FIRST

LANGUAGE
ENGLISH 7
Grading:
Continuous assessment (50% of final grade) 2.5 to 5 points (see detailed
workplan for due dates)
Task 1 = 1.5 points (either individual or teamwork)
Task 2 = 1.5 points (either individual or teamwork)
Final project = 2 points (teamwork)
Final exam (50% of final grade) 2.5 to 5 points
Voluntary task (up to 1 extra point)

No passing grade will be given for the exam alone, regardless of the grade, and
no passing grade will be given unless at least 2.5 points (out of 5) are reached in
each of the evaluation components (continuous assessment & exam). Every
evaluation component can be resit in the convocatoria extraordinaria
clara.molina@uam.es
 1. LANGUAGE VARIATION AND CHANGE
(GETTING STARTED)
Two language types: synthetic and analytic aunque las lenguas no suelen cambiar de tipo, el
inglés lo ha hecho.

Historical linguistics: It is also called diachronic linguistics. It is the branch of linguistics

concerned with the study of phonological, grammatical, and semantic changes, the
reconstruction of earlier stages of languages, and the discovery and application of the
methods by which genetic relationships among languages can be demonstrated.

Comes from Greek Dia=through Chronos=time

● Change ≠ Variation: the fact that you have variation doesn’t mean that you don’t have
change. They are two sides of the same coin.

Change: Language change refers to the historical development and transformation of

language over time. Language change can be caused by internal factors, such as linguistic
innovation, analogy, simplification, and regularization, or by external factors, such as
language contact, borrowing, diffusion, and shift. For example, English has changed
significantly from its origins as a Germanic language to its current status as a global
language, influenced by various languages such as Latin, French, and Arabic. Language
change can be traced through different sources, such as historical documents, comparative
methods, and reconstruction techniques.

Variation: different pronunciations, words… reasons for variation: different contexts exist. If
you are from one region or another you will use the language differently (north/south) if you
are from a different class (higher variation/lower variation). The context in which the
language is used. Variation gives you options, so the language then changes. Entonces si
tienes variación en el presente puede que haya change en el futuro, aunque no
necesariamente. Pero para que haya cambio tiene que haber habido variación previamente.
Variation is inevitable. *Language in synchrony: the study of a language at a specific point
and time.

● Historical linguistics is not about deciding what is right and wrong. Language is not a
product is a project.
● Languages are not willing entities, they don’t have a will, they don’t have entities.
“La lengua cambia”. Es común que tendamos a la personificación de las cosas y eso
hacemos con la lengua. Les otorgamos a las lenguas propiedades que no les
pertenecen. Languages change but they are not trying to get anywhere. El cambio
linguistico no puede controlarse, pasa por “inercia”, como cuando envejecemos y nos
salen canas.

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● Languages are:
➢ Conventional: a matter of agreement. A society has agreed upon.

Ex: the relation between significant and signifier is arbitrary.

manners are also conventional. Ortografia.

➢ Redundance: He is a man. Reduncade can deviate you from the expected

objective
➢ Sysematic
● Changes happen slowly so its hard to notice

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 2. INTRODUCING HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Diachronic linguistics: Study of language change over time. Language is always changing
(whether we like it or not).

Synchronic linguistics: the study of the state of a language at a given point in time

English is a new language compared with other languages (i.e. Spanish)

Anglo-Saxon and Old English weren’t unified languages. There is no awareness of being
unitary people. Different languages, but really similar, wars all the time.

7th century: we have the first texts in which we find Old English.

Language change is not a formal science because it depends on people. We cannot make
predictions, we only look at the past. We cannot discover the origin of language.

Language is a process, not a product

Varieties of English: formal, informal, etc. there is not only one English because every
speaker speaks one variety of English. There are different varieties of English: Hombre >
ombre > onvre > omvre in Old English it was like that.

Language is conventional. El principio de convencionalidad es el siguiente: " Para ciertos

significados, existe una forma que los hablantes esperan que sea utilizada en la comunidad
lingüística ". Es decir, si un término convencional expresa lo que quieren decir, los hablantes
deberían utilizarlo. Not teleological because it does not want to get anywhere

Languages are very redundant → tone of voice, gestures,… Por ejemplo, no es lo mismo ir a
clase que escuchar una clase solo por audio o que te lean un texto en lugar de leerlo tú if you
do not understand something while reading you can always reread the text

Redundant sentence → He is a man → we make sure that the message comes across

- The subject is signalled twice (sentence-initial position and pronominal from he

instead of any other
- Singular, four times (he instead of they, is instead of are, a instead of no article, man
instead of men)
- Masculine, twice (he and man):
- Sometimes Americans are more conservative/innovative, sometimes English
fall/autumn, tap/faucet, tomato
- Muchas de las palabras que usamos son calcos de otros idiomas y no pasa nada
- Los cambios no son producto del azar, siguen patrones sistemáticos

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Reading: The ever-whirling wheel

• Goes over examples of older English texts to point at how much language evolves.

• Many intelligent people condemn language change (it is sloppiness, lazyness). Goes over examples
of articles critizising language change during the 60s to the 80s, referred to as "decline".

• Author's goal: examine how language change occurs in order to find out the direction in which
language is moving (wether it is good or bad)

Possibilities:

○ Decay
○ Evolution towards efficiency ("survival of the fittest")

‘In the evolution of languages the discarding of old flexions goes hand in hand with the
development of simpler and more regular expedients that are rather less liable than the old
ones to produce misunderstanding.’

1. Equilibrium of advance and decay

SEARCH OF PURITY

● Social-class prejudice as source of disapproval of alterations.

● Complaints about language decline are persistent throughout history (18th century is
when purity is at it's height)
● Samuel Johnson: creator of a dictionary that was very influential and payed attention
to actual usage of the middle and upper class.
● Purism is not necessarily right (purists support the use of “got” instead of “gotten”,
even though the original, oldest version would be “gotten”). *It originates from a
nostalgic sentiment, but obeys social pressures* (doesn’t really defend what is correct
from an historic standpoint, but what is privileged).
● This doesn’t necessarily prove that language is not in decay, just that social prejudices
cloud the issue.

RULES AND GRAMMARS:

1. Prescriptive grammar: prescribes what people **should* say (Lowth’s grammar)

2. Descriptive grammar:* describe what people *actually* say (grammars and rules of
linguists). No external authority laws, but *a codification of submucous conventions
followed by the speakers.* They also separate spoken and written languages.
3. *Rules: codifies **actual patterns of a language* that we are not aware of but follow
subconsciously (you could say Sebastian is eating peanuts, but not *Sebastian is
peanuts eating, *Peanuts is eating Sebastian, or *Eating is Sebastian peanuts).

The sum total of the rules of a language is known as a *grammar*.

- No linguist has succeded in creating a 100% accurate grammar.

- The term grammar is used to speak about the whole of a language (phonology +
syntax + semantics + morphology)

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- Muchas de las palabras que usamos son calcos de otros idiomas y no pasa nada
- Los cambios no son producto del azar, siguen patrones sistemáticos
- Reading: The ever-whirling wheel
- Goes over examples of older English texts to point at how much language evolves.
- Many intelligent people condemn language change (it is sloppiness, lazyness). Goes
over examples of articles critizising language change during the 60s to the 80s,
referred to as "decline".
- Author's goal: examine how language change occurs in order to find out the direction
in which language is moving (wether it is good or bad)

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3 . ATTITUDES TOWARDS LANGUAGE CHANGE
● A number of “common sense” attitudes
● Neither illogical nor recent add-ons (but a long history of complaints about linguistic
corruption)
● Correctness vs. acceptability (a much more useful alternative for our purposes)
● El lenguaje siempre va a cambiar y cada vez más deprisa, no podemos hacer nada
para impedirlo: you know (1350), super for good (1850) some people complain about
these things, they think that is not the “real English”
● Ain’t probably the most despised world, it is very common.

Absolute stability in a language is never found … All parts of the language are subject to
change, and any period will see a revolution of greater or lesser extent. It may vary in rapidity
or intensity, but the principle admits no exceptions: the linguistic river never stops flowing.
Suassure

➢ Linguistic corruption, not a recent complaint

○ 18th century: Bishop Lowth praised for showing "the grammatic inaccuracies
that have escaped the pens of our most distinguished writers”
○ 19th century: Frederick Marryat thought it “remarkable how very debased the
language has become in a short period in America”

➢ Correctness vs. acceptability

○ Prestige: we want to be accepted, we do not want to be isolated. We tend to
imitate the more educated, richer, etc.
○ Acceptability: adaptar el lenguaje al contexto, cómo de aceptable es un
lenguaje y para quién
○ Correctness: las cosas son o blanco o negro, o están bien o están mal. It’s nice
in an academic context

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4. HOW LANGUAGE CHANGES
1. The problem of evidence:
● Problems concerning the availability of evidence, the relationship between
internal and external evidence, and the interpretation of whatever evidence
exists
■ Internal vs external evidence: linguistic as such (language samples
from texts and documents) versus non-linguistic historical
information (from archaeological sites or contemporary written
histories). Changes IN THE LANGUAGE (for example, the use of
‘ss’)
■ Internal vs external history of a language: an account of the
language at different points in time vs an account to who spoke the
language, where and when. Things that happened TO THE
SPEAKERS of the languages (for example, French invasions)

Por ejemplo, en unos siglos aunque leyesen el BOE no sabrían cómo hablábamos en
2020 porque no refleja la lengua de verdad, solo el canon de la lengua

