Historical Linguistics

1
Historical Linguistics

• Language history
• drift change by internal development
• contact change by external borrowing
• Possible relations among languages
• family tree
• similarity due to separate development from
  common ancestor
• diffusion of traits
• similarity due to borrowing in period of contact
• or, no provable relationship
• Tasks of historical linguistics
• inference of historical connections
• reconstruction of proto languages

2
Colonial Philology

• Thomas Jefferson corresponded with many sources
  to obtain word lists in Indian languages
• Examined and compared the results of Peter the
  Greats Siberian expeditions
• Benjamin Franklin also collected Indian word lists

3
How many ages have elapsed since the English,
Dutch, the Germans, the Swiss, the Norwegians,
Danes and Swedes have separated from their common
stock? Yet how many more must elapse before the
proofs of their common origin, which exist in
their several languages, will disappear? It is to
be lamented then that we have suffered so many
of the Indian tribes already to extinguish,
without our having previously collected and
deposited in the records of literature, the
general rudiments at least of the languages they
spoke. Were vocabularies formed of all the
languages spoken in North and South America,
preserving their appellations of the most common
objects in nature, of those which must be present
to every nation barbarous or civilised, with the
inflections of their nouns and verbs, their
principles of regimen and concord, and these
deposited in all the public libraries, it would
furnish opportunities to those skilled in the
languages of the old world to compare them with
these, now or at a future time, and hence to
construct the best evidence of the derivation of
this part of the human race.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of
Virginia. Written1781-82.
4
Benjamin Barton sees a pattern
By a careful inspection of the vocabularies, the
reader will find no difficulty in discovering
that in Asia the languages of the tribes of the
Delaware-stock may be all traced to ONE COMMON
SOURCE. Nor do I limit this observation to the
languages of the American tribes just mentioned
HITHERTO, WE HAVE NOT DISCOVERED IN AMERICA ANY
TWO, OR MORE LANGUAGES BETWEEN WHICH WE ARE
INCAPABLE OF DETECTING AFFINITIES (AND THOSE VERY
OFTEN STRIKING) EITHER IN AMERICAN, OR IN THE OLD
WORLD.
New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations
of America Benjamin Smith Barton M.D., Professor
of Materia Medica, Natural History and Botany,
in the University of Pennsylvania (1798)
5
Bartons hypothesis
My inquiries seem to render it probable, that
all the languages of the countries of America
may be traced to one or two great stocks
6
Jefferson disagreed
imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues
spoken in America, it suffices to discover the
following remarkable fact. Arranging them under
the radical ones to which they may be palpably
traced, and doing the same by those of the red
men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty
in America, for one in Asia, of those radical
languages, so called because, if they were ever
the same, they have lost all resemblance to one
another. A separation into dialects may be the
work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to
recede from one another till they have lost all
vestiges of their common origin, must require an
immense course of time perhaps not less than
many people give to the age of the earth. A
greater number of those radical changes of
language having taken place among the red men of
America, proves them of greater antiquity than
those of Asia.
Notes on the State of Virginia Written 1781-82
7
though later, J. considered a sociolinguistic
explanation
Having heard that some Indians considered it
dishonorable to use any language but their
own, he suggested that when a part of a
tribe separated itself, the seceded group might
refuse to use the original language and invent
their own.
Perhaps this hypothesis presents less
difficulty than that of so many radically
distinct languages preserved by such handfuls of
men from an antiquity so remote that no data we
possess will enable us to calculate it. Ms.
notes circa 1800
8
Jeffersons plans

• By 1801, he had collected vocabularies for dozens
  of indigenous languages
• and began to arrange this for publication lest
  by some accident it might be lost
• He put off publication in 1803
• due to the opportunity to include the results of
  the Lewis Clark expedition

9
The sad end of J.s linguistic career

• His linguistic papers were packed in a large
  trunk and shipped back to Monticello in 1809 with
  his other effects
• The trunk was stolen during the trip up the James
  River
• The disappointed thief dumped the contents in the
  river
• Only a few items floated to shore and were
  recovered

10
Jefferson to Barton (1809),sent with Lewis
vocabulary of Pani
It is a specimen of the condition of the little
that was recovered. I am the more concerned at
this accident, as of the two hundred and fifty
words of my vocabularies, and the one hundred and
thirty words of the great Russian vocabularies
seventy three were common to both, and would
have furnished materials from which something
might have resulted. Perhaps I may make another
attempt to collect, although I am too old to
expect to make much progress in it.
11
Sir William (Oriental) Jones

• Lawyer appointed in 1783 to superintend British
  jurisprudence in India
• Founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta for
  Inquiring into the History, Civil and Natural,
  the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences, and Literature,
  of Asia
• Learned Sanskrit because the laws of the natives
  must be preserved inviolate but the learning and
  vigilance of the English judge must be a check
  upon the native interpreters

12

• One of the early European orientalists
• Cross-cultural pioneers?
• Agents of colonial domination?

