LING 101 • Lecture outline
M Nov 30
Today’s topics:
•Historical ling — Genetically
related languages
•Overall conclusions — What to
remember about language
Background reading:
• CL Ch 7, §7 (optional)
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0. Course information
• Please remember to do your online course
evaluations
- We take feedback seriously in planning future
courses!
• Final exam: F Dec 4 at 12:00 (Fetzer 109)
- A study guide has been posted
- The study guide is meant to refresh your memory
about topics covered
- In addition, don’t forget to go over homework
and feedback, exams, lecture notes, readings
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0. Course information
• Wednesday’s class will be a recitation rather than a
lecture class — at 11:15 for all recitations
• But, our regular recitation rooms aren’t available, so
here is where to go:
Iyad • 601 = Fetzer 109 (here!)
Emily • 602 = Bingham 108
Yuka • 603 = Bingham 301
Grant • 604 = Dey 208
• Wednesday will be your chance to review for the
final exam
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1. Genetically related languages
• When two languages are descended from a
common ancestor language, linguists say that they
are genetically related
- This doesn’t have anything to do with DNA or
human biology — it’s a metaphor
• For example, we can say that Spanish, French, and
Italian are genetically related because they all
descend from a common ancestor language
- This does not mean that all current speakers of
these languages are closely genetically related to
each other in the biological sense
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1. Genetically related languages
• People love lists of words from different languages
that resemble each other...
• But finding “similar” words is not proof of
genetic relationship between languages
- Borrowing? (from each other, or both from a
third language)
- Chance resemblance?
• Which English word is genetically related to the
Greek word?
- Greek deka [ðeka]
::
English decade? /ten?
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1. Genetically related languages
• decade < French decade ..., < Latin decas, decad-em, <
Greek δεκάς, δεκάδα, a group of ten, < δέκα ten
(Oxford English Dictionary)
- Greek >(borrowing) Latin >(historical change) French
>(borrowing) English
• ten < Old English tíen, -e, Anglian tén, -e, Common
Germanic, = Old Low German *tehan, ... Old Saxon
tehan (tîan, tein), ... < Old Germanic *teχan, beside
*teχun [<] pre-Germanic *ˈdekm
- Pre-Germanic >(historical change) Old Germanic
>(historical change) > various descendants
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1. Genetically related languages
• Genetically related languages:
“Languages that developed historically [through
processes of language change] from the same ancestor
language” (CL, Ch 8, p 301)
- I.e., language variation taken “to the extreme” —
varieties that eventually cease to be mutually
intelligible
• We’ve just seen that genetically related
words/morphemes may look less alike than
borrowings
• So how do we identify genetic relationships?
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2. Systematic sound correspondences
• Observe the following (forms given in orthography)
Sanskrit
padpranápāt-
Greek
podpro-
‘descendant
’
trī-/tráyas
tv-am
treĩs/tría
tū (Doric)
Latin
pedpronepōs ‘nephew,
grandson’
Gothic
fōtus
fra(OHG
nefo)
English
foot
fro
ne[f]ew
(OE nefa)
trēs
tv-am
þrija
þu
[θ]ree
thou (was
[θ])
śatám
dáśa
(he-)katón [k]entum
déka
de[k]em
hunda (pl.) hundred
taíhun
ten
[tɛxun]
• What are the systematic patterns?
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2. Systematic sound correspondences
• Sound correspondences (part of Grimm’s Law)
Sanskrit
p
t
ʃ
Greek
p
t
k
Latin
p
t
k
Gothic
f
θ
h
English
f
θ
h
• Can we state any generalizations here?
- Skt/Gk/Lat __ : Germanic ___
- separate sound change for Sanskrit [ʃ] also
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2. Systematic correspondences
• Grimm’s Law: Sound changes (see CL, p 286)
Proto-Indo-European
[p]
[t]
[k]
>
Germanic
[f]
[θ]
[ x ] (> [ h ])
[b]
[p]
[ɡ]
[k]
[ bʰ ]
[b]
[ ɡʰ ]
[ɡ]
[d]
[ dʰ ]
[t]
[d]
• What English word is related to Latin card(ium)?
