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The Consequences of Language

Chapter 7: How does one Examine Language As A Historical Product?

This chapter presents various approaches to the study of language change. Comparative linguistics , historical reconstruction, glottal chronology, areal linguistics, language and history.

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1. Historical Background

As we noted in chapter 3, the beginning of the 20th Century marked a shift in focus from

diachronic synchronic linguistics. There we presented the synchronic approach to analyzing

language structure. In this chapter, we outline the major lines of the historical (diachronic)

investigation of language structure. We note in passing that while it was Saussure who urged the

new focus on the synchronic study of language, Saussure began his career as a very successful

diachronic linguist, having published a very well received treatise on the vowel system of Proto-

Indo-European.

2. Historical Linguistics

Historical or diachronic linguistics examines languages change. Underlying this

approach is the family tree hypothesis: that when speakers of the same language separate into

two or more groups, each group will independently introduce changes into their variety of the

language and the two varieties will gradually become more and more different from each other to

a point where they are no longer mutually intelligible.

This view suggests that many of the world languages are historically related to a common

ancestor known as the proto-language. The group of languages descendent from the

The Consequences of Language: How does one Examine Language as a Historical Product? Chapter 7

protolanguages is termed a language family. One of the first language families identified by

historical linguists, Indo European is shown in the diagram above. The discovery of Indo-

European demonstrated that languages from different parts of the world (Europe and South Asia)

had a common ancestors.1

Some scholars reasoned that if some of the world’s languages were related, is it not

possible that all of the world’s languages can be traced to a common ancestor language, a “proto-

world”? While an intriguing possibility, we have yet to develop techniques or discover evidence

that support a proto-world hypothesis.2

3 Methods for Studying Language Relatedness

Two general methods are currently employed for the study of language family. The first,

termed lexicostatistics, has to do with comparing the relatedness of the vocabulary of a group of

language. The comparative reconstruction attempts to reconstruct earlier forms of the language

based on the differences found among a set of related languages.

Lexicostatistics looks for the degree of relatedness in a group of languages. It is based on the

concept of basic vocabulary that presumes that the more fundamental the meaning of a

vocabulary item is, the more likely it will 1) be common to all languages and 2) more important,

that it will be more likely to come from the parent language than to be borrowed from another

language. Thus, the more basic vocabulary two languages share, the more closely they are

related.

The following example comes from Joseph Greenberg (1977:99) who is credited with

providing the developing the modern the classification of African languages using this lexico

statistical technique. In looking at the example, it is necessary only to see similarities and

differences. One does not need to know how to pronounce these words. Notice, that in a large

number of the languages the word for ‘three’ is very similar (tri, dri, tre, until we come to the last

four languages. This single set separates the Indo-European languages from the Altaic

languages (Finish, Estonian and Hungarian). Not all cases are this straightforward and

1 The use of terms like ancestor and family, has led to the extension of the biological metaphor to include characterization of these relations as ‘phylogenetic’ or sometimes simply ‘genetic.’ Unfortunately, this term has led some to confuse this metaphoric use of the term with its literal sense with the result that they mistakenly think that the specific language one speaks is biologically (genetically) inherited.2 Since many of these early historical linguists, or philologists, as they were sometimes called, were German, the original term for proto-world was “Ursprache” meaning ‘original language.’

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Greenberg and other historical linguists would argue that the entire set of basic vocabulary needs

to be examined before determining degree of relatedness. Note that the word for ‘two’ supports

the Indo-European hypothesis as well.

Basque is a language spoken in the mountains of northern Spain and southern France.

Interestingly, none of the words shows an obvious similarity with those of other words in the

example. While numerous hypotheses have been suggested as to what language family Basque

might belong, most linguists believe that Basque is an isolate with no genetic relationship to any

language family.

