Origins

1. Origins

3. Indo-European • Sir William Jones, in 1786, proposed that Latin, Greek and Sanskrit were sister languages • A programme of research began • What is the original language? • Are there other related languages? • This study was know as philology and is the beginning of modern linguistics

4. Indo-European • Eventually, it was determined that there was a large language family (Indo-European) • Stretching from Northern India throughout Europe and into what is now Iran

5. Middle English Contemporary English French German Old English Italian Greek Latin Germanic Proto-Indo-European Germanic Greek Latin French

6. Proto-Indo-European • Two hypotheses on origins • Warriors from the Russian Steppes • Based on vocabulary and some archeology • Farmers from Turkey • Based on archeology

7. Philology • The results of these early studies created the field of philology • This was the study of the history of words • It is possible to trace the evolution of a word from its original form through each of the IE families

8. Example Proto-Indo-European *māter etymon mother Greek Sanskrit Latin mātar māter mētēr daughters reflexes cognates sisters

9. English • If English is a member of the Indo-European language family • it should have cognates with other Indo-European languages

10. p p p f p p p f

11. Hypothesis • One of the changes that separated English (and the other Germanic languages) from other Indo-European languages was • p →f

12. t t t th t t t th t t th t t t th t t t th

13. Phonetics (Again) • What sound is th? • th is not a sound, it is a representation • and not a good one • it actually represents 2 sounds in English • compare thing and that, thigh and thy • The French did not have these sounds and the symbols for them were discarded

14. Phonetics • The symbol that represents the sound we are interested in is Ɵ(Greek letter theta) • So, perhaps there is a rule that in the evolution of English: • t → Ɵ

15. Hypothesis • We have seen that sometimes a rule is part of a larger process • Could these two rules be part of something bigger?

16. Phonetics (review) • Speech sounds are created by first producing a column of air • That air flow is then coloured by changing the shape of the channel that it is travelling through • For consonants, there are several articulators

17. Consonants • Consonants are defined by 3 major dimensions (there are others) • Manner (how is the air flow affected) • Place (where is the air flow affected) • Status of glottis

18. Manner • The air flow can be restricted is several ways • It can be stopped for milliseconds (stop) • It can be constricted (fricative) • It can be lightly modified • It can be passed through the nasal cavity

19. Place • The various modifications can occur at various places in the vocal tract • In English we are primarily interested in • Lips • Tongue (at different places along its length) • Glottis

20. Glottis • The glottis has 1 of 2 states • Vibrating (voiced) • Still (voiceless)

21. Phonetics • Put it together

22. Phonetics

23. Phonetics

24. Review • In the history of English, the following 3 rules seem to have applied • p → f • t → Ɵ • k → h • Is there anything more to say?

25. Review • In the history of English, the following 3 rules seem to have applied • p → f • t → Ɵ • k → h • Is there anything more to say?

26. Germanic Consonant Shift • These observations are part of a general comprehensive shift that helped to distinguish English (and the Germanic languages) from the other IE languages • The next section examines this phenomenon in detail • cognates

27. Germanic Consonant Shift • The discovery of this phenomenon helped to establish linguistics as a discipline because it established the notion of rule governed behaviour • It was originally known as “Grimm’s Law”

28. Phonetics Voiceless stops became fricatives

29. Germanic Consonant Shift • Because of the history of English, it is possible to examine Grimm’s Law using English vocabulary • English borrows words from other languages and so contains cognates from different languages borrows cognates

30. Borrowing

31. Borrowing • When cultures come in contact, they often borrow words from one another • Why? • When we borrow ideas/technologies/et, we usually borrow the word as well • Note words for food • Taboos

32. Borrowing • Naturalization • If a borrowed word has been in a language long enough, it comes to look like a native word • e.g. Japanese basubaru • This is good evidence that there are rules in a language that words follow

33. Borrowings demonstrate rules • Consider the words psychiatrist and pneumonia • English does not permit [ps] and [pn] at the beginnings of words • So, these are not pronounced when a word is borrowed.

34. Attitudes toward borrowing • Not everyone is in favour • George Orwell wrote against it • Others argue that borrowing is necessary to distinguish concepts • cf. underwater and subaquatic

35. Borrowing • Because English has borrowed so heavily from Greek and Latin, we can actually study the Germanic Consonant Shift in English • Without have to learn Greek and Latin

36. Borrowing • Typically, when a word is borrowed, it will initially still follow the rules of original language • Consequently, it is necessary to know what language the word is associated with (where it originated) to know which rules it will obey

37. Borrowings Origins • How to find the origin of a word? • Use a dictionary • We will use Meriam-Websters online dictionary

38. feather • Start with feather • Etymology: Middle English fether, from Old English; akin to Old High German federa wing, Latin petere to go to, seek, Greek petesthai to fly, piptein to fall, pteron wing

39. Proto-IndoEuropean pet Germanic English feather

40. Greek • helicopter • Etymology: French hélicoptère, from Greek heliko- + pteron wing — more at feather

41. Proto-IndoEuropean pet Greek Germanic pteron English helicopter feather

42. Subtlies • Consider ‘loyal’ and ‘legal • Etymology: Middle French, from Old French leial, leel, from Latin legalis legal • Etymology: Anglo-French, from Latin legalis, from leg-, lex law • Which language is each from?

43. loyal and legal • Recall that Latin developed through Old French to Middle French to Contemporary French • So ‘loyal’ developed naturally in French • But ‘legal’ must have been borrowed into Anglo-French because according to the dictionary it did not develop through Old French

44. Importance of origin • Each language has its own set of rules • To turn French into Latin, the rules of Latin must change into a new set that define French • If ‘legal’ and ‘loyal’ are descended from the same word in Latin, why are they different?

45. ‘legal’ and ‘loyal’ • The concepts of rules associated languages and language of origin provides the answer • ‘loyal’ is French and obeys French rules, ‘legal’ is Latin and obeys Latin rules

46. Rules of Thumb • If a word existed in Old English (or Old French), then it is an English (or French) word • It developed naturally from Old English and was not borrowed

47. Rules of Thumb • If a word enters a language from a sister (or unrelated) language, it is not a native word • It is a borrowing • Refer to the family tree to determine whether two languages are sisters or mother daughter

48. Rules of Thumb • When following a chain of borrowings, take it to the last language • Refer to the Indo-European family tree • Etymology: Middle English tropik, from Latin tropicus of the solstice, from Greek tropikos, from tropē turn

49. Examples

50. Germanic Consonant Shift • Discovered by Jacob Grimm • Recall Grimm’s fairy tales • Reinforced the idea that language change is rule governed