History of Linguistics
Lecture 5
Historical Linguistics
The Comparative Method and
Internal Reconstruction
Historical Linguistics
Origins of historical linguistics (Renaissance,
17th/18th century)
• normative grammar: what is good Dutch,
English, etc.? (answer: the oldest stages of the
language, before ‘corruption’ took place)
• religion: what was the language of Paradise?
What happened during and after the Babylonian
confusion of tongues?
Normative grammar
• Balthasar Huydecoper
Proeve van Taal- en Dichtkunde, in
vrymoedige aanmerkingen op Vondels
vertaalde herscheppingen van Ovidius
Visscher & Tirion, Amsterdam, 1730
From the preface:
Om het goede van het kwaade te onderscheiden, en
op eene overtuigende wijze voor te stellen, zijn de
Voorbeelden der Ouden ten alleruitersten
noodzaakelijk.
“To distinguish the good from the bad, and to present
this distinction in a convincing manner, the examples
from ancient texts are of the utmost importance”
Goal of historical linguistics of
the Huydecoper variety
• enrichment and purification of the native
tongue
• by looking at older stages, modern loan
words and modern variants can be
rejected
• by looking for old, discarded words,
alternatives to newfangled barbarisms can
be found
Note
• During the early modern period, all the main
languages of Europe underwent a phase of
standardization and purification, because Latin
was abandoned, gradually, as the lingua franca
of administration and science
• Standardization requires some reflection on
what variants should be normative
• Historical arguments are more neutral, hence
persuasive, than sociopolitical ones
Example (from Huydecoper)
• Vondel: te inf en inf : te dansen en springen
• Huydecoper: te should be repeated:
te dansen en te springen
• So who is right? H.: Me, look at all the ancient
examples of coordinated infinitives
[In Hoeksema 1995, I show that the Vondel/
Huydecoper disagreement is still reflected in
modern Dutch judgments]
Religious background
Language of paradise/the original language:
•
•
•
•
Hebrew?
Dutch?
Unknown?
How do we find out?
Still an open question today
• was there an original single language ?
(monogenesis)
• or did language come about independently
in a number of places?
and related to this...
• are similarities among the languages of
the world evidence of a single ultimate
source,
• due to genetic factors (innate language
system)
• or due to certain preferences naturally
arising independently?
Lambert ten Kate 1674-1731
• Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische
spraeke en de Nederduytsche (1710)
• Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het
verhevene deel der Nederduitsche sprake
(1723)
• (fairly) worked-out account of the historical
relationships between the Germanic
languages, including Gothic, Icelandic, Old
High German, Old English, etc.
• extensive study of the system of strong
verbs (uniquely Germanic, among Indoeuropean)
• Ten Kate was one of the instigators of the
comparative method
• influenced the work of Jakob Grimm (19th
century)
• important also for the history of Dutch
phonology, as he gave detailed comments
on pronunciation in various dialects of
Dutch
Sir William Jones
THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS
Delivered 2 February, 1786
The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a
wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more
copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than
either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in
the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could
possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed,
that no philologer could examine them all three, without
believing them to have sprung from some common source,
which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason,
though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the
Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different
idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old
Persian might be added to the same family, if this were the
place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities
of Persia.
Johann Christoff Adelung
(1732-1806)
Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde,
mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey
nahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarte,
fortgesetzt von J.S. Vater, Berlin 1806-1817.
Early investigation of the connections between
European languages and Sanskrit
Early overview of the languages of the world
from a general point of view
Sound Laws
• A Reader in Nineteenth Century
Historical Indo-European Linguistics
• Edited & Translated by W. P. Lehmann
• Now available on the World Wide Web:
•
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-docs/lehmann/reader/reader.html
Rasmus Rask
Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller
Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse"
(Copenhagen, 1818)
“An investigation concerning the source of
the old Northern or Icelandic language”
Rask: statement of sound laws
When in such words one finds agreements
between two languages, and that to such
an extent that one can draw up rules for
the transition of letters from one to the
other, then there is an original relationship
between these languages; especially
when the similarities in the inflection of
languages and its formal organization
correspond; e.g.
Jakob Grimm
• Jakob und Wilhelm
Grimm: Kinder- und
Hausmärchen (18121815)
• Jakob Grimm, Deutsches
Wörterbuch (1854-1960)
• Jakob Grimm, Deutsche
Grammatik (1819-1837)
Grimm’s Laws
Yet more astounding than the accord of the liquids and the
spirants is the variation of the lip, tongue and throat sounds,
not only from the Gothic, but also the Old High German
arrangement. For just as Old High German has sunk one
step down from the Gothic in all three grades, Gothic itself
had already deviated by one step from the Latin (Greek,
Sanskrit). Gothic is related to Latin exactly as is Old High
German to Gothic. The entire twofold sound shift, which has
momentous consequences for the history of language and
the rigor of etymology, can be so expressed in a table:
GK
Goth
OHG
P.
B.