LANGUAGE ONE TWO THREE HEAD NOSE MOUTH TOOTH Breton ünan dau tri penn fri genu dantIrish öön d tri kjan srn bjal fjakljWelsh in dai- tri pen truin keg dantDanish en too? tre hoodh ns mon tan?Sweedish en tvo tre hüvud näsa mun tandDutch een tvee drii hooft nöös mont tantEnglish wn tuw ri hed nowz maw- tuwGerman ajns tsvaj draj kopf naaze muant tsaanFrench œ~/yn dö trwa tt ne buu dãItalian uno/-a due tre tsta naso bokka dnteSpanish un/-a dos tres kabesa naso boka dnteRumanian un doj trej kap nas gur dinteAlbanian n' du tre kok hund goja dbmpGreek enas dhjo tris kefali miti stoma dbondiLithuanian vienas du tris galva nosis burna dantisLatvian viens divi triis galva deguns mute zobsPolish jeden dva ci glova nos usta zöbCzech jeden dva tri glava nos usta zupRussian adjin dva trji galava nos rot zupBulgarian edin dva tri galava nos usta zebSerbo-Croatian jedan dva tri glava nos usta zubFinish üksi kaksi kolme pa naenä suu hammasEstonian üks kaks kolm pea nmina suu hammasHungarian ed keet haarom fö orr saaj fogBasque bat bi hirür bürü südür aho ortsEuropean correspondences from Greenberg (1957:42)

This reflects the fact that the first 21 languages belong to the Indo-European language

family, while the last four do not. Furthermore, Finish, Estonian and Hungarian share a good

deal of basic vocabulary among themselves, reflecting their membership in another language

family known as Altaic.

Lexicostatistics can also help to identify branches within Indo-European (above diagram)

Note the similarity of the word forms of Danish, Swedish, Dutch, English, and German for

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mouth (mon, mun, mont, mawand mawnt) are more closely related to each other than they are

to the rest of the group. This set helps to identify the branch of Indo-European known as

Germanic (see above diagram) and reflects an innovation in the common ancestor of these

languages called proto-Germanic.3 In a like way, the word for ‘head’ (galva, glova, etc.) helps to

identify the Slavic branch (Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, etc). Note that the example does not

lead to the identification of those languages that have descended from Latin, known as the

Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian and Rumanian). This is why a larger basic

vocabulary set is required to make a more accurate determination.

Comparative Reconstruction

During the 18th and 19th centuries, historical linguists developed the method of

comparative reconstruction. This methodology seeks to reconstruct earlier forms of the

language family, and is based on the principle that the phonemic correspondences between

languages are systematic and not haphazard. This means that if a PIE /d/ changes to /t/ in

Germanic, in one word, it will do so in all other PIE words containing /d/ as well, given the same

conditions..

Note that the Germanic words for

‘two’ and ‘tooth’ begin with a /t/, whereas

elsewhere it is typically a /d/. This was

actually part of a larger systematic sound

change, known as Grimm’s Law, where Proto Indo-European voiced consonants (*b, *d, *g)4

became voiceless stops (/p, t, k/) in Germanic. The regularity of such laws helps to explain why

Germanic words: father, hemp and heart’, correspond to the Latin -pater, the Greek - kannabis,

and kardia where Grimm’s Law did not apply.

The goal of comparative reconstruction was not only to establish the relatedness between

languages, but to show how these languages were related by identifying the systematic

phonological changes, which they called sound laws, by which they evolved. This process also

3 These data suggest either an innovation in Proto-Germanic or, less likely, a retention of the Proto-Indo-European form elsewhere. The data presented here are not sufficient to determine which.4Because the Proto-Indo-European forms have never been observed, they are marked with an asterisk, to show that they are hypothetical reconstructions.

Grimms Law Proto Indo-European Proto Germanic

voiceless stopsvoiced stopsvoiceless fricatives

*p, *t, *k*b, *d, *g*f, *s, *x

f, s x (>h)p, t, kv, d,

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involved reconstructing principled, albeit hypothetical, characterizations of earlier forms of these

languages (called protolanguages) including the presumed ancestor of all the related languages.

Proto Indo-European was the first such family to be reconstructed, owing in part to the

greater familiarity the European linguists had with these languages and to the abundance of

ancient written texts to assist with the reconstruction. This technique has proven itself so

successful that it has now been applied to all of the world’s other language families. In our

example above, this ancestral language is called Proto Indo-European. The dramatic results of

this work, which was aided both by the great familiarity with these languages and the large

number of ancient written texts which these historical linguistics could use to test their methods

of reconstruction.

Although these reconstructions are hypothetical, that is why they are preceded with an

asterisk, these scholars were able to compare their reconstructions with early written documents.

