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Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics. Language classification and change. Classification. Genetic Typological Areal. A very important discovery. Jones [1788] described Sanskrit:

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Historical linguistics

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  1. Historical linguistics Language classification and change

  2. Classification • Genetic • Typological • Areal

  3. A very important discovery • Jones [1788] described Sanskrit: • Sanskrit has a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity … than could possibly have been produced by accident.

  4. Language families • “Family trees”: linguists love trees! • The world has many (how many?) languages • They can be traced back to a small number of families • Which families do English and Chinese belong to? • The word “family” is used to describe different levels, so it is vague • The highest level node can also be referred to as the Proto-language, for example PIE

  5. Cognates • Words from the same root • Maternal and madreboth come from mater • (which 3 languages, please?) • Yule 184-187 show how linguists can rebuild PIE and other proto-languages • Read “Word Reconstruction” carefully • Understand the example • Do study question 3, including the reasons

  6. Change in grammar and vocabulary • Read about Syntactic changes and Semantic changes • Try Research Task D

  7. Typological classification • SVO SOV… • 6 possible types • Pro-drop vs non-pro-drop • Can you remember this? What is Chinese? • Accusative (Japanese, Latin) vs ergative (Basque) (from wikipedia.org) (Japanese? German?)

  8. Areal linguistics • There is no genetic relationship between languages, but they still share features, and they are spoken in the same region • Balkan linguistic union • Albanian, Greek, Bulgarian and Romanian are all IE languages • However, they are not closely related • And yet they share certain grammatical features (case, tense etc.)

  9. East Asian sprachbund • Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and others are probably unrelated genetically (like Chinese & English, also unrelated) • Various shared features • Tone • Classifiers • Monosyllabic morphemes • Topic-comment constructions • こちらは 田中さんです。 • 你的衣服,怎么这么脏? (wiki again) • Politeness (changing in Chinese)

  10. Lexical borrowing • Lots of languages borrow extensively from English • You can probably think of many words in Chinese… how about the other way round? • This is not really part of language classification though • Domain-specific borrowing • Legal / administrative vocab zh  vn • Cooking fr  en • Philosophy de  en • Calque • Skyscraper  gratte-ciel (fr), Wolkenkratzer (de), 摩天樓 (zh) • Brainwash, runway (can you say why?)

  11. English  Chinese loans • Phonologically similar • Easy to think of many examples • Calque/phonological hybrid • 冰淇淋 • 蹦及 • Cross-straits difference • 電子郵件, 伊媚兒, EMAIL • SIZE, CASE • Taiwan Office English (why??) • 麻煩你把candidate的resume fax 給我, 我明天要interview他.

  12. Sociolinguistics

  13. Variation in language • What are • Accent? • Dialect? • Language? • Draw a tree • For English (me) • For Chinese (students) • Give some examples of lexical differences, from English and Chinese.

  14. Social factors in accent • Differences in accent • What are the 3 main reasons one accent differs from another? • Place; ____; ____. • Accent differences • Taiwan Mandarin vs standard Mandarin • English • Labov (1987) investigated “4th floor” pronunciation, in NYC • 3 department stores (Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s, and Klein’s) • “higher class” speakers pronounce the /r/ • Trudgill (1974) in the UK • Found that “higher class” speakers do not pronounce the /r/

  15. Register: describe the differences, please • Would you mind giving me your full attention please? • Shut up! • I am writing to inform you • Just wanted to let you know • That is truly marvelous • That really rocks (what does rock mean?) • t/v distinctions

  16. Diglossia • This happens in a bilingual society • Each variety is used • With different people • In different situations • Or for different purposes • An easy example of this phenomenon, please? • Usually there is said to be an H. variety, and an L. variety. Can you guess what H. and L. mean? • Also Singapore; Philippines; England in the Middle Ages; many other examples

  17. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (almost certainly incorrect, but interesting anyway! • Sapir and Whorf, in the 1930s, said that language determines culture • Hopi (American Indian language) has a feature +/- animate • Hopi words for cloud and stone are animate • Whorf concluded that clouds and stones are animate in the Hopi world-view • Can you disprove the S-W hypothesis, using the knowledge you have of Spanish, French, Hungarian or German?

  18. What was that all about? • Definition of language • Description of the different levels of language. Analyzing • Sounds • Words • Sentences • Meaning

  19. And then… • Language and the mind • How language is acquired • How things sometimes go wrong • Today’s introduction to historical linguistics and language in society • Thanks for coming!

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