LING 080 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Great Vowel Shift, Indigenous Languages Of The Americas, Scottish English

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 080
• Professor: Tony Cook

Document Summary

Language evolves very slowly, we can tell from written records. Old english (449-1100 ce) > middle english (1100-1500) > modern. Historical and comparative linguistics - deals w/ how languages change, what kinds of changes occur and why. Regular sound correspondence - like [aj] vs. [a:] in southern english. Different pronunciations in a language bc of dialect. Middle english and modern english regular correspondence from [u:] to modern [a ] Genetically related - offspring languages of one language. Protolanguage - ancestral language from which related languages develop. Regular sound correspondences illustrate changes in the phonological system of a language. English dropped the /x/, turned into nothing, /k/, replaced by vowel, or remained /x/ in scottish english. Old english used to not have /v/, but /f/ was pronounced [v] b/t vowels. Phonological rule changes often result in dialect differences. Most indo-euro languages lost the case endings from latin. Lexical changes - change in lexical category, addition of new words,