How do we know about earlier periods of a language?

The role of textual records:

The Anglo-Saxon Invasion of BritainThe settlement of the invading Anglo-Saxon tribes in Britain

Language: closely related tribal dialects called Pre- or Continental Old English

The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy

Language: (Insular) Old English (cca 500-1100 AD)

Mediaeval England

Language: Middle English (cca. 1100-1500)

Elizabethan England

Language: Early Modern English (cca 1500-1750)

Modern England

Language: Modern (Present-day) English (from cca the 19th c.)

The historical (genetic) kinship of English

Pr-d English is

1/ West Germanic (together with German Dutch and Frisian)

2/ Germanic (WGmc, NGmc/Scand, EGmc – now extinct)

3/ Indo-European (since Gmc is part of the the IEu language family, together with cca 11 other branches)

Evidence for these genetic relationships to be discussed later

Lecture IThe Study of Language Change I

Historical linguistics: description and explanation of language change

The Nature of Language Change:Study the OE translation of the following sentence from Bede

the Venerable’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastic History of the English people):

Þā sendan hī hām „renddracanthen sent they home messenger ‘then they sent home a

messenger’Differences from PrDE:1/ pronunciation: hām [ha:m] → ME [hƒ:m] → PrDE [həUm]2/ morphology: OE suff. send-an – past tense + plurality;

„renddraca-n – Acc. sing. inflection

Lecture IThe Study of Language Change II

3/ syntax: different types of word order:• Adv – V – S – Adv – O (see above)• and Seaxan Þā sige geslōgan ‘and Saxons then victory won’

S - O - V• hī oncneowon Þā Þæt hī nacode wæron ‘they knew then that they naked were’

S V - Adv cj S C V• hī gehyrdon his stemne ‘they heard his voice’ S V O

Lecture IThe Study of Language Change III

4/ Lexicon:a/ words that disappeared: „renddraca ‘messenger’ sige ‘victory’b/ words that have survived:

sendan ‘send’c/ maintained, but with a change in meaning:

geslōgan, past tense of slēan PrD E ‘slay’, OE meanings: ‘strike’, ‘beat’, ‘coin’, ‘forge (weapons)’ ← semantic strengthening

All these examaples imply that all components of language (grammar) from meaning (semantics) to individual sounds (phonology) are subject to change.

5/ Systematicity of language change: SVO affects all verbs; development of OE ā [a:] in hām, bāt, stān, etc.

Lecture IThe Study of Language Change III

Some causes of language change:

• articulatory simplification: see some details of sound change below;

• spelling pronunciation: the case of often, Kádár’s manner of speech;

• analogy and reanalysis: the cases of goed and hamburger;

• hypercorrection (overcompensation): the case of he saw John and I;

• language contact: adstratum – the case of Old English and Old Norse

substratum (Amerindian-AmE)

superstratum (OFr-ME)

Lecture IISound Change I

Types:• sequential: at least two segments involved;• segmental: only one segment involved;• auditorily based: replacement of one segment with another, similarly

sounding segment;

Sequential change:

1/ Assimilation: total vs partial (place or manner of articulation)• other assimilative processes include:

- palatalization

- nasalization

- umlaut

- PG breaking

Lecture IISound Change II

• “Assimilation may be partial or total. In the phrase ten bikes, for example, the normal form in colloquial speech would be /tem baiks/, not /ten baiks/, which would sound somewhat 'careful.' In this case, the assimilation has been partial: the /n/ sound has fallen under the influence of the following /b/, and has adopted its bilabiality, becoming /m/. It has not, however, adopted its plosiveness. The phrase /teb baiks/ would be likely only if one had a severe cold! The assimilation is total in ten mice /tem mais/, where the /n/ sound is now identical with the /m/ which influenced it."(David Crystal, Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th ed. Blackwell, 2008)

• Alveolar Nasal Assimilation: "I ain't no ham samwich""Many adults, especially in casual speech, and most children assimilate the place of articulation of the nasal to the following labial consonant in the word sandwich: sandwich /sænwɪč/ → /sæmwɪč/ The alveolar nasal /n/ assimilates to the bilabial /w/ by changing the alveolar to a bilabial /m/. (The /d/ of the spelling is not present for most speakers, though it can occur in careful pronunciation.)"

