Historical Linguistics

It grew out of the earlier disicipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents
dating back to antiquity. More specifically, it had its roots in the etymological speculations of
classical and medieval times, in the comparative study of Greek and Latin developed during the
Renaissance , and the speculations of scholars as to the language from which the other
languages of the world were descended.
The field of historical linguistics developed significantly in the nineteenth century, after
European scholars realized that there were systematic similarities between Sanskrit, the ancient
language of India, and other well-known languages, such as classical Greek and Latin. Sir
William Jones , a British Judge working in India was the first to propose a common ancestor
for Greek , Latin , Sanskrit , Persian , German and Celtic. These similarities among languages
indicated that a genetic relationship must exist; i.e. these languages must stem from the same
ancestor language.
Principal concerns of historical linguitics :
• To describe and account for the observed changes in particular languages.
• To reconstruct the pre-history of languages and to determie their relatedness, grouping
them into language families .
• To develop general theories about why and how language changes
• To study the history of words, etymology

.Definition of Key Concepts

1.Language family: is a group of genetically related languages, that is, languages which share
a linguistic relationship by virtue of having developed from a common ancestor called the proto
language of the family. Most languages in the world belong to specific a family.
Proto-Languages (Ancestral languages): A Proto language is the most recent common ancestor
of a language family immediately before the family started to diverge into
daughter languages. It is therefore equivalent with the ancestral language or parental
language of a language family.
2. Definition of Indo-European Languages: The Indo-European languages are a family of
genetically related languages that are today widely spoken in the Americas, Europe, and
also Western and Southern Asia. Just as Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian languages
are all descended from Latin, Indo-European languages are believed to derive from a
hypothetical language known as Proto-Indo-European.
3. A language Isolate: is a language which has no known relatives. It is a language that has
not been confirmed to descend from an ancestor common with any other language.
Language isolates are in effect language families consisting of a single language and it is
understood to be in the absolute sense of having no genetic relationship to any other
known language. Some of the best known isolates are Basque,Sumerian, Korean, ... etc.
4.Sub Grouping: It is about the internal classification of the language within language families.
The term subgroup (subfamily, branch) is used to refer to the branches of a family tree or a
group of languages within a language family which are more closely related to each other. i.e.:
a subgroup is a branch of a family. It is common for a language to diversify over time to split
up into 2 or more daughter languages.Indo-European languages have a large number of
branches. For example:
• The Germanic Branch includes English, German, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish,
Danish,
and Norwegian.
• The languages belonging to the Italic Romance Branch are descendants of Latin, and
include Italian,Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Catalan, and few additional
languages
As a proto-language diversifies, it develops daughter languages. If a daughter language
subsequently splits up and develops daughter languages of its own, then the descendents of that
daughter language will constitute members of a subgroup. This way, the original daughter
language becomes in effect an intermediate proto-language, i.e. a parent of its own immediate
descendents, but still at the same time a descendent itself of the original proto-language. (See
figure 1).

Proto-Indo-European (Mother language)

Proto Germanic(A Daughter Language. It constitutes members of a subgroup)

English German Swedish

(Figure 1)
3.Classification of Languages

Languages may be classified by type or by genetic relationships.

3.1 Genetic Classification of Languages

Genetic classification is based on the origin of languages (the families they come from).Languages that
possess genetic ties with one another belong to the same linguistic grouping known as a language
family and descend from a common ancestor called the proto-language. The purpose of genetic
classification is to group languages into families according to their degree of diachronic relatedness.
Example: Two languages are considered to be genetically related if one is descendent from the other
or if both are descended from a common ancestor. Eg: Italian is descendent from Latin. Therefore, they
are genetically related.

3.2 Typological classification or structural Classification of Languages

Typological classification is based on the similarities and differences in the linguistic structure. It aims
at grouping languages into categories according to their types. August schleicher an out-standing
linguist of the 19th century established a tripartite division: isolating languages (analytic), agglutinating
languages, inflecting languages(fusional).
The classification of these languages is not absolute, languages may be classified according to what
degree they are isolating, agglutinating or inflecting. When we say typological languages, it means that
they share the same structural characteristics. E.g.; English and Germanic, French and Italics share
some characteristics like the suffix “ions”.

3.2.1. Isolating languages: They are called isolating languages because they are composed of isolated
or free morphemes. In other words, isolating languages cannot be analyzed morphologically as one
morpheme equals one word. Highly isolating languages such as Chinese and Vitnamese are
characterized by lack of derivational and inflectional processes. Derivational and inflectional affixes are
almost nonexistent in Chinese. English is partially isolating; it has thousands of morphemes that occur
as one word.eg: the, can, ball, walk. The expression of the future tense is expressed through the
morpheme will (shall). Example: Chinese: t’a dau nar ch’u means “he to where go” or “where is he
going?”

3.2.2.Agglutinating languages: The term Agglutinating is derived from the Latin verb “Agglutinar”
which means “to glue together”. In agglutinative languages, each affix typically represents one unit of
meaning. In such languages, various morphemes are combined to form a single word. This way, suffixes,
prefixes and even infixes are used over and over to build new words. Other examples of agglutinative
languages include French and Arabic. English, is somewhat agglutinating, for example, goodness,
incomplete, unacceptable. Turkish is highly agglutinating. Example: ev=house ev-ler=his/her house.

3.2.3.Inflecting languages: in such languages, a word or morpheme undergoes a change in form for
grammatical reasons. In other words, an inflecting language is a language in which the form of words
changes to suit the different grammatical functions of words in a sentence. Morphemes fuse with the
root and have no independence. Internal inflection is one of the characteristics of these languages
where inflection does not consist in adding a suffix or prefix but requires a sound change of the stem
itself. For example: deep-depth, long-length. Latin and Greek are highly inflecting languages. In French,
Cheval (singular horse)--------chevaux (plural).

3 In English, sing (present)-----sang (past)-----sung (past participle) or man (singular)-----men (plural).

In these cases, inflection appears through a sound change by modifying a vowel with the stem. Note:
In terms of typology, both agglutinating and inflecting languages depend on inflection. Opposed to the
agglutinating languages, however, inflecting languages show a certain type of irregularity in the
inflectional processes.

References: Campbell, Lyle. Historical Linguistics : An Introduction. Massachusetts :MIT press, 1999.
Oxford Lerners Dictionary, 4 th ed., Oxford university Press, 2011