Noor Yanti AzizaMoh. Toha

Hanim FaridaElia Setiawan

Nenny SeptianaFirman D. Riandy

Purpose of this chapter: To take a long-term view of languages and indicate how such a view can benefit anthropologist.

Synchronic: The approach that considers a language as though it has been sliced through time, ignoring historical antecedents.

Diachronic=historical linguistics: An analysis/approach to study the historical development of a language, giving attention to the changes that occurred in the language over a period of time.

Anty

Language Changes: English a Thousand Years Ago

Living languages change through time and the changes affect all aspects of a language.

Pronunciation, example: redPhonological, example: a - oMorphological, example: goodMeaning, example: But mice and rats, and

such small deerConverse, example: box

Internal and External Changes. Assimilation The influence of a sound on a

neighboring sound – become similar e.g. ten bucks tembucks

Toha

DissimilationOne of two identical or very similar neighboring sounds of a word is changed or omitted because a speaker finds the repeatation of the same articulatory movement difficult in rapid speech

February Febyuarybird briddfealdan fold

MetathesisThe transposition of sounds or larger unitbird (ME) bridd (OE)

. Grammatical change

fold (ME) fealdan (OE)help (ME) helpan (OE)

Externalcontacts between the speakers of different language

Borrowingdebt debitum (Latin)

Loanwordsoap sabaoconfession confissao

Coinagebrunch (Breakfast + lunch)

HOW AND WHY SOUND CHANGES OCCUR

THE EFFECT OF CHANGE OF A PARTICULAR SOUND

MODERN VIEW OF SOUND CHANGES---LEXICAL DIFFUSION (William Labov, 1960s)

LINGUISTIC CHANGE:• FROM ABOVE (HIGHER PRESTIGE)

e.g. car, card, four, fourth• FROM BELOW (deals with progressive change in the

quality of the first vowel of the diphthongs /ay/ and /aw/)

Hanim

WHY DO LANGUAGES CHANGE?

TO MAINTAIN DEFINITE PATTERN OF ORGANIZATION

ANALOGY—REGULAR FORMS AFFECTS LESS REGULAR FORMS

THE PASSING ON OF LANGUAGE FROM PARENTS TO CHILDREN

SOCIOCULTURAL FACTORS (Where people like to imitate sounds used by people with social prestige)- over imitation---hypercorrection

Reconstructing Protolanguages1786: Sir William JonesGothick and Cetcick

had the same origin with Sanskrit and the old Persian

He said that Sanskrit, ancient Greek, Latin, and other European languages were spoken in prehistoric times.

1868: August Schleicher “translated” into the prehistoric ancestral language a short fable about a sheep and three horses.

Elia

It’s possible to reconstruct the sounds and meanings of words as well as the grammar and syntax.

The goal of reconstruction is the ancestral language (protolanguage).

How?

1.Similarities between words from different languages indicates that these languages are related to each other

2.Sound changes are regular under like circumstances.

Example of reconstructionWritten records: cloud is nabhas (Sanskrit), nephos (Ancient Greek) and nebo (Old Church Slavonic). What is cloud in Proto-Indo-European (PIE)—protolanguage?

Sanskrit Ancient Greek Old Church Slavonic

PIE?

n n n

a e e

bh ph b

a o o

s s

It shown that the word “cloud” is *nebhos in PIE.

Sanskrit Ancient Greek Old Church Slavonic

PIE?

n n n *n

a e e *e

bh ph b *bh

a o o *o

s s *s

RECONSTRUCTING THE ANCESTRAL HOMELAND

A case of Algonquian Language(North America)

Nenny

How to Track DownPeople always

migrate and mobileHow do you

reconstruct such migration?

The problem is: written form is shallow, difficult to track down.

Method of Reconstruction The Original Home of the Proto-

Algonquian People (Frank T. Siebert)• Here are the assumption:

1. Ancestral people occupied a limited territory.(They walk on foot, not flying on a jet plane, right?) ^_^

2. Their vocabularies were related with their environment, including animals and plants around them. Some similar cognates in descendant language can reveals original location of parent population.

Result53 Proto-Algonquian vocabularies on natural

environmentDerived from modern Algonquian language to

construct ancestral vocabularies.Then ….

Siebert located the corresponding area which related with the vocabularies.Problem: The distribution of animals and plant had greatly changed.• Forestland had converted to fields• Some species were eliminated by pollution• Mammals had reduced and exterminated

Siebert consulted 100 sources of information about the natural history of North America.

Once geographic distribution established, he plotted the ranges on a map of the continent.

We got the distribution map of Algonquian People!

language reconstruction + land plotted = one ancestral homeland

Reconstructing a protoculture

Firman

definitionLinguistic reconstruction is the practice of

establishing the features of the unattested ancestor (proto-language) of one or more given languages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_reconstruction

definitionProtoculture ( プロトカルチャー , Purotokaruchā?) is

a term introduced in the 1982 Japanese animated television series Super Dimension Fortress Macross and adapted to the Americanized Robotech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoculture_%28Macross%29

In physical anthropology, protoculture is the passing of behaviours from one generation to another among non-human primates. These cultures are very rudimentary, and do not exhibit complex cultural technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoculture

…”is likely to throw light on some aspects of prehistoric culture of those who spoke the protolanguage.”

daughter in lawSanskritGreekLatinRussianOld EnglishGerman

snusánuósnurussnokhásnoruschnur

Linguistic reconstructionsTell us more about the ancient Indo-

Europeans: used yokes and wheeled vehiclesenvironmentalpracticed agriculture and cultivated cerealsused numerals and a decimal systemled by tribal chief or kings

Glottochronology What? It studies time relationships among

related languages by statistical comparison of samples.

Who? Swadesh – 11-word list How? Translate – find the equivalent -determine

which pairs are cognate

Cognate: a word that has the same origin, or that is related in some ways, to a word I another language

Time Perspective in Culture

CLASSIFICATIONS OF LANGUAGES GENETIC – LANGUAGE FAMILY /LANGUAGE STOCK:

All languages coming from the same ancestral language. (Proven by comparative work and convincing number of cognates)

TYPOLOGICAL—STRUCTURAL FEATURES: Structural similarities of languages regardless the history (e.g. sound systems, word order, etc)

MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS Four types: isolating, inflecting, agglutinative, polysynthetic