• Total (a) and partial (b) assimilation in the history of E:(a) wīf + man → wīf man → wimman → Pr-d E woman (regressive)(b) cēped → cēpəd → cēpd → cēpt → Pr-d E kept (progressive)

Lecture IISound Change III

2/ Dissimilation: one segment is made less like another;3/ Epenthesis: the insertion of a sound in a particular environment;4/ Prothesis: the insertion of a sound before a consonant cluster to make

pronunciation easier;5/ Metathesis: a change in the relative positioning of segments (adjacent or at a

distance)6/ Weakening and deletion: both vowels and consonants are affected. Types: voiceless stops stronger• apocope: deletion of a word-final vowel; voiceless fric. • syncope: loss of a medial vowel; voiced stops• consonant deletion; nasals• consonant strength: liquids

glides weaker

Lecture IISound Change IV

Segmental change:deaffrication of affricates in Fr, its role in defining the relative chronology of some loans from Fr into E (chance and chef)

Auditorily based change:• [x] → [f]• [T] → [f] (Cockney)Phonetic vs Phonological Change:if sound changes affect the overall sound pattern → phonological change Types:• splits (sing vs sin)• mergers (fin and thin in Cockney)• shifts (the GVS)

Lecture IIIMorphological Change I

Addition of affixes:- by borrowing- by fusion

Loss of affixes:- for no obvious reason- through sound change

OE: complex system of affixes marking case, number and gender of nouns, 4 distinct case forms

ME: consonant deletion + vowel reduction, 2 case forms, further vowel reduction (deletion of [@] → -s

Development of E morphological structure:synthetic (many affixes) → analytic (few affixes) → synthetic tendencies reappearing in E

Lecture IIIMorphological Change II

Causes of morphological change:- analogy (decrease of mutated plurals, growth of weak verbs, etc.)- reanalysis: the case of PrDE –ly as an adjectival/adverbial suffix

Syntactic Change IS vs DirO distinction in all languages through:

- case marking- word order

OE: many endings → word order more variable, for examples see aboveLanguages of the world:

- SOV (many case endings, cf. H), majority

- SVO (few case endings, cf. E)- VSO

Lecture IIISyntactic Change II

History of E : SOV → SVO Gallehus horn:Ek Hlewagastir Holtijar horna tawido‘I Hlewagastir of Holt horn made’- compounds showing OV patterns in OEInversion in E:

OE, ME, EModE: inversion applied to all verbs, not just auxiliaries:Speak they the truth? Call you that keeping?What make you here? (Sh, AYL)In questions all verbs (aux + “main”) moved to the leftPrDE: Only aux move to the left → do appears

Lexical and Semantic Change I

I. Addition of lexical items through:

1/ Word formation (examples from) OE:

a/ compounding:

N+N sunbēam nouns

A+N middelnīht

N+A blōdrēad adjectives

A+A dēadboren

b/ derivation:

bæc (verb) + ere → bæcere nouns

frēond + scipe → frēondscipe

Lexical and Semantic Change II

wundor + full → wundorfull adjectives

cīld + isc → cīld + isc

Compounding in PrDE still productive: air+craft, ~crew ~head, ~liner ~plane, etc.

Some OE compounds and derived forms that went out of use but still understandable:

hwalrād, bōccræft, mancyn, mīldheortniss,

manscipe, heofonisc,

c/ conversion: not available in OE, causes

2/ Borrowing: substratum, adstratum and superstratum influences

Lexical and Semantic Change III

Celtic substratum in PrDE:

a huge number of place names (London, Dover, Thames, Avon, Cumberland, etc.)