Many of these documents confirmed this methodology, while others led to an improvement in

the methodology. In the case of reconstructing Proto-Romance, the ancestor of Spanish, French,

Italian and Rumanian, linguists discovered that their results more closely resembled vulgar Latin

rather than Classical Latin. Vulgar, in this context, carries an older meaning of ‘common’ rather

than the modern meaning of ‘crude’ and ‘disgusting.’ Hence Vulgar Latin is merely the Latin of

ordinary, rather than the elite Romans.

In other parts of the world, especially where there were few ancient documents, linguists

began with the sound-meaning comparison of basic vocabulary. Any such work dealing with

such comparisons and which assumes that the more shared basic vocabulary, the more closely

related the languages is called lexicostatistics. Joseph Greenberg, building on the work of

Dietrich Westermann, used this technique establishing the relationships among the languages of

Africa. He identified four major, independent language families: Afro-Asiatic, which includes

Hausa, Amharic, Arabic and Hebrew, Niger-Congo, which includes several subfamilies

including Mande and Benue-Congo (of which Swahili is a member), Nilotic and Koi-San. The

following table shows the same kind of basic-vocabulary comparison used in the Indo-European

languages.

Internal Reconstruction is a method of reconstructing an earlier form of the language based on

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the irregularities found in the current language. In chapter 3, we introduced the various

allomorphs of the plural morpheme /-s/. Internal reconstruction assumes that the allomorphs, [-s,

-z, and z/ arouse through the phonological processes described in that chapter and that in an

earlier stage of the language there was a single invariant form {*-s}.5

Glottal Chronology, a technique developed by Morris Swaddesh (1950) takes lexicostatistics

one step further by assuming that the rate of change of basic vocabulary was constant. This

assumption enables Swaddesh to claim not only that the more basic vocabulary two languages

share, the more closely related are phylogentetically. But Swaddesh could also claim how long

ago they separated from a common ancestor. While not all linguists accept the assumptions of

Swaddesh’s hypothesis, the theory has been shown to produce results remarkably consistent with

other historical information (Eheret 19xx).

Most linguists will agree that while lexicostatistics and glottal chronology are very useful

in establishing relationships, especially for languages that have been separated for a long time.

The best way of showing this relationship is through comparative reconstruction. However, it

should be noted that comparative reconstruction requires a much richer knowledge of the

languages involved, far beyond the minimal knowledge of the languages’ basic vocabulary and

for this reason, glottal chronology and lexicostatistics are often used initially.

4. Areal Linguistics

The lexico-statistical comparison of languages often reveals another very interesting

phenomenon, that languages spoken in the same geographic area often exhibit similar properties,

syntactical, lexical and phonological. In my own work comparing the basic structural features

Southwestern Mande, I found several such areal phenomena.

The adjacent table,

shows the words for ‘mother’

in both Mande (column 2) and

Non-Mande (colum 3)

languages of Sierra Leone and

Liberia. Each row represents a

5 A discussion as to why this form was selected as opposed to one of the other allomorphs is beyond the scope of this book.

Different forms for the word ‘mother’ in Mande and Non-Mande lgs.Prototype Mande Non-Mande(n)ye Mende nja/ye Bandi nje/ye

Loko nje/yeGola yee

(n)de Kono nde Dan deLorma dde Wen deKpelle nee Mwe neMano le

Guro ne Kru diGrebo de Bassa ne

ba Bamana ba Vai ba(n)du Kuwaa nu Guere dou

Kissi nduaa Bele daKoyo n Godie daDida n

(n)ga Susu nga Aizi kk6


similar phonetic form. Mande shows four very different forms for ‘mother.’ This reflects the

fact that there has been a good deal of innovation in the Mande languages. Furthermore, the fact

that Mande shares many of these forms with non-Mande languages suggest that these groups

have been interacting. A one explanation for why two languages would share the same word for

‘mother’ is intermarriage. If Mende6 men frequently married Gola woman, their children are

likely to refer to their mother in her language with the result that the Gola word enters the Mende

language.

Note how different this table is from those given earlier in which similar lexical signs

were seen to be an indication of a common ancestor. Greenberg noted that language families can

be identified by mass comparisons, but he did not rule out other explanations, like borrowing, to

explain, similar forms. The above example is such a case and represents what we call an areal

phenomenon, a given linguistic feature found commonly in a geographic area and which cuts

across language membership. Other such examples of this kind of phenomena involve

phonological changes such as the change of /f/ > /h/7 and grammatical phenomena such as the

use of wa ‘to come’ to mark the future show an areal distribution. More widely in Africa, we see

additional areal phenomena such as the distribution of serial verbs (the use of several verbs in a

row), ideophones (special linguistic forms to dramatize verbal meanings), the use of the word

pass to mark comparative structures (He is bigger than his brother/He passes his brother with

respect to goodness) and the presence of the labiovelar consonants /kp/ and /gb/.

