Transcript Never again: the regrammaticalization of never as a marker

Genetic relationships I
Li2 Language variation:
Historical linguistics
David Willis
*Proto-Indo-European
‡Tocharian
*Proto-Celtic
‡Old Irish
*British
Gaelic
Irish
‡Manx
Breton
‡Cornish
Welsh
Armenian
*ProtoIranian
‡Ancient
Greek
Albanian
‡Latin
ROMANCE
Catalan
French
Italian
Occitan
Portuguese
Romanian
Romansh
Spanish
*Proto-Indo-Iranian
*Proto-Germanic
*ProtoBalto-Slavic
Modern
Greek
Kurdish
Ossetian
Persian
Pashto
Tadzhik
‡Sanskrit
INDOARYAN
Assamese
Bengali
Gujarati
Hindi/Urdu
Maldivian
Marathi
Punjabi
Sindhi
Sinhalese
*Proto-Slavic
*Proto-Baltic
NORTH EAST
Danish ‡Gothic
Latvian
Faroese
WEST
EAST
Lithuanian
Icelandic
Czech
‡Prussian
Belorussian
Norwegian
Polish
SOUTH
Russian
Swedish
Slovak
Bulgarian
Ukrainian
Sorbian
Croatian
Macedonian
* = reconstructed language
‡Old Church Slavonic
‡ = dead lang uage
Serbian
Slovene
WEST
Afrikaans
Dutch
English
Frisian
German
Yiddish
The Comparative Method
How do we establish that languages are related? Similarities between languages can be
due to:
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accident (chance resemblance or independent parallel development)
borrowing / language contact
onomatopoeia
universals and typology
genetic relationship
The first four need to be eliminated to demonstrate the last.
Eliminating borrowings and chance similarities
ÔeyeÕ
M ODERN
GREEK
['mati]
FINNISH
abst raktinen
almanakka
arkkitehti
M ALA Y
[mata]
ENG LISH
abst ract
almanac
architect
Eliminating borrowings and chance similarities
H AWAIIAN
aeto
noonoo
manao
mele
lahui
meli
kau
mahina
ÔeagleÕ
ÔthoughtÕ
ÔthinkÕ
ÔsingÕ
ÔpeopleÕ
ÔhoneyÕ
ÔsummerÕ
ÔmonthÕ
A NCI ENT GREE K
aetos
ÔeagleÕ
nous
ÔthoughtÕ
manthano
ÔlearnÕ
melos
ÔmelodyÕ
laos
ÔpeopleÕ
meli
ÔhoneyÕ
kauma
ÔheatÕ
men
ÔmoonÕ
Correspondence sets
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systematic sound correspondences between cognates (items in two
languages that have been continuously transmitted from a single parentlanguage item) are strong evidence for linguistic affinity (assuming regularity
of sound change)
some linguists regard sound correspondences as essential for demonstrating it
Correspondence sets
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some linguists regard them as essential for demonstrating it
use basic vocabulary: body parts, close kin, natural world, low numbers (but
even basic vocabulary can sometimes be borrowed e.g. Finnish borrowed from
Baltic and Germanic the words for ‘mother’, ‘daughter’, ‘sister’, ‘tooth’, ‘navel’,
‘neck’, ‘thigh’, ‘fur’)
similarity due to onomatopoeia is not reliable evidence of relatedness, but can
usually be readily identified
cognacy is often not recognised until the systematic correspondences are
understood:
English wheel : Hindi cakkā
English horn : Hindi sĩg
English sister : Hindi bahan
French cinq : Russian pjat’ : Armenian hing : English five (< PIE *penkwe)
(regular but non-obvious correspondences e.g. Armenian hing shows *p > h in
Armenian cf. Armenian het : Greek ped- ‘foot’, hour : pyr ‘fire’ etc.)
False correspondence sets due to borrowing
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regular correspondences may sometimes be found in loans:
English : French normally shows f : p (pere : father, pied : foot, pour : for)
Romance loans show p : p (paternel : paternal, piedestal : pedestal)
use of basic vocabulary may help up to overcome this but not always:
Massive borrowing may create false correspondence sets e.g. Welsh /p/ : Latin
/p/:
False correspondence sets due to borrowing
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can be hard to distinguish from real correspondence sets e.g. Welsh
/p/ : Old Irish /k/:
WELSH
ÔfourÕ
pedwar
ÔwormÕ pryf
ÔI buyÕ prynaf
ÔheadÕ penn
OLD IRISH
cethair
cruim
crenaim
cenn
Armenian was widely believed to be an Iranian language until 1875, when
Heinrich Hübschmann showed it to be an independent branch of IndoEuropean in 1875 by showing that similarities with Iranian were due to
borrowing (Armenian showed three systems of sound correspondence with
Iranian) and were not supported by morphological irregularity.
