Historical linguistics
Encyclopedia
Historical linguistics is the study of language
change. It has five main concerns:
dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology
, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity.
At first, historical linguistics was comparative linguistics
. Scholars were concerned chiefly with establishing language families and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages, using the comparative method
and internal reconstruction
. The focus was initially on the well-known Indo-European languages
, many of which had long written histories; the scholars also studied the Uralic languages
, another European language family for which less early written material exists. Since then, there has been significant comparative linguistic work expanding outside of European languages as well, such as on the Austronesian languages
and various families of Native American languages, among many others. Comparative linguistics
is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-European languages
, comparative study is now a highly specialised field. Most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, in particular, the development of the modern standard varieties.
Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other families into Nostratic. These attempts have not been accepted widely. The information necessary to establish relatedness becomes less available as the time depth is increased. The time-depth of linguistic methods is limited due to chance word resemblances and variations between language groups, but a limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed. The dating of the various proto-languages is also difficult; several methods are available for dating, but only approximate results can be obtained.
's distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, is now seen to be idealised.
In practice, a purely synchronic linguistics is not possible for any period before the invention of the gramophone
, as written records always lag behind speech in reflecting linguistic developments. Written records are difficult to date accurately before the development of the modern title page
. Also, the work of sociolinguists
on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways that point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic change in progress.
The biological origin of language
is in principle a concern of historical linguistics, but most linguists regard it as too remote to be reliably established by standard techniques of historical linguistics, such as the comparative method
. Less-standard techniques, such as mass lexical comparison
, are used by some linguists to overcome the limitations of the comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable.
The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. In practice, however, it is often unclear how to integrate the linguistic evidence with the archaeological or genetic
evidence. For example, there are numerous theories concerning the homeland and early movements of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
, each with its own interpretation of the archaeological record.
(originally comparative philology
) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent, thus languages can change and are also able to cross-relate.
Genetic relatedness
implies a common origin or proto-language
. Comparative linguistics has the goal of constructing language families
, reconstructing proto-languages, and specifying the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. To maintain a clear distinction between attested language and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts.
is the study of the history
of word
s — when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. A word may enter a language as a loanword
(i.e., as a word from one language adopted by speakers of another language), through derivational morphology
by combining pre-existing elements in the language, by a hybrid of these two processes called phono-semantic matching
, or in several other minor ways.
In languages with a long and detailed history, etymology makes use of philology
, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics
to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method
, linguists can make inferences, about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots
that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European
language family
have been found. Although originating in the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done in language families
for which little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic
and Austronesian
.
is the scientific study of linguistic dialect
, the varieties of a language that are characteristic of particular groups, based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. This is in contrast to variations based on social factors, which are studied in sociolinguistics
, or variations based on time, which are studied in historical linguistics. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation
.
Dialectologists are concerned with grammatical features that correspond to regional areas. Thus, they are usually dealing with populations living in specific locales for generations without moving, but also with immigrant groups bringing their languages to new settlements.
is a sub-field of historical linguistics, which studies the sound
system of a specific language or set of languages and change over time. Whereas phonetics
is about the physical production and perception
of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages.
An important part of phonology is studying which sounds are distinctive units within a language. For example, the "p" in "pin" is aspirated
while the same phoneme in "spin" is not. In some other languages, for example Thai
and Quechua
, this same difference of aspiration or non-aspiration does differentiate phonemes.
In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, such as the /p/ in English, and topics such as syllable
structure, stress
, accent
, and intonation
.
The principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of sign language
s, although the phonological units do not consist of sounds. The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of modality
because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not language-specific ones.
is the study of the formal means of expression in a language; in the context of historical linguistics, how the formal means of expression change over time; for instance, languages with complex inflectional systems tend to be subject to a simplification process.
This field studies the internal structure of words as a formal means of expression.
Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology
. While words are generally accepted as being (with clitic
s) the smallest units of syntax
, it is clear that, in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word-formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages, in the context of historical linguistics, how the means of expression change over time. See grammaticalisation
.
is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences
in natural language
s. The term syntax is used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the syntax of Modern Irish
". Modern researchers in syntax attempt to describe languages
in terms of such rules. Many professionals in this discipline attempt to find general rules
that apply to all natural languages in the context of historical linguistics, how characteristics of sentence structure in related languages changed over time. See grammaticalisation
.