6 The words Mande and Mande are different. Mande is the lame of a branch of Niger-Congo which includes the Mende language of Sierra Leone. Interestingly, both Mande and Mende are historically derived from the source, *mande, but evolved different paths. As such they are termed couplets. Couplets are a common phenomena in most languages. In English, for example the following words are couplets: ‘heart’ via Germanic – ‘cardiac’ via Latin; ‘tooth’ via Germanic – ‘dental’ via Latin.7This occurs in the Southwestern Mande languages of Loko, some dialects of Bandi and Kpelle (but not Mende and Lorma) and the Eastern Mande languages of Mano, Gio, We Mwa, Nwa but not the others).

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Areal phenomena, such as these, appear to be caused by human interaction, marriage, as

in the case of mother, people trading with one another, or populations moving to different areas

for a variety of reasons. Areal phenomena of this sort lead to the structural elements of

languages becoming more like one another and as a result, the process involved has been called

convergence. This convergence model stands in sharp contrast to the divergence model

described above. Finally, the spread of linguistic forms in this way resembles a wave rippling

away from the center of a splash and for this reason this phenomenon has often been referred to

as the wave theory. Similarities among languages, due to a common ancestry (divergence) and

similarities due to interaction can be distinguished in a number of ways: 1) common ancestry is

shown by large numbers of similarities in the basic vocabulary; 2) similarities due to

convergence are more sporadic and are less likely to cause numerous changes in the basic

vocabulary.

5. Language and History

In looking at a given language at a given time, we can see that it is the product of both its

inheritance from its antecedents and the contact that it has with speakers of other languages. The

identification these influences can help uncover the history of the people speaking the language.

Often it is possible to determine the direction of spread of areal influences, thus further enriching

this history. For example in the above example of the word for mother nye/yee, an analysis of

these language reveals that the form yee is more basic and that the direction of influence was 8


from Gola to Mende/Bandi/Loko.

Other linguistic contributions to the

interpretation of history can be gained from

first reconstructing the proto vocabulary of a

language family. For example Christopher

Eheret (19xx) developed a technique of first

reconstructing the non-basic proto

vocabulary of a language family and then

examining the vocabulary for indications of

what elements and hence cultural practices

were common to them. The sidebar shows

my application of this technique to the

Mande branch of Niger-Congo.

Another promising line of investigation involves comparing genetic traits with language

groups. Frank Livingstone (1958), looked at the distribution of sickle cell trait in the Sierra

Leone/Liberia area among different language groups, and found that in addition to the fact that

the Mande-speaking people had moved into the area, there had been a good deal of intermarriage

in the process. Cavali-Sforza (1991) sampled genes from different language populations. This

work has supported the long-held contention that the human population of the planet originated

with homo sapiens sapiens moving out of Africa and early population movements are quite

consistent with the language families that have been developed to date.

6. Why Do Languages Change?

The family tree theory of language diversification begins with the assumption that

languages change, but doesn’t specifically state why languages should change. When the

question of change is examined, it turns out that several mechanisms of change are constantly at

work on language.

Contact. The contact between people speaking different languages (or varieties of the same

language) is the source of change underlying the wave theory. But once we consider language

contact, we encounter a variety of very different situations. Gumperz and Wilson (1971)

4000 BP Proto Mande cattle, bow and arrow, | fish, horse, milk, war | sheep/goat, dog?, okra? 1200 BC | ______|_____________________ | | Western wine, mortar, pestle Eastern Mande dog, oil?, chicken? Mande | hippo?, to plant?, | seed? 400 BC | _____|_____________________ | |Northern iron, hoe, to plant SouthwesternMande corn/millet, oil Mande chicken, seed

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describe a situation in India where two very different languages (one Indo-European and the

other Dravidian) coexist in the same community and as a result the two languages have grown

more like each other in areas of phonology, vocabulary and syntax. Other contact situations

arise from trade and imperialism (including colonialism) which accounts for the spread of the

European languages into Africa and the Americas. Often such situations lead to massive

multilingualism and some of the language change from contact comes about as a result of a

bilingual speaker attempting to manage two different systems. This issue is developed further in

chapter 12.

