1、Historical linguistics,Topics to be coveredHistorical 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 creoliz
2、ation 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 s
3、peakers: 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 death: S
4、udden-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 (e.
5、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 Language
6、 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 planningDecember 2006, Washington Post article http:/ corpus planning modernization of the lexicon (vocabulary) implement a writing system status
7、 planning build lay loyaltyIrish: “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 human cognitio
8、n. 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 Language Fund htt
9、p:/www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/,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 influence of Fre
10、nch (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) Works of Shak
11、espeare (1564-1616) The King James Bible (1611),Language changeLanguage changes are evidenced inSoundPhonetics Phonology Morphology Lexical/semanticssyntax,Sound Change: Grimms Law Three phases 1.Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives. 2.Proto-Indo-European voiced stops
12、 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, etc .,High German Sou
13、nd 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. The resulting langu
14、age, 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), principally the Upp
15、er 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 positions. 3. Voiced stop
16、s 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 ShiftThe values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Mo
17、dern 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 vowels became diphth
18、ongs, 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 not happen overnight.
19、 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 to pronounce the sa
20、me 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 timeMidE ModEclomb klom climbed klaImd (Proportio
21、nal) Analogy: a form changes to be more like another, usually to make a pattern more regulartime timedrhyme rhymedclimb ?,3. Borrowing 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
22、 ME.Family members: uncle, aunt, niece, nephewPower, war, religion, chase, art, fashion, architecture, court, battle, sport, image, dress, tower (Hughes 2000),Borrowings from Latin: -nity, -listic, maternity, fraternity, sorority, (Hughes 2000) Greek astro-: astronomy, astrology, astrophysics -sis:
23、(hypo)thesis, analysis, crisis -logy: biology, sociology (Hughes 2000), Hindi bungalow, guru, shampoo, verandah (Hughes 2000) Arabic al-: alcohol, algebra, harem, hashish, mask, monsoon, sheikh, sofa, zenith, zero (Hughes 2000),Semantic change Changes involving the meanings of words Extensions/ broa
24、dening: meaning of a word is extended to new referentsME doggie meant a specific breed; holiday meant holy day. Reductions/ narrowing: meaning of a word is narrowed to fewer referentssilly_ OE happy to ME nave to ModE foolish; lust meant pleasure with no sex overtones,Semantic Change Semantic change
25、 Generalization Specialization, i.e. meanings became specialized in different directions, e.g.Schrze skirt and shirt Metaphor, 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: ster
26、ben); it now means “to die of hunger” “meat” meant “food in general and now refers to “flesh of an animal as food” “to die” means to “to be very much eager to learn about sth” (e.g. Im dying to hear that from you),Syntactic changeOE used more, most at the same time as er and est e.g. more gladder, m
27、ore lower, most royalest, most shamefulest,Sociocultural changesPersonal pronouns he, him, it are no longer being used much 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
28、it might be more common to write:It is the students responsibility to know the date for each test, so they should consult 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:,
29、Classifying Languages: Germanic,We also know that many other languages, including English, are part of a different family: the Germanic family.,Classifying Languages: Indo-European,We also notice that there are similarities between Latin (Romance), English / German (Germanic) and yet other languages
30、: Greek and Sanskrit, for example.Sir William Jones, in the 1780s, was the first to notice them.,Classifying Languages: Indo-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 l
31、anguage of all Indo-European languages No direct evidence for it (unwritten) Reconstructed from later Indo-European languages by back-tracking known sound changes,Comparative Method,Regularity of Sound-Change Most of historical linguistics relies on the assumption thatsound-change is regular and exc
32、eptionlessThat is, any sound-change will affect all the words that contain that (combination of) sound(s).,Regularity of 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 re
33、lationships between them.This is known as the Comparative Method.,Comparative Method Deducing genetic relations between 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 (an
34、cestor language),The Comparative Method,Sanskrit Greek Latin Gothic English PIE pita pate:r pate:r fadar father *pter- padam poda pedem fotu foot *ped- bhratar phrate:r frate:r broar brother *bhrater- bharami phero fero baira bear *bher- sanah hene: senex sinista senile *sen-tris tre:s ri three *tre
35、i-deka dekem taihun ten *dekm-he-katon kentum hund(ra) hundred *dkm-tom-,But Sound-Change that isnt Regular,Analogy Words, and other parts of language (morphology, for example), can change irregularly to make them match other similar-seeming words:sing, sang, sung; sobring, ?, ?,Sound-Change that is
36、nt Regular,Is it bring, brought, brought or bring, brang, brung?Another irregular change:Borrowing Borrowing is why English semantic fields dont always seem to contain words that all come from the same root. For example, the meat from a sheep doesnt look at all like sheep; its mutton, which is borro
37、wed from Fr mouton. (Sheepmeat does exist, but its a technical farming term covering both mutton and lamb.),Change that isnt Sound-Change,Lexical changeThis can take the form of borrowing, or simply of using another word from the same language. For example, we dont use kin any more; we will say relations, which may be borrowed (from French) but also has other meanings in English. Syntactic change Older stages of English were SOV!,