F.
P.
B.(V) F.
F.
B.
P.
|
|
|
T.
TH.
D.
D.
T.
Z.
TH.
D.
T.
|
|
|
K.
-.
G.
G.
K.
CH.
CH.
G.
K.
Examples
Latin
English
piscis
fish
tenuis
thin
centum
hund(red)
pater
father
tres
three
octo
eight
quod (kw)
what (hw)
No change
After /s/:
• stare
• spuo
• piscis
-
stand/staan/stehen
spew/spuwen
fisk
Karl Verner
"Eine Ausnahme der ersten
Lautverschiebung,"
Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete
der Indogermanischen Sprachen, 23.2
(1875), 97-130
Verner’s Problem
• Grimm’s Law had certain ill-understood
exceptions, making it more a tendency,
than a regular correspondence rule
• e.g. brôþar in Germanic corresponds with
frater in Latin, bhrotar in Sanskrit
• môdar in Germanic corresponds with
mater in Latin, matar in Sanskrit
so...
the interdental (th) in mother is not original
Germanic, but a later invention of the
English
Cf. Old Saxon:
Thar ina thiu modar fand (Hel. 818)
‘there the mother found him’
• So what explains the difference between
mother (d) and brother (th)?
“The only person who has sought an answer to this
question, as far as I know, is Scherer in the passage just
cited. He assumes that the shift to voiced stops occurs
"in frequently used words (like fadar, môdar)"
consequently the regular shift occurs in less frequently
used words (139).
I believe that the venerable author did not wish to
attach great weight to this attempt at explanation and
that he permitted himself to mention it only as a
conceivable possibility. A careful scrrutiny of the
Germanic vocabulary is not favorable to his thesis. Is it
probable that fadar and môdar were used more
frequently than broþar? In Ulfila's writings moreover
môdar does not even appear, the word aiþei always
being used instead; and he uses fadar only once,
otherwise however atta, while his broþar has no parallel
synonym at all.”
Verner’s solution
The original indo-european accent,
as it is preserved in Sanskrit (and
sometimes ancient Greek), but not in
Germanic, where it was lost some time
after the application of Grimm’s Law
Sanskrit: bhrátar, vs matár, pitár
“When the accent in Sanskrit rests on the
root syllable, we have the voiceless
fricative for the root final in Germanic; on
the other hand, when the accent in
Sanskrit falls on the ending, the Germanic
forms show a voiced stop for the root
final.”
modern formulation
the apparently unexpected voicing of
voiceless fricatives occurred if they were
non-initial and immediately preceded by a
syllable that carried no stress in PIE
bonus: not only the voiceless fricatives
resulting from Grimms Law are involved in
Verner’s Law, but also the voiceless
fricative /s/; this /s/ becomes /z/, and by
rotacism may later turn into /r/
Compare Middle Dutch
vriesen
kiesen
wesen
vroos
koos
was
vroren
koren
waren
gevroren
gekoren
gewezen
internal reconstruction
• instead of comparing forms in across
languages (comparative method), one
may also compare related forms of a word
within a language
• this is called internal reconstruction
• Verner’s Law was a big impetus for
internal reconstruction as a source of
evidence
example
• Rijen/rijden/gerejen/gereden
• Vrijen/*vrijden/gevreeën/*gevreden
Based on this evidence, we may assume
that the /d/ is original in rijden and got
weakened to a glide, rather than vice
versa
Junggrammatiker
• school of linguists, originating in Leipzig in
the 1870’s
• influenced by Verner, they proposed that
sound changes should be exceptionless
• and that laws such as Grimm’s law are not
generalizations about data, but
comparable to e.g. Newtons laws of
gravitation: general truths, not statistical
tendencies
Some prominent Junggrammatiker
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Berthold Delbrück
August Leskien
Hermann Paul
Hermann Osthoff
Karl Brugmann
Eduard Sievers
Wilhelm Braune
Hermann Paul
Tenets
• sound changes are exceptionless
• unless they involve analogical change
(i.e.: change in a word, not change in a
sound)
• exceptions may seem to occur because of
loan words, or dialect mixture
analogical change
freeze vriesen
vriezen
frieren
froze
vroos
vroor
fror
froze
vroren
vroren
froren
frozen gevroren gevroren gefroren
• more in general: morphology may bring
about changes in words that are not
regular sound changes, but allomorphic in
nature
• example: Umlaut in German used to be
phonological in nature, but now it is
morphological
• Example: Vati, Mutti, Fundi (not: Väti, etc.)
loans
Dutch
German
tijd
Zeit
te
zu
tuin
Zaun
tijger
Tiger
typisch
tante
typisch
Tante
dialect mixture
gluren
loeren
meesmuilen
smoel
lui
lieden
Family tree vs Wave model
• Indo-european branches out in the form of
a family tree
• This is a model of separation, loss of
contact
• For contact-induced changes, a wave
model is proposed
• Wave model important in dialectology
(expansion theories)