INSTRUCTOR'S MANUAL for Historical Linguistics: an Introduction (Third Edition) Lyle Campbell University of Hawai‘i Mānoa © Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Not for sale – This manual is available only to instructors who have adopted the accompanying textbook for course use. The manual is not available to students, or to those studying the book by themselves. Instructors may not sell or transfer the manual to others or make any of the solutions publicly accessible, on the Web or otherwise. INSTRUCTOR'S MANUAL Historical Linguistics: an Introduction Table of Contents PREFACE Chapter 1 Introduction, Exercise and solutions 1 Chapter 2 Sound change, Exercise and solutions 10 Chapter 3 Borrowing, Exercise and solutions 26 Chapter 4 Analogical change, Exercise and solutions 55 Chapter 5 Comparative method, Exercise and solutions 58 Chapter 6 Language Classification, Exercise and solutions 90 Chapter 7 Models of Linguistic Change (No exercises) Chapter 8 Internal reconstruction, Exercise and solutions 94 Chapter 9 Semantic and lexical change, Exercise and solutions 119 Chapter 10 Morphological Change (No exercises) Chapter 11 Syntactic change, Exercise and solutions 123 Chapter 12 Language Contact (No exercises) Chapter 13 Explanation (No exercises) Chapter 14 Distant Genetic Relationship, Exercise and solutions 129 Chapter 15 Philology and writing, Exercise and solutions (No exercises) Chapter 16 Linguistics prehistory, Exercise and solutions 141 Chapter 17 Quantitative Approaches to Historical Linguistics (No exercises) PREFACE The primary mission of this manual is to provide sample answers or possible solutions to the exercises in the Historical Linguistics: an Introduction, 3rd edition. For many of the exercises, of course, there is no definitive or unique single solution, and other answers than those given here may often be possible. The purpose here is to provide sample possible answers which indicate how the exercise might be approached and solutions sought. For ease of access, the exercises with their questions are repeated here, followed by possible solutions. The exercise instructions and examples are color-coded in BLACK. Solutions are in BLUE. Notes and incidental comments are in RED EXERCISES FOR CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Exercise 1.1 This exercise is about attitudes towards language change. 1. Try to find letters to newspapers or columns in newspapers or magazines, or on blogs, which express which express opinions on the quality of English in use today and about changes that are taking place. What do you think they reveal about attitudes towards language change? 2. Ask your friends, family and associates what they think about language today; do they think it is changing, and if so, is it getting better or worse? 3. Find books or articles on ‘proper’ English (prescriptive grammar); do they reveal any attitude towards changes that are going on in today’s language? 4. Consider the many things that schoolteachers or school grammar books warn you against as being ‘wrong’ or ‘bad grammar’. Do any of these involve changes in the language? 5. Compare books on etiquette written recently with some written thirty years ago or more; find the sections which deal with appropriate ways of speaking and use of the language. What changes have taken place in the recommendations made then and now? Do these reveal anything about change in the language or in language use? Anything the reader finds involving attitudes towards language change can contribute to answering the questions of this exercise. An internet search for “attitudes towards language change”, “language attitudes”, “proper language”, “improper language”, “correct language”, “language etiquette”, “correct grammar”, “bad grammar”, or “prescriptive grammar”, for example, should provide sources relevant to parts 1., 3., 4., and 5. of this exercise. For part 2., ask friends, family, and associates. Exercise 1.2 Observe the language you hear around you, and think about any changes that are going on now or have taken place in your lifetime. For example, if you are old enough, you might observe that gay has changed its basic meaning: today it mostly means ‘homosexual’ although until recently it did not have this meaning, but rather meant only ‘happy, cheerful’. Slang changes at a rather fast rate; what observations might you make about recent slang versus earlier slang? Can you find examples of ongoing change in other areas of the language besides just vocabulary? Any observations about what may appear to be language change taking place currently are appropriate as answers to this question. Examples of lexical change are the easiest to