2. The spread of change from person to person:

● Speech communities: nationality, residence, ethnicity, language, age, gender,
education, occupation, job place, subculture, hobby, religion, politics,
residence, occupation, language
● Conscious language change: triggered by “pressures from above”, usually
toward the socially accepted norm
● Unconscious language change: influenced by “pressures from below” (the
level of social awareness), usually away from the accepted norm
○ No se trata de que lo hagas o no lo hagas, sino que hay muchos
“puntos intermedios”. Podemos hacerlo en momentos puntuales, por
ejemplo, o no hacerlo siempre sino solo en ciertas ocasiones.
Además, estas presiones no son de golpe, sino poco a poco, como los
cambios del lenguaje
● Overt/covert prestige: we are imitating people all the time

3. The spread of change within a language:

● No blind laws with no exceptions, no mechanical simultaneity, but S-curves
cuando empieza hay pocas personas que lo utilicen, los demás imitan y la
mayoría lo utiliza, luego pasa el tiempo y deja de utilizarse
● Generalizar patrones: crear una regularidad relacionando cosas que en un
principio no tienen relación
● Language change is regular (gradual implementation and gradual spread both
from person tu person and within the language) takes time (the diffusion is as
important as innovation) no es algo que pase de la noche a la mañana y sin
motivo, sino que ocurre muy lentamente y con sentido

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 4. Things to keep in mind:
● The aim of studying language change is not knowing “what happened when”
● Languages do not change because of time: not only because of time (for
example, Latin has not changed these last centuries)
● Speakers are those who change language → there are problems in
communication and speakers solve them
● Los cambios se producen en los márgenes de la lengua: “Just like a seed is
likely to enter the ground where the soil is soft, such as a crack between
paving stones, so a sound change is likely to creep into a language at a
vulnerable point”
● Both speakers and hearers have a role in language change

5. Universal tendencies: expressions

● Human body > physical world at large: foot of the mountain, ribs of the whip,
hear of the organization
● External bodily behaviour > internal events. I see what you mean, let’s go
over the plan again
● Space > time: from tree to tree > from time to time; in the wood > in the
morning

6. Rutas de cambio:
➢ From contextual to away from contextual. There (deictic) > there is a house
➢ From iconic to conventional: iconicity > opacity > reiconicity: folk
etymology
➢ From marginal to central: from non-relevant to relevant contexts, from
sporadic to habitual, from less to more functional, from ambiguity to
preciseness
➢ From lexical to grammatical: lexicon > derivative morphology > flexive
morphology
➢ From concrete to abstract: physical > temporal > symbolic (dentro, dentro de
una hora, dentro de lo que cabe)
➢ There is always tension between stability and change.
➢ Margenes de la lenguaàweak, vulnerable spots=conceiled linguistic susceptibility.
➢ Difference btw triggers and causes, causa y desencadenante
➢ Catalyst
➢ Social linguistic causes are superficial in language change:
○ Immediate (social) vs long term (mental)
○ External (social) vs internal (internal)
➢ Minimal adjustment theory: La teoría del "ajuste como proceso" describe que, desde
el momento en que nacemos, los humanos estamos en un estado constante de ajuste.
Dado que vivimos en un estado de cambio constante, a menudo rápido, se deduce que
no podemos dividir estos cambios en desafíos separados y no relacionados.

THERE IS ALWAYS A TENSION BETWEEN STABILITY AND CHANGE

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5. LANGUAGE VARIATION AND CHANGE
1. Things we already know:
- Language change is constant, inevitable and neither right nor wrong. Human
activity, a subjective, socially and culturally transmitted thing, so its bound to change.
- Language change involves both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors.
❖ Sociolinguistic: language used by younger people
❖ Pycolinguistic: el worksheet 5 da más info de psycholinguistic factors.
- Language change is gradual: tug-of-war (back and forth conflic) between conflicting
loyalties and tension between stability and change
- Language is ecological and self-regulating.
❖ Self regulation: when there are important changes going on in a part of a
language, las otras partes tend to remain stable. There are turns (not stricts
turns) a la hora de que ocurran cambios en un idioma. Not all parts of the
language change at the same time, they take turns.
❖ Ecological: we very rarely create thing out from scratch. If we have one
word and its meaning is obsolete, we either change the meaning (reuse) or
stop using it. Ecological, recycling.
- Language change is regular (it cannot be predicted)
- De una era a otra hay cambios que marcan the end of an era Old middle
english, pero no son harsh endings and begginings.
- Middle English: change in vocab, French words…

Diffusion of a change in language:

● From person to person: conscious/unconscious, but always entailing prestige

Prestigio: ¿es prestigioso aquello que se acerque más a la norma? No necesariamente,

el prestigio se marca a partir del grupo que esté escuchando. Aceptable to whom.

● Within the language: rule generalization

We also know that language change attracts criticism. Sometimes it can be socially and/or
politically undesirable. What then?

- If it disrupts communication
- At the and of me this happened, people complained ab the lang because they didn’t
understand each other. The changes in the south were more rapid than in the north.
Habia barrera idiomatica. Communication was hindered. They created the standard
English incorporating mostly aspects of the south language, aunque para que no fuera
una imposicion para el resto, Tambien se incluyeron aspectos lingüísticos del norte y
del este de la isla. The presence of the standard slows down the process of change.

Any other brakes to language change?

- Isolation, puristic attitudes > vigilance, sociopolitical stability. It is not a factor

anymore but it used to be a factor in the past, porque ya no se suelen dar.
- A strong written tradition: the written is fixed, it is there to stay. Makes the lang
change less, it will chaned but less. Fixed, conservative, linked to powerful clases.

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 - Self-regulation: if there are extensive ongoing changes in one language sub-system,
other subsystems tend to remain stable cuando los cambios anteriores ya se han
estabilizado, empiezan otros, se asegura de manera natural de que los hablantes no lo
cambien todo a la vez, se autoregula para no explotar

2. Trigger vs. Causes:

No es lo mismo un desencadenante que una causa

ej: METEOROLOGÍA Una tormenta provoca centenares de caídas de árboles e inundaciones en

varios puntos de la Comunidad. El ejemplo de los arboles de Madrid, cierran el parque cuando hace
mucho viento por si se caen los arboles, pero el culpable no es el viento, es que los arboles no están
bien.

CAUSES OF CHANGE

Not only one cause: always a constellation of both external and internal causes

External causes: only accelerate it

Fashion: social prestige and the desire of speakers to accommodate, hearer’s

misinterpretations

o Recall social prestige and the desire of speakers to accommodate

o In addition, hearers’ misinterpretations

Foreign influence: language contact, de un idioma que consideremos prestigioso

o Substratum theory; simeplre se ha dicho q las lenguas cambian porque hay una
comunidad imigrante que mezcla su propia lengua de origen con la del lugar.
Pero esto no es del todo cierto porque se tiende a una supercorrecion que acaba
por desembocar en la lengua del lugar, la lengua más prestigiosa.

o Language contact:

Social need: prestigious

o Slang, expressions… needs can come in various ways

But remember! A language only accepts those elements it is ready for + foreign influence only
accelerates changes somehow under way

→Borrowings … rain through a cracked window: lectura

Internal causes: speakers and hearers need to solve their communicative problems
(todos somos las dos cosas de manera simultánea)

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Internal causes: Randomness and language acquisition

What both speakers & hearers need to solve their communicative problems

Least effort: que la comunicación sea lo más sencilla posible

Analogy

Reanalysis: redundancy (or avoidance of redundancy), linearity constraints

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6. UNIVERSAL PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE CHANGE
El inglés adoptó muchas palabras de la lengua más prestigiosa del momento, que era el inglés.

COGNATES: palabras que se parecen mucho porque tienen orígenes muy similares Patterns
in language change: roots, etc.

Language change as natural processes:

Phonological change

Metathesis: 2 sounds switch positions in a word. For example: acsian ask

Epenthesis: addition of a sound in the middle of a word: timr timber

Protheses: Addition of a sound to the beginning of a word. Schola escuela (school)

Morphosyntactic change

Grammaticalization: a form takes more grammatical function over time. Go (verb of motion)

go (indicating future tense)

Semantic change

Broadening: a word takes on a broader meaning over time. Dog, Kleenex, holiday

Narrowing: a word takes on a narrower meaning over time: hound, girl, wife (any woman, now only
married ones)

Amelioration: a word takes on a more positive meaning over time: bad, dope, sick

Pejoration: a word taking a negative meaning over time. Hussy, vulgar, pathetic, silly

1. Language change is possible because of the conventional (i.e., arbitrary) nature of the linguistic
sign

o Iconic signs (photographs, star charts…): sth that clearly resembles the fact in real
life. La papelera de windos, es igual que la papelera de real life.

§ In language, onomatopoeias are iconic

o Indexical signs (smoke to fire, a symptom to an illness…):

§ In language, deictics are indexical, señalan

· DEMONSTRATIVES: this, that

· ADVERBS: here, there

· TENSE MARKS: now, later

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 o Symbolic signs (a flag to a nation, a rose to love…): human arrangements,
arbitrary connections, we have agreements por ejemplo, te doy una rosa para
demostrar amor, es una conexion arbitraria, una decision. As it is a decision it is
easier to change

§ Most thins in language are symbolic, therefore they are arbitrary and that’s
why linguistic change happens.

2. Language change involves a constellation of socio/psycholinguistic factors

«La eficacia del sistema se basa precisamente en mantener un equilibrio muy rentable entre cambio y
continuidad. Los hablantes rara vez generan innovaciones a partir de la nada, radicalmente novedosas, es
decir, evitan esfuerzos de creación e interpretación innecesarios con los que se arriesgan además a que fracase
la comunicación. Lo habitual es renovar y utilizar recursos ya existentes. En este sentido, la lengua actúa como
una perfecta planta de reciclaje, en la que continuidad e innovación se dan la mano»

La lengua está a punto de cambiar ya que está creada de elementos simbólicos. Si algo está en la
naturaleza, pasa. Cambiar está en la naturaleza de la lengua.

