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.