Name : Emha Fadlan Romadon
Major : Magister of English Literature (1st Semester) NPM : 71210422007
Chapter 8 Summary of “Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication”
Background
Language change is one of the subjects of historical linguistics, the subfield of linguistics that studies language in its historical aspects. Sometimes the term diachronic linguistics is used instead of historical linguistics, as a way of referring to the study of a language (or languages) at various points in time and at various historical stages. Diachronic is often used in contrast to synchronic, a term referring to the study of a language (or languages) at a single point in time, without reference to earlier (or later) stages.
In considering the history and development of particular languages, one of the most fascinating questions—and indeed, a question that has intrigued scholars throughout the ages—
concerns the origin and evolution of language in the human species in general. When in the history of our species did language originate? What was the nature of the first language(s)?
Often, as in this case, the most fascinating questions in linguistics are the very ones we cannot answer in any definitive way.
The Origin and Evolution of Human Language
One idea concerning the origin of human language is that humans began to mimic the sounds of nature and used these sounds as referents for the sources of the sound. According to another speculation, vocal language gradually evolved from spontaneous cries of pain, pleasure, or other emotions. It has also been suggested that a gestural language—that is, a system of hand gestures and signals—may have preceded vocal language (Hewes 1976). In addition, it is sometimes speculated that human language gradually evolved from the need for humans to communicate with each other in coordinating certain group tasks.
At what point in time language may have originated is far from clear. In any event it seems likely that language is a relatively recent development in the human species. There is an abrupt change in the quality and nature of tool development beginning 100,000 years ago, signaling to some anthropologists the emergence of modern humans. It is plausible that this increased ability may have been associated with a qualitative change in language ability, but we have no evidence at all that this was the case.
We not only have no idea when language began, we do not even have an idea of what the earlier stages of language might have been like—even in the most recent stage before the
modern era. Language is a biological phenomenon, and in the biological world it is frequently possible to find earlier forms of life existing simultaneously with more evolved forms. For example, the coelacanth was a biologically primitive fish known only in fossil form until a living specimen was discovered and identified in 1938. Might it be possible to encounter a group of people who speak a form of language that can be identified as an earlier form of modern language?
Similarities among Languages
The discovery in the early nineteenth century that most of the European languages, such as English, German, and French, were historically related not only to each other, but also to the languages of antiquity, such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit (an ancient language of India), led to a revolution in our understanding of the nature and history of language. Linguistic similarities among the di¤erent languages of Europe had not gone unnoticed before the nineteenth century.
Already in the sixteenth century Filippo Sassetti pointed out similarities between Italian and Sanskrit. Even the philosopher Leibniz observed that Persian and German were grammatically similar. A true understanding of the nature of the relationship among these languages did not come, however, until the early part of the nineteenth century. The person who is credited with the first and clearest statement concerning the relationships among the classical and other ancient languages was Sir William Jones, who wrote in 1786 that “The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin . . . 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 . . . had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family . . . (quoted in Lehmann 1967, 15)”
This language, ‘‘which . . . no longer exists,’’ is called (Proto-) IndoEuropean in the English-speaking world, a term reflecting the (earlier) geographical distribution of the speakers of this language family from India to Europe. Note that if it is possible to learn about an earlier form of a language for which no written records exist, then we may also be able to learn about the history of the world’s languages and perhaps even something about the geographical origin of language itself.
Borrowing
Many terms relating to Western technology and culture have become part of the vocabulary of the world’s languages, and English speakers in turn have borrowed many words from other languages. The vocabularies of Modern Japanese and English, for example, share a
significant number of common words, among them karate, sushi, hibachi, tsunami, beer, and computer. This common and shared vocabulary might lead a naive linguist to hypothesize that English and Japanese are somehow related— perhaps they are descended from a common language? ( It may be that Japanese and English are in fact descended from a remote common language, but this is unprovable given our present state of knowledge.) In establishing genetic relationships among languages, then, one must exclude words that may have been borrowed and are therefore not part of a common inheritance. The Latin words in (3) were borrowed by (Old) English speakers, and although this vocabulary seems to refer to rather common objects, it does reflect the cultural influence of speakers of Latin in northern Europe. Even without records that establish evidence of borrowing, we will see that borrowed words can be distinguished from common inherited words by the principles discussed in the section on establishing genetic relationships among languages.
