‘Oxford introductions to Language Study Series Editor H.G. Widdowson Published in tis series: z Guy Cook: Applied Linewistce Rod Elis: Second Language Acquistion Claire Kramsch Language and Culture ‘Tim McNamara: Language Testing Peter Roach Phonetics Thomas Scovel: Psycholinguistics Bernard Spolsky: Sociolinguistics Peter Verdonk: Stylistics 2 H.G.Widdowson: Linguistics George Yule: Pragmatics OXFORDOXFORD Asin ck re A Gp Tor Chee Nair ‘Sangha Tai Tokyo Toes rh Ono Uni Pr ar No wnenbaed pocopins rents elon ceca ‘em age i he sae ao i orem seen at gn ror IUrechics iy caries, Contents Preface suney Language change as a matter of fact Aatieudes to language change Language sate and process ‘The aims and scope of historical linguistics Reconstructing the past: data and evidence “The data of historical linguistics The writen evidence Sources of evidence Comparing and reconstructing languages Correspondences between languages Laws ofchange Internal reconstruction Vocabulary change Coining new words ‘Changes of meaning ‘Why do word meanings change? Grammatical change Morphological change Syntactic change Sound change low sounds are produced Phonetic change Phonemic change 5 5 26 3S 38 43 46 se8 Language contact Borrowing from other languages Convergence and linguistic areas Language birth: pidgins and ereoles anguage death 7 How and why do languages change? Functional explanations Psycholinguistic explanations: language acquisition Sociolinguistic explanations ‘The origin and spread of changes 8 Postscript farther developments Socio-historical linguistics and historical pragmatics volutionary linguistics Standardization and language planaing Conclusion Readings References Glossary ss 3s 59 6 68 na 76 Br sr S 83 8 3 Preface Purpose ‘What justification might there be fora series of introductions ro language study? After all, linguistic is already wel served with introductory texts: expositions and explanations which are comprehensive, authoritative, and excellentin cheir way. Generally Speaking, however, their way isthe essentially academic one of| providing a detailed initiation into the discipline of linguistics, and they tend tobe lengthy and technical: appropriately so, given their purpose, But they can be quite daunting to the novice. There is nso a need for a more general and gradual introduction «0 language: transitional texts which will ease people into an understanding of complex ideas. This series of introductions is designed to serve this need “Their purpose, therefore isnot to supplant but to support the ‘more academically oriented introductions to ingsties: to prepare the conceptual ground. They are based on the belief thar itis an advantage t have a broad map of the erain sketched out before fone considers its more specific features on a smaller scale, a ‘general context in reference co which the derail makes sense. Itis Sometimes the case that students are introduced to detail without it being made clear what itis a detail of. Clearly, a general understanding of ideas is not sufficient: there needs to be closer scrutiny. But equally close scrutiny can be myopic and mean- ingless unless itis related tothe larger view. Indeed it can be said thar the precondition of more particular enquiry isan awareness fof whan, in general, the particulars are about. This series isdesigned to provide this large-scale view of different areas of language seudy. As such it can serve as preliminary to (and precondition for) the more specific and specialized enquiry which Students of linguistics are required ro undertake But the serics is not only intended to be helpful to such students There are many people who take an interest in language without being academically engaged in linguistics per se. Such people may recognize che importance of understanding language for their own lines of enquiry or for their own practical purposes, ‘or quite simply for making them aware of something, which figures so centrally in their everyday lives. If linguistics has revealing and relevant things to say about language, this should presumably not be a privileged revelation, but one accessible to people other shan linguists. These books have been so designed as| toaccommodate these broader interests too: they are meant to be introductions to language more generally 2s well as linguistics asa discipline. Design The books inthe serie sare four parts: Survey, allcutto the same basic pattern. There eadings, References, and Glossar. Survey ‘This isa summary overview of the main features ofthe area of language study concerned: its scope and principles of enquiry, its basic concerns and key concepts. These are expressed and ex plained in ways which ae intended to make them as accessible as possible ro people who have no prior knowledge or expertise in the subject. The Survey is written to be readable and is un clutered by the customary scholarly references. In this sense itis simple. But ies aot simplistic, Lack of specialist expertise des ‘ot imply an inability to understand or evaluate ideas. Ignorance means lack of knowledge, not lack of intelligence. The Survey, therefore, is meant to be challenging. It draws a map of the subject afea in such a way as‘ stimulate thought and to invite a Critical participation in the exploration of ideas. This kind of ‘conceptual cartography hasits dangers ofcourse: the selection of ‘whats significant and the manner of is representation, will not be to the liking of everybody, particularly not, perhaps, ta some ‘of those inside the discipline. But these surveys are written inthe belie tae there must be an alternative toa echnical account on the one hand, and an idiots guide on the other if linguistics sto bbe made relevant to people in the wider world Readings Some people will be content to read, and perhaps re-read, the summary Survey. Others will want ro pursue the subject and so willuse the Survey as the preliminary for more detailed study. The Readings provide the necesary transition. For here the reader is presented with txts extracted from the specialist literature. The ‘purpose ofthese Readings is quite different from the Survey. [eis {ogetreadersto focus onthe specific of what issaid, and how itis sai, in these source texts. Questions are provided to further this purpose: they are designed to direct attention to points in each text, how they compare across rexts, and how they deal withthe issues discussed in the Survey. Te idea iso give readers an intial familiarity with the mote specialist idiom of the linguistics literature, where the issues might not be so eadily accesible, and to encourage them into close critica reading Refer One way of moving into more detailed study is through the Readings. Another is through the annorated References in the thied section of each book. Here there is a selection of works {books and articles) for farther reading. Accompanying comments indicate how these deal in more detail with the issues discussed in the different chaprers ofthe Survey. Glossary (Certain terms inthe Survey appear in bold. These are terms used ina special or technical sense in the discipline. Their meanings acemade clear inthe discussion, bu they are also explained inthe Glossary at the end of each book, The Glossary is cross referenced tothe Survey, and therefore serves a the same time as an index. This enables readers to locate the term and what it signifies inthe more general discussion, thereby, in effect, using the Survey asa summary work of reference.Use “The series has been designed so as to be flexible in use. Each ttle ie separate and self-contained, with only the basic format in| ‘common. The four sections ofthe formar, as described here, can he drawn upon and combined in different ways, as required by the needs, o interests, of different readers. Some may be content with the Sarvey and the Glossary and may not want to follow up the suggested References, Some may not wish to venture into the Readings. Again, the Survey might be considered as appropriate preliminary reading for a course in applied linguistics or teacher fducation, and the Readings more appropriate for seminar discussion during. the course. In short, the notion of an ineroduction will mean different things to different people, but in all cases the concern isto provide access to specialist knowledge tnd stimilate an awareness ofits significance. This series as a ‘whole has been designed to provide this access and promote this {wareness in respect to different areas of language study. Author's acknowledgements The fact that the Oxford Introductions 10 Language Study include a volume on historical linguistics bears wimess othe fact fat this time-honoured linguistic discipline has taken up a tenteal place within the field again. This book tries to make the Subject accessible to the uninitiated reader and to show how closely historical linguistics is inked to the other linguistic areas Covered in the series, My thanks go to Oxford University Press And the series editor, H.G, Widdowson, fr including this volume in the series, Quite a: number of people have provided me with valuable input and have helped to make this a better and more readable book. First and foremost, I owe a very special debt of gratitude to HG, Widdowson for his continuous support and invaluable advice through all the stages of my writing; he has made numerous proposals for improvement, both in regard 10 the overall structure of the book and to countless details, and has painstakingly read through the various drafts ofthe manuscript. ‘The following fiends and colleagues have read the whole or substantial parts of the manuseriptin various stages and have made valuable suggestions: Clausdirk Polines, Hans Plazes, Angelika Hirsch, Ute Smit, Barbara Seidlhofe, Gunther Kaltenbéck Nikolaus Rite provided me with valuable information on ‘nco-Darwinian evolutionary theory. My heartfele thanks to all of them. Iam much indebted to the people at Oxford University Press forall their support. Las, but not least, my special thanks 0 £0 my wife, who has not only read hoth the manuscript and the proofs, but has also been a constant source of encouragement. London, October 2000SECTION 1 Survey4 Language change as a matter of fact All physical aspects ofthe universe and all aspects of human life re subject to change and languages reno excepion-Individual Changes can be que abrupe and obvious, as when new words | ake an appearance and become popular. Normally, however, language change is gradual, almost imperceptible, a withthe slow alterations in pronunciation when one generation speaks Slghly diferey from anothe. Linguistic changes tend to he the esl of two equivalent forms coensting a variants for some | ime, and one giving way tothe oter Two words, for example, {— Grtwo ways of pronouncing the same word, may coexist inthe Same specch community for some time, hut may be used. hy diferent subgroups oF on different ocssions. However, for reasons tobe discused Inter, such variant forms may begin 0 onypete an finally one wll dominate andthe othe deci. Sill ingusde changes may be evident in everyday exper ace, and people may notice (and sometimes disapprove) when ‘words are ied of pronounced in different ways; but language Change is mos obvious ona large scale when we lok at older texts ofa particular language, and the Further back we go i history, the more obvious the changes become. Here is an example of Old English, eaken from the time of King Allred the Late noth century aD}, for which a translation ia modem English given below (1) Alfred kyning hated gretan Werfer® biscep his wordum Iufice ond freondlice ond Qe cyan hate, fet mecom wide oft on gemynd, hwelce wiotan iu waron giond Angeleyan aegier ge godcundra hada ge woruldcundra, ond hu sgesliglicatida 0a waron giond Angeleynn. LANGUAGE CHANGE 3,[King Alfred sends greetings t0 Bishop Warferth with his loving and friendly words, and I would declae to you that it has very often come to my mind what wise men there were formerly throughout the English people, both in sacred and in secular orders, and how there were happy. times. then throughout England.) Here the language has changed almost out of all recognition. [A linguistic discussion ofthe passage would go beyond the scope ofthis