the biblical view of language change: the tower of babel

The Biblical view oflanguage change:

The Tower of Babel

BabelGenesis 11

1 And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a

plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. 3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them

thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may

reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Babel doesn’t really explain the obvious correspondences

Babel doesn’t really explain the obvious correspondences

L OE OIpater fæder faðirped- fót fótrpisc- fisc fiskrpecus féoh féper for fyrr

Neogrammarians1789 William Jones's paper for the Asiatic Society in Calcutta: The Sanskrit language, whatever may be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin; yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of the verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong that no philologer could examine the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists. There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that Gothic [=the Germanic languages] and Celtic had the same origin with the Sanskrit.(Quoted in Robins 1967:134))

Neogrammarians

• Rasmus Kristian Rask 1787-1832: Undersögelse om det gamle Nordiske eller Islandske Spogs Oprindelse. Copenhagen 1818.– Noted crucial correspondences between

'Thracian' (Indo-European) & 'Gothic' (Proto-Germanic)

Neogrammarians

• Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm 1785-1863 Deutsche Grammatik I-IV 1822‑37

• (Darwin: Origin of Species 1859)• Friederich Karl Brugmann, Grundriss der

vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen, 5 vol. 1886-93

Neogrammarians

What was the Neogrammarian theory of language change?

Neogrammarians

What was the Neogrammarian theory of language change?

Languages change systematically, not randomly

Systematic language change

Relationships between languages are obviously systematic to some degree:

Systematic language changeThe Neogrammarians were particularly struck with the correspondences of the consonants in the Germanic and Romance language groups:

Systematic language change

They maintained that these relationships were essentially systematic, and that most of the present European languages had evolved from a common ancestor, known as Indo-European.The following slides show typical representations of the Indo European “family tree”:

Copied from: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.html

http://www.linguatics.com/indoeuropean_languages.htm

Centum and Satem• Latin and Avestan for “100” • Possibly an early split

ssatem group

kkentum group

Latin centum

Gernanic hund-Try Deborah Anderson on http://popgen.well.ox.ac.uk/eurasia/htdocs/anderson.html

Indo-Europeank

>sFrench cent > English cent

Sanskrit śatám

Lithuanian šimtas

Russian sto

http://popgen.well.ox.ac.uk/eurasia/htdocs/anderson.html

Germanic

EastGermanic

NorthGermanic

WestGermanic

Germanic

EastGermanic

NorthGermanic

WestGermanic

EastDanish

Swedish

WestNorwegianIcelandic

today:

MainlandNorwegian

DanishSwedish

AtlanticIcelandicFaroese

Germanic

EastGermanic

NorthGermanic

WestGermanic

Gothic(extinct)

Wulfilas4th cent.

Germanic

EastGermanic

NorthGermanic

WestGermanic

HighGerman

Saxon Anglo-FrisianDutch

German Platdeutch EnglishDutchFlemish

Afrikaans

Frisian

Germanic

NorthGermanic

WestGermanic

HighGerman

SaxonandDutch

Anglo-Frisian

English

Norse(Danish,

Norwegian)

Italic

Latin

French

First Germanic Consonant Shift=

Grimm’s Law

English Icelandic German etc.

First Germanic Consonant Shift-summary

Indo-European Germanic

First series p t k kw f þ h hw

Second series b d g gw p t k kw

Third series bh dh gh ghw

b d g gw

Thus the two basic neogrammarian concepts were:

1. The idea of a language family tree

2. The idea that sound laws are without exception

• Early criticism: there are exceptions everywhere!

dens toothdecem ten

duo twoedo eatdigit token

Some correpsondences were systematic:

Indo Germanic d remains d in Latin, becomes t in Germanic(Second series)

dare givedeus goddux leader

dexter rightdolor pain

Others were not systematic:

(No correspondence with d in these words!

dolor doledux duke

domus domesticdexter dexterousdies day

Sometimes the correspondence was too close:

(d should not reappear as d!)

The Neogrammarian thesis was that when sounds do not match, there were four main reasons:

1. words change their meaning – caput ~ chef ~ tête– deus~Tiw ~ Týr– domus~timber

1. words change their meaning 2. langages borrow words from each other

(loans)• Loans entering a language after a sound-change

has ceased are not effected by it.


dnt-

dent- dont-

dentistdent

tönntóþ

tooth

tunþ-

dandelion


– (loans)

3. analogy


analogy

• Words take on each others’ characteristics

IE: *kwetwer, *penkwe Latin: quattuor, quinque

French: quatre, cinque

féower, fíffour, five

pinque

hwéowerwhour


– (loans)

3. analogy4. exceptions also systematic

– further rules


• Problem: the unvoiced stops p,t,k sometimes became f,þ,h as expected, but sometimes also became voiced to β,ð,z

Verner’s Law:• The change in the first series was normal if it occurred in a stressed syllable in IE (as in 'bhratar, t>þ)• but following an unstressed syllable (pi'tar) the change was to a voiced fricative t>ð (>d in OE)

Subsequent development has levelled the difference between father and brother in English and Ice. What about German?

• Verner’s Law accounted for one of the problems faced by Grimm’s law, and thus supported the Neo-Grammarian contention that sound-changes were regular and without exception.

exceptions ...• So the Neogrammarian idea that sound

laws are systematic and without exception is correct as long as we are not dealing with semantic shift, loans, analogy, and any number of other chance factors.

Which if you think about it, simply means that if you ignore the exceptions, and you will find there are no exceptions.

language tree?

• Many of the exceptions, then, work against the idea of a language tree ...

... obviously, we have to look for other effects ....

trees or waves?

• Family tree model• Wave theory

see: http://www.hi.is/~peturk/KENNSLA/11/TOPICS/01neogrammarians.html

The Wave Model

Algeo, Problems p. 87

trees or waves?

• Family tree model• Wave theory• Interaction

– Substratum effect – Relexification – Cohabitation


Interaction

Contact between languages: • Equality or inequality?• Different levels of social development?• Power relationships?

– Economic, political, military?• Prestige?


trees or waves?

• Family tree model• Wave theory• Interaction

– Substratum effect – Relexification – Cohabitation


Interaction

• Substratum effect

The subaltern adopts the language of the rulers:– Latin developed differently in Italy, France and

Spain ....– Irish pronunciation of English


Interaction

• Substratum effect• Relexification

– The subaltern classes keep their own language

– Prestige: vocabulary moves from the high prestige language to the low-prestige language

– England during and after the Norman occupation


It has been said that only about 20% of Old English vocabulary has survived to the present day. In some ways this is true; but we should remember that the words that have survived are usually the commonest ones, and that most of the structural words of Modern English are still Anglo-Saxon. Let's look at this paragraph again, this time underlining all the words that survive from Old English

So although it may be true that, on a dictionary count, 80% of the old English vocabulary has been replaced by French or Latin words, we can see that in the text above, over 80% of the forms are still native English. Many of the new French or Latin words have English endings or are combined with English morphemes: survived, underlining.

Interaction

• Substratum effect• Relexification• Cohabitation

– If a Norse immigrant marries an English native, what language will their children speak?

– extensive intermarriages (we’ll come back to this......)


the biblical view of language change: the tower of babel

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