updated
Click here to go to The Ethnologue, a site listing languages of the world
- People, times, and places
- Goals of the course
- Prerequisites
- Required and supplementary texts
- Grading basis
- Examinations
- Term paper
- Week by week course outline
- Important dates
Instructor: Russell G. Schuh
Lecture: TuTh 2:00-3:50, Bunche 3164
Teaching Assistant: Lauren Varner
Discussion 1a: (253-385-201) F 9-10, Haines A28
Discussion 1b: (253-385-202) F 10-11, Dodd 178
Where and when did human language(s) originate? What does it mean for languages to be "related"? Why do languages change over time? Are changes in languages random or systematic? What can we find out about earlier, unrecorded languages? How did writing originate and evolve? These are some of the questions that we will address in Linguistics 110. Most of our examples will be from the Indo-European family because it is the world's best documented and best studied family and the comparative study of the Indo-European languages is not only the foundation of all study of language change, but also the foundation of modern linguistic science. However, we will be considering data from other language areas as well.
Linguistics 20 "Introduction to Linguistics" is the absolute minimum requirement. If you have not taken Linguistics 20, you should not try to take Linguistics 110. You should also have taken Linguistics 120A "Phonology I". Without 120A, you will be at a serious disadvantage because concepts from that course will be assumed and will not be explained in Linguistics 110. You could conceivably "survive" if you have not taken 120A but have completed Linguistics 103 "Introduction to Phonetics". It is probably not sufficient to take 103 concurrently with 110. It would be desirable for you to have taken Linguistics 120B "Syntax I" or Linguistics 127 "Syntactic Typology and Universals". Most students in the class will have taken one or both of these courses. However, most of the syntactic concepts covered in Linguistics 110 will assume only basic knowledge of syntax that you probably would have picked up elsewhere, such as in language classes and Linguistics 20.
Anthony Arlotto, Introduction to Historical Linguistics, University Press of America, 1980.
Academic Publishing Services Lecture Book for Linguistics 110, Spring 2006
Raimo Anttila, Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Benjamins, 1989. [This is a revision and update of An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Macmillan, 1972, which also remains valuable.]
Leonard Bloomfield, Language, Chapters 17-27, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1933. [These chapters have also been published separately as Language History, edited by Harry Hoijer, 1965.]
Lyle Campbell, Historical Linguistics, An Introduction. MIT Press, 1998.
Terry Crowley, An Introduction to Historical Linguistics, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1993.
Hans Heinrich Hock, Principles of Historical Linguistics, Mouton de Gruyter, 1986.
Robert J. Jeffers & Ilse Lehiste, Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics, MIT Press, 1979.
Winfred P. Lehmann, Historical Linguistics, 3rd ed., Routledge, 1993.
Assignments 35% (8 assignments with weight spread evenly over the 35%)
Paper prospectus 2%
Paper 23%
Quiz 10%
Final exam 30%
Assignments: There will be written assignments for weeks 1-8. These will be distributed in the discussion sections and collected in sections the following week. The assignments will, for the most part, consist of data sets for analysis. Each assignment will be given equal weight in the 35% that the assignments contribute to the course grade.
There will be two examinations:
"Quiz" (Tuesday of 7th week, 5/16): The "quiz" is not a mid-term per se in that it will not be a comprehensive test for the first part of the quarter. It will cover only types of sound change and some specific sound changes that we will study, and it will be mainly "fill-in" format rather than problems involving data sets.
Final examination (Wednesday, June 14, 3-6): The final exam will be a comprehensive test of everything covered during the quarter and will consist primarily of data analysis problems like those on assignments.
Paper: You will write a term paper which will probably run about 10 pages (12 point double-spaced, including a list of references). This paper will be due no later than 1:00 PM, Thursday, June 15. This paper will give you a chance to put into practice some of the concepts that we will be covering during the first 6 7 weeks of the quarter. The Paper prospectus (a paragraph describing the project you plan to work on) is due no later than Thursday of 8th week. Please submit your prospectus as an e-mail message. I will comment on the feasibility of your project and provide suggestions by return e-mail no later than Monday of ninth week.
