JPN494: Japanese Language and Linguistics JPN520:

JPN494/598: History of the
Japanese Language
Basic concepts in historical linguistics
Basic Concepts in Historical Linguistics
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synchronic vs. diachronic studies
dia- (through) + chronos (time) + -ic
Diachronic linguistics is concerned with
change in language or languages over time.
Synchronic linguistics deals with a language
at a single point of time.
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philology: (i) historical linguistics, the
historical study of language; (ii) the study of
old written documents, linguistic studies
based on old writings
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etymology: (the study of) historical origins of
individual words
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稲荷寿司 (いなりずし)
面白い (おもしろい)
glamour < ‘grammar’
cf. folk-etymology
 デマ (‘false rumor’) < でまかせ?
 asparagus < sparrow-grass?
(ク語法)
“見らく少なく恋ふらくの多き”
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見らく (‘見ること’), 恋ふらく (‘恋いること’), 清けく (‘清いこと’)
見る + あく (miru + aku) ?
恋ふる + あく (kouru + aku) ?
清き + あく (kiyoki + aku)?
あく = ‘こと、ところ’
あくがる (Mod J: あこがれる ‘to admire, to be attracted to’ )
Varieties of Linguistic Changes
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Domain: Sound, Syntactic, and Lexical
Changes, etc.
Cause: Analogy, Borrowing, etc. (or no
obvious cause)
Sound changes
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Regular Changes
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conditioned or unconditioned?
phonemic or not? (e.g. whether they lead to a
change of the phonemic system)
Sporadic Changes
Two major types of sounds
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Consonants: speech-sounds produced when
the speaker either stops or severely
constricts the airflow in the vocal tract.
Vowels: speech-sounds produced with a
relatively open vocal tract, which functions as
a resonating chamber.
Consonants
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Place(s) of Articulation:
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Manner of Articulation
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lips, teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, velum (soft
palate), …
stops (plosives), fricatives, affricates,
approximants, …
Voicing (Phonation)
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voiced vs. voiceless
Vowels
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Three major parameters that characterize a
vowel:
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How wide the mouth is open (or, how high the
tongue is) (open, open-mid, close-mid, close)
How forward the tongue position is (front, central,
back)
The shape of the lips (rounded, spread)
Simple vowels (monophthong) can be
combined to form a diphthong (e.g. English
[aɪ] as in I am …) or triphthong.
Web resources
The original IPA chart:
(http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html)
“Pronounceable” IPA chart with sound files:
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1.
2.
(http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/charts/IPAla
b/IPAlab.htm) (U of Victoria)
(http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguisti
cs/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapt
er1.html) (UCLA)
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Plosives (Stops): complete closure of the
articulators, which blocks the air stream
through the mouth.
Nasals: the same as plosives but with airflow
through the nasal cavity & nostrils.
Fricatives: close approximation of two
articulators; the air stream is partially
obstructed and turbulent airflow is produced
Affricates: continuous sequences of plosives
and fricatives
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Taps (Flaps): a quick contact of two
articulators (e.g. the tongue and the alveolar
ridge)
Trills: repeated quick contacts of articulators
Approximants: A gesture in which one
articulator is close to another, but without the
vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent
that a turbulent airstream is produced.
(Lateral: the tongue is in contact with the
upper structure of the mouth.)
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Regular sound change: a kind of change
that takes place whenever the sound or
sounds which undergo the change are found
in the circumstances or environments that
condition the change.
Conditioned vs. unconditioned sound
changes
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p > b / V _ V (Latin to Spanish)
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capillus > cabello, caput > cabo, …
pater > padre, professio > profesión, …
 > j (in many dialects of Spanish)
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calle: [kae] > [kaje], llamar: [amar] > [jamar]
halla ‘find’ vs. haya ‘have (subj.)’
Merger, loss, split of sounds (phonemes)
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Certain (regular) sound changes affect the
phonemic system of a language, while certain
others don’t.
Phonology vs. Phonetics
Phonetics deals with linguistic sounds as
physical objects (phones).
Phonology deals with linguistic sounds as
units of meaningful expressions
(phonemes).
Phonetics vs. Phonology
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pin [phɪn], spin [spɪn], pop [phɑp]
[ph] vs. [p]: “different” or “same”?
They are different from the phonetic
perspective, but the same from the
phonological perspective.
[ph] and [p] are allophones of the same
phoneme, /p/ (in English).
Notational Convention
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phonetic description: […] (e.g. [phɪn])
phonological (phonemic) description: /…/ (e.g.
/pɪn/)
Complementary distribution
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Complementary distribution: allophones do not
occur in the same phonological environment
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OK: pin [phɪn], spin [spɪn]
??: pin [pɪn], spin [sphɪn]
Pairs of expressions that have different meanings
and that differ in only one sound (phone) are called
minimal pairs; they can be used to show that two
phones are not allophones of the same phoneme.