13
Historical Context

• The British in India
• piecemeal conquest 1750-1900
• began with trade concessions in Calcutta and
  Bombay
• expanded one principality at a time
• mixture of direct and indirect rule
• many Indian institutions left in place
• rule mainly administered and enforced by Indians
• until 1850s, administration was in the hands of
  the East India Company rather than the British
  Crown

14
India in 1785
15
Jones learns Sanskrit (1783-1786)

• Sanskrit
• Language of Hindu holy texts (1000 BC)
• Formalized by grammarians c. 600 BC
• Preserved to the present day as a language of
  religion and learning
• No Brahman would teach a foreigner
• Jones hired a vaidya (doctor) as tutor while the
  Brahmanic scholars were away on a religious
  retreat

16
Jones Third Discourse (1786)

• Anniversary addresses to the Asiatic Society
• First Discourse purposes and procedures of the
  Society
• Second Discourse a detailed research program
• Third Discourse on the nations of Asia

The five principal nations, who have in different
ages divided among themselves, as a kind of
inheritance, the vast continent of Asia, with the
many islands depending on it, are the Indians,
the Chinese, the Tartars, the Arabs, and the
Persians who they severally were, whence and
when they came, where they now are settled, and
what advantage a more perfect knowledge of them
all may bring to our European world, will be
shown, I trust, in five distinct essays the last
of which will demonstrate the connexion or
diversity between then, and solve the
great problem, whether they had any common
origin, and whether that origin was the same,
which we generally ascribe to them.
17
The Indo-European Hypothesis
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 Gothick and the Celtick, 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.
18
Jones American connection

• Jones was a radical Whig and an early political
  supporter of the American Revolution
• Met Benjamin Franklin at the RS in 1771
• Visited Franklin in Paris in 1779, 1780, and 1782
• To explore compromise peace plans
• To deal with a clients property claims in
  Virginia
• To obtain a pass for travel to America
• considered emigration to Charleston or
  Philadelphia!
• Many weeks of political and philosophical
  conversations
• Indirect communication with Jefferson
• Relations to the Virginia manuscript?

19
Indo-European Examples
English Latin Greek Sanskrit
father pater patêr pitar
brother frater phrater (fellow tribesman) bhratar
two duo duo dva
three tres treis tryas
four quattuor tettares catvaras
seven septem hepta sapta
20
Jones methods

• Analyst must be perfectly acquainted with the
  languages compared
• Meanings of proposed cognates must be nearly
  identical
• Vowels should not be disregarded
• No metathesis or unexplained consonant insertions
• Transliterations must be systematic and careful
• Use basic vocabulary, not exotic words more
  likely to be borrowed

21
Remember Barton

• By a careful inspection of the vocabularies, the
  reader will find no difficulty in discovering
  that in Asia the languages of the tribes of the
  Delaware-stock may be all traced to ONE COMMON
  SOURCE. Nor do I limit this observation to the
  languages of the American tribes just mentioned
  HITHERTO, WE HAVE NOT DISCOVERED IN AMERICA ANY
  TWO, OR MORE LANGUAGES BETWEEN WHICH WE ARE
  INCAPABLE OF DETECTING AFFINITIES (AND THOSE VERY
  OFTEN STRIKING) EITHER IN AMERICAN, OR IN THE OLD
  WORLD.