Latin words through Celtic intermission: Chester (Manchester, Winchester) ←Celt.← Lat. castrum, street ← Celt. ← late Lat. strāta, port ← Celt. Lat. portus, ass ← Lat. asinus

very few common terms:

brock, bin, curse

II. Loss of lexical items

Changes in society, advancement in technology (the object or the notion becomes obsolete):

Dolgbōt ‘compensation for wounding’; Þeosc ‘hunting spear’; eafor ‘tenant obligation to the king to convey goods’; flûtme ‘a blood-letting instrument’

Lexical and Semantic Change IV

III. Semantic changetypically a step-by-step process involving:

• broadening: meaning becomes more inclusiveaunt, barn, bird

• narrowing: meaning becomes less inclusivedisease, fowl, hound, meat

• amelioration: meaning becomes more positiveknight, pretty, queen

• pejoration: meaning becomes less positive/derogatoryhussy, silly, wench

• weakening: soon ‘immediately’ → ‘in the near future’ quell ‘kill, murder’ → ‘to put down, pacify’

Lexical and Semantic Change V

• shift: loss of former meaning, taking on a new (related) meaning

– immoral ‘not customary’ → ‘unethical’

– the new meaning may become unrelated to the original:

hearse ‘triangular harrow’ → ‘frame for church candles’ → ‘device which holds candles over a coffin’ → ‘framework on which curtains were hung over a coffin’ → ‘coffin’ → ‘the vehicle used to transport a coffin’

Lexical and Semantic Change VI

• metaphor: based on a perceived similarity between distinct objects or actions, a word with a concrete meaning takes on a more abstract sense, the original meaning is not lost:

grasp ‘understand’, yarn ‘story’, high ‘on drugs’, down ‘depressed’

sharp ‘smart, clever’ dull ‘stupid’• metonymy: a word or phrase that is used to stand in for another word

"The pen is mightier than the sword,“ – pen stands for written word,

sword for military aggression and force

Crown - in place of a royal person

The White House - in place of the President or others who work there

silver fox - for an attractive older man

hand - for help

Language Reconstruction I

Based on strong resemblance of certain words to each other. By systematically comparing languages we can establish whether two or more languages descended from a common parent and are therefore genetically related.

I. COMPARATIVE RECONSTRUCTIONSystematic phonetic correspondences: the most reliable sign of family

relationship, must point toward a common source. Cf some Gmc dataE Dutch G Dan Swman man Mann mand manhand hand Hand hånd handfoot voet Fuß fod fotbring brengen bringen bringe bringa

Language Reconstruction II

Conversely: where languages are not related, their voc. items fail to show systematic similarities. Cf. Turkish and Hun, unrelated to Gmc:

Turkish Hun E

adam ember man

el hand kéz

ajak foot láb

getir bring hoz

Language Reconstruction III

Words descended from a common source: cognates

Where languages are distantly related, the systematic correspondence may be less striking:

E Russian Hindi vs Turkish Hungarian

two dva dō iki két

three tri tīn yts három

brother brat(r) bhāji kardes fivér (barát: loan from

Slavic)

nose nos nāk burun orr

Language Reconstruction IV

Existence of a relationship between two or more languages established: attempt to reconstruct the common source → proto-language, proto-forms: hypothetic (usually printed with an *), unrecorded, inobservable.

II. TECHNIQUES OF RECONSTRUCTION

Uncovered processes can be reversed. It is possible to reconstruct all components/levels of a proto-language: phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, semantics.

Two main strategies:

1/ Phonetic plausibility strategy: any changes posited between the proto-forms and later forms must be phonetically plausible;

2/ Majority rules strategy: if no phonetically plausible change can account for the observed differences, then the segment found in the majority of cognates should be assumed.

The first strategy always takes precedence over the second!

Language Reconstruction V

Reconstruction and the catalogue of sound changes

The following sound changes can be considered highly probable:

Rule Name of change

t → t∫, ts/ _ i palatalization

k → t∫, tsn → m / _ b assimilation (place of articulation)

t → d

p → b / V_ V voicing

k → g

k → 0 / V_ st consonant deletion, etc.

