Families of languages: the Indo-European family

Important facts:

-          Of the 6,000 languages of the world, 140 are Indo-European.

-          Almost half of the world´s population speaks an Indo-European language.

-          Most of the major European languages are Indo-European, but not Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian or Basque.

        

        Proto-Indo-European family tree.

Doblets and triplets: Practice

Look up on a monolingual dictionary the meaning of the following doublets. Can you find semantic differences between both synonyms? 

Doom/judgment

House/mansion

Hearty/cordial

Wish/desire

Ox/beef

Hide/conceal

Wedding/marriage

Pig/pork

Love/charity

Freedom/liberty

Rise/mount/ascend

Room/chamber



Rememeber: follow this link to get the proper definition of doublets and triplets: Cognates, doublets and triplets

Proto-Language: PIE

The proto language is the single, common source which a group of genetically related languages shared. It has been conserved records of some proto languages, but most of existing proto languages is not recorded.

Moreover, Sir William Jones said that maybe the original source if the Indo-European languages “no longer exists” and, of course, PIE is unattested, it has been conserved no records. And Proto Germanic –the original language of all Germanic languages- is also unattested.

RECONSTRUCTION

Though deductive processes, scholars are able to partially reconstruct an unattested proto-language. It is possible, above all, regarding the vocabulary and the structures of languages. And, as it is not recorded, all reconstructed words must be marked by an asterisk.

For the process of reconstruction, it is used the comparative method, which uses sister languages and cognates. 

* Sister languages: languages assumed to be genetically related descendent of a common language.*Cognates: forms od a same word existing in different languages. They are similar, but not identical, and the process of identifying cognates presupposes the recognition of sound changes of one and the other language compared.  


Steps of reconstruction

  1.      Eliminating borrowing words
 2.    Establishing cognate sets
 3.    Sound correspondences are traced. 

The work of reconstruction is very hard, and many works of reconstruction, as well as of structure and vocabulary has been done. For reconstructions, the inflections can be used, as the recorded ancient Indo-European languages preserved in writing are also inflected. In the same way –still regarding the work of reconstruction-, it is known that PIE had a number of noun classes and a case system.


But, what is a cognate? And what are doublets and triplets? Follow this link and get a proper definition: 

Cognates, doublets and triplets

Grimm´s Law: Practice

And here, you have a very easy exercise about Grimm´s Law. Feel free to make it, as it has not been much treated in class. In the case you do it, the solution will serve you in helping of other exercises you have to upload in campus. 

As, well, use this link to answer question D of the exercise you have to upload before 31th December 

PRACTISE.

Exercise Grimm´s Law

PIE	Grmc.	Mod.E.
Mük	Mü__on	Mow
Mod	Mo__jan	Meet
Gerbh	__er__an	Carve
Ghalgh	__al__	Gallows
Tel	__il	deal
Dhren	__ren	drone

The answers to this question are going to be uploaded after 31th December. 

The discovery of Indo-European: Grimm´s Law

Scholars, to raise the concept of a Proto-Indo-European language, had to work hard in their studies. First of all, they thought that they have to find the “original language” from which all other languages had derived. But they firstly thought that this original language has to be a known ancient language, such as Greek or Latin. But they were wrong (confusion with Tower of Babel or degeneration).

It was William Jones who clearly saw the nature of connections among Indo-European languages. He “played” with forms of grammar –a more reliable indicator than vocabulary- to establish connections among languages. In that way, he was the responsible of the beginnings of the comparative method.

A comparative method is a study of the development of the Indo-Europeans languages and the reconstruction of their common source, the Proto-Indo-European. Men who contributed to enrich this study were Jacob Grimm or Karl Verner. 

GRIMM´S LAW. 

It was so important Grim that it is essential to speak about it, as he with the Grimm´s Law was one of the two most important sound changes in the history of English.

It is also called the First Sound Shift. Grimm was only one part of this system of change; the other part was Karl Verner with Verner´s Law.

It is a part of study of phonological changes from PIE to Germanic.

Grimm´s Law posits an unconditioned sound change of massive proportions, affecting all the stop consonants of PIE, since all of the Germanic languages show the effects of Grimm´s Law.

		Grimm´s Law
From voiceless stop in PIE to voiceless fricatives in Germanic.	*p > *f	*t > *∂	*k > *h	Change on the articulation
From voiced stop in PIE to voiceless stops in Germanic.	*b > *p	*d > *t	*g > *k	Devoicing
From voiced stop in PIE to voiced stops in Germanic.	*bh > *b	*dh > *d	*gh > *g	Loss of aspiration

Classification of languages

You have here a table in which you can visualize easily that languages are classified according these two different systems.

Systems   of      classification	of              language
Typological classification	Genealogical classification
Based on particular structural features found in languages. No attention to the derivation of language.	Based on common origin of and historical relations among languages. Genetically related languages are very different among them. Family tree.

Topic 1: Origins

TOPIC 1: ORIGINS

This is the first topic of your course. From now to the second topic -Old English-, what I am going to do is to post some entries talking about the main aspects of this topic, as well as some exercises that will serve you to make a review for your final exam.

You have here schemes and tablas containing the main information that you have to get in mind; you have also here some further but interesting information and also some exercises of several of the main points.

I hope they are useful for you; this blog is prepared for you in order to pass in an easier way your final exam.