You may choose any of three general paper types:
Your paper will take the following form:
Introductory section(s)--applies to all types of papers: Discuss the genetic classification of the language(s) you will be studying. This should include (at least) the placement of the language(s) within a larger family and, if your doing a comparative reconstruction, the subgrouping of the languages among themselves and with other languages to which they are close. Of interest would also be geographical, cultural, or other factors which might have affected the history of the language(s). For overall classification of the world's languages, consult The Ethnologue on the web and/or Ruhlen's Guide to the World's Languages , but you must cite AT LEAST ONE source which SPECIFICALLY discusses the family of languages you are studying.
Analysis-SOUND CHANGE: A sound change paper, as defined for this class, traces changes that have take place in a selected set of sounds between a language as it was spoken in the past and a direct descendant of that language as it is spoken now. If you choose to do a sound change paper, you may NOT use a reconstructed language to represent the earlier stage. That is, for the older language, you must use a language for which there are actual records of the language (or, as in the case of the sample paper, direct--not reconstructed--evidence for the older language). Typical examples would be Latin > one of the modern Romance languages, Old English > Modern English, Old High German > modern Swiss German, Classical Arabic > a modern spoken Arabic "dialect", Sanskrit > a modern Indian language, Middle Korean > a dialect of modern Korean, etc. SOME RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Select a limited set of sounds that form a natural class, such as the velar obsruents, the liquids, the vowels, etc. Then look at this set of sounds in all the environments where they were found in the earlier stage (word initial, intervocalic, post-consonantal, etc.). Tracing the changes in the sounds themselves may also require tracing changes in the environments that had effects on the selected sounds.
2) Spelling vs. sounds: Generally, studying sound change will require using written records from at least the earlier stage, and probably the later stage as well. Spelling differences between the earlier and later stages can often be helpful as evidence in documenting changes, such as the "i" in French lait 'milk' suggesting a change [k] > [j] from Latin lactem. Remember, however, that you are describing changes in SOUNDS. Thus, even though Latin centum '100' and Spanish ciento are both spelled with initial "c", the SOUND at the beginning of this word has changed from [k] > [s].
3) It is fine to work on a sound change or set of sound changes that have already been documented, such as changes from Latin to a Romance language, where the sound changes are well understood. However, I expect you to assemble your own data set by supplementing existing descriptions of changes with further data from dictionaries or elicitation from speakers (one of you may be yourself!). I also expect the organization of your description, including your formulation of the changes, to be your own, not copies of someone else's.
Analysis-COMPARATIVE RECONSTRUCTION: Use data from AT LEAST THREE genetically related languages or dialects of one language as the basis for a comparative reconstruction of some aspect of the sound system of the proto-language from which the languages/dialects have all descended. This section (or these sections) of the paper should lay out the data from each of the languages in systematic correspondence sets, propose reconstructed proto-forms from which the data items have descended, and propose the specific sound changes for each of the languages which lead to the modern forms. SOME RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Select a fairly restricted set of sounds to reconstruct, e.g. initial stops, initial fricatives, word final obstruents, syllable final nasals, initial CC clusters, stressed vowels, long vowels, etc.
2) Compare fairly closely related languages. These would typically be languages from the “lowest” nodes in families listed on pp. 291-300 in Ruhlen (1991)-see “Recommended reference” under Week 1 of the Course Outline. Thus, in Indo-European, you should compare several Germanic languages or several Slavic languages, not, say a Germanic language, a Slavic language, and an Italic language.
3) It is fine to write your paper on languages for which someone has already done reconstructions. If you write on languages for which reconstructions have been proposed, you must cite previous work. You should present an original data set which you have assembled yourself, and you should point out differences, if any, between your findings and those of previous writers. NOTE ON ROMANCE LANGUAGES: The Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, etc.) provide fertile ground for comparative papers, but they are tricky! First, there is the tendency to look at Latin to see what the “real” reconstruction is. DO NOT INCLUDE LATIN AS ONE OF THE COMPARED LANGUAGES! Second, there is the tendency to be misled by the writing systems when talking about the sounds you wish to compare. Third, there is a lot of borrowing from Latin itself and from Romance languages into other Romance languages, which often obscures what forms should legitimately be compared. IF YOU WANT TO WORK ON ROMANCE LANGUAGES, SEE ME OR YOU TA EARLY TO AVOID PITFALLS!
