Language history and change

Language history and change

Lexical Analysis

- Diego Ulloa Iglesias -

Language history and change.

In 1786, Sir William Jones went on tosuggest that a number of languagesfrom very different geographical areasmust have some common ancestor.

Nowadays, this linguistic investigation carried on twocenturies after his suggestion.


Proto – Indo – European

Original Form Europe

IndianSub-continent

PIE Language is the unattested, reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages.


Some of the more than 4.000 languages in the world are much morewidely spoken than others.

1st.- Chinese : Close to 1 billion speakers.

2nd.- English : About 350 million speakers.

3rd.- Spanish : Close to 300 million speakers.

4th.- Hindi : About 200 million speakers.

5th.- Arabic and Russian : About 150 million speakers each.


Before starting to recognise the connection of the language family wehave to know what a cognate is.

It is a word that has a common etymological origin with another one; both from different languages.

Sanskrit Latin Greek

pitar pater patër (“father”)

bhrätar fräter phräter (“brother”)


All PIE sounds and words are reconstructed from later Indo-European languages using the comparative method.

This procedure operates on the basisof some general principles

The Majority Principle The Most natural Development Principle

If there are further relatedlanguages, the sound thatoccurs most often in the

relevant cognates is assumedto be the proto-form.

It is based on the fact thatcertain types of sound-change

are very common, whereasothers are extremely unlikely.


* The Majority Principle

If three forms begin with a [p] sound and one form begins with a [f]sound, the we guess that the majority have retained the original soundand the minority has changed a little through time.

[p] v/s [f]

pater(Latin / Italic)

father(English / Germanic)

pitar(Sanskrit)

patér(Greek)


* The Most natural Development Principle

Some rules of this principle are:

↘ Final vowels often disappear↘ Voiceless sounds become voiced between vowels↘ Stops become fricatives (under certain conditions)↘ Consonants become voiceless at the end of words

Italian L. Spanish L. French L.

cavallo caballo cheval (horse)

cantare cantar chanter (sing)

[k] sounds [š] sound

According to this principle, changes tend to occur in the direction of stopsbecoming fricatives, so the [k] is more likely to have been the original.


Language change

The historical development of English is usually dividedinto three major periods.

↘ Old English7th century – 11th century.

↘ Middle English1.100 – 1.500

↘ Modern EnglishFrom 1.500 to the present.


* Old English

↘ Variety due to influence of different tribes as Angles,Saxons and Jutes.

mann (man) - cild (child) - hüs (house)

↘ Variety due to Christian convertion (Latin influence).angel – bishop – cande – church – priest – school

↘ Variety due to Viking invasion.give - law - skin - sky - take - they


* Middle English

↘ Influence of new language (French) brought by the Normans.

army - court - defense - faith - prison - tax

↘ Variety in pronunciation terms, for example:

The diphthong /ei/ is spelled "ei", "ey", "ay" or "ai", and sounds a bit like "whey": they, day.

Both Old and Middle English aspects just mentioned are examples of external change in language.


Sound changes.

- Quality of the vowels sounds:

Old English Modern English

spo:n spu:n (spoon)

wi:f wayf (wife)

- Some sounds disappeared:


nicht [nixt] nayt (night)

- Reversal in position of two adjoining sounds (metathesis):


frist first

hros horse

Latin Spanish

crocodilus Cocodrilo (crocodile)

Algeria Argelia (Algeria)


- Addition of a sound to the middle of a word (espenthesis):

- Addition of a sound to the beginning of a word (espenthesis):

turum

arithametic

trump

arithmetic

status(Latin)

estado(Spanish)

(state)

spiritus(Latin)

espíritu(Spanish)

(spirit)

* ESL learners often add a vowel sound to the beginning of some English words,such as: espeak (speak), eschool (school), Espanish (Spanish).


Syntactic changes.

Word order.

• Old English:

Subject + Verb + Object Verb + Subject Subject + Object + Verb

• Modern English:

Subject + Verb + Object

Inflection. Nouns, adjectives, articles and pronouns lost manyinflectional affixes and took different inflectional forms.


Lexical changes.

* Borrwing. Many words that Old English borrowed from other languages(mainly Latin and Greek) have ceased to be used.

Broadening Narrowing

The range of meanings associated with a word becomes more…

…general than at the beginning of its use. …restricted than at the beginning of its use.

Example: Example:

“cool”, Old English: a part of professional jargonof Jazz.“cool”, Modern English: (almost) anythingconceivable.

“mete”, Old English: any solid consumable food.“meat”, Modern English: edible animal flesh.

* Broadening and Narrowing.


The process of change.

There is an unending process whereby each language-user has to ‘recreate’ forhim/herself the language of the community: each new generation has to find a

way of using the language of the previous generation.

Diachronically: change of the language through time.

Synchronically: change of the language in different placesat the same time.

Language history and change

Education

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