Historical linguistics

Historical linguistics or diachronic linguistics is the linguistic discipline that studies the change of languages over time and the process of linguistic change. Therefore, it occupies a prominent place in the study of the genetic relationship of languages.

The results of historical linguistics can often be compared with those of other disciplines such as history, archeology or genetics. In interdisciplinary studies of this type, what is sought is to reconstruct the relative chronology of contacts between peoples, routes of expansion, and mutual cultural influences.

Within historical linguistics, the techniques of comparative linguistics are especially important, among which the comparative method stands out.

Synchronous methods of linguistic reconstruction

External Reconstruction: Comparative Method

Similarities between different languages obey one of three possible causes: a) chance; b) linguistic borrowing; c) inheritance or kinship.

When the similarities between words in different languages are due to a common origin, these words are called cognates. These cognates can be used to determine the succession of phonetic changes within a language or a group of languages (which makes it possible to partially reconstruct the history of a language family) or the degree of closeness of two languages within a family.

When examining a list of cognates, regular phonetic correspondences are seen, for example, many basic words in Germanic languages such as fish 'pez', father 'father', for 'for', start with f-, while in Romance languages their equivalents are similar but begin with p-. Similarly, question words show a wh- / what- correspondence: who 'who', what 'what', where 'dónde' (Latin quo), when 'cuando' (Latin when). From the regular phonetic correspondences you can try to reconstruct the phoneme behind each correspondence. For example, the correspondence between English wh- and Latin qu- is due to the fact that both sounds derive from the labiovelar *k^w from Proto-Indo-European, which evolved into Proto-Germanic *h^w (and was transcribed in Middle English as wh) and Latin archaic remained as *k^w (although it was written as qu-).

If all languages in a phylogenetically related group share a feature, we assume that the feature was present in the parent language. Thus, for example, all ancient Indo-European languages are inflectional languages with explicit case markings, so this feature must have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. Proto-Indo-European has been reconstructed primarily by the comparative method, reconstructing the elements behind every observed regular correspondence between the Indo-European languages.

Internal reconstruction

This method attempts to reconstruct ancient language systems from the data of a single language. It is based on the fact that present irregularities refer to processes that were regular in the past. This method is basically used with isolated languages for which relatives are unknown or in combination with external reconstruction. The results of the external reconstruction improve when an internal reconstruction is previously performed within each language.

Several examples of reconstruction can be given in Spanish, where their verbal paradigms present diphthongization in the presence of the accent I can, you can, can, we can, you can, they can (note that in the forms with ue the tonic accent falls on the dipotong, while the forms with o are unstressed), which would lead to reconstructing the old forms *pǫdo, *pǫdes, *pǫde, *pǫdemos,... (where /ǫ/ represents the open vowel []). Similarly, Latin resolves some participles that would produce three consonants in a row simplified to s instead of t (amā-re 'to love' > amā-tus 'beloved') or by deleting a consonant:

tondere 'afeitar'  tonsus (defeated from ♪. ♪tond-tos)

myttere 'send' ▪ Missus (defeated from ♪. *mitt-tos)

torquere 'torcer'  tortus (defeated from *torq-tos)

pectere 'peinar' ▼ pexus (defeated from ♪. *pect-sos)

yourere 'frotar, clean' 한 tersus (defeated from *terg-sos. *terg-tos)

Glottochronology

This method is based on certain assumptions of the retention of basic vocabulary items. The method compares the percentage of cognates (genetically related words) common to the compared languages. For many linguists, the basic assumptions are unrealistic, and they do not take into account the sociopolitical and cultural factors that can influence the evolution of a language in an important way. However, despite these objections, the method continues to be frequently discussed in textbooks of historical linguistics and articles continue to be written about its scope. There is also a set of glottochronological estimates that give results that are reasonably consistent with historical and archaeological data. Furthermore, when there are no written sources by which to investigate the past of that language, it is frequently one of the few existing alternatives.

Paleontology

Linguistic paleontology is the study of reconstructed lexical vocabulary relating to plants, animals, technology, and institutions. The knowledge of this lexical vocabulary and its comparison with archaeological, paleobotanical and paleozoological data provides clues about the past prehistory of a group of languages, allowing to conjecture hypotheses beyond the known historical records.

