Historical linguistics (also called
diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:
- to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages;
- to develop general theories about how and why language changes;
- to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.
History and development
Modern historical
linguistics dates from the late
18th century and grew out of the earlier discipline of
philology, the study of ancient texts and documents, which goes back to antiquity.
At first historical linguistics was
comparative linguistics and mainly concerned with establishing language families and the reconstruction of prehistoric proto-languages, using the
comparative method and
internal reconstruction. The focus was on the well-known
Indo-European languages, many of which had long written histories. But since then, significant comparative linguistic work has been done on the
Uralic languages,
Austronesian languages and various families of
Native American languages, among many others.
Comparative linguistics is now, however, only a part of a more broadly conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the
Indo-European languages, comparative study is now a highly specialised field, and most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, particularly the development of the modern standard varieties.
Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families, linking for example Indo-European, Uralic and other families into
Nostratic. These attempts have not been accepted widely because the information necessary to establish relatedness becomes less available as the time depth is increased. The time-depth of linguistic methods is limited because of chance word resemblances and variations between language groups, but a limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed. The dating of the various proto-languages is also difficult. Several methods are available for this but only approximate results can be obtained.
Evolution into other fields
Initially,
all modern linguistics was historical in orientation - even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. But
Saussure drew a distinction between
synchronic and diachronic linguistics, which is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and
diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, is now seen to be idealised. In practice, a purely synchronic linguistics is not possible for any period before the invention of the
gramophone: written records always lag behind speech in reflecting linguistic developments, and in any case are difficult to date accurately before the development of the modern
title page. Also, the work of
sociolinguists on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways which point to language change. Synchronic variation is linguistic change in progress.
The biological
origin of language is in principle a concern of historical linguistics, but most linguists regard it as too remote to be reliably established by standard techniques of historical linguistics such as the
comparative method. Less standard techniques, such as
mass lexical comparison, are used by some linguists to overcome the limitations of the comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable.
The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in the prehistoric period. In practice, however, it is often unclear how to integrate the linguistic evidence with the archaeological or genetic evidence. For example, there are a large number of theories concerning the homeland and early movements of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans, each with their own interpretation of the archaeological record.
Sub-fields of study
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics (originally
comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through
borrowing or by genetic descent, thus languages can evolve and are also able to cross-relate.
Genetic relatedness implies a common origin or
proto-language, and comparative linguistics aims to construct
language families, to reconstruct proto-languages and specify the changes that have resulted in the documented languages. In order to maintain a clear distinction between attested and reconstructed forms, comparative linguists prefix an asterisk to any form that is not found in surviving texts.
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the
history of
words—when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. A word may enter a language as a
loanword (i.e., as a word from one language adopted by speakers of another language), through
derivational morphology by combining pre-existing elements in the language, by a hybrid of these two processes called
phono-semantic matching, or in several other minor ways.
In languages with a long and detailed history, etymology makes use of
philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. However, etymologists also apply the methods of
comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the
comparative method, linguists can make inferences, about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In this way,
word roots have been found which can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the
Indo-European language family.
Even though etymological research originally grew from the philological tradition, nowadays much etymological research is done in
language families where little or no early documentation is available, such as
Uralic and
Austronesian.
Dialectology
Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic
dialect, the varieties of a language that are characteristic of particular groups, based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features (as opposed to variations based on social factors, which are studied in
sociolinguistics, or variations based on time, which are studied in
historical linguistics). Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from a common ancestor and
synchronic variation.
Dialectologists are ultimately concerned with grammatical features which correspond to regional areas. Thus they are usually dealing with populations living in their areas for generations without moving, but also with immigrant groups bringing their languages to new settlements.
Phonology
Phonology is a sub-field of historical linguistics which studies the
sound system of a specific
language or set of languages change over time. Whereas
phonetics is about the physical production and
perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages.
An important part of phonology is studying which sounds are distinctive units within a language. For example, the "p" in "pin" is
aspirated while the same phoneme in "spin" is not. In some other languages, for example
Thai and
Quechua, this same difference of aspiration or non-aspiration does differentiate phonemes.
In addition to the minimal meaningful sounds (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, such as the /p/ in English, and topics such as
syllable structure,
stress,
accent, and
intonation.
The principles of phonological theory have also been applied to the analysis of
sign languages, even though the phonological units do not consist of sounds. The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of
modality because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not language-specific ones.
Morphology
Morphology - the study of the formal means of expression in a language; in the context of historical linguistics, how the formal means of expression change over time; for instance, languages with complex inflectional systems tend to be subject to a simplification process
is the field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words as a formal means of expression. Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of
lexicology. While words are generally accepted as being (with
clitics) the smallest units of
syntax, it is clear that in most (if not all) languages, words can be related to other words by rules. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller units and how those smaller units interact in speech. In this way, morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies patterns of word-formation within and across languages, and attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of the speakers of those languages, in the context of historical linguistics, how the means of expression change over time. See
grammaticalisation.
Syntax
Syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing
sentences in
natural languages. The term
syntax is used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the
syntax of Modern Irish". Modern researchers in syntax attempt to
describe languages in terms of such rules. Many professionals in this discipline attempt to find
general rules that apply to all natural languages in the context of historical linguistics, how characteristics of sentence structure in related languages changed over time. See
grammaticalisation.
Comparison of traditional and modern historical linguistics
There are several differences that occure dealing with the objects of research of traditional and modern historical linguistics. The focus of traditional historical linguistics lies in keeping records of language change in past times of a language or language family. Modern historical linguistics, however, focus on the progress of language change. They trie to analyze the cause or motivation, the spread and the modality of language change.
Traditional historical linguistics concentrate on language and its changes regarding to internal factors. Modern historical linguistics put its focal point on external factors e.g. the social surroundings. That synchrony variates is seen as a key to a variation in diachrony. The conclusion is that the beginning of a language change is variation.
For traditional historical linguistics the language structure and the language system are very important, whereas in modern historical linguistics the language use and the user are centered. They claim that grammar is shaped by discourse and language is changed by the speakers.
Traditional historical linguistics are mainly interested in phonology and morphology and not so much in syntax and semantics. In modern historical linguistics the main interest lies in syntax, semantics and pragmatics and no more in phonology.
Furthermore traditional historical linguistics are based on quality while modern historical linguistics are both qualitative and quantitative.
Traditional historical linguistics deal only with written language but modern historical linguistics are also concerned with spoken language.
See also
Citations and notes
