JEZYKOZNAWSTWO

1. LANGUAGE HISTORY CHANGE ; ABC Writing

1. What is philology?

Love of meaning, fond of learning from Greek philologi, from philologos, Middle English philologie, from Latin philologia, or of words: philo-, philo+logos, reason, speech; see –logy.

1. Indo-European Family of Languages

1. What are cognates?

Words in related languages that developed from the same ancestral root (they have a similar form and are used with a similar meaning)

English mother father friend

German Mutter Vater Freund

Spanish madre padre amigo

Italian madre padre amico

1. What is comparative reconstruction?

The aim of this procedure is to reconstruct what must have been the original or ‘proto’ form in the common ancestral language.

THE MAJORITY PRINCIPLE (the majority from the set retain original)

THE MOST NATURAL PRINCIPLE :

-certain types of sound-change are very common, others are extremely unlike

-final vowels often disappear

-voiceless sounds become voiced between vowels

-stops become fricatives

-consonants become voiceless at the end of words

Languages

1 2 3 protoform

mube mupe mup mupe

abadi apati apat apati

agana akana akan akana

enugu enuku enuk enuku

protolanguage

CHANGES

METATHESIS: the reversal in the position of two adjoining sounds

OE (Old English)

acsian – ask

frist – first

bridd – bird

hros – horse

EPENTHESIS: the addition of a sound to the middle of a word

OE

aemting – empty

spinel – spindle

timr – timber

PROTOTHESIS: (not found in English) the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word

schola – escuela

spiritus – espiritu

SYNTACTIC CHANGES

• Syntax changed- a number of different orders that are no longer permitted

• the loss of a large number of inflectional affixes from many parts of speech

LEXICAL CHANGES

Broadening: the meaning is borrowed by related items:

Holy day – holiday

Narrowing: the meaning is narrowed

DIACHRONIC STUDIES

Concentrate on variation in language viewed from the historical perspective of change through time

SYNCHRONIC STUDIES

Concentrate on differences within one language in different places and among different groups at the same time.

OLD ENGLISH/ ANGLO-SAXON (Englisc)

Old English was the West Germanic language spoken in the area now known as England between the 5^th and 11^th centuries. Speakers of Old English called their language Englisc, themselves Angle, Angelcynn or Angelfolc and their home Angelcynn or Englaland.

Anglo-Saxon runes (were used mainly in manuscripts)

Middle English

• French influence

• Scandinavian influence

• Loss of inflections

• Less free in word order

• Loss of grammatical gender

• More phonetic spelling

• Final –e pronounced, as well as all consonants

• Resurrection of English in 13^th…

Middle English Subperiods

1066-1204 Decline of English

THE DEVELOPMENT OF WRITING

• PICTOGRAMS ‘Pictures’ are to represent particular images in a consistent way

(e.g. cave-drawing)

• IDEOGRAMS

Abstract derived from pictograms, everyone should use a similar form to convey a roughly similar meaning; a conventional relationship between the symbol and its interpretation (idea-writing)

• LOGOGRAMS

The form of the symbol gives no clue what type of entity is being reffered to (logographic writing, Summerious)

Cuneiforms (pismo klinowe)

Modern times: CHINESE characters (basic literacy 2000 characters), the meaning of words and not sound.

• REBUS WRITING

Existing symbols represent the sounds of language, a particular symbol can be used whenever that sound occur in any word.

• SYLLABIC WRITING

A system that represents a set of symbols which represent the pronounciation of syllables.

JAPANESE: a syllabary system of writing (is based on Chinese characters, kanji, two syllabic scripts ‘hiragana’ and ‘katakana’.

Chinese (logographic) Japanese (syllabic writing)

Symbols can be used to represent single sound types in a language (Greek, Roman Cyrillic)

KOREAN – the Haugul (consonant are to depict the place and manner of articulation, vowels and drawn as long vertical or horizontal lines)

DIFFERENT SYSTEM OF WRITING!

CONSONANTAL ALPHABETIC WRITING

Consists only of consonants because consonants from the root of most words and are fully developed symbols.

Hebrew/Arabic (we read it right to left)

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

• Culture ‘socially acquired knowledge’

• The role of categories, category labels

• Conceptual distinctions are LEXICALIZED

Language is treated as source of information in a general study about culture.

The social ideas concept that we learn, make us members of a particular group.

Category is a group of members that share the same knowledge, possessed the same common features.

Category labels – like an access point lexicalised (expressed by means of words) these words present conceptual distinctions.

• Kinship terms: mother, father, uncle

Grandmother (Norwegian)

Farmor Mormor

(father’s mother) (mother’s mother)

(Mopan Maya)

• Suku’un : older brother and parent’s younger brother

• Tataa’ : parent’s older brother and grandfather

TIME CONCEPTS

(Hopi have no terms connected with the ‘clock’)

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY

• Weak version

• Strong version: ‘language determines thought’

• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

e.g. snow – Inuit : quanik, aput, Eskimos: circa 30 names of snow, English: it’s more like slush than snow outside.

• Tuvuluan: different names for different types of coconut.

L.r. the structure with its categories must have influence on the way we … the word.

Weak version

Sapir-Whorf- strong relation between biological natural categories and categories that are present in language.

• Social categories (are used for social organisation)

• Address terms (Mr, Mrs, Prof., Miss)

• Gender: biological, grammatical, social

(sex) (r f n ) recognition of social roles by means of which the position of particular members of a group is defined)

T/V distinction

Tu – Vous

Du – Sie

Ms – Mrs

Tu – Vd.

BLENDS – are similar to compounds in that they are produced by combining two words, but parts of the words that are combined are deleted. Smog, from smoke+frog; brunch – breakfast+lunch.

EMOTICONS are string of text characters that, when viewed sideways, form a face expressing a particular emotion. They are used mostly in e-mail and text messaging to express a feeling.

EXERCISES

4 a

App – abbreviation for application

Block – a blend of ‘book’ and ‘blog’: a book written by a bloger

Daycation – a trip or short vacation which lasts only one day

Hotspot – location in which wireless internet access is available

Mocktail – a non-alcoholic drink that looks like a cocktail

4 b

Aerodrome (small airport), alienism (psychotherapist), brabble (wasn), charabanc (coach)

4d

Film (klisza), central locking (in car)

6

L1, L2, L4, L8, L10. L11

9(CHAPTER 12)

A 7 , B 6, C 9, D 2, E 4, F 8, G 1, H 10, I 3, J 5

10

1. Spanish,

2. English

3. French

4. German

5. Italian

6. Portuguese

7. Japanese

8. Russian

9. Polish

10. Czech

11. Greek

12. Turkish

13. Arabic

7.

A. is unambiguous unless you are contemplating maternal cannibalism. As for stress, if you said, "What are WE having for dinner?" it would mean as compared with what someone else was having for dinner. If you said, "What are we having for DINNER?" it would mean as compared with some other meal.

B. has a slight possibility of being considered ambiguous if you wonder whether the teacher is of German nationality or teaches the German language. But any native English speaker would assume you meant the latter. No difference in stress.

C. could mean an administrative committee to handle student grievances, or a student committee to handle student grievances. No difference in stress.

D. It is pretty clear that each man kissed his own wife, though it would be even clearer if the second HIS were stressed. The idea that George kissed Charles' wife is not implied by this sentence. If you wanted that meaning, you would say, "Charles kissed his wife and George kissed her too."