Historical Linguistics

A language family is a group of languages that all developed from the same
ancestor language. A proto-language in the tree model of historical
linguistics is a language usually hypothetical from which a number of
known languages are believed to have descended by evolution, or slow
modification of the proto-language.

The ancestor language of the Indo-European language family is called proto-

Indo-European.

Other branches of Indo-European include:

Romance, Slavic, Greek,Celtic, Indic, and Iranian.

Indic (Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bangla, -- all descended from Sanskrit)

Proto-Indo-European
Social structure and culture
- house(hold)
- villages, fortified seblements
- tribe
- tribal king - warriors - farmers
- religion
How do we know all this?
- reconstructed vocabulary
- archaeological evidence

comparative reconstruction: the creation of the original form of an ancestor

language on the basis of comparable forms in languages that are descendants

In carrying out this procedure, those working on the history of languages operate
on the basis of some general principles, two of which are presented here.
The majority principle is very straightforward. If, in a cognate set, three words
begin with a [p] sound and one word begins with a [b] sound, then our best guess is
that the majority have retained the original sound (i.e. [p]).
The most natural development principle is based on the fact that certain types of
sound change are very common whereas others are extremely unlikely. The
direction of change described in each case (1)(4) has been commonly observed,
but the reverse has not.
(1) Final vowels often disappear (vino vin)
(2) Voiceless sounds become voiced, typically between vowels (muta muda)
(3) Stops become fricatives (ripa riva)
(4) Consonants become voiceless at the end of words (rizu ris)

Language Reconstruc/on
Historical linguists can reconstruct an (unknown) proto-language by comparing
cognates from the descendent languages and establishing systematic sound
changes.
How far back in time can reconstruction go?
limit of about 8000-10,000 yrs

Borrowing
A special type of borrowing is described as loan-translation or calque (/klk/).
In this process, there is a direct translation of the elements of a word into the
borrowing language.
The English word superman is thought to be a loan-translation
of the German U bermensch, and the term loan-word itself is believed to have
come from the German Lehnwort

Word that have the same origin are called cognates.

 But not all cognates are due to a genetic relationship between languages some
cognates are due to borrowing.
English has borrowed words like kimono and tsunami from Japanese, but this
does not mean that English and Japanese are genetically related.
Also, similariBes between (short) words from different languages is sometimes
due to chance.
Yana tinii- (small)
English 0ny

Sound change and reconstruc/on

Sound change is systematic!
Example: The Germanic Consonant Shi{ (aka Grimms Law)

Sanskrit Greek La/n French English German Dutch

pad pod ped pied foot fuss voet
pita pater pater pere father vater vader
piscis poisson fish fisch vis
pecu fee vieh vee
pente five funf vijf
The Germanic languages have an [f] or [v] where the other Indo-
European languages have a [p].
Sound change in proto-Germanic: *p > f
(in historical linguisBcs, a * indicates a reconstructed form or sound)
More on Sound Change
Sound change may lead to a wholesale
reorganization of the sound system of a language.
For example: The Great Vowel ShiW in English
roughly 1300 to 1700
transition from Modern English to Early Modern English
affected only the long vowels