Analysis-INTERNAL RECONSTRUCTION: Internal reconstruction is very much like phonological analysis of the type you did in 120A, but you are reconstructing earlier historical forms and sound changes, NOT modern underlying forms and phonological rules. Your concern is therefore not whether alternations can be accounted for by phonological rules, but rather working out sound changes that may or may not have counterparts as rules that speakers apply actively in the modern language. SOME RECOMMENDATIONS:
1) Select an area of the language that involves a good range of phonological alternations. Verb paradigms are often good because in many languages they have sets of agreement and/or tense marking affixes that create a variety of phonological environments. If a language has rich derivational morphology, derived forms of the same root often provide a range of phonological alternants.
2) Because doing internal reconstruction is similar to doing phonological analysis, a good source of ideas for internal reconstruction might be a phonological description, which you can use as a starting point for finding relevant alternations.
3) Comparative evidence from related languages can often be used to confirm hypotheses based on internal reconstruction. However, your main task in internal reconstruction is to understand alternations in terms of sound change WITHIN A PARTICULAR LANGUAGE, coupled with analogical and other changes that have obscured the basic picture. Romance languages provide good data for internal reconstruction BUT PLEASE NOTE THE POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF ROMANCE LANGUAGE DATA IN SUGGESTION 3) FOR COMPARATIVE RECONSTRUCTION ABOVE! Also be careful of relying on spelling when doing internal reconstruction. Spelling is sometimes helpful in the same way that comparative evidence is, but just as often it can be misleading.
Concluding section(s)--applies to all papers: Summarize your results and point out unresolved questions.
REMEMBER! A prospectus of your paper is due by Thursday of 8th week, but I will accept prospectuses earlier! You should be thinking about a topic by at least 6th week.
The outline here gives the basic order of events. We will have discussed and practiced the topics covered in the QUIZ listed for 5/17 by that time. (See comment under "Examinations" for a description of what this QUIZ will cover.) Topics from the middle to the end of the quarter will probably be pushed a lecture or two later than listed.
Week 1: Introduction; genetic classification of languages
Tu 4/4
Th 4/6
Week 2: Sound change: the nature of sound change, procedures for analysis, relative chronology
Tu 4/11
Th 4/13
Week 3: Sound change: motivations, effects, types
Tu 4/18
Lecture book: “Phonological Strength Hierarchies and Sound change”
Th 4/20
Week 4: Indo-European “Sound Laws”; introduction to Comparative Reconstruction
Tu 4/25
Th 4/27
Week 5: Comparative Reconstruction
Th 5/2
Tu 5/4
Week 6: Internal Reconstruction
Th 5/9
Th 5/11
Week 7: Analogical change
Tu 5/16
QUIZ (2:50-3:50): Types of sound change and Indo-European “Sound Laws” (from weeks 3-5-you will have gotten back corrected assignments covering these topics by this time)
Th 5/18
Week 8: Explaining morphological and syntactic change
Tu 5/23
PAPER PROSPECTUSES DUE
Th 5/25
Week 9: Finish syntactic change (grammaticalization); semantic change
Tu 5/30
Th 6/1
Week 10: Typological and areal classification of languages; language contact
Th 6/6
Lecture book, “Sources of Systematic Resemblances between Languages”, “Classifying languages by areal features”; “Typological classification of languages”
Tu 6/8:
Finish up previous topics
Course evaluations
Term papers due: no later than Thursday, June 15 at 1 PM
Final examination: Wednesday, June 14, 2006, 3:00pm-6:00pm
Paper prospectuses due: Tuesday, May 23
Term papers due: Thursday, June 15, 1:00 PM
Final examination: Wednesday, June 15, 3:oo-6:00