Instead of creating new words, we replace them to give them a new meaning. Recycling. Sino entre
generaciones no nos entenderíamos.

FACTORES EN EL CAMBIO LINGÜÍSTICO Paloma Tejada […]

Todos estos factores y necesidades o sólo parte de ellos pueden incidir en una determinada situación y pueden
hacerlo con distinto grado de intensidad. ¿Por qué ha triunfado brunch? Probablemente por ser
simultáneamente necesaria, eufónica, breve, expresiva, por no estar ligada a sectores marginales, por
difundirse a través de la publicidad y por acomodarse a patrones de formación léxica del inglés y a una
tradición que se remonta al menos hasta el siglo XVII. Es precisamente la combinabilidad cuantitativa y
cualitativa de los factores lo que provoca que a situaciones aparentemente similares la lengua dé soluciones
distintas; que la lengua cambie con mayor o menor rapidez, que los cambios resulten más o menos probables.

Pongamos un ejemplo más. En inglés, la {-s} se generalizó como marca de plural hacia el siglo XIV. Este
morfema se veía favorecido por múltiples factores: la mayoría de los sustantivos formaban el plural con un
morfema similar; en la época se introdujeron múltiples préstamos del francés, variante prestigiada, cuyo
morfema de plural coincidía fónicamente con el nativo; al tiempo, la progresiva reducción flexiva estaba
provocando la pérdida del género gramatical en inglés; la confusión inicial, a la que contribuyó la mezcla de
formas nativas y extranjeras, indujo a que los sustantivos ingleses originalmente femeninos y neutros adoptaran
mayoritariamente el morfema de plural más generalizado, es decir, el que compartían los masculinos nativos y
los préstamos franceses; todo esto ocurrió además en un momento en que el inglés dejaba de ser una lengua
esencialmente vernácula para convertirse en lengua normalizada, institucionalmente más compleja y preparada
para difundir geográfica y socialmente patrones lingüísticos homogéneos.

- The endings are disappearing (from old to middle English)

- At the same time a lot of borrowings from French that happen to have an -s
- Dominum > dueño ; Hominum > hombre

Para percibir el contrapunto de esta situación tenemos que recurrir a la especulación. Sería raro, por ejemplo,
que hoy por hoy se generalizara en inglés el sistema de clasificación de sustantivos bantú, caracterizado por la
presencia de sufijos que diferencian los objetos por la forma. El inglés y el bantú no son lenguas genéticamente

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relacionadas, ni tampoco comparten rasgos fonéticos, morfológicos ni de otra índole; no hay contacto
significativo entre hablantes de una y otra lengua; la cultura bantú no reviste prestigio alguno para los
miembros de la comunidad anglosajona y la innovación supone una alteración particularmente radical para los
esquemas morfológicos del inglés, por lo demás altamente estandarizada. En este caso comprobamos cómo la
mayoría de los factores se aúnan para rechazar el cambio; sería, por tanto, muy improbable, nada previsible,
casi imposible que la innovación apuntada encontrara acomodo en el sistema inglés (excerpted from Cruz &
Martín Arista, eds. 2001. Lingüística

This excract explains why something would not change.

3. Change is constant and inevitable, but languages are self-regulating

A tendency toward symmetry (phonological pairs of matching vowels & consonants, regularized
plurals & verbs because of analogy…)

4. Language change cannot be predicted but it is a regular process: universal paths

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7. RESEARCH METHODS IN HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
- Methods for linguistic reconstruction (to study the prehistory of languages when no texts are
available). You never have enough texts, and you cannot assume that the written version is
similar to spoken language.

Ej: “I” “EYE”

- From Proto-Indo-European to ProtoGermanic

Linguistic reconstruction

1. The comparative method: COGNATES

COGNATES: Terms that look sound and seem the same in different languages. Normally because
they come from the same family.

§Miracles do not exist

§Changes are not haphazard

§Uniformity principle

2. Internal reconstruction:

Is exactly the same as morphemic analysis, but the emphasis of the two is different. Morphemic
analysis brushes aside unproductive irregular alternations, whereas internal reconstruction
concentrates on them. In traditional historical linguistics the technique known as internal
reconstruction is complementary to the comparative method for studying the earlier forms of
languages.

Internal reconstruction involves comparing forms within a single language, if they give any indication
regarding an earlier state of that language. In present day linguistics, much of what has previously
been subsumed under internal reconstruction is taken over by descriptive linguistics, specifically
under the heading of morphophonemic analysis. Nonetheless, from historical point of view internal
reconstruction remains a valid device for getting at earlier stages of languages.

3. Lexicostatistics & glottochronology:

Another approach, pioneered by the American Structuralist linguist Morris Swadesh, is called
lexicostatistics. For a set of languages of interest, we get a small vocabulary list of common, basic
words (typically 100-200 items). For each pair of languages, we determine the percentage of words on
this list that appear to be cognate. Determination of cognation is dependent on the subjective judgment
of the linguist, and we expect some errors, especially if the scholar does not know the languages very
well, but we hope that the error rate will be small enough not to affect the results.

We can then arrange these cognate percentages in a table, from which we draw some conclusions
about the degree of relationship among the languages involved.

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Swadesh and others took this type of analysis further, based on the idea that the average rate of loss of
cognates could be regarded as constant over historical time, just like the rate of radioactive decay.
Swadesh looked at some languages where historical stages are well documented, and concluded that
basic vocabulary decays by 14 percent every millenium. According to the entry on Swadesh in the
Encyclopedia of Linguistics:

Thus, if the basic vocabularies of two related languages are found to match by 70
percent, they can be assumed to have developed from a single language that existed
approximately 12 centuries before.The assumption that basic vocabulary decay is
generally uniform has been largely rejected. If one allows that languages, just like
societies, may develop at different rates at different times, the assumption of steady
vocabulary decay in particular, and the glottochronological method in general, is
seriously undermined.

4. Protolexicon

(SOME) LANGUAGE TYPES

1. Isolating: each word expresses a distinct idea and has no inflections; variations in the parts
of speech and syntactic relations are determined by WO and by separate particles

2. Agglutinating: a single word combines various linguistic elements, each having a distinct,
fixed connotation and separate existence

3. Inflectional: words have affixes (prefixes & suffixes) that modify meaning and identify the
grammatical relations within a sentence

> 2 types of grammars within inflectional Linguistics:

• Syntactic grammars (English, Spanish): prepositions and word order to indicate

grammatical relationships

• Case grammars (Latin, OE): cases to show grammatical relationships in a sentence

English, at least 3-in-1

1. Isolating the boy will ask the girl vs the girl will ask the boy

2. Inflectional the biggest boys have been asking

3. Agglutinating anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism Plus genealogical & cultural considerations!

From IndoEuropean to Germanic:

1. Unique vocabulary items rain, drink, broad, hold, wife, meat . . .

2. Simplified verbal system only present & past tenses indicated by inflection

3. Weak and strong verbs •weak verbs (dental suffix): talk—talked • strong verbs (vowel
change): sing—sang

16
 4. Weak and strong adjectives •weak adjectives: þa geongan ceorlas • strong adjectives:
geonge ceorlas

5. Stress fixed in initial position wa-ter, eat-ing

6. Vowel changes •IE /a:/ > Germanic /o:/ •Latin mater versus OE modor

7. Grimm’s Law

Verner's Law was the answer to some irregularities in Grimm's Law (step 2): in some environments, t
> ð (rather than θ), which explains *pater > OE fæd

English, then, began its separate existence as a form of Germanic brought by pagan
warrior-adventurers from the Continent to the then relatively obscure island that the Romans called
Britannia and that had up until a short time before been part of their mighty empire. There, in the next
five centuries or so, it was to develop into an independent language quite distinct from any Germanic
language spoken on the Continent.

Moreover, it had become a language sufficiently rich in its word stock, thanks largely to the impetus
given to learning by the introduction of Christianity, that by the year 1000, this newcomer could
measure swords with Latin in every department of expression and was incomparably superior to the
French speech that came in with William of Normandy. English, then, began its separate existence as
a form of Germanic brought by pagan warrior-adventurers from the Continent to the then relatively
obscure island that the Romans called Britannia and that had up until a short time before been part of
their mighty empire. There, in the next five centuries or so, it was to develop into an independent
language quite distinct from any Germanic language spoken on the Continent.

17
La lengua a medida que evoluciona acorta palabras, etc., pero siempre deja la primera letra de
la raíz

Las palabras más frecuentes son las que suelen cambiar más

Ver cómo ha evolucionado una lengua: compararlas con otras lenguas de la misma rama o
analizar cómo una sola lengua ha cambiado a lo largo del tiempo

Research methods:

COMPARATIVE METHOD: look at different languages to reconstruct a proto-language. We

compare cognates in current or ancient times. Cognates may have evolved similar, different or
even opposite meanings. English comes from a Germanic language (‘father’: pater, piter,
Pater, fadar,…).

