Language Evolution and Change Overview

Language Evolution and Change

• Language is a genetically-conditioned ability unique to humans.
• Language types include phonetic/phonological (e.g., OE scyrte → ModE shirt), syntactic (e.g., OE Ic will slaep → ModE I will sleep), semantic (e.g., OE gesælig → ModE silly), and pragmatic/discourse (e.g., be + like as discourse marker).
• Language change is influenced by cognitive factors (economy principle, imperfect learning), structural factors (grammaticalization within the system), and social factors (contact, environment, prestige).

Language Differences

• Linguistic typology studies language structures and functions (e.g., sounds, morphology, word order).
• Phonological differences exist in the number and type of sounds across languages (e.g., clicks in some African languages, labial-velar plosives in some languages).
• Morphological differences reflect morpheme-per-word ratios, ranging from analytic languages (e.g., English, Mandarin) to polysynthetic languages (e.g., Nahuatl).
• Word order differences, including SOV (e.g., Latin), SVO (e.g., Mandarin), VSO (e.g., Arabic), and VOS (e.g., Malagasy), exist across languages.
• Semantic differences reflect variations in how semantic fields and word meanings differ across languages.

Languages of the World

• There are approximately 7,099 living languages.
• There are at least 152 language families.
• The largest language family is Niger-Congo (with 1,539 languages).

Language in a Globalized World

• Peripheral languages, spoken by less than 10% of the world's population, often lack official status and are primarily oral.
• Supercentral languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, etc.) have high numbers of speakers and are important for communication across nations.
• English serves as a global language medium for knowledge dissemination.

Germanic Languages

• Germanic languages include various dialects, for example Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic, English, Frisian, German, Dutch, and Yiddish.
• These languages are descended from Proto-Germanic (c. 500 BC).

Balto-Slavic Languages

• Balto-Slavic languages include 24 languages (Baltic and Slavic branches).
• These languages are descended from Proto-Balto-Slavic (c. 1500 BC) and Proto-Slavic, (c. 500 AD).

English Language

• English has evolved through stages (Roman conquest, Anglo-Saxon settlement, Viking invasion, Norman invasion, etc.)
• English has various dialects, including British, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, American, Canadian, West Indies, Australian, New Zealand, South African, and African-American Vernacular English.

History of English

• English has evolved substantially from its ancestor languages including Latin, Old English, Old Norse, and Norman French.
• Different dialects and historical periods shape modern English.

Evolution of Polish

• Polish evolved through different periods including pre-written period (900-1050 AD), old Polish period (c. 1050-1500 AD), and middle Polish period (c.1500-1750 AD)
• Modern Polish emerged by 1750 AD

Polish language

• Spoken by approximately 37.4 million people in Poland.
• 741,000 in Germany..
• Other countries with smaller populations speaking Polish include Lithuania, Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania.

Other Language Features

• Phonetics: Studies speech sounds.
• Phonology: Studies the organization and functions of speech sounds.
• Morphemes: Smallest units of language carrying meaning.
• Types of Morphemes: Free (independent) morphemes, vs. bound (grammatical) morphemes.
• Syntax: Sentence structure.
• Word Order: Arrangement of words in a sentence.
• Relative Clauses: Clauses that modify nouns or noun phrases.
• Reduplication: Repetition of a word or morpheme to express a meaning.
• Affixation: Adding affixes to root words to form new words.
• Compounding: Combining two or more stems to create a new word.
• Clipping: Shortening a word.
• Conversion: Changing a word from one part of speech to another.
• Backformation: Creating a new word by removing a portion of an existing word
• Loanwords: Words borrowed from one language and incorporated into another.
• False Friends: Words that look or sound similar in two languages but have different meanings.

Explore the fascinating aspects of language evolution and change, including phonetic, syntactic, and semantic transitions. Delve into the cognitive, structural, and social factors that influence how languages develop over time. This quiz also covers the differences in language structures and typologies.