Historical Linguistics

1. Introduction: historical linguistics, its aims and scope

Concerned with the study of phonological, grammatical, and semantic changes,

the reconstruction of earlier stages of languages, and the discovery and
application of the methods by which genetic relationships among languages
can be demonstrated. Had its roots in the etymological speculations of classical
and medieval times, in the comparative study of Greek and Latin developed
during the Renaissance, and in the speculations of scholars as to the language
from which the other languages of the world were descended.
2. Sound change:
Regularity hypothesis, conditioned/unconditioned/sporadic sound
change, Grimm’s Law, Verner’s Law, relative chronology,
analogy and borrowing, subphonemic and phonemic sound change,
merger and split, neutralization.
Regularity hypothesis (also called the Neogramm hypothesis and sometimes
the regularity principle) that sound change is regular, or, by their slogan, that
‘sound laws suffer no exceptions’. One of the most important basic
assumptions in historical linguistics is that sound change is regular. For
example, original p regularly became b between vowels in Spanish (p > b /V __
V); this means that in this context, between vowels, every original p became a
b.

Conditioned sound change: A change that takes place only in certain contexts,
that is, change that is dependent upon neighbouring sounds, upon the
changing sound’s position within words, or on other aspects of the grammar.
Conditioned changes affect only some of a sound’s occurrences, those
contexts, but not other occurrences that happen to be found in environments
outside the restricted situation in which the change takes effect. For example,
the Spanish change of Romance p to Spanish b intervocalically, as in lupus >
lobo ‘wolf’, is conditioned.

Unconditioned sound change: (also called unconditioned phonological change)

Sound change that occurs generally wherever the sound appears in the
language in question and is not dependent on the phonetic context in which it
occurs, that is, not dependent on or restricted by neighbouring sounds.
Unconditioned sound changes modify a sound in all contexts.
Sporadic sound change: Any irregular change, particularly a sound
change. Typically, only one or a few forms are affected by a sporadic change.
An example is the loss of /r/ in Old English sprᴁc ‘speech, language’, giving
modern speech, which happened only in this word, not in others, such as
spring, spry, spree (and is preserved in the German cognate Sprache ‘speech,
language’). Changes of metathesis, haplology and dissimilation are sometimes.
sporadic.

Grimm’s Law: A well-known sound change of Indo-European found by

Hermann Grassmann that involves regular dissimilation in Greek and Sanskrit
where in roots with two aspirated stops the first dissimilates to an unaspirated
stop. The consonants involved are voiced aspirated stops in Sanskrit and
voiceless aspirated stops in Greek:
Sanskrit bhabhuva > babhuva ‘became’ (reduplication of root bhu-)
Greek phéphuka > péphuka ‘converted’ (reduplication of phú- ‘to engender’).
A well-known Greek example is: trikh-ós ‘hair’ (genitive singular) / thrík-s
(nominative singular), where trikhos comes from *thrikh-os, to which
Grassmann’s law has applied dissimilating the th because of the following
aspirated kh (*th ... kh > t ... kh); in thríks ‘hair’, from *thrikh-s, the kh lost its
aspiration because of the following s (*khs >ks), and so Grassmann’s law
did not apply to this form, there no longer being two aspirated stops.

Verner’s Law: A famous sound change, named for its

discoverer, Karl Verner (1877), in which Proto-Germanic non-initial voiceless
fricatives became voiced when the stress followed, rather than preceded these
sounds. Verner’s Law explains some seeming exceptions to Grimm’s Law. (Indo-
European *p, *t, *k, *kw > Germanic f, θ, x, xw)

Relative chronology: A linguistic change takes place at some particular time,

and different changes taking place at different times have a temporal order or
sequence, some earlier, others later, though usually the exact time of the
changes cannot be determined directly. Two changes is clear: Grimm’s Law and
Proto- Indo- European:The second (voiced stops > voiceless) had taken place
before the first (voiceless stops > fricatives), then all stops would have ended
up as voiceless fricatives, both the original voiceless
stops and the later ones from the change of voiced stops to voiceless.
Analogy: A process whereby one form of a language becomes more like
another with which it is somehow associated; that is, analogical change
involves a relation of similarity in which one piece of a language changes to
become more like another pattern in that language when speakers perceive the
changing part as similar to the pattern which it changes to become like. For
example, earlier English brethren ‘brothers’ changed to brothers,
with brother/brothers coming in line with the pattern of many nouns that have
-s plurals as in sister/sisters, mother/mothers, son/sons etc.