It has been used by historical linguists to reconstruct lexical, phonological and morphological
data

Although the proto-languages reconstructed by the comparative method are hypothetical, a

reconstruction may have predictive power

Proto language: is a language (usually hypothetical) from which a number of attested, or

documented, known languages are believed to have descended by evolution, or slow
modification of the proto-language into languages that form a language family

How is the reconstruction accomplished? 3 main assumption underlying the reconstruction of

a protolanguage are:

Belief in the arbitrary nature of language: recurring similarities between words from different
languages or dialects indicate that these languages or dialects are related to each other and
must therefore have descended from a common ancestral language

Belief in the Neogrammarian hypothesis: sound changes are regular under like circumstances

Belief in the Uniformity Principle: miracles do not exist and changes are not haphazard

Economy: when multiple alternative are available, the one which requires the fewest
independent changes is most likely to be the right

INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION: technique for inferring aspects of the history of a

language from what we see in that language alone. It analyses the internal development of a
single language over time

Frequently applied when: to isolated (languages without known relatives), individual

languages in order to arrive at an earlier stage to which the comparative method can then be
applied to compare this with related languages in the family

Method of recovering information about language’s past from the characteristics of the same
language but a later date

18
Involves making a detailer study of a single language at a simple point in time, and ducting
acts about previous states of that language

Irregularities within a language are due to language change, so this method tries to reconstruct
the earlier language stage

The thins compared in this method are the forms in the language which have more than one
phonological shape in different circumstances

Basic premise: a meaning-bearing element in different environments (formation of past

simple tense) was probably a single form in the past (underlying form) into which alternation
was introduced by the usual mechanisms of sound change and analogy

Lexicostatistics

GLOTTOSCHRONOLOGY: uses the percentage of vocabulary loss or retention to determine

the relationship between languages and give an approximate date of language change. Lists
the most natural, most neutral translations of each of the 100 semantic concepts collected are
assembled and compared in two or more languages, which are thought to be related

MASS COMPARISON: to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It

provides an evaluation of the basic vocabulary of the entire language groups

19
8. ENGLISH AS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE
•The Germanic family of languages

•English, a non-prototypical Germanic language

Old English has influence from the people that conquered them: OLD EAST NORSH (germanicos)

Middle English has influence from the people that conquered them: OLD FRENCH

Why does ME use different lexinoc than OE?

- The effect of language contact: NORSE and FRENCH

o Norse: Vikings, Scandinavians that conquered England in 8th century. Scandinavian

influence: SKY, WINDOW, HUSBAND (loan-words)

o French: (transition from OE to ME 1066 mas o menos). Grench influence: Relic,

Virgin, Fashion… 30% of ME words were borrowings from French.

GERMANIC LANGUAGES

•Proto-Germanic (AKA Germanic, Common or Primitive Germanic, Primitive Teutonic), the

linguistic ancestor/parent language of the Germanic family, split from related IE languages sometime
between the 15th and 10th centuries B.C

•The Germanic culture (known for runes, skaldic poetry & alliterative sagas) was only alive until
Christianism

•The Germanic language was never recorded in writing (hence, the name Proto-Germanic) and did not
leave records

•In the 19th century, it was reconstructed from written evidence in descendant languages

•Over time, dialectal differences + migrations > branches within the Germanic family = Germanic
languages English, already by 1000, A non-prototypical Germanic language (even a non-prototypical
west Germanic language)

1. Simplicity of inflection

- Present Day German reiten: 16 forms

- Old English ridan: 13 forms
- Present Day English ride: 5 forms (ride, rides, rode, riding, ridden)
- Although not as much as in isolating languages! Compare 5 forms in German (Mann,
Mannes, Manne, Männer, Männern), 4 in English (man, man's, men, men’s) and only
1 in Chinese (jen)

2. Openness of vocabulary

3. Flexibility of function

20
9. LINGUISTIC CONTACT THROUGH HEL
Periodization in the history of English (in relation to language contact)

Pre-Old English 5th-7th centuries: NO WRITTEN RECORDS

Old English (OE) 7th-12th centuries: INFLECTIONS

Kingship, Christianity, literacy (Alfredian scriptoria) > budding written standard (does not
survive the Viking raids)

Main linguistic features of each period

OLD ENGLISH

Spelling

• Some letters not yet used: ,<J> ,<q> , <v> <z>

• Some runes used: æ (ash), þ (thorn), ð (eth)

•Different letter combinations used to express familiar sounds: (sh) fisc (qu) cwic (wh) hwaet
(dge) bricg

• Some letter combinations no longer in use: <lc> folc <lh> wealh ‘Welsh' <hl> hlaf
<hn>hnutu

Vocabulary

• Approximately 50,000-60,000 words in OE

• 99% of the vocabulary purely Germanic

• Many new words formed by compounding: leohtfaet (light-vessel) 'lamp', daegred (day-red)
'dawn'

Grammar

• A richly inflected (synthetic) language

•Words have grammatical gender (masculine and feminine)

• Strong & weak adjectives

•Double negative widely used

• Pronominal separate 'dual case' (wit 'we two', git 'ye two’) • Existence of a definite article
('the') questionable

•Word order much freer than in PDE

21
MIDDLE ENGLISH ( 1 1 0 0 - 1 5 0 0 ) :

1100-1500 (Norman Conquest to Renaissance) MAJOR TYPOLOGICAL CHANGE

Triglossia: French as a social marker > thousands of borrowings

Downfall of feudalism + rise of middle class > triumph of English

1100 to 1500 (12th to 16th centuries)

- 12th 1066: Norman Conquest Triglossia

- 13th 1204: Loss of Normandy Thousands of borrowings English becomes a mark of
nationalism
- 14th-15th 1362: Parliament English is official again 1476: Caxton's Printing Press
East Midlands dialect spreads as the new standard

Historical influences leading to the triumph of English

- 1204 Loss of Normandy

- 1258 Provisions of Oxford (1st written constitution)
- 1337-1453 Hundred Years' War
- 1348 Black Death
- 1381 Peasants' Revolt

Languages spoken by English kings during the ME period

Norman French only:

- William I (1066-1087)
- William II (1087-1100)
- Henry I (1100-1135)
- Stephan (1135-1154)
- Henry II (1154-1189)
- Richard I (1189-1199)

- John I (1199-1216) 1st English speaker

All bilingual;

- Henry III (1216-1272)

- Edward I (1272-1307)
- Edward II (1307-1327)
- Edward III (1327-1377)
- Richard II (1377-1399)

English only:

- Henry IV (1399-1413)

22
 - Henry V (1413-1422)

ME

Spelling

● New spellings (due to French influence):

● New letter combinations:

Vocabulary

● A great deal of French influence (mostly after the Provisions of Oxford): some
10,000 loanwords between 1250-1450.
● Many prefixes (pre-, super-, inter-, sub-, dis-) and suffixes (-ance, -ence, -ant) came
into the language from French and Latin.
● English develops from being a highly inflected language to being an analytical
language: loss of inflexional endings
● There was an absence of a written standard: linked to regional variation written from
changed a lot over time
● 3 possibilities:
● French words replaced English words
● English words stayed in the language
● French words merged with English words
● 10,000 French words were introduced in the English language: about ¾ of which are
still in use today

Grammar

● Loss of inflections: no longer nominative, dative & accusative distinctions.

● Loss of grammatical gender & appearance of "natural" gender, so words like mare
and stallion would have the pronoun references based on gender.
● Development of fixed word order & increased use of prepositions: as inflections
disappeared, English changed from synthetic to analytic.
● Words begin to take on new functions: nouns being used as verbs for the first time.
● Use of the double and triple negative became common:

23
 Ne isaeh naevere na man selere chiht nenne. // No-one had ever seen a better
knight.

● English becomes an analytical language. Case and number endings are reduced or
disappear
● Grammatical functions are indicated through the use of grammatical words and word
order
● When languages come together, a process of grammatical simplification normally
takes place
● Nouns: case suffixes were lost, generalised plural marked became -s
● Adjectives: lost agreement with nouns
● Adverbs: ending -lic became -ly
● No aprender todos los detalles, solo saber cómo la lengua inglesa ha cambiado hasta
llegar hasta hoy y hablar sobre sus cambios

Pronunciation

● Some initial /h/ sounds get lost: hring > ring

● Some metathesis: brid > bird, thrist > thirst, frist > first
● Appearance of initial /dg/ sound: judge, jury, juice, gem
● 14th-16th centuries (that is, in between Middle and Early Modern English): GREAT
VOWEL SHIFT
● Vowels: sounded more like Old English than Modern English
● Consonants: Most consonants stayed the same. When pronouncing consonants, in
Middle English you pronounce those that have become silent in Modern English:
knight, write, gnawen, halve
● We have shorter words
● Word stress normally fell on the first syllable, unless it was a prefix
● Old-English diphthongs (heofonum > in hevene)
● New diphthongs emerge in the Middle English period (daeg: dai, day)

Dialects

Lowland Scottish, Northern, East-Midland (raised standard), West-Midland, South-western,

South-eastern/Kentish

No encontramos una lengua estándar porque estaban aisladas.

What are the languages of Medieval English?

Late Old English: many different dialects raise of West Saxon

Latin: Language of the ecclesiastical hierarchies

Old Norse: Viking invaders

French: Normal conquerors

Middle English: Language of the people (99% of population) Raise of East Midland
(London standard)

24
Early Modern English (EModE) 1500-1700 (1707 Act of Union) CONSOLIDATION OF
STANDARD ENGLISH

Late Modern English (LModE) 1700-1800 COLONIALISM > THE ENGLISHES

Present-Day English (PDE) 20th century onwards (contemporary) HEGEMONY OF

ENGLISH

Remember the antecedents…

By the end of the 14th century, there were many complaints about the “gret diversité” By the
mid-15th century, the standard is consolidated, but only for official documents.

- 16th ME-EModE transition: Written standard English well consolidated.

- 17th 1611: King James Bible Social rather than regional dialects get stigmatized.
Functions are created for the written standard. Spoken standard arises. Expansion to
North America and South Africa.
- 18th Codification and fixing (completed by early 19th c.) Expansion to India,
Australia, and New Zealand.
- 19th The Englishes
- The Age of Reason

o English should be reduced to a set of rules and set up standards of correct

usage.

o The language needs correction and refinement to remove defects and

introduce improvements.

o When the proper reforms have been put in place, the language should be
fixed permanently and protected from change.

Los dialectos estaban más o menos

aislados, así que evolucionaron por su
cuenta, aunque en la misma dirección.

25
10. STANDARD ENGLISH
1. The process of language standarization

STANDARIZATION

According to Wardhaugh, language standardization is “the process by which a language has

been codified in some way. That process usually involves the development of such things as
grammars, spelling books, and dictionaries, and possibly a literature.”