ingroduction, but itis evident that only a small number of ‘words ofthe modern language sill carry obvious traces oftheir heredity, and even these have changed in various ways, e4 freondlice,lflice > friendly, lovely. Some ofthe eters used have disappeared from modern English, such as Ofor modern th, or forthe vowel in modern standard English hat ‘Aux here is an example from Middle English, almost half ‘of millennium later, taken from the Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (2) Ye goon to Caunterbury—God yow speede, ‘The blisul mastir quite yow youre moede! ‘And wel woot, as ye goon by the weye, Ye shapen yow to talen and o pleye; For tewely, confort ne myrthe is noon ‘Taide by the weye doumb as a stoon; The language here i less remote. There are obviously several differences in spelling, for example, the endings of verbs (goon, talen, both with plural ending (et, and in some word forms {woot know", ye"you'). Ifyou heard the passage read aloud, the distance from mosen English would be somewhat greater But most of the features in (2} we can recognize as related to the English language as we use it today. ‘And finaly, heres passage from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’ Dream iti. 335) writen about two centuries after (Chaucer, at the end ofthe sixteenth century (5) Lysander Now she holds me not. Now follow ifthou dart, to try whose eight, (Of thine or mine, is most in Helena Demetrius Follow! Nay, I'l go wih thee, cheek by jow. Hermia You, mises, all this coils long of you: Nay, go not back. Helena Lill no erase you, No longer stay in your curst company Your hands than mine are quicker fora frays My legs are longer, though, to run ay. ‘This isin many ways, including che pronunciation, very close to modetn English, But there ace still obvious differences on all linguistic levels, especially with regard to grammar and vocabu: lary. In the second person singular of verbs, we notice che ending «tn dart and the singular personal pronouns thoulthe besides Jot. The negative sentence she holds me not would be expressed inmodern English as she does wot hold me, and the word order of Your hands than mine are quicker fr a fray sounds definitely peculiar today: None of the words looks particularly unusual, though in some cases their meanings have changed. The word ti for example, wll be familia to many because it also occurs in Hamers famous phrase shuffled off cis moral coil’. But they twill almost certainly not know its sixtenth-century meaning of arm’ Tn looking at a particular language over a longer period of time i becomes apparent that language change does noc esult in iifferent distinct stages of a language but in a historical con- tinuum, so that speakers easly understand the language of the generations immediately before and after them, but meet increasing diffculties in understanding chronologically remote stages oftheir language. Ths closely resembles the well-known phenomenon of the dialect continaum: adjacent geogeaphical Yarieties of a language are mutually intelligible, but dialece Speakers may have problems with geographically remote varieties oftheir language. The close relationship beeween temporal and spatial linguistic differences may also be noticeable in another respect: thus, revelling through rural Britain from south to north for from east go west can in many ways resemble a journey through the history of English, since rural dialects have often preserved older forms of language. Linguistic change, then, is not restricted to particular lan- guages or generations, bu is a universal fact. This does not mean | that people wil always be happy to accept the inevitable.Attitudes to language change Languageis so closely associated with social identity thatitis not surprising that people have steong felings about it. Language change can be unsettling anda widespread attitude istosee tas.a ‘change forthe worse. Speakers of cifferent periods and cultures have often tended to think that their own language is inferior ro thae of their forebears. For them, language change is a matter of decline or decay. In some societies this attitude can be traced back to the biblical account of the Tower of Babel. Here the change from one common language toa diversity of different languages is presented as divine punishment for sinful behaviour. Ta the history of European languages, negative statements on language change as corruption and decay clearly predominate ‘over neutral ones, while positive views sem ro be conspicuously absent. In mos of the emerging European national languages we Find increasing atcempts to “purify” sind coliy the language, ie tox prescriptive rules of correct usage and thus stop language change. This task was partly undertaken by offical institutions, so-called ‘language academies, such as the Accademia della Ceusea in Florence (founded in 1382), che French Académie francaise (1635), and various German ‘language societies’ ofthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In England the eighteenth century, with its striving for regulariey and order, was especially hostile to the idea of linguistic change, but here eoditetion was ‘mainly carried out by influential individuals. Many of the leading intellectual and literary figures of the period, such as Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson, vehemently opposed the idea of language change. For Johnson, author of the famous Dictionary ofthe English Language (1755) for instance al linguistic change was ‘of tself an evil In the Preface o his Dictionary, he states: (4) tongues [i.e languages) like goveenments, have a natural tendency 0 degeneration; we have long preserved our ‘constitution, ler us make some struggles for our language. ‘This comparison of language with human institutions like governments was in no way restricted to England. For the ‘American politician Benjamin Franklin, language reflected social reality and the supposed ‘degeneration’ of language directly tmicrored the degeneration of contemporary society. 4 ‘This‘complaine ration’ (as ithas been called) has continued tp t0 the present century. Here is a recent example from a popular book on linguistic correctness by an American art critic, expressing a view echoed by educated laypersons in many ‘countries. (See also Section 2, Readings, Text 1. (s) [Bly and large, linguistic changes are caused by the ignorance of speakers and writers, and in the last few centuries—given ou school, dictionaries, and books on grammar—such ignorance could have been, like the live netle or poison iy itis, uprooted {John Simon, Paradignss Lost, 1976) ‘Notonly individuals, But also governmental instirtions have shown emotional or ideologically motivated attudes towards certain changes. In Navi Germany attempts were made to assert the integrity of the language by promoting words of German character even for established foreign words (Femsprecher ‘telephone’, literally “distant speaker’, instead of Telephon). But even democratic governments are not immune from nationalistic tendencies in tying t0 stop excessive borrowing of foreign "words. A recent case in point has been the French government’ (unsuccessful) measures against the use of “ranglais', English borrowings such as le weekend and le shopping, by means of governmental deroes and attempts to replace chem with French tvords coined by an official committe, e.g le baladeur for le twalleman. Though reversion to a real or imagined earlier (and ‘purer) state of language also involves change, this type of change is seen to be ‘inthe sight diretion’ and acceptable for political reasons. Een professional linguists have in the past heen prone to a conservative attitude 10 language change. Early nineteenth- century scholars regarded language asa growing organism witha stage of grout, a brief moment of evolutionary perfection, and subsequent decay. Thus, for example, the disappearance of case inflections between Old English and Modern English or from Latin eo French, and their partial replacement by prepositional phrases (for example, Old English freondes vs. English of the [Fronds Latin amici vs, French de ami“of the friend) was seen 8 indicating decineContemporary linguists in general hold a neutral ot ev positive atitude towards change. On the positive side it has been aimed that changes are a necessary development to make languages more communicatively effective as they become attuned to changing socal needs. This also applies to che promotion of conscious linguistic changes to achieve this goal, suchas language planning and measures to make langage “politically correct (cf. ‘Chapter 8). Furthermore, changes have been viewed as necessary therapeutic measures to restore the halance and symmetry of the Tinguistc system, o a8 moves towards the simplification of the grammar. In such a view, the change of language over periods of time ia function oF influences operating at any given time. In this respect, the study of history (of language or of anything else) depends on an understanding ofthe present, just as the present is tobe understood by reference tothe past. Language state and process [Nevertheless in much modern linguisties past and present have been separated into different areas of enguity. It has been a ‘common assumption that synchronic linguistics, which concerns itself withthe state of languages ata given time, in particular the present, is most conveniently carried out in distegard of the Findings of historical or lachrone linguistics about the processes of language development overtime, However, this strict division is based on a misunderstanding ofthe relationship between these two aspects of the study of language. On the one hand, the synchronie study of linguistic systems can provide insights chat can be used in reconstructing thee past. On the other hand, we Should also recognize that the implied assumption that syn ron linguistic systems are completely systematic, static and hhomogeneous, is a fiction. All of them are in some respects tunsystematc: the numerous irregular relics of eaier systems (he ‘exceptions’ to the rule}, which are simply inexplicable in synchronic terms, can only be explained by reference to past States and developments. The unstable state ofa language at any tiven point ofimeis the consequence of historical processes, and its very instability is evidence that these processes continue to ‘operat in the present. Fqually, there is a close inerrlationship between synchronic linguistic variation, ic. the coexistence of mote or less equivalent variants at given time, and diachronic linguistic change. The [growing awareness of these facts over the past thirty yearshas led to a major reorientation in the discipline, wit historical linguist ies again taking its rightful place in the eld of language stu. The aims and scope of historical linguistics “The beginning of historical linguistic studies inthe modern sense ‘of the word dates back more than two hundred years, though there isa much older tradition of language study in some cultures. Soi isnot surprising that there have been very differen scholarly traditions and approaches to historical linguistics, each of which sets particular research objectives. and. calls’ for different rethodologis. Wecan identify these broad areas of enquiry 1 The study ofthe history of particular languages on the basis of existing writen data, 2 The study of the prehistory of languages by means of ‘comparative reconstruction, whereby the unrecorded past is inferred on the evidence ofthe data that are available from late period, 5 The study of ongoing changes in a language, ie. changes happening at the present cme. However fascinating these issues may be in their own right (especially for historical linguists themselves) they should be linked to other and more abstract aims, namely the discovery of ‘mote general, possibly universal, aspects of language change. By relating che descriptive fats about a particular language to what is common across all (or most) other languages, the historical Tinguis seks to explain wy languages change, and how these changes spread in space and time, The most promising area for finding answers to these questions is the study of ongoing, changes, especially when caried out within a