Borrowing: The process in which a language takes linguistic elements from

another language and makes them part of its own. The borrowed elements are
typically loanwords, but borrowing is not restricted just to lexical items taken
from one language into another.

Subphonemic and phonemic sound change: A change in pronunciation; the

process by which sounds change their phonetic nature and phonological
systems change.

Merger: Two (or more) distinct sounds fuse into one, leaving fewer phonemes
in the phonological inventory than there were before the change. Often the
result of merger is that two sounds merge into an existing sound. the change of
lj, j > j in most varieties of Latin American Spanish)

Split: Opposite of a merger, phoneme splits into two or more phonemes in a

language. An axiom of historical phonology is that splits
follow mergers.

Neutralization: Loss or suppression of an opposition

between linguistic units. Most typically, loss or suppression in some context of
an opposition between phonemes that maintain their contrastive nature in
other environments. The contrast between /t/ and /d/ is neutralized between
vowels where the first is stressed, so that both latter and ladder are
pronounced the same, with a flapped ‘d’ in the middle.

3. Sound change:
assimilatory changes, lenition/weakening, dissimilatory
processes, epenthetic changes ,morphological reinterpretation,
contamination, folk etymology

Assimilatory changes: A change in which one sound becomes more

similar to another through the influence of a neighbouring, usually adjacent,
sound. Assimilatory changes are often subclassified in terms of total-partial,
contact distant and regressive-progressive dichotomies.

Lenition/ weaking: The resulting sound after the change is conceived of as

somehow weaker in articulation than the original sound before the change.
Lenitions typically include changes of stops or affricates to fricatives, of two
consonants to one, of full consonants to glides (j or w), sometimes of
voiceless consonants to voiced ones in various environments, as well as the
complete loss of sounds, among other examples.

Epenthetic changes: The insertion of a sound into a word (from Greek epi
‘in addition’ + en ‘in’ + thesis ‘placing’). Prothesis, anaptyxis, excrescence
and paragoge are kinds of epenthesis. Epenthesis can be a synchronic or a
diachronic process.

Morphological reinterpretation: Involves a change in syntactic and

semantic category; for example, in that was fun > that was a fun
game, the noun fun is reinterpreted as the adjective fun.

Contamination: Creation of new words by the combination of parts of two

or more existing words, for example smog < smoke + fog ; brunch <breakfast
+ lunch ; motel < motor + hotel ; blog < web log.
There are also syntactic blends, for example the English construction I’m
friends with him – a blend based on (a) I’m a friend with him and (b) we are
friends.

Folk etymology: A kind of analogical change in which speakers assign

meaning associations to forms (words or morphemes) that the forms did
not originally have based on their resemblance to other forms in the
language, and on the basis of these new meaning associations either the
original form is changed or new forms based on the new meaning
associations are created.
4. Vocabulary change and grammatical change:

Semantic changes:
• Extension (broadening the meaning of one word), e.g. bird ‘young bird’ >
‘bird in general’
- Metaphor (transfer b/o imagined similarity), e.g. a bottle neck, head of
state, foot of a mountain
- Metonymy (part for the whole, etc.), e.g. White House (the American
president), crown (the king or queen)
• Narrowing (the meaning of a word), e.g. fowl ‘bird in general’ > ‘specific
kind of bird’, meat ‘food’ > ‘special kind of food’
• Semantic bleaching (process of grammaticalization) (It can be described
as the loss of semantic content. More specifically, with reference to
grammaticalization, bleaching refers to the loss of all (or most) lexical
content of an entity while only its grammatical content is retained) will ‘full
verb’ (to want) > ‘auxiliary’
• Amelioration (improvement, the upgrading or elevation of a word's
meaning,), e.g. knight ‘boy, youth, attendant’ > ME ‘a noble person’
• Pejoration (from neutral to pejorative, often mirror lower social status of
certain groups), ( the downgrading or depreciation of a word's meaning) e.g.
knave (dishonest man) < OE cnafa ‘boy, servant’; churl ‘peasant; bad-
tempered person’ < OE ceorl ‘peasant, low-ranking freeman’; villain < ME
‘feudal serf’; ALSO: master vs. mistress, bachelor vs. spinster.
Silly"The word silly is a classic example of pejoration, or gradual worsening
of meaning. In early Middle English (around 1200), sely (as the word was
then spelled) meant 'happy, blissful, blessed, fortunate,' as it did in Old
English.