Chance Overlap in Sound and Meaning
The fact that languages often have similarities in sound structure and have words for common objects yields a significant probability that there will be accidental overlaps in sound- meaning correspondences between them. For example, all languages have a low vowel (such as a), and most have i and/or u vowels; most languages have t, k, and p and the nasal consonants n and m. Moreover, most languages have words referring to water, the numbers, male and female parents, and other items common to human existence. In Lummi, a Native American language spoken in northwestern Washington State, the word for ‘‘father’’ is /mæn/. In Navajo and Chinese the word for ‘‘mother’’ is /mA/, as in Chinese ma ¯ and Navajo shi-ma ´ ‘‘my mother.’’
There are a few words in Chinese, Navajo, and Lummi that are phonetically and semantically similar to words in English, but this is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that any of these languages is genetically related to English.
Establishing Genetic Relationship among Languages
The study of language history and the relationships among languages is one of the tasks of comparative linguistics. The traditional procedure that linguists use in determining a true historical (genetic) relationship is called the comparative method. It is this method that has led linguists to conclude that Sanskrit and Spanish are, in fact, historically related. The comparative method does not refer to a fixed procedure that is to be followed rigidly. Rather, it refers to the analytical techniques linguists employ in reconstructing the history of languages that are hypothesized to be members of the same language family.
Grimm’s Law Grimm’s Law:
A. b – p
d – t g - k B. p – f t – y k – x (- h) C. bh – b
dh – d gh – g
The changes above are known collectively as Grimm’s Law, because their systematic lawlike character was first stressed by Jacob Grimm (one of the Brothers Grimm, best known in the United States for their collection of German fairy tales). There is some controversy over whether Grimm should be credited for discovering this set of ‘‘laws,’’ since the correspondences had already been published by a Dane, Erasmus Rask. Because of his emphasis on their lawlike properties, however, Grimm is usually given credit for the discovery.
The Indo-Europian Language Family
The languages of the Indo-European family also share similar morphological and syntactic properties that support a distant historical relationship.
European began to split up. Until recently the consensus was that the Indo-European homeland was in the steppes of Russia, north of the Black Sea, and that the Indo-Europeans were associated with the Kurgan people (Gimbutas 1970). This theory is supported by archeological as well as linguistic evidence. From this centrally located homeland, some of the Indo-Europeans would have migrated east to India and others would have migrated west toward mainland Europe. An alternative hypothesis ( Renfrew 1989) places the Indo-European homeland in what is today Turkey. The expansion of the Indo-Europeans into the surrounding areas is hypothesized to be a consequence of the development of agriculture and the need for new farmland. Whereas earlier theories portrayed the Indo-Europeans as mounted conquerors entering new territory, the most recent theory envisions the offspring from one generation of farmers moving onto adjacent potential farmland, repeating this sequence until all arable land was settled. However, such wavelike settlement is not consistent with the division of Indo- European into its major subfamilies (Germanic, Celtic, and so forth), so it seems clear that much of the history of the migration and settlement of Indo-Europeans is still to be determined.
Why Languages Change and How Language Change Spreads?
What are the causes and mechanisms of language change? Surprisingly perhaps, linguists currently have little understanding of the exact causes of language change. For purposes of discussion, we may divide the topic of language change into two areas: individual
and community. By individual change we refer to a spontaneous change in a language on the part of a single speaker. Community change we may define as the transmission and ultimate sharing of changes among speakers in a linguistic community.
The Linguistic History of English
The English language has undergone extensive changes between the Old and Modern English periods. Changes in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary have made Old English no longer understandable to speakers of Modern English. Nonetheless, speakers of Modern English are able to recognize Old English as a relative of their familiar language. For example, in (b), a word-for-word Modern English translation of (a) that ignores some meaning differences, many of the words show a strong similarity to the Old English words.
A. Old English
In þa mtu ne wæ ron þæt hu s and þæt bur þæs eorles.
B.
Modern EnglishIn the town were the house and the chamber of-the chief (earl).
