of 11 th century Middle English: ~1100 -1500 Modern English: after 1500 17

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (4) 5. Other examples: Old English about 7 th century to 11 th century (1066) 1. 8 forms of “the” (Nash 110): 2. example (Framkin and Rodman) “The Man Slew the King” (6 possible word order in Old Eng. ) a. se man sloh ðone cyning. b. ðone cyning sloh se man. c. se man ðone cyning sloh. d. ðone cyning se man sloh. e. sloh se man ðone cyning. f. sloh ðone cyning se man. se: definite article only with subject ðone: definite article only with object. So, with the article (& suffixes), word order wasn’t so important— but now word order (and preposition, too) is crucial in modern English. Comparisons: The man slew the king. Therefore, word order matters now. The king slew the man. Yun-Pi Yuan 18

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (5) This change (reduction of Eng. inflections) related to Great Vowel Shift (phonological change)—which made it hard to distinguish the endings—necessitated other changes in order for the lang. to remain clear & processible, also quick & easy, & expressive (which could also be related to processes of child lang. acquisition) so, suffixes dropped out, Eng. word order becomes stricter and prepositions become more important. Yun-Pi Yuan 19

Morpho-Syntactic Changes (6) 6. Mandarin: related to monosyllabic questions—ancient Mandarin: monosyllabic; but phonological changes caused many formerly distinct syllables (morphemes) to become homophonous (e. g. 要, 藥). “Threat of too many homophonous morphemes forced Mandarin to dramatically increase the proportion of polysyllabic words. ” (Li and Thompson 14) Homophone: a word that sounds the same as another, but is different in spelling, meaning, and origin. e. g. “knew” and “new” are homophones. Yun-Pi Yuan Polysyllable: a word that contains more than 2 or 3 syllables. e. g. “unnecessary” 20

Lexical Changes (1) Lexical Changes (Nash 111 -14; Yule 221 -22) It’s not difficult to add words to a language (as seen in “Morphology, ” many derivational processes); Words can be added, lost, or changed. Addition Loss of words Change in meaning Broadening Narrowing Shifting Yun-Pi Yuan 21

Lexical Changes (2) 1. Addition a. derivational processes b. borrowing (a process, not a reason) Majority of English words (as in a dictionary) are borrowed. But, most of the most frequently used words are native to English (100 most frequent words—all native; of next 100, 83—native out of corpus of 50, 000 words). Why so many borrowed words? History of Eng. language. Yun-Pi Yuan 22

Lexical Changes (3) Historical development of English: Old English (OE): ~7 th century to end of 11 th century (or 450 ~1150) Angles, Saxons, Jutes from northern Europe invaded the British Isles in 5 th century spoke Germanic languages developed into earliest form of English. 6 th to 8 th centuries converted to Christianity—this brought Latin influence alphabet, many borrowed words. 8 th to 9 th centuries Viking invaders brought another language influence: old Norse. (many settled there). Yun-Pi Yuan 23

Lexical Changes (4) Middle English (ME): ~1100 -1500 (or 1150 ~1500) Norman invasion in 1066: ruling class used French—the nobility, government, law, church leaders. But, the language of common people: still English. e. g. (low-class and high-class people used different words) cow/beef; pig/pork; sheep/mutton; calf/veal; deer/venison. Colonial/imperial periods: (economic imperialism now) e. g. curry, tea, pajama (from India). Yun-Pi Yuan 24

Lexical Changes (5) Renaissance: 14 th~17 th century § Greek and Latin represented LEARNING (still an influence in scientific terminology) § Borrowed words also got lost: “Of the more than ten thousand new words brought into English during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, only about half are still in use” (Clairborne 162). Note: half doesn’t mean bad at all. § Borrowing can be “direct” or “indirect” “algebra”: Arabic Spanish English “grammar”: Greek Latin French English Any Eng. Japanese Taiwanese? e. g. tomato, beer, truck, 秀逗 , lighter, slippers Modern English: after 1500 Economic domination of. Yun-Pi US: Yuan Mc. Donald’s, microsoft, 25 Costco, etc.

