English Sept 11
Internal and External Change in Language
External change (language contact):
Occurs when groups interact: people show up, people go home, conflicts arise, social forces change the language landscape. These events are relatively straightforward to track.
Examples in the history of English include the initial contact with Romans and later Germanic migrations; the external layer shapes which languages enter contact and under what social conditions.
Internal change (in-language dynamics):
Far more complex to trace because it involves multiple subsystems: phonetic/phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic (i.e., how people use language in social contexts).
Changes tend to cascade: one change in a subsystem can trigger changes in others (e.g., great vowel shift affecting several other aspects of the grammar and usage).
The course emphasizes broad, non-linguist-level explanations of internal changes rather than minute, highly technical detail.
External vs internal change together yield a complex history of language spread and development.
Why Studying Proto- and Early Language is Hard
Evidence is scarce for crucial early stages because:
preliterate groups (e.g., Anglo-Saxons, Jews, Frisians) left little in their own languages for us to read; most records are in other languages retelling their speech.
Even when there is data, it is fragmentary and tiny in size (small corpora).
Speech does not fossilize; there are no audio records from the distant past.
When we can infer pronunciation, it often comes from indirect sources like poetry and rhyme; e.g., rhymes in 18th century poetry can hint at how words sounded in earlier periods.
The linguistic systems involved are vast and interdependent:
phonetics/phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics all interact.
Changes in one area often cause ripple effects in others (as with the Great Vowel Shift).
There is rarely a singular, satisfying answer to
"Why did the changes start?" because historical linguistics often yields only descriptive accounts of what changed and how it changed, not definitive causal reasons.
Sociolinguistics helps explain some
how social factors and conditions influence language use and change, but it does not always give a simple answer to the origins of a shift.
The Great Vowel Shift and Internal Change
Great Vowel Shift (a major internal change in English):
Involved systematic changes to vowel sounds that cascaded through the vowel system, altering pronunciations and, in turn, spelling conventions.
The shift shows that a change in vowel pronunciation can drive broader changes in the language’s structure.
Internal change is not isolated to phonology; it also affects:
word order, inflectional endings, modes of address, and discourse structure (how we speak to and about others).
Article system in English as a typological change:
English originally had little or no definite/indefinite article system.
It developed a robust article system (the, a/an) over time, illustrating a major typological shift in the language.
External changes accompanying internal change include loanwords and creolization:
loanwords (new words coming from other languages) can influence syntax, morphology, and word formation.
creolization and substrate/superstrate influences add to the language’s structural diversity.
External Change: The Indo-European Expansion and Theories of Movement
Indo-European language family map (high-level):
Indo-European languages spread across Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and parts of Asia.
Notable non-Indo-European enclaves exist, e.g., Basque in western Europe.
Examples of Indo-European languages in contact regions include Urdu, Hindi (Indo-European) and Tamil (non-Indo-European) in the broader geography of South Asia.
Why did Indo-European languages disperse? The traditional “warrior expansion” idea vs. dispersals by language groups:
Dominant old image: a single wave of warriors spreading on horses, displacing others. This model is aesthetically appealing but problematic for several reasons.
Issues with the warrior-elite expansion model:
It assumes a long-lasting, aggressive campaign across thousands of years (roughly 6,000+ years ago), which is unlikely to be sustained in that form.
If a single wave killed or enslaved neighbors, the language would clash with population genetics and the persistence of “kitten” populations or other languages; it doesn’t explain how populations adopt a new language while maintaining others.
Renfrew’s Alternative (1990s): language dispersals can be explained by economic migration, demographic pressures, and agricultural dynamics rather than solely conquest. This explains multiple, smaller dispersals over time and why you get distinct dialects and languages within the same family.
Core mechanisms driving dispersal (as described in the lecture):
Push factors: overpopulation, resource strain, lack of arable land, environmental stress, etc.
Pull factors: opportunities in new lands, access to resources, better living conditions, etc.
Movements are often family-based and gradual rather than rapid, single-wave invasions.