" and "innovative" are often used in historical linguistics to characterize the extent of change occurring in a particular language or dialect as compared with related varieties. In particular, a conservative variety has changed relatively less than an innovative variety. These are descriptive terms carry no value judgment. A particularly conservative variety that preserves features that have long since vanished elsewhere is sometimes said to be "archaic".
List of language histories
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
change. It has five main concerns:
- to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
- to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguisticsComparative linguisticsComparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
) - to develop general theories about how and why language changes
- to describe the history of speech communities
- to study the history of words, i.e. etymologyEtymologyEtymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
.
History and development
Modern historical linguisticsLinguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity.
At first, historical linguistics was comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
. Scholars were concerned chiefly with establishing language families and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages, using the comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
and internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction
Internal reconstruction is a method of recovering information about a language's past from the characteristics of the language at a later date...
. The focus was initially on the well-known Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, many of which had long written histories; the scholars also studied the Uralic languages
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
, another European language family for which less early written material exists. Since then, there has been significant comparative linguistic work expanding outside of European languages as well, such as on the Austronesian languages
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
and various families of Native American languages, among many others. Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
, comparative study is now a highly specialised field. Most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, in particular, the development of the modern standard varieties.
Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other families into Nostratic. These attempts have not been accepted widely. The information necessary to establish relatedness becomes less available as the time depth is increased. The time-depth of linguistic methods is limited due to chance word resemblances and variations between language groups, but a limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed. The dating of the various proto-languages is also difficult; several methods are available for dating, but only approximate results can be obtained.
Evolution into other fields
Initially, all modern linguistics was historical in orientation, even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
's distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, is now seen to be idealised.
In practice, a purely synchronic linguistics is not possible for any period before the invention of the gramophone
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
, as written records always lag behind speech in reflecting linguistic developments. Written records are difficult to date accurately before the development of the modern title page
Title page
The title page of a book, thesis or other written work is the page at or near the front which displays its title and author, usually together with information relating to the publication of the book...
. Also, the work of sociolinguists
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways that point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic change in progress.
The biological origin of language
Origin of language
The origin of language is the emergence of language in the human species. This is a highly controversial topic. Empirical evidence is so limited that many regard it as unsuitable for serious scholars. In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris went so far as to ban debates on the subject...
is in principle a concern of historical linguistics, but most linguists regard it as too remote to be reliably established by standard techniques of historical linguistics, such as the comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
. Less-standard techniques, such as mass lexical comparison
Mass lexical comparison
Mass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison...
, are used by some linguists to overcome the limitations of the comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable.
The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. In practice, however, it is often unclear how to integrate the linguistic evidence with the archaeological or genetic
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
evidence. For example, there are numerous theories concerning the homeland and early movements of the Proto-Indo-Europeans
Proto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...
, each with its own interpretation of the archaeological record.
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguisticsComparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
(originally comparative philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent, thus languages can change and are also able to cross-relate.
Genetic relatedness
Genetic relationship (linguistics)
In linguistics, genetic relationship is the usual term for the relationship which exists between languages that are members of the same language family. The term genealogical relationship is sometimes used to avoid confusion with the unrelated use of the term in biological genetics...
implies a common origin or proto-language
Proto-language
A proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
. Comparative linguistics has the goal of constructing language families
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
, reconstructing proto-languages, and specifying the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. To maintain a clear distinction between attested language and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts.
Etymology
EtymologyEtymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
is the study of the history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
of word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
s — when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. A word may enter a language as a loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
(i.e., as a word from one language adopted by speakers of another language), through derivational morphology
Derivational morphology
Derivational morphology changes the meaning of words by applying derivations. Derivation is the combination of a word stem with a morpheme, which forms a new word, which is often of a different class...
by combining pre-existing elements in the language, by a hybrid of these two processes called phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root....
, or in several other minor ways.
In languages with a long and detailed history, etymology makes use of philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method
Comparative method
In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
, linguists can make inferences, about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way, word roots
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
language family
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
have been found. Although originating in the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done in language families
Language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family. The term 'family' comes from the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a...
for which little or no early documentation is available, such as Uralic
Uralic languages
The Uralic languages constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt...
and Austronesian
Austronesian languages
The Austronesian languages are a language family widely dispersed throughout the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, with a few members spoken on continental Asia that are spoken by about 386 million people. It is on par with Indo-European, Niger-Congo, Afroasiatic and Uralic as one of the...