Syntactic changes:
 Modern English:
– auxiliary verb raises to Tense
– main verb stays in VP
– result: main verb follows adverbs: John often went skiing.
– I to C in questions
– result: aux verb to C in questions

 Old and Middle English:

 Here men vndurstonden ofte by this nyght the night of synne
here men understood often by this night the night of sin

5. Internal reconstruction: definition, analysis of examples,

questions of naturalness, limitations and accuracy

A method for inferring aspects of the history of a language from the

evidence found in that language alone. Internal reconstruction compares
such variants and irregularities – different allomorphs in paradigms,
derivations, stylistic variants and the like.It can recover valuable information
when applied to:
(1) isolates (languages without known relatives);
(2)alternating forms in reconstructed proto-languages to see even further
back into the past
(3) individual languages to arrive at an earlier stage to which the
comparative method can then be applied to compare such an internally
reconstructed older stage of a language with related languages in the
family. The result of internal reconstruction is labeled ‘pre-’, as in, for
example, Pre-English, to English as internally reconstructed. For instance, for
the English alternating forms /lɔŋ/ (as in long) – /lɔŋg/ (as in longer), /strɔŋ/
(strong) –/strɔŋg/ (in stronger)
Internal reconstruction can often recover conditioned changes, but cannot
recover unconditioned sound changes or changes where too much
subsequent change obscured the original conditioning, that is, the
environments in which the change took place.

6. Comparative method: regular sound correspondence, analysis

of examples, comparative reconstruction and the family tree
model, the wave theory, the I-E language family

Basic assumption of comparative linguistics: accounting for similarities, which

cannot be attributed to chance, by the assumption that they are the result of
descendancy from a common ancestor, i.e. of genetic relationship. Through the
procedure of comp. rec. we can establish language families, such as those of
Indo-European, as well as recover prehistoric linguistic reality.

a) Chance similarities
Mod.Gr mati 'eye' - Malay mata 'eye'
Korean man = Eng. man
Hung. ki = Fr. qui
'baby talk': daddy, mommy, baby, - It. papa, mama, bambino(syllable
reduplication)

Similarities should not be limited to a few lexical items, but recur in large sets
of examples; longer forms are preferred over short ones. Onomatopoeia or
'baby talk' should be excluded.

b) Similarities due to linguistic contact

(1) Engl. Grm. (2) to zu

calf Kalb too zu
cow Kuh two zwei
swine Schwein twenty zwanzing
eat essen
bite beissen
father Vater
mother Mutter

Wave theory: A model of linguistic change seen by some as an alternative to

the family tree model but thought by others to complement the family tree
model; it is intended to deal with changes due to contact among languages and
dialects. According to the wave model, linguistic changes spread outward
concentrically as waves on a pond do when a stone is thrown into it, becoming
progressively weaker with the distance from their central point. Since later
changes may not cover the same area there may be no sharp boundaries
between neighbouring dialects or languages; rather, the greater the distance
between them, the fewer linguistic traits dialects or languages may share.
 7. Old English: historical background, types of declensions
and conjugations, sound system, OE i/j-mutation, OE syntax
and vocabulary
During the 5th Century AD three Germanic tribes (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes)
came to the British Isles from various parts of northwest Germany as well as
Denmark. These tribes were warlike and pushed out most of the original, Celtic-
speaking inhabitants from England into Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. When
the Anglo-Saxons first came to England from northern Germany (Saxony) in the
fifth and sixth centuries, they brought their language with them. It is a
Germanic language and has some fundamental similarities to Modern German.
When the Anglo-Saxons first came to England from northern Germany (Saxony)
in the fifth and sixth centuries, they brought their language with them. It is a
Germanic language and has some fundamental similarities to Modern German
Types of declensions:
Strong Masculine Nouns
stem -ā-
Sg.N/A stān dæġ end-e
G stān-es dæġ-es end-es
D stān-e dæġ-e end-e
Pl.N/A stān-as dag-as end-as
G stān-a dag-a end-a
 D stān-um dag-um end-um

