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Title: History of Linguistics Lecture 5


1
History of LinguisticsLecture 5
  • Historical Linguistics
  • The Comparative Method and Internal Reconstruction

2
Historical Linguistics
  • Origins of historical linguistics (Renaissance,
    17th/18th century)
  • normative grammar what is good Dutch, English,
    etc.? (answer the oldest stages of the language,
    before corruption took place)
  • religion what was the language of Paradise?
    What happened during and after the Babylonian
    confusion of tongues?

3
Normative grammar
  • Balthasar Huydecoper
  • Proeve van Taal- en Dichtkunde, in vrymoedige
    aanmerkingen op Vondels vertaalde herscheppingen
    van Ovidius
  • Visscher Tirion, Amsterdam, 1730

4
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5
From the preface
  • Om het goede van het kwaade te onderscheiden, en
    op eene overtuigende wijze voor te stellen, zijn
    de Voorbeelden der Ouden ten alleruitersten
    noodzaakelijk.
  • To distinguish the good from the bad, and to
    present this distinction in a convincing manner,
    the examples from ancient texts are of the utmost
    importance

6
Goal of historical linguistics of the Huydecoper
variety
  • enrichment and purification of the native tongue
  • by looking at older stages, modern loan words and
    modern variants can be rejected
  • by looking for old, discarded words, alternatives
    to newfangled barbarisms can be found

7
Note
  • During the early modern period, all the main
    languages of Europe underwent a phase of
    standardization and purification, because Latin
    was abandoned, gradually, as the lingua franca of
    administration and science
  • Standardization requires some reflection on what
    variants should be normative
  • Historical arguments are more neutral, hence
    persuasive, than sociopolitical ones

8
Example (from Huydecoper)
  • Vondel te inf en inf te dansen en springen
  • Huydecoper te should be repeated
  • te dansen en te springen
  • So who is right? H. Me, look at all the ancient
    examples of coordinated infinitives
  • In Hoeksema 1995, I show that the Vondel/
    Huydecoper disagreement is still reflected in
    modern Dutch judgments

9
Religious background
  • Language of paradise/the original language
  • Hebrew?
  • Dutch?
  • Unknown?
  • How do we find out?

10
Still an open question today
  • was there an original single language ?
    (monogenesis)
  • or did language come about independently in a
    number of places?

11
and related to this...
  • are similarities among the languages of the world
    evidence of a single ultimate source,
  • due to genetic factors (innate language system)
  • or due to certain preferences naturally arising
    independently?

12
Lambert ten Kate 1674-1731
  • Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de
    Nederduytsche (1710)
  • Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het verhevene deel
    der Nederduitsche sprake
  • (1723)

13
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14
  • (fairly) worked-out account of the historical
    relationships between the Germanic languages,
    including Gothic, Icelandic, Old High German, Old
    English, etc.
  • extensive study of the system of strong verbs
    (uniquely Germanic, among Indo-european)

15
  • Ten Kate was one of the instigators of the
    comparative method
  • influenced the work of Jakob Grimm (19th century)
  • important also for the history of Dutch
    phonology, as he gave detailed comments on
    pronunciation in various dialects of Dutch

16
Sir William Jones THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY
DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February,
1786
  • The Sanskrit language, whatever be its
    antiquity, is of 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,
    both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of
    grammar, than could possibly have been produced
    by accident so strong indeed, that no philologer
    could examine them all three, 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 both the Gothic and the Celtic,
    though blended with a very different idiom, had
    the same origin with the Sanskrit and the old
    Persian might be added to the same family, if
    this were the place for discussing any question
    concerning the antiquities of Persia.

17
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18
Johann Christoff Adelung (1732-1806)
  • Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde, mit
    dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe
    fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarte, fortgesetzt
    von J.S. Vater, Berlin 1806-1817.
  • Early investigation of the connections between
    European languages and Sanskrit
  • Early overview of the languages of the world
    from a general point of view

19
Sound Laws
  • A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical
    Indo-European Linguistics
  • Edited Translated by W. P. Lehmann
  • Now available on the World Wide Web
  • http//www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-d
    ocs/lehmann/reader/reader.html

20
Rasmus Rask
  • Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller
    Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse" (Copenhagen, 1818)
  • An investigation concerning the source of the
    old Northern or Icelandic language

21
Rask statement of sound laws
  • When in such words one finds agreements between
    two languages, and that to such an extent that
    one can draw up rules for the transition of
    letters from one to the other, then there is an
    original relationship between these languages
    especially when the similarities in the
    inflection of languages and its formal
    organization correspond e.g.

22
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23
Jakob Grimm
  • Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm Kinder- und Hausmärchen
    (1812-1815)
  • Jakob Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854-1960)
  • Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (1819-1837)

24
Grimms Laws
  • Yet more astounding than the accord of the
    liquids and the spirants is the variation of the
    lip, tongue and throat sounds, not only from the
    Gothic, but also the Old High German arrangement.
    For just as Old High German has sunk one step
    down from the Gothic in all three grades, Gothic
    itself had already deviated by one step from the
    Latin (Greek, Sanskrit). Gothic is related to
    Latin exactly as is Old High German to Gothic.
    The entire twofold sound shift, which has
    momentous consequences for the history of
    language and the rigor of etymology, can be so
    expressed in a table
  • GK         P.       B.        F.             
    T.          D.      TH.       
    K.         G.          CH.
  • Goth      F.        P.        B.          
    TH.           T.       D.         -.         
    K.          G.
  • OHG     B.(V)    F.        P.             
    D.          Z.       T.          G.      
    CH.         K.    