identify 1 for people not trained in linguistics; slang and obscenities typically offer examples. You might notice such things as the tendency to lose the subjunctive in English, as in I wish Gollum was smarter instead of I wish Gollum were smarter, or the use of is is where standard English would have only a single is, as in The problem is is that his feet are too big, rather than standard The problem is that his feet are too big – perhaps on analogy to sentences such as, What the problem is is that his feet are too big. Some people are able to notice differences in pronunciation of vowels in some regions that seem to reflect ongoing changes. Exercise 1.3 Changes in spelling and occasional misspellings have been used to make inferences about changes in pronunciation. This can, of course, be misleading, since spelling conventions are sometimes used for other purposes than just to represent pronunciation. Try to find examples of recent differences in spelling or of misspellings and then try to imagine what they might mean, say, to future linguists looking back trying to determine what changed and when it changed. For example, you might compare the spelling lite with light, gonna with going to, wannabee with want to be, or alright and alot with all right and a lot respectively. In particular, variations in spellings can be very revealing; see if you can find examples which may suggest something about language change. Any examples of spellings not generally considered standard or examples of frequent misspellings can be possible answers. An internet search of things such as “occasional spelling”, “bad spelling”, “spelling errors”, etc. will turn up numerous examples. Exercise 1.4 Shakespeare A number of examples from Shakespeare’s plays, written in the Early Modern English period, are presented here which illustrate differences from how the same thing would be said today. Think about each example and attempt to state what changes have taken place in the language that would account for the differences you see in the constructions mentioned in the headings, the negatives, auxiliary verbs and so on. For example, in the first one we see: Saw you the weird sisters? The modern English equivalent would be Did you see the weird sisters? Had the heading directed your attention to yes–no questions, you would attempt to state what change had taken place, from former saw you (with inversion from you saw) to the modern version which no longer involves inversion but requires a form of do (did you see) which was not utilized in Shakespeare’s version. Treatment of negatives: 1. Saw you the weird sisters? . Came they not by you? (Macbeth IV, i) 2. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not (A Midsummer Night’s Dream II, 1, 188) 3. I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers (Henry V V, v) 4. Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Hamlet: I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Wittenberg (Hamlet I, ii) 2 5. But yet you draw not iron (AMidsummer Night’s Dream II, i, 196) 6. Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit (A Midsummer Night’s Dream II, i, 211) 7. And I am sick when I look not on you (A Midsummer Night’s Dream II, i, 213) 8. I will not budge for no man’s pleasure (Romeo and Juliet III, i) 9. I cannot weep, nor answer have I none (Othello IV, ii) 10. I am not sorry neither (Othello V, ii). Negatives: Auxiliary do is inserted with main verbs (not with forms of to be or modals); not (or its contraction, -n’t) is placed after an auxiliary, modal verb, or a form of the verb to be: 1. Came they not by you? > Didn’t they come by you? (Auxiliary do). 2. I love thee not, therefore pursue me not > I don’t [or do not] love you, therefore don’t [or do not] pursue me. 3. I know thee not ... > I don’t [or do not] know you ... The former use of double negatives is no longer grammatical in Standard English: 8. I will not budge for no man’s pleasure > I will not budge for any man’s pleasure / I will budge for no man’s pleasure. 9. I cannot weep, nor answer have I none > I cannot weep, nor do I have any answer. 10. I am not sorry neither > I am not sorry either. Treatment of auxiliary verbs: 1. Macduff is fled to England (Macbeth IV, i) = ‘has fled’ 2. The king himself is rode to view their battle (Henry V IV, iii) = ‘has ridden’ 3. Thou told’st me they were stolen into this wood (A Midsummer Night’s Dream II, i, 191) = ‘had stolen away/hidden’ Auxiliary verbs: Forms of to be as the auxiliary verb in constructions with main verbs of motion in the Present Perfect or Past Perfect have changed to corresponding forms to the auxiliary have: 1. Macduff is fled to England > Macduff has fled to England.