Lexical Change 1. Addition
From Old English times to the present, new words have continuously been added to the English language. Surprisingly, only a few Celtic words have found their way into English, even though English speakers have been continuously in contact with Celtic speakers in Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Personal names such as Lloyd and its variant Floyd are Welsh borrowings. By far the greatest number of new words came from French as a result of the Norman invasion. These French words did not always replace Old English words; instead, in many instances they expanded an already existing vocabulary. For example, the words pork, beef, veal, mutton, and venison all derive from French words referring respectively to the edible meat of the swine, cow, calf, sheep, and deer, the latter being Old English words. Formerly, the Anglo-Saxon words were used to refer to both the meat and the animals. Interestingly, the words beef and cow are both descendants of a common Indo-European word *gwhow-, which, because of the different historical changes in the Germanic and Romance families, has given rise to quite di¤erent-sounding words.
2. Loss
Conversely, many words have been lost since the Old English period, though a surprising number of the lost words are still present in compounds. One example is Old English wer ‘‘man.’’ This word is historically related to the Latin word vir, also meaning
‘‘man,’’ forms of which (e.g., virile) have been borrowed into English. The form wer,
even though lost as an independent word, still exists in werewolf, which originally meant
‘‘man-wolf ’’ or ‘‘wolfman.’’
3. Change
One example of semantic narrowing that occurred between Old English and Modern English is seen in the word hound (Old English hund ). This word once referred to any kind of dog, whereas in Modern English the meaning has been narrowed to a particular breed. The word dog (Old English docga), on the other hand, referred in Old English to the masti¤ breed; its meaning now has been broadened to include any dog.
The meaning of dog has also been extended metaphorically in modern casual speech (slang) to refer to a person thought to be particularly unattractive.
Semantic Change and Semantic Fields
In her study of semantic fields, Lehrer (1974) noted that words belonging to the same semantic field undergo similar semantic changes. To take an example ( Lehrer and Battan 1983), consider the following set of words, drawn from the semantic field ofbird names: goose, cuckoo, pigeon, coot, turkey.
It is also the case that the structure of a semantic field plays a role in semantic change.
For example, the words hot and cold are antonyms that describe physical temperature. With pairs of antonyms, if one member undergoes a metaphorical extension, the other tends to change in a parallel fashion. Thus, just as hot and cold are opposites in describing temperature, so they are also opposites in their metaphorical extension in phrases such as hot news (news that is just breaking) versus cold case (unsolved criminal case that is old). In colloquial style, we can speak of a hot car (stolen car); hence, we would not be surprised if speakers began using the phrase cold car (one that is not stolen), on the grounds that semantic change tends to a¤ect entire semantic fields in a parallel fashion, and not just single members of the field (for discussion, see Lehrer 1974).
Phonological Change 1. Rule Addition
There have been many phonological changes between Old English and Modern English, and the rules discussed in chapter 3 (e.g., the rules governing flapped and glottal stop variants of t) have been added to American English relatively recently. Of course, rules that are added to a language can later be lost as living rules, and only certain e¤ects of the rules remain. For example, an important set of extensive sound changes affecting the long (tense) vowels occurred at the end of the Middle English period, and these changes are the cause of one of the major discrepancies between the spelling of Modern English and its current pronunciation.
2. Rule Loss
Early in the history of English a rule called i-Mutation (or i-Umlaut) existed that turned back vowels into front vowels when an /i/ or /j/ followed in the next syllable. For example, in a certain class of nouns in the ancestor of Old English, the plural was formed not by adding -s but by adding -i. Thus, the plural of /gos/ ‘‘goose’’ was /gosi/ ‘‘geese.’’
Later, when the i-Mutation rule was added, the i-ending of the plural conditioned the change of /gosi/ to /gœsi/. The /œ/ phoneme is a combination of the /o/ and /e/
phonemes; it is a mid front vowel like /e/ but has lip rounding like /o/. Hence, the effect of i-Mutation was to cause back vowels to be articulated in a more forward position in the mouth, but the newly fronted vowels kept the rounding that they had when they were back vowels. Still later, the lip rounding was lost, and the plural /gœs(e)/became /ges(e)/.
