How Would You Establish Whether a Group of Languages Is Related - Term Paper Example

LANGUAGE In the study of language, it is to be d that the nature of language actively in use is never static, it changes and grows. The process of change leads to divergent developments .If any separation of one community from another takes place and lasts for a considerable length of time, a language grow up. When the differences are slight, they lead to the rise of dialects. The dialects have so much in common that the speakers of the various dialects of the same language may not find it difficult to understand one another. But, if for some reason, the speaker of the various dialects migrate to distant places and remain separated for a considerable time, then each dialect will develop in its own way influenced by varying factors. The difference between a dialect and another may become so pronounced that the speaker of one dialect may find it extremely difficult to understand the speaker of another dialect .When such a stage is reached, the different dialects may be said to have become separate languages. But even where the difference are significant ,it may be possible to identify a sufficient number of features common among the language to indicate that at one time they were one, for instance though English German and Swedish are distinct languages, they have many similar features to claim a common ancestry. Taking vocabulary alone into consideration, it is easy to establish resemblance. English German Swedish Stone stein sten Bone bein ben Home heim hem One ein en Similarly resenblasence in words can be traced in the vocabularies of different languages like Greek, Latin, Gothic, Sanskrit, Old Norse, Dutch, Swedish and English. Such correspondence do indicate that these different languages are related to one another and therefore they may be said to belong to one family. It is said that we have nearly two thousand different language s in the world today and they may be classified age as belonging to various groups or language families. Scholars believe that there are nearly a hundred such language families. Comparative method The comparative method in historical linguistics 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. By looking at languages of today, linguists deduce which processes could have produced one word/rule in one language and another in a different language when both are believed to have come from the same mother language. 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. It depends upon the principle of regular sound change—a principle that, as explained above, met with violent opposition when it was introduced into linguistics by the Neogrammarians in the 1870s but by the end of the century had become part of what might be fairly described as the orthodox approach to historical linguistics. Specifically, linguists look for phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic and lexical changes and their causes. Proto-Indo-European is thought to be the mother language for most of the European languages, and the languages of Iran and India. Nostratic is, more controversially, thought to be an earlier language that covers the families of Indo-European languages, the Hungarian and Finnish languages, and others. Both Nostratic and Proto-Indo-European linguists use the comparative method. Genetic relationship between two (or more) languages can be established if they show a number of regular correspondences in native vocabulary, which means that there is a regularly recurring match between the phonetic structure of basic words with similar meanings (Lyovin 1997:2-3). In the case of Indo European language The great consonant Shift describes the set of changes that the Proto, Indo-European stops (consonants) underwent in Germanic. Grimm illustrated the changes of Germanic consonants by citing contrasting cognates in Latin, Greek or Sanskrit . According to him a p in Indo –European, preserved as such in Latin and Greek, was changed to an f in the Germanic language. Latin English Piscis fish Pedis foot Grimm found that what was true of p also was true of t and k. In other words the original voiceless stops ( p ,t ,k) were changed to spirants th ,kh Latin English Tres three Centem hundred Thus bh, dh,gh became voiced stops b,d,g. Sanskrit English dha do bharami bear bandha bind Latin English Decem ten Duo two Genu knee Thus four series of of Indo-European consonants have shifted in the Germanic languages. 1. The labial p , ph, b, bh 2. The dentals t , th, d, dh 3. The palatals kw, khw, gw, ghw 4. The glutterals k , kh , g, gh In each case the Indo –European sound corresponding to any symbol (except the last) in any raw, is shifted, in cognate Germanic words, to the sound corresponding to the symbol which next succeeds it. That is to say (taking the first raw)dh sound in Indi-European would be shifted to d sound in Germanic and so on. Similar change would take place in the other two rows also. Bh>b; b>p; p>ph(f) Gh>g; g>k; k,kh(h) One of the most important sound changes in primitive Germanic is known by the name Verner’s law .These changes were due to the influence of the Indo Germanic system of free accentuation. In the Germanic the stress was invariably shifted to the first syllable, where as in indo-European the stress fell on the medial or final syllable. He found that when the consonant preceded the stress, voicing took place as illustration we may take the word Weorthan. It is derived from the Indo-European Wert. As the stress falls on the first and only syllable in wert, t become th according to Grimm’s law and so we get the word weorthan. But in the preterite tense of wert in wurdon the t in wert becomes shifted to d( instead of th). Here Grimm’s law does not seem to operate. Verner pointed out that as stress fell on the second syllable in wurdon the th become voiced to d. According to Verner ,this wurdon should have developed from primitive Germanic wurdhum. As this change had already taken place in the early Germanic the dh in wurdhum had become shifted to d in Germanic language. As another illustration we may take the word hundred- Latin centum. In Latin centum(from German ‘Kmtom’ )the correspondence between the initial consonants c[k] and h is according to Grimm’s law; but That between the t in Latin and the d in English is not. Verner attributed this apparent irregularity to the shift in accent, In Latin centum, originally the stress did not precede the consonant and therefore the t which should have become th according to Grimm’s law ,got voiced to d giving us the word hundred. According to Neogrammarians, apart from the general sound change laws, languages are also subject to borrowing from other languages and other sporadic changes (like irregular inflections compounding and abbreviation) that affect one word at a time or small subset of words. Borrowing on a larger scale occurs in areal diffusion, when features are adopted by contiguous languages over a geographical area. The borrowing may be phonological ,morphological, or lexical. A false proto-language over the area may be reconstructed for them or may be taken to be a third language serving as a source of diffused features. Several areal features and other influences may converge to form a sprachbund, a wider region sharing features that appear to be related but are diffusional. For instance, the East Asian Sprachbund suggested several false classifications of such languages as Chinese ,Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, before it was recognized. The basic assumptions behind comparative method were 1 The proto language was uniform with no dialect (or social)variation. This assumption is counterfactual since all known languages have regional or social variations and different style. 2 Language splits are sudden. 3 After this split-up of the protolanguage there is no subsequent contact among the related language. These assumptions are a consequence of the fact the comparative method addresses directly only material in the related language which inherited from the proto language and has no means of it’s own for dealing with borrowing ,the result of subsequent contact after diversification into related languages.( page 164). TREE MODEL Based on these assumptions a tree model of language evolution was set up ,in which daughter languages are seen as branching from the protolanguage, gradually growing away from it through accumulating phonological , morpho-syntactic and lexical changes. The assumption of uniformity in a proto-language, implicit in the comparative method, is problematic. Even in small language communities there are always dialect differences, whether based on area, gender, class, or other factors. The Pirahã language of Brazil is spoken by only several hundred people, but it has at least two different dialects, one spoken by men and one by women.[61] Campbell points out:[62]. WAVE MODEL The different dialects of language ,as they evolve into separate language ,remain in contact with one another and influence each other. The alternative to the family tree model was the wave theory. It was s series challenge to the comparative method. It deals with changes due to contact among languages and dialects. According to this model the linguistic changes spread outward concentrically like waves which become progressively weaker with the distance from their central point. Anthony fox illustrated the defects of comparative method in his book ‘ Linguistic Reconstruction’ (page 137). He was against the tree model because it excludes language convergence. It is unable to deal with waves of innovation. Greenberg opposed the view of linguists of 20 th century about comparative reconstruction. He argued that genetic classification is prior to comparative reconstruction. A new method called mass comparison was put forward by him. But this was opposed by most of the historical linguists. Woks cited Cambpell Lyle – Historical Linguistics: Great Britain,1998 Read More