Language Change: Historical Linguistics II

Why do Languages Change?

• Language Contact
• Through migration, conquest, trade
• Adults may learn the new language as a second language
• Children may be fully bilingual
• Results in borrowing of words, sounds, even syntactic constructions

Borrowing

• Borrowed words with sounds not in the borrowing language may be “nativized”
• e.g. Russian does not have [h]
• German words with [h] borrowed into Russian change to [g]
• German Hospital -> Russian gospital

Borrowing

• Or, the borrowed sounds may be incorporated into the new language (Bach [x])
• If the borrowing is extensive enough, a new phoneme may be added to the borrowing language

Language change: good or bad?

• Not an aesthetic question!
• All stages of language are valid expressions of our language instinct (Universal Grammar)
• Just as all languages and dialects are valid expressions of our language instinct