LING 100

Weve seen how language families

spread and interact
How languages constantly change, and
diverge when separated

What actually changes?
phonetics
phonology
morphology
syntax
Semantics

Were talking primarily about internally
motivated change in this chapter, not change
as a result of language contact (borrowings,
etc.)
P. 484
Check out the examples of Old English
all the way up to Modern English and
compare them.

What kinds of changes do you see?



Wanna know what OId English sounded like?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wl-
OZ3breE

Middle English (taken from Canterbury Tales)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE0MtENfO
MU
All languages contain variation at all times
Sound change is complex, and probably
reflects subtle changes in the distribution of
variation that accumulate over time
Keeping this in mind, we can still get some
mileage out of simplifying the situation
Sound change implies an initial state of affairs
that is replaced by another state of affairs at some
historical point (remember though: change is not
abrupt)
Sound changes as a result of some
phonological process (~a rule)
a new rule, or the expansion of an old one
e.g. pin~pen - some English dialects or registers
have the same vowel in both words
if this rule spread to all similar environments, or all mid
front lax vowels became high front lax vowels, then it would
count as a sound change
this would be an example of an unconditioned sound
change - the vowel changes regardless of its phonetic
environment
An example of a conditioned sound
change:
/s/ aspiration in Spanish - occurs at the end
of a syllable, e.g. cmo ehts/ehth?
/s/ at the beginning of a word is unchanged
s / V_V also changes in some dialects, so
the process would be different, but its still
conditioned
Types of conditioned and unconditioned
sound changes are listed in Files pp 494-
95
NOTE!!!
These are closely related to the phonological
processes we looked at synchronically
earlier in the course
It might be good to review that chapter!
The big picture:
There is a close relationship between synchronic
variation and diachronic sound (or other) change in
language.
Changes originate as variation, then spread through
the lexicon, affecting all instances of a sound (in a
particular context, if its a conditioned change)
Once the change has spread through the whole
lexicon, theres no going back - the link to the earlier
forms is broken
Phonemic changes alter the phonemic
structure of a language
the pin~pen one we mentioned, if it took over all of
English, would collapse the mid front lax and high
front lax vowels into one phoneme
Phonetic changes alter allophones, but not
phonemes
Spanish /s/-aspiration (/s/ becomes /h/) would
create another allophone of /s/, but its still the same
phoneme
This doesnt necessarily correlate with whether
the change is conditioned or not
Refer to Files
Summary: morphological change is usually
analogical, either by proportional analogy (a:b::c:X)
or by paradigm leveling (where related words are
changed to look more like each other
It also results from reinterpretation (Files calls this
misanalysis) (if burglar has the suffix /er/, then there
must be a verb to burgle)
We also add words by various processes (see p.
500/501)
Exercise (13), p. 518
What sounds changes that occurred
between Proto-Quechua and its daughter
language Tena?
Which sounds changes are conditioned
and which are unconditioned?
Consider these examples:
father our NP->N Det
our father NP-> Det N

Also:
fder ure (subject)
fder urne (object)
Change in marking of grammatical
function from OE to ModE.
OE had nominal inflection (case marking)
ModE based on word order
(24), p. 521
Semantic extensions
OE dog particular breed
ModE dog general term
Metaphorical extension: broadcast - to
scatter seed over field to send radio
waves through space
Semantic reductions
OE hund- referred to dogs in general
ModE hound particular breed of dogs

Semantic elevations
Positive change in connotation
knight (OE cniht) initially meant
youth/military follower and later on a
romanticized warrior.
Semantic degradations
Acquisition of a pejorative meaning
ME silly happy, innocent
ModE silly foolish, inane


Think of terms you use to talk about
computers and actions related to using
the PC.
How many of these are old words that have
been put to new use?
How many are totally new words?
Why do you think this is the case?
2 crucial assumptions
sound-meaning correspondences are arbitrary
otherwise we couldnt tell if languages were related, or if
similarity was just meaning-related
Sound chage is regular
a sound either changes completely across a language
or it changes completely, within a given phonetic
environment
By this assumption, we expect sister languages to have
regular sound correspondences between words with the
same meaning
Goals:
to discover which languages are related
to discover why and how languages change
Protolanguages:
we either have a historical record
or we can reconstruct protoforms (e.g. proto-
Indo-European *ma:te:r (mother))
Procedure (Files pp 511ff)
compile cognate sets, eliminate borrowings
list sound correspondences across cognates
reconstruct sounds in each position
total correspondence
most natural development
Occams Razor (most frequent variant)
check for regularity (exceptions mean you have to
revise!)
A B C
siza sesa siza

Sound correspondences
s>s>s i>e>i z>s>z a>a>a

(p. 512) common sound changes
/s/ voices between vowels to [z]

So *[s_sa] preliminary reconstruction
What about the vowel [i] or [e] in the 1
st

syllable?

Occams Razor:
It is easier to posit that i > e (one change) than to
say that e>i (two changes)!

= > Final Reconstruction: *[sisa]

Group up and do the reconstructions pp.
523 (36), (37), (38)