Language history and change

• In 1786, Sir William Jones came up with the idea that all languages descend from one common ancestor. What was his clue? He realized that after studying Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Indian Court, place where he was working at the time.

The term used to refer this common ancestor was

PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN

Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Helenic, Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are branches of PIE.

PROTO

•Which refers to the original form of a language

INDO

•Which refers to the place (sub-Indian continent) where this original form was spoken

EUROPEAN

•Which refers to the place (Europe) where this common ancestor influenced new languages

We may think that only one language cannot influence so many languages as PIE, this common ancestor, did, but there are signals of how important it was.

It is very unlikely to find several similar words on a row, but it is a good way to prove that PIE is the common ancestor for real.

Sanskrit Greek Latin Meaning

Pitar Patêr Pater Father

Bhrâtar Phrâtar Frâter Brother

Cognates: words that have a similar meaning in

different languages

L A N G U A G E C H A N G E The change of the English language can be divided into:

OLD ENGLISH

MIDDLE ENGLISH

MODERN ENGLISH

600-

1100 AD

1100-

1500AD

1500-

TODAY

OLD ENGLISH PERIOD The Anglo Saxons invaded the Great Britain and they

brought their Germanic dialects.

Anglo Saxons were converted to

Christianity and Latin influenced the

language

From the 8th century, Vikings came to Great Britain and their Scandinavian dialects

influenced the language

Middle English PeriodThe Normans conquered England

French:Language of the Upper

class, Court, Law, Science

and Literature.

Latin:Language

of the Church

English:Language of

the Low class

During this period and after the influence of these 3 languages, English started to

look like we know it today

These processes produced

Lexical changes

New wordsA new order for

sentence elements and new structures

Syntactic changes

Diachronical Variation