Republic of the Philippines

Capiz State University

College of Education

ENGLISH 104
LANGUAGE, CULTURE and SOCIETY

COURSE DISCRIPTION:
Explore and inextricable links between and among language, culture and society and its implication to the
development of English and the ways by which it is learned and taught.

Lizther Joy de Domingo Jiecel Begona Dequina Dr. Miraluna T. Sabid

Reporters Course Facilitator

GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY and TIME PERSPECTIVE IN CULTURE

Objectives:
1. To understand the Glottochronology and Time Perspective in Culture on language.
2. To identify the changes and relationship in languages.

GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY
Morris (Mauricio) Swadesh
 was born on January 22, 1909, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He died suddenly of a massive heart
attack in Mexico City on July 20, 1967, while in his fifty-ninth year.
 Swadesh became a linguist as a student of Edward Sapir at the University of Chicago.
 In (1949) he proposed a method for determining the time when two related languages became
independent: GLOTTOCHRONOLOGY.
Lexicostatistics:
 The study of vocabulary statistically for historical inference.
 Is a method of establishing linguistics relationship on the basis of a quantitative study of lexical
items (words).
Glottochronology:
 Method of lexicostatistics for determining degrees of relationship between languages, based on
counting the number of cognates in a particular set of vocabulary items.
 It tries to calculate when two languages separated in the past. It is analogous to a kind of
linguistic Carbon-14 test, but it usually cannot give absolute dates.
  Glottochronological dating is based on the assumption that in all languages there are certain
words that tend to be replaced at a constant rate over a long period of time.

The basic (core) vocabulary consists of words for concepts assumed to be a necessary part of all human
cultures. The semantic field represented by the lexical items includes pronouns, numerals, adjectives
(e.g. big, long, small), kinship terms (mother, father), living beings (dog, louse), body parts (head, ear,
eye), events and objects in nature (rain, stone, star), and common activities (see, hear, come, give).

1. I 21. Dog 41. Nose 61. Die 81. Smoke

2. You 22. Louse 42. Mouth 62. Kill 82. Fire
3. We 23. Tree 43. Tooth 63. Swim 83. Ash
4. This 24. Seed 44. Tongue 64. Fly 84. Burn
5. That 25. Leaf 45. Claw 65. Walk 85. Path
6. Who 26. Root 46. Foot 66. Come 86. Mountain
7. What 27. Bark 47. Knee 67. Lie 87. Red
8. Not 28. Skin 48. Hand 68. Sit 88. Green
9. All 29. Flesh 49. Belly 69. Stand 89. Yellow
10. Many 30. Blood 50. Neck 70. Give 90. White
11. One 31. Bone 51. Breasts 71. Say 91. Black
12. Two 32. Grease 52. Heart 72. Sun 92. Night
13. Big 33. Egg 53. Liver 73. Moon 93. Hot
14. Long 34. Horn 54. Drink 74. Star 94. Cold
15. Small 35. Tail 55. Eat 75. Water 95. Full
16. Woman 36. Feather 56. Bite 76. Rain 96. New
17. Man 37. Hair 57. See 77. Stone 97. Good
18. Person 38. Head 58. Hear 78. Sand 98. Round
19. Fish 39. Ear 59. Know 79. Earth 99. Dry
20. bird 40. eye 60. sleep 80. cloud 100. name
It should be noted that the large majority of these words can be traced to Old English- but is, they are
very old English words. Because of the universal nature and occurrence of the referents for which these
words stand, equivalents in other languages are available and may also be expected to be old.

Lexicostatistical test lists are used in lexicostatistics to define subgroupings of languages, and
in glottochronology to "provide dates for branching points in the tree". [8] The task of defining (and
counting the number) of cognate words in the list is far from trivial, and often is subject to dispute,
because cognates do not necessarily look similar, and recognition of cognates presupposes knowledge
of the sound laws of the respective languages.
Examples:
English German
Blood Blut
Cloud Wolke
Hair Haar
Sand Sand
tree Baum
black schwarz
Old English- new english
 Eald - means old *Brodor - means brother
 Hus - means house *Nett - means net
 Riht - means right *Apostle - came from apostol

Abortion Aborsyon Catalonan katalunan

Administration Administrasyon Mancocolam Mangkukulam
Peso piso Magtatanggal manananggal
bureau Buro (noun) Osuang aswang
cafeteria Kapetirya sitan satan

*flex *troll *karga/kagrado *buaya

An ABC (The Prayer of Our Lady)

Geoffrey Chaucer - 1343-1400
(The spelling has been standardized, and a modern rendition given to the right):

Almightly and all mercyable queen [Almighty and merciful queen],

to whom that all this world fleeth for socour [to whom everyone in the world runs to for help], to have
release ofsin, of sorrow, and teene [for release from sin, sorrow, and hurt],
Glorious virgin of flowers flower [Glorious virgin and flower of all flowers],
To thee I flee confounded in error [To you I come, confused and in error].