.
Dialectology
DialectologyDialectology
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...
is the scientific study of linguistic dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
, the varieties of a language that are characteristic of particular groups, based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. This is in contrast to variations based on social factors, which are studied in sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society...
, or variations based on time, which are studied in historical linguistics. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and synchronic variation
Descriptive linguistics
In the study of language, description, or descriptive linguistics, is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is spoken by a group of people in a speech community...
.
Dialectologists are concerned with grammatical features that correspond to regional areas. Thus, they are usually dealing with populations living in specific locales for generations without moving, but also with immigrant groups bringing their languages to new settlements.
Phonology
PhonologyPhonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
is a sub-field of historical linguistics, which studies the sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
system of a specific language or set of languages and change over time. Whereas phonetics
Phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...
is about the physical production and perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages.
An important part of phonology is studying which sounds are distinctive units within a language. For example, the "p" in "pin" is aspirated
Aspiration (phonetics)
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ...
while the same phoneme in "spin" is not. In some other languages, for example Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
and Quechua
Quechua languages
Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...
, this same difference of aspiration or non-aspiration does differentiate phonemes.
In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, such as the /p/ in English, and topics such as syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
structure, stress
Stress (linguistics)
In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...
, accent
Accent (linguistics)
In linguistics, an accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.An accent may identify the locality in which its speakers reside , the socio-economic status of its speakers, their ethnicity, their caste or social class, their first language In...
, and intonation
Intonation (linguistics)
In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody...
.
The principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of sign language
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
s, although the phonological units do not consist of sounds. The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of modality
Modality (semiotics)
In semiotics, a modality is a particular way in which the information is to be encoded for presentation to humans, i.e. to the type of sign and to the status of reality ascribed to or claimed by a sign, text or genre. It is more closely associated with the semiotics of Charles Peirce than Saussure...
because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not language-specific ones.
Morphology
MorphologyMorphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
is the study of the formal means of expression in a language; in the context of historical linguistics, how the formal means of expression change over time; for instance, languages with complex inflectional systems tend to be subject to a simplification process.
This field studies the internal structure of words as a formal means of expression.
Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology
Lexicology
Lexicology is the part of linguistics which studies words, their nature and meaning, words' elements, relations between words , word groups and the whole lexicon....
. While words are generally accepted as being (with clitic
Clitic
In morphology and syntax, a clitic is a morpheme that is grammatically independent, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase. It is pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level...
s) the smallest units of syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, it is clear that, in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word-formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages, in the context of historical linguistics, how the means of expression change over time. See grammaticalisation
Grammaticalisation
In linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...
.
Syntax
SyntaxSyntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences
Sentence (linguistics)
In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...
in natural language
Natural language
In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
s. The term syntax is used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the syntax of Modern Irish
Irish syntax
Irish syntax is rather different from that of most Indo-European languages, notably because of its VSO word order.-Normal word order:The normal word order in an Irish sentence is:#Preverbal particle#Verb#Subject#Direct object or predicate adjective...
". Modern researchers in syntax attempt to describe languages
Descriptive linguistics
In the study of language, description, or descriptive linguistics, is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is spoken by a group of people in a speech community...
in terms of such rules. Many professionals in this discipline attempt to find general rules
Universal grammar
Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have.Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest themselves without being taught...
that apply to all natural languages in the context of historical linguistics, how characteristics of sentence structure in related languages changed over time. See grammaticalisation
Grammaticalisation
In linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...
.
Conservative, innovative, archaic
The terms "conservativeConservative (language)
In linguistics, a conservative form, variety, or modality is one that has changed relatively little over its history, or which is relatively resistant to change...
" and "innovative" are often used in historical linguistics to characterize the extent of change occurring in a particular language or dialect as compared with related varieties. In particular, a conservative variety has changed relatively less than an innovative variety. These are descriptive terms carry no value judgment. A particularly conservative variety that preserves features that have long since vanished elsewhere is sometimes said to be "archaic".
