Change Over Time

The Great Divide

“The opposition between the two view points, the synchronic and the
diachronic, is absolute and allows no compromise.”
– Ferdinand de Saussure

„ Synchronic description: Static, a single point in time.

‹ Ferdinand de Saussure
‹ Structuralism
‹ What Question
„ Diachronic description: Dynamic, across time.
‹ Sir William Jones
‹ Transformism
‹ The Why Question
 Historical Linguistics
„ Goals
‹ Understanding linguistic relatedness

‹ Deduce regularities of language change

„ Method
‹ Reconstruct prior-language states

‹ Multiple methods of reconstruction

 Linguistic Relatedness
The Sanskrit 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 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.
(Sir William Jones, 1786)
Sir William Jones

• 1786 gave an address to Royal Asiatic Society

• British man who worked at a post in India
• Knew Greek, Latin, English, and German
• Learned Sanskrit
• Realized the similarities among all these were too
great to be attributable to chance alone
What similarities do you see?
Sanskrit Latin Greek English
aja:mi ago: ‘I drive’
ajras ager agrós ‘field’
vidhava vidva ‘widow’
mi:dha ‘prize’ misthos ‘pay’
pitar pater patér ‘father’
dva duo ‘two’
dan den- ‘tooth’
bhráta frater phrater ‘brother’
bhar- fer- pher- ‘bear’
saptá septem heptá ‘seven’
nákt- nokt- nukt- ‘night’
ad- edō édō ‘eat’
pad- ped- pod- ‘foot’
The Indo-European Family of
Languages

A superfamily of languages which stretches

across Europe (and much of the world through
recent colonization) and all the way into the
Indian subcontinent.
Members of a family of languages are
genetically related, just like genetic lineage with
people. Traits are passed on and mutations can
occur within subfamilies. We use traits and
mutations to assume and determine relatedness.
The Centum Languages (West)
The Satem Languages (East)
 Methods of Reconstruction
1. Comparative historical linguistics
Comparisons between languages
2. Typological reconstruction
Regularities across languages
3. Internal reconstruction
Focus on irregular forms
Rask, Grimm, Grassman, Verner, and the
Neogrammarians of the 19th century gave us a
scientific methodology for determining
relatedness between languages.

The Comparative Method

 Comparative Method
„ Assumptions
‹ Arbitrariness of sign

‹ Sound change is regular

„ Search for cognates

‹ Cognates: Words descended from the same source

‹ con- + gn ‘born together’

‹ Reconstruct the proto word form.

„ Distinguish between real cognates and false cognates

False cognate examples:
‹ Jaqaru aska and English ask

‹ Spanish mucho and English much

 Text-Based Data
„ Dated written materials
Beowulf—Chaucer—Shakespeare
„ Rhymes & Puns
You spotted snakes with double tongues / Thorny hedge-
hogs, be not seen / Newts, and blind-worms do no wrong /
Come not near our fairy queen. (Midsummer Night’s
Dream)
„ Old Grammarians
We produce this letter by pressing the lower lip of the
mouth on the upper teeth. The tongue is turned back
towards the roof of the mouth, and the sound is
accompanied by a gentle puff of breath. (Roman
grammarian, Victorinus)
Another Example of Sound
Change Regularity
English Spanish French
foot pie pied
father padre pere
tooth diente dent
two dos deux
The Data of Rask and Grimm
Sanskrit Avestan Greek Latin Gothic English

pita pater pater fadar father

padam poda pedem fotu foot
bhratar phrater frater brothar brother
bharami barami phero fero baira bear
jivah jivo wiwos qius quick
('living')
sanah hano henee senex sinista senile
virah viro wir wair were(wolf)
('man')
tris tres thri three
deka decem taihun ten
satem he-katon centum hund(rath) hundred
Rask and Grimm wanted to explain
the PIE > PG changes
 To explain the previously unexplained
Grimm’s Law difference between Germanic and other
IE languages (from PIE to PG)
--might be called Rask’s hard work and Grimm’s nice summary and
synthesis.
i. PIE voiceless stops become voiceless fricatives
ii. PIE voiced stops become voiceless stops
iii. PIE voice aspirates become voiced stops or fricatives
(depending on the context in which they occur)

p,t,k The First

Germanic Sound
b,d,g f,,h Shift
bh,dh,gh
 The Data of Rask and Grimm
Sanskrit Avestan Greek Latin Gothic English

pita pater pater fadar father

p>f
padam poda pedem fotu foot
bhratar phrater frater brothar brother
bh >b
bharami barami phero fero baira bear
jivah jivo wiwos qius quick
('living')
sanah hano henee senex sinista senile
virah viro wir wair were(wolf)
('man')
tris tres thri three t>
deka decem taihun ten d>t
satem he-katon centum hund(rath) hundred k>h
The Comparative Method and Historical
Linguistics:
--a means of determining the degree of linguistic ‘genetic’
relatedness between a variety of languages, assumed to be
related
-- by establishing regular sound change patterns
--which enable the researcher to propose a reconstruction of
the earlier sounds in the ‘parent’ language
--as well as to propose subgroups, denoting shared history
between particular varieties which exhibit participation in the
same innovations from the proto-form.
The Neogrammarian
Hypothesis and the
Comparative Method
•sound change is regular—exceptionless
•still in use today, though somewhat debated
•problems with the basic Neogrammarian assumptions:
• language contact, borrowing and interference
• lexical diffusion (sound change working through the lexicon)—
does this lead to ‘apparent’ irregularities until the change is
finished?
 Typological Data
„ Inferring structure from the typical characteristics of language
‹ Entailments of different word orders

 VO language place auxiliaries before verb

• E.g., Bears may eat honey. (English, French,

Spanish)
 OV language places auxiliaries after verb

• E.g., Bears honey eat may. (Japanese, Hindi,

Turkish)
‹ Entailments of sound inventories

 Gaps in a system, tend to be filled

• E.g., p/b, t/__, k/g Æ probably “d” also

 Language-Internal Data
Assumption:
‹ Current irregularities were once regular.

1. Compile irregularities
2. Discover regularity
Regular: pure/purity obscure/obscurity
Irregular: sane/sanity serene/serenity
*These irregular forms due to The Great Vowel Shift.