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- Read: Ch. 7-9 of Trask.
- Assignment 5: due Feb. 21.
- Assignment 6: due Feb. 28.
- Language relationships.
- Dialect geography. Dialects of English.
- The concept of genetic relationship between languages.
- Subgrouping. Shared innovations and shared retentions.
- The tree model.
- Dialect chains, convergence, contact, and the wave model.
- Pidgins and creole languages.
- Obsolescence, death, and revival of languages. Standardization.
- Major language families of the world.
- Comparative-historical linguistics: establishing language relationships.
- Method 1: Word comparison.
- Shared vocabulary as evidence for genetic relationships.
- Greenberg's method of mass comparison.
- Lexicostatistics and glottochronology.
- Problems and pitfalls.
- Method 2: Morphological comparison.
- Shared morphological idiosyncrasies as evidence for genetic relationships.
- Problems and pitfalls.
- Method 3: The modern comparative method.
- How the comparative method works and why: regularity of sound
change, arbitrariness of the sign, the uniformitarian principle.
- An example: reconstructing the Indo-European consonant system.
Grimm's Law, Verner's Law, Grassmann's Law.
- Reconstructing split and merger.
- Naturalness, typology, universals.
- The reality of proto-languages.
- Internal reconstruction
- Using synchronic alternations as evidence for earlier changes.
- An example: the Indo-European vowel system and laryngeal theory.
Next: Feb. 28: Variation and
Up: L160: Historical Linguistics
Previous: Feb. 7-9: Syntactic change
Paul Kiparsky
2006-01-09