Farming as a driver: farming improves survival, reduces child mortality, and increases population growth, which increases pressure to move when land becomes scarce.
Real-world illustrations:
Acadians, Quebecois, Cajun French illustrate how the same language group can diversify depending on dispersal routes and historical timing.
Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan are cited as dramatic examples of expansion, but they do not represent normal language spread patterns; conquest can force decay or elimination of populations rather than sustained language adoption.
Implication for language history:
Instead of a single, uniform wave, the Indo-European languages spread through multiple, overlapping dispersals.
Language diversity within the same family can arise from different stages of dispersal, contact with preexisting languages, and varying social conditions.
The Roman Legacy, Germanic Migrations, and Britain
Romans and their impact on Britain:
Romans introduced a cultural/historical layer but did not leave a lasting imprint on early English itself because English did not exist yet as a separate language; their influence was indirect (e.g., infrastructure, social organization) and less about direct language change.
When the Germanic West Germanic speakers migrated into Britain after the Roman withdrawal, linguistic changes accelerated in the region, contributing to the development of Old English.
Differences between conquest-driven and migration-driven language change:
Romans came in as a political/administrative power with a long-term presence; Germanic migrations came in waves with different social structures and interactions.
The broader lesson:
Language change is not a single event; it is a tapestry of external pressures and internal developments across many centuries.
The same language family (Indo-European) can exhibit different sub-branch developments (e.g., West Germanic) as it adapts to new environments and social structures.
Early Philology, Language Origins, and Historical Methods
Philologists as early language researchers:
Grimm and his brother (the Grimm brothers) collected early linguistic data as part of their broader work in literature and folklore.
They contributed to the emergence of methods in historical linguistics, showing that there are regular sound changes that can be traced across related language families.
The long-standing question about the first language:
There was a historical Western assumption that languages trace back to a single origin (often humorously tied to Hebrew in some traditions), but linguistic evidence showed this was untenable among Indo-European languages.
The discovery of regular sound correspondences:
Regular consonant shifts linked Germanic, Romance, and other branches back to a common ancestor (Proto-Indo-European) during identifiable historical periods.
The period for these shifts is identified as roughly 1500 BCE to 500 BCE (for certain Germanic/Indo-European changes).
The Roman contact on Germanic languages:
There were loanwords from Latin into Germanic languages before English existed, illustrating cross-cultural contact but not a wholesale transformation of the entire language before English emerged.
Takeaway:
The historical method in linguistics relies on systematic, rule-governed sound changes to reconstruct language families and track their divergence over time.
The Structure of Language and Gender Distinctions
Two kinds of gender in language:
Natural gender: gender based on natural/semantic categories (he/she, masculine/feminine in grammatical gender systems are often aligned with real-world gender but not always).
Grammatical (linguistic) gender: grammatical categories that affect agreement and inflection, seen in languages like French (two genders) and German (three genders).
Examples and nuances:
English largely uses natural gender in pronouns and some noun usage today, while French uses grammatical gender for many nouns.
German assigns three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) which affects pronouns, adjectives, and article endings.
Persian reportedly has no grammatical gender distinctions.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic relativity):
Strong version: the language you speak determines your world view; you cannot think beyond your language.
Weak version: language influences how you perceive and categorize the world, but does not rigidly determine it.
The lecture emphasizes the weak version as a plausible explanation; the strong version is generally viewed as overly deterministic.
Language and kinship terminology as an illustration of world view:
Some languages encode complex kinship and family relations with very few or differently structured terms, illustrating how language organization can reflect cognitive categories distinct from those in English.
Example (hypothetical/illustrative): a language with only two gendered terms for relatives (e.g., a and b) where all close relatives fall into the same category; this highlights how different languages carve up family relations differently.
Loanwords, Spelling, and the Interplay of Sound and Writing
Loanwords showcase contact and adaptation across cultures:
Doppelgänger (German): a loan into English reflecting cultural interest in German literature and folklore; the term originally meant a double or double-goer and carried a spiritual/metaphoric resonance in its source culture.