This is the largest group of OE nouns, and the pattern above represents
approximately 35-40% of the noun inflections in the language. Some other nouns
belonging to this group are: āð 'oath', bāt 'boat', bæcere 'baker', cyning 'king',
dēofol 'devil', heofon 'heaven', hlāf 'loaf' etc.

Strong Feminine Nouns

stem -ō-
Sg.N tal-u lār brycg
A tal-e lār-e brycg-e
G/D tal-e lār-e brycg-e
Pl.N/A tal-a lār-a brycg-a
G tal-a lār-a brycg-a
D tal-um lār-um brycg-um
About 25% of the nouns in OE followed the pattern above. Other nouns in this
group are: andswaru 'answer', ecg 'edge', rōd 'cross' sorg 'sorrow', strengþu
'strength', glōf 'glove' etc.

Strong Neuter Nouns

stem -ā-
Sg.N/A scip word rīč-e
G scip-es word-es rīč-es
D scip-e word-e rīċ-e
Pl.N/A scip-u word-u rīċ-u
G scip-a word-a rīċ-a
D scip-um word-um rīċ-um
The Neuter declension differs from the Masculine only on N/A Pl. About 20-25%
of the OE nouns belong to that group. Other nouns: bān 'bone', bedd 'bed', cynn
'race', land 'land', yfel 'evil' etc.

The Weak -AN Declension

stem -n-
Sg.N eorð-e nam-a sunn-e
A/G/D eorð-an nam-an sunn-an
Pl.N/A eorð-an nam-an sunn-an
G eorð-ena nam-ena sunn-ena
D eorð-um nam-um sunn-um

This group includes nouns of all genders, approximately 15% of the whole stock
of OE nouns. Other nouns: boda 'messenger', ċyriċe, 'church', hearte 'heart',
hlæfdige 'lady', tunge 'tongue', oxa 'ox' etc. The only modern survivals of this
pattern are oxen, children, and the archaic brethren and kine.

Irregular Declensions
(other consonantal stems)
-z- stem r-c stem -r- stem
 Sg.N/A ċild fōt mūs brōþor
G ċildes fōtes mūses brōþor
D ċilde fēt mys brēþer
Pl.N/A ċildru fēt mys brōþor
G ċildra fōta mūsa brōþra
D ċildrum fōtum mūsum brōþrum

These nouns did not follow any of the patterns outlined above, but conformed to
patterns which had become infrequent by OE times. The most important
subgroup is that with mutated plurals, nouns which had had an -i sound in the
inflections. Like fōt were: brōc 'breeches', gōs 'goose', lūs 'louse', mann 'man',
tōþ 'tooth' and a few others. Most of the nouns in this group have resisted the
pressure of analogy and have survived 'irregular' to this day.

Conjunction:
Weak conjugation: dǣlan ‘to share’

iċ dǣle wē dǣlaþ

þū dǣlst ġē dǣlaþ
hē/hēo/hit hīe dǣlaþ
dǣlþ

Consonants:
 Intervocalic voicing of fricatives
<f> stæf [stæf] ‘letter’ but stafas [stɑvɑs] ‘letters, staves’
<s> hūs [huːs] ‘house’ but hūsian [huːziɑn] ‘to house’
<þ> bæþ [bæθ] ‘bath’ but baþian [bɑðiɑn] ‘bathe’

