ANEXO I

Historical and
Comparative Linguistics

Historical Linguistics is the branch of linguistics concerned with:

1. The study of language change and stability,
2. The reconstruction of earlier stages of languages,
3. The discovery and implementation of research methodologies by which genetic
relationships among languages can be put forward.
The linguist is interested in a dynamic vision of language, thus she is not as concerned
with a specific static span of time. It is a fact that one cannot conceive the dynamic
relationships without framing them in different moments in time. Therefore, the main
point differentiating Descriptive from Historical Linguistics is that the former describes a
particular stage of a language. On the other hand, Historical Linguistics tries to address why
languages look the way they do; how the changes they have experienced can show how they
relate to each other; and finally, whether a parent language can be propounded for different
languages. In undertaking this task is where the Comparative Method is used, thus as the
student might suspect, Historical and Comparative Linguistics are branches of study which
are tightly interconnected.
Linguists studying diachronic changes must go back in time to stages in the language
where the differences between the old and current form are distinctly different. Those
stages are known as dead languages, thus no speakers can be used in their scientific study.
Therefore, linguists must entirely rely on extant written evidence which has survived in the
form of manuscripts. However, when texts are not found, inscriptions on stones or pieces of
jewellery can help as a starting point in the reconstruction of a language. One may claim that
an expert in diachronic linguistics contrasts texts from different periods. These texts reveal
384 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

the main aspects about the state of the language in distinct stages of the language. Since a
diachronic analysis always follows a synchronic analysis, it can be regarded as dependant on
it. However, as Bynon argues (1981: 15), that methodology will not catch the continuous
changing nature of language. She uses in her argumentations an illustrative analogy from
geometry. It states that explaining linguistic change through the confrontation of different
texts would not explain linguistic evolution, just as a series of straight lines linking the
different points of a circle do not explain that circle.
According to Bynon there are two factors internal to linguistics that have stood in
the way of the study of linguistic variation. The first factor is that synchronic studies
use idealisations of a language in order to describe it. This is due to the fact that the
actual variation existing in a specific moment is too large to be apprehended in a
synchronic grammar. The variation we are referring to depends on aspects such as
dialects, gender, social class and age. The two leading linguistic schools, structuralism
and generativism, have hindered historical linguistic analyses, since they use strong
generalisation of the actual linguistic system as their subject of study. As Bynon (1981:
16) puts it, quoting Hockett and Chomsky, for structuralists: “el procedimiento
descriptivo establece la ficción de que las distintas articulaciones en cuestión no poseen
orden temporal, espacial o social alguno,” while for generativists: “una gramática de
una lengua pretende ser una descripción de la competencia de un hablante-oyente
ideal.” In the analysis of current states of a language, the extent to which a system has
been idealized can be collated to the actual language, used by speakers, but this is not
feasible when it comes to dead languages.
The second factor that has hindered diachronic linguistics analyses can be found,
according to Bynon, in the belief that the way languages are transmitted is responsible
for a majority of linguistic changes. The life of speakers is limited, then a new generation
has to learn the language again. This recurrent acquisition process by children has been
claimed to play a relevant role in variation. The use of word forms such as goed instead of
went or volvido instead of vuelto resembles attested linguistic developments across time, for
example, the replacement of the old form of the past preterit of the verb helpan, holp with
helped. However, Bynon thinks that to attribute linguistic change to the improper learning
of the language by children gives a simplistic view of diachronic phenomena. Further, this
improper learning is counteracted by speakers that consciously struggle to keep the integrity
of the linguistic system.
Bynon concludes that even though the mistakes made by children may anticipate
linguistic variation, speakers of a language are not aware of this phenomenon. She suggests
a twofold strategy for the study of linguistic change. First, one has to focus on the different
grammars that result from the study of different time spans in the evolution of a language
and then contrast them with the description of other related languages. The changes
ANEXO I: Historical and Comparative Linguistics 385

attested in this kind of analysis should lead to the extrapolation of diachronic rules.
Secondly, linguistic variation must be approached as a phenomenon that cannot be
separated from sociological factors. Geographical space, implying contact between
unrelated languages, is thought to play an important role.

1 Origins

It can be argued that Historical Linguistics has its origin in the etymological speculations
of classical and medieval times, more specifically in the contrastive study of Greek and Latin
carried out in the Renaissance period and the search of scholars for a parent language of the
other languages of the world. However, more technically, the origin of Historical Linguistics
dates back to the nineteenth century, when Sanskrit, the ancestor of most northern Indian
languages, was the object of scientific analysis in Europe. Its analysis found that despite the
geographical and cultural differences between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin some similarities
could still be identified. It seemed obvious that the only explanation for these systematic
correspondences was the existence of genetic links among these languages. However, this
had been stated a century earlier by the English Orientalist Sir William Jones, who in
1786 stated that Greek and Latin bore more systematic similarities than could have been
produced by chance or massive borrowing. One of the great achievements of nineteenth
century linguists was the acknowledgement of the ubiquity of linguistic change. Even
though this may seem obvious to us, it must be noted that people have not always known
that languages actually change and evolve through time. The second major achievement of
nineteenth century linguists was the development of the Comparative Method, which will
be studied later in this lesson. In fact, much of what we know today about English and its
ancestors was discovered in this century. Historical events contributed to this new attitude
in linguistic research, viz. the extension of the empire enhanced the interest in a whole
range of languages other than the classics. The interest in Sanskrit increased the settlement
of Europeans in India after the discovery of a sea-route by Vasco de Gama in 1498. The
student may be wondering why the development of Comparative Linguistics did not take
place earlier. Beekes (1995: 11) points to three main reasons that explain this situation.
First, the Greeks were not sufficiently acquainted with other languages. Second, as we
have already mentioned, people had to learn that languages change. Previously, when some
change was identified it was considered a type of decay. The third reason is that Greeks
never compared words cross-linguistically, a technique which was solidly established in
India.
It is also important to note that tracing genetic relatedness back to the common
ancestor is not always as straightforward as it was with the case of Latin, Greek and
386 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

