1、Historical linguistics,Topics to be covered Historical linguistics From language birth.to language extinction Endangered languages Language change Classifying language Comparative method,From language birth.to language death Creoles: the “newest” languages in the world today are the result of creoli

2、zation 1970s: Nicaraguan sign language 1850s: Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) 1770s: Seselwa (Seychelles, Madagascar),From language birth.to language death Creoles: some are becoming national languages (Tok Pisin), others are, like conventional languages, dying out. Why do languages die? Loss of native

3、 speakers: cultural transmission ends when there are no children learning it - all speakers die (cataclysm or population attrition) - speakers are absorbed by another culture with another language and social need for the language decreases,From language birth.to language death Types of language deat

4、h: Sudden-all speakers die or are killed (, e.g. Tasmanian) Radical-speakers stop using the language under threat of political repression or genocide (Nez Perce) Gradual- (most common) minority language dies out in contact with socially dominant language Bottom-to-top-survives only in a few contexts

5、 (e.g., Latin: liturgical usages),Endangered languages Only 20% of Native American languages remaining in the US are being natively learned by children Comanche, Apache, Cherokee becoming extinct (like Indo-European languages Hittite, Cornish) Some languages are being revitalized,Revitalization Lang

6、uage Revitalization refers to any deliberate effort to recover the spoken use of a language that is no longer spoken or learned at home corpus planning status planning December 2006, Washington Post article ,Revitalization corpus planning modernization of the lexicon (vocabulary) implement a writing

7、 system status planning build lay loyalty Irish: “We will not go along with the mistaken view that this wailing over the language is all sentimentality” accept language in broader range of social functions,Revitalization Why? “Through its grammar, each language provides new evidence on the nature of

8、 human cognition. And in its literature, poetry, ritual speech, and word structure, each language stores the collective intellectual achievements of a culture.” (Fromkin et al. 2007) There are 6,000 languages in the world, 3,000 of these have died or will die during the present century Endangered La

9、nguage Fund /,A (Brief) History of English Old English (449-1066) Celts inhabit British Isles 5th c.: Angles, Saxons (Germany) arrive 9th c.: Norse Vikings (Scandinavia) invade 1066: Norman invasion (France) Beowulf (c. 750-1000),Middle English (1066-1450) Heavy i

10、nfluence of French (and Latin) in areas of government, judicial system, church Chaucers Canterbury Tales (1387-1400),(Early) Modern English (1450-1700) End of 15th c.: First steps of English standardization William Caxtons printing press (first English printing press in 1476 Printed Canterbury Tales

11、) Works of Shakespeare (1564-1616) The King James Bible (1611),Language change Language changes are evidenced in Sound Phonetics Phonology Morphology Lexical/semantics syntax,Sound Change: Grimms Law Three phases 1.Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives. 2.Proto-Indo-Eu

12、ropean voiced stops become voiceless. 3.Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lose their aspiration and change into plain voiced stops.,Exceptions The voiceless stops did not become fricatives if they were preceded by *s. Similarly, *t did not become a fricative if it was preceded by *p, *k, et

13、c .,High German Sound Shift A sound change which took place in the southern dialects of the West Germanic in several phases, probably beginning between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD, and was almost complete before the earliest written records in the High German language were made in the 9th century.

14、The resulting language, Old High German, can neatly be contrasted with the other continental west Germanic languages, which mostly did not experience the shift, and with Old English, which was completely unaffected., The change affects the High German dialects (i.e. those of the mountainous south),

15、principally the Upper German dialects, though in part it also affects the Central German dialects. However, the fourth phase also included Low German and Dutch.,Phases 1. Germanic voiceless stops became fricatives in certain phonetic environments. 2. The same sounds became affricates in other positi

16、ons. 3. Voiced stops became voiceless 4. / became /d/.,Great Vowel Shift 15th century Unconditioned sound change between MidE and ModE Responsible for many of the spelling peculiarities of English,Great Vowel Shift The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of M

17、iddle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English. Originally, these vowels had continental values much like those remaining in liturgical Latin. However, during the Great Vowel Shift, the two highest long

18、vowels became diphthongs, and the other five underwent an increase in tongue height with one of them coming to the front.,Great Vowel Shift,GVS took 8 steps When we talk about the GVS, we ususally talk about it happening in eight steps. It is very important to remember, however, that each step did n

