LINGUIS 100 1st Edition Lecture 17 Sound Changes a How are sounds different and what has changed in history that has made sounds into what they are today b In words like tooth we see that the d in the original latin word dente has changed to a t sound i Latin didn t change in this situation but that is not to say that it doesn t in other situations because it does ii It just so happens that Latin influences the English change in this example c You can compare words You want to compare things that probably existed 5 000 years plus ago i Words that describe body parts are good for this ii Words that involve technology or anything super recent are not e g computer iii Sometimes you cannot compare the exact same word even though the 5 000 year rule may apply 1 E g the word tree is not similar to the German word for tree but there is another word that is and that is bean which is resembled closely to this when translated to German d Shift Meaning i Words like prayer actually meant bead e History i Know that historical events and relations across countries impact how languages developed and formed to specific people in certain regions ii We cannot stop language changes from happening iii Historical Linguistics is important for us as English speakers because of odd spelling of words that have been influenced by historical contexts we can explain some of the exceptions with historical reasoning f Working with Languages i When Dr Pattillo does work she works with at least 100 languages and tries to get many samples from numerous language families ii Papua New Guinea has over 800 languages spoken one of the most linguistically diverse place in the world iii Questions to ask in Research 1 If a language does this does it also do that 2 Can certain parts of languages be predicted and are they systematic across numerous languages g Cross Linguistic Tendencies i All languages have nouns and verbs ii All languages have plurals iii All languages have vowels and consonants h Statements i If we have this then we have that 1 If a language has voiced stops it also has voiceless stops i ii Some languages are accusative and others are ergative meaning that accusative languages have cases that dictate how the grammar of the language words whereas others do not do this like English iii If a language differs in the singular form it will also do that in the plural form What do typologists do i Know how to approach data and read it in order to make statements about a number of languages ii Study specific vocabulary concepts like the expression of colors and how many terms specific languages have for each iii If a language has this then it also has that 1 Languages have hierarchies a Humans animals plants minerals other 2 Cannot work around the natural process of accusative cases that have a natural flow of how they are learned a Predicts how languages are behaved but doesn t predict how speakers see the world b Just because you don t have a word or a way of saying something in one language doesn t mean that you cannot see it iv Why do we care about Typology 1 It helps us portray something as accurately as possible 2 Don t want to have skewed data and this teaches us how to collect it correctly and accurately 3 If we put things out of order does this help us teach the language effectively 4 How do we impose language before it dies with it s limited speakers that take it with them