<þ> thorn: a letter of Runic origin, used in Old English, Old Scandinavian
and Modern Icelandic
 Dorsal consonants (velars and postalveolars)
<c> [k]
<ċ> [tʃ]
<sċ> [ʃ]
<g> [g] or [γ] between vowels
<ġ> [j]
<cg> [dʒ]

Vowels:

Front  Back 

unrounded  rounded  unrounded  rounded 

Close  i ī y ȳ   u ū 

Mid  e ē œ ōe   o ō 

Open  æ ǣ   a ā  

I/J Mutation

Germanic Old English Modern English

Sg *mūs mūs /maʊs/ 'mouse’
Pl *mūsi mȳs > mīs /maɪs/ 'mice’
Sg *fōt fōt /fʊt/ 'foot’
Pl *fōti fēt /fiːt/ 'feet’

 Monophthongs:
ā, ō, ū before i, j > æ, œ, y
Eg. Lat anglus – OE engle, Fin kuningas – OE cyninȝ, Gth laisjan – OE læran
Diphthongs:
ea > ie, y eald – ieldra – ieldest
eo > ie, y ȝeonȝ - ȝienȝra - ȝienȝest
eā > iē, ӯ hēāh – hӯrra – hӯhst
eō > iē, ӯ treōwiðu – frӯwðu

8. Middle English: historical background and its impact on

language, ME inflections, French influence and vocabulary,
the rise of standard, sound change processes (lengthenings,
shortenings), development of grammatical categories

Roughly from the Battle of Hastings (1066) to the beginning of the 16th century
William the Conqueror on the Bayeux Tapestry Bayeux Museum
Simplified morphology (though not yet as simple as in Modern English)
Heavy borrowing from Norman French
Anglo-Saxon Norman French
board table
dish plate
eat dine
cow beef
calf veal
sheep mutton
pig pork

 Long vowels
a as the a in father (never as in Modern English mate)
ee similar to the a in Modern English mate but a monophthong
ea as in yeah → howjsay
i as in Modern English see
oo as the single o in hope but a monophthong
ou as oo in Modern English boot
  Short vowels
a as the a in father but short
e final e is not silent unless it is followed by a vowel
o as in British English hot → howjsay
u as in put (never as in cut)
 Consonants
gh as German ch:  thrugh [θrux] ‘through’
kn the k is not silent:  knight [kniçt]
French Influence on the Vocabulary
- French Language influenced in the Germanic Tribes because of Norman
Conquest
- They transferred French to English in the case of governmental,
administrative, ecclesiastical, legal, military, food & social life
- Over 10000 French words entered in English gradually
- The number of French word was so large because of it’s domination
- Most of the French word used till in present Modern English
- The example of French borrowed word for animals and their meat
Animal Meat
Sheep Mutton
Cow Beef
Swine Pork

 The Rise of Standard English

Four reason regarding The Rise of Standard English
1. Flexibility of the Language
2. Regional Advantage
3. Because of Cambridge & Oxford Universities.
4. Influence of Chaucer
  Sound changes:
LENGTHENINGS
(1) Vowels were lengthened in Late OE before the consonantal clusters -ld,
-mb, -nd. The process was prevented by the third consonant following the
clusters. Thus OE ċild became ME child [či:ld], but children; OE hound > ME
hound [hu:nd], but hundred [hundrзd].
(2) In ME, between c.1200 and 1400 the stressed vowels in open syllables
were lengthened in disyllabic words when only one consonant intervened
between the first anρd the second syllable of the word. Thus OE talu [talu] >
ME tale [ta:lз], OE nosu [nozu] > ME nose [no:zз], OE brecan [brekan] > ME
brek(e) [bre:k(з)].
(3) The vowel [a] and sometimes [o] were lengthened in Early ModE (after
1600) when followed by the voicless fricatives [f, θ, s]. Thus Br.E staff [sta:f],
path [pa:θ], class [kla:s], soft [so:ft].
SHORTENINGS
(1) In Late OE/Early ME vowels were shortened before two or more
consonants (other than the clusters listed above which caused lengthening).
Thus, OE crepte [kre:pte] > ME crepte [kreptз], OE mænte [mæ:ndз] > ME
ment(e) [ment(з)].
(2) In ME vowels were shortened if they appeared in a syllable followed by
two unstressed syllables. Thus OE hāliġdæġ [ha:lijdæj] > ME haliday [halidej].
(3) The vowels in unstressed syllables (including the vowels in monosyllabic
words which were unlikely to carry sentence stress) were shortened in ME.
Thus OE tōdæġ [to:dæj] > ME today [tз’dej], OE ūs > ME us [us].
Note: All quantitative vowel changes above depend on one or both of the
following factors: stress and environment.
Other changes in vowels:

