Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Anexo I. Historical and
Comparative Linguistics
- 1. Historical Linguistics is the branch of
linguistics concerned with:
- 1. The study of language
change and stability.
- 2. The reconstruction of
earlier stages of
languages.
- 3. The discovery and implementation of
research methodologies by which
genetic relationships amond languages
can be put forward.
- The linguist is interested in a dynamic vision of
language. The main difference between
Descriptive and Historical Linguistcs:
- Descriptive Linguistics: describes a particular
stage of a language.
- Historical Linguistics: address why languages look the way they do,
how the changes show how they relate to each to each other and
whether a parent language can be propounded for different
languages.
- They use the Comparative Method. Thus, Historical and
Comparative Linguistics are interconnected.
- Linguists go back to stages where an old and a current form
of a language are distinctly different. These forms are dead
languages and no speakers can be used in the study.
- Linguists rely on extant written evidence in the form
of manuscripts, inscriptions on stones or pieces of
jewellery.
- We may say that a diachronic analysis always
follows a synchronic analysis, but for Bynon
this methodology will not catch the continuous
changing nature of language.
- (Bynon) 2 factors internal to
linguistics have stood in the way of
the study of linguistic variation:
- Synchronic studies use idealisations of a language in
order to describe it. Due to the fact that variation in
a specific moment is too large to be apprehended in
a synchronic grammar.
- Structuralism and Generativism use strong
generalisation of the actual linguistic system.
- The belief that the way languages are transmitted is
responsible for a majority of linguistic changes
- Bynon thinks that to attribute linguistic change to the improper learning
of the language by children is a simplistic view of the phenomena.
Further, improper learning is counteracted by speakers that struggle to
keep the integrity of the linguistic system.
- Thus, she suggest a twofold strategy to study linguistic change:
- Focus on different grammars from different time spans
of a language and contrast them with other related
languages. The changes found should lead to the
extrapolation of diachronic rules.
- Do not separate linguistic variation from sociological
factors: contact between languages plays an important
role.
- 2. Origins of Historical Linguistics
- Contrastive study of Greek and Latin in the
Renaissance period.
- More technically, 19th century: when Sanskrit was object of
study in Europe. They found that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin
had some similarities.
- Achievement 1: the acknowledgement of the
ubiquity of linguistic change.
- Achievement 2: the development of the
Comparative Method.
- Why the development of Comparative Linguistics did not
take place earlier? Beekes gives 3 reasons:
- 1) Greeks were not sufficiently acquainted with
other languages.
- 2) People had to learn that languages
change.
- 3) Greeks never compared words
cross-linguistically.
- But tracing genetic relatedness is not that easy
because sometimes languages evolve in a way that it
is impossible to identify any correspondence.
- A common procedure was the comparison of cognates, which
allowed historical linguists to identify certain phonological
patterns which signalled that all these words come from the
same ancestral parent language.
Anmerkungen:
- Cognate: a term with the same etymological origin but different phonological, and often semantic, evolution.
- 3. The Comparative
Method
- Developed in the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and used in the analysis of other
language families. The basis: the regular principle of phonological change (introduced as a
linguistic rule by the Neogrammarians).
- Phonological changes had not been considered rules, but tendencies. Patterns in phonological change
were studied in terms of sound laws.
- Grimm's Law
- Verner's Laws
- Also, Saussure's Laryngeal
Theory hypothesised for the
Indo-European.
- CM's steps:
- 1) Isolation of a set of cognates
- 2) Extraction of a number of phonological correspondences
- 3) The use of sound laws in order to reconstruct a series of phonemes
- Criticism
- The reconstructed forms are the result of comparing attested
cognates, but they cannot be taken as bearing a 100%
correspondence.
- Taken for granted that all languages are born from a parent
language. Therefore, what happens with the parent language?
- Belief that once 2 languages have split from their ancestor, they diverge until
they do not bear any resemblance. But there is not just one single direction:
they can converge again.
- 4. The Wave Theory
- In order to overcome the shortcomings of the CM
and the Family-tree metaphor.
- Bynon: the family-tree metaphor is a a situation of continuity
in the course of time, an ideal temporal-spatial frame, a
"relative chronology".
- Johannes Schmidt: changes in language would spread as waves in the water from a
politically or historically important centre, but not all changes reach the same place.
Bynon offers different ideal cases:
- A political, commercial, cultural, etc., centre appears
inside a linguistic territory.
- Some innovations occur and they only reach part of the
territory where the language is spoken, while the rest
of the territory is ruled by the pre-existing centre
- Isoglosses start to rise until the speakers lose mutual
intelligibility and 2 different languages remain.
- 2 independent languages start sharing certain features.
- If territories become integrated under a political force with a single
administrative and cultural centre, some isoglosses will start to
disappear and a common traits will be shared.
- 5. Proto-language: a hypothetical reconstruction of the earlier
form of a language. No written records exist so the reconstruction
draws upon the comparison of related words and expressions of
the different languages derived from it. The reconstruction
depends on the evidence available.
- 6. Linguistic Genealogies: ways to classify
language (not mutually exclusive)
- Typological: based on similarities in the linguistic
structure (frequent in the case of unwritten
languages). It draws upon grammar structure.
- Isolating (analytic): words made up of a single
morpheme. Classical Chinese and Vietnamese.
- Agglutinative: words consist of a series of
morphemes, each of them representing a single
grammatical category. Japanese, Turkish, and Finnish.
- Inflectional (Synthetic): a single morpheme in one
word may represent several grammatical
categories. Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
- Genetic: lead to the establishment of language
families, language stocks which are related by
common origin because of cognates.
- Phylum: it encompasses a
number of language families.
- Language isolate: a language family
made up of just one language.
- 7. The Neogrammarians
- Group of young German linguists that defended the
view that phonological change was always regular;
apparent exceptions did not have an explanation yet.
- The linguist's work is to find the rules
behind those apparent exceptions.
- Karl Verner found an explanation for the apparent
exceptions to Grimm's Law, and showed they were
conditioned by the phonological environment.
- 8. Internal Reconstruction (Method)
- Focuses on the analysis of
irregular linguistic patterns.
- Main tenet: irregular linguistic patterns
have developed from earlier regular forms.
- Called 'internal' because it is not necessary to examine other
languages to reconstruct the earlier stages of a given one.
- Example: English participles. The English regular verbs form
the PP by the addition of -ed: love/loved, paint/painted...
- A number of strong verbs construct
the PP by using -en: write/written,
take/taken...
- This pattern is not productive anymore
(new verbs follow the -ed pattern).
- BUT some old verbs maintain the -ed suffix for their PP and
the -en suffix for adjectival forms: shaved/clean-shaven,
melted/molten lead, mowed/new-mown...
- Conclusion: the original forms of the PP showed the -en pattern as strong
verbs, but by analogy with the weak verbs the regular forms -ed displaced
the original strong pattern. However, the adjectival form was not affected.