Sociolinguistic Change. Sociolinguistics (chapter 9) deals with the relationship between

linguistic variables and social identity. A linguistic variable is a signified with two different

signifieds. An example of this is the use of -in as a variant of -ing as in goin and going. Once a

variable is introduced, it has the possibility of becoming the dominant form, replacing the earlier

form and hence resulting in language change.

Simplification. Both language contact and sociolinguistic change build on existing language

structures. In contact situations, existing structures are borrowed; in sociolinguistic change,

existing variables are developed. In contrast, both simplification and development are types of

innovative, internal change. Simplification is a process whereby languages eliminate excess

structural material, whether phonological, lexical or syntactic. Simplification occurs in

piginization (Chapter 13) and often in the case of spreading lingua francae. But simplification is

a common process found in all languages and cannot be explained simply as a process resulting

from second language learning.

System Types of Change Examples

Syntax Gender loss Old English had three genders which were lost in Middle English

Word Level Affix production (modifying words become affixes)Regularization (irregular forms are lost)Word loss (unused words are lost)

town > ton Kingstown > Kingston (Boston, ...)like > ly (quick-like > quickly) brethren > brothersindices > indexesdistaff, yeoman

Phonology AssimilationReductionGemination

in put > imput (in pronunciation)fifths > fiths (even fis) (in pronunciationItalian: Egypto > Egytto (Egyptian)

The mechanisms for simplification have been attributed to the effects of language 10


universals, especially during the learning of one’s first language. Here, it has been noted that

children, around the world, often make the same kinds of errors in acquiring their adult language.

Such errors are consistent with the kinds of simplification represented above and with the kinds

of errors that would be explained by language universals.

Development. But language simplification cannot be the only cause of language innovation, for

if it were, languages would only simplify and over time all languages would lose all their

complexity. Yet complexity is always being introduced into language. The most obvious

example of this is the introduction of new vocabulary in order to be able to converse about the

new concepts (signifieds) that are constantly arising. Yet the process of lexical innovation raises

the question of where to get the new signifiers to attach to these new signifieds to make signs.

Take for example the case of a list of choices on a computer screen. As a concept (signified),

this computer concept was becoming increasingly common in daily experience, the need to

discuss it (instructional manuals, problem solving and ordinary conversation) increased. The

question of what sort of signifier to put with it arose. Several processes are available.

Type of Innovation Process Example

Brand-new signifier Creation of a new sequence of sounds. Used in making up new names for cars: elantra, alero

Borrowing Borrowing word, or translating the word concept from another language.

ketchup (from Malay)tomato (from Nahuatl)

Multiple Meaning Using two words or parts of words in a new word to carry the meaning of the concept.

waterfowl, girl scout, penknife, sexism, adultism?

Acronyms; Taking the initial letters from a string of words describing the concept.

I.D., IOU, UNICEF, NATO, NAFTA

Blends Using parts of words and blending them together.

Louis Carroll’s slithy (slimy and lithe)

Extension extending the meaning of an existing word Menu

In the case of the computer list of choices, the term menu was selected, not because it had to be

selected but because someone came up with it. As Saussure points out, language innovations are

individual acts of parole, but occasionally the innovation is accepted and becomes part of langue.

The author played a role in the creation of the term heritage language learner which is now a

commonly used term to refer to people who learn a language because it is part of their cultural 11


heritage.

Interestingly, the word menu has a long history, it did not always mean a list of choices on a

computer screen, it also means a list of food choices in a restaurant, and before that simply a

listing of the food that was going to be served to you, with no choices. And before that, a menu

was nothing more than a detailed listing of anything, not just food. Etymologically, the word

derives from an earlier word meaning small, from which we get words like minute and minutia.

Grammaticalization. In an analogous way, grammatical constructions can also arise. The

various languages of the world have come up with a variety of specialized constructions that may

well strike the English speaker as unusual. For example, some languages draw a distinction

between a recent and remote past so that an event that took place earlier today requires a

different verb ending from an event that took place a couple of days ago. Such constructions are

numerous and linguists have developed a multiple meaning process consisting of a word and the

suffix -I’ve to describe them. Here are a few examples: locative (words and phrases that show a

place or location; inchoative (a tense that shows a beginning action); dative (a case that shows

that the noun is the receiver of the action); ablative; accusative and so on. The process of

grammaticalization involves using a given sequence of words that carries a range of meanings

and narrowing the range of interpretation to one of these meanings. Take for example the

sequence “I’m coming to do that.” This sentence could mean ‘I am moving closer to the speaker

to do that.’ Another reading carries a future sense, ‘I will to do that in the future.’ The use of

come (like go in English and many European languages) is a common way win which future

tenses develop.