framework which femphasizes the interrelationship between socal factory sj chronic linguistic variation at any one time, and diachronic linguistic change overtime.iid & Reconstructing the past: ‘The data of historical linguistics “The synchronic description of living languages in the present can by based on a wide range of data suchas the introspection ofthe linguise (asa native speaker), the guided elicitation of data from ative informants, and observation including the use of coxpora} Different linguistic schools have placed different emphases on these types of data, The data of historical linguistics, on the other hand, are much mote restricted. Obviously, much ofthe pasts not accessible through introspection or elicitation. We only have its observable traces to go on, most importantly the limited orpos of written texts as a record of actual Ianguage use in former times. Fortunately, many languages have along recorded past, which provides evidence for the development of the individual lan {guages and also for more general properties of linguistic change But there aze clear limitations with regard to both the quantity and the quality of the data. In general, the further back we go in time, the more sparse and unreliable the data become, while at the same time the language becomes more and more remote Frequently we lack suficientextralinguistic information on old texts, such as theie author, purpose, or audience. Equally the range of text types is limited, and authentic spoken daca are altogether lacking before the twentieth cencury. The recon: Struction of older written langage is difficult enough, but its ‘ren more difficult to reconstruct older speech from written data ‘We must beat in mind too that this reconstruction is not a straightforwaed matter of facts, The interpretation—and eventhe selection—of the available data is always informed by undeelying general assumprions about language or a specific theory to which the historical linguist subscribes. This means that, as with other aspects of history, we will find competing explanations ofthe past. ‘Whenever che beginning of human language may have heen — and most modern estimates vary between $0,000 and 100,000 years ago, though some extend it substantially 10 one milion years ago or even more—it is obvious that the evolution of language is documented only for a very small percentage of is total history, and even this applies only to relatively few ofthe 5,000 fo. 6,000 human languages said to exist in-the-world at present. The lack of data from these unrecorded stages, i. from the prehistory of languages, can however be partly overcome by systematic comparison of the oldest writen records of related languages even f they are now extinct. These canbe as fascinating, a8 dinosaus eges or Foss of extinct species and, just like these winesses ofthe pas, they can help us to extend our knowledge of linguistic evolution further hack into prehistoric sind wnrecorded time. The reconstruction of the prehistory of languages isthe domain of comparative reconstruction discussed later in this chaptet The written evidence Written texts provide the most important data for historical linguistics, and it is a crucial matter how these data are interpreted as evidence for earlier spoken language as well as for linguistic systems. Such interpretation may present almost insurmounable dlfculkies in the case of extinct languages with unknown writing systems. The deciphering of extinct languages ‘writen in such systems often depends on the existence of bi- or trilingual texts, in which a east one ofthe languages is known. A famous casein point isthe Rosetta Stone found inthe course of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt and now in the the trilingual inscription on tis stone in ancient two different versions ofthe ancient Payptian script provided the key to the decipherment of the Egyptian hirogyphs. Bat interpreting written data as evidence of language systems and speech is not unproblematic, even for languages whose ‘weiting systems are known and. well established. Consider alphabetic writing as used for English and the other European languages. Whereas in other weting systems symbols might stand for syllables or words, here they represent sounds, 4. vowels and consonants, more or less directly, whether in the Latin, Greek, or Cyrillic alphabet. These alphabers stand in a long tradition and their basie writing conventions have been handed down for centuries. But even so, the nature of the correspondences berwen ‘letters’ and ‘sounds’ ig by no means ‘easy {0 determine, Speech and writing are wo distinct though clearly relaced systems, but the nature of this relationship may change over time. It is widely agreed that alphabetic writing inically aimed ac rendering the distinctive sound units of a language and tended to neglect non- distinctive differences: chus the letter in Latin, Old English, Old French, et. represents the distinctive unit! as opposed 0 l/l, et), but does not ell ws anything about its specific realization as atriled,retofle, oF ‘guttural sound (cf che different quality of /e! in English, Seoss, French or German), Furthermore it safe to assume thatthe scribes who ist used the Latin alphabet to write down languages such as Old English ‘or Old High German adhered to the Latin spelling conventions, since they had been fist trained in writing Latin. Forunately, these conventions are quite well known as a result of the unbroken Latin tradition in Western civilization. However, the Latin writing system had to be adapted in a number of ways to these newly written languages, Fr example, Latin did nothavea sound corresponding tothe iia sound in English thing, while ‘Old English did. Here, the Old English scribes adopted two alternative solutions: they either used a letter fom the old runic alphabet, namely 6 ,orthey slightly changed the Latin eter dinco the form 3 ‘The originally more-or-less direct relationship between letters and sounds, or more generally, between writing and speech became, however, blurred as a esult of language change, since spelling tends to be conservative and either does not record changes at all or docs 0 only after a considerable time-lag. An additional complicating factor may be the mixing of different Bregional or national spelling conventions due to cultural contact. ‘Thus Anglo-Norman conventions appear widespread in English texts after the Norman invasion of England in 2066. To give a simple example from the history of English: the Old and Middle English forms of house were both pronounced with long i (the ‘vowel in modern English goose) and the Old English spelling hus for fhu ellets the original Latin-based one-to-one relation between specch and writing, The new Middle English spelling bous(e) fr the same pronunciation /husis due tothe adoption of the Anglo-Norman convention of writing ow for fa! (et modern French jour ‘day’, pour ‘for). This spelling is stil Tetained today, though “tl was diphthongized in the Karly “Modern period, yielding modern English ‘haus. Weean say that English writing started asa system which was secondary 0, i dependent on, specch, but became increasingly autonomous and unrelated to actual pronunciation, (For the relation beoween| ‘writing and speech see also Readings, Text 3.) Sources of evidence “The hypotheses of th historical linguist depend crucially on the interpretation ofthe daa. Iris not justa matter ofthe amount of data available but primarily of their quality, To evaluate the ‘quality of old texts, we have to find out as much as possible abou theie extealingustc context (such as the author, scribe, purpose, and location of a text, et.), and about the textual tradition, including the original form and date of composition and copying, ‘Thisis the task of che philologist, for whom auxiliary disciplines such as history and palaeography, the study of ancient waiting, are of major importance. ‘Only very few old texts are inthe authors own hand, and even these may shaw various kinds of textual errors. Mostly they are the result of mulple copying by diferent scribes in diferent regions and over long period of time. Some textsare compilations hy a specific author from linguistically divergent, possibly orally transmitted original sources, as with Homer’ Iliad and Odyssey, or the Rigveda, the oldest collection of religious texts written in Sanskrit, Such texteal history may resultin linguistically composite texts witha mised language fill of srbal errors due to negligence ‘or insffcient competence in the language(s) or varieties of the original. These diferent linguistic layers, whether dialectal or tiachronic, must be disentangled and scribal errors detected before the textcan he used as data fr forming hypotheses about specific stages of a language, Furthermore, old texts are often translations, e from Latin into Old English, or from Greek into carly Gothic or Old Church Slavic, so that we have fo reckon With linguistic influence fom the original language. “Though written texts constitute the maj source fr historical linguistics, other types of data may provide imporeant sop- plementary evidence. For example, archaeological findings such as pieces of pottery, grave findings, and ther historical material have contributed substantially to our knowledge of the setle- ment history of early Anglo-Saxon England, which again may help in reconstructing te dialectal distribution of Old English, ‘OF particular interest as daca are diocr descriptions of and ‘explicit comments on a language by contemporary speakers. Such ‘metalinguistic’ evidence is, however, raze for the early sages of most languages and not always reliable, though there are excellent early grammars of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. The bulk of such information for European languages only dates from the modem period. Some detiled desriptions of English sounds and even phonetic transcriptions of texts date hack tothe sixteenth century and we have numerous surviving glossaries, ‘word lists and translations of Latin and other languages, which provide information about word meanings in medieval Europe. ast but not least, modem dialeets and related languages can provide valuable information to help construct oF test our bbypotheses. Let ws now look at how data are wed to reconstruct linguistic history. Comparing and reconstructing languages [A basic hypothesis in historical linguists is that for all their ‘curren differences languages may originate from one common source (or prototanguage), to which they are this genetically felated. We have unambiguous linguistic and extalinguistic historical evidence for such genetic relationships in the case ofthe6 modern Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, et.) These are the direc descendants oF laughter languages of Latin (more precisely of its different spoken forms, Vulgar Latin), from which they have evolved in the course of centuries as 4 result of geographical distance and isolation, social factors and political developments, and chrough contact with oher languages. Genetically related languages form language families and they show systematic and recurrent formal correspondences, i. similarities and differences which are too ‘regular and frequent to be mere chance or the result of borrow. ing. These correspondences become more evident and regular the farther back we go in language history. They are; for example, stronger between Old French and Old Spanish than beeween Modern Prench and Modern Spanish "The most famous and bestresearched language family isthe Indo-European (TF) one, witha long extual tradition in a wide range of geographically divergent daughter languages. Indo- European languages have long been spoken from India to the western borders of the European continent, and have in more recent times been exported all over the world. They ate grouped inco-a number of subfamilies (or branches) such as Germanic, Italic (including Latin and che Romance languages), Balto-Slavie (including the Slavie languages Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, ete), Geki, Greek, and Indo-Iranian (with Persian, Kuedish, Sanskrie and a mumber of modern Indian languages). The reconstruction ‘ofthe common ancestor