Download - Introducing English Linguistics Charles F. Meyer Chapter 1: the study of language Language Change
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Introducing English LinguisticsCharles F. MeyerChapter 1: the study of languageLanguage Change
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Is there a difference between synchronic and diachronic approaches to language study?
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Other distinctions
• Language/dialect• Pidgin/creole
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How are the number of speakers of a language determined?
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Most Widely Spoken Languages
Language# of First Language Speakers
# of Second Language Speakers
Total
Chinese (Mandarin)
873 (83%) 178 (17%) 1,051
English 340 (25-40%) 500-1,000 (60-75%)
840-1,340
Hindi 370 (76%) 120 (24%) 490
Spanish 360 (86%) 60 (14%) 420
Russian 167 (60%) 110 (40%) 277
Arabic (standard)
206 (90%) 24 (10%) 230
Portuguese 203 (95%) 10 (5%) 213
Bengali 207 (98%) 4 (2%) 211
Indonesian 23 (14%) 140 (86%) 163
Japanese 126 (99%) 1 (1%) 127
German 95 (77%) 28 (23%) 123
French 65 (57%) 50 (43%) 115
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The two ways to classify languages
• Genetic• Typological
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The comparative method
Genetic relationships between languages
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The Indo-European language family
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Ways of doing linguistic reconstruction
• Cognate vocabulary• Grammatical similarities
– E.g. case in Indo-European languages
• Historical/archeological information– E.g. interesting new work on DNA analyses to track
migrations of people around the world
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Words in Modern and Older Indo-European Languages Equivalent to Modern English foot
Old English fótModern English footModern German FußModern Dutch voetModern Norwegian fotModern Danish fodModern Swedish fot
Modern French piedModern Italian piedeModern Portuguese péModern Spanish pieSanskrit pātLatin pēsGreek peza
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The Marking of Case, Number, and Gender in Latin and Modern English for the word girl
Latin English
Case Singular Plural Singular Plural
Nominative puella puellae girl girlsGenitive puellae puellaru
mgirl’s girls’
Dative puellae puellis girl girlsAccusative puellam puellas girl girlsAblative puella puellis girl girlsVocative puella puellae girl girls
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Verb Endings in Romance Languages
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Language Typology
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Morphology
Isolating languages—Meaning is expressed by separate words. Chinese is a very isolating language. In the construction nuan-huo te yi-fu (‘warm clothes’), the separate word te is used to indicate that the first word (nuan-huo) modifies the second word (yi-fu).
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Morphology (cont.)
Agglutinative languages—Meaning is expressed by very complex internal structure. Turkish is a very agglutinative language. The construction çayiçtik means ‘We drank the tea’ (çay = ‘tea’; iç = ‘drink’; and tik = ‘we/past’).
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Morphology (cont.)
Fusional languages—Meaning is expressed by inflections dependent on such factors as the case, number, and gender of a noun. Modern German is a fusional language. In the sentence Das ist ein gutes bier (‘That is a good beer’), the inflection –es on gutes indicates that the gender of the noun Bier is neuter and that the noun is marked for the nominative case.
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Morphology (cont.)
These categories are not discrete but tend to grade off into one another. For instance, Modern English would be classified on a scale somewhere between Chinese and Modern German. Why?
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Syntax (from a posting on the Linguist List by Fritz Newmeyer
Dear Listers, There are 16 ways that languages can divide up according to the
following 4 criteria: 1. VO vs. OV word order2. Prepositions vs. postpositions3. N-Genitive order vs. Genitive-N order4. N-Relative clause vs. Relative clause-N order
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Syntax (cont.)In Jack Hawkins' sample of 149 languages, 6 of the 16 possible
combinations did not occur:VO Pr NG RelNVO Pr GN RelNVO Po NG NRelVO Po NG RelNOV Po NG RelNOV Pr NG RelN
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Why is Old English so different from Modern English?
Internal/External influences on language change
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Is there one single source language for all languages?
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Do languages change or evolve?
Is there a difference?
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Language Death