Sir William Jones, a British Judge in India in
1786, observed that Sanskrit was more
perfect than the Greek, and more copious
than the Latin, and more exquisitely
refined than either
Yet bearing to both a stronger affinity both
in roots of verbs and in the forms of
grammar.
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During the nineteenth century the historical
study of languages was described as
philology. It was the major preoccupation of
linguists.
At this time a term came into use to describe
a common ancestor. It incorporated the
notion that this was the original form = proto
of a language which was the source of
modern languages in the Indian subcontinent (Indo), and in Europe (European).
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Proto-Indo-European was established as the
“great –grandmother”. Scholars traced the
branches of her family tree , see p. 214
There are about thirty such language families
which have produced more than 4,000
languages in the world. Chinese has the most
native speakers: close to 1 billion, English 350
million, Spanish 300 million, Hindi 200
million, Arabic and Russian about 150 million.
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A legitimate question to ask is: how can it be
determined that these language groups are
related? On the face of it, Italian and Hindi
have nothing in common. One way to see the
relationship more clearly is by looking at
records of an older generation:
Sanskrit (pitar), Italian (pater), Greek
(pater)=brother
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The example given above illustrates a
phenomenon called cognates= similar forms
with similar meaning.
On the basis of cognate sets, it would be
proposed that such sets in modern English
and modern German probably have common
ancestor ( labeled Germanic branch of IndoEuropean.
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Making use of cognates leads to a
procedure
called
comparative
reconstruction. The aim of this procedure is
to reconstruct what must have been the
original or ‘proto’ form in the common
ancestral language.
It is like trying to work out what the great
grandmother must have been like on the
basis of common features possessed by the
set of granddaughters.
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Two general principles have been followed
in reconstructing the proto form: the
majority and principle and the most natural
development principle.
As to the first principle: if, in a cognate test,
three forms begin with a /p/ sound and one
form begins with a /p/ sound, then the best
guess is that the majority have retained the
original sound, and the majority have
changed a little through time.
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The most natural development principle: it is 
based on the fact that certain types of sound
change are very common, whereas others are
extremely unlikely as in:
1. final vowels often disappear 
2. voiceless sounds become voiced between 
vowels
3. Stops become fricatives under certain 
conditions
4. Consonants become voiceless at the end of 
words.
See example on page 216 (base interpretation 
on sounds rather than on spelling)
There is the majority principle in evidence 
since two forms have /k/ sound, and only one
has /sh/.
Moreover, /k/ sound is a stop consonant and 
the /sh/ sound is a fricative. According to the
most natural development principle, changes
tend to occur in the direction of stops
becoming fricatives.
So the /k/ is more likely to have been the
original
Example on page 217: group discussion
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The reconstruction of proto-forms is an attempt 
to determine what a language must have been
like before written records began.
The historical development of English is usually 
divided into three major periods: Old English,
Middle English and Modern English.
As for OE, the primary sources for what 
developed as the English language were the
Germanic languages spoken by a group of tribes
from northern Europe who invaded the British
Isles in the fifth century AD.
In one early account, these tribes of
Angles, Saxons and Jutes were described as
God’s wrath toward Britain. It is from the
names of the first two that we have the
term Anglo-Saxons, to describe these
people, and from the name of the first tribe
, the Angles, that we get the word for their
language, Englisc, and their new home
Engla-land.
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From this early variety of English, we have many of
the most basic terms: mann (man), wif (wife), cild
(child), hus (house), mete (food), etan (eat), drincan
(drink), and feotan (fight).
They did not remain pagan for ever. From the sixth
century, the Anglo-Saxon were converted into
Christianity and a number of terms from the
language of religion, Latin, came into English at
that time: The origins of the modern words angel,
bishop, candle, church, martyr, priest, school all
date from this period.
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From the 8th century through the 9th and
10th centuries, another group of northern
Europeans came first to blunder, and
eventually to settle in, parts of the coastal
regions of Britain. They were the Vikings,
and it is from their language, Old Norse,
that the forms which gave the following
words were derived: give, law, leg, skin,
sky, take, and they.
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The event which marks the end of OE and the 
beginning of Middle English is the arrival of
Norman French in England around 1066.
These French-speaking invaders proceeded to
take over the whole of England. The became
the ruling class, so that the language of
nobility, the government, the law and civilized
behaviour in England for the next two
hundred years was French: army, court,
defense, faith, prison, tax, etc. Yet the
language of peasants remained English
One of the most obvious differences between
Modern English and the English spoken in earlier
periods is in the quality of vowel sounds . See
examples on page 220
Perhaps two most interesting processes involved in
lexical change are: broadening and narrowing of
meaning. An example of broadening is the change
from holy day as a religious feast to the very
general break from work called a holiday. By
contrast, narrowing is illustrated by mete, once
used for any kind of food, became restricted to only
specific types.
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