A.

Read Elly Van Gelderen's A History of English Language (Chapter 1) and answer the
following questions:
1. What are some instances of recent changes in English? Discuss whether they are internal or
external changes.
= The recent changes in English are The word “like” as a hedge marker or as a quote
marker. when prepositions start being used to introduce sentences, i.e. as complementizers. Like is
a preposition in She swims like a fish but is extended to introduce sentences in She did like I said.
This is an internal change, as is the loss of case marking on who and stranding the preposition in
Who did you talk to. But e. If it is being used by speakers to mark a certain variety of English, it is an
external one.

2. How can we stop or encourage language change? Think of an actual example

= To stop or encourage language change we can use word in a popular book or listening
podcast even we can watch tv show. Ex: germaphobe in Seinfeld: ‘an obsessive about cleanliness
B. Again, Read Elly Van Gelderen's chapter 3, and answer the following questions:
1. What do you know about Grimm's Law?
= Grimm’s Law is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants
as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. Grimm’s Law can be considered a
chain reaction: aspirated voiced stops become regular voiced stops, voiced stops in turn become
voiceless stops, and voiceless stops become fricatives. Examples of this change taking place at the
beginning of words are provided in (1) (except for b > p which is hard to find word-initially). Sanskrit
is the first form given (except for kanab which is Old Persian), Latin the second, and English the third.
It is important to remember that the change takes place only once in a word: dhwer corresponds to
door but the latter does not change to toor: (1) bhrater-frater-brother dhwer-foris-door ghordho-
hortus-yard (< Old English geard) pitr-pater-father tu-tu-thou krnga-cornu-horn kanab-cannabis-
hemp (< Old English henep) danta-dentis-tooth jna-gnoscere-know/ken Thus, Grimm’s Law
distinguishes Germanic languages from languages such as Latin and Greek and modern Romance
languages such as French and Spanish. The latter are closer to Latin, and keep père and padre,
respectively, for ‘father’. The change probably took place a little over 2,000 years ago. Within
Germanic, many changes have taken place that help differentiate languages such as English,
German, and Swedish.

2. How does linguistic reconstruction works?

= We might first identify the form the majority of languages use. Applying the majority rule to
produces *cavallo. (We indicate a reconstruction by means of an *). We could also reconstruct by
looking at the actual rules to see if they make phonetic sense. To get from *cavallo to the modern
languages, we would need the following rules:

a. [k] → [w] (French)

b. [v] → [b], between two vowels (Spanish)

c. ending/double consonant disappears (French, Italian, and Catalan)

Rules a and c make sense since both palatalization and loss of endings and of double consonants
occur frequently. Rule b, however, does not make sense since typically stops become fricatives
between vowels and not the other way around. Therefore, instead of *cavallo, we reconstruct
*caballo. We keep rules a and c, but change b into a frication rule (stops to fricatives). Even though
the rule has to apply in two languages, it is preferable linguistically: redone (6b) [b] → [v], between
two vowels (French, Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan) Note that in many Spanish varieties, the b is
changing to a fricative as well, and that makes more plausible. To make sure the reconstruction of
*caballo is correct, we need to examine other words with the same voiced stops. If a fair number of
such words show the same correspondences, the reconstruction is probably accurate