History of Linguistics Lecture 5

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History of LinguisticsLecture 5

• Historical Linguistics
• The Comparative Method and Internal Reconstruction

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Historical Linguistics

• Origins of historical linguistics (Renaissance,
  17th/18th century)
• normative grammar what is good Dutch, English,
  etc.? (answer the oldest stages of the language,
  before corruption took place)
• religion what was the language of Paradise?
  What happened during and after the Babylonian
  confusion of tongues?

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Normative grammar

• Balthasar Huydecoper
• Proeve van Taal- en Dichtkunde, in vrymoedige
  aanmerkingen op Vondels vertaalde herscheppingen
  van Ovidius
• Visscher Tirion, Amsterdam, 1730

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From the preface

• Om het goede van het kwaade te onderscheiden, en
  op eene overtuigende wijze voor te stellen, zijn
  de Voorbeelden der Ouden ten alleruitersten
  noodzaakelijk.
• To distinguish the good from the bad, and to
  present this distinction in a convincing manner,
  the examples from ancient texts are of the utmost
  importance

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Goal of historical linguistics of the Huydecoper
variety

• enrichment and purification of the native tongue
• by looking at older stages, modern loan words and
  modern variants can be rejected
• by looking for old, discarded words, alternatives
  to newfangled barbarisms can be found

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Note

• During the early modern period, all the main
  languages of Europe underwent a phase of
  standardization and purification, because Latin
  was abandoned, gradually, as the lingua franca of
  administration and science
• Standardization requires some reflection on what
  variants should be normative
• Historical arguments are more neutral, hence
  persuasive, than sociopolitical ones

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Example (from Huydecoper)

• Vondel te inf en inf te dansen en springen
• Huydecoper te should be repeated
• te dansen en te springen
• So who is right? H. Me, look at all the ancient
  examples of coordinated infinitives
• In Hoeksema 1995, I show that the Vondel/
  Huydecoper disagreement is still reflected in
  modern Dutch judgments

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Religious background

• Language of paradise/the original language
• Hebrew?
• Dutch?
• Unknown?
• How do we find out?

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Still an open question today

• was there an original single language ?
  (monogenesis)
• or did language come about independently in a
  number of places?

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and related to this...

• are similarities among the languages of the world
  evidence of a single ultimate source,
• due to genetic factors (innate language system)
• or due to certain preferences naturally arising
  independently?

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Lambert ten Kate 1674-1731

• Gemeenschap tussen de Gottische spraeke en de
  Nederduytsche (1710)
• Aenleiding tot de kennisse van het verhevene deel
  der Nederduitsche sprake
• (1723)

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• (fairly) worked-out account of the historical
  relationships between the Germanic languages,
  including Gothic, Icelandic, Old High German, Old
  English, etc.
• extensive study of the system of strong verbs
  (uniquely Germanic, among Indo-european)

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• Ten Kate was one of the instigators of the
  comparative method
• influenced the work of Jakob Grimm (19th century)
• important also for the history of Dutch
  phonology, as he gave detailed comments on
  pronunciation in various dialects of Dutch

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Sir William Jones THE THIRD ANNIVERSARY
DISCOURSE, ON THE HINDUS Delivered 2 February,
1786

• The Sanskrit language, whatever be its
  antiquity, is of a wonderful structure more
  perfect than the Greek, more copious than the
  Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either,
  yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity,
  both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of
  grammar, than could possibly have been produced
  by accident so strong indeed, that no philologer
  could examine them all three, without believing
  them to have sprung from some common source,
  which, perhaps, no longer exists there is a
  similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for
  supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic,
  though blended with a very different idiom, had
  the same origin with the Sanskrit and the old
  Persian might be added to the same family, if
  this were the place for discussing any question
  concerning the antiquities of Persia.

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Johann Christoff Adelung (1732-1806)

• Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde, mit
  dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe
  fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarte, fortgesetzt
  von J.S. Vater, Berlin 1806-1817.
• Early investigation of the connections between
  European languages and Sanskrit
• Early overview of the languages of the world
  from a general point of view

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Sound Laws

• A Reader in Nineteenth Century Historical
  Indo-European Linguistics
• Edited Translated by W. P. Lehmann
• Now available on the World Wide Web
• http//www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/iedocctr/ie-d
  ocs/lehmann/reader/reader.html

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Rasmus Rask

• Undersøgelse om det gamle Nordiske eller
  Islandske Sprogs Oprindelse" (Copenhagen, 1818)
• An investigation concerning the source of the
  old Northern or Icelandic language

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Rask statement of sound laws

• When in such words one finds agreements between
  two languages, and that to such an extent that
  one can draw up rules for the transition of
  letters from one to the other, then there is an
  original relationship between these languages
  especially when the similarities in the
  inflection of languages and its formal
  organization correspond e.g.

