Historical Linguistics 3130 A

Extra reconstruction problems

Extra problems which we will take up at Monday's class are now available: Additional problems to work on for Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, 2005

I will try to go over these during Monday's class, but we will not have much time to spend on it, so it is important that you have worked on them ahead of time if you are to get any benefit from them.

We will also be discussing Section 5.4 to 5.6 of the textbook, which we should have done last class. Some of this will be review, so it may not take long. The important part is Grimm's Law, Verner's Law, and Grassman's Law, two of which should sound familiar. If possible, you should read this section before class, unless you have already done so.

We will cover the highlights of Section 6.1 to 6.4 (linguistic classification) on Monday's class in accordance with our schedule. It may help if you skim through it.

On Thursday, we will cover internal reconstruction (Chapter 8), but I would like to introduce it on Monday, so you can start to work on a couple of problems. Also on Thursday, we must finish off our brief survey of the history of writing systems.

The final class on Monday, December 5, is a review. We will have a chance to review the final homework then and to go over the topics you need to study for the final exam.

Solution to analogy exercise

The solution to exercise 4.2 is now posted. You should try to give this kind of detail in your actions if you can and make sure your explanations are as clear as possible.

Where I indicated "proportional analogy," those are all proportional analogies, but that phrase adds nothing to the answer, and would just as well be left out.

Readings for the second mid-term

This is a re-cap of the readings you should review for the second mid-term:

Campbell Ch. 4: Analogical change

All of this chapter except Section 4.5 was covered in detail. You can ignore Section 4.5 in your review. For the other sections, you should be able to identify given examples or provide examples yourself of the various types.

Kuryłowycz

From the October 11 web handout,

• You should be familiar with most of Kuryłowycz's "laws" and be able to give an example for at least two of them.
• You should be able to say what analogy is (using some combination of the definitions on page 3 of the handout)
• You do not need to know any details of Mańczak's list, but you should be able to compare his list with Kuryłowycz if given an example

The copies of the papers posted on October 20 are mainly for your reference and clarification. I am not requiring you to read them in detail. I do recommend reading the English translator's introductory notes, if you haven't read them already, as they contain helpful explanatory discussion.

The important points are outlined in the lecture notes posted October 20. These also contain the main points we covered on semantic change.

Semantic change and grammatical change

The parts to pay attention to were covered on the notes just mentioned. These are in Campbell Chapter 9. We only covered up to and including section 9.2.7 (pp. 252-262). You are not responsible for any of the rest of Chapter 9.

For syntactic change, you only need to read Section 10.4 from pages 292-293 and some of the examples that follow. You mainly need to know what it is and what the common signs of grammaticalization are.

Current issues in historical linguistics

You should be familiar with the points discussed regarding Lyle Campbell's State of the Art paper, linked from the posting on October 20. The outline of the notes is also in that posting. You should be prepared to discuss at least two of the current debates in historical linguistics.

Models of change and explanations

All of Chapter 7 (models) is relevant to what we covered. You should review all of it. Particularly, look at Section 7.5 which gives the framework of Weinreich et al.

For Chapter 11 on explanation, the important parts are 11.1, 11.2, and 11.4.6. The test will not include anything outside of that.

We discussed the unique circumstances of click consonants. You should be familiar with the extent of their range and where they came from. (This is also an areal linguistics topic.)

Areal linguistics

You should have read Campbell Chapter 12, although it is not necessary to read all of the examples which take up much of the chapter.

You should be familiar with Sarah Thomason's definition of a linguistic area as outlined in class and detailed in section 1 of her online paper linked from the course website. The rest of Thomason's paper is less important. Concentrate on Section 1. You should be able to name some linguistic area and you should know at least some of the languages involved. You should also be able to name the types of things that languages in such areas have in common. Some specific examples would be helpful here.

What you don't need to know are all the details of all of the examples. Those are mainly to clarify the principles involved.

Distant genetic relationships

The part of Chapter 13 to concentrate on is 13.1 and 13.2 (pp. 344-348). Know the general principles. You don't need to know all the languages in the list, but you should be familiar with these proposed groupings: Amerind, Eskimo-Uralic (and Ural-Altaic, Ural-Altaic/Eskimo-Aleut), Eurasiatic, Nostratic, Proto-World.

History of writing

You should read Section 14.5 of Campbell, although nothing in there is likely to be included on this test (but may be on the final exam). Campbell doesn't really say what I want to say about this. I will prepare notes which will be posted between now and Monday's class. We will also finish and tie together the discussion from last Thursday at the beginning of the review class.

The Phaistos Disk

We discussed the Phaistos disk last class. The ancient city of Phaistos is located on the island of Crete just south of the Greek mainland. Excavations of the ancient palace began in 1884 and the Phaistos disk was discovered there in 1908 along with many artifacts written in Linear A. Some people believe that the "writing" is related to Linear A, but other say that the disk does not appear to be any kind of Linear A.

Ancient writing found on the island of Crete includes Linear A, which has never been deciphered, and Linear B, which has. There is a web page by a professor at the University of Texas with some good illustrations comparing Linear A and Linear B.

The Phaistos disk is a continuing puzzle which still eludes decipherment. Many people have recently claimed to have solved the dilemma, but all of them seem to have considerable flaws or make false assumptions. A web page in Greece has an excellent list of recent attempts to decipher the Phaistos disk with some discussion about the various claims and links to more information about many of them. It's well worth taking at look at.

A whole page of high-resolution pictures of the disk and some objects that may be related is available on a French web site. There is also very extensive discussion in French there.