In contrast to simplification, which reduces the complexity of existing structural material

in a language, stands development, a process that adds new structural complexity to it.

7. Language Typology and Linguistic Universals

Another type comparative linguistics concerns language typology and the search for

linguistic universals. Here one examines language for patterns of structures. We have already

encountered several language universals in all three major sign systems of human language.

Representational The phonological system of a language consists of a finite set of signs called phonemes.Some phonemes are segmental (vowels and consonants) while others are suprasegmental (tones).

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All phonemes are constructed from a universal finite set of phonological contrasts called features such as voiced/voiceless; nasal/oral; stop/continuant; front/back.

Lexical The basic sign of the lexical system is the word.A word is a minimal free form, the smallest unit that can be said by itself. (Affixes for example have to be said with another morpheme.)Words consist of one or more morphemes - the smallest lexical unit with a consistent pairing of sound and meaning.Words consist of roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes)

Syntactic Syntactic signs consist of sentences.Sentences are structures that are represented by strings of parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective).Sentences consist minimally of a subject and a predicate.

In addition to these absolute universals, of which there are many more, there are also

universal tendencies, in which one can say that something tends to happen. For example, one

can say that voiceless stops ten to become voiced between vowels, or that voiced stops tend to

become liquids and glides between vowels. This means that while these things do not happen,

that they are likely to happen. Similar tendencies can be noted in the areas of lexicon and syntax.

For example, one can state that postpositions tend to occur in SOV languages.

The study of language universals is important in several ways. First they represent an

interesting area of investigation in their own right. Second, they represent a part of linguistic

theory sometimes called metatheory. A metatheory is a theory of a theory. In this case, as

Chomsky noted, a grammar can be considered a theory of a language and that a metatheory can

be considered a theory of grammars. In this second sense, we prefer to construct grammars that

are consistent with the metatheory. If the grammar we construct of a particular language is at

odds with the metatheory, it means either that our grammar is wrong, or that the metatheory is

wrong and in need of correcting. It is this dialog between grammars and the metatheory that

increases our understanding of the nature of language structure. Finally, linguistic universals are

linked with our understanding of the faculty of language, for we assume that this kind of

knowledge is available, in some form, to the language learning process and is what helps learners

to construct their grammars in much the same way in the various languages of the world. This is

why the study of the acquisition has become a major area of interest within current linguistics.

While we can see that the linguistic method of analysis is principled and rigorous, it

differs in some important ways from the scientific method. The scientific method is based on

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universal (unchanging) physical laws, and that science proceeds by proposing hypothetical laws

that attempt to explain observed physical phenomena. Such laws are generally accepted as valid

as long as they are consistent with other such laws and the observed data.

Linguistic analysis is based on two such relationships. There is the relationship between

the grammar of a language and the sentences (observed behavior) of the language. A grammar is

considered to be valid as long as is consistent with the observed behavior of the data and is

consistent with itself. In addition, linguists assume that the grammar of a language is both

enabled by and limited by the properties of the human mind which they characterize as linguistic

universals. Thus, in addition to being consistent with observed behavior, a grammar must be

shown to be consistent with the linguistic universals.

We will see in chapter xx that the analysis of myth by Claude Lévi-Strauss follows a

linguist approach rather than a scientific approach.

Questions for Study and Review 1.2. The words in the Proto-Indo-European table can also be compared to see which languages are more

closely related to each other. For example, German is termed a Germanic language. Which other languages appear closely related to German and thus too could be considered to be Germanic? Similarly, Russian is a Slavic language. Which other languages appear to be Slavic? Which languages in the table appear not to be related to Indo-European at all?

3. In addition to English ‘heart’ and Greek ‘’ there are a lot of other words which illustrate the h-k relationship between Germanic and other Indo-European words. Can you find the Latin or Greek reflexes for the following English words: hound; who; when; horse; horn; hard. A dictionary will help here, but note that many of these Greek and Latin words have found their way into English by borrowing.