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3. The Indo-European language family
• This kind of research, looking for systematic sound
correspondences, can be used to:
- identify genetically related languages
- develop hypotheses about the structure of the
ancestor language
• One very successful example of this technique: The
Indo-European language family
- Here are some images of the Indo-European
family tree
→ From SDSU
→ From Wikipedia
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3. The Indo-European language family
• Most of the languages of Europe are IndoEuropean
- Exception: Basque — no known relatives
- Exception: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Saami
— belong to the Finno-Ugric family (may also be
related to the Turkic languages; controversial)
• Some of the languages around India/Pakistan are
Indo-European: Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Gujarati,
Marathi...
- Others belong to the Dravidian family: Tamil,
Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada...
Information on this slide is FYI only.
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Changing gears:
Overall conclusions
“What to remember about
language”
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4. Qs from Day 1: Phonology/morphology
• Example of systematic behavior of native speakers
of English
cat[s]
dog[z]
iguana__
shark__
• Now that we have studied linguistic analysis, what
can we say about this example? What does it show?
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4. Qs from Day 1: Phonology/morphology
• What does this example show?
• Plurals of (regular) nouns in English are formed by
adding a suffix
- There is a morphology component to the mental
grammar, which builds words by rule out of
smaller elements
• The pronunciation of the suffix depends on the
sound properties of the last sound in the base
- The mental grammar refers to sound properties
and natural classes
- Speech sounds are not indivisible atoms
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5. Qs from Day 1: Syntax
• Example of systematic behavior of native speakers
of English
Oscari admires himselfi.
Oscari thinks that Groverj admires himselfj/*i.
Oscari told Susanj stories about himselfi.
Oscari told Susanj stories about herselfj.
• How can we use what we know about syntactic
analysis to understand this pattern?
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5. Qs from Day 1: Syntax
• How can we use what we know about syntactic
analysis to understand this pattern?
• The mental grammar produces sentences in the
form of hierarchical tree structures that contain
words grouped together into constituents
- Rules of the mental grammar (such as where a
reflexive pronoun may find its antecedent) refer
to constituents
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6. Types of linguistic research today
Typological: What kinds of patterns are found in the
world’s languages?
• Example: The World Atlas of Language Structures
(WALS) — You can generate maps that show the
frequency and geographical distribution of various
language characteristics
- Languages that do and do not use voicing to
distinguish stop (‘plosive’) or fricative phonemes
[map]
- Languages that do and do not apply the
WH Movement transformation: [map]
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6. Types of linguistic research today
Experimental:
• Field work: Go out, record language data
(naturalistic or elicited), analyze patterns
• Laboratory: Have experiment participants produce
or perceive language data under experimental
conditions
- Examples of perception experiments
(phonetics/phonology research):
[ #1 ] [ #2 ]
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6. Types of linguistic research today
Computational: Use computer software to...
• Analyze very large data sets
- Example of corpus/computational studies in
historical syntax [ slides ]
• Build and test complex models of mental grammar
• Gather, as well as analyze, linguistic data
- Try a mini-experiment: Google Ngrams for
really fun
so fun
very fun
funnest
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6. Types of linguistic research today
Theoretical:
• Take the results of any of the above methods and
make proposals about mental grammar that allow
us to account for those facts about language
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6. Types of linguistic research today
• Courses you can take in the Linguistics department
at UNC-CH
- Almost all of them have LING 101 as their only
prerequisite
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7. Final words
• The most important things to remember:
Observable human language behavior is caused by
the operation of a mental grammar
All language varieties have a mental grammar
• Keep these points in mind when you are thinking
about...
- Learning or teaching a foreign language
- Children acquiring their language
- The role of non-standard varieties in society
- etc., etc.
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