Advantages

● Serves as a model for everyone to use a common, mutually comprehensible language,

hence unifying the members of a community
● Can be employed to reflect and symbolize some kind of identity and can also be used
to give prestige to speakers
● Makes the language easier to teach in schools

Disadvantages

● Creates a sense of elitism among the speakers of the standard and a feeling of
inferiority in those who use non-standard forms (low-status speakers)
● Forces parents who wish for their children to be accepted by the dominant group to
conform to the standard variety, possibly neglecting the language and culture they
were born into

The process of state formation creates the condition for a unified linguistic market where
one linguistic variety acquires the status of standard language.

- Selection of a variety: 15th century

- Acceptance by powerful and educated classes: 16th
- Elaboration of functions: 17th
- Codification in dictionaries and grammars: 18th

Once English became a standard language, it developed a centripetal nature.

Standard English gradually took over and ultimately was imposed upon many other varieties
and languages it had coexisted with so far. But remember! everyone speaks dialect

➔ How to distinguish a language from a dialect?

◆ Mutual intelligibility? Systematicity? The number of speakers?
➔ A standard language is an idea: it originates as any other dialect but acquires high
status and prestige because of functions (education, law, administration, literature,
religion, media…)
➔ Stigmatization of varieties

BUT any language/variety can become a standard/global language

- English was not always a standardized language, or hegemonic

26
 - Forms that used to be standard in the past are no longer standard
today, forms that are now standard were deviant in the past

Once the language of Protestantism and of the British Empire, English is now a world
language: The Englishes, A Lingua Franca taught all over the world

27
11. THE ENGLISHES

1. Facts and figures

What is the most spoken language? English is the largest language in the world if you count both
native and non-native speakers. If you count only native speakers, Mandarin Chinese is the largest.

2. Terminology
English as a Second Language (ESL)
English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)
English as an Additional Language (EAL)
English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)
English as an International Language (EIL)
English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI)
World Englishes (WE)

Before the 1980s, discussions of English worldwide usually employed a normative vocabulary that
foregrounded a distinction between “native” versus “nonnative” speakers and employed such terms as
English as a Native Language (ENL), English as a Second Language (ESL), and English as a Foreign
Language (EFL), in order to classify particular varieties of English.

Since the early 1980s, however, world Englishes, with its inclusive plural, has increasingly become
the standard term to refer to varieties of English worldwide
● Pluricentric perspective
● Sociolinguistic standpoint

3. Models

1. Kachru’s three-circle model of English speakers (THE MOST INFLUENTIAL)

- The inner circle (norm providing) represents the traditional sources of English speaking, e.g.,
UK, and USA, which have provided the language norms for English Language Teaching
(ELT). The first diaspora
- The outer circle (norm developing) which includes countries in Africa and Asia, where
English is not necessarily people’s first language but has been important historically through
colonization. The second diaspora
- The expanding circle of countries (norm dependent) where English has never had an official
status but is now important as an additional language or a lingua franca

Criticisms
● Based on geography, not how speakers use the language
● The situation is not homogeneous in all countries within each circle

28
2. McArthur’s wheel model (also Gorlach’s)

8 regional standard and/or standardizing varieties out from an idealized central variety (best
represented by “written international English”) + an outer layer of localized subvarieties

Wheel models highlight the presence of varieties (all of them equidistant from the hub of the wheel),
but:
- No such thing as a “World Standard English”
- 3 sets of speakers (L1, L2, EFL) conflate in 2nd cycle
- Pidgins, creoles and L2 Englishes in the 3rd cycle

According to Crystal, “worldwide communication centres on Standard English, which however

radiates out into many kinds of English and many other languages, producing clarity here, confusion
there, and novelties and nonsense everywhere. The result can be (often is) chaotic, but despite the
blurred edges, this latter-day Babel manages to work.”

He proposes a multidialectical model encompassing 3 types of varieties: An informal local dialect, A

formal intranational dialect, An educated international written dialect.
Just as we said about Standard English, World English is only a theoretical phenomenon.

According to Blommaert, “globalization forces sociolinguistics to unthink its classic distinctions and
biases and to rethink itself as a sociolinguistics of mobile resources” because “we need to replace it
[traditional sociolinguistics] with a view of language as something intrinsically and perpetually
mobile, through space as well as time, and made for mobility.”

New terminology to describe a range of sociolinguistic processes associated with mobility, for
instance:

- Translanguaging: desarrolado por los galeses en los 90 para explicar un proceso de

aprendizage utilizando más de una lengua (ingles gales). Se ha desarrolado a traves del
tiempo. Tiene que ver con una perspectiva interna de lo que es ser bilingue. Tiene que ver
mucho con lo social, los bilingues tienen un solo repertorio linguistico que está relacionando
con el lugar en el que ha nacido el bilingue. Un bilingue de español//ingles de estados unidos
no tiene el mismo repertorio linguistico que el de españa.

- Superdiversity and metrolingualism: it is a lens of looking at society, not a theory. People use
social networks and communicate with people from people arround the world.
Metrolingualism, using many languages to communicate. this destroys the theory on
language-nation, because language transpases borders.

29
12. ENGLISH AS A WORD LANGUAGE

1. English as a world language

Wardhaugh: “You can learn [English] and use it without having to subscribe to another set of values
[…] English is the least localized of all the languages in the world today. Spoken almost everywhere
in the world to some degree, and tied to no particular social, political, economic or religious system,
or to a specific racial or cultural group, English belongs to everyone or to no one, or it at least is quite
often regarded as having this property.”

2. The ownership of English

● Nativespeakerism: discriminating against certain english language teachers bc they are not
native speakers of english. Thought that native teachers are ideals.
Roots:
- “A language belongs to the native speakers” Because they have been exposed to it
since birth so they have been in contact for a longer time. Not true. Successful
communication isnt related to nativity, the social context is more important.
- Ideology of discrimination.

● Accent in a foreign language: it happens because sounds differ from language to language.
- Adaptation of words to fit → ehSpain-Spain
- Stress: all french words are stressed in the last syllable: HusTON, HUston

● Most native speakers dont have a b2

A world language, is not necessarily a neutral one

What does NEUTRAL mean when applied to language? Usually, gender neutral, but not only
Some authors have said English to be Imperialistic Democratic Neoliberal (etc.)

- Is control of English shifting away from British and American native speakers?
- Stop trying to be a native speaker: IDENTITY
- Should English be taught as a 'global' language?
- What about the future?

3. Checklist: 25 questions to make sure you know all you need to know about HEL
4. Thinking about the final exam

30
WORKSHEETS

1
WORKSHEET 1: GETTING STARTED
Watch this video: El inglés está invadiendo la publicidad

What is, in your opinion, the function of the RAE (Royal Spanish Academy)? Can
Spanish, or any other language, be protected from change? Should it be so? How?

In my opinion, the RAE should limit itself to documenting the usage of Spanish speakers, not
trying to influence these changes.

La RAE tiene como misión velar porque los cambios que experimente la lengua española en
su constante adaptación a las necesidades de sus hablantes no quiebren la esencial unidad que
mantiene en todo el ámbito hispánico.

Fijar significa escoger una variedad y fijarla como la estándar. Limpiar significa eliminar todo
lo que no es correcto, todo lo que no es la variedad estándar, los anglicismos, por ejemplo.
Una lengua también tiene que ver con la nacionalidad, a veces es considerada una bandera, un
signo nacional. Dar esplendor tiene que ver con la conservadora idea de que tiene que reflejar
una clase social, y todo lo que no le dé ese “prestigio” tiene que ser eliminado. Es
prescriptivo: esto está bien, esto no, elimina esto… Por ello recibe tantas críticas por parte de
los lingüistas. Hay que describir la lengua tal cuál es.

La RAE te puede recomendar o no cierto uso, pero no te lo puede prohibir. Algunas lenguas
tiene una RAE, pero otras no. Por ejemplo, el inglés no tiene academia, pero eso no significa
que no les preocupe su lengua a los hablantes. Si no tienen una academia tendrán un
diccionario, el OED.

According to the RAE, what is the influence of ICT (Information and Communication
Technology) on Spanish? What about Spanglish? Is the RAE against it? Are you? Why?
Why not?

According to RAE, the influence of ICT is negative for the Spanish language and is against
Spanglish. Although I am not against Spanglish, I think there are many things that could be
said directly in our language.

Según la RAE, las nuevas tecnologías hacen que la lengua cambie más rápidamente, también
les preocupa que se empobrezca el idioma.

Personalmente no creo que se escriba peor ya que nuestra generación ha tenido más acceso a
la formación que generaciones anteriores. Simplemente, como el mundo va tan rápido y solo
buscamos optimizar el tiempo, abreviamos palabras. Al tener correctores en el móvil se nos
olvida escribir ciertas palabras. Más que la regla tenemos que ser conscientes del contexto.

Think of the "netspeak" and/or English terms you and/or your friends use. Why do you
use them? What do your parents think about that?

I wear them out of habit, but not because I think it's cooler. When my parents hear netspeak
they criticise it, they don't like it and don't understand it.

2
Watch these videos (Where did English come from? & How did English evolve?) and be
prepared to discuss the following questions:

What do we understand by "synchrony" and "diachrony"? What about language

"variation" and "change"? Why is diachrony often related to a tree?

Synchrony es en un punto en el tiempo; por ejemplo, la Biblia, un siglo en concreto.

Diachrony se refiere a diferentes puntos en el tiempo, por lo que no tienen que ver con el
presente o pasado, sino en un punto o varios en el tiempo.

Why are Old English and Present-Day German so similar? Why are English and
German so different today? How are the Spanish words "padre" or "diente" related to
"father" or "tooth" in English?

