Langauge history and change (G.

Yule, The Study of Langaue)

Task 1.
How would you group the following languages into pairs which are closely related from a
historical point of view:
Bengali, English, Farsi, Gaelic, Hindi, Italian, Norwegian, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese,
Ukrainian, Welsh?
Bengali and Hindi
Farsi and Pashto
English and Norwegian
Italian and Portuguese
Polish and Ukrainian
Gaelic and Welsh

Task 2.
What are cognates?
Cognates are words in different languages with a common origin, meaning they evolved from
the same ancestral language. These words often have similar meanings, spellings, and
pronunciations. For example, the English "mother" and the German "Mutter" are cognates.

Task 3.
What types of sound changes are illustrated by the following pairs?
(a) thridda→third
(b) scribere→escribir
(c) glimsian→glimpse
a) metathesis r<->i
b) prothesis +e at the beginning
c) epenthesis +p in the middle of the word

Task 4.
The Old English verb steorfan (‘to die, from any cause’) is the source of the Modern English
verb starve (‘to die, from lack of food’). What is the technical term used to describe this type
of meaning change?
Narrowing of meaning