of these languages, Proto-Indo-European, was one of the outstanding achievements of nineteenth-century comparative linguists. “The most widely used way of showing genetic relationships graphically sche fam tree model. The diagram on the next page tives a simplified family tee ofthe Germanic languages, which disregard lite stages such as Old Norse a the common, ancestor of lelandic and Norwegian, and the older stages of the ‘modern languages such as Old English, Old High German, ec Linguists vary in their interpretation of the informational value of such family tres. For some this is only a convenient way of visualizing the degree of genetic eelationship between lan- ‘guages, and labels such as North Germanic are seen as a cover term fora group of languages showing closer similarities beeween Family tree of Germanic languages roto-Germanic West Germanic NorthGermanic East Germanic Duh Danish Gothic English Ieelandic Fesian Norwegian High German ‘seednh ow German cach other than with th other languages of the family. For others {and this was how it was fist conceived) this is a model of linguistic change which directly shows the way in wich proto- languages diversify into daughter languages. In such a view a label such as North Germanic sands for an actual language, an ancestor which acted as an intermediate proto-language. (Foran alternative tothe family tree model, see Readings, Text 4.) Correspondences between languages “The comparative reconstruction tha enables us to establish such language families is based on identifying correspondences between related languages. These correspondences are most evident on the levels of phonology and morphology, i. sounds and inflections, and are accessible through the systematic comparison of so-alled ‘cognates. These are words which are similar both in form and meaning and which go back to a common source. Cognates are particularly frequent in the basic vocabulary of daughter languages, since words which relate ro basic aspects of lfe orto ‘common human experience (such as time, place, food, or socal relations) tend to be les readily replaced by borcowings from other languages. ‘The following simple example demonstrates the basic principles of comparative reconstruction. French champ, Italian ‘compo, Spanish and Portuguese campo all derive from Latin ‘campus ‘eld and are thus cognates. Fven if Latin had noe been "preserved in a wealth of writen records, we could partly recon Struct it by comparing such cognate forms of its daughter languages, as illustrated inthe table below (the meanings ofthe respective words in English re (x) ‘dea’ (2) ‘eld (3) house) Correspondences between Latin and Romance languages “Tata French alan Spanish Porragnese T carnaikh—cher(fer|caro(k]—caro(k]caro[k] 2 campue(k) champ) campo) campo tk] campo tk) 3 cack] cheelfel'a caua{k] caualk} casa The table above shows three sets of cognates from four different Romance languages, as well asthe Latin form, Having established the sets on the basis of ther similarities of form and meaning, we now proceed to recoastruct the original sounds of the proto-form of each set. For this purpose we establish systematic sound correspondences within and between the sets of cognates: in all three sets, for example, the French initial ‘eonsonant[f] (asin English shoe) corresponds o [ke] inthe cree ‘other Romance languages. There are evidently three possible sources for these intial consonants in the common proto- language: (i) it was (k} a8 preserved in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; in this case, the original sound would have undergone a change only in French; or (i it was original [f] asin French, in which ease it would have changed ico [k] in the other three languages or (i) it was neither [k) nor {s}, but another consonant from which therwo attested ones developed as result of diffeent sound changes. Asis evident from these hypotheses, the reconstruction of the proto-sound also involves. recon seructing the sound changes which occurred in the individual daughter languages. There are certain general methodological principles that we «an bring to bear on deciding on the proto-sound. The most important of these are: (i) Any reconstruction should involve sound changes tha are phonetically plausible, The phonetic plausibility of a change is evaluated on the basis of general phonetic considerations as to how sounds ae formed as wellas onthe extensive documentation ‘of sound changes in other languages. On tis evidence, a change from {ki to [f] is more frequent and plausible (and hus mote ‘natura’ than a change inthe opposite direction, [j] > [x leis even more natural i ie proceeds via an intermediate stage [Uf], ‘whose existences well documented in the history of French, This stage is also reflected in carly English borrowings from older French such as Charles, chief, which have preserved this earlier French pronunciation with [tf]. On the basis ofthis principle of phonetic plausibility or ‘naturalness’ we reconstruct “[k] a the initial consonant ofthe above sets 1-3 for Proto-Romance, in which che asterisk * indicates a reconstructed form, without written evidence Ui) A second, though lest rciable principle, isthe ‘majority principle. Any reconstruction should involve af few changes berween the proto-language and its davghter languages a5 possible. Thus, the sound which is more frequently met in the related forms is more likely to be the original one. In sets 1-3, three languages have (k} while only one has [f]. The secon: structed proto-sound *[k] isnot only more frequently found in the corresponding sets, but also involves only one sound change inthe history of the daughter languages for French), while inthe case of reconstructed "Ij three languages would have undergone the same change *[] > [k. Continuing. with our reconsteucion in. this manner will eventually resale for sets 2-3 inthe Proto-Romance forms "caro, “campo, *casa, although this reconstruction is not always a¢ casy and straightforward as with *[k]. These reconstructed Proto-Romance forms are quite close tothe attested Latin forms given in the table (as an inflected language, Latin actually had the ase forms caro, cmp) In the case ofthe Romance languages we are obviously in the fortunate positon of being able to verify our reconstructions to a lange extent, and thus 10 test our methodology and basic assumptions, In general, however, we can only reconstruct those fearures ofthe proto language which have left atleast some trace in one of the daughter languages. Thus the quality of our reconstruction crucially depends on the quality of the survivi evidence Ac the same time, the individual reconstructed sounds must also forma plausible complete sytem, which should furthermore 9conform to more general principles of sound systems. Languages tend to have symmetrically struceured sound systems and there ‘would have to be compelling evidence to disregard this general tendency for a reconstructed proco-language. To illustrate this with an example or two: a language having a set of so-called “voiceless stops’, ie. [p. . KJ and the corresponding ‘voiced ‘stops [b, 4, ] i moze likely (or natural) than one with [p, 1, &] butonly b, gh ie- without (]—chough gapsin asystem do occur in natural languages. Similarly there are no known languages ‘which have only nasal vowels (asin French champ, cf. above) and ‘no 'pure’,e-non-nasal vowels, and only very few which have no nasal consonants Sach general "typological considerations mast influence the final shape of any reconstructo ‘We should aote here thar there ate certain reservations about this method of analysis. In the first place, the reconstructed roto-language i (misjrepresented as an idealized homogeneous system, whereas in face natural languages are necessarily hetero iencous and variable. Secondly, sound changes ace presented as being regular and occurring without exception in all identical ‘contexts. As we shall se later, both these views have come under attack in recent decades, though the main esuls of comparative reconstruction, ie. most ofits hypotheses about the shape of a number of proto-languages, have stood the rst of time. (For a discussion of the status of reconstructed forms, see Readings, Text.) Laws of change In the reconstruction of linguistic relaionships and develop- iments we identify certain processes of change that ate so regular a tbe considered las. One ofthese is evident in the develop ment ofthe Germanic branch of Indo-European, The Germanic languages show a series of distinctive and related sound changes involving certain Indo-European conson- ants. These are accounted for by Grimm's Law, named aftr the jerman linguist who discovered it It tates that Indo-European stops, ie: consonants produced with a bref closure such as [p,b, 1d, k, gh regularly changed into different consonants (the stops Ip. Kh, for example, becoming the fricatives [f, 8, ah, i. consonants produced with an audible friction due to the narrowing of two speech organs; see Chapter 5 for phonetic decals). More specially, Grimms Law staes the following, stands for ‘develop into’ ‘voicedvoiceess refers tothe presence br absence of vibration of the vocal folds ‘aspirated refers to an atadile breath) voiceless stops [pt k]> voiceless fricatives [fx] voiced stops [b, dd] > voiceless stops [p, tk] voiced aspirated stops [b8, db, gh > voiced plain stops, do] This law applies to all Germanic languages. Other Indo European languages, such as Greek or Sanskrit, basically show the original sounds of Proto-Indo-European. This may be seen in the following table, which gives (i) one example each of two changes of voiceless stops to voiceless frcatives (lp >My [t> 8) and of voiced stops to voiceless stops (fd > tp fg > k) inthe old German languages (Gothic, Old English "OE", Old High 2 ‘OHG'}, (i) examples of their preservation in two non- manic Indo-European languages (Sanskrit and Latin), and (i) the reconstructed Proto-Iado-Furopean (PeE") forms. Reflexes ofthe working of Grimm's Law Sanskrit Latin Gothic OE ONG Pile pad: fot fot fox *p “Toot trdyas rial brie det tthe" dau). duo tai tw usd dew! fras’ gems tant cmd haat “g “ace [As shown above, comparative reconstruction is based on consideration of related forms in genetically related languages, Its basic methodology ca, however, also be used to reconstruct unattested ealir stages or gaps in the tradition of a language by ‘comparing related forms from within a single language. This is the domain of intemal reconstruction, which relies on the linguistic races leftin a language from its earlier stages.Intermal reconstruction Alllanguages show patterned alternations in diferent realizations ‘of morphemes, the smallest meaningful units of language. Thus the English regular plural morpheme is cealized in three different variants (or allomosphs), namely 2! and Fl, cf. ats (kets), dogs [dog borses [hss]. Internal reconstrction starts fom ‘the assumption that such synchronic alernation is in general the result of regular sound changes and chat the different forms have developed from a single non-altenating form. A simple example toillustrate this German words endingin voiceless tops, While some of these, such as Rat [e] ‘advice’ and Lack [k] ‘varnish’, "etain the voiceless stop in inflected forms, others sch as Rad [t} “bicycle” and Tag [k] ‘day’ show alternation between a voiceless stop in word-fial postion and 2 voiced one in the inflected forms (asin Rades, Tages, with the genitive singular ending ines) frat) fect) flak} aks} ‘The mon-altemating ancestor of the variants [racvrasd] and [taskta:g-] ofthe moephemes meaning “bicycle” and “day” could have been ether (i) frat} fac], (i) red, [ag or fii) an lunatested different form. Since internal reconstruction should follow the same basic principles applied in comparative econ struction, the hypotherical changes leading to the alternations should fall the criteria of economy and naturalnes, and should ‘not lead to contradictory results in other forms. Looking at the sound system of German, we notice that voiced stops never occur in \wort+-final position, so that iis plausible to reconstruct the earlier non-alterating single forms with the voiced stops" [aa] ‘ay’ and * [sc ‘bicycle’ and a subsequent sound change of devoting voiced stops in word-fnal position, while che voiced stops remain in non final positions. We have thus reconstructed both the orginal non altenating forms *[tagfasgas] and the sound change of final devoicing, which hasled othe modern alterations [ak/tagos] OF ‘course, intemal reconstruction is no aways a straightforward as this. There are alternations which are mich more complex and where the original sate has been obscured by multiple sound ‘changes. In such cases, the reconstruction also has to establish the ‘advice’ frat) fracdos) “bicycle” ‘varnish’ [eck] [tagos} “dy ‘elatve chronology of the various changes, i. the order in which they have aken place. However ifaspecifcchange has eft no trace in the language, internal reconstruction may lead to a grossly simplified description ofthe intermediate sags. Furthermore, we ‘eed to note that not all alterations can be traced hack toa single ‘on-alkemating form, Tntcenalreconstrcion is most feutflly applied in cases where we have insufficient material for comparative reconstruction, as in the case of isolates, ie. languages with no know eelatves, or ‘when only very distant, posibly controversial relatives exist. In such cases as well as with languages without any textual tradition, internal reconstruction may be virtually che only way tolearn about the unactested linguistic past. Ocherwise it should ideally be used in combination with other methods such as comparative reconstruction. ‘The present chapter has shovsn how the historical linguist— much ike an archacologist—can piece together information even fon unrecorded stages of languages and processes of change. ‘These methodshave been most secessully applied to phonology and morphology, while syntactic reconstruction is more con- troversial. ‘The reconstruction of che proto-vocabulary in core areas such as kinship, plants, animals and metals has also increased our knowledge ofthe societal structures, the economic ‘organization, and the original homeland ofthe Indo-Europeans. ‘Let us now turn to a more detailed consideration of linguistic change at the different levels of language. 3Thus sound change can lead ‘morphological change, and this in tun may have consequences a aa on dlifferentlevelsof language, We will begin with the changes which are most obvious, namely ths Speakers constantly have The unparalele cl increase in the number of words and word meanings from Old English to the present day makes English particularly wel suited for a discus son of lexieal change ‘There are ewo main strategies for the introduction of new words, nam Languages may ad abou hE REEGHES EBON aN, ie 7 pr26 «ent of modeen English is sad to consis ofloan words from more ‘an So diferent languages primarily Latin and French. “There are obvious historical reasons for this extensive Borrow: ing such as thee COR UESTO ENG|ARAIALND «and chehigh prestig@fLatinastheinremational language of communication ‘GEO the eighteenth cer. Buc ic is ultimately che attitude of speakers towards foreign influence in general and towacds specific languages in particular which determines the acceptance andl@eGree OF BGFFOWIng. Since borrowing is the result of Jaguage cant, wil be discussed in more detail in Chapter "rte folfowing secions, we will focus on the other strategies ‘which speakers gto festa newer changed concepts, nary ‘he coining of new words and semantie change, .c. change in ‘word meaning. Coining new words AAs the smallest meaningful units of a lnguag@/MORSReMee constitute the basic building Blocks of words. New words are ‘normally formed by combining existing words and morphemes into new, complex words. Frclsh reach consists oF a :morplieme, while fzhcer can be analysed into two meaning _units:The suffi -ay, which signifies “agent™In Teacher, and “inst ORT TF VOI, Ws SO-TAMEN BOUHTOFPEATE, hic When discusing historical word-formation, we must dif feremate between the appearance of new words. the outpot ‘of word-formation rules, and these abstract rules themselves. (Word-formation rules are bot languagespesific and subject to clachronic chanye, especially in rezard to their productivity i.e. the frequency and flexibility with which they are used to coin new words. “Two of the most important word-formation processes are ‘compounding and afxation. Compounds are the combination of io independent words, i.¢ fee morphemes, ike guesthouse kc quest + hous), wiiliafaixationa Bound morphemeisadded 10a base, asa prefix (eg wnlike) ora suffix (likeness) Compounding. hss beet Righly productive througHGWnc (try oF Rngish, and innumerable compounds were coined cover the centuries. Many ofthese have survived since Old English ‘ims, ARE Kise others ave HONE OUD ws, such a Old English which was replaced bythe Trench loan fan, though thas survived aaa aR and as ssa) the basis of the semantic lations Denyse thee diferent parts we cd distinguish ilferene subtypes of com pounds, such s guesthouse house fr guest. glfiond rend Who isa gifs Not al of these subtypes have boo equally productive in the history of English and iis act too dificul co ‘magine compounds which ae unaoeptable in English. However, English, and German likewise, han Fewer SOSA compounding than some other languages sucha French, ‘Ava result of sound changes compounds may lose their teansparency and develop into unanalsabl simple words such a= Old English qgodapell 9008 dings RaRpel, Few ‘non- specialists are aware that English fore hy go back to the . Ina similar way,many feums refering to women have undergone pejoration, while she corresponding terms for men have remained hettral oF have improved, ct. master vs. mistress, bachelor ys. SPinsterwhick agin vftors che traditional lower status of ‘women in our socery. Extensive shifts of meaning often cloud the relationship between the original meaning and the modern one(s), as in English dll) (< Old English (g)salig‘Happyeblesied’, 2s sill preserved inits German cognate sli). look atthe incermediate ‘ages, howevenmleesthe development more tinspatent. From ‘ts original meaning attested till the late 15th century silly passed through the fol nM SERRE NRE” (ate x3thc—r8the.) > (@eSeRNgBIy”(c_1300-19th <-) SAW FeRbe” (x3ch roth c), Simplegiaibfane (r6th cc. 1800), feeblesninded) (16th c- coday) MoishleRipepeaUED late 6th c.— today) ‘These dates illustrate that typically an old meaning is not replaced immediately by a new one, but that both coexist for some time, each in specific contexts. A semantic change very similar to thavOFily happened to Freich erin 'stipid person’, which, ike French chretien “Christian', derives from Latin bristianus ‘Christian. (See also Readings, Texts.) 3Why do word meanings change? ‘The above survey has been largely descriptive, though the discus sion of metaphor, metonym, and the social dimension of change ‘amelioration and pejoraion has already touched upon some ‘mone general mechanisms. Lerus now look at some further forces, bodh linguistic and extralingistic, behind semantic change. (One of these is thee mieition@dl atthe beginning zis ‘hapter, to adapt language to new communicative requirements ‘Apart from borrowing or coining new words, speaks equenty ‘se existing words whose meanings are metaphorically or met- fifiieally extended. Thos corpedo originally referred to a lat fish .. which emits eletrie rays’, tant toa large container for holding liquids at least with torpedo, the new military meaning hhas become the primary one, When efiSGinObiGeschageth cir ‘orm but rea thei basic function, the od word may, but nced ot besrerined-as: well English rorch has kept its original mating, Bur now ao refers to + Siallpgrtable elem Jamo", While German has formed the new compourel Taschen, literally “pocket lamp for the late, hut relers to the former as Fackel. Anothet psychological factor in semantic change is «(5iS6 human tendency to emphasize and exaggerate. Constant ase of words may wear off their specific meaning, so that new, more ‘expressive terms are sought. Thus we wimness a constant change of English intensifying adverbs meaning very’ from Old English svibe to Middle English full and modern very (< Old French verrai ‘rue rel ERED aE, A central pg chological factor ISLES 00, tendency eo avoid ditect reference to unpleasant oF socially stigmatized concepts such as death, old age illness and sexuality. In tabooed fields speakers resort «0 the strategy of using ccaphemisin, ie. neutral words for referting to stigmatized concepts, lke tOPUGE SURI YOPO WI, To sleep Tal SOMmeB Edy. But through frequent use the euphemistic word may isell come to be sega ROOD so thatneyecuphemistic terms are used, Tabooed fields themselves: may also change. In many modern western societies, oR it seems, has become taboo, leading to euphemisms lice senioriticens andl theelderwhile we have become inereasinglyyexplicitinsexualimsts. in some Societies the force oF taboo I so strong that neither the name ofa deceased person nor any word resembling this name may be used any longer. In such speech communities a constant and rapid turnover even of basic vacablary takes place. Apart from such extralingustic factors, (GUUS behind seeantetaige have BeeRiproposedsthough they are less easy to prove. ‘Among thes is the fact thatthe vocabulary ofa language is notsimpy alist of focmally mose or less related words, bu is also seeuctured into groups of semantically related words, scaled semantic or lexical fields, The meaning relations between words seem to play a major role in semantic change, as the above discussion of the changes of bird and fowl! has illustrated. These two words reorring to birds changed their clative status as superordinate (bird in general’) and subordinate term (specific kind of bid’). Atleast part of che vocabulary i stroctured in his vvay. such a5 verbs of motion, verbs of saying, «te. A meaning change of any member of a semancc Feld typically affects the (range ofmeaningsoF the-other membersasyeell, and tnis aso applies tochangesin the el dueto the addition or disappearance ofa word. Iehas frequently been observed thatthe borrowing ofa word for which a synonymous native word exists cither leads to the disappearance of one of the wo oF to their semantic ditferentiation {ch above for ceqpman vs, merchant). Thus the broad meaning of ‘Old English eofon ‘heaven and sky" narrowed down to ‘heaven’ asa result ofthe borrowing of Scandinavian sky, which originally meant ‘cloud’, There seems to be 2 tendency for languages (or rather cheie speakers) cofvol SSnbnyiious Word for reasons ‘gomomy related teadencys ip reduce the extent of polysemy, jig the attachment dftoo-many diferenemeaningstosassnele Word. Finally, when twa words with similar oF opposite meanings becoméhomlenyls ic. formally identical, this may lead to 3536 1s Smal sina a gh EB. 0 infecting languages vch as Lain ot Greek, on the oer han, Gmorpicme oaneares ate Tequemy Bled, and sre tieanngsimay becompresedinssne fons in Latin vcas"You loves for camnple tt tleeonnreatles the meanings “tnd rerson, singly, presen nets’ (caso the above sna oF RESEME ptper Htfiag English, do noe be ealy into one of thee categories, but the cassiation il provides & tefl desceptive ane work for historical inguin. it has ben dhimed—though conoversally—tha ang tend to change this morphological type in a kind of fe ith pe oni 10 end op a6 loltng om SRP TRPNONER eructics co agsutioning ones have been observed SAO (ct Chapter 6, wwhere unstressed independent lexical and grammatical words hive Hecome prftes ad sufi af a etl of phonological féligion. Engsh also has considerably changed ts morph ogled!sructure tice the tine offs predominantly ila Proto-Germanic parent language. ‘The rconsructed, Pro Germanic dative plural “dap totheday” consisted of three mocphologial lementy the root "dag the so-called “theme andthe case inflection mix Telater two had fased int a sige morpeme xm by the Old Engh period eseling in the form daguim, Old Englh sill had gaan. inflectional ees, sie to modern German. and od sinipler tian Latin, Compare the pla infioaion of the O1F English word for Gayot nominarvetceusatve gs, geitve saga, dative dag Ths system had largely calpsed bythe ‘ary Midale English period n partclar because ofthe eneal weakening