Chapter 13: Historical Linguistics
Language Change over Time
NoTES:
 About exercising: it keeps you healthy: physically & mentally.
 We won’t cover the entire chapter here.
Read pp 420-436. Skim the rest.
Language Change
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Major Types of Change
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Phonological
Semantic
Grammatical
(Review the meaning of these vocab words…)
Phonological
Semantic
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Starve (steorfan)
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Meant “die“ in 1000 AD
Wicked
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Meant “mean” or “bad” in 1980 AD
Grammatical
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Goes the king hence today?
Is the king leaving today?
I might could do that.
He be jammin’
Dialect  Language
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Can happen if speakers are isolated
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Mountains
oceans, (great) lakes, (uncrossable) rivers
Social or political differences
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Tribe
Religion
Ethnic
National
You Tell Me:
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English seems most like:
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French
German
Greek
Hindi
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Latin
Persian
Russian
Spanish
Which is really the closest relation?
Language Families
Adapted from: http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/ling007.html
Relative Distance
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Why do Hindi, Persian & Greek
seem so much more different?
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Borrowing
(enabled by)
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Geography
Politics
Culture
Proto-Indo-European
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Theorized in 1786
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Sir Williams Jones
Recognized similarities between
• Greek
• Sanskrit
• Gothic
• Latin
• Persian
• Celtic
 “inferred” or “theorized” language
 No direct evidence exists…
Working Assumption
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“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
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
t
t
Proto-Polynesian
t
k
Sister Languages
Comparative Reconstruction
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Goal
- Understand dead “mother” language
Method - Examine related living languages
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Assume least possible change
Look for groups & subgroups
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Change - Merge (two phonemes  one)
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Beware - Non-conforming changes
- Split
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Recall
(one phoneme  two)
Like *t > k in Hawaiian
- Proto-language is “theorized”
- Exceptions happen
Now You Try It
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What other “correspondence set” can you see here?
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What is the variation between sister languages?
What phoneme would you propose for Proto-Polynesian?
World Languages
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Thousands of languages
Only 5 with > 200 million speakers
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Chinese
English
Spanish
Hindi-Urdu
Arabic
1.2
325
325
240
205
billion
million
million
million
million
Dying Languages: Homework
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Research a dying language of interest to you
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In 3-5 minutes or less tell us about it
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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
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http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp
http://www.omniglot.com/index.htm
Recommended Exercises
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Textbook Exercises
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1a
2
5 – not covered in class, use logical thinking
6 – enough to be confident
7 & 8 – valuable whether you plan to teach or not