Language history and change 2

Language history and change

By Camilo Saavedra

Proto-Indo-European family

of languages

different geographical

areas

common features

A common ancestor

A kind of “Grandmother” of

languages

Comparative reconstruction

It was found out through

similarities in different

languages

their relation to an ancestor

In order to find

Cognates

a similar word in one language and

another

form or pronounciation

process in wich cognates are compared in order to find similarities

Cognates Examples

In comparative reconstruction there are two important principles:

The majority principle

Principles

The natural development principle

the ones more similar demonstrate the less that those languages

have changed from the proto-language

are a series of rules in language change (or

evolution) that show the antiquity of that

language in relation to the proto-language.

This shows that the more the word respects these rules, the more similar it is towards the proto-language.

The natural development principle

English language change

Old English (VII-XI)

Middle English (XI-XV)

Modern English (XV-present days)

Old English

Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) invaded the

British Isles in the V century

Words belonging to this period: mann (man), drincan (drink), etan (eat)

Then, another northern-

european tribe arrived, The

Vikings

. They brought the Old Norse,

words like: give, leg, skin

Anglo-saxon invasion

Viking invasion

Middle English

Normans arrival to the British Isles in 1066. William “The

Conqueror” (a norman) was

crowned King of England

French relevance during this period, although English never ceased being spoken (by the lower class)

Words like: defense, court,

faith, army

Norman invasion

From 1400 to 1600 English started changing becoming Modern English

(more specifically, early modern English)

Middle to Modern English transition

Pronounciation Syntax Lexicon

Pronounciation change

Not only some sounds changed, but also

some others disappeared. i.e. the

voiceless velar fricative /x/ wich in old english pronounciation of nicht as [nixt], but is absent in the present-

day form of night [nayt]

Metathesis

is a reversal in two adjoining sounds, had changed the

pronounciation of some words

Prothesis

That is the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word

Metathesis example

Prothesis example

Syntactic changes

In the transition from old english to modern english, we can find several differences in the order of the sentence, i.e.

Lexical changes

A lot of borrowed words have been added to the english language along its evolution, from latin, greek and other languages.

New words were created

Some other words have ceased to be used

In terms of meaning, there are two processes:

Broadening and Narrowing

Meaning (semantic) features

Broadening Narrowing

A word that previously had only one meaning, now it has some others, for example:

In old english the word “dogca” was used to refer to any breed of dogs, but now, its evolution “dog” is used to refer to any breed.

Is the reverse process, a word that before had several different meanings or uses, now it has only one, for example:

The old english word “mete” refered to any kind of food, now it refers only to a specific breed, “meat”

It’s worth mentioning that this process of change in the language was not from one day to another, on the contrary a language changes gradually, it takes time and requires some factors to make it possible.

Another important point to conclude is that language is in a continuous process of evolution, it’s always changing.