Linguistics 105 * Words and Sounds Lecture Number Twenty One Tracking Linguistic Drift: The Comparative Method
- Linguistic Drift
- Causes
- Imperfect transfer between generations
- Heavy lexical borrowing: English /—/: garage, rouge, arbitrage
- Foreign accents (from heavy immigration)
- Phonological Change
- Syncope:
courtesy curtsy aeroplane airplane camera [kÀmrÏ] Latin fem[i]na French femme Latin num[e]rum French nombre
- Haplology: probably : probly
- Phonesthemes (or blends):
glow + beam gleam glow + twitter glitter glow +stare glare
- Epenthesis:
Latin Spanish French scola escuela ec²le stella estrella et²ile status estado etæt
- Lenition:
Latin French vitellus 'calf' veaux Latin vita 'life' French vie Latin pater 'father' French pÕre Latin nativum 'native' French na®f 'naive'
- Metathesis (especially liquids):
English gard-en Serbian grad 'city' German berg Serbian breg 'shore, bank' Latin plen-us Russian poln-yj
- Tendency to Open Syllables (ending on vowels); e.g., French:
long cabinet veaux (veal) dans les vous
- Morphological Change
- Analogical Leveling:
- Russian: Nominative-Accusative okno
- English:
help : holp : holpen help : helped : helped get : got : gotten get : got : got prove : proved : proven prove : proved : proved
- Bilingual speaker, e.g. French influence on English more beautiful
- Syntactic Change and its Causes
- Loss of case system frees prepositions
The bed in which he slept The bed he slept in John looked up a friend in New York John looked a friend in New York up
- Case loss also makes word order more important
Ivan udaril Borisa John hit Boris Borisa udaril Ivan Boris hit John
- Semantic Change and its Causes
- Semantic Narrowing
- Red Square: Russian krasnyj = "colorful > "red"
- drugs, disease, deer, meat, golden
- dress > to dress "put on clothes"
- dress > a dress
- Semantic Broadening:
- holy day > holiday
- Lady > lady
- a park > to park "put in park" > "put in any place"
- a ship > to ship "send by ship" > "send (large object)", ship by bus
- Pejoration:
- drugs
- dope(head)
- wench
- silly
- disease
- (not to mention the words for 'cat' and 'rooster')
- Amelioration:
- pretty 'sly, cunning'
- knight 'boy'
- Metaphorical drift:
- Drive carefully, the road is oily (has oil > is slippery)
- Look out for him, he's an oily character (is slippery > untrustworthy)
- Lexical Change and its Causes
- Loss:
dolgbot 'compensation for wounding someone'
flytme 'blood-letting instrument'
þeox: 'hunting spear'- Borrowing
- Words:
- HINDI: thug, punch, cummerbund, shampoo
- ARABIC: algebra, orange (narange)
- SLAVIC: robot, polka, galoshes;
- FRENCH: tax, revenue, government, parliament, royal, slave, prince, prayer, sermon, religion, chaplain, priest, judge, defendent, jury, evidence, jail, crime, medicine, physician, pharmacy, art, sculpture, fashion, music, literature (boccrÀft), poetry
- SCANDINAVIAN: anger, cake, call, egg, fellow, get, his, sky, husband, low, ski, they, their, ugly, window, wing, raise, root, score
- AMERINDIAN: toboggan, opossum, wigwam, chipmunk, muskrat, tobacco, potato, chili, coyote (coyotl)
- Calques (particularly in Latin, Greek, Russian, German):
- German ãbermensch > superman
- Latinate compassion > Russian sostradanie, influence > v-li-anie
- Greek sympathy > Russian soñuvstvie, English feel for
- Taboo words:
- cock(erel) [clipping] > rooster
- urs > medv-ed 'honey-eater' (Eng mead)
- crap, tinkle, doo-doo, whiz
- "p" > pee (Initialism, initialization)
- pissed off > "p"-ed off > teed off (golf)
- gee, gee whiz, golly, gosh, darn
- Folk etymology:
- crevise > crayfish > craw(l)fish
- chaise longue > chaise lounge (French)
- outr-age > out-rage (French)
- m'aidez > May Day! (French)
- mousseron > mushroom (French)
- berfrey "bell-tower" > belfry
- bride-gome "bride-man" from bryd and guma > bridegroom
- musquash (Algonquian) > muskrat
- otchek (Algonquian) > woodchuck
- Lexical Stock Expansion
- Commonization: a watt, an ohm, a quisling, malapropism
- Clipping: van, flu, phone
- Phrase Reduction:
- jet propelled airplane > jet
- toboggan cap > toboggan
- Blends: motor + hotel > motel
- smoke + fog > smog
- happening + circumstance > happenstance
- melt + weld > meld
- guess + estimate > guesstimate
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