Chapter 12

Student resources for Chapter 12: Language Change - Linguistic Dynamicity

Terminology
You should be able to simply define or explain the following terms and concepts.

synchrony	diachrony	lenition
assimilation	erosion	renewal
analogy	narrowing	broadening
Comparative Method	cognate	language contact
loanword/borrowing	family tree	Grimm’s Law
language family	proto-language	Proto-Indo-European
recurring sound correspondences	conditioned sound change	grammaticalization
decategorialization	routinization	linguistic paleontology

Concepts

All living languages are dynamic, constantly undergoing processes of change through the process of speaker use and interaction
All areas of language undergo change, including sounds, words, meanings, and grammar
Sound changes are diachronic rules result that result from synchronic phonological processes
Sound changes are regular (occurring everywhere that the conditioned environment is met)
Sound change can be at the broad systemic level; an example is the Great Vowel Shift
Due to regular sound change, the Comparative Method can be used to determine degrees of relatedness among languages, reconstruct proto-languages and proto-words, and state the sound changes that occurred to differentiate the daughter languages
By reconstructing the proto-words of a language, we can determine a significant amount of information regarding the lifestyles and cultures of the speakers of the mother language
Grammars also change; the most common type of change is grammaticalization whereby lexical morphemes take on grammatical functions or grammatical morphemes change their grammatical meanings

Skills
On completion of this chapter, you should be able to perform the following tasks:

Explain the difference between words that are cognates and words that are borrowed
Explain the family tree model of historical linguistics
Define the term “language family” and name several known families
Say what the Comparative Method is and what it is used for
Apply the Comparative Method to a data set, reconstructing proto-forms and stating sound changes
Identify different types of sound change
Given data, write a rule describing a sound change
State the position of English in the Indo-European language family
State some of the sound changes that occurred in the history of English
Identify different types of semantic change
Explain in general terms where grammatical markers come from
Name and describe processes involved in grammaticalization
Discuss linguistic paleontology and the sorts of information that you can learn by reconstructing proto-languages