19、ot happen overnight. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word.,Older, more conservative speakers would retain one pronunciation while younger, more advanced speakers were moving to a new one; some people would be able

20、 to pronounce the same word two or more different ways. The same thing happens today. The word “route” can rhyme with “boot” or with “out” and may switch from one pronunciation to another in the midst of a conversation.,Morphological change Change in the morphology over time MidE ModE clomb klom cli

21、mbed klaImd (Proportional) Analogy: a form changes to be more like another, usually to make a pattern more regular time timed rhyme rhymed climb ?,Lexical change Addition of new words (e.g. sandwich, egghead, smog, NATO, flak) Loss of words (porridge, buckboard, surrey, locomotive, mammet),3. Borrow

22、ing Food: OE had ox, cow, swine, calf, sheep, deer, but in ME we get beef, veal, pork, bacon, mutton, venison) At least 10,000 Norman-derived new words were added during ME. Family members: uncle, aunt, niece, nephew Power, war, religion, chase, art, fashion, architecture, court, battle, sport, imag

23、e, dress, tower (Hughes 2000),Borrowings from Latin: -nity, -listic, maternity, fraternity, sorority, (Hughes 2000) Greek astro-: astronomy, astrology, astrophysics -sis: (hypo)thesis, analysis, crisis -logy: biology, sociology (Hughes 2000), Hindi bungalow, guru, shampoo, verandah (Hughes 2000) Ara

24、bic al-: alcohol, algebra, harem, hashish, mask, monsoon, sheikh, sofa, zenith, zero (Hughes 2000),Semantic change Changes involving the meanings of words Extensions/ broadening: meaning of a word is extended to new referents ME doggie meant a specific breed; holiday meant holy day. Reductions/ narr

25、owing: meaning of a word is narrowed to fewer referents silly_ OE happy to ME nave to ModE foolish; lust meant pleasure with no sex overtones,Semantic Change Semantic change Generalization Specialization, i.e. meanings became specialized in different directions, e.g. Schrze skirt and shirt Metaphor,

26、 e.g. a hidden meaning of any word, e.g. in poetry,Examples “deer” meant “wild animal” (cf. German “Tier”) “to starve” once meant “to die” (Old English: steorfan, German: sterben); it now means “to die of hunger” “meat” meant “food in general and now refers to “flesh of an animal as food” “to die” m

27、eans to “to be very much eager to learn about sth” (e.g. Im dying to hear that from you),Syntactic change OE used more, most at the same time as er and est e.g. more gladder, more lower, most royalest, most shamefulest,Sociocultural changes Personal pronouns he, him, it are no longer being used much

28、 by American writers. For example, it was common: It is the students responsibility to know the date for each test, so he should consult the course outline for those dates. Now it might be more common to write: It is the students responsibility to know the date for each test, so they should consult

29、the course outline,Classifying Languages: Romance,For a long time we have known that many of the languages now spoken in Western Europe (and elsewhere) are descended from Latin:,Classifying Languages: Germanic,We also know that many other languages, including English, are part of a different family:

30、 the Germanic family.,Classifying Languages: Indo-European,We also notice that there are similarities between Latin (Romance), English / German (Germanic) and yet other languages: Greek and Sanskrit, for example. Sir William Jones, in the 1780s, was the first to notice them.,Classifying Languages: I

31、ndo-European,Since Sir William, research has proved that those languages, and others, are related in the vast Indo-European family:,Proto-Indo-European (PIE) The proposed parent language of all Indo-European languages No direct evidence for it (unwritten) Reconstructed from later Indo-European langu

32、ages by back-tracking known sound changes,Comparative Method,Regularity of Sound-Change Most of historical linguistics relies on the assumption that sound-change is regular and exceptionless That is, any sound-change will affect all the words that contain that (combination of) sound(s).,Regularity o

33、f Sound-Change,An example: the Great Vowel Shift,If we assume that sound-change is regular and exceptionless in this way, we can use systematic comparison of languages to see the relationships between them. This is known as the Comparative Method.,Comparative Method Deducing genetic relations betwee

34、n languages by comparing cognates Cognates: words from different languages that are similar in form and meaning, suggesting a common origin Used to reconstruct the proto-language (ancestor language),The Comparative Method,SanskritGreekLatinGothicEnglishPIE pita pate:r pate:r fadarfather*pter- padampodapedem fotu foot*ped- bhratar phrate:r frate:rbroar brother*bhrat