Historical linguistics?
Study of how languages change over time
Concerned with language reconstruction to help establish genetic relationships between languages
What are the main causes of language change?
- Articulatory simplification (sound changes)
- Spelling pronunciation
- Analogy and reanalysis
- Language contact
Articulatory simplification?
Speech sounds change in order to become simpler to articulate
Spelling pronunciation?
Spelling of a word can have affect on its pronunciation, resulting in language change over time
If spelling is different from way its pronounced, speakers may change pronunciation to match spelling
Analogy and reanalysis?
Analogy reflects speakers performance for regular patterns over irregular patterns
Reanalysis occurs when speakers try to attribute an internal structure (eg. compound or root+affix) to a word that formally was not broken down into component morphemes
Language contact?
When the speakers of a language frequently interact with the speakers of another language or dialect
Results in borrowing: when aspects of 1 language are adapted into another
Common in bilingualism or multillingualism
Hypercorrection?
When a speaker attempting to speak another dialect or language overgeneralizes particular rules
Sound change?
Involves change to the phonology of a language
Assimilation, dissimilation, metathesis, weakening and deletion, deaffrication
Assimilation: more similar
dissimilation: less similar
metathesis: segments change positions
weakening and deletion: consonant weakening then deletion
deaffrication: tS –> S
Assimilation
occurs when a segment becomes more similar to a nearby segment in its articulation (eg. place, manner, voicing)
Palatalization / affrication?
occurs when a velar [k, g] or alveolar [t, d] sound becomes an affricate before a front vowel.
Phonological split?
Occurs when 2 allophones of the same phoneme become distinct phonemes
Occurs when conditioning environment is lost over time
Phonological merger?
When 2 or more phonemes collapse into a single phoneme
Phonological shift?
When a series of phonemes are systematically modified so that their organization with respect to each other is altered
Great English vowel shift?
Each long vowel systematically shifted to a new vowel
Why did the Great vowel shift occur?
To maximize the use of vowel space: to spread out vowels in a maximally efficient and symmetrical way
Diphthongization?
Creation of new diphthongs
Helped maximize the vowel space
Involved merger: [ɛː] and [eː] > [iː]
How does morphology change over time
Create new affixes through process of borrowing and fusion
Lose affixes through process of sound change
Fusion? occurs when
2 independent words that are frequently adjacent become fused together to form a single word consisting of a base and an affix