4. Take a look at the table showing the lexical innovation in Mande (figure xx). Can you say about the evolution of Mande subsistence patterns?

5. If Loko and Dan are Mande languages, what other languages in figure (xx) appear to be Mande languages?

6. Table (xx) shows several ways that the lexicon can be expanded. For each mechanism, can you find two additional examples? You will find the dictionary a good resource both in looking for examples and in checking your answers.

7. In addition to English ‘heart’ and Greek ‘’ there are a lot of other words, which illustrate the h-k relationship between Germanic and other Indo-European words. Can you find the Latin or Greek reflexes for the following English words: hound; who; when; horse; horn; hard. A dictionary will help here, but note that many of these Greek and Latin words have found their way into English by borrowing.

The author (Dwyer) began his work on the Mande languages (From Bambara to Dei on the

above table) and especially the Southwestern Mande languages (Loko, Mende, Bandi, Lorma

and Kpelle) doing the comparative reconstruction of the tonal system of these languages.

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LANGUAGE ONE TWO THREE EAR EYE MOUTH TOOTH HEAD NOSE Fulfulde do didi dati noru yitr hunduko nyire hr kinalBiafada numa bihe biiyo nnufa -gir musu keede gaga -siniTemne -ita r -sas lens -fr -se -sek -bump sotLimba funte taae tatat ifa -ifa -foti tiiti kafa perenKisi pel miu gaa nilen -if sondoo kinde bol milindoBullom bul tin ra niu -hl nyhl cha -bol -minGola gun tiel taal kenu ef onya kesa edi emiaBambara kile fila saba tulo nyi da nyi ku nunDyula kilen fla saba toro nyadn da nyi --- nunKuranko gl fla sawa tule ye de nyamen --- ---Manya knln fila sara tolo na da nyin k nuKono kele fela wawa toro ya daa ir kun nunVai dondo fela sagba tolo ja da nyi kun suSusu kede firi saxa tuli y d nyinni x nomLoko gila fele sawa guo gau nda gongu ngu hokpaMende ita fele sawa goli gah ndo gongolu gu hokpaBandi ngila fele sawa goli gas nda gongolu gu sokpaLorma ggila fele sawa ggoi ggaa dawiliso niga u sokpaKpelle tn fere sawa woli naika la nyi u suwãMano do pele yaka to nyenwle le sl wun nyuDan d pira yaka tu nyaga di sõ goga nyWe d pire yaka turu nyawe lae-bo so wun neNwa d pil ã pe lon laga s me nyeMwa do ple yaga trona yirebe di so moru nyiBe do plao gaõ turun yowore ye so wunu nyeGuro du fia yaa tone yüe le süe mb miBisa dinne hira karko tur yer le s min miiBobo tele pla saxa turu nyono do nyini won biDei boo soõ taã l gire un ir duru merãBassa do soõ taã ln gire uo ir tru mõlãKrahn doo soõ tã ngu gie u nye debo meraGrebo do so tã nuuã yiie uun nye lu miaKru --- sõ --- --- ji --- --- --- ---Kuaa dee sn taã ni s wn kala wulu nyuAkan baako abie abisa aso ani ano so eti ehweneGa ekome eny etn toi himi daa n yitso gugYoruba eni eji ta eti oju no oli imu —

Suggestions for Further Reading

1. Saussure, F. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. McGraw_Hill. 1959. 1_22.2. Culler. Ferdinand de Saussure. New York: Penguin Books, 1967.3. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi, and Friederike Hünnemeyer. Grammaticalization: a conceptual

framework. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.1991.4. Greenberg, Joseph. A New Invitation to Linguistics. Anchor Books; Garden City, N.J. 1977.5. Christopher Eheret and Merrick Posnansky (eds). The Archaeological and linguistic reconstruction of

African History . Berkeley: University of California Press. 1982.6. Gudschinsky, Sarah. The ABCs of Lexicostatistics (Glottochronology). Word 12: 175-210. 1956.

Glossary

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metatheorCavali-Sforza (1991)Cavali-Sforza (1991)Gumperz and Wilson (1971)treedivergence modelconvergence modelareal phenomenonEheret 19xx).Morris Swaddesh (1950)Niger-CongoProto Indo-EuropeanprotolanguagesGrimm’s Lawcomparativereconstructiolexicostatisticproto languagemutually intelligible

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