New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations
of America Benjamin Smith Barton M.D., Professor
of Materia Medica, Natural History and Botany,
in the University of Pennsylvania (1798)
22

• Thomas Jefferson again

imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues
spoken in America, it suffices to discover the
following remarkable fact. Arranging them under
the radical ones to which they may be palpably
traced, and doing the same by those of the red
men of Asia, there will be found probably twenty
in America, for one in Asia, of those radical
languages, so called because, if they were ever
the same, they have lost all resemblance to one
another. A separation into dialects may be the
work of a few ages only, but for two dialects to
recede from one another till they have lost all
vestiges of their common origin, must require an
immense course of time perhaps not less than
many people give to the age of the earth. A
greater number of those radical changes of
language having taken place among the red men of
America, proves them of greater antiquity than
those of Asia.
Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787
23
The controversy continues

• (Like Barton) Joseph Greenberg (1987)
• All American languages in three groups
• Eskimo-Aleut
• Na-Dene
• Amerind
• (Like Jefferson) Other scholars
• The Amerind category is a fiction
• There are
• 60 unrelated families in N. America
• 19 unrelated families in C. America
• 80 unrelated families in S. America

24
Different methods

• Mass comparison
• Cognate ratios (lexicostatistics)
• Glottochronology
• Typological features
• e.g. classifier systems
• Comparative reconstruction
• Determination of systematic sound laws
• Lexical and morphological reconstruction

25
Laws of sound change

• Meaning change is usually sporadic
• Sound change is usually systematic, e.g.
• t/d deletion (best, past, lost, etc.)
• short a raising (camera, man, vanish, etc.)
• Neogrammarian hypothesis (1870)
• All sound change is systematic
• Apparent exceptions analysis is incomplete
• Article of faith with scholars known asthe
  young grammarians

26
Grimms Law

• Jakob Grimm (1822)
• Gradation of consonant manner
• bh dh gh -gt b d g
• b d g -gt p t k
• p t k -gt f th h
• pater father labium lip
• tres three duo two
• canis hound ager acre
• bhratar brother
• dha do
• vah wagon

27
Verners Law

• Karl Adolf Verner (1875)
• Fixes gaps in Grimms Law
• voicing after accentless vowels
• applies to non-Grimms Law cases as well
• from PIE to Gothic in four algorithmic steps
• PIE p_at_tér
• GL f_at_thér
• (vowels) fathár
• VL fadár
• AS fádar

28
More on sound change

• Well attested in recent history
• I.e. English Great Vowel Shift

• Can study sound change in progress today
• Tends to produce tree-like histories.
• operates on the system as a whole
• isnt easily borrowed across languages

29
Problems with comparative reconstruction

• Requires detailed knowledge of languages involved
• Must be enough cognates for patterns to emerge
• and layers of borrowing to be identified and
  discarded
• Maximum time depth of 5-10K years
• (Jefferson was right)

30
Cognate percentages

• Catherine the Greats method
• make a list of appellations of the most common
  objects in nature, of those which must be present
  to every nation barbarous or civilised
• Standard lists devised by Morris Swadesh around
  1950
• For each pair of languages, estimate the
  proportion of cognate words
• Raw result is a table of percentages
• like a table of trip distances

31
Example
Central Yambasa languages (Cameroon)
32
Questions about lexicostatistics

• Genetic descent vs. borrowing
• borrowing creates non-tree structures
• Variability of rate of change
• Swadesh 14 per millenium
• Expected rate of false cognates
• How to combine with other evidence
• Inference of tree structure
• from cognate percentages
• from detailed account of shared traits

33
Historical inferencefrom linguistic and genetic
data

• Potentially the best evidence of the derivation
  of the human race (Thomas
  Jefferson)
• BUT
• Inferences are complex
• methods and results from several disciplines
• Intellectual stakes are high
• Work has often been careless
• sometimes spectacularly so
• dangers of overinterpretation and scientism

34
General methodological problems

• Not all graphs are trees
• treeness tests often left out
• treeness hypothesis can often be rejected
• Tree inference may be underdetermined
• Branching structure
• Root choice
• Rates of change may not be constant
• for different markers
• across time
• Gene trees (and language trees) may not be
  population trees
• Biology and language are complicated
• simplifying assumptions are sometimes
  perniciously mistaken

35
Trees vs. Clines (etc.)

• A tree structure represents the results of a
  sequence of splits in population (or language)
• no further influences among separate branches
• if rates of change are constant, distances should
  be quantized
• Within an interbreeding (intercommunicating)
  population, distances reflect the amount of gene
  flow (transmission of linguistic traits)
• should correlate strongly with accessibility
• e.g. geographical distance in the simplest case