Lexical Changes (6) 2. Loss of words: Borrowed words also got lost: “Of the more than ten thousand new words brought into English during the 16 th and 17 th centuries, only about half are still in use” (Clairborne 162). usually not as noticeable as borrowing—gradual e. g. 1. from Shakespeare (Nash 113) 2. Hebrew—lost curse words, had to borrow form Arabic (Nash 113) 3. avoidance of “bad words”: cock in American English (Nash 113) Yun-Pi Yuan 26

Change in Meaning (1) 3. Change in meaning: a. Broadening holiday: “holy day”—now any day without work (social change, too) picture: now including “photograph” sail: now a spaceship sails, too (Nash 114) dog: used to mean a certain breed of dog; now dogs in general (also see “hound” below) Yun-Pi Yuan 27

Change in Meaning (2) b. Narrowing girl original: “young person of either sex” meat (Bible) = food; now animal flesh used as food (Nash 114) hound original: “dog of any type”; now usually “hunting dog” wife original: “any woman” Yun-Pi Yuan 28

Change in Meaning (3) c. Shifting nice original: “ignorant” bead original: “prayer” silly original: “happy” (OE) ”naïve” (ME) “foolish” (Modern English) Shift through borrowing: “footing” (borrowed from English) in Spanish = “jogging” “lady-like” (in English): 她很 “lady” Yun-Pi Yuan 29

III. Reasons for Change (1) External (social) reasons: Socio-political upheavals New ideas, inventions, new things from other countries Other social reasons Internal reasons: natural ling. processes Child language acquisition Speaker errors Preference for regular systems Competing pressures Yun-Pi Yuan 30

III. Reasons for Change (2) A. Social Reasons (external reasons) 1. Socio-political upheavals: § § Wars, invasions: such as Norman invasion of England in 1066; Japanese occupation of Taiwan; religious conversions Chinese civil war (geographical/physical separation): differences in Mandarin between Taiwan and Mainland China Yun-Pi Yuan 31

III. Reasons for Change (3) 2. New ideas, inventions, new things from other countries Television, computer, (set off whole big range of changes: “window, ” “modem, ” “hard copy, ” “mouse”), technological development, tea (words plus whole associated list of tea utensils, tea-making processes), toufu, pizza, 比薩, 漢堡, etc. Yun-Pi Yuan 32

III. Reasons for Change (4) 3. other social reasons: social gender/class/status differences: female: leads to standard, prestigious use male: vernacular, non-standard lang. use social interaction: tightly knitted community, few interaction with outside world fewer changes population: multilingual more changes Yun-Pi Yuan 33

III. Reasons for Change (5) B. Internal reasons: natural linguistic processes: 1. child language acquisition: n No one teaches them. Children build their own grammar from what they hear; it gradually becomes more and more similar to adult grammar, but never exactly like adult grammar. Moreover, they hear many different speakers, who each have a slightly different grammar. n A “tenuous transmission process”–each new user of the language “has to ‘recreate’ for himor herself the language of the community. ” Yun-Pi Yuan 34

Speaker Errors (1) 2. speaker errors: n assimilation as a speaker error (Nash 107) § sound change: § e. g. gamel gamble; thuner thunder; tener tender release /m/ as a stop, both bilabial (/m/ and /b/) alveolar (both /n/ and /d/ ) Yun-Pi Yuan 35

Speaker Errors (2) n reversal of position of phonemes e. g. “comfortable” very often pronounced /kΛ mftɚ bl/ (Nash 107) e. g. metathesis (OE Modern E): involves a reversal in position of two adjoining sounds. For example, bridd bird; hros horse; frist first (a similar e. g. of metathesis by modern cowboy as a dialect variant within modern Eng. : purty good pretty good); in some American English dialects: ask aks (Yule 220) Yun-Pi Yuan 36

Speaker Errors (3) n spelling pronunciations: (Nash 107) Pronunciations have been affected by word spellings. n e. g. often / ftən/, sword, singer [Note: Chinese examples should be called a “writing pronunciation, ” not a spelling pronunciation. e. g. 太空“梭” “ 俊“; 癌 vs. 炎; 床笫之事; 莘 莘學子; 龜 裂; 占卜; 病入膏肓; 一丘之貉] Yun-Pi Yuan 37