Orange (from Indian/Persian/Spanish roots): illustrates a long-ladder etymology from narang/naranj through Persian/Arabic, Spanish, and French, finally arriving in English as orange; the pronunciation/orthography was influenced by contact and phonological adaptation.
The path of loanwords reveals how English interacts with other languages and how pronunciation and spelling adapt over time.
The relationship between pronunciation and spelling:
The printing press fixed spelling to the pronunciation at the time; subsequent pronunciation shifts did not automatically change spelling, leading to mismatches between sound and script.
Examples discussed include words with historical pronunciations that diverged from modern pronunciation, such as hotel, hostel, and hospital—where spelling preserves older forms while pronunciation evolved.
Word-internal changes and orthography:
The system of letters and sounds evolves together; English spellings often preserve etymological or historical pronunciations rather than current pronunciations.
The example given about fronting vowels (e.g., a word pronounced with a more fronted vowel in contemporary speech) illustrates how ongoing pronunciation shifts interact with spelling conventions.
Practical implications:
Language learners must navigate the mismatch between spelling and pronunciation.
The history of loanwords can reveal how contact and prestige influence which languages contribute to a lexicon and how new forms are integrated.
A Quick Chronicle of Core Concepts and Terms
Key concepts to remember:
External change, internal change, typological change, creolization, loanwords, substrate/superstrate influences, and language contact dynamics.
Great Vowel Shift (internal change in English vowels).
Push factors vs pull factors in language dispersion and migration.
Indoeuropean language family and the varieties within (Germanic, Romance, Indic, etc.).
Basque as a non-Indo-European outlier in Europe.
Kurgan hypothesis (traditional warrior expansion) vs Renfrew’s dispersal hypothesis (language spread via agricultural diffusion and demographic processes).
Grimm and his brother as pioneers in historical linguistics; regular sound changes linking language families.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (strong and weak versions) and their implications for thought and language.
Article system development in English (loss of inflections, changes in word order, and emergence of articles).
The role of the printing press in stabilizing spelling and its interaction with evolving pronunciation.
Two kinds of gender (natural vs grammatical) and examples from German, French, Persian, and others.
Important numerical and temporal references:
Language-shift timeframe for some Indo-European consonant changes: 1500 ext{ BCE} ext{ to } 500 ext{ BCE}
Deep historical horizons of language spread: 6{,}000 ext{ to } 10{,}000 ext{ years ago} (general migration/demographic context).
The Indo-European homeland discussion centers on eastern Europe and western Asia with migrations that began thousands of years ago and continued through multiple centuries.
Connections to broader themes:
Language history is not just a tale of invasions; it is a tapestry woven from migrations, economic pressures, demographic shifts, social structures, and cultural contact.
The evolution of a language like English is shaped by a suite of external events (invasions, trade, colonization, contact with Latin via the Church, and later printing) and internal reorganizations (loss of inflection, emergence of a robust article system, spelling reforms).
Studying language change requires interdisciplinary thinking: archaeology, history, sociology, migration studies, and philology all contribute to a fuller understanding.
Summary Takeaways
Language change is driven by a combination of external social forces and internal structural dynamics; both interact in complex ways over long time scales.
The Indo-European language family expanded through multiple dispersals rather than a single wave of conquest, shaped by push/pull factors and farming-driven demographic change.
The Great Vowel Shift illustrates how a major internal phonetic reorganization can precipitate broad typological changes in a language.
Articles, word order, and other grammatical features can emerge or transform radically (typological change) even as core vocabulary continues to borrow from neighboring languages.
Spelling often lags behind pronunciation, a legacy of historical pronunciations that were fixed by the advent of the printing press.
Loanwords and language contact provide window into cultural exchange, social prestige, and the dynamics of language borrowing and adaptation.
The Sapir-Whorf discussion highlights the interaction between language and perception, with the weak version offering a nuanced perspective on how linguistic categories can influence, but not rigidly determine, world view.
Philology and historical linguistics emerged from early attempts to trace origins of language, ultimately showing that language histories are multi-layered, non-linear, and deeply contingent on human movement and sociocultural change.