Tienen el mismo origen, pero han sufrido distintos cambios debidos a su contexto. Mientras
que el alemán no ha cambiado mucho, el inglés sí. En inglés se incluyeron muchas palabras
en alemán, pero también en francés. Cogmates: coger una palabra de otra lengua y meterla en
nuestra lengua. El cambio lingüístico es regular, es decir, sigue patrones regulares (a las
personas nos salen arrugas cuando envejecemos, pero no alas), los cambios no son
casualidad.

Proto-germanic (500 BCE); Proto-IE (6000 years ago); Systematic changes

What do synonymous expressions such as "hearty welcome" and "cordial reception"

tell us about the history of English? List a chronology of invaders of the British Isles and
at least one linguistic consequence of each of those invasions.

Celtas > romanos > sajones > bárbaros > ? > normandos

Prepare the answers to the Paternoster exercise below, adapted from T. Pyles & J.
Algeo. 2004 (4th ed.) Origins and Development of the English Language: Workbook.
Wadsworth Publishing.

Here are three translations of the Paternoster corresponding to the three major periods in the
history of our language: Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Early Modern
English. The first was made about the year 1000, the second is from the Wyclif Bible of 1380,
and the third is from the King James Bible of 1611.

OLD ENGLISH: Fæðer ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum, sī þīn nama gehālgod. Tōbecume þīn
rīce. Gewurðe þīn willa on eorðan swā swā on heofonum. Ūrne gedæghwāmlican hlāf syle ūs
tō dæg. And forgyf ūs ūre gyltas, swā swā wē forgyfað ūrum gyltendum. And ne gelǣd þū ūs
on costnunge, ac ālȳs ūs of yfele. Sōðlice.

MIDDLE ENGLISH: Oure fadir that art in heuenes halowid be thi name, thi kingdom come
to, be thi wille don in erthe as in heuene, yeue to us this day oure breed ouir other substaunce,
& foryeue to us oure dettis, as we foryeuen to oure dettouris, & lede us not in to temptacion:
but delyuer us from yuel, amen.

3
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH: Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy Name. Thy
kingdome come. Thy will be done, in earth, as it is in heauen. Giue vs this day our dayly
bread. And forgiue vs our debts, as we forgiue our debters. And leade vs not into temptation,
but deliuer vs from euill: For thine is the kingdome, and the power, and the glory, for euer,
Amen.

Try to make a word-for-word translation of the Old English Paternoster by comparing

it with the later versions. Write your translation in the blank spaces under the Old
English words.

Our father which art in heaven, hallo would be their Name. Their kingdom come. They will
be done, in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver vs from evil: For
thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever, Amen.

Some Old English words that may look completely unfamiliar have survived in Modern
English in fixed expressions or with changed meanings. Finding the answers to these
questions in a dictionary may help you to translate the Old English paternoster:

What is a ‘bishopric’? (cf. rīce)

What is the meaning of worth in ‘woe worth the day’? (cf. gewurðe) What is the Old
English source-word for Modern English loaf? What is the meaning of sooth in
soothsayer or forsooth? (cf. sōðlice)

What three letters of the Old English writing system have been lost from our alphabet?
Ae (ash), eth, thorn

What different forms does Old English have for the word our? Can you suggest why Old
English has more than one form for this word? Urne, urum,…

List three phrases from the Wyclif translation in which the use of prepositions differs
from that in the King James version, and another three phrases in which the word order
differs from that in the Old English version.

What reasons might an Elizabethan have for thinking the language of your version to be
“corrupt”? What reasons might an Englishman of the year 1000 have for thinking the
language of the King James version “corrupt”? Why would they both be wrong?

4
WORKSHEET 2:
1. Read the chapter The ever-whirling wheel (from Jean Aitchison’s book Language
Change: Progress or Decay?) and listen to the podcast A web of worries (from Jean
Aitchison’s The Language Web lecture series)

Think of at least three new words, meanings, pronunciations, or constructions in

Spanish (or in whatever language you were born and raised) that you personally don't
like (make sure not all of them are words!) Why don't you like them? What about
program versus programme in English, or the media are versus the media is? Which
forms do you prefer? Why?

“Me se ha caído”, etc. En el siglo XVIII eran muy rígidos en cuanto a lo que estaba bien y
estaba mal.

What was the puristic movement? Why do you think it was at its height in the 18th
century? Why was Latin so admired in the 18th century? What were some of the effects
of such admiration? Why do people still tend to think that language is going down the
drain?

Los puristas marcaban las cosas que la gente hacía bien o mal hablando. They had this idea
that Latin was the ideal language, so rules that were applied to Latin should be applied in
English. We tend to think that wealthy people speaks better than us, and this has no sense
because there are rules considered wrong based on non-linguistic things. For example: pescao
is not ok because rich people do not say that. Why was Latin the model? It was associated
with the church.

Las cosas que nos molestan nos producen este efecto porque es lo que hemos aprendido desde
pequeños, lo que hemos interiorizado.

Explain the following metaphors in the podcast: damp spoons, crumbling castles, infectious
diseases. Can you think of any other metaphors we use to refer to language?

Contagiarse: por ejemplo, cuando se nos pega un acento

2. Prepare the answers to the Attitudes towards language change exercises below,
adapted from L. Trask. 1994. Language change workbook. London: Routledge.

EXERCISE 1: Here are few examples of contemporary English usage which many
conservative speakers vigorously object to. In each case, do you find the example normal
and unremarkable, or do you too object to it? If you find it normal, can you put your
finger on the problem perceived by the conservatives?

This project was carried out by Sarah and myself. myself solo puede ir con ‘me’

I tried to persuade Juliet to join the choir, but she was disinterested. uninterested or
“was not interested”

5
 Your analysis is questionable, but your data is certainly interesting. data are (porque
‘data’ en latin es plural)

Just between you and I, Alison and Steve have broken up.

The audience were literally glued to their seats. The audience was

Senna is one of those drivers who always seems to get the best out of his car. seem

Somebody has forgotten their umbrella.

EXERCISE 2: Can you bring examples of any changes regarding sexism in English or
Spanish you would like to promote? What do you think about those changes proposed
by others? Manpower (fuerza laboral), manslaughter,…

EXERCISE 4: Basque is spoken in northern Spain. Below is a list of some Spanish

words, followed in each case by the word used for the same Basque speakers, and then
the word used by many younger Basque speakers. What seems to have happened earlier
in Basqu happening now? What kind of attitude is being exhibited by Basque speakers?

3. Watch the video A surprising new language: Texting. Was there anything that John
McWhorter said that surprised you? After completing this worksheet, how would you
summarize your own attitude towards language change? Give at least one example that
illustrates your point.

Texting is a spoken language: grammatical mistakes. En este tipo de comunicación no hace

falta que tu lenguaje sea correcto, la prioridad es que la comunicación tenga éxito.

6
WORKSHEET 3:
1) Read the chapters Charting the changes, Spreading the word & Conflicting loyalties (from
Jean Aitchison’s book Language Change: Progress or Decay?) and answer the following
questions (to be discussed in class):

Diachronic linguistics: study of language change

Synchronic linguistics: study of the state of a language at a given point in time

In the past, language change was thought to be observable only after it had already taken place.
However, Labov’s experiment about the pronunciation of /r/ in New York tells us otherwise.
How? Explain how a change can be observed while it is still taking place and provide a couple of
examples of ongoing changes (in English or any other language).

Los de clases altas lo pronuncian distinto a las bajas. Cuando les preguntaron por segunda vez a los de
clase baja, estos imitaron a los de las clases bajas.

What is language variation? Why is it such a crucial notion for language change? Relate your answer
to the statement “Changes are signalled by the frayed edges of languages” (page 42).

Cuando tenemos variaciones es que hay un cambio en marcha (variation). Fuzziness: no está muy
claro si son correctos o no. No hay cambios sin variation pero sí hay variation sin cambios. Además,
los cambios siempre se producen muy despacio, sobre todo los cambios sintácticos, solo se producen
cambios rápidos en ciertas palabras concretas, y es raro. La variación va antes del cambio y puede
durar siglos. Cambio: cuando una variación gana a la otra.

Why does the reading say that “humans are more like stars than sponge-cakes” (page 49)?
Relate your answer to the concept of “social network”. Then think about the sociolinguistic
networks in which you participate and how they influence your linguistic repertoire, that is,
every language and language variety within you, when you use them, what for or with whom
(you can watch this video to learn more about repertoires.)

Cuando vives en un pueblo y no tienes internet es poco probable tener contacto con gente nueva y de
otros lugares, pero en la ciudad entre la cantidad de gente que hay y el Internet, hay más contacto con
gente distinta. Por tanto, hay más variación y, por tanto, más probabilidad de cambio.

The chapter Conflicting loyalties mentions something that usually happens when a nonstandard
feature suddenly emerges into the consciousness of people. What is it?

Es más común que las mujeres corrijan a los niños en el lenguaje que los hombres. Los hombres para
dar una imagen de “pasotismo” tienden a usar más variaciones que son consideradas “incorrectas”.

Dependiendo de la imagen que queramos dar a veces utilizamos una variación u otra, como destacar o
pasar desapercibido, dependiendo del contexto.

The chapter concludes that “a change occurs when a group consciously or subconsciously takes
another as its model, and copies from its speech” (page 83). How does this statement relate to

7
the ways in which a change in language begins? What is the relationship between prestige and
the diffusion of a language change? Be ready to provide examples to illustrate your answers.
Also, be ready to explain the case studies described in the chapter in your own words.
Muchas veces no somos conscientes de las variaciones que utilizamos, por ejemplo, cuando vamos a
la universidad se nos pegan cosas del lenguaje.