of sao Qa, Snstrsed inal As cae endings disappeared in the Mid English cio, the various function ofthe inflected Old English cases (sch shat offi bj, oro adverb et) were nccasingy taken over by prepestonal phrase wth nindoced ours Modern Engl ‘as lost mot ots orginal inftons nt only on. nous yt also oad ropa i inflecting| synthetic to 2. predominantly analytic language, in ‘which free grammatical words and fixed word order have taken fover much of the former funetions of inflections, A similar development has in many instances taken place berwoen the highly inflected Latin and its Romance daughter languages like French or Ialiny compare the Latin dative singulatavic.o ‘to ‘the-riend” with the functionally largely equivalent prepositional phrase French 2 'zi, Italian all’ amico, Spanish af argo. “The above changes from inflectional to analytic invol¥e the ‘eduction of unstressed inal vowels and sjlables and are chus closely linked tosound changes (see Chapter 5). Let us now look {sea more general mechanism of morphological change, which interacts with sound change in various ways, B06 fig Analogical change oceurs when one form adjusts to resemble nother one with which Wis related in foray oF meaning Inlec tional morphemes, for example, relate ao each other inspect sets or ‘paradigms’ and there is a tendeney-to-remove-such ‘egegalarires inthe patterns, Tet us ustrate this with the wo main types OP analogy; “proportional analogy’ and ‘analogical leveling Proportional (or Your part’) analogy rests on the application of the equation ArB : CX ie. ‘A isto Bas C isto What? This can be regarded as the basis of the analogical extension ofthe “Midile English plural forms of nouns in-els to the sell sabstantal number of Middle English irregular placals like kine-covs', eyen eyes’, word “words etc; here the equation wove be “bul: bulls cowe=X°, with X being interpreted as cows instead of original kine An example of the second type, analogical leveling, is provided by a number of Old English strong (‘ircegula’) verbs. ‘These had four different but formally and semantically related forms (against the theee of modern English}, such as feosan— freas-fraron-froren “freexe-troxe-frozen’. With Old. English freosan the sten-fnal consonant altrnated between sand ras the resule of a regular sound change ofthe originals] > [rin the last two forms. However, sucit eBngonamtal lkemation only xisediaaysmallinumberofverbs, while the majority had the same stenfinal consonat forts. Accordingly one of the two variant ofthe verb stem was by analogy adapted tothe other one in its stem-fnal consonant, esulting in the uniform predominatin38 modern English pattenifaeRe=POMSORen. (Old High German hhad the same consonantal alternation as Old English, but it {generalized the [] in all forms, cf. modern German frieren-fror= {efroren.) This example also illustrates the general face chat "eels ound change may adorei morphol ‘may ‘morphologically regular again by eee emigre “There have been some attempts to discover general rules for ‘moxphologcal analogy, but these are at best tendencies for which numerous counter-examples can be found. TisiEsSems hat basic "orms influence derived forms, rather than way ound, and chat double morphological marking tends to replace single ‘marking rather than vie versa. An example of the tendency for double marking i provided by German Bau ‘trees ts original plural Baume (marked only by the plural sufix -) was replaced by anew, doubly marked plural Baume in analogy to Gast-Giste ‘guesi(s/, where such double marking by vowel alternation and the suffix -e was the regular development. So far we have described some morphological changes and looked at a major mechanism of such changes, namely analogy Bur neither descriptions of changes nor the estiblishing of les ‘or tendencies of analogy offer any explanation for why chese ¢ festill need a more general principle behind these mechanisms. A promising answer ro this question m: provided by che concept ofnaturalnes?. Some mi ‘ots sem to be more natural (or ‘unmarked, which implies not ‘only dhartheyaremorefrequent, hur ssa thse: ed cacy iret language acquisition, are more ‘gang ne though they ofte result from change), and are typical of pidgin and creole languages (ef. Chapter 6). Furthermore, naturalness follows some general pifipes sghlas thst of ‘cdnsuctioial ico i. the principle thar che ‘more complex form is algo morphologically es6re complex, Ths the notion of pluraliy is semantically ‘more OF SIGUA, so ts to be expected that a plural is alo morphologically ‘more’ than a singulas, ie. that something is added to express a plural. This Principe has empirical support since the languages of the world ‘ypically have morphological plural marking, whild aed Sngularsjare’extremelyrare. It has been claimed that morph ‘ological change proceeds towards more natural forms. Thus, the English plural wordsis more natura han the original Old English plural word, which violated the principle of constructional iconicty since iegvasformallyienteawithEeSingolat: Though thece ae still English plurals that do not conform co this principle (sheep, fish, etc), a very large number of similar non-iconic plurals have become iconic inthe history of English. Obviously, ome ofthese changes can equaly be explained 2s daetoanalogy, buc the theory ofjnarural morphology’claims=though not un ‘ontroversally—ta provide 3 mare comprehensive and possibly universal framework fora wide range of morphological changes (Fora critical view on naturalness see Readings, Text 8.) ‘Syntactic change After a period of relative neglect ange has become ‘the focus of much research in the last 5, though there isstill no generally accepted theoretical framework Forts stu If we look at the history of a particular language such as English, we can notice a great number of syntactic changes from (Old English to the present time. Old English only knew two tenses, 2 present an a pas fensé and the modern opposition between the simple and the so-called: fotms, asin 1 read vs. Lam reading, was stil nor fully established by Shake- speare’s time (you may remember Polonius asking Hamlet, who is absorbed in a book, ‘What do you read, my lord), Similarly, ‘negations and questions could sill be formed without the use of doin Shakespeare's times thus I know not or Whom trust you principles of symtactc change. In the following section a few ofthese central issues will be briefly discussed, starting with two important mechanisms of syntactic change, namely the sis of surface structures an he proca of GuamaoasAR hough ot cvecP Bes change ean be accounted for in this Way. The ensuing discussion ‘of some typological aspects of syntactic change will link the 39° I) (che sound in French une, or Gecman Click}, or fa) SIe1, was frequent in the development of pre-Old English. is sti reflecred in the vowel alternation of pais such as English dnolsesnle, (BEER ex., where the vowel inthe second forms was palat- alized by an [ij which originally followedin the next syllables hus pre-Old English *[mnssr] » Old English my] ‘mice’ *[Fortcl > [tet] “eer lm wlan, on the other Gand the tone mois backltowards the velumlor'sof palate, This accounts for the cbiterenve in the vowel sounds between English sword and ‘German Sehudeylalyhich both go back toa common Germanic form with |e, vlarized in Old English to [@jsWowels ay also be ised, a8 in English goose, boot, where [uz] developed from \Midale English fo) oF they may be lowered, ie. become more ‘pany as frequently happens before (ej. Other vocalc changes involve the degres oflip rounding, Thus therounded vowel yin Old English mje was subsequently unrounded to li) a is still reflected in the modern English spelling mice. Furthermore, oral ‘6 pure" vowels may become nasalized as in French, which has developed a whole series of nasal vowels before nasal con sonants, cf. fn [2 end’ gm [a] ear sc Dipthongzation charges a simple vowel neo &diphithong, vc. & ‘owel in whose production the tongue changes its postion, 1s» English house, ride, which in Middle English had (ur and (i) respectively; on the other hand, insome Briish English varieties we increasingly hea menaphthongatlon or ‘ling ) OF ipso before fal asin fire, towver, even resulting in [a ‘Consonants may change both thei manner and ther place of @Ficulation. widespread change in manner of articulation is ‘spantzation, che change from stop to Fricatve (Spirant), 25 in Grimm’ Law, when the Indo-Europeaf woteeless stops [pk] ‘iam eels Trieaives HB) inthe Germanic languages (see ‘Chapter 2) Inthe change [p]> 1 sprancization is combined with an additional change from a bilabial articulation, ie. one involving both lip, toa labiodental one involving lip and teeth, But stops can also develop into affricats, 2 in the change of pre:s (Old English [k] > [i] before palatal vowels in words like hild, chuychsa change also subsumed under palatalization Phonetic change may be uneondtone, i. affect all ocevr renees of a specific sound irrespective of its contest. Mare Frequently, however, i condoned in chat ie only- occurs in 2 specific phonetic environment, as when in English [rf was lose before consonants and wor-finally, asin cour [kot], hair fs -nae vas eetained in all other positions, ef rng en, Dairy Tea. So far we have described various types of frequent sound changes. Even more important than the description of such individval sound changes, however, isthe establishment of more general types of sound change including groups or clusters of sounds. This will make some phonological processes more transparent and will help us to understand better the nature of these changes. anion is 2 cover tem for various processes which involve some “weakring? of sounds (though the term is nor well defined) fenition processes involve, in some kind of hierarchical ‘order, voicing ue the change of voiceless consonants to voiced ‘ones 5 quently happens between vowels cf. Latin intervocalic In, tk] > Spanish [b, d, gly as in pagado “pacified, pleased” (= [Latin pacar i) spirantization (cf. Grimm's Taw above and see Chapter 2}; (i) vocalization of consonants, asin French paume ‘palm’ (< Latin palma) or the Cockney pronunciation of English mile as [mxok]; (iv) the deletion or disappearance of sounds, asin French nr ‘macure’(« Latin maturus). "There are different types of sound deletion and the opposite ‘process of sound insertion, all with specific technical terms. The ‘ost important ones are: apacope, ie, word-fnal vowel lows, as in many English words still written with -e, which was pronounced well into the Middle English period, such as Middle English nose [noso, tae [ts ete; syncope, the deletion of an unstressed medial vowel, asin ever [ev and frequently as an informal variant of English words ike [sti history epenthesis, the dseetionvofsevowelrae consonant as in Japanese furoboro “football or English Honble CORERlish fymel, but also often heard inthe pronunciation of prince as prints [pats] ofl as fom Many changes result. rom thant SnERGE ae EORERER berween segments in the process of spéech production. Our impression of hearing the discrete sounds [0 {] [p [8] in the pronunciation of lips results from the working af our brain and ‘our knowledge of the language, bE UORSHGE COPESPOREIEO TG ‘agousticreality. When we speak, our speech organs do not jump fonrone position tothe next/buFas in eonsinuoussoveMeRt ‘What is of interest here is that this continuous movement ofthe speech organs may lead o a partial anticipation ofthe postion of 2 following sound, or the continuation of a preceding one into the next, which often increases the ase of articulation, This the proces that brings about one of the most widespread types oF “hang, namely assimilation she partial of fotal adjustment of 3 Gd 16 another one. The term itself ilustrarce she prowess nicely, since Latin assladerives through assimilation from ia sai’ Ta the first syllables of English impossible, iterate the wo diferene allomosphs of a morpheme meaning ‘not are due ro assimilation o the following consonant, while the unassimilated form is sen in incorrect, Assinllatonlighe season for the nasalization of vowels next to nasal consonants 3° in French it [2 “end and also for thesfrontinguinemicees