HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Discussant: Georgie Mae C. Martinez

HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
• Traditionally known as philology linguistics
• The study of language change . The oldest subfield of Modern Linguistics
• Success of Historical linguistics in the nineteenth century was a major force behind the
growth of Synchronic Linguistics in twentieth.
• Explores of different aspects of language.
• Brian D. Joseph ( American Linguistics ) define historical linguistics as a branch of linguistics
that is concerned with languages, and in general and with specific change in language, and in
particular
AIMS OF HISTORICAL LANGUAGE
• Shares the history of particular languages on the basis of existing written data.
• It studies the pre history of language by means of comparative reconstruction.
• It studies the ongoing change in language.

DOMAIN OF HISTORIC LINGUISTICS

• Focuses on the inter connections between different languages in the world.
• Studies their historical developments.
• Investigate how language evolve and changes through time.
• How multiple offspring languages can arise from one past parent language.
• How cultural contact between speakers of different languages can influence language
development and evolution.

PHILOLOGY
• Study of language; especially the study of how languages or how words develop.
COMPARATIVE METHOD OR COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY
• Concern the comparison or cross linguistics feature in order to establish the relatedness of
language.
• Way of identifying relations among language in the absence of written record. Featuring
comparison of two or more language.

CROSS LINGUISTICS
• Refers to the comparison of different languages.
• Different types or families.

SUBFIELDS
• COMPARATIVE METHOD
A branch of historical linguistics concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their
historical relatedness.
• ETYMOLOGY
Study of word histories. An explanation of where words came from.
• DIALECTOLOGY
Historical study of dialects. Grammatical variations and phonological changes within a dialect
over time.
•PHONOLOGY
Study of sound system which exist in a specific language. Can also concern comparative
approaches to language studies between different time, periods, dialects, languages.
•MORPHOLOGY/SYNTAX
How means of expression of a language evolve over time. Focused on inflectional system
grammatical structures, and word order.

WAVE THEORY OR WAVE MODEL

• Is a model or theory of language change in which a new language feature (innovation) of a
new combination of language feature spreads from a central region of origin in continuously
weakening concentric circles.
• Regards language as impermanent collections of features at the intersections of multiple
circles.

Figure 1 Euler Diagram of Wave model

EULER DIAGRAM OF WAVE MODEL
• Originally presented by Johannes Schmidt
• The circles are to be regarded diachronic they increase a diameter over time, they increase a
diameter over time, like the concentric waves on water surface struck by a stone.
•The circles are stable dialects, characters, or bundle of characteristics that have been
innovated and have become more stable over an originally small portion of the continuum.

FAMILY TREE MODEL

• Formulated by August Schleicher (1871)
• Shows the direction of change and the relations among languages.
• The older stage of language is located in the higher of the tree through the straight line of the
tree.

NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE CHANGE

• Studies the nature and causes of language change.
• Sound changes usually involve articulatory simplification as in the most type, assimilation.
• Analogy and reanalysis are important factors in morphological change.
• Borrowing is another important source of language change.
• Change can simultaneously affect all instances of a particular sound or form.
• Sociological linguistic factors can play an important role in determining whether or not a
linguistic innovation is ultimately adopted by the linguistic community at large

REFERENCES:
Nordquist, R., (2018 April 4) . An introduction to Historical Linguistics. Retrieved from https://
www.thoughtco.com
Lucid, C., (2017) . Historical linguistics. Retrieved from https:// www.slideshare.com