Historical Linguistics is the study of how

languages change over time

Historical Linguistics

Middle English (1066-1476) Some observable changes

And a litil aftir, thei that stooden camen, and seiden to Petir, treuli
thou art of hem; for thi speche makith thee knowun. (The Wycliff
Bible, 14th century)
Early Modern English (1476-1700)
And after a while came vnto him they that stood by, and saide to
Peter, Surely thou also are one of them, for they speech bewrayeth
thee. (The King James Bible, 1611)
From Early ME > ME
• Lexical: replacement of word bewrayeth ‘expose (a
deception), malign’; speech > accent (borrowing from Old
French)
• Syntactic: subject-verb inversion eliminated ‘and after a
while came vnto him they’ > ‘and after a while they
came….’ (still obligatory in German)

Modern English • Morphological:‘thou art’ (singular familiar vs. ye/you

Shortly afterwards the bystanders came up and said to Peter,
‘Surely you are another of them; your accent gives you away!”
(The New English Bible, 1961)
plural, sg. formal) > ‘you are’ (morphological
neutralization); Third person singular verbal suffix –eth (as
in bewrayeth) > -(e)s
 Comparing Shakespeare (Early Modern
Middle English > Early ME English) with Modern English
• Morphological: Loss of final –n in third
person plural: stooden > stood, camen > came • Saw you the weird sisters? (Macbeth)

• Lexical: 3rd person plural object pronoun • I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers (Henry V)
hem > them (borrowing from Old Norse)
• Macduff is fled to England (Macbeth)

• She comes more nearer earth than she was wont (Othello)

Languages change in many ways Family tree model of language

• Phonological divergence
OE /mi:s/ > Modern English mice /mais/ Language A Mother

• Morphological
Loss of gender distinctions in English, brethren > brothers
Language B Daughters Language C
• Syntactic Subgroup Subgroup
Loss of subject-verb inversion: ‘and after a while came vnto
him they’ > ‘and after a while they came….’
Language B1 Language B2 Language C1 Language C2
• Semantic
deer: animal > specific type of animal
 Drawing family trees Proto-Language
• A linguist’s hypothesis about the form and
• Over time, languages change sufficiently to
structure of a mother language for which no direct
develop into separate languages; in this way a
evidence exists
parent language gives rise to daughter languages

• The parent language is termed a proto-language • Proto-languages are reconstructions, built up by

• By looking at languages belonging to the same comparing vocabulary and grammar in the modern
subgroup we can hypothesize about the shape of languages, and by using our knowledge about the
the proto-language structure of languages and how they change

• Cognates generally have similar phonological form and

How do we know languages are related similar meaning
Cognate: Words or morphemes in different languages • Sometimes, though, it is difficult to differentiate
that have developed independently from a single cognates and borrowings, but this step is crucial in
historically earlier source historical analysis
• For example, the fact that we find the word sushi in
English father
English doesn’t mean that it is cognate with Japanese, and
German Vater Proto-Indo-European *páter that English are derived from the same proto-language.
Spanish padre
Gothic fadar
 Terminology related to cognates The Comparative Method
• cognate set: the set of related words descending
• Devised to determine genetic relationships and
from the same ancestor word of the proto-
reconstruct proto-languages
language
• Most solid evidence for genetic relationship in
• sound correspondence: sounds found in the
regular sound correspondences, which this method
related words of cognate sets which descend from
helps you find
a common ancestral sound
• reflex: the descendant sound of a sound in a
proto-language

Cognate sets: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French

How to reconstruct a proto-language
Step 1: Find a cognate set for related languages, Italian Spanish Portuguese French gloss
or languages suspected to be related
kapra kabra kabra SevÂ(´) goat
It is standard to look for cognates among basic
vocabulary items, e.g. body parts, close kinship terms,
low numbers, basic geographical terms, since these are karo karo karu SEÂ dear
more likely to be words which are preserved from the kapo kabo kabu Sef head, top
proto-language rather than borrowed at a later time.
One common list of words is the Swadesh list karne karne karne SEÂ meat,
flesh
kane kan ka)w) SjE) dog