25
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26
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27
Examples
Latin English
piscis fish
tenuis thin
centum hund(red)
pater father
tres three
octo eight
quod (kw) what (hw)
28
No change
  • After /s/
  • stare - stand/staan/stehen
  • spuo - spew/spuwen
  • piscis - fisk

29
Karl Verner
30
  • "Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung,"
    Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung
    auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen,
    23.2 (1875), 97-130

31
Verners Problem
  • Grimms Law had certain ill-understood
    exceptions, making it more a tendency, than a
    regular correspondence rule
  • e.g. brôþar in Germanic corresponds with frater
    in Latin, bhrotar in Sanskrit
  • môdar in Germanic corresponds with mater in
    Latin, matar in Sanskrit

32
so...
  • the interdental (th) in mother is not original
    Germanic, but a later invention of the English
  • Cf. Old Saxon
  • Thar ina thiu modar fand (Hel. 818)
  • there the mother found him

33
  • So what explains the difference between mother
    (d) and brother (th)?

34
  • The only person who has sought an answer to
    this question, as far as I know, is Scherer in
    the passage just cited. He assumes that the shift
    to voiced stops occurs "in frequently used words
    (like fadar, môdar)" consequently the regular
    shift occurs in less frequently used words (139).
  • I believe that the venerable author did not
    wish to attach great weight to this attempt at
    explanation and that he permitted himself to
    mention it only as a conceivable possibility. A
    careful scrrutiny of the Germanic vocabulary is
    not favorable to his thesis. Is it probable that
    fadar and môdar were used more frequently than
    broþar? In Ulfila's writings moreover môdar does
    not even appear, the word aiþei always being used
    instead and he uses fadar only once, otherwise
    however atta, while his broþar has no parallel
    synonym at all.

35
Verners solution
  • The original indo-european accent,
  • as it is preserved in Sanskrit (and sometimes
    ancient Greek), but not in Germanic, where it was
    lost some time after the application of Grimms
    Law
  • Sanskrit bhrátar, vs matár, pitár

36
  • When the accent in Sanskrit rests on the root
    syllable, we have the voiceless fricative for the
    root final in Germanic on the other hand, when
    the accent in Sanskrit falls on the ending, the
    Germanic forms show a voiced stop for the root
    final.

37
modern formulation
  • the apparently unexpected voicing of voiceless
    fricatives occurred if they were non-initial and
    immediately preceded by a syllable that carried
    no stress in PIE
  • bonus not only the voiceless fricatives
    resulting from Grimms Law are involved in
    Verners Law, but also the voiceless fricative
    /s/ this /s/ becomes /z/, and by rotacism may
    later turn into /r/

38
Compare Middle Dutch
vriesen kiesen wesen
vroos koos was
vroren koren waren
gevroren gekoren gewezen
39
internal reconstruction
  • instead of comparing forms in across languages
    (comparative method), one may also compare
    related forms of a word within a language
  • this is called internal reconstruction
  • Verners Law was a big impetus for internal
    reconstruction as a source of evidence

40
example
  • Rijen/rijden/gerejen/gereden
  • Vrijen/vrijden/gevreeën/gevreden
  • Based on this evidence, we may assume that the
    /d/ is original in rijden and got weakened to a
    glide, rather than vice versa

41
Junggrammatiker
  • school of linguists, originating in Leipzig in
    the 1870s
  • influenced by Verner, they proposed that sound
    changes should be exceptionless
  • and that laws such as Grimms law are not
    generalizations about data, but comparable to
    e.g. Newtons laws of gravitation general truths,
    not statistical tendencies

42
Some prominent Junggrammatiker
  • Berthold Delbrück
  • August Leskien
  • Hermann Paul
  • Hermann Osthoff
  • Karl Brugmann
  • Eduard Sievers
  • Wilhelm Braune

43
Hermann Paul
44
Tenets
  • sound changes are exceptionless
  • unless they involve analogical change
  • (i.e. change in a word, not change in a
    sound)
  • exceptions may seem to occur because of loan
    words, or dialect mixture

45
analogical change
freeze vriesen vriezen frieren
froze vroos vroor fror
froze vroren vroren froren
frozen gevroren gevroren gefroren
46
  • more in general morphology may bring about
    changes in words that are not regular sound
    changes, but allomorphic in nature
  • example Umlaut in German used to be phonological
    in nature, but now it is morphological
  • Example Vati, Mutti, Fundi (not Väti, etc.)

47
loans
Dutch German
tijd Zeit
te zu
tuin Zaun
tijger Tiger
typisch typisch
tante Tante
48
dialect mixture
gluren loeren
meesmuilen smoel
lui lieden
49
Family tree vs Wave model
  • Indo-european branches out in the form of a
    family tree
  • This is a model of separation, loss of contact
  • For contact-induced changes, a wave model is
    proposed
  • Wave model important in dialectology (expansion
    theories)
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