When /gos/ and /ges/ finally underwent the Great Vowel Shift, the current pronunciations /gus/ and /gis/ resulted. Thus, i-Mutation is an example of a rule that was once present in Old English but has since dropped out of the language, and thanks to the Great Vowel Shift even the effects of i-Mutation have been altered.
3. Change in Rule Applicability
In Old English, fricatives became voiced when they occurred between voiced sounds (i.e., f - v, s - z). Since the most common plural ending was formerly -as, all nouns ending in fricatives underwent this rule in the plural. The rule causing this voicing is no longer present in Modern English, but its effects can still be observed in pairs such as singular wife /waIf/ and plural wives /waIvz/. This change of the stem in the plural is still the result of a rule, but the form of the rule is quite di¤erent from the form that it had in Old English. In Old English the rule was phonological: it applied whenever fricatives occurred between voiced sounds. In contrast, the alternation between voiced and voiceless fricatives in Modern English is not phonological but morphological: the voicing rule applies only to certain words and not to others. Thus, a particular (and now exceptional) class of nouns must undergo voicing of the final voiceless fricative when used in the plural (e.g., wife/wives, knife/knives, hoof/hooves). However, other nouns ending with the same sound do not undergo this process (e.g., proof/proofs). The fricative voicing rule of Old English has changed from a phonological rule to a morphological rule in Modern English.
Diffferences in Phonemic Inventory
1. Addition of Phonemes
The phonemic system of Old English was similar to that of Modern English, although several di¤erences can be noted. For example, the voiced labiodental fricative [v] was not an
independent phoneme in Old English. The [v]’s that did occur were voiced allophonic variants of the phoneme /f/. As a result of subsequent changes between Old English and Middle English, /v/
has become an independent phoneme.
2.
Loss of PhonemesThe mutated (or umlauted) vowels /œ/and /y/ (front rounded vowels) lost their rounding during the Old English period. The word thimble, for example, probably was originally pronounced as in very early Old English. Later /y/ (a rounded high front vowel) became unrounded to /I/. ( Knowing that the suffix -il was used to form nouns with diminutive meaning from other nouns, what can you surmise about the origin of the word thimble?)
Morphological Change
1. Rule Addition
The -able rule discussed in chapter 2 is an example of a rule that has been added to English since the Old English period. As a result of the influx of a large number of -able words from French into English, English speakers were (and are still) able to extract a productive rule from these words. Words such as doable and washable have been formed by adding -able to the Germanic roots do and wash.
2.
Rule LossAn example of a morphological rule that has been lost is the Causative Verb Formation rule of Old English. In Old English, causative verbs could be formed by adding the suffix -yan to adjectives. The modern verb redden meaning ‘‘to cause to be or make red’’ is a carryover from the time when the Causative Verb Formation rule was present in English, in that the final -en of redden is a reflex of the earlier -yan causative suffix. However, the rule adding a su‰x such as -en to adjectives to form new verbs has been lost, and thus we can no longer form new causative verbs such as *green-en ‘‘to make green’’ or *blue-en ‘‘to make blue.’’ ( Do you see now how awake and awaken are related to each other?)
3.
Rule ChangeNew nouns could be formed in Old English by adding -ing not only to verbs, as in Modern English (sing þ ing ¼ singing), but also to a large class of nouns. For example, the word viking was formed by adding –ing to the noun wic ‘‘bay.’’ ( Why might the word for ‘‘bay’’ be used to describe the Vikings?) It turns out that the -ing
suffx can still be added to a highly restricted class of nouns, carrying the meaning
‘‘material used for,’’ as in roofing, carpeting, and flooring. Thus, the rule for creating new nouns with the -ing suffix has changed by becoming more restricted in its application, so that a much smaller class of nouns can still have -ing attached.
Syntactic Change
1. Rule Addition
A syntactic rule that has been added to English since the Old English period is the Particle Movement rule. Thus, sentence pairs of the type John threw out the fish and John threw the fish out did not occur in Old English.
2. Rule Loss
A syntactic rule that has been lost from English is the morphosyntactic rule of Adjective Agreement. At one time adjectives required endings that had to agree with the head noun in case, number, and gender. This rule is no longer found in English, since most of the language’s earlier inflectional endings have been lost.