‘Shared aberrancy’ / shared grammatical
irregularity
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The presence of similar (highly arbitrary) morphological alternation in two
languages is a very good indicator of genetic relationship (e.g. English
good, better, best and German gut, besser, best-). Antoine Meillet termed
this ‘shared aberrancy’
Typological evidence
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the value of typological evidence in disputed
early linguists often used shared morphological type as evidence of relatedness
usually considered to be of little value today, despite some attempts to use it
The subgrouping problem
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lines on family trees indicate a period of shared innovation (development) of
all the daughter languages
splits indicate the beginning of independent innovation
nodes indicate intermediate parent languages (whether or not these are
attested or even have names) e.g. Proto-Germanic, Latin etc.
subgrouping is done by establishing that a group of languages share an
innovation that is not found in some other portion of the family e.g. Grimm’s
Law defines Germanic (English father, German Vater vs. French père (Latin
pater), Ancient Greek patēr, Sanskrit pitr); loss of PIE *p defines Celtic (Old
Irish lán, Welsh llawn vs. French plein, Russian polon, English full)
genetic similarities between languages may be due either to shared retention
or to shared innovation: only shared innovation is indicate of subgrouping
shared parallel development is a possible confounding factor
The subgrouping problem
L1
L2
L3
L4
L5
p
p
f
f
zero
The subgrouping problem
L1
L2
L3
L4
L5
p
p
f
f
zero
Most linguists would prefer to posit two changes in the histories of these
languages, namely, p > f and (subsequently) f > ø, hence the tree:
(Harrison 2003)
Note that this means that, perhaps surprisingly, L1 and L2 share no particularly
close relationship.
The establishment of Indo-European
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establishment of Indo-European is often attributed to William Jones’s third
discourse to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (February 1786):
The Sanscrit langu age, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and
more exquisitely refined than either; yet bearing to both of them a
stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar,
than could possibly have been produced by acc ident; so strong indeed,
that no philologe r could examine them all three without believing them to
have sprung from some common source , which, perhaps, no longer exists.
There is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that
both the Gothic and Celtick , though blended with a very different idiom,
had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian migh t be added
to the same familyÉ
Sir William Jones
(1746–94)
The establishment of Indo-European
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connections between Indo-European languages had been observed long before Jones
the relationship between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages had been
observed before Jones
Jones did not use the comparative method
Jones interpreted linguistic relationship as part of ethnic / genealogical relationships
in a biblical framework, the history of the human races
Jones made a number of errors that were not made by everyone at the time:
Of these cursory observations on the Hindus É this is the result; that they had an
immemorial affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, and the Egyptians; the
Phenicians, Greeks, and Tuscans[= Etruscans]; the Scythiansor Goths, and Celts; the
Chinese, Japanese
, and Peruvians; whence, as no reason appearsfor believing that
they were a colony from any one of those nations, or any of those nations from them,
we may fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some central country, t o
investigate which will be the object of my future Discourses. (Third discourse t o the
Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1786)
The establishment of Indo-European
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early attempts at language classification in the sixteenth century saw all
languages as descended from Hebrew
even in the sixteenth century, many of the branches of Indo-European
were recognised (e.g. by Konrad Gesner in 1555)
early attempts at etymology allowed free substitution of sounds (cf.
Voltaire’s alleged remark that ‘etymology is a science in which the vowels
count for nothing and the consonants for very little’)
an improvement is the notion that certain sound changes recur in
different languages
The establishment of Indo-European
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the idea that various European languages might go back to a common
ancestor originates with the ‘Scythian hypothesis’, first propounded by
Johannes Goropius Becanus (Jan van Gorp van der Beke) in 1569 and
later associated with Claude Saumaise (1588–1653) (Indo-Scythian),
Marc Boxhorn (1602–53) and Andreas Jäger (Scytho-Celtic):
An ancient language, once spoken in the distant past in the area of the Caucasus
mountains and spreading by waves of migration throughout Europe and Asia, had
itself ceased t o be spoken and had left no linguistic monuments behind, but had as a
ÔmotherÕgenerated a host of Ôdaught er languagesÕ, many of which in turn had become
ÔmothersÕto further ÔdaughtersÕ. (For a language tends to develop dialects, and these
dialects in the course of time become independent, mutually unintelligible languages.)
Descendant s of the ancestral languages include Persian, Greek, Italic (whence Latin
and in time the modern Romance tongues), the Slavonic languages, Celtic, and finally
Gothic and the other Germanic tongues. (Andreas JŠger, De lingua vetustissim a
Europae, Scytho
-Celtica et Gothica, 1686)
The establishment of Indo-European
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the discovery of Sanskrit added weight to such investigations. Thomas
Stephens had noted similarities between Indian languages and Latin
and Greek in 1583 (but he meant typological similarity and not
common historical origin):
The languages of these reg ions are very numerous. They have a not unpleas ing
pronunciation and a structure similar to Latin and Greek.
The idea of common origin was suggested by Gaston Laurent
Coeurdoux in 1767 (but he meant borrowing). Such ideas were
commonplace in the mid 18th century.
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Edward Lhuyd (1707) was perhaps the first to identify sound
correspondences and understand that regularity of sound
correspondences was proof of common origin e.g. he identified that
Greek, Romance, Celtic /k/ corresponds to Germanic /h/ (German
hundert ‘hundred’: Latin centum, German Hund ‘dog (hound)’ : Latin
canis, German Hals ‘neck’ : Latin collum = Grimm’s Law).