PPT presentation about language history and change

1. By Camilo Saavedra
Language history and change

2. XIX century linguists came up with the
idea of the existence of a proto-Indo-
european family of languages
Languages from different geographical
areas have some common features,
they are all related.
A common ancestor
A proto-language, a kind of “Great-
grandmother” of modern languages

4. Comparative
reconstruction
 A way of finding similarities in different
languages (and this way find out their
relation to an ancestor), were/are used
cognates
 Cognates are a similar word in one
language and another in form or
pronounciation
 Comparative Reconstruction is a
process in wich cognates are compared
in order to find similarities

5. Cognates example

6. Principles
 In comparative reconstruction there are
two important principles:
 The majority principle: when comparing
cognate sets, the ones more similar
demonstrate the less that those
languages have changed from the proto-
language
 The natural development principle: are a
series of rules in language change (or
evolution) that show the antiquity of that
language in relation to the proto-

7. This shows that the more the word
respects these rules, the more similar
it is towards the proto-language.

8. English language
change
 English language history is divided
into three main periods:
 Old English (VII-XI)
 Middle English (XI-XV)
 Modern English (XV-present days)

9. Old English
Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons
and Jutes) invaded the British Isles
in the V century.
Words belonging to this period:
mann (man), drincan (drink), etan
(eat)
Then, another northern-european
tribe arrived, The Vikings. They
brought the Old Norse, words like:

10. Anglo-saxon
invasion

11. Viking invasion

12. Middle English
Normans arrival to the British Isles
in 1066. William “The Conqueror” (a
norman) was crowned King of
England.
French relevance during this period,
although English never ceased
being spoken (by the lower class)
Words like: defense, court, faith,
army.

13. Norman invasion

14. From 1400 to 1600 English
started changing in form,
structure and pronounciation
becoming Modern English
(more specifically, early modern
English)

15. Pronounciation
change
 Not only some sounds changed, but
also some others disappeared. i.e. the
voiceless velar fricative /x/ wich in old
english pronounciation of nicht as [nixt],
but is absent in the present-day form of
night [nayt]
Metathesis: is a reversal in two
adjoining sounds, had changed the
pronounciation of some words

16. Metathesis example

17. Prothesis
That is the addition of a sound to the
beginning of a word

18. Syntactic changes
In the transition from old english to modern
english, we can find several differences in
the order of the sentence, i.e.

19. Lexical changes
 A lot of borrowed words have been added
to the english language along its evolution,
from latin, greek and other languages.
 New words have been created
 Some other words have ceased to be used
 In terms of meaning, there are two
processes: Broadening and Narrowing.

20. Broadening
A word that previously had only one
meaning, now it has some others,
for example:
In old english the word “dogca” was
used to refer to any breed of dogs,
but now, its evolution “dog” is used
to refer to any breed.

21. Narrowing
Is the reverse process, a word that
before had several different
meanings or uses, now it has only
one, for example:
The old english word “mete” refered
to any kind of food, now it refers
only to a specific breed, “meat”

22.  It’s worth mentioning that this process of
change in the language was not from
one day to another, on the contrary a
language changes gradually, it takes
time and requires some factors to make
it possible.
 Another important point to conclude is
that language is in a continuous process
of evolution, it’s always changing.