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History of English
Which 4 types of evidence do we have for historical stages?
1) Linguistic (textual) evidence
2) Metalinguistic evidence
3) Comparative reconstruction
4) Internal reconstruction
History of English
What are examples for metalinguistic evidence?
Old grammar books and dictionaries
History of English
Define 'Comparative reconstruction'!
Similarities between words in different languages point to common ancestry. Ancestor languages can be reconstructed by comparison.
History of English
What's a cognate?
Words from different languages displaying similarities in terms of form and meaning due to common ancestry (as opposed to eg borrowing) = data for comparative reconstruction
History of English
What aims comparative reconstruction to do? Name two principles regarding this aim!
It aims to detect regular correspondences between speech sounds.
-> Naturalness Principle (some sound changes more natural...e.g. vowel nasalisation plus nasal deletion)
-> Majority Principle: Change is (supposed to be) rarer than non-change (i.e parallel changes in related languages are unlikely)
History of English
What is internal reconstruction?
A method for reconstructing earlier language stages that relies on comparative data from within one language
History of English
What is the prehistory of English? (roots, tree diagram)
PIE --> Germanic --> West Germanic --> Old English --> Middle English --> Modern English
History of English
Why don't we have linguistic evidence from PIE? And how do we then know where it comes from?
History of English
What is Grimm's Law (First Germanic Consonant Shift)?
Regular sound change which affected the PIE plosive consonant inventory
History of English
Which Germanic innovations exist in terms of their separation from other Indo-European languages?
History of English
What is the 'Fixed Root Initial Stress'?
Development of a strong stress on first syllable of the root, leading to phonological reduction in other syllables
History of English
What is a Weak Past Tense?
Class of verbs for which past tense is indicated by dental suffix (instead of vowel alternation)
eg loved (lufode), bought (brothe) kept (cepte)
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