language history and change 2
TRANSCRIPT
Language history and change
By Camilo Saavedra
Proto-Indo-European family
of languages
different geographical
areas
common features
A common ancestor
A kind of “Grandmother” of
languages
Comparative reconstruction
It was found out through
similarities in different
languages
their relation to an ancestor
In order to find
Cognates
a similar word in one language and
another
form or pronounciation
process in wich cognates are compared in order to find similarities
Cognates Examples
In comparative reconstruction there are two important principles:
The majority principle
Principles
The natural development principle
the ones more similar demonstrate the less that those languages
have changed from the proto-language
are a series of rules in language change (or
evolution) that show the antiquity of that
language in relation to the proto-language.
This shows that the more the word respects these rules, the more similar it is towards the proto-language.
The natural development principle
English language change
Old English (VII-XI)
Middle English (XI-XV)
Modern English (XV-present days)
Old English
Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) invaded the
British Isles in the V century
Words belonging to this period: mann (man), drincan (drink), etan (eat)
Then, another northern-
european tribe arrived, The
Vikings
. They brought the Old Norse,
words like: give, leg, skin
Anglo-saxon invasion
Viking invasion
Middle English
Normans arrival to the British Isles in 1066. William “The
Conqueror” (a norman) was
crowned King of England
French relevance during this period, although English never ceased being spoken (by the lower class)
Words like: defense, court,
faith, army
Norman invasion
From 1400 to 1600 English started changing becoming Modern English
(more specifically, early modern English)
Middle to Modern English transition
Pronounciation Syntax Lexicon
Pronounciation change
Not only some sounds changed, but also
some others disappeared. i.e. the
voiceless velar fricative /x/ wich in old english pronounciation of nicht as [nixt], but is absent in the present-
day form of night [nayt]
Metathesis
is a reversal in two adjoining sounds, had changed the
pronounciation of some words
Prothesis
That is the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word
Metathesis example
Prothesis example
Syntactic changes
In the transition from old english to modern english, we can find several differences in the order of the sentence, i.e.
Lexical changes
A lot of borrowed words have been added to the english language along its evolution, from latin, greek and other languages.
New words were created
Some other words have ceased to be used
In terms of meaning, there are two processes:
Broadening and Narrowing
Meaning (semantic) features
Broadening Narrowing
A word that previously had only one meaning, now it has some others, for example:
In old english the word “dogca” was used to refer to any breed of dogs, but now, its evolution “dog” is used to refer to any breed.
Is the reverse process, a word that before had several different meanings or uses, now it has only one, for example:
The old english word “mete” refered to any kind of food, now it refers only to a specific breed, “meat”
It’s worth mentioning that this process of change in the language was not from one day to another, on the contrary a language changes gradually, it takes time and requires some factors to make it possible.
Another important point to conclude is that language is in a continuous process of evolution, it’s always changing.