WORKSHEET 4:
Read the chapters Catching on and taking off & The reason why (from Jean Aitchison’s
book Language Change: Progress or Decay?) and answer the following questions (to be
discussed in class)

Explain in your own words the meaning of the following statement: “Just like a seed is
likely to enter the ground where the soil is soft, such as a crack between paving stones,
so a sound change is likely to creep into a language at a vulnerable point” (page 84). On
the same page Aitchison explains how, in the past, linguists thought that “all sound
changes, as mechanical processes, take place according to laws with no exceptions”.
Today we know that is not true, as not all words are affected simultaneously. Give
examples and relate your answer to what Aitchison calls “the snowball effect”.

Necesitamos algo interno en el lenguaje que active este cambio, necesitamos factores
externos e internos. Es cierto que es importante el factor externo, como cuando cambiamos
nuestro lenguaje para que nos perciban de cierta forma, pero no es el único.

Explain the meaning of the following quotation in relation to language change: “A skier
may trigger an avalanche by going off-piste and skiing on untouched snow. But the skier
alone did not cause the avalanche. The underlying causes were a combination of factors,
such as the depth of the snow, the angle of the slope, and the amount of sunshine to
which it was exposed. When these reached a certain point, any one of a number of
events could have triggered the avalanche; for example, a skier, a shower of rain, a
gunshot, a rock fall, or an extra-hot day” (page 111).

Los catalizadores/detonantes provocan y aceleran el cambio, sí, pero no solo es uno, hay
muchos motivos. Quizá hubiese tardado más en producirse, pero habría llegado finalmente.
Se tienen que combinar una serie de factores: combinación de motivos sociales y
sociolingüísticos (factores externos e internos).

What does the statement “sociolinguistic causes of language change are superficial”
(page 151) mean? What is the meaning of self-regulation in language? How does this
relate to the interplay of internal and external factors in language change?

We turn to borrow words, then we make it fit in language (turn it plural, masculine,…
anything your language needs), we make it resemble to our language (que se parezca a
nuestro lenguaje, que parezcan native words: por ejemplo, los rusos al ‘jazz’ lo escriben
‘dzhaz’. Si no encajase con nuestro idioma no la habríamos escogido, esto se llama minimal
adjustment tendency naturalising process.

8
In what sense is “borrowing” a misleading term? What are, according to Aitchison, the
main characteristics of borrowing? What is the most frequent cause for the adoption of
English loanwords in Spanish? Now read the handout below and think of a reason for
the striking similarities between French and Spanish loanwords. Be ready to explain
how and why borrowings occur and what consequences they have for the receiver
language.

There are many degrees of integration that respond to the minimal adjustment tendency. Los
dos extremos serían totalmente alienado y totalmente naturalizado, pero hay muchos “grises”
entre estos dos extremos, en el texto aparecen los siguientes:

Se mantiene la forma pero la fonética cambia: piercing, stop, Facebook

Traducciones: de lejos/con mucho (by far), aplicar para un trabajo, controversial, atender a
clase

Abreviaturas: ‘super’ a ‘supermercado’

Especialización de préstamos. ‘clip’ como parte de un vídeo, un ‘book’ como un álbum de

fotos para su carrera

Darle otro significado a una palabra ya existente: ‘aplicar’ como ‘aplicar a un trabajo’,
‘remover’ de ‘remover los escombros’ (remove)

Se mantiene una parte del significado: ‘smoking’ (viene de fumar, pero se refiere a ropa), irse
de camping

Darle otro significado: footing (no existe en inglés), puénting

Coger una palabra de otro idioma y cambiarle la función gramatical: lifting (facelift). Parking
(car park)

To conclude, can language change be socially undesirable? Are there any brakes to
language change? Can language change be said to be regular? Can it be predicted?

No se pueden juzgar los cambios en las lenguas porque no son conscientes ni voluntarios. No
se puede predecir ni regularizar porque la lengua no es algo independiente e inmutable sino
inconsciente y adaptado al contexto. El ritmo de cambio de la lengua es ahora mucho más
rápido de lo que era antes y eso nos obliga a estar muy atentos para no quedarnos atrás.

9
WHORKSHEET 5:
Están hechos para facilitarle la vida al hablante

ASSIMILATION: Process whereby one phoneme becomes more like a

neighbouring one Example: Latin nocte > Italian notte [kt] > [tt]

DISSIMILATION: Process whereby neighbouring phonemes become less like one

another Less frequent than assimilation. Example: Latin arbor > Spanish árbol [r] >
[l]

PALATALIZATION: It is a subtype of assimilation. Some consonants are

palatalized because of the influence of following front or palatal vowels [i,e]
Example: [k] + [i, e] > [tS] cock/chicken

NASALIZATION: It is a subtype of assimilation. A following nasal feature [n,m] is

transferred to the preceding phoneme. The nasal feature may become redundant and
disappear Example: Latin bonum > French bon [bon] > [bo]

MUTATION or UMLAUT: Subtype of vocalic assimilation. Typical phonological

process of the Germanic languages. A vowel sound is modified by a following vowel,
usually a high front vowel [i, j] and sometimes a velar vowel [u]. Vowels are
palatalized Example: Proto Germanic *[musiz]

OE [müs] > ME [mis] > ModE [mais]

Es la diéresis, hay una mutación, marca el cambio en la pronunciación

SYNCOPE: Kind of ellipsis in which weakly stressed vowels are lost in middle
position Example: [intrestin]

Acortar una palabra, no decirla entera

APOCOPE: Loss of phonemes, usually vowels, from the end of a word Example:
Latin civitate

Spanish ciudad

Acortar una palabra quitándole algo al final

METATHESIS: Transposition of phonemes. Very common in the history of most

languages. There are neurological factors underlying this process. Two types: Two
phonemes are transposed over some distance: Latin miraculum > Spanish milagro
Two juxtaposed phonemes are transposed: OE axian > ModE ask /ks/ > /sk/

10
 Por ejemplo: croqueta

EPENTHESIS: Insertion of a phoneme within a morpheme. Very common in the

history of English Example: ME Þuner > EModE thunder

SONORIZATION: Voicing of intervocalic voiceless consonants Example: Latin

cuppa > Spanish copa Latin cupa > Spanish cuba

RHOTACIZATION: Intervocalic /s/ becomes /r/ Example: Latin */genesis/ >

/generis/ (through*/z/)

HAPLOLOGY: Similar and adjacent syllables are reduced to one Example: Latin
*stipipendium stipendium

SEMANTIC PROCESSES: Help us to understand what is going on

EXTENSION/GENERALIZATION: Latin *arripare (ad 'to'+ ripa 'shore, bank') >

English arrive

RESTRICTION/SPECIALIZATION: OE steorfan 'to die' > PDE starve significado

amplio se ha hecho más pequeño. Ej: sermón antes significaba conversación

AMELIORATION: OE cniht 'servant, attendant' > PDE knight (caballero) cambiar

significado, hacerlo más positivo

PEJORATION: OE sælig 'happy, blessed' > PDE silly empeorar el significado de

una palabra (‘villano’)

METAPHOR AND METONYMY: see, grasp > 'understand'; going to: spacial
distance > temporal distance, future; foot: human being > mountain I got you, I follow
you

WORD CREATION PROCESSES: coger cosas de otras lenguas y empezar a utilizarlas en las
nuestras

ROOT CREATION: Kodak

DERIVATION: -hood, -ly < OE had, lic forma más común de crear palabras, con
sufijos y prefijos

COMPOUNDING: daisy, window en inglés es muy frecuente. Estas palabras vienen

del nórdico antiguo y para decir ‘ventana’ decían “ojos del viento”. Español:
sacapuntas, pintauñas, dieciséis, fachaleco

FOLK ETYMOLOGY: sparrowgrass, cockroach, ‘destornillarse de risa’ en lugar de

‘desternillarse’

MORPHO-SYNTACTIC PROCESSES:

WORD ORDER CONSTRAINTS: changes promoting closeness of V and O

11
AVOIDANCE of REDUNDANCY

ANALOGY: process of regularization of 'irregular' forms in which frequency,

production, grammatical criteria work together. Examples: English plurals, English
strong verbs

GRAMMATICALIZATION: process whereby some lexical items and constructions

come, in certain linguistic contexts, to serve grammatical functions. Examples: OE
suffixes -had, - lic; French ne pas, rien (L rem), personne (L persona); English modal
verbs < willan 'wish, intend to', magan 'be able, strong', cunnan 'know', sculan 'owe'...

En el pdf de la worksheet está hecho el ejercicio 2.

12
CHECKLIST
1. Why study HEL (Historical English Language)? Necesitamos la perspectiva del pasado para
comprender la lengua actual

2. What is the difference between a synchronic and a diachronic approach to language?

Synchronic linguistics aims at describing a language at a specific point of time, often the present. In
contrast, a diachronic (from δια- "through" and χρόνος "time") approach, as in historical linguistics,
considers the development and evolution of a language through history.

3. What is the relation between language variation and language change?

4. What is arbitrariness? What is iconicity? How are they related to the notions of economy and
motivation? What role do they play in language change? Give examples.

5. Why is redundancy essential in natural languages? Give examples.

6. What is the difference between "correctness" and "acceptability"?

Sth being correct or incorrect

Sth being acceptable or unacceptable

7. Why is the notion of "progress" problematic when applied to language?

A language doesn’t progress, tiene connotacion negative lo de no progresar

8. What is the meaning of "innovation" and "propagation" when referring to language change? What
is the relationship between them?

Innovation son palabras nuevas: npc

Propagación de tanto usarlo (redes sociales), se propaga.

9. What is the difference between external and internal evidence? What about external and internal
history of a language?

External evidence: históricas, arceologicas, dna (not related to the text en si)

Internal evidence: propios textos

External history: cambios en los hablantes

Internal history: cambios en la lengua

13
10. Can language change be observed? Can it be predicted?

