Latoya Brown
ELL101
Professor Yin
05/25/10
Chapter 17 (Language History and Change) 182-193
1. Philology; the study of language history and change.
2. Proto-Indo-European; the hypothesized original form of language that was the source of
many languages in India and Europe.
3. Cognate; Words in different languages that have a similar form and meaning. Example;
English Friend and German Freund
4. Comparative reconstruction; the creation of the original form of an ancestor language on
the basis of comparable forms in languages that are descendants.
5. Majority principle; in Comparative Reconstruction, the choice of the form that occurs
more often than any other form in the set of descendants. Example; if in a cognate set,
three words begin with a [a] sound and one begins word begins with a [e] sound then the
best guess is that the majority has retained the original sound (i.e. [a] and the minority
have changed a little through time .
6. Most neutral development principle; Comparative Reconstruction, is based on the fact
that certain types of sound change are very common whereas other are extremely
unlikely. Four Types of Sound Change; (1) Final vowel often disappear ( vino vin)
(2) Voiceless sounds become voiced, typically between vowels (muta  muda)
(3) Stops become fricatives (ripa riva) (4)Consonants become voiceless at the end of
words (rizu ris)
7. Old English; the form of English in use before 1100.
8. Middle English; the form of English in use between 1100-1500.
9. External change and Internal Change: External change is the influences from the outside
that cause changes in a language; while Internal Change is change in language that is not
caused by outside influence.
10. Metathesis; is a sound change involving the reversal of position in two sounds. Examples;
hroshorse; fristfirst; bridd bird
11. Epenthesis; a sound change involving the addition of a sound to a word. Examples;
timirtimber; spinelspindle.
12. Prosthesis; a sound change involving the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word.
Examples; (spirit) Spiritus espiritu ; (school) scholaEscuela
13. Syntactic changes in modern English and old English; (1) in Old English texts, SubjectVerb-Object, is an order most common in Modern English, but a number of different
orders can also be found that are no longer used; (2) The use of negatives also differs
from Modern English, (3) the loss of a large number of inflectional affixes from many
parts of speech
14. Broadening; a semantic change in which a word is used with a more general meaning;
Examples; the change from holy day as a religious feast to the very general break from
work called a holiday; the change of fodda (fodder of animals) to talk about all kinds of
food.
15. Narrowing; a semantic change in which a word is used with a less general meaning;
Examples; mete (any of food  meat (only animal flesh); hund (used to mean any kind
of dog)  hound ( now used for a specific type of dog)
16. Diachronic Variation and Synchronic Variation; Diachronic Variation is the differences
resulting from change over a period of time; while Synchronic Variation is the
differences in language form found in different places at the same time.