36
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37
The procedures outlined here provide a rigorous
method for inferring whether the geographical
pattern of variation is consistent with an
historical split (fragmentation) or no
split(recurrent gene flow) using criteria that
are completely explicit. For example, in
analyzing the mtDNA of tiger salamanders, a clear
split into eastern and western lineages was
detected for mtDNA. Using the same explicit
criteria, there was no split among any human
populations. Quite the contrary, the present
analysis documents recurrent and continual
genetic interchange among all Old World human
populations throughout the entire time period
marked by mt DNA. Accordingly, estimating a date
for a 'split' of Africans from non-Africans based
on evidence from mtDNA is certainly allowed by
many computer programs, but the results are
meaningless because a date is being assigned to
an 'event' that never occurred. Templeton
(1997)
38
Methods for tree inference(phylogeny)

• Two general approaches
• clustering (easier but cruder)
• generate and evaluate alternative trees
• Distance-based methods
• based on matrix of distances/similarities
• Parsimony
• based on set of partly-shared characters or
  traits
• http//evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip/so
  ftware.html
• documents 193 different phylogeny packages

39
Cognate percentagesfor 8 Vanuatu languages
Toga 64 Mosina 64 58 Peterara 57 51
65 Nduindui 29 28 34 32 Sakao 51 45 55
52 40 Malo 39 39 45 41 43 50 Fortsenal
52 48 57 60 31 48 45 Raga
Data from Guy (1994)
40
Reconstruction Algorithm(Guy 1994)
A message is input at the root of a tree-shaped
transmission network, whence it is transmitted to
the terminal nodes. As they travel, copies of the
original message are affected by errors
consisting in randomly selected segments of the
message being replaced by other segments randomly
drawn from a pool of possible segments (the
"alphabet of the message). The problem is from
the garbled versions of the original message
collected at the terminal nodes, reconstruct the
network and the history of the transmission of
the message.
Additive-distance tree with weights on branches
ratherthan on nodes -- doesnt assume constant
rate of change
41
Explanatory force of the model

• Set of distances grows as
• Set of binary-tree branch labels grows
  as
• For 8 languages we predict 28 numbers (the
  inter-language cognate proportions) with 14
  numbers (the binary tree branch proportions)
  

42
Inferred tree
  Toga -830------919------972------947----
- Mosina -770-----'
Peterara -----829-----------'
Nduindui -----795------------949-----'
Raga -----755-----------'
Sakao -----567------------883------89
5-----' Fortsenal -----759-----------'
Malo ----------772----------------'  
Mosina/Toga .77.83 .6391 (really
64) Peterara/Mosina .829.919.77 .5866
(really 58) Peterara/Toga .829.919.830
.6323 (really 64)
from Guy (1994)
43
True - predictedcognate percentages
  Toga 0 Mosina
1 -1 Peterara 1 -1 4
Nduindui -2 -1 0 0 Sakao
2 0 2 3 1 Malo -3 0
-1 -2 0 -2 Fortsenal -1 -1 -1
0 1 1 4 Raga  
The model fits very well!
44
Wheres the root?
Isnt it obvious?
  Toga -830------919------972------947----
---Protolanguage Mosina -770-----'
Peterara -----829-----------'
Nduindui -----795-----------
-949-----' Raga -----755-----------
' Sakao
-----567------------883------895-----' Fortsenal
-----759-----------' Malo
----------772----------------'  
45
Oops other options
protolanguage
  Toga -830------919------972------947----
- Mosina -770-----'
Peterara -----829-----------'
Nduindui -----795------------949-----'
Raga -----755-----------'
Sakao -----567------------883------89
5-----' Fortsenal -----759-----------'
Malo ----------772----------------'  
46
And some more
protolanguage
  Toga -830--919--972--947--895--883--5
67- Sakao Mosina -770-'
-759- Fortsenal Peterara -----829---'
---772----- Malo Nduindui
-----795----949-' Raga -----755---'
In the absence of other constraints, the root can
be placed anywhere in the tree without changing
the models fit!
47
Possible other constraints

• Historical evidence
• about earlier forms
• about structure of relationships among
  contemporary forms
• outgroup
• Constraints on rate of change
• linguistic (or genetic) clock

