unit10historicallinguistics讲课.ppt

Chapter Ten Historical Linguistics Outline 1. The purpose and significance of the historical study of Language 2. The nature of language change 3. The historical development of English 4. Language family 5. The causes of language change Historical linguistics is the subfield of linguistics that studies language change. 1. The purpose and significance of the historical study of Language Historical linguists are concerned with the historical development of languages and the processes involved in language change. Historical linguists study the nature of language change and the causes that lead to language change. They also study methods and techniques with which they can reconstruct linguistic history and establish the relationship between languages that belong to the same language family. Language change is inevitable. As a general rule, language change is universal, continuous and, to a considerable degree, regular and systematic. 2. The nature of language change Language change is extensive, taking place in virtually all aspects of the grammarin phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics. 2. The nature of language change Language change is never an overnight occurrence; otherwise, communication would be impossible. Language development may be regarded as linguistic evolution from one stage to another. It is generally accepted that the history of the English language is divided into the periods of Old English, Middle English and Modern English 3. The historical development of English 3.1 Major periods in the history of English Three major periods English has experienced: Old English (roughly from 449 to 1100) Middle English (roughly from 1100 to 1500) Modern English (roughly from 1500 to the present) 3. 1. 1 Old English Old English dates back to the midfifth century when AngloSaxons, the speakers of English, invaded the British Isles from northern Europe. The pronunciation of Old English is very different from its modern form. In terms of morphology, nearly half of the nouns are inflected to mark nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative cases. Syntactically, the verb of an Old English sentence often proceeds, instead of following the subject. 3. 1. 2 Middle English Middle English began when the Norman French invaders invaded England under William the Conqueror in 1066. In this period, French, as the language of the ruling classes, deeply influenced English. For example, words such as “army” “court,“ and” “defense,” were borrowed into the English language from the language of the French rulers. 3. 1. 3 Modern English Modern English began with the European renaissance movement. A direct consequence of the Renaissance movement was the influence of Latin and Greek on the English language. In the postRenaissance period, England established many colonies across the world. Now, English was the native language in England, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc. 3. 2. 1 Sound change 3. 2. 1. 1 Vowel sound change Great Vowel Shift, which occurred at the end of the Middle English period, approximately between 1400 and 1600 and which involved 7 long vowels, led to one of the major disagreements between the pronunciation and the spelling system of Modern English. For example: Middle Englis h Modern Englis h fiv e fi:v faiv m o u s e mu:s maus fe e t fe:t fi:t m o o d moid mu:d br e a k breken breik br o k e broiken bruk Na m e na:ma neim 3. 2. 1. 2 Sound loss Some sounds in English have simply disappeared from the general pronunciation of English. For example, the voiceless velar fricative / x /, which was present in “nicht“ /nixt/ (“night“) in old English, was lost in the presentday form of night. “knight“ and “knee.“ deletion of a word-final vowel segment- apocopate. For example, name and love were pronounced respectively /na:m/and /luv/ in Middle English, but as / neim/ and /LV/ in Modern English and the word-final sound / was lost. 3. 2. 1. 3 Sound addition Sound addition includes the gain or insertion of a sound. A change that involves the insertion of a consonant or vowel sound to the middle of a word is known as epenthesis, for example: emty empty glimse glimpse 3. 2. 1. 4 Sound movement Metathesis refers to sound change because of a reversal in the positions of two neighboring sounds. For example, Modern English word “bird” is the result of the reversal of the two neighboring sounds /r/ and/i/ in the Old English word “bridd“ (“bird“) 3. 2. 2 Morphological change 3. 2. 2. 1 Affix loss In Old English, the affix “-bora“, which was added to a noun to indicate the performer of the action, was now lost in Modern English. mund (“protection“) + bora mundbora (“protector“) Derivational rule loss also occurred to the Old English suffix “- yan”, which was added to an adjective to produce a causative verb. In modern English, this suffix has simply disappeared. 3.2.4 Lexical change 3.2.4. 1 Lexical loss Many words, which were used in Old English or Middle English have fallen out of use in Modern English. For example: demiss, ere, oft, wot, beseem, aught, thou, thee, thy. Some of them can still be found in compound words or idioms, such as were-wolf. 3. 2. 4. 2 Lexical addition (omit) 3.2.5 Semantic change 3.2.5.1 Semantic broadening 3.2.5.2 Semantic narrowing 3.2.5.3 Semantic shift 4. Language family 4. 1 Classifying genetically related languages 4. 2 The IndoEuropean language family 世界七大语系19世纪，欧洲的比较学派研究了世 界上近一百种语言，发现有些语言的某些语音 、词汇、语法规则之间有对应关系，有些相似 之处，他们便把这些语文归为一类，称为同族 语言；由于有的族与族之间又有些对应关系， 又归在一起，称为同系语言，这就是所谓语言 间的谱系关系。现在，世界上主要的语系有七 大类： 印欧语系 印欧语系是最大的语系，下分印度、伊朗、日 耳曼、拉丁、斯拉夫、波罗的海等语族。印度 语族包括梵语、印地语、巴利语等。伊朗语族 包括波斯语、阿富汗语等。日耳曼语族包括英 语、德语、荷兰语、斯堪的纳维亚半岛各主要 语言。拉丁语族包括法语、意大利语、西班牙 语、葡萄牙语和罗马尼亚语。斯拉夫语族有俄 语、保加利亚语、波兰语。波罗的海语族包括 拉脱维亚语和立陶宛语。 汉藏语系 汉藏