historical linguistics

Historical Linguistics

It is the study of how language has evolved in time to acquire the

current situation?

Language Change

• Language can change because of our physical,psychological or sociological nature, and language can unavoidably change too!

Where there is variation, there is likely to be change. Suzanne ROMAINE

ATTITUDES TO LANGUAGE CHANGE

• ‘Linguistic Conservatism’: almost all people in the world believe that old language was better!

But linguistic change is not only inevitable but in fact desirable ( new words, new pronounciations, grammatical structures)

Causes Of Language Change

• Immigration

• Geographical Distance

• Linguistic Pressure

• Invading Army

• Solidarity

Origin Of Human Vocal Language

• Population growth and Immigration

• Evolution

• Imitation of Natural Sounds

• Creationism

• Innateness

Population Growth and Immigration

• 100.000 years ago

• Eastern part of Africa, Sudan and Ethiopia

• There are 800.000 to 1.200.000 population was forced people to immigrate

• They had to speak and save names to exotic things..

• Then they have started to speak :D

Evolution• Physical development

of brain• The development of

vocal tract • Lateral development of

brain• The need to use signs• Enough time to

develop a sizeable lexicon

Creationism

Innateness : IT’S ALL IN YOUR MIND

• “We are born with a set of rules about language in our heads.” (LAD: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE)

Cognates

• Cognates are words from two or more languages which sound similar and refer to same thing.

• Cognates serve as clues that two or more languages are related to one another because of their similarities (form,meaning of words)

Language Families

Indo-European Language, Germanic, Old high german old english, English

Language Typology

• Agglutinative languages (turkish)• Inflectional languages (arabic)• Isolating languages (english)

Agglutinative language create words that consist of many morphemes.

Example: piştilendinPişti –le -n –di -n

• Inflectional languages gramatical relationships in words are obtained by changing internal structure of words.

Example: Kitab (which is written), ketebe (to write), katib(person who writes)

Isolating languages : each words carries one piece of information.

Example: piştilendin= you have been inadvertently put into a position you wouldnt like.

• Celtic Languages (celtic settlement)

• Old English (germanic invasions)

• Middle English (Norman Invasion)

• Early Modern English (Great Vowel shift)

• Late Modern English (Industrial Revolution)

Linguistic Changes

1- Phonological Change

GREAT VOWEL SHIFT: It has two major steps

-raising

-diphthongization

Raising in the GVS

e:

i:

o:

u:

Feet = /fe:t/ /fi:t/

Diphtongization of GVS

• Time = /ti:m/ /taım/

i:

aı

u:

au

• 2-Grammatical Change (word order)

SOV > SVO > VSO

FORGET ME NOT! DON’T FORGET ME

Maliye eski bakanı Eski maliye bakanı

3-Semantic Change

• Meaning Extension (hawk, dove)

• Meaning Narrowing (girl = old : female or male, now: female)

• Semantic Shift (Pejoration -,Amelioration+)Fond= old: foolish, now : loving (A)• Lexical Change (devinmek)