Observed yes

Predict also, we can more or less predict what way is a language going to take

11. What is the difference between conscious and unconscious language change? How do they work?

Conscious language change:

Unconscious language change: más a largo plazo

12. What is the role of the speaker in language change? What about the hearer?

Speaker: agent of the change

Hearer: react to the change, beside it adapts or not

13. What is the meaning of the expression "conflicting loyalties" in relation to language change?

Conflicting loyalties: lectura

14. Why are S-curves said to be the typical profile of language change? What are the implications for
the study of language change?

regular

15. What is lexical diffusion? Where does this process rest on?

Lexical diffusion: change spreading throughout the language. It rests on generalization. Whatever you
do for a word, in the beginning, it gets widespread.

16. Why are external forces said to be "triggers" rather than "causes"? List these forces and discuss
their role for an explanation of how language changes.

17. In what situations is language change most likely to take place? Why?

18. What is grammaticalization? How would you define it? Give examples.

19. What is analogy? How would you define it? Give examples.

20. List possible explanations for why language changes.

21. What is the "minimal adjustment" tendency? How is it related to the overall operation of language
change?

22. Why is the principle of least effort unsatisfactory as an explanation for all changes that occur in a
language? What about sloppiness and imperfect learning?

23. Can language change be stopped? Are there any factors impeding language change?

24. Is there any situation in which language change could be undesirable? Explain.

14
25. Can languages die?

15
clara.molina@uam.es Language variation and change

WORKSHEET 6
1 Read the chapter Lengua e historia (from Paloma Tejada’s book El cambio lingüístico: claves
para interpretar la lengua inglesa) and check the websites The Roots of English &
Reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European language to make sure you know the answer to
the following questions:

What are cognate words and how are they used for linguistic reconstruction?
What is a protolanguage? How can historical linguistics help reconstruct the homeland and
culture of peoples extinct long ago?
What is the difference between a genetic and typological classification of languages?

2 Complete the exercises on cognates (from C.M. Millward. 1996. Workbook to accompany A
biography of the English language, 2nd ed. Boston: Hartcourt Brace) and typology (from J.
Algeo. 1982. Problems in the origins and development of the English language, 3rd ed.
Boston: Hartcourt Brace) below. Beware, this takes a while!

COGNATES

The accompanying chart lists fourteen words from seventeen different languages. Of these
seventeen languages, twelve are Indo-European and represent three different subdivisions of Indo-
European. The remaining five languages represent three different sets of related, non-Indo-
European languages. Inspect the list and sort the languages into six groups, three Indo-European
and three non-Indo- European. Remember that some forms will not be cognate, even between
closely related languages; further, the more distantly related two languages are, the more
differences between them will be found.

1. Write the numbers of the languages in each group:

Group I, Indo-European (four languages): 2,
Group II, Indo-European (four languages): 3,
Group III, Indo-European (four languages): 5,
Group IV, non-Indo-European (two languages): 1,
Group V, non-Indo-European (two languages): 4,
Group VI, non-Indo-European (one language):

2. From your knowledge that English is a Germanic language, identify which of the
groups above is Germanic.

3. Can you identify any of the other groups?

4. In which group do the member languages seem to be least closely related?

5. How do you explain the fact that the word for “tobacco” is obviously from the same
root in many different, unrelated languages, yet is sometimes from different roots
in two related languages?

1
clara.molina@uam.es Language variation and change

hand fish eye water under tobacco wind

1 yad samak ayn ma taht tabgh rih
2 ruka ryba oko voda pod tabák vítr
3 hand vis oog water onder tabak wind
4 käsi kala silmä vesi alla tupakka tuuli
5 main poisson œil eau sous tabac vent
6 Hand Fisch Auge Wasser unter Tabak Wind
7 yad dag ayin mayim tachat tabak ruach
8 kéz hal szem víz alatt dohány szél
9 tangan ikan mata air bawah tempakau angin
10 mano pesce occhio acqua sotto tabacco vento
11 hånd fisk øye vann under tobakk vind
12 ręka ryba oko woda pod tytoń wiatr
13 mînă peşte ochi apă sub tutun vînt
14 ruká riba glas vadá pod tabák vyéter
15 ruka riba oko voda ispod duhan vjetar
16 mano pescado ojo agua bajo tabaco viento
17 hand fisch oig vasser unter tabik vind

red death elbow fire liver oak three

1 ahmar mawt mirfaq nar kabid ballout tsalatsa
2 červeny smrt loket oheň játra dub tři
3 rood dood elleboog vuur lever eik drie
4 punaimen kuolema kynärpää tuli maksa tammi kolme
5 rouge mort coude feu foie chêne trois
6 rot tod Ellenbogen Feuer Leber Eiche drei
7 adom mavet marpek esch kaved alon schloschah
8 piros halál könyök tüz máj tölgy három
9 mérah mati siku api hati ék tiga
10 rosso morte gomito fuoco fegato quercia tre
11 rød død albue ild lever eik tre
12 czerwony śmierć łokieć ogień wątroba dąb trzy
13 roşu moarte cot foc ficat stejar trei
14 krásni smyert lókat agón pyéchen dup tri
15 crven smrt lakat vatra jetra hrast tru
16 rojo muerte codo fuego hígado roble tres
17 roit toit elen sreife leber demb drei
boigen

LANGUAGE TYPES

The older and often imprecise classification of languages into four types (isolating, agglutinative,
inflective, and incorporative) has been greatly refined by modern scholars. Joseph H. Greenberg
discusses the history of the four-way classification and suggests a number of indexes by which the
type of a language can be determined quite precisely. For a rough and ready classification,
however, the four terms are still useful, although linguists no longer use them to imply an
evolutionary development in language. The following examples will illustrate the four types.

An isolating language is one in which words tend to be one syllable long and invariable in
form. They take no inflections or other suffixes. The function of words in a sentence is
shown primarily by word order.

CHINESE
Ni men ti hua wo pu tu tung ‘I do not entirely understand your language’
ni men ti hua wo pu tu tung
you plural possessor language I not all understand

2
clara.molina@uam.es Language variation and change

An agglutinative language is one in which words tend to be made up of several syllables.

Typically, each word has a base or stem and a number of affixes. The affixes are quite
regular; they undergo very little change regardless of what base they are added to.

TURKISH
Babam kardeşime bir mektup yazdirdi ‘My father had my brother write a letter’
Baba -m kardeş -im -e bir mektup yaz -dir -di
father my brother my dative a letter write cause to past tense

Inflective languages are like agglutinative ones in that each word tends to have a number
of suffixes. In an inflective language, however, the suffixes often show great irregularity in
varying their shape according to the word-base to which they are added. Also, a single
suffix tends to express a number of different grammatical concepts.

LATIN
Arma virumque cano ‘I sing about weapons and a man’
Arm- a vir -um -que
weapon neuter accusative plural man masculine accusative singular and

can -o
sing first person singular present indicative

An incorporative language is one in which the verb and the subject or object of a sentence
may be included in a single word. What we would think of as the main elements of a
sentence are joined in one word and have no independent existence.

ESKIMO
Qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq ‘Someone did not at all find a suitable resting place’
Qasu -iir -sar -vig -ssar -si -ngit
tired not causing to be place for suitable find not
-luinar -nar -puq
completely someone third person singular indicative mood

EXERCISE. To which of the four types does each of these languages seem to belong?
1. Ya dumayu, chto eto samyĭ malen’kiĭ iz vsekh gorodov Rossii
‘I think that this is the smallest of all the cities of Russia’
Ya duma -yu chto eto sam -yĭ
I think first person singular present tense that this most masc. nominative singular
malen’k -iĭ iz vs -ekh
small masculine nominative singular out of all genitive plural
gorod -ov Rossi -i
city masc. genitive plural Russia fem.gen.sg.

2. Lầ̀̀̀ ǹ-lâǹ dân-chúng hoc làm chính-tri

‘Little by little the masses are learning to engage in politics’
Lầ̀ ǹ lâǹ dân chúng hoc làm chính tri
time time people multitude learn make government rule

3. La maljuna viro krekigis malgrandan pomarbaron

‘The old man cultivated a small Apple orchard’
La mal- jun -a vir -o krek -ig -is mal-
the un- young adjective man noun grow cause to past tense un-

3
clara.molina@uam.es Language variation and change

grand -a -n pom -arb -ar -o -n

large adjective accusative apple tree collection noun accusative

4. Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono

‘The life of the land is preserved in righteousness’
Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina i ka pono
perfect aspect constant the life of the land in the goodness

5. Tis ara houtos estin, hoti kai ho anemos kai he thalassa hypakouei autoi?
‘Who then is this, that both the wind and the sea obey him?’
Ti -s ara hout- os
who masculine nominative singular then this masculine nominative singular
es -tin hoti kai h -o
be third person sg present indicative that/ and the masculine nominative sg
anem -os kai h -e
wind masculine nominative singular and the feminine nominative singular
thalass -a hypakou -ei
sea feminine nominative sg obey third person sg present indicative/
aut -oi
same masc. dative singular

6. Kahä ‘eisibäti
‘He fractured his skull’
Kah -ä’ei -si -bä -ti
blow, strike head be in condition of cause to third person sg intransitive verb

7. Watu walivitaka vitabu vikubwa vyote

‘The men wanted all the big books’
Wa- tu wa- li- vi- taka vi- tabu vi- kubwa vy- ote
plural person they past them want plural book plural big plural all

8. Wa?shagnihwęhtonie? Bil
‘We made a snowsnake [stick used in winter games] for Bill’
Wa?- shag- ni- hwęht- oni e ?

non future definite event I-him dual subject snowsnake make for event
occurring
bil only once
Bill

The eight languages above are Russian, Vietnamese, Esperanto, Hawaiian, Greek, Arapaho, Swahili & Onondaga.