before the originally following i] vhac we noted sHove. AMI hese changes have been fully implemented inthe language and have been ratied in encoded forms, But there are many more assimilation which only occur in rapid speech, sucha 6od pronounced asi) GUUPSome ofthese may ako one ay become part ofthe linguisticsystem, while others wil remain restricted 10 individual ‘uterances; here we sce again the correlation hetween performance-elated changes and changes ‘which become generalized and enter the underlying abstract stem of a Language, 2 phenomenon we have come across before. Assimilation may be both regressive or progressive, ic work backwards or forwards Much rarer i lshation)s rc GG RIERA sounds becom les similar, e.Enalsh pilin < Latin peregrine, ‘or German Kartofjl poate, placing orginal tart. “The changes discussed so fara later changesin the quality ‘of sounds, but there are equally changes in quantity, ic. inthe length of segments, particularly of vowels, Vowel shortening ”se frequently happens before consonant clusters, in words with three or more syllables, and in unstressed position; it accounts for the vowel alternation in pare such as Keep/kept, holylhaliday [oehich originally had the same long vowel in both members of ‘each pait), and for the short vowel in English us, which had Old tends to go hand in hand wit a keeps the overall length of the syllable conscant, since the total quantity of ashore vowel plus a consonant equals that of along, ‘vowel in phonological terms. This process is refloced in the cognate pair English goose and German Gans goose’ (< Germanic ile Germanhas kept original short vowel an A discussion of phonetic changes like tha inthe previous section is certainly interesting, particularly for the history of individual ‘words, but ittells us nothing about systemic change nin ena ie {fern their number of phonemes and in the way these are organized into systems, and both these dimensions may also be subject to change. Thus classical Latin had a system of five Jong and fve shore vowels, while modern Italian as one ofits daughter languages has a seven-vowel system without quanticy pposicon both chonalgial sca, bower i iin Coe ee usr parern along the iereions of front back and open sed! Trench, anther daughter language of Latin has developed a beside the original pure vowels, overall stops, while its Indo-European parent had few fricaives but a considerable number of stops including aspirated ones (cf. the discussion of Grimms Law in Chapter 2) By way of example, let us now look atthe two main types of change in phonemic s)Sems, 5 PROREMRERE ase of complete merger of rwo formerly distinct phonemes, ‘occurred withthe two Middle English long e sounds, open ie! as in meat, read, and closed e/ as in meet, reed. (Slashes like | ED << RD which may have contributed to their merging under ‘i! in Modern English. The corresponding velar pair of long 0 sounds, Middle English jo’ asin boot, moor and ‘as in Boat, moar, rsh. Phonemic spit, on the is ypically connected with the development of diferent allophones in specific environments. Examples sce provided by the ahove-mentioned iregulat English plurals fet, geese, mice, ete which in pre-Old English formed. theit shominaive plural with the sulix ie, thus singular "/mue/, “fot, plural muss, “fost. The palaalzation of the stem vowels before the following palaral [i} (see preceding section) vielded new rounded front vowels asin “Inysz} "fot while Aisappeared in the course of time, the occurrence of [us] and [or], gains [:} and [ot] (later uneounded to (i) and (e}) was no stable fom th on . sngulae vs, plural) of Be Od Engle fora mas vs. tvs f2t now only rested upon the opposition berween xthe different stem vowels, This is che point where aspli ofthe ‘original wo phonemes tothe Four phonemes uy /0, fe! has occurred, chough no further phonetic change of the vowels is involved at this final stage. As the above discussion has sown, rhonete change may result in phonemic change, though io ears always the case; on the other hand, PHOTIC ‘hisisby no means always Pheer «pies and mergers ‘Often teracrin various ways, as when onc ofa act ofnewly split phonemes merges with an alecady existing one Since the phonemes of a language form a structured system, ‘each individual phonemic change affects the whole. ihe anges even trigger offa series of interrelated changes, so-clle! hala shits. Deperdins on the Beginning and’ direction oT sue ~AITSRIRS, We can distinguish between ‘push chains” and “dra. Gay Goes Ea thechangeortnde Paropern™® TS, oxy, dg!» py, & koh, dh, gh» bd (cf. Chapter 3} i a famous case in point. (HgiaSOP=ERee Sao enangET ‘bviously intertelatedy” though their relative: chronology 1s (GREMEA ash carn account of Gem's Taw would see te Deggning ofthe change withthe shife bb, dh, gh! > b, din order to avoid mergers with the already existing set of’, d, /, the latter would develop to /p, Wy thus in turn pushing the exiting ip, , W/ to become feiatives. A drag chain account, on the ocher hand, sc SRB) oF eTEEanie ie Cage! ip. tk! > if, 0, x, which would haggrefehesposiionssotshe + STEERS The resulting gap woud Nave Tera oT thedevorcing oF original, d,g/ in a kind of pull mechanism, leading toa new set of voiceless stops, kl, which in turn left ‘empty theslot of voiced stops, into which the originally aspirated voiced scops were dragged Another famous chain shift for which both types of chain mechanisms as well as a combination of the two have been proposed isthe English Great Vowel Shift. Ths shift ofthe whole system of Middle English long vowels involves a raising of each ofthe long vowels, hus > le > (meat), fel» (meet), ee: (seeahove), except forthe highest vowels and fu, which were diphthongized leading to modern English fav, ‘aw ice, house) [see the simplified diagram below) meet boot meat boat So far we have described phonemic change as a change of phonemic segments. However, wecan also describe phonemes as bundles of distinctive phonological features, such a [voiced agus ef Cams Law ite Pets BOT acacia be deste ae ‘Saar ea {Fora dseuson ofsound changin ens of phonological rues sec Readings, Tes 1 forthe influence of poste street Tears) Ts some of the above examples illstrate, phonological change not only atfecs the shape of indvideal words and tmorphcmes, but ay alo lea to ochronic alternation nthe realzation of spectie morphemes 12 to ferent allomorphs, {binmonserice,o dined From asyachronic poi of Nossal cts Sf sealed morphophonemic altrnaon pi of de nore Ee Re ee ol org li legions a eel phonological changes, a fact strates the interaction + nonology and morphotogy in linguistic change, FAHCE Biblioteca Central Nro. tav. AB 20, Sig, Ton. Eee Fecha de Aita. 3 21Language contact ‘One of the main reasons why languages change is tha they come into contact with other languages. This contact typically involves Bilingual speakers i.e. people who speak the two (oF more) languages involved, at lease toa certain extent. The languages of such individuals may act upon and influence each other in a wide range of ways: in the adoption of features of pronunciation, the borrowing of words, or the modification of grammae. From a prcely linguistic poine of view, language contact phenomena are neither good nor bad, but the atiude of speakers to such Dhenomiena is frequently not as neutral (cf. Chapter 2). Since languages and speakers in contact ate rarely of equal political, economic of social status and power, theless powerful or prest- igious group is frequently disadvantaged. This often leads to language conflict between the speech communities. Borrowing from other languages The most frequent and obvious instances of linguistic borrowing are loan words, which enter a language as a result of various political and cufeurl factors. As discussed in Chapter 3, English started out with a predominantly Germanic vocabulary, bu has integrated a huge number of loans inthe course ofits turbulent history Similarly, the vocabulary of Romanian, which ultimately developed from Vlgar Latin, has become strongly influenced by Slavic, though Romanian has kept a basically Romance grammae Such widespread replacement of native vocabulary has occurred in mumerous languages ofthe world56 Lexical borrowing is often triggered by a perceived gap in the vocabulary ofthe recipient language, particularly with respect to cultural phenomena associated with the source or donor language. Well-known examples of such cultural borrowings in English are thug from Hindi, sherry (from Spanish), waltz (rom German), ski {rom Norwegian), sauna (from Finnish) and, more recent, _lasnost (from Russian) and sushi (fom Japanese). This kind of Cultural borrowing is abundantly evident in other languages as wel, and seems to have greatly increased in modern times with developments in communication, However, speakers may feel che need for borrowing not hocause theie own language does not have a word fora particular ‘objector concept, but because they think thar the equivalent word in the donor language is somehow better or more prestigious. Many indigenous languages in former colonies have Adopted large numbers of loans from the formerly more pres ‘ious colonial languages such as French of English. Finish has borrowed extensively from Germanic and Baltic languages even in such central filds as kinship terms and body parts (e.g. the terms for mother, "daughter, sister’, tooth, ‘neck’ et.) though ithad cortesponding native terms. Loan words can also reflect, the predominance of different languages in specific domains of ‘use at particular periods of time, This accounts forthe prevalence ‘of French loans in English in such fel as the law (cre, judge), warfare (officer, enemy, government and administration (reign, court) fashion and food (mirror, mutton). And, asa glance at 3 fashion magazine or menu will reveal, French stil provides English speakers with mach of the vocabulary of haute couture and ante cuisine ‘One influence on the extent of borrowing, then, isthe per ceived prestige of the donor langoage. Other factors are the length of language contact, the extent of the communication between different speech communities, and the number and status of thee bilingual speakers. Borrowing also varies across different word classes. Nouns tend to be the most frequent, followed by adjectives and verbs, Ie would appear that itis mainly in the naming of objects rather than atsbues or processes that people find most deficiencies in their own languages. Pronouns and conjunctions on the other hand, form closed sets of words and are therefore only rarely borrowed. But even within these ‘word classes borrowing does occu as the Scandinavian loans Uy, tein and tin Middle English lustre Loan wd tend to beadapte in varying degreeso the target language, especially if the two languages fer substantially in thei phonologes and morphologies. Finnish for example, does not have inal consonant casters, so that Germanic rand ‘Shore’ ef. German Strand) has been borrowed into Finnish 35 ranta, Japanese has mainly open syllables, ie. syilales of the form "consonant + vowel (CV), s0 that English words wich closed yale. with the seructue (CJVC(C) are restructured {ofitino the Japanese phonological system, giving for instance futoboro“Yootball, esuboru baseball Texical borrowings can be subclassifed in different ways accordngto the degree of formal adherence to the foreign model. While loan words ae bok semantically and formally borrowed from the source language, there are aso diferent kinds of loan translations, Le. more or les Iiteral translations of complex foreign words into the target language; French gratte-ciel and German Wolkenkratzer, fo example, ae loan tanslations fom nish skyscraper. Massive borrowing. may substantially change the lexical steacrure ofthe target language. For example only the first ofthe following sie English verbs of thinking is Germanic and goes back tothe Old English period, while the others are from French (PP) or Latin, and were introduced only from the fourteenth centory onwards, providing the language with a namber of Seylisically differenced nearsynonyms: think reflect (FL, 13th e}s meditate (L, x6th es ponder (Fath consider ‘4thesseogitae(L,16the: cs obvious