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Age of Language:
Spoken language: 40,000 to 150,000 years old.
Written language: ~5,000 years old.
Development:
Sumerian pictographs into cuneiform (~3000 BCE).
Misconception that writing equals language.
Consideration of primary vs. secondary forms.
Separating Language and Writing:
Writing is a representation but not the language itself.
Languages with histories (Tamil, Hebrew, Chinese) are not inherently older.
Codified forms of ancient languages (Latin, Greek) remained stable while spoken forms evolved.
Similar scripts do not imply language relationship (e.g., Latin and Greek).
Nature of Languages:
Languages evolve similarly to biological species—continuously changing over time.
Contact with other languages influences changes.
Complaints about language degradation are historic (e.g., Romans forgetting Latin).
Two Approaches:
Diachronic: Studies changes over time (e.g., Old English to Modern English).
Synchronic: Examines language at a specific point (e.g., AAE influence on Gen Z).
Focus on diachronic change and genetic language relationships—akin to biology.
Historical linguists identify genetic relationships through:
Regular Sound Correspondence:
Examples:
English foot /fʊt/ and Italian piede /pjɛde/
Words like father, feather, nephew illustrate correspondence across languages.
Sound Change Mechanics:
Proto-Indo-European changes affecting various languages:
*f> Italic, Hellenic, and Indo-Aryan /p/, while Germanic kept /f/.
Types of Sound Change:
Unconditioned: Occurs without specific contexts (e.g., PIE *p > Proto-Germanic *f everywhere).
Conditioned: Changes depend on phonetic environment (e.g., /k/ changes in Spanish before front vowels).
Divergence: Different languages evolve from a common ancestor.
Convergence: Languages begin to share features due to contact (e.g., phonological similarities).
Example languages: Vietnamese, Burmese, and Thai showing convergence features.
Key Outcomes:
Language Shift: Transition to another language (often leading to death of the original).
Lexical Borrowing: Inclusion of words from one language to another.
Structural Convergence: Shared grammatical features due to prolonged contact.
Language Formation: Development of Pidgins and Creoles.
Language abandonment may either lead to complete extinction or coexistence without loss.
Historical examples (Minoan to Greek: death).
Quechua to Spanish: shift without death.
Influences from direct contact include:
English has 30% French origin from the Norman Conquest.
Via literary or prestigious languages too (Latin to English, Middle Chinese to Korean).
Least likely to be borrowed:
Numbers, kinship terms, pronouns, body parts, and natural world words.
Important for comparative linguistics analysis.
Calques: Literal translations of phrases (e.g., English skyscraper to Italian grattacielo).
Semantic Loans: Adaptations of meanings (e.g., computer mouse in Finnish).
Result of Prolonged Contact:
Phonological: E.g., tones in Vietnamese.
Syntactic: Changes in language orders due to contacts.
Pidgin Development: Needed for communication without a common language.
Creoles: Evolved pidgins with native speakers; functional languages, representing colonial histories.
Origins: French contact with enslaved populations in the 17th-18th centuries.
Vast French lexicon (90%) with distinct grammar influenced by West African languages.
Commonalities across creoles include lack of gender marking and regular morphology.
Example comparisons illustrate significant differences in structure and development.
Debate on whether creoles represent fundamentally different structures than non-creoles.
Critics argue that categorical differences are exaggerated and rooted in colonial biases.