The Biblical view of language change: The Tower of Babel

1. The Biblical view of language change: The Tower of Babel

2. Babel Genesis 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.

3. Babel doesn’t really explain the obvious correspondences

4. Babel doesn’t really explain the obvious correspondences

5. Neogrammarians 1789 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))

6. 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)

7. 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

8. Neogrammarians What was the Neogrammarian theory of language change?

9. Neogrammarians What was the Neogrammarian theory of language change? Languages change systematically, not randomly

10. Systematic language change Relationships between languages are obviously systematic to some degree:

11. Systematic language change The Neogrammarians were particularly struck with the correspondences of the consonants in the Germanic and Romance language groups:

12. 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”:

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

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

15. Centum and Satem • Latin and Avestan for “100” • Possibly an early split Indo-European k k kentum group s satem group Latin centum Sanskrit śatám >s French cent > English cent Russian sto Lithuanian šimtas Gernanic hund- Try Deborah Anderson on http://popgen.well.ox.ac.uk/eurasia/htdocs/anderson.html

18. Germanic North Germanic East Germanic West Germanic

19. today: Mainland Norwegian Danish Swedish Atlantic Icelandic Faroese Germanic North Germanic East Germanic West Germanic East Danish Swedish West Norwegian Icelandic

20. Germanic North Germanic East Germanic West Germanic Gothic (extinct) Wulfilas 4th cent.

21. Germanic North Germanic East Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian High German Saxon Dutch German Platdeutch Dutch Flemish Afrikaans Frisian English

22. Italic Latin French Germanic North Germanic West Germanic Anglo- Frisian High German Saxonand Dutch Norse (Danish, Norwegian) English

23. First Germanic Consonant Shift= Grimm’s Law

26. English Icelandic German etc.

34. First Germanic Consonant Shift-summary

35. Thus the two basic neogrammarian concepts were: • The idea of a language family tree • The idea that sound laws are without exception • Early criticism: there are exceptions everywhere!

36. Some correpsondences were systematic: Indo Germanic d remains d in Latin, becomes t in Germanic (Second series)

37. Others were not systematic: (No correspondence with d in these words!

38. Sometimes the correspondence was too close: (d should not reappear as d!)

39. The Neogrammarian thesis was that when sounds do not match, there were four main reasons: • words change their meaning • caput ~ chef ~ tête • deus~Tiw ~ Týr • domus~timber

40. The Neogrammarian thesis was that when sounds do not match, there were four main reasons: • words change their meaning • langages borrow words from each other (loans) • Loans entering a language after a sound-change has ceased are not effected by it.

41. tunþ- tóþ tönn dent tooth dentist dandelion dnt- dent- dont-

42. The Neogrammarian thesis was that when sounds do not match, there were four main reasons: • words change their meaning • langages borrow words from each other • (loans) • analogy

43. analogy • Words take on each others’ characteristics IE: *kwetwer, *penkwe pinque Latin: quattuor, quinque French: quatre, cinque féower, fíf hwéower four, five whour

44. The Neogrammarian thesis was that when sounds do not match, there were four main reasons: • words change their meaning • langages borrow words from each other • (loans) • analogy • exceptions also systematic • further rules

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

46. 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)

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

48. 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.

49. 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.

50. language tree? • Many of the exceptions, then, work against the idea of a language tree ... ... obviously, we have to look for other effects ....