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1. Language Change LING 100

2. How does language change proceed? • We’ve seen how language families spread and interact • How languages constantly change, and diverge when separated

3. Language Change • What actually changes? • phonetics • phonology • morphology • syntax • Semantics • We’re talking primarily about internally motivated change in this chapter, not change as a result of language contact (borrowings, etc.)

4. Samples of change… • P. 484 • Check out the examples of Old English all the way up to Modern English and compare them. • What kinds of changes do you see?

5. Sound samples… • Wanna know what OId English sounded like? • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wl-OZ3breE • Middle English (taken from Canterbury Tales) • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfOMU

6. Sound change (Files 12.3) • All languages contain variation at all times • Sound change is complex, and probably reflects subtle changes in the distribution of variation that accumulate over time • Keeping this in mind, we can still get some mileage out of simplifying the situation • Sound change implies an initial state of affairs • that is replaced by another state of affairs at some historical point (remember though: change is not abrupt)

7. Sound Change • Sound changes as a result of some phonological process (~a rule) • a new rule, or the expansion of an old one • e.g. pin~pen - some English dialects or registers have the same vowel in both words • if this rule spread to all similar environments, or all mid front lax vowels became high front lax vowels, then it would count as a sound change • this would be an example of an unconditioned sound change - the vowel changes regardless of its phonetic environment

8. Sound Change • An example of a conditioned sound change: • /s/ aspiration in Spanish - occurs at the end of a syllable, e.g. ¿cómo ehtás/ehtáh? • /s/ at the beginning of a word is unchanged • s / V_V also changes in some dialects, so the process would be different, but it’s still conditioned

9. Sound Change • Types of conditioned and unconditioned sound changes are listed in Files pp 494-95 • NOTE!!! • These are closely related to the phonological processes we looked at synchronically earlier in the course • It might be good to review that chapter!

10. Sound Change • The big picture: • There is a close relationship between synchronic variation and diachronic sound (or other) change in language. • Changes originate as variation, then spread through the lexicon, affecting all instances of a sound (in a particular context, if it’s a conditioned change) • Once the change has spread through the whole lexicon, there’s no going back - the link to the earlier forms is broken

11. Sound Change - one more note • Phonemic changes alter the phonemic structure of a language • the pin~pen one we mentioned, if it took over all of English, would collapse the mid front lax and high front lax vowels into one phoneme • Phonetic changes alter allophones, but not phonemes • Spanish /s/-aspiration (/s/ becomes /h/) would create another allophone of /s/, but it’s still the same phoneme • This doesn’t necessarily correlate with whether the change is conditioned or not

12. Morphological Change • Refer to Files • Summary: morphological change is usually analogical, either by proportional analogy (a:b::c:X) or by paradigm leveling (where related words are changed to look more like each other • It also results from reinterpretation (Files calls this misanalysis) (if burglar has the suffix /er/, then there must be a verb to burgle) • We also add words by various processes (see p. 500/501)

13. Practice! • Exercise (13), p. 518 • What sounds changes that occurred between Proto-Quechua and its daughter language Tena? • Which sounds changes are conditioned and which are unconditioned?

14. Syntactic Change • Consider these examples: • “father our”… NP->N Det • “our father” NP-> Det N

15. Syntactic Change • Also: • fæder ure (subject) • fæder urne (object) • Change in marking of grammatical function from OE to ModE. • OE had nominal inflection (case marking) • ModE based on word order

16. Practice • (24), p. 521

17. Semantic Change • Semantic extensions • OE “dog” – particular breed • ModE “dog” – general term • Metaphorical extension: broadcast - “to scatter seed over field” – “to send radio waves through space” • Semantic reductions • OE “hund”- referred to dogs in general • ModE “hound” – particular breed of dogs

18. Semantic Change • Semantic elevations • Positive change in connotation • knight (OE cniht) initially meant “youth”/”military follower” and later on a romanticized warrior. • Semantic degradations • Acquisition of a pejorative meaning • ME “silly” – happy, innocent • ModE “silly” – foolish, inane

19. Practice • Think of terms you use to talk about computers and actions related to using the PC. • How many of these are old words that have been put to new use? • How many are totally new words? • Why do you think this is the case?

20. The Comparative Method • 2 crucial assumptions • sound-meaning correspondences are arbitrary • otherwise we couldn’t tell if languages were related, or if similarity was just meaning-related • Sound chage is regular • a sound either changes completely across a language • or it changes completely, within a given phonetic environment • By this assumption, we expect sister languages to have regular sound correspondences between words with the same meaning

21. The Comparative Method • Goals: • to discover which languages are related • to discover why and how languages change • Protolanguages: • we either have a historical record • or we can reconstruct protoforms (e.g. proto-Indo-European *ma:te:r (mother))

22. The Comparative Method • Procedure (Files pp 511ff) • compile cognate sets, eliminate borrowings • list sound correspondences across cognates • reconstruct sounds in each position • total correspondence • most natural development • Occam’s Razor (most frequent variant) • check for regularity (exceptions mean you have to revise!)

23. Example • A B C siza sesa siza • Sound correspondences s>s>s i>e>i z>s>z a>a>a • (p. 512) common sound changes • /s/ voices between vowels to [z] So *[s_sa] preliminary reconstruction

24. What about the vowel [i] or [e] in the 1st syllable? • Occam’s Razor: • It is easier to posit that i > e (one change) than to say that e>i (two changes)! = > Final Reconstruction: *[sisa]

25. Practice • Group up and do the reconstructions pp. 523 (36), (37), (38)