PROBLEMS THAT DWIGHT BOLINGER SUMMARIZED:

1. “we cannot be sure that the social and historical forces of change have not been
stronger in one epoch than in another, or that many items of supposedly basic
vocabulary have not actually been borrowed rather than inherited”
2. “a survey of the speech of the year-round inhabitants of Martha’s Vineyard found that
their desire to be different from the detested mainlanders is leading them to speed up a
certain changes in the pronunciation of their vowels. Social pressures create variable
rates of change in phonetics as well as in vocabulary”
3. The basic core vocabulary list is equally applicable to all cultures, that is, that it has no
cultural bias and is truly universal

According to the proponents of glottochronology, the length of time required for two languages to
diverge from a single language can be calculated. They proposed the following logarithmic formula:
t = log c / 2 log r,
where time depth (in years) is represented by t, c the percentage of cognates shared between the two
languages in question, and r the assumed retention rate (percentage).
Dip (for “degree of lexical relationship”) - relative unit of time depth that would be less misleading .

TIME PERSPECTIVE IN CULTURE

  The relative age of a culture element can be determined with some reliability from the
form of the native (not borrowed) word that refers to the element.
 Such simple and not further analysable words: Bow, plow, spear, wheel are as rule
much older than words that can be broken down into smaller constituent parts.
For example,
 The word airplane, battleship, railroad and spaceship.

EDWARD SAPIR
 one of the foremost American linguists and anthropologists of his time, most widely
known for his contributions to the study of NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES.
 A founder of ethnologuistics, which considers the relationship of culture to language, he
was also a principal developer of the American school of structural linguistics.

8.2 LINGUISTIC INFERENCES

ABOUT EARLY BANTU HISTORY
The oldest Bantu subsistence vocabulary so far constructible accords with postulation of a
higher-rainfall, tropical environment for the proto-Bantu homeland. No grain terms can be
reconstructed, but there is instead a word for yam. Two or three possible root words dealing
with the oil palm may also date to proto-Bantu, and the re-constructible proto-Bantu name
for alcoholic drink apparently referred specifically to palm wine. At least one cucurbit,
probably the bottle ground, a pulse (the cowpea?), and probably the voandzeia groundnut
were also known to the proto-Bantu…. These three crops would all have been domesticated
elsewhere than in the proto-Bantu homeland, but apparently they would be effectively
grown in high-rainfall savanna and/or rain forest…
A second indication of a high-rainfall environment is provided by the re-constructability of
fishing and boating vocabulary… apparently the proto-Bantu made considerable use of
riverine resources and lived where large perennial streams were commonplace.
Knowledge of two domestic animals, cattle and goats, can be reconstructed… whatever the
cause of proto-Bantu knowledge of cattle, it was lost by those who expanded into the
equatorial rain forest, for the proto-Bantu root *nyaka is found no farther south than some
of the forest languages in which it was reapplied, in the absence of cattle, to the buffalo…
Contrary to a widely held view, knowledge of iron working cannot be linguistically
reconstructed for proto-Bantu… by the beginnings, however, of Bantu expansion into eastern
Africa, on linguistic grounds most probably during the last millennium B.C., metallurgical
terms had come into use among at least the ancestral eastern Bantu communities.
From Christopher Ehret,”linguistic inferences
About early Bantu History” (1982), 61-62

Loanwords
 A word adopted from a foreign language with little or no modification.
  Usually designated elements of foreign cultures, can frequently be identified by their
different phonetic structure (we would now say “phonemic”).
 Thus, although /z/ and /j/ occur in old words of the native English vocabulary in medial
or final position.
Example:
Frozen, rise, bridges, and ridge),

 initially these two sounds are found only in loanwords,

Example:
zeal (adapted from Late Latin)
just (adapted from middle French).

Similarity, some combination of sounds betray the foreign origins of words in which they occur,
as /ps/ does in apse and lapse (both from Latin) and rhapsody (from Greek via Latin). But the
final /-ps/ in lips, sleeps, ship’s, and other such words is not comparable because the /-s/
represents other morphemes—the plural, the third-person singular, or the possessive,
respectively.
The assignment of related languages to a language family implies the earlier existence of an
ancestral language from which all modern languages of the family have descended. The more
differentiated these descendant language are, the longer the period of time one must allow for
their development to have taken place; the time depth has important consequences for culture
history.

CONCLUSION:
 If applied to related languages whose history is not known and for which written records do not
exist, glottochronology may provide some preliminary estimates of their closeness. But careful
linguistic anthropologists would look for supporting evidence from archaeology, comparative
ethnology, and linguistic reconstruction using the comparative method before accepting
glottochronology results as valid.
 Living languages change slowly but constantly. The old English is no longer intelligible to
speakers of modern English. The tendency of sound changes to be regular makes it possible to
reconstruct the assumed language of daughter language. Re-constructible words having to do
with the natural environment of a prehistoric society facilitate determining the location of its
ancestral homeland.

References:
5th edition LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND SOCIETY (An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology)
www.stu.ca
www.antropology.iresearchnet.com
www.google.translate.com
www.howtopronounce.com
https://www.britanica.com
https://www.study.com
www.strazny.com