LING 425 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Onomatopoeia, Language Change, Nganyaywana Language
30 Jan 2020
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Document Summary
Not focused with: history of ling, origin of human language, preservation of correct language . Focused with: change in language over time, revealed in the study . Swiss linguist ferdinand de saussure (1857-1913: recognized language as an arbitrary pairing of sound and meaning. Similarities surrounding chance, nursery words, onomatopoeia: chance: merely a coincidence, greek (indo-european) the s god", onomatopoeia: result of non-arbitrariness in sound/meaning pairing, nursery words: similarities across unrelated languages. Borrowing: due to contact between speakers of different languages: pashto (indo-euro) m then flour mill", less plausible, if, similarities hold across a geographically diverse array of languages, hold in core" vocabulary items like numbers. William jone"s insight i. e. romance languages ancestor, latin": came up with the idea of a common ancestor language, found similarities between sanskrit and latin, common hypothesis; dates as far back from the 4th century ce. Language relationships & protolanguages predicted on the fact that language changes over time.