III. Reasons for Change (5) 3. preference for regular systems: (Nash 117) (Universal Operating Principle—“Avoid exceptions”) § e. g. 1. Singular/plural nouns cow—kine (pl. ) cows bandit—banditti (pl. Italian) bandits agendum (sing. )—agenda (pl. ) agenda (singular)--agendas (plural) pizza—pizze (pl. ) pizzas (pl. ) syllabus—syllabi (pl. ) syllabuses § e. g. 2. Irregular past tense forms: sweep—swept sweeped light—lit lighted dream—dreamt dreamed Yun-Pi Yuan 38

III. Reasons for Change (6) 4. competing pressures: (the 4 Rules) § e. g. involved in case endings change (one change leading to another) § sound change: first affected endings, then something had to happen to maintain processibility and expressiveness strict word order and more prepositions) § e. g. , for “quick and easy”: § abbreviations replace longer original forms § e. g. , laser Yun-Pi Yuan 39

IV. Historical Linguistics (1) A. Comparative reconstruction (Yule 213 -17) § § “Linguistic investigation of this type…focuses on the historical development of languages, and attempts to characterize the regular processes which are involved in language change. ” (Yule 213 bottom) Note: regular processes = rule governed Scholars noted certain similarities between different languages (e. g. Sanskrit—Latin—Greek), some very far apart geographically (see Yule 214 chart). Linguists studied these similarities; examined older written materials (when available); hypothesized a common ancestor—on the basis of the similar features and the development that would be traced through older records. Yun-Pi Yuan 40

IV. Historical Linguistics (2) Cognates: (1) words that have descended from a common source (as shown by systematic phonetic and often semantic similarities) are called cognates. (2) possible family connection between different languages within groups (Yule 215). (3) A word in one lang. which is similar in form and meaning to a word in another lang. because both langs. are related. e. g. (Eng. ) brother vs. (German) bruder (Note: sometimes words in 2 languages are similar in forms and meaning, but are borrowings and not cognate forms. e. g. (Swahili) kampuni= a borrowing from (English) “company”) Yun-Pi Yuan 41

Germanic Languages (Cognates) More closely related : Eng. Dutch, German, Swedish English Dutch German Swedish Turkish /mæn/ /m. An/ adam man /hænd/ /h. Ant/ /h. And el hand /fut/ /vu: t/ /fu: s/ /fo: t/ ayak /br ŋ/ /breŋe/ /br ŋe /briŋA/ getir foot bring n/ Note: Turkish is not a Germanic language because vocabulary items fail to show systematic similarities. Yun-Pi Yuan 42

Cognates vs. Non-cognates Which language is unrelated? English Russian Turkish Hindi two dva iki do three tri üč tin brother brat kardeš bhaya nose nos burun nak (nahi) Note: English, Russian, Hindi distantly related because they belong to different smaller families (i. e. Germanic, Slavic, Sanskrit). Yun-Pi Yuan 43

Some General Principles So, from this kind of comparison—with much larger set of cognates (data)— many regular processes of change (rules) were figured out. [Note: all this is sound (phonological) change. ] 1. The majority principle (see Yule 216) 2. The most natural development principle Yun-Pi Yuan 44

The Most Natural Development Principle § § § § a. final vowels often disappear b. voiceless sounds become voiced between vowels and before or after voiced consonants (“assimilation”) c. stops become fricatives (“weakening”) d. consonants become voiceless at the end of words e. consonants become palatalized before front vowels. (relevant to the split of Mandarin consonants, Nash 106) f. (other) fricatives become /h/ g. difficult consonant clusters become simplified. Yun-Pi Yuan 45

Language Families B. Some results of comparative reconstruction: (Yule 214 chart) Language families: about 30 language families identified so far (+ 4, 000 languages) Family Trees: (see slides #42, 43—Language Family Trees) 1. Indo-European 2. Sino-Tibetan Yun-Pi Yuan 46

Indo-European Languages Proto-Indo-European Germanic Celtic Italic Hellenic Balto-Slavic Baltic (Latin) Slavic (Ancient Greek) German English Dutch Danish Swedish Norwegian Icelandic Yiddish Afrikaans etc. Irish. Gaelic Scots. Gaelic Welsh Breton Italian Spanish French Portuguese Romanian Catalan Romansch Sardinian Occitan Greek Latvian Lithuanian Yun-Pi Yuan Indo-Iranian Indic Iranian (Sanskrit) Russian Polish Czech Bulgarian Serbo. Croatian Slovene etc. Hindi. Urdu Bengali Punjabi Marathi Gujarati Romany etc. Persian Pashto Kurdish etc. 47

