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Historical Linguistics
Discover how languages evolve and split over time through semantic drift, back formations, and regular sound changes with MIT professor Norvin Richards.
Lecture guide · Written by AI from the lecture. For the lecture’s own words, open the Transcript tab.
Explores the mechanisms of historical linguistics, explaining how semantic drift, recuttings, back formations, and regular sound changes drive language evolution and divergence. Norvin Richards demonstrates how comparative reconstruction and sound laws allow linguists to establish family relationships among languages while debunking pseudo-scientific practices like glottochronology and megalocomparison.
Key Takeaways
- Language change is driven by regular, systematic sound shifts rather than random vocabulary similarities.
- The comparative method allows linguists to reconstruct ancestral proto-languages and determine genetic relationships.
- Semantic drift encompasses shifts such as narrowing, broadening, and pejoration over time.
- Recuttings and back formations can create entirely new morphemes or words based on surface misanalyses.
Concepts Explained19
arbitrariness of the sign—The principle that the association between a word's sound and its meaning is generally accidental rather than inherently motivated.
semantic drift—The historical process by which the meanings of words change over time.
pejoration—A semantic shift where a word acquires increasingly negative connotations over time.
Reconstruction—Hypothesizing the ancestral form of a word or language family based on descendant forms when no direct written records exist.
Examples, Proofs & Derivations
Works & Sources Cited2
Book
Canterbury Tales—Geoffrey Chaucer, cited for its use of the old word ek (also).
Book
Memoirs of a Fieldworker—Book by Robert Dixon detailing his fieldwork on Australian Aboriginal languages.