Step 2. Establish sound correspondences
between languages for the cognate sets
Correspondence 1:
Italian k-: Spanish k-: Portuguese k-: French S-
Note that hyphen after sound indicates that sound is in
initial position; hyphen on either side indicates medial
sound; hyphen before sound indicates final sound
Step 3. Reconstruct the proto-sound
How does one reconstruct proto-sounds?
In cases, in which all the daughter languages have
the same reflex, it is pretty clear that the reflex
found in all the languages will be the sound in the
proto-language
But, what about if the reflexes are not identical
across languages?
Important point: Avoid apparent sound
correspondences attributed to chance, e.g. Kaqchikel
Mayan mes ‘mess, disorder, garbage’ English mess
If we compare other words in the two languages, we
see that m:m corresondence is not regular
English Kaqchikel
man atsi
mouse tS’oy
moon qati/t
Some guiding considerations
Naturalness
Reconstruct the sound which allows for formulation
of natural (i.e. phonetically) sound changes;
naturalness results in greater commonness of change
Correspondence: Ital. -p-: Span. -b-: Port. -b-: French. -v-
Natural for stops to become voiced and spirantized between
voiced sounds; thus:
*p > Span., Port., French b / between voiced sounds
Less natural for devoicing between voiced sounds in Ital.
 Majority wins
Assuming that all languages are equally related, then
it is more likely that one language underwent a sound
change than multiple languages all independently
underwent the same change
e.g. it is more likely that French changed k to S than
all three other languages independently changed S to k
If Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese formed a
subgroup of which French were not a member, it
could be that the subgroup changed S to k before the
subgroup split up into the daughter languages.
In this case, there wouldn’t really be a majority,
since one sister would have S and one would have k
Latin
Proto-Ital-Span-Port k French S
Italian Spanish Portuguese
Important: majority wins is not always reliable
• Majority wins might conflict with naturalness, as in the
voicing of *p discussed above
• A sound change may have occurred independently in
separate languages, e.g. diphthongization of high vowels
in German and English: German Haus, English house,
Swedish hus
• It could be the case that the languages forming the
majority form a subgroup and are closely related, in
which case the common sound would not be an
independent development
In this particular case, this didn’t happen, as the real
grouping is as follows
Latin
Western Romance Italian
French Spanish Portuguese
Thus, there is in fact a majority in favor of k
 Notice that this subgrouping provides a nice Continuing our investigation of correspondences
account of the facts for *p discussed earlier
Italian a: Spanish a: Portuguese a: French E proto *a
Italian o: Spanish o: Portuguese u: French ∅ proto *o
Latin *p
Consider the following cognate sets now
Western Romance *b Italian p
Italian Spanish Portuguese French gloss

French Spanish Portuguese

v b b kolore kolor kor kul{Â color
kostare kostar kostar kute dear

Italian k: Spanish k: Portuguese k: French k

Compare this with our earlier correspondence set:

Italian k-: Spanish k-: Portuguese k-: French S- First, see if the second scenario can account for the data

We have two choices:
• Either the proto-sound for the two correspondence sets
is different
• Or there is a difference in environment between the
two correspondence sets which explains why *k > S in
some cases in French but remained k in other cases
In fact, we see that the S in French occurs before *a (>E)
but the k in French occurs before *u
Thus, we can reconstruct *k for both correspondence sets
and attribute the *k > S in French to a particular
environment
 First, we see whether it is possible to reconstruct *b for
Italian Spanish Portuguese French gloss both sets, in which case we need a way to predict when we
get b in Italian, Portuguese, and French and when we get v.
battere batir bater bat to beat In fact, there is no conditioning factor which allows us to
valle bal∆e vale val valley predict when we get b and we get v

Two correspondence sets Thus, we reconstruct different proto-sounds for the two
correspondence sets
• Italian b: Spanish b: Portuguese b: French b
• Italian v: Spanish b: Portuguese v: French v • Italian b: Spanish b: Portuguese b: French b proto *b
• Italian v: Spanish b: Portuguese v: French v proto *v

As a final step, once we have our correspondence sets

and their reconstructed sounds we can reconstruct Morphological and syntactic change
words/morphemes for the proto-language
Reanalysis: English abreast from at + breast, beside
Italian Spanish Portuguese French Proto- gloss from by + side, behind from by + hind
Romance
Borrowing: Pipil borrowed comparative construction
kapra kabra kabra SevÂ(´) *kapra goat mas...ke... from Spanish