Origins of Historical Linguistics

Portrait of Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás, outstanding precursor of historical linguistics. His work Catalogue of known Languages (1805) is considered a pioneer in the systematic classification of the different languages.

The development of comparative grammar occurred mainly by Germanists. August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887), creator of comparative etymology, worked in the same direction as Franz Bopp or Jacob Grimm; Georg Curtius (1820-1885), best known for his Principles of Greek Etymology (1879); Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), whose Lectures on the Science of Language (1861) contributed to spreading the doctrines of the comparatists, and finally August Schleicher (1821-1868), who tried to codify and synthesize the set of Indo-European languages, then called Indo-Germanic. his Compendium of Comparative Grammar of Indo-Germanic Languages (1861) represents the systematization of all the efforts made by comparatists since Bopp and Grimm.

Neogrammatic School

The history of this linguistic discipline has its origins in the mid-19th century with the so-called Neogrammarians, interested in finding the roots of all European languages (Indo-European) and immutable phonetic laws without exceptions.

Two ideas were the foundations at that time for the development of the new form of linguistic study:

• in the first place, the change of languages is due not only to the conscious will of men, but also to an internal need^{[chuckles]required]}. The linguists of the time distinguished to this effect two types of relations between analogous words in two certain historical moments: the loan and the heritage heritagethe first relationship motivated by conscious changes and the second by unconscious changes or Internal to the tongue. In this sense, the assumption that a word may come, by inheritance, from a different word meant admitting that there are natural causes for linguistic change. Important consequence of this idea is that the comparison between languages also uses differences to establish kinship.

• second, linguistic change is regular and respects the internal organization of languages^{[chuckles]required]}. Acceptance of the idea that it is only considered a difference as a change if it manifests a certain regularity within the language, is essential for the configuration of historical linguistics as a fully scientific discipline; the study then called etymologywhich considered every word as a special problem. Regularity, on the contrary, implies that the difference between two analogous words comes from one of its constituents and that in all other words where the same constituent appears is affected by the same change. This purely structuralist thought was subsequently discarded by the diachronic linguists, who argue that the language is dynamic and the changes are not usually regular, but may affect only a small group of words of equal characteristics.

From this second idea it was concluded that, for the change to have regularity, it seemed necessary that it respect the grammatical organization of the language and only alter the word through its internal organization. For the rest, it was then suggested that this regularity could also occur in the phonetic components; Hence, in the XIX century, the study of phonetic laws was consolidated, one of the fields where historical linguistics obtained its roots. greatest hits.

Comparatism as a methodology

1816 is usually pointed to as the date of birth of historical linguistics with the appearance of the work System of conjugation of the Sanskrit language, compared with that of the Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic by the German linguist Franz Bopp. The title perfectly describes the methodology used: the so-called comparatism or comparative grammar, a technique used by various linguists of the time, including von Schlegel, Jacob Grimm, August Schleicher and Rasmus Kristian Rask. The initial characteristics of comparatismo were the following:

• Dedication to the study of the Indo-European languages, an interest derived from the discovery at the end of the 18th of the analogy between the Sanskrit and most European languages.
• Idea that among the Indo-European languages there is not only a resemblance, kinship: it is therefore of natural transformations of the same mother tongue, the indo-European.
• The comparative method: it is sought, first of all, to establish correspondence between the languages comparing them; this comparison is also among their grammatical elements. In this regard, the controversy arises as to whether attention should be paid to roots of the words or to the affixable elements of these (sufijos, prefixes...); at the beginning of the XIX, the comparison of the languages was essentially regarded as the comparison of the latter, as they were the least susceptible of being loans in isolation.

Later, the comparative method was applied to other families, very early to the Bantu languages and Malayo-Polynesian languages and during the XX century virtually all recognized families. Likewise, there has been an emphasis on the linguistic reconstruction of the protolanguages that gave rise to the families and groups, which name it.

Variety of language

Varieties within a historical language can be of three types, each of which corresponds to a specific linguistic system:

• Variances or diatopic varieties: It is the realizations of a language in the different territorial areas. The systems that correspond to these varieties are the dialects.
• Variances or diastrotic varieties: They are established among the sociocultural strata of a linguistic community. They are manifested in the levels of the language, also called social dialects or sociolects.
• Variances or diaphase varieties: Respond to the various forms of expression of the speakers in relation to the communicative situation. They are made in the styles of the tongue or records.