Historical Linguistics

Historical Linguistics A Brief History of the English Language

Big Picture in History of English • Old English characterized by: • Small lexicon • Complex grammar • PDE characterized by • Immense lexicon • Simplified grammar

What is Historical Linguistics? • Tracks language change across time and space • Diachronic rather than synchronic • First historical linguists tracked changes in the Indo-European Language Family • Family Tree model used to describe relationship between Indo-European Languages

Language Families May be reconstructed based on two hypotheses • Regularity hypothesis: speech sounds change in regular, predictable, and recognizable ways • For example, velar stops become palatalized before front vowels • Contrast “key” /ki/ with “cot” /kɑ/ -- your /k/ differs • Velar stops may become affricates before front vowels • Contrast L “gent” /gɛnt/ with PDE “gentle” /ʤɛntəl/

Language Families May be reconstructed based on two hypotheses • Relatedness hypothesis: phonological similarities (in cognates) may be due to a historical relationship between languages • PDE “mother” to F “mere” to L “mater” etc. • PDE “brother” to F “frere” to L “frater” etc. • Foundation of the comparative method

Types of Sound Change • Unconditioned sound change • Happens without obvious provocation • Most important example in the history of Germanic languages is the First Consonant Shift (c. 500 AD) • Most significant example in the history of English is the Great Vowel Shift (c. 1500 AD)

Conditioned Sound Change • Parallel to phonological processes we discussed earlier • Assimilation OE /wulfas/ [wulvas] • Deletion OE /no:zɛ/ ME /nɔ:zə/ PDE /noz/ • Insertion OE /æmtij/PDE /ɛmpti/ • Phonemic change is also the result of conditioned change and contact between languages and dialects • OE /f/ [v] between voiced sounds; [f] elsewhere • ME /f/, /v/

Morphological Change • Morphology changes largely by analogy • OE cu [ku] ‘cows’, pl. cye [kyə] • ME kou, kine (b/c many ME plurals in “n”) • PDE cow, cows • Proportional Analogy • NOUN : NOUN + s :: cow : cow+s • Paradigm leveling eliminates irregularities within a paradigm • OE cēosan [ʧe:ozan] ppl. coren • PDE choose, ppl. chosen

Syntactic Change • English originally a SOV language • Gradually changes to a SVO language, with SOV order remaining in subordinate clauses in Old English • English also originally had more elastic clausal order • NP N + DETpossp or DETpossp + N • Most important syntactic change in English is the development of the ‘do’ auxiliary

Semantic Change • Extension of meaning (generalization) • Can be even from the “brand” level • Metaphorical extensions extend a meaning beyond its literal level • “I feel cooked.” • “What’s your course load?” • Reductions (narrowing) • Restrict meaning of an otherwise general term • OE mete (food)  PDE meat • OE deor (food animal)  PDE bambi animal

Elevations (amelioration) • Enhance the prestige of a term • OE cniht ‘boy’ ME knight • Degradations (pejoration) • Diminished prestige or “tabooing” of a word • Frequently comes with borrowing • OE swīn PDE pork – In OE a “swin” was the animal, but in PDE it is merely the animals’s flesh.

Other Important Topics • Borrowing: English speakers have borrowed vocabulary from speakers of Latin, Old Norse, French; they’ve also borrowed vocabulary from other Europeans. • Irregular verbs • Strong/Weak Adjectives

Historical Linguistics