See also
- Afroasiatic
- Comparative linguisticsComparative linguisticsComparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
- Comparative methodComparative methodIn linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal...
- Comparative word lists:
- Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Basic English Word List
- Wiktionary:Wiktionary:Swadesh list
- Genetic linguistics
- Germanic philologyGermanic philologyGermanic philology is the philological study of the Germanic languages particularly from a comparative or historical perspective.The beginnings of research into the Germanic languages began in the 16th century, with the discovery of literary texts in the earlier phases of the languages. Early...
- GlottochronologyGlottochronologyGlottochronology is that part of lexicostatistics dealing with the chronological relationship between languages....
- GrammaticalisationGrammaticalisationIn linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...
- Indo-European studiesIndo-European studiesIndo-European studies is a field of linguistics dealing with Indo-European languages, both current and extinct. Its goal is to amass information about the hypothetical proto-language from which all of these languages are descended, a language dubbed Proto-Indo-European , and its speakers, the...
- Language changeLanguage changeLanguage change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
- Language families and languages
- LexicostatisticsLexicostatisticsLexicostatistics is an approach to comparative linguistics that involves quantitative comparison of lexical cognates. Lexicostatistics is related to the comparative method but does not reconstruct a proto-language...
List of language histories
- List of languages by first written accounts
- Mass lexical comparisonMass lexical comparisonMass comparison is a method developed by Joseph Greenberg to determine the level of genetic relatedness between languages. It is now usually called multilateral comparison...
- PaleolinguisticsPaleolinguisticsPaleolinguistics is a term used by some linguists for the study of the distant human past by linguistic means. For most historical linguists there is no separate field of paleolinguistics...
- Proto-languageProto-languageA proto-language in the tree model of historical linguistics is the common ancestor of the languages that form a language family. Occasionally, the German term Ursprache is used instead.Often the proto-language is not known directly...
Recommended readings
- Karl BrugmannKarl BrugmannKarl Brugmann was a German linguist. He is a towering figure in Indo-European linguistics.-Biography:He was educated at Halle and Leipzig. He was instructor in the gymnasium at Wiesbaden and at Leipzig, and in 1872-77 was assistant at the Russian Institute of Classical Philology at the latter place...
, Berthold DelbrückBerthold DelbrückBerthold Gustav Gottlieb Delbrück was a German linguist who devoted himself to the study of the comparative syntax of the Indo-European languages.-Biography:...
, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (1886–1916). - Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics (Cambridge University Press, 1977) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
- Henry M. Hoenigswald, Language change and linguistic reconstruction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1960).
- Richard D. Janda and Brian D. Joseph (Eds), The Handbook of Historical Linguistics (Blackwell, 2004) ISBN 1-4051-2747-3
- Roger Lass, Historical linguistics and language change. (Cambridge University Press, 1997) ISBN 0-521-45924-9
- Winfred P. LehmannWinfred P. LehmannWinfred P. Lehmann was an American linguist noted for his work in historical linguistics, particularly Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic, as well as for pioneering work in machine translation.-Biography:After receiving B.A. in Humanities at the Northwestern College in Watertown in 1936, he...
, Historical Linguistics: An Introduction (Second Edition) (Holt, 1973) ISBN 0-03-078370-4 - April McMahon, Understanding Language Change (Cambridge University Press, 1994) ISBN 0-521-44665-1
- James Milroy, Linguistic Variation and Change (Blackwell, 1992) ISBN 0-631-14367-X
- M.L. Samuels, Linguistic Evolution (Cambridge University Press, 1972) ISBN 0-521-29188-7
- R.L. TraskLarry TraskRobert Lawrence "Larry" Trask was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex and an authority on the Basque language and historical linguistics....
,(ed.) Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics (Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001) ISBN 1-57958-218-4 - August SchleicherAugust SchleicherAugust Schleicher was a German linguist. His great work was A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European Languages, in which he attempted to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language...
: Compendium der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen. (Kurzer Abriss der indogermanischen Ursprache, des Altindischen, Altiranischen, Altgriechischen, Altitalischen, Altkeltischen, Altslawischen, Litauischen und Altdeutschen.) (2 vols.) Weimar, H. Boehlau (1861/62); reprinted by Minerva GmbH, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, ISBN 3-8102-1071-4