Chapter 13: Language Change

Languages are similar due to a variety of reasons, including:
- human anatomy
- Humans make the same basic sounds because we are anatomically similar
- coincidence
- Similarities that arise can be completely coincidental and independent without contact
- non-arbitrariness
- There is an iconic connection between the form and meaning
- language contact
- Languages in contact often borrow words from each other
- Relatedness hypothesis- when multiple languages were once one language, but underwent enough changes that they are considered separate languages
Protolanguage- a common language from which other languages descend from
Family tree theory- speech sounds change in regular, recognizable ways, and because of this, phonological similarities among languages may be due to a genetic relationship among those languages

Sound change is an alternation in the phonetics of a sound as a result of a phonological process
- Phonetic changes only affect the pronunciation of words
- Phonological changes add or delete a phoneme, or changes the distribution of allophones
Sound changes almost always turn out to be completely regular; every instance of the sound in question will undergo the change
Sound changes are gradual processes
Unconditioned sound change- every instance of the sound change in question will occur, regardless of the surrounding sounds
Conditioned sound change- a sound change that occurs because of the influence of the sounds that occur around it
Types of sound changes
- Assimilation- one sound becomes more like another sound
- Dissimilation- two similar sounds become less like one another
- Deletion- a sound is no longer pronounced
- Insertion- a sound is added to a pronounced word
- Monophthongization- a change from a diphthong to a simple vowel sound
- Diphthongization- the change from a simple vowel sound to a complex one
- Metathesis - a change in the order of sounds
- Raising and lowering- changes in the height of the tongue in the pronunciation of words
- Backing and fronting- alterations in the frontness and backness of the tongue during pronunciation

Change does not necessarily occur regularly
Analogy- the influence of @@one form or set of forms over another@@
Paradigm- a set of @@inflectionally related forms@@
Proportional analogy- the creation of a @@new inflected or derived form@@
Back formation- the creation of a @@new stem form@@
Fold etymology- @@obscure morphemes@@ are reanalyzed in terms of @@more familiar morphemes@@
Adding new words to a language:
- @@Acronyms@@- taking the initial sounds of a phrase and uniting them into a combination that is itself pronounceable as a separate word
- @@Blends@@- the combination of the parts of two words
- @@Clipping@@- shortening words without paying attention to the derivational morphology of the word
- @@Coinages@@- words created “out of thin air”
- @@Conversions@@- new words created by shifting the part of speech of a word to another part without changing the form of the word
- @@Eponyms@@- something that is named after a person who is connected to it

Extensions- occurs when the set of appropriate contexts or referents for a word @@increase@@
Reductions- occurs when the set of appropriate of contexts or referents for a word @@decrease@@
Elevations- occurs when a word takes on somewhat @@grander or more positive connotations over time@@
Degradations- occurs when a word acquires a more @@pejorative meaning over time@@

Internal reconstruction- the @@analysis of data from a single language in order to make hypotheses about that language’s history@@
Comparative reconstruction- the systematic comparison of @@multiple related languages in order to make hypotheses about the common protolanguage they descended from@@