LING 15 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Althing, Word Order, Res Publica
Document Summary
Inherited traits: properties if a language that transmit from previous generations: non-inherited traits: innovations or origins in language contact. Innovations: morphosyntactic cycle and emergence of gender class. Form and/or meaning of symbols can change over time. Link between form & meaning is v flexible: observation: there are some languages known to be related. Why do languages share traits: shared inheritance, (mutual) influence, related: inheriting traits from same ancestor. Inheritance & divergence: if 2 languages share enough traits to seem related yet still differ one or both has changed. Shared influence vs influence: english, german germanic pie, spanish, french latin pie, some words have complicated histories- changes in form or meaning over time, cow: females of bovine species, no general species term. Bovine borrowed from latin and cattle borrowed from french still english words. Cow vs cattle: cattle refers to livestock in general. Some semantic processes: synecdoche: using a part to refer to a whole.