OE [a:] > ME [o:] OE bān > ME bōn

OE [æ] > ME [a] OE þæt > ME that
OE [æ:] > ME [ε:] OE sæ > ME sē
OE [y] > ME [i] OE synn > ME sinne
OE [y:] > ME [i:] OE hydan > ME hīden

 Grammatical categories:
Originally lexical words adopts a grammatical function (plus semantic
bleaching; it can affect both morphology and syntax).
English:
- The development from main to auxiliary verbs, e.g. will, ‘ll (Grm Ich will
‘I want”); The going to future: I’m going to the shop (verb of motion) >
I’m going to fly to London (intended, future action) (full
grammaticalization in the 19th c.), now phonetic reduction gonna. A
similar development of ‘going to’ in other lgs (French).
- The development of the progressive form from a construction of a
‘particle of place + non-finite verb’: he is on hunting > he is a-hunting >
he is hunting
- The development of negative particles from negative intensifiers, Eng.
not, nought < nowiht, niwight ‘not a thing’.

9. Early Modern English: EModE sound changes, Great Vowel

Shift, its dating, scope and mechanis
16th – 17th centuries

 Great Vowel Shift:

The change in the pronunciation of the tense vowels that helps to demark
Middle from Modern English. This change, the most salient of all
phonological developments in the history of English, is called the Great
Vowel Shift.
1. Dating. In traditional accounts the GVS is a change starting after 1400
and almost fully completed by 1700. This view has been challenged on
the basis of earlier evidence of ‘shifted’ vowels and post-1700 instances
of continuing ‘shifts’, especially in the non-standard varieties of English.
No compelling arguments have been put forward to counter this
challenge, yet textbooks continue to repeat the traditional dating,
sometimes with a caveat. Thus, the best approach would be to accept
the term GVS as a label identifying an artificially isolated portion of a
continuum, representing the evolution of the entire phonological system
of the language through time, with no starting – and no endpoint.

2. Scope. The GVS affected all and only long vowels. There is comparatively
little disagreement on this point, although this tranquil scene can be
disrupted by taking into consideration recalcitrant, i.e. unshifted, long
vowels in some regional varieties. Also, a post-vocalic [r] can arrest or
distort the results of the change.

3. Mechanism. The two most widely quoted, and conflicting theories are the
drag chain theory of Karl Luick and the push chain theory, which originated
with Otto Jespersen
ME ModE Examples
i: ai bind, wife, design
e: i: tree, be, fiend
ε: i:/ei meal, sea, steak
a: ei bake, strange, save
u: au how, house, cow
o: u: do, moon, scoop
ɔ: ou boat, nose, stone
ME 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 ModE

[i:] rise(n) ------------ [Ii] --------- [əi] ------------------------------ [ai] rise

[u:] mouth ------------ [υu] --------- [əu] ----------------------------- [au] mouth

[e:] feet -------------------------------- [i:] ----------------------------- [i:] feet

[o:] goos -------------------------------- [u:] ----------------------------- [u:] goose

[ε:] beeme ------------------------------------------------- [e:] ---------- [i:] [i:] beam

[ɔ:] stōn ------------------------------------------------- [o:] -------------- [o/əu] stone

[a:] name -------------------------------- [æ:] ------- [ε:] ---------- [ei] [ei] name

Important:
10.ME [ɔ:] developed from OE [a:], thus stān > stōn
11.ME [ε:] also developed into [ei], which can be seen in four words in
contemporary English: great, break, steak, yea.
12.Many ME [ε:] were shortened, as in lead, bread, head.