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pin: bin
hit : heat
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Allophones in one language are not
necessarily allophones in another language.
[p] and [ph ] are considered the “same” in
English (phonologically).
But they are not in some other languages

비 [pi] ‘rain’ vs. 피 [phi] ‘blood’ (Korean)
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The inventory of phonemes of a given
language may expand or shrink through
historical change.
(Not all sound changes, on the other hand,
affect the number of phonemes in the
language.)
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// and /j/ merged (into /j/) in many dialects
of Spanish
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halla ‘find’ vs. haya ‘have (subj.)’
/ɑ/ and /ɔ/ merged (into /ɑ/) for many
speakers of American English (e.g. law vs. la,
cot vs. caught)
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Sporadic (non-regular) sound changes:
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E.g.:
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けむり [kemuri] ‘smoke’ < けぶり [keburi]
たき [taki] ‘water fall’ < たぎ [tagi]
Syntactic Change
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The Wycliff Bible (14th century; middle
English):
And a litil aftir, they that stooden camen, and
seiden to Petir, treuli thou art of hem for thi speche
makith thee knowun.
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The King James Bible (1611; early modern
E.):
And after a while came vnto him they that stood by,
and saide to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them,
for thy speech bewrayeth thee.
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The New English Bible (1961; modern E.):
Shortly afterwards the bystanders came up and said
to Peter, ‘Surely you are another of them; your
accent gives you away!’
Lexical changes
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The vocabulary (the collection of words) of a
language may acquire new members
through:
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borrowing
coining
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gas, smog
(to) xerox, guillotine, canary
radar (< radio direction and ranging), VCR (< video
casette recorder) (acronym/alphabetism)
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Words may be lost; sometimes they are
replaced by new words; sometimes they
simply become obsolete along with the
concepts associated with them.
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活動写真 (かつどうしゃしん; motion picture)
年貢 (ねんぐ; land tax)
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Meanings associated with words can change
through time, with the phonetic forms
unchanged.
There are various types of semantic changes;
a complete/consistent classification is hard to
come by.
Varieties of semantic changes
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widening & narrowing
degeneration & elevation
hyperbole, litotes
euphemism
semantic expansion by metaphor and
metonymy
Widening & Narrowing
Widening
 dog: ‘a specific breed of dog’ > ‘dog in general’
 salary: (a Latin word for) ‘a soldier’s allotment of salt’
> ‘a soldier’s pay’ > ‘wages in general’
Narrowing
 hound: ‘dogs in general’ > ‘a specific type of dog’
 meat: ‘food in general’ > ‘meat’
Degeneration & Elevation
Degeneration
 silly: ‘happy, innocent’ > ‘foolish’
 putta: ‘girl’ > ‘whore’ (Italian)
Elevation
 knight: ‘boy, servant’ > ‘mounted worrior,
nobility’
 pretty: ‘crafty, sly’ > ‘lovely’
Hyperbole & Litotes
Hyperbole (Exaggeration)
 ‘I am terribly sorry.’
Litotes (Understatement)
 meurtre: ‘to bruise’ > ‘to kill’ (Spanish)
Euphemism
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euphemism: replacement of words regarded
as unpleasant/obscene
“Terms for ‘toilet’ frequently come to be
considered indelicate, and substitutions lacking
the distressing sentiments are made”
(Campbell 99: 263)
water closet (WC) → toilet → bathroom,
mens’/ladies’ room, rest room, etc.
Semantic expansion
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polysemy & (lexical) ambiguity
A word (form) is called polysemous when it
has multiple meanings (that are connected
with each other)
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bank: (i) financial institution, (ii) river side
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Expansion by metaphor
 grasp: {‘seize’} > {‘seize’, ‘understand’}
 to chill: {‘to cool down’} > {‘to cool down’, ‘to calm down, to relax’}
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leg, crane, は (歯・刃)
before
Metaphor: a process whereby one thing is conceptualized in
terms of another, with a leap across semantic domains.
A metaphor is based on the resemblance of two things. (e.g. Snow
White)
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Expansion by metonymy
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dish: {‘tableware’} > {‘tableware’, ‘food’}
timber: {‘room, building’} > {‘building’, ‘material for building (wood)’} >
{‘wood’}
メガネ, blonde
Champagne, Toyota
go to bathroom, 頭を下げる, 頭を抱える
Metonymy: a process whereby the name of one thing is
substituted by the name of another, closely related object.
A metonymy is based on the contiguity/relevance of two things.
(product-place, person-attire, part-whole, etc.) (e.g. Little Red Riding
Hood)
Borrowing
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Lexical borrowing (loanwords) is very
common in Japanese as well as in English.