Sino-Tibetan Languages Sino-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman Sinitic Miao-Yao (? ) (# of tones) Burmese N. India Nepal Burma Tibetan Sharpa Newari Szechuan Northern Mandarin Yunnan Shanghai (4) Central Mandarin Southwest Mandarin Hsiang Hakka (5) (6) Wu Min-pei Min-nan Cantonese (7) (7) (8) Yun-Pi Yuan Miao Yao South China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand 48

Language Classification Genetic vs. typological classification: n. Genetic classification ncomparative reconstruction: show historic relationships and changes n. Typological classification nanother way to classify languages is by structural similarities Yun-Pi Yuan 49

Typological Classification (1) Similar word order patterns SOV: Japanese, Korean, Turkish SVO: English, Chinese (sort of) VSO: Hebrew, Welsh, Maasai (language in Kenya) Morphology—word structure Isolating Agglutinating Synthetic/inflectional polysynthetic Phonological systems Yun-Pi Yuan 50

Isolating Languages Isolating (analytic) languages: E. g. , Mandarin Chinese (& English to a great extent), Cantonese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian All of its words consist of a single morpheme (root), so there’re few bound morphemes (affixes); e. g. , 我的� 我們 Categories such as number and tense must therefore be expressed by a free morpheme (a separate word); e. g. 我有一 本 or 很多本書，他吃飯了 or 他吃了飯 Yun-Pi Yuan 51

Agglutinating Languages Agglutinating languages: E. g. , Turkish (one-to-one correspondences) Making extensive use of words containing two or more morphemes (a root and one or more affixes). Each affix is clearly identifiable and characteristically encodes a single grammatical contrast; e. g. , affixes in Turkish: ev = “house, ” ev-ler = “houses” (“ler” marks plurality), ev-ler-de = “in the houses” (“de” = “in”) Yun-Pi Yuan 52

Synthetic/inflectional Languages n Synthetic/inflectional languages n Several-to-one correspondences n Example: Russian n Affixes often mark several grammatical categories simultaneously. n e. g. Ptits-i peli (=Birds sang. ) n A single inflectional affix (i. e. , “I”) indicates: n (1) the noun belongs to the feminine gender class (i. e. , the N’s gender class) n (2) the noun is plural (its number) n (3) N functions as subject (its grammatical role) Yun-Pi Yuan 53

Polysynthetic Languages n. Polysynthetic languages: n e. g. Swahili, native languages of North America n Long strings of bound forms (or affixes) are united into single words (which may be equal to entire sentence in English). e. g. ni ta ku penda (Swahili) I-will-you-love (“I will love you”) Yun-Pi Yuan 54

A Mix Language: English: a mix language 1. lots of isolating—free morphemes, function words 2. also agglutinating—in derivational morphemes. For example, “unwillingness” 3. some synthetic—pronouns (person, gender, number, case, all in one form) e. g. “he”=the third person, singular, masculine subject Yun-Pi Yuan 55

Phonological Systems 3. Phonological systems n Tone/intonation language: Chinese/English n Stress time vs. syllable time language: n Stress time: rhythm is based on the stressed syllable (i. e. , Eng. poetry); the stressed syllable is more important n Syllable time: syllable = unit of rhythm; stressed or not, every syllable receives more or less equal time n English vs. French, Spanish, (and maybe Chinese) Yun-Pi Yuan 56

Genetic and Typological Lang (1) Genetically related languages may be different typologically. E. g. , Eng. + Russian distantly related genetically, which are very different typologically. Russian: highly inflectional, extensive case system, free word order English: few inflections, almost no case marking, fixed word order Yun-Pi Yuan 57

Genetic and Typological Lang (2) Typologically similar languages may be unrelated genetically. Chinese & Vietnamese: both isolating languages, but genetically unrelated. Hebrew & Massai: both VSO languages, but genetically unrelated. Chinese & Thai (5 tones): both tone languages, but genetically unrelated. Yun-Pi Yuan 58

Review Is language change for better or worse? Is it inevitable? Can you give some examples about language change at phonetic & phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical level? What are the reasons for change? How are languages classified? Name four Germanic languages. Define the terms: cognates, isolating languages, agglutinating languages, and the majority principle. Yun-Pi Yuan 59