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Why do linguists believe in language families?

Why do linguists believe in language families?. Cognates – if languages have words in common (or words closely related to one another), linguists believe that the two languages are “related” and share a common “ancestor.”

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Why do linguists believe in language families?

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  1. Why do linguists believe in language families? • Cognates – if languages have words in common (or words closely related to one another), linguists believe that the two languages are “related” and share a common “ancestor.” • The more cognates, the more closely related – ie, the less time that has passed since both were the same “parent” language. • Dialects = different versions of one language (speakers usually understand most of what another dialect speaker is saying) • Standard American English vs. Standard British English • Languages = 2 dialects diverge into separate languages when speakers can no longer understand one another • Portuguese vs. Spanish vs. French vs. Italian

  2. Late 18th C (1700’s) • Classically trained Englishmen encounter Sanskrit and see that it has cognates with Greek and Latin. • Propose idea that languages with cognates could be descended from one parent language. • Start to map out cognates among European and Indian languages. • American, African, East Asian, Pacific languages do not have significant cognates with I-E languages.

  3. Indo-European A family / tree of languages

  4. ~ 5000 years ago / 3500-2500 BC • Humans speaking different languages all over the globe; almost none of these languages ever written down (and NO Indo-European languages written down) • “Kurgan” culture (name given to them by archeologists) living in western Russia/central Europe and speaking PIE (Proto-Indo-European) • Semi-nomadic (some hunter-gatherer and some settled agriculture • Neolithic (late stone age, but with some metal working) • polytheists

  5. Indo-European languages spread over centuries as speakers migrate. Scandanavia England Ukraine Black sea Caspian sea Med Sea India

  6. Kurgan / PIE culture • PIE speakers probably migrated / traded east and west, mostly moving southerly. • Most of the cultures with which they came into contact ended up adopting their language. • As PIE speakers lost contact with one another, they developed different dialects and then different languages from one another. • These dialects and languages differ geographically, with PIE language families spread over geographical regions in Europe and Asia.

  7. PIE ~1500 BC • Some fragmentary Hittite (Mesopotamian) texts (discovered in 20th C and still being translated) • Extensive Sanskrit religious and literary texts (encountered by European linguists in 18thC) • Oldest written I-E texts (Egyptian texts not I-E) • Preserve older features of PIE • Ex: singular, dual, plural forms for nouns & pronouns • PIE very grammatically complex – “daughter languages” less complex

  8. Proto-Germanic before 500 BC • One of the spoken “daughter” languages is Proto-Germanic – the “parent” language of all Germanic languages. • By 500 BC, the first Germanic sound change – Grimm’s Law – has been completed. • We know this b/c these sound changes appear in ALL Germanic languages, so they must have taken place AFTER PIE diverges into Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, etc. and BEFORE Proto-Germanic diverges into German, English, Norse, etc. • No written Germanic language texts until 300 AD

  9. Grimm’s Law I bh, dh, ghinnon-Germanic all go through intermediate steps to b, d, and g in Germanicbhbdhd                           ghgvoiced aspirated stops become voiced stops Before 500 BC!

  10. Grimm’s Law II p, t, kin non Germanic become f, θ, x or h in Germanic p                 f             t                 θ              k                 x or h voiceless stops become voiceless fricatives x is the voiceless velar fricative that is the final consonant sound in Bach [bɑx]; not a PDE sound, but an OE and ME sound.

  11. Grimm’s Law III b, d, g in non-Germanic become p, t, k in Germanicb                 p             d                 t                                         g                 k voiced stops become voiceless stops link

  12. Germanic languages 500 BC – 300 AD • No written Germanic texts until ~ 300 AD • Proto-Germanic has diverged into different dialects. • North: What will become Icelandic, Norse, Swedish, Danish • East: Gothic (no longer extant) • West: What will become German, Dutch, English • By ~ 300 AD, probably most German dialect speakers could make themselves understood to one another, but the dialects diverged further.

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