Week 21 - Historical Linguistics Tuesday, March 12, 2019 3:56 PM - Latin and Greek seen as pure, to speak it was to be more educated - Languages change over time. Change is neutral, our attitude towards it can be good o bad - Historical Linguistics ? The study of language change over time Also called diachronic linguistics ? Historically seen as a branch of philology, now often as a subpart of variationist (socio-)linguistics - All aspects of language structure undergo change ? Phonetic ? Phonological ? Morphological ? Syntactic ? Lexical/semantic ? Social/pragmatic - politeness, things said in social situations - Before English ? Celtic Expansion; later, Roman occupation of Britain o Celtic languages the earliest record of language in the Britain. Began in Europe and spread to British Isles ? Latin was spoken in Britain during Roman occupation - Old English: 450-1100 ? Old English = Beowulf o The Angle, the Saxons and the Jutes. ? Associated with the invasion of Germanic languages into Britain ? Viking Era: Northern vs Southern varieties. Resulted in Scandinavian influence. - Middle English: 1100-1500 Middle English = Cantebury Tales ? Norman invasion in 1066. Norman Variety of French influenced English - 1500 - modern ? Early Modern English: Shakespeare Today we speak Contemporary Modern English In Britain divided into territorios Dannlass Endlich Territoris Saltin lands
- - Modern English is a colonial language. Spread through the world through British colonialism. Phonetic and Phonological Changes - All phonological rules that we have talked about are also common sound changes - Languages don't typically change in large strokes. Change happens because children grow up speaking slightly different than their parents. Slowly over time, over multiple generations, the change becomes larger and larger. Children are the vector of change. - Examples of Phonetic and Phonological Change ? Affrication in Quebec French ? Canadian Raising ? Voicing of Fricatives ? Great Vowel Shift Morphological Change - Some morphological changes involve the addition or loss of affixes Addition of affixes o Loss of affixes ? Reanalysis: moving of morphology, example: a napple -> an apple - Morphological changes often involve either regularization or analogy o Irregular (strong) verbs: mostly regularization, but new irregulars by analogy. Example, wrought is irregular past tense of work. Has been regularized into worked. o Irregularization happens too. Sneak -> snuck. Used to be sneaked. Syntactic Change - Old English was a Verb second language - Modern English has residual V2 word order. o Ex, rarely has he every deceived me. o Ex, Wh questions, What will you say? - V2 word order was lost along with case morphology in English - Loss of Movement in Early Modern English. o Speak they the truth? Verb moves to the beginning of sentence. Contemporary Modern English uses the auxiliary 'do' instead: Do they speak the truth?'. o They speak not the truth. In Contemporary Modern English, 'do' must be added for negation: they do not speak the truth. Semantic Change - Addition or loss o