48
A universal constantfor glottochronology?
Thirteen sets of data, presented in partial
justification of these assumptions, serve as a
basis for calculating a universal constant to
express the average rate of retention k of the
basic-root morphemes k 0.8048 0.0176
per millennium, with a confidence limit
of 90.
Lees (1953)
49
Some of Lees data
Language Years Words Cognates Rate (per millenium)
English 1000 209 160 .766
Latin/Spanish 1800 200 131 .790
Latin/French 1850 200 125 .776
German 1100 214 180 .854
Middle Egyptian/Coptic 2200 200 106 .760
Greek 2070 213 147 .836
Chinese 1000 210 167 .795
Swedish 1050 207 176 .853
50
Some more retentive languages(rates per 1000
years)
Language 100-word list 200-word list
Icelandic (rural) 99 97.6
Icelandic (urban) 98 96.2
Georgian 96.5 89.9
Amenian 97.8 94
Bergsland Vogt (1962)
51
Some less retentive ones
Bergsland Vogt estimate of vocabulary retention
in East Greenlandic as .722 in 600 years, or .34
per millenium.
David Lithgow (pers. com. circa 1970) has
observed a replacement of some 20 of the basic
vocabulary in Muyuw (Woodlark island) in one
generation. Raise 0.8 to the 33rd power, and that
gives you the retention rate of Muyuw per 1000
years should it continue to evolve at that rate
0.06.
Jacques Guy (1994)
52
Language chains
A .77 B .65 .76 C
Configurations like this are taken as prima facie
evidence of non-treeness, to be attributed to
borrowing/mixing/cline types of situations. But
in fact they can also easily be generated by
variable rates of change
A ----------- 90 -----------.
____ protolanguage B ---- 95 ----.
---- 90 ----' C
---- 80 ----'
Note that the required difference in mean rate of
change is only (.9-.9.8)/.9 .2 , or 20
53
Mitochondrial Genome
54
Mitochondrial family tree
55
Mitochondrial phylogeny
56
Three fascinating results

• Mitochrondrial Eve
• Mitochrondial Clans
• The three-wave theory converging linguistic and
  genetic evidence

57
Mitochondrial Eve

• Cann, Stoneking, and Wilson (1987)
• mtDNA comparisons of 147 people from Europe,
  Africa, Asia, Australia, and new Guinea show that
  all present human mtDNA is descended from a
  single African woman who lived about 200,000
  years ago.

58
First problem

• Computer program was used to find a tree
  consistent with the mtDNA data
• But so were many other (unreported) trees!
• order of answers depended on order of data
• root could be effectively anywhere in the dataset
• e.g. Melanesian Eve, Asian Eve, European Eve

59
Other problems

• mtDNA may not change at a constant rate
• mtDNA changes may be adaptive
• Gene trees may not be population trees
• DNA (including mtDNA) can spread by gradual flow
  or by range expansion
• spread can be influenced by other factors

60
Early results Native Americans come from four
genetic lineages, labeled A through D. Amerinds
have all four lineages, NaDene only A, and
Eskaleuts A and D. Current results The four
mtDNA lineages divide into nine distinct genetic
subtypes. All four lineages are in all three
language groups. Many local populations have
all four lineages and a number even have all the
subtypes. All subtypes can be found in North,
Central and South America. It isn't realistic
to believe that the same lineages ended up in all
these populations across two continents by
separate migrations."
61
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62
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63
And MtDNA inheritance may not even be entirely
clonal!

• Mice
• demonstration of paternal leakage
• Hagelberg
• rare mtDNA mutation in Vanuatu
• Erye-Walker
• statistics of mtDNA homoplasies

64
Island evidence

• Erika Hagelberg (Proc. R. Soc. 1999)
• Island of Nguna (Vanuatu, Melanesia)
• 3 main MtDNA population groups
• as expected for the region
• In all three groups, the same mutation is
  sometimes found
• previously known only from one Northern European
• Repeated chance mutation is unlikely
• local spread by recombination seems more probable

65
Statistics of mtDNA homoplasies

• Mutations that occur in different mtDNA
  haplogroups around the world
• Assuming purely maternal inheritance, these were
  thought to represent chance recurrence of
  mutations in hypervariable regions
• Eyre-Walker et al. (Proc. R. Soc. 1999)
• regions are not statistically more variable than
  others
• mutations cluster geographically
• MacCauley (1999) counters
• much of the result comes from a dataset that may
  be errorful
• no need to panic

66
Reaction of another mtDNA afficionado
I am reminded of a comment by a bishops wife in
Victorian England, also concerning human origins
Let us hope that it isnt true, and if it is,
that it will not become generally known.