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Language Change Reconstructing Dead Languages

Language Change Reconstructing Dead Languages . Lec . 9. Historical Evidence. How do we discover phonological changes? How do we know how Shakespeare or Chaucer or the author of Beowulf Pronounced their versions of E nglish? We have no recordings that give us direct knowledge.

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Language Change Reconstructing Dead Languages

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  1. Language ChangeReconstructing Dead Languages Lec. 9

  2. Historical Evidence How do we discover phonological changes? How do we know how Shakespeare or Chaucer or the author of BeowulfPronounced their versions of English? We have no recordings that give us direct knowledge.

  3. 1. Spelling The spelling in early manuscripts tells us a great deal about the sound systems of older forms of modern languages; two words spelled differently were probably pronounced differently. Fond / bond Found / pound

  4. 2. Non-English words The spelling of borrowed words that appear in English manuscripts reveals a particular letter sound correspondence

  5. 3. Private Letters Linguists prefer letters written by native speller, who will misspell words according to the way they pronounce them

  6. 4. Prescriptive Grammarians The writings of the prescriptive grammarians of the period; in prescribing how people should speak , they told us how people actually spoke

  7. 5. Puns & rhythms in literature Two words rhyme if the vowels and final consonants are the same BENVOLIO: ‘tis in vain to seek him here that means not to be found’ ROMEO: ‘he jests at scars that never felt a wound’.

  8. 6. Dialect differences Dialect differences may provide clues as to what earlier stages of a language were like. By comparing the pronunciation of various words in several dialects, we can draw conclusions about earlier forms and see what changes took place in the inventory of sounds and in the phonological rules

  9. The genetic classification of languages When we examine the languages of the world, we perceive similarities and differences among them that provide evidence for degrees of relatedness or non-relatedness. e.g. English & German e.g. Latin & Sanskrit See the Indo-European Tree of Languages

  10. Languages of the world • How many languages do linguists speak? How many languages are there in the world? • Who are polyglots? • Ideological issues & mutual intelligibility • Hindi & Urdu (Indo-Iranian languages) • Mutually unintelligible dialects spoken in China

  11. Classifying languages of the world • Language family

  12. Languages of the world

  13. Classifying languages of the world • Language traits There are six (6) possible orders • *SVO  ENGLISH / FRENCH / SWAHILI / THAI • *VSO  IRISH / ARABIC / HEBREW • *SOV  TURKISH / JAPANESE / PERSIAN • OVS  APALAI (Brazil) / BARASANO (Colombia) • OSV  APURINA & XAVANTE (Brazil) • VOS  CAKCHIQUEL (Guatemala) / HUAVE (Mexicao)

  14. Why do languages change? • No one knows exactly how or why languages change • Changes are more gradual, particularly in the phonological & syntactic system • A basic cause of change is the way children acquire language. • New things • Assimilation • Analogic change

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