Japanese words can be classified by their
origins:
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和語 (わご); 固有語 (こゆうご) native words
漢語 (かんご) Sino-Japanese words
洋語 (ようご) foreign words
混種語 (こんしゅご) hybrid words
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Motivation for (lexical) borrowing
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need: coffee, tobacco; コーヒー, タバコ
prestige: アクロバット (かるわざ, 曲芸), アナリスト
(分析家), アメニティー (快適さ), …
“English could have done perfectly well with only
native terms for ‘pig meat’ and ‘cow meat’, but for
reasons of prestige, pork and beef were borrowed
[from French].” (Campbell 99:64)
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Sound borrowing is less common than lexical
borrowing, but may happen after
extensive/intimate language contact.
/ʒ/ (as in leisure, vision) became an English
phoneme through French loanwords.
(cf. leisure vs. ledger)
ファン [ɸaɴ], ティー [ti:]
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Syntactic borrowing: “is much more frequent and
important than some scholars have thought in the
past” (Campbell 99)
(From Spanish to Pipil)
 Esa mujer es más linda que tú.
 ne siwa:t mas galá:na ke taha
Analogy (analogical change)
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Analogy has been considered one of the most
important factors in linguistic change (along with
regular sound change and borrowing).
The definition of linguistic analogy, however, tends
to be quite vague.
E.g., “Analogy is a process whereby one form of a
language becomes more like another with which it is
somehow associated.”
ex. January, Febuary, …
Analogy is a “wastebasket” category of
linguistic change, and includes various
subtypes, such as:
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…
proportional analogy
 analogical leveling
 analogical extension
metanalysis
hypercorrection
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A proportional analogical change can be
represented in an equation of the form:
A:B=C:X
where one solves for X.
A proportional analogical change that makes the
paradigm {simpler/more uniform} is
called analogical leveling.
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ex 1:
old-elder-eldest > old-older-oldest
late-latter-last > late-later-latest
new : newer = old : x
ex 2:
Standard English
I was
We were
You were
You were
He was
They were
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Some dialects (e.g. Smith Island English)
I was
We was
You was
You was
He was
They was
A proportional analogical change that makes the
paradigm {more complex/irregular} is
called analogical extension.
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ex 1:
ride : rode = dive : x
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ex 2: ラ抜き言葉 (らぬきことば)
Type 1 - verb
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書く : 書かれる : 書ける
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読む : 読まれる : 読める
Type 2 - verb
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食べる : 食べられる : 食べれる
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見る : 見られる : 見れる
Type 1 - verb
 kak-u : kak-are-ru : kak-e-ru
 yom-u : yom-are-ru : yom-e-ru
Type 2 - verb
 tabe-ru : tabe-rare-ru : tabe-re-ru
 mi-ru : mi-rare-ru : mi-re-ru
are : rare = e : X
Hypercorrection involves an attempt to change a
form in a less prestigious variety to make it
conform to how it would be pronounced in a more
prestigious variety.
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lawn > lawned, across > acrost (in analogy with han
vs. hand, firs vs. first)
umbrella > umbrellow (in analogy with fella vs.
fellow)
Metanalysis involves a change in the structural
analysis (by the speakers).
amalgamation
all most > almost; do on > don
 reanalysis
a norange > an orange; a napron > an apron
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Models of linguistic change/diversification
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The family tree model vs. The
dialectological model (the wave theory)
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The family tree model: attempts to show
how languages (& dialects) diversify and how
language families are classified (typically
using the comparative method).
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The family tree model emphasizes on the regularity of
sound changes.
“Sound laws suffer no exception.”
Thanks to the regularity of sound changes, we are
able to reconstruct extinct, ancestral languages
(proto-languages), using the comparative method.
Many scholars believe that the comparative method is
effective for the reconstruction of the syntax of the
proto-language as well (as opposed to the sound
system only)
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The “wave theory” (the dialectological
model):
“Each word has its own history.”
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“Linguistic changes spread outward
concentrically like waves, which become
progressively weaker with the distance from
their central point.”
k > ʃ / _ a (from Latin to French)
1.
2.
3.
4.
candēla > chandelle
cantāre > chanter
cattu(s) > chat
campus > champ
‘candle’
‘sing’
‘cat’
‘field’
(ʃ)
(ʃ)
(k)
(k)
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regular sound changes + borrowing +
analogical changes
“Neither the family tree model nor the
dialectological model [(the wave theory)] is
sufficient to explain all of linguistic change
and all the sorts of relationships that can exist
between dialects and related languages.”
The wave theory deals with changes due to
contact among languages and dialects.
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Excerpts from Campbell (2004)
Excerpt from Shibatani (1990)
IPA chart
Assignment #1

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