LING 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Jargon, Grammar, Danelaw
Monday, November 20th, 2017
Language Contact:
Language change and contact
• Last week, we thought about how languages change through time – what it means for
languages to be related.
• This eek, ell eaie hat happes he languages come into contact with one
another.
• What types of situations does this result in?
The tree model of language change
• Language families are groups of languages that can be traced back to a single proto-language
• Assumption – each branch of a family is defined by a set of innovations
• Innovations are changes in relation to the last stage of a language
• Example – certain innovations define the PIE > Germanic branch vs. the PIE > Armenian
branch
• Assumption – each branch of a family is defined by a set of innovations
• Innovations are changes in relation to the last stage of a language
• A problem with this model is that it has difficulty accounting for changes that spread over a
number of well-defined branches of the family
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The wave model of language change
• linguistic innovations spread, like waves created by a stone thrown into a pond
• intersecting with the waves created by other innovations
• Useful for modeling influences of one language on adjacent languages
Sigle laguages do’t eist i a vacuu
• Oiousl, laguages dot eist i a auu – languages coexist in space with other
languages in the same place
• Gie this, its iportat to ask ho these situatios affet the laguages that oe ito
contact in these areas
• For example – how is language change affected by language contact?
Results of language contact
• The most common result of language contact is change in some or all of the languages
• Typically, though not always, at least one of the languages will exert at least some influence
on at least one of the other languages.
• This influence can be seen in all parts of a language
• And the most common specific type of influence is the borrowing of words.
• English, for instance, is notorious for having a huge number of loan words - by some estimates
up to 75% of its total vocabulary, mostly taken from French and Latin.
• All aspects of language structure are subject to transfer from one language to another...
• ...given the right mix of social and linguistic circumstances
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
The wave model of language change: linguistic innovations spread, like waves created by a stone thrown into a pond, intersecting with the waves created by other innovations, useful for modeling influences of one language on adjacent languages. 8th-11th c. danish invasions of england: resulted in extensive bilingualism, borrowing into english, fellow, egg, window, skirt, sky, get, take, both, they, them, their, danes also invaded normandy [norman < north man] Danish-origin place names in england: follo(cid:449)i(cid:374)g da(cid:374)ish defeat i(cid:374) (cid:1012)(cid:1011)(cid:1012), da(cid:374)ish settle(cid:373)e(cid:374)t/rule (cid:894)(cid:858)da(cid:374)ela(cid:449)(cid:859)(cid:895) (cid:272)o(cid:374)fi(cid:374)ed to ne e(cid:374)gla(cid:374)d, there are place names in england that have their origin in danish, but they are limited to the. The norman conquest: arose out of a dispute over succession: harold godwinsson of essex vs. william, duke of. Normandy: william invades southern england in 1066 defeats harold at the battle of hastings detail from the bayeux tapestry.
