19th centurylo

7/29/2019 19th Centurylo

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Establishing relationships among

languages, and

the original source

Archeology from modern and ancient

languages. Not histories of words, but histories of

sounds and a focus on grammatical

elements.


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Rasmus Rask (1787-1832):

experience demonstrates that agreement in

words is extremely uncertain. Through the

intercourse of different peoples, an

incredible number of words may pass from

one language to another, however differentthe two may be in origin and type.

Grammatical agreement is a much more


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Certain indication of kinship or of original

identity, because a language which is mixed

with another seldom or never takes over

morphological changes or inflections from

it.this kind of agreement, which is the most

important and the most certain, hasnevertheless been almost entirely overlooked

hitherto in the derivation of languages, and this

oversight is the principal error in most previousdiscussions of this subject; for this reason

earlier work is so uncertain and of so little

scientific value. (c.1811)


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One family

Sanskrit

Greek

Latin

Germanic


5/17

Consonants in Germanic

Rask still (I'm missing symbols): p > f: Gr patr (L. pater) Old Norsk fadhir

t > th: Gr treis (L. tres) ON thrr

k> h: L. cornu, O.N. horn d>t: Gr. damo I tameL. domo, ON tamr

g>k: Gr. gyn, O.N. kona woman

Gr. gnos, ON kyn family

Gr agr-s (L. ager) ON akr field


6/17

A great leap:

regular sound change In Grimms first edition (1819), he didnt

see it; in the second (1822), he did.

It is one thing to see relations between sounds

in two families (Latin qu- words (quis?

who? etc.) correspond to Germanic hw (now

English wh, German w);But quite another to see that the sound

changes are regular, and subject tosound

law (regular sound change).


7/17

Schleicher: 1837

Not just comparisons among languages, but

reconstructions of what the words were in

the proto-language, like

Indo-European *ekwo-s horse -- not the

same as Latin equus, Grhppo-s, Sanskrit

asva-s, OEnglish eoh, etc.


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2nd half of 19th century

Verner, de Saussure, Brugmann

A vast and complex field of facts from the

12 branches of IndoEuropean was studied,

and regular patterns of development from

proto-forms were established;

Regular patterns ofablautin the proto-language (sing,sang,sung) were established.


9/17

Pride in laws:

The Young Grammarians

Junggrammatiker

Shift from No rule without its

exception to No exception without its rule!


10/17

When we compare languages, do

we compare sounds,

or sound categories?

Spelling systems -- orthographies -- contain within

the seed of a theory: that a language has just asmall number of sounds that can organized (in a

linear fashion).

So while languages change, it is theircategories ofsounds that change. Languages dont have residues

ofold sounds. Speakers at all times keep just a

limited set of sounds.


11/17

Sound changes can be small, taken one at a

time, but these small, gradual changes build

up to great changes over long periods.

What does that sound like?

Evolution


12/17

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: theory

of evolution by random change/ indefinite

variability and natural selection. Faced the same issues as the linguists with regard

to whether the ancestor was extant today.

Combined ideas about the evolution of language,

and the economic ideas ofAdam Smith, who

worked out the concept of the free market, the

interaction of local economic agents (The Wealth

of Nations).


13/17

Summing up

19th century linguistics was a spectacular

success on its own terms, and set a high

standard for other fields to seek.

It served as a paradigm for a rigorous and

systematic way to explore humanitys past

and the structure of a part of human culture,language.


14/17

Past Europes history?

There was some uncertainty in the field

around the turn of the 20th century as to

whether other language families could beexplored using the same methods.

The anthropologists insisted they could, and

they were proven right.


15/17

Linguistics of this sort became part of the

universalization of mankind, part of the

movement to underscore the similarities thatall humans share.

But linguistics underwent a radical shift in

the early 20th century as well, one whichwent hand in hand with the emergence of

the notion of the phoneme.


16/17

The phonemeBegan as a hazy conception among linguists,

as the thought-category corresponding to

the sounds of language. Languages are very

restrictive with regard to what sounds and

sound combinations they permit.

A language permits a small number of target

sounds which speakers try to say and

hearers expect to hear. These are thephonemes, it was thought.


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And it was the category of the phoneme that

shifted over time, then. So the subject of

study of historical linguistics could be takento be the shift in the psychologically real

sound-targets speakers adopted.

This led to the synchronic study of soundsystems: from diachrony to synchrony as

the center stage of linguistics.

19th centurylo

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