Historical Linguistics

An Introduction
What is Historical Linguistics?
Historical linguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with the development of
a language or languages over time.
Traditionally known as philology. The primary tool of historical linguistics is
the comparative method, a way of identifying relations among languages in the
absence of written records. For this reason, historical linguistics is sometimes
called comparative-historical linguistics.
What is the comparative method?
The comparative method, is the primary tool of historical linguistics. It is concerned
with the reconstruction of an earlier language or earlier state of a language on the
basis of a comparison of related words and expressions in different languages or
dialects derived from it. The comparative method was developed in the course of
the 19th century for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European and was subsequently
applied to the study of other language families.

Aims/Objectives: The comparative method aims to recover the ancestral languages

in order to determine what changes have taken place in the various languages that
developed from the protolanguage.
• Language Family: A language family is a group of related languages descended
from a common ancestor. This means that, if two languages have a common
origin, this means that they belong to a single family of languages.
• Example: French, Italian, and Spanish are modern descendants of Latin.

• Protolanguage: In historical linguistics, a protolanguage is the reconstructed

prototype of the ancestor of a group of languages. Generally, when a
protolanguage evolves to produce a number of different daughter languages, we
have no written records of the process.
• Example: Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic.
Diachronic vs. Synchronic point of view:

• One of the points that Saussure stressed was the fact that we need to make a
distinction between studying a language from a diachronic point of view and from
a synchronic point of view.
• When we consider how language has changed over time like looking at changes in
more than one stage of the language, we are looking at it from a diachronic point
of view, e.g., from Old English to Middle English.
• When we describe a language synchronically, we looks at the changes of the
language at a specific stage or phase, e.g., in Old English only.
• Language Change: All languages change over time, it’s true to say
that some languages change more than others and faster than others,
but all languages change nevertheless, but how they change, what
drive these changes, and what kind of changes we can expect are not
obvious. But, while all languages change, the change need not to be in
the same direction for all the speakers.
• Languages change in all aspects of the grammar: Phonology,
morphology, syntax, and semantics.
• Old English (ca. 950 A.D. Lindisfarne, Northumbrian)
Fader urer ðu arð [oððe] ðu bist in heofnum [oððe] in heofnas, sie
gehalgad noma ðin, to-cymeð ric ðin, sie willo ðin suæ is in heofne ond
in eorðo, hlaf userne oferwistlic sel us todæg ond forgef us scylda usra
suæ uoe forgefon scyldgum usum, ond ne inlæd usih in costunge, ah
gefrig usich from yfle.

• Middle English (ca. late 14th c., Wycliffite)

Oure fadir flat art in heuenes, halwid be fli name, fli reume or kyngdom
come to be. Be fli wille don in herfle as it is doun in heuene. Geue to vs
to-day oure eche dayes bred. And forgeue to vs our dettis, flat is oure
synnys, as we forgeuen to oure dettoris, flat is to men flat han synned
in vs. And lede vs not in-to temptacion, but delyvere vs from euyl. Amen,
so be it.
• Modern English (ca. l985)
Our father who is in heaven, may your name be sanctified. Let your
kingdom come. May your will be fulfilled just as much on earth as it is
in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our
transgressions, as we forgive those who transgress against us. And do
not lead us into tempetation, but free us from sin. For yours is the power
and the golry, forevere. Amen.
Linguistic changes – an overview:
1. Sound change:
• Changes that are conditioned by phonetic factors. An example of this is the
Modern English diphthongization of Old English ū in ūre to our [aur]. Sound
change is remarkably systematic.
2. Analogical change
• Many changes affecting the pronunciation of words are not conditioned entirely
by phonetic factors and therefore do not qualify as sound changes. Analogy plays
an important role. Analogy can most easily be seen at work in the early stages of
children’s language acquisition. If for instance a child says goed instead of went,
the form goed is made to follow the analogy of the many other past tense forms of
English in which -ed is added to the verb stem. An example of analogy can be
observed in the history of English like the spread of the plural marker –s in
Middle English.
3. Lexical borrowing and other contact changes
• The resulting linguistic contact is reflected in the fact that English adopted from
French a large amount of vocabulary, such as reume (Mod.Engl. realm) beside
inherited Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The effects of language contact may go far
beyond vocabulary borrowing. Through prolonged contact, languages may
converge. Language convergence is when languages become similar in their
overall structure.
• Language death is a slow but steady atrophy in the use and structure of a language
that is being replaced by another, dominant form of speech.
• The development of pidgins and similar forms of language that are severely
reduced in function, structure, and vocabulary.
4. Semantic change
• Meanings of words may undergo change. Where Old English heofon could freely
refer to both the spiritual ‘heaven’ and the visible ‘sky’, Modern English prefers to
use different terms for the two concepts.

5. Syntactic change
• It is concerned with the change in structure over time. Old English permitted both
the order fader ure(r) and urer(r) fader. Modern English, on the other hand,
ordinarily only has the order our father.
• Cross-linguistic change:

• Cross-linguistic change means that certain changes are common in the languages
of the world.

• Language vs. dialect:

• “dialects” are speech varieties that are mutually intelligible, while “languages”
are not.