karo karo karu SEÂ *karo dear Pipil: ne siwa:t mas galá:na ke taha
(Spanish más linda que tú)
kapo kabo kabu Sef *kapo head, the woman more pretty than you
top
‘That woman is prettier than you.’
 Semantic change
• Widening (extension, broadening)
salary: originally a soldier’s allotment of salt >
soldier’s wages > wages in general
Spanish caballero: originally a horseman >
gentleman, man of upper society
Finnish raha: originally fur-bearing animal, pelt >
fur used in trade > money
Elevation: words assumes positive connotation
pretty < OE ‘crafty, sly’
fond < ME past participle of fonnen ‘to be foolish’
Spanish casa ‘house’ < Latin casa ‘hut, cottage’
Taboo replacement/euphemism
ass replaced with donkey
toilet often replaced with restroom, lavatory, etc.
in England bloody nose replaced with blood nose, bleeding
nose
Chickasaw: fakit ‘turkey’ replaced with English turkey
Narrowing (restriction)
meat: originally meant ‘food’ > particular kind of food
hound: originally meant ‘dog’ > dog with long ears
which tracks prey be scent
starve: die > die of hunger
Degeneration: word assumes negative meaning
madam ‘female head of house of ill-repute’ < polite
form of address
silly ‘stupid, foolish’ < ME ‘happy, innocent’ < OE
‘blessed, blissful’
Spanish siniestro ‘sinister’ < Latin ‘left’
Why do languages change?
Factors which do not cause language change:
• Geography, e.g. Grimm’s law (a consonant shift in
Germanic) due to life in the Alps: running up and
down mountains caused huffing and puffing which
caused voiceless stops to become fricatives
• Racial/anatomical factors, e.g. Grimm’s law result of
earwax build-up among speakers which triggered
misperception of Indo-European consonants
• Cultural factors related to work ethic, e.g. Languages
change because younger generation is lazy
Legitimate factors: Internal vs. external causes • Psychological/cognitive causes, e.g. preservation
of contrast, simplification of complex paradigms
Internal causes include the following: Estonian loss of final –n: Northern Estonian: final -/ lost and
final –n lost except in 1st person singular verb forms, but
• physical, i.e. phonetic, causes which may be Southern Estonian: final –n lost even in 1st person singular, but
articulatory or perception based final -/ not lost
Most sound changes fall into this category
gloss Proto-Balto-Finnic N. Estonian S. Estonian
I carry *kanna-n kannan kanna
Latin okto > Italian otto (assimilation) Carry! *kanna-/ kanna kanna/

-n in 1st sg. not lost in N. Estonian, since this would neutralize

contrast between 1st person singular verb form and imperative
-n in 1st sg. lost in S. Estonian, since this would not neutralize
contrast, since / was preserved

German dialects:
Language Contact
Regular sound change (loss of intervocalic g and
unrounding of y) threatened to neutralize [li…g´n] ‘lie
(down)’ and [lyg´n] ‘lie’, so sound change simply When groups which speak different languages are
didn’t apply in [li…g´n] in close contact with each other, the language may
change as a result.
• External causes—outside structure of language and
physical/psychological considerations of speakers
The type of change depends upon the degree, nature
Finnish: D > d in response to spelling system
and length of contact.
Suppression of flapping in ‘learned’ forms in English
Borrowing/language contact (more later)
 Pidgins
• A linguistic system used when people with no common
Characteristics of Pidgins
languages are together in a situation where they need to
communicate • Non-inflectional
• The most radical result of a contact situation
• Highly simplified grammars
• Utilizes pieces from the various languages of the speakers
• Reduced lexicons
• Generally, the language of the socially dominant group
supplies most of the vocabulary. • Not register sensitive
• Geographically wide-spread; often the result of • Tendency for interspeaker variation
colonialization (e.g. Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea), but
not always (e.g. Chinook Jargon in North America). • NO NATIVE SPEAKERS

Julius Caesar in Tok Pisin The preposition fO in Cameroonian Pidgin

(from Cambridge Encyclopedia of Linguistics) (from Fromkin et al., A Introduction to Language)
Gif di buk fO mi ‘Give the book to me’
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your years;
I dei fO fam ‘She is at the farm’
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Dem dei fO chOs ‘They are in the church’

Pren, man bolong, Rom, Wantok, harim nau.
Mi kam tasol long plantim Kaesar.
Mi noken beiten longen.
Du dis wan fO mi, a b!g ‘Do this for me, please’
Di møni dei fO tebul ‘The money is on the table’
You fit muf t!n frank fO ma kwa
‘You can take ten francs for my bag’
 Creoles Characteristics of Creoles
• Develop from a pidgin when people in the
pidgin-speaking community have children • Structurally complex
(called “nativization”
• More morphology
• The language develops as a result of the need
for full communication within the family and • A “NATURAL” LANGUAGE IN ALL SENSES
community, and the needs of children to have
access to all the functions of language
• Found throughout world, e.g. Hawaiian Creole,
Krio (Sierra Leone), Louisiana Creole