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.
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.
Many misconceptions about language change arise from equating writing with 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).
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.
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.
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).
Focuses on diachronic change and the genetic relationships among languages, analogous to evolutionary biology.
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)
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).
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.
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).
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).
Calques: Borrowing through literal translation (e.g., English skyscraper to Italian grattacielo).
Semantic Loans: New meanings are assigned to existing words.
Results from deep bilingual contact and can include phonological or syntactic changes between languages.
Pidgins may arise in situations where speakers lack a common language; Creoles are fully developed pidgins.
Most spoken creole with about 13 million speakers.
Developed from contact between enslaved Africans and French speakers in the 17th-18th centuries.
Appreciation for a successful quarter and encouragement to enjoy the break.
RYAN_SLIDES
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.
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.
Many misconceptions about language change arise from equating writing with 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).
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.
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.
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).
Focuses on diachronic change and the genetic relationships among languages, analogous to evolutionary biology.
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)
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).
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.
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).
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).
Calques: Borrowing through literal translation (e.g., English skyscraper to Italian grattacielo).
Semantic Loans: New meanings are assigned to existing words.
Results from deep bilingual contact and can include phonological or syntactic changes between languages.
Pidgins may arise in situations where speakers lack a common language; Creoles are fully developed pidgins.
Most spoken creole with about 13 million speakers.
Developed from contact between enslaved Africans and French speakers in the 17th-18th centuries.
Appreciation for a successful quarter and encouragement to enjoy the break.