Low probability: the reverse of all these processes

Language Reconstruction VI

Consider the representations of ‘full’ in IEu groups:

Germanic

E G Du Icel Dan Sw Gothic

full voll vol fullr fuld full fulls

← Proto-Gmc *fullaz

Slavic

Russian Polish Serbo-Croatian

полный pełny pun

Baltic

Lithuanian Latvian

pìlnas pilns

Latin plēnus Greek πλήρηζ

Language Reconstruction VII

Two factors allowing for the reconstruction of Proto-IEu *pol-~ple ‘to fill’:

1/ Phonetic plausibility

voiceless plosives → voiceless fricatives: highly probable

p → f (also t → θ and k → x)

for t → θ cf. OE þrīe, E three, Icel. Þrīr vs Slavic tri, Latin tres (It. tre), Greek τρεις, Baltic (Lith.) trys ← Proto-IEu *treies;

for k → x: E hound (OE hund) G Hund (← Proto-Gmc *hundaz) vs Latin canis, Greek κυων, ← Proto-IEu *kwntós ‘dog’;

(the examples above are part of the 1st Gmc consonant shift described by Jacob Grimm and therefore called Grimm’s Law, see below for details);

2/ Majority principle: of all the examples above, those beginning in a voiceless plosive represent the majority, therefore the appearance of voiceless fricatives in the Gmc words must have been secondary.

The Discovery of Indo-European (IEu) I

Sir William Jones (1746-1794), lawyer and scholar working in India, summed up the implications of his findings in 1786 as follows:

“The Sanscrit 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 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 Sanscrit; and the old

Persian might be added to the same family.”

The Discovery of IEu II

Several decades of intensive historical-comparative work during the 19th c.

Study of phonetic correspondences→ most languages of Europe, Persia and Northern India belong to a single family now called Indo-European (IEu, terms formerly used: Indo-Aryan, Indo-Germanic)

Outstanding figures:

Rasmus RASK (Danish, 1787-1832): Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse (Essay on the Origin of the Ancient Norse or Icelandic Tongue), 1818 – careful documentation of the relationships between cognates in a number of IEu languages;

Franz BOPP (German, 1791-1867): Über das Conjugationssystem der Sanskritsprache in Vergleichung mit jenem der griechischen, lateinischen, persischen und germanischen Sprache (On the Conjugation System of Sanskrit in Comparison with That of Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic), 1816 – the first comparative analysis of Sanskrit, Greek, Persian, and Germanic;

The Discovery of Indo-European III

Jacob GRIMM (German, 1785-1863) Deutsche Grammatik (A Grammar of German) 1822 - the first to explain the relationships betwen the cognates noted by Rask in terms of a sound shift – a systematic modification of a series of phonemes (Grimm’s Law, German: grimmsche Gesetz or Erste oder germanische Lautverschiebung), an overall restructuring of the PIEu system of plosives:

1/ PIEu voiceless plosives → Gmc voiceless fricatives:

p t k kw → f θ x xw

2/ PIEu voiced plosives → Gmc voiceless plosives:

b d g gw → p t k kw

3/ PIEu aspirated voiced plosives → Gmc non-aspirated voiced plosives:

bh dh gh gwh →b d g

The Discovery of Indo-European IV

Examples of Grimm’s Law:

1/ for p, t, k → f, θ, x see above, slides 22, 23

2/ IEu (Slavic)

*bol- (cf South Slavic bla-t-ŭnŭ ‘moorish, swampy’, H Balaton) → Gmc (E) pool

Sansk. Gk Lat Gmc (E)

daça δέκα decem ten

αγρός ager ‘land, field’ acre

3/ Sansk. Gk Lat. Slavic Gmc (E)

bhrātā φράτηρ frāter bratrŭ brother

vidhavā είθεος vidua vŭdova widow

(g)hansa ‘swan’ χήν (h)ānse *gYsĭ goose

The Discovery of Indo-European VComments:1/ Reflexes of PIEu gh and gwh are fairly irregular in different languages.2/ Systematic exceptions:PIEu st → Gmc st (not sθ) - *stə- Lat stare E standPIEu kt → Gmc xt (not xθ) - *oktō Lat octo, OE ēaht E eight G acht3/ Most important group of exceptions

Compare the following pairs of sets:a/ IEu t → Gmc θ (Grimm’s Law)Sansk. Gk Lat Slavic Gmc (Gothic)bhrāta φράτηρ frāter bratrŭ broþar (θ)

as opposed topitāo πατήρ patér fadar b/ IEu p → f (Grimm’s Law)Lith. Czechpilnas πλήρηζ plēnus plný fulls