than lexical borowing is structural borrowing, 4, borrowing on the phonological, morphological, or syntactic levels Some additions tothe English phoneme inventory, suchas the voiced ficatives 2, 3 in words ike very, eal, measure, were obviowsly backed bythe enormous intake of French words With these consonants, though native factors have also played ome role, There are a number of sytactc constrictions English which ae claimed to be de to stractoral orvosrng, suchas the “progressive form (am writing) from Lati, and the38 ‘empty’ do in questions and negations from Cehtc, though these claims are controversial (sce also Readings, Text 13)- Changes of the basic word order SVO as discussed in Chapter 4 may also be due to structural borrowing from neighbouring languages and language families. Extensive structural borrowing on the different linguistic levels can result i linguistic convergence, ic. in increased suc tural similarity even of genetically uneelated languages. Convergence and linguistic areas In situations of long and rather stable language contact, bilingual speakers tend to make their languages structurally more similar to case communication and the acquisition of the other language( ¢ the piecemeal process of borrowing, this mutual con- ‘vergence of different linguistic systems typically involveslanguages of similar social stats, and brings about changes in all the languages involved. A famous case of mutual convergence is found in the multilingual Indian village of Kupwar, where wo Indo-Aryan languages, Urdu and Marathi, and one unrelated Dravidian language, Kannada, are spoken by ethnically and socially diferent groups. Practically al inhabitants have known And used all three languages in their daily communication with members of che other groups over several centuries. Asa result the originally very different grammatical structures of the three languages have converged o such a igh degree in Kupwar that they are now largely identical. Oa th ather hand, the vocabularies of these languages have remained largely differen, guaranteeing the linguistic independence of the speech communities. Linguistic convergence may also occur over extended geo- graphical areas and involve larger numbers of genetically related ‘and unrelated languages, though it may be restricted to a number ‘of linguistic features, Such tguistie areas have been found in India, Africa, che north-west coast of North America, etc. The most famous linguistic area is formed by a number of Balkan languages belonging to different language families or branches, such as Albanian, Slavic (varieties of Bulgarian, Macedonian, and o some extent Serbian}, Romance (Romanian), and Greek “These languages share a great deal of vocabulary and a number fof grammatical features, for example the placement of the “efit article after the aun, the replacement ofthe infinitive by 1 different construction, and the specific formation of the rimerals from rx to 19 of the type ‘one on en’. The number and combination of these features vary for the individual Balkan languages, but the important point is that these shared ‘Balkanisms’ often do not occur in other members of the same language families or even in the same languages spoken outside the Balkan linguistic area, The source of a particular feature is ‘often not clear, but it as been claimed that a language will nly adopt features which correspond to a basic developmental tendency in the recipient language TnChapter2 we saw how the family tree model tiesto account forthe rise of new languages from a common parent or proto- language. (For a further explanation see Readings, Text 14.) However, the family tree model cannot account for the fandamenal changes which linguages may undergo through close language contact. In some cases heavy borrowing a sroctrlconvergncehave changed anuag to suchanget that a genetic relation to parent and sister languages i no longer cleat Genetic eclaionship is particularly problematic inthe case ofthe two types of contact languages discussed inthe next section Language birth: pidgins and creoles In the previous section we saw how languages in contact may become structurally more similar while sill remaining separate languages. Under particular citcumstances, however, intensive language contact may result inthe birth of new sypes of coneact languages, pldgis and ereoles. pidgin is an auxiliary language witha reduced structure and lexicon which develops to meet the communicative requirements of speakers of mutually unintel ligible languages, mainly for certain rudimentary transactions in ttade, seafaring, of the management of labour in general. This language expediently brings together the elements of the wo sisparate languages to the extent necessary to full it restricted range of functions, most of which have to do with recurring and predictable situations inthe here and now. A pidgin therefore has 4 highly elementary grammar and vocabulary designed ro make 3aseconomical a connection with context as possible. A creole, on the other hand, i usually defined as a pidgin which has been adopted as arse language by a speech communiey and which has therefore developed in complexity to account for the much wider range of functions that a language needs o fulfil across a variery| ‘of domains of use inthe maintenance of social life. ‘of pidgins and creole reveals with particular clarity the processes of language change through contact. The speed in ‘which the structural and lexical complexity of ereoles tends to develop makes certain linguistic changes directly observable for linguists, while similae changes take much longer in other languages. Furthermore, there isan increasing awareness among, linguists that some oF even many of our modern languages may ultimately go hack to former ereoles which have developed into fully ledged languages without a tace of their ancestry. This Ibypothesis challenges the traditional view of linguistic evolution from proto-languages as discussed in Chapter 2, though some linguists have tried co apply the comparative method even to pidgin and creole languages to arrive at proto-pidgins. ‘We have every reason to assume chat pidginization and creolzation are natural communicative and linguistic processes, ‘which aze not restricted to the moder period. The pidgin Sabi, for example, developed as early as the crusades and became widely used within and outside the Meditereanean world. Since :mostpidgins and creole) show surprising structural similarities, their origin isa highly controversial issue: theories of origin range from the claim that all pidgins go back oa single source, possibly Sabir, which underwene mulkple elexieaton, i.e, exchange of vocabulary, through lexical borrowing, to the view that they have arisen independently in similar communicative contexts, possibly as the resule of an inbuilt universal *bioprogram for language acquisition which all humans shar, Inthe development ofa pidgin, ther iscontact eeween speakers ofa dominant language with those of one or more subordinate, so called substrate, languages, The status ofthe speakers corresponds to that of theie languages, with substrate language speakers typically being native labourers and slaves. It has been argued ‘thatthe simple grammatical structure of pidgin i derived from the subordinate language(s), though this seems unlikely given the astonishing structural similarities among pidgins in different parts ofthe world. Whats more certain, and generally accepted, fsthatthe restricted vocabulary of pidginsis mainly derived from the dominant language often one ofthe main colonial languages such as English or French, a face which has contributed to the mistaken belief that pidgins (and creoles) are corrupt forms of these languages. Pidgins with English-based vocabulary include ‘West African Pidgin English, and Tok Pisin in Papua New Guineas, Haitian Creole is French-based, Senegal Creole is Portuguese based, ete. ‘Typical linguistic features of pidgins are: strong variation in pronunciation, combined with a reduced phono- logical system, ic. fewer vowels and consonants than in the dominant langage, so thas theres, for example; phonological distinction between sp, sbip, chip in Tok Pisin; simplification of| ‘morphology and syntax, especially lack of inletions indicating, number, case, person, and gender, lack of tense markers to indicate time, fixed word order lack of sentence embedding, ie ‘of clausal subordination, etc; finaly, a restricted vocabulary, which may be expanded in an ad hoc manner from native languages In the process of ercolizaton, these simple structures get elaborated in a variety of ways: morphology and syntax become ‘more complex, the vocabulary increases, and pronunciation becomes more stable—processes which are mainly-due to the above-mentioned additional functions ofa fist language. A wel documented case is Tak Pisin, which has become the frst language ofa considerable number of speakers and atthe sa time one of the national and parliamentary languages of Papua New Guinea, where it serves as agua franca, 2 feneral language ‘of communication, for many more people. As a frst language, Tok Pisin is generally spoken faster and has thus undergone phonological processes of assimilation and reduction (eg. the demonstativelarticle wanpela ( 3! in words like pleasure, sreasure. ‘Though this change is parey due to structural borrowing from French, it can be interpreted as therapeuti in that it had the beneficial effect of establishing symmetry inthis subsystem. The second asymmetrical phoneme, fh, on the other hand, has disappeared from a number of vernacular varieties of British English by ‘h-dropping’ thus restoring the symmetry by elim: inating the ‘odd man out’ This striving for symmetry and balance iat the same time a move towards greater economy of linguistic phonological processes such as chain shifts with their push or drag chain mechanisms (cf. Chapters) have also been claimed to Serve vatious therapeutic functions. Among, these are che ten dency to avoid phonemie merger, to keep oF restore the balance ff the phonemic system, or to increase the phonetic. space between phonemes. This in turn may also have the elfect of avoiding homonyms, ie. «wo words of identical form but [ue] > lsh o possibly of vowel quantiy, ht there arc evidenty also changes thar cannot be phonetically gradual. Neither the insertion oF deleion of sounds nor their Fearrangement (‘metathesis’) as in Old English acsian beside l>adt This scale predicts that a speaker pronouncing [after wll also retain it after any ofthe consonants eo the Fight of Speakers saying [\utud} suited will also pronounce jin tnthusiaom or tute; on the other hand, people pronouncing {jus acd will also Keep the in tator, But not necessary in ‘ited. In other words if] stained afer a consonants any point on te scale, this implies the retention of {afer all Consonants othe right ofthat point, but does not say anything bout ts retention tothe let of that consonant. Sula implica ional patterns of change have already boon discussed in Chapter 4 inthe case of syntactic sypoogies and changes i the tase word order Tn spite of such evidence, lexical diffusion has not been generally acepted a8 model forthe spread of phonological Change in historical iguisice (sce also Readings, Text 17) Recent research makes i scem likely that both types of speead nay exist sie by siden language, with certain sound changes being of the Neogrammasian type, and others following the pattern of excl cifsion. “The above discussion has concentrated on the implementation of change in the linguist system without regard to the socal dimension of the implementation in the speech community. In Labor's macro-sciolingustic model, the decisive step is that various socal factors may cause an existing variant to become Socially sigicant forthe group dentfcation of speakers. This nails that rhs variant also becomes grammatically significant, Since he roles forts factaating use, the so~alled variable rules, fecome an integral part of 4 speaker’ competence. In ther words, a member ofa specie socal group somehow knovs the probability of occurrence ofa variant, and knows which variant torus ina given speech styl with what overall Frequency, as was