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RYAN_SLIDES

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RYAN_SLIDES

Page 1: Notices

  • Scheduled Maintenance:

    • MTA: No trains between Flatbush Av and Franklin Av from Feb 18-21, 11:30 PM to 5 AM.

    • Free shuttle buses will be available for transport during this period.

Page 2: The History of Language

  • Spoken language is estimated to be between 40,000–150,000 years old.

  • Writing is much younger, having developed around 5,000 years ago.

  • The Sumerians created pictographs that evolved into cuneiform by approximately 3000 BCE, marking the world's first writing system.

Page 3: Common Misconceptions

  • Many misconceptions about language change arise from equating writing with language.

Page 4: Myths about Writing and Language

  • Language is primary, writing is secondary:

    • Languages with long written histories (e.g., Tamil, Hebrew, Chinese) are not inherently older than others.

    • Ancient languages, such as Latin and Greek, did not "die"; their written forms remained stable while spoken forms evolved.

    • Similar writing systems do not indicate a genetic relationship between languages (e.g., Latin is not descended from Greek).

Page 5: Language as a Living Organism

  • Linguistics can be likened to biology, with languages compared to living organisms that can thrive or become extinct.

  • All languages continuously change over time, and change cannot be halted, often influenced by contact with other languages.

Page 6: Historical Complaints

  • Concerns about the degradation of language are not new, as exemplified by Gnaeus Naevius’s statement about Latins forgetting how to speak Latin in the 3rd century BCE.

Page 8: Diachrony and Synchrony

  • Linguistic variation can be examined through two primary approaches:

    • Diachronic: Studies language change over time (e.g., Old English to Modern English).

    • Synchronic: Analyzes language at a specific point in time (e.g., influence of African American English on Gen Z slang).

Page 9: Historical Linguistics

  • Focuses on diachronic change and the genetic relationships among languages, analogous to evolutionary biology.

Page 12: The Comparative Method

  • Historians use the comparative method to identify genetic relationships between languages based on regular sound correspondences.

    • Cognates:

      • foot (English) / piede (Italian)

      • father (English) / padre (Italian)

      • feather (English) / penna (Italian)

Page 19: Sound Change

  • Unconditioned Sound Change: Regular changes across the board (e.g., Proto-Indo-European *p → Proto-Germanic *f).

  • Conditioned Sound Change: Changes that depend on specific contexts (e.g., Latin /k/ becoming Spanish /θ/ before front vowels).

Page 21: Divergence vs. Convergence

  • Similarities between languages can arise through unrelated languages influenced by contact (e.g., Vietnamese and Thai).

  • Divergence refers to languages evolving in distinct paths, while convergence indicates languages sharing features due to prolonged contact.

Page 24: Outcomes of Language Contact

  • Language Shift and Language Death:

    • People may abandon their native language for another due to social pressures, leading to shifts or potential language extinction.

    • Examples:

      • Language shift with death (Minoan to Greek).

      • No death (Quechua to Spanish).

Page 26: Lexical Borrowing

  • Borrowing can arise through contact (e.g., Norman Conquest leading to French words in English) or through prestige languages (e.g., Latin's influence on English).

Page 28: Loan Translations

  • Calques: Borrowing through literal translation (e.g., English skyscraper to Italian grattacielo).

  • Semantic Loans: New meanings are assigned to existing words.

Page 30: Structural Convergence

  • Results from deep bilingual contact and can include phonological or syntactic changes between languages.

Page 31: Language Formation

  • Pidgins may arise in situations where speakers lack a common language; Creoles are fully developed pidgins.

Page 32: Haitian Creole

  • Most spoken creole with about 13 million speakers.

  • Developed from contact between enslaved Africans and French speakers in the 17th-18th centuries.

Page 39: Closing Remarks

  • Appreciation for a successful quarter and encouragement to enjoy the break.