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Jakob Grimm

• Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm Kinder- und Hausmärchen
  (1812-1815)
• Jakob Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (1854-1960)
• Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (1819-1837)

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Grimms Laws

• Yet more astounding than the accord of the
  liquids and the spirants is the variation of the
  lip, tongue and throat sounds, not only from the
  Gothic, but also the Old High German arrangement.
  For just as Old High German has sunk one step
  down from the Gothic in all three grades, Gothic
  itself had already deviated by one step from the
  Latin (Greek, Sanskrit). Gothic is related to
  Latin exactly as is Old High German to Gothic.
  The entire twofold sound shift, which has
  momentous consequences for the history of
  language and the rigor of etymology, can be so
  expressed in a table
• GK         P.       B.        F.             
  T.          D.      TH.       
  K.         G.          CH.
• Goth      F.        P.        B.          
  TH.           T.       D.         -.         
  K.          G.
• OHG     B.(V)    F.        P.             
  D.          Z.       T.          G.      
  CH.         K.    

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Examples
Latin English
piscis fish
tenuis thin
centum hund(red)
pater father
tres three
octo eight
quod (kw) what (hw)
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No change

• After /s/
• stare - stand/staan/stehen
• spuo - spew/spuwen
• piscis - fisk

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Karl Verner
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• "Eine Ausnahme der ersten Lautverschiebung,"
  Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung
  auf dem Gebiete der Indogermanischen Sprachen,
  23.2 (1875), 97-130

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Verners Problem

• Grimms Law had certain ill-understood
  exceptions, making it more a tendency, than a
  regular correspondence rule
• e.g. brôþar in Germanic corresponds with frater
  in Latin, bhrotar in Sanskrit
• môdar in Germanic corresponds with mater in
  Latin, matar in Sanskrit

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so...

• the interdental (th) in mother is not original
  Germanic, but a later invention of the English
• Cf. Old Saxon
• Thar ina thiu modar fand (Hel. 818)
• there the mother found him

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• So what explains the difference between mother
  (d) and brother (th)?

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• The only person who has sought an answer to
  this question, as far as I know, is Scherer in
  the passage just cited. He assumes that the shift
  to voiced stops occurs "in frequently used words
  (like fadar, môdar)" consequently the regular
  shift occurs in less frequently used words (139).
  
• I believe that the venerable author did not
  wish to attach great weight to this attempt at
  explanation and that he permitted himself to
  mention it only as a conceivable possibility. A
  careful scrrutiny of the Germanic vocabulary is
  not favorable to his thesis. Is it probable that
  fadar and môdar were used more frequently than
  broþar? In Ulfila's writings moreover môdar does
  not even appear, the word aiþei always being used
  instead and he uses fadar only once, otherwise
  however atta, while his broþar has no parallel
  synonym at all.

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Verners solution

• The original indo-european accent,
• as it is preserved in Sanskrit (and sometimes
  ancient Greek), but not in Germanic, where it was
  lost some time after the application of Grimms
  Law
• Sanskrit bhrátar, vs matár, pitár

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• When the accent in Sanskrit rests on the root
  syllable, we have the voiceless fricative for the
  root final in Germanic on the other hand, when
  the accent in Sanskrit falls on the ending, the
  Germanic forms show a voiced stop for the root
  final.

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modern formulation

• the apparently unexpected voicing of voiceless
  fricatives occurred if they were non-initial and
  immediately preceded by a syllable that carried
  no stress in PIE
• bonus not only the voiceless fricatives
  resulting from Grimms Law are involved in
  Verners Law, but also the voiceless fricative
  /s/ this /s/ becomes /z/, and by rotacism may
  later turn into /r/

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Compare Middle Dutch
vriesen kiesen wesen
vroos koos was
vroren koren waren
gevroren gekoren gewezen
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internal reconstruction

• instead of comparing forms in across languages
  (comparative method), one may also compare
  related forms of a word within a language
• this is called internal reconstruction
• Verners Law was a big impetus for internal
  reconstruction as a source of evidence

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example

• Rijen/rijden/gerejen/gereden
• Vrijen/vrijden/gevreeën/gevreden
• Based on this evidence, we may assume that the
  /d/ is original in rijden and got weakened to a
  glide, rather than vice versa

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Junggrammatiker

• school of linguists, originating in Leipzig in
  the 1870s
• influenced by Verner, they proposed that sound
  changes should be exceptionless
• and that laws such as Grimms law are not
  generalizations about data, but comparable to
  e.g. Newtons laws of gravitation general truths,
  not statistical tendencies

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Some prominent Junggrammatiker

• Berthold Delbrück
• August Leskien
• Hermann Paul
• Hermann Osthoff
• Karl Brugmann
• Eduard Sievers
• Wilhelm Braune

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Hermann Paul
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Tenets

• sound changes are exceptionless
• unless they involve analogical change
• (i.e. change in a word, not change in a
  sound)
• exceptions may seem to occur because of loan
  words, or dialect mixture

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analogical change
freeze vriesen vriezen frieren
froze vroos vroor fror
froze vroren vroren froren
frozen gevroren gevroren gefroren
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• more in general morphology may bring about
  changes in words that are not regular sound
  changes, but allomorphic in nature
• example Umlaut in German used to be phonological
  in nature, but now it is morphological
• Example Vati, Mutti, Fundi (not Väti, etc.)

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loans
Dutch German
tijd Zeit
te zu
tuin Zaun
tijger Tiger
typisch typisch
tante Tante
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dialect mixture
gluren loeren
meesmuilen smoel
lui lieden
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Family tree vs Wave model

• Indo-european branches out in the form of a
  family tree
• This is a model of separation, loss of contact
• For contact-induced changes, a wave model is
  proposed
• Wave model important in dialectology (expansion
  theories)