Sanskrit. Occasionally, languages evolve in a way that makes it impossible to identify any
correspondence. According to Trask (1996: 207), it takes 6000-8000 years when two
languages split for them to lose remnants of their common past. The historical linguist
can be considered a kind of archaeologist, who explores the remains of dead languages
to define its history and attempts a reconstruction of their ancestry. The comparison
between languages can be developed in relation to any of the different aspects of a
language: sounds, grammar or vocabulary. A common procedure was the comparison
of cognates, which allowed historical linguists to identify certain phonological patterns
which signalled that all these words come from the same ancestral parent language. This
was more obvious when these terms referred to basic daily concepts, since they are less
frequently borrowed. For the sake of example we include below the declension of the
verb to be in Sanskrit and Latin, so that the student can observe the correspondences for
herself (Beekes 1995: 15):
Sanskrit. as-mi ‘I am’ Latin s-um
as-i ‘you are’ es
as-ti ‘he is’ es-t
s-mas ‘we are’ s-umus
s-tha ‘you are’ es-tis
s-anti ‘they are’ s-unt

1 The Comparative Method

This method was developed within the framework of Comparative Linguistics,

also known as Comparative Grammar or Comparative Philology. As has already been
mentioned above, this was the most active branch of linguistics in the nineteenth. It was
highly promoted by Sir William Jones’ discovery that Greek, Sanskrit and Latin stemmed
from the same parent language. The Comparative Method was basically developed in
the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, and then it was used in the analysis of other
language families. The basis of this method is above all, the regular principle of phonological
change. This principle, as we will study in the following section, was introduced as a
linguistic rule by the Neogrammarians. At the beginning, the Neogrammarians’ hypothesis
endured strong opposition on the part of some schools, since, until they entered the
linguistic scene, phonological changes had not been considered rules, but tendencies.
Nevertheless, it was finally accepted as common procedure in the study of linguistic change
and the classification of language families. Patterns in phonological change were studied
in terms of sound laws, the most important being Grimm’s law and Verner’s Laws, both
ANEXO I: Historical and Comparative Linguistics 387

developed in connection with Germanic languages. It is also worth mentioning Saussure’s

Laryngeal Theory hypothesised for the Indo-European.
In the Comparative Method we can identify the following steps:
1) The isolation of a set of cognates, or putative cognates, for example the numeral ten:
Latin decem; Greek deca; Sanskrit daśa; Gothic taihun
2) A number of phonological correspondences can be extracted:
(a) Latin d; Greek d; Sanskrit d; Gothic t
(b) Latin e; Greek e; Sanskrit a; Gothic ai
(this orthography represents a
e sound in Gothic)
(c) Latin c; Greek c; Sanskrit ś; Gothic h
(d) Latin em; Greek a; Sanskrit a; Gothic un
The sound laws mentioned before would help the scholar to reconstruct a series of
phonemes. After analysing the above evidence it was concluded that the Proto-Indo-
European word for ten was *dekm. Using regular phonological principles, we can figure
out how this word developed into the different variants in the languages under analysis.
Therefore, as the student can see:
1. One single change separates the reconstructed form from the Latin term: *m > em;
2. In Greek we have two steps, the vocalization of the syllabic nasal and the
disappearance of nasality *m > a;
3. In Sanskrit two different, though related developments have taken place. On the one
hand, the palatalization of the velar *k > ś, and on the other, the same sound change
as in Greek *m > a.
4. The development that affected the Gothic term is probably the only one that seems to
be the least obvious to the student. It constitutes an exemplar of Grimm’s law. We will
simply describe the changes that derived taihun from *dekm. In the first place, *d > t
and *k > h, the dental has become voiceless and the velar has become a fricative. Then
*m > un, i.e. where the Indo-European term has undergone vocalisation of syllabic
nasal and velarisation of this nasal.1
However, despite the empirical and scientific character of this method, it has
been subjected to some criticism. For instance, there are linguists who claim that the
reconstructed forms are the result of comparing attested cognates, but they are often
unpronounceable and cannot be taken as bearing a 100% correspondence to the linguistic
reality of Indo-European. It took some time to humbly assume this fact, since in the
beginning of the Comparative Method linguists had an absolute faith in its feasibility.

1
This symbol (>) is the standard convention that signals that the form of the right of the symbol has derived from
the term on the left.
388 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

Some of the basic assumptions of the Comparative Method have also been reconsidered.
It is taken for granted within this framework that languages at some point are born from a
parent language, and therefore, this view poses the question of what happens with the parent
language as their descendants rise. Another controversial point is the belief that once two
languages have split from their common ancestor they will diverge until they do not bear
any resemblance. The facts support the view that there is not just one single direction for
the evolution of two languages. They can also converge if social or historical developments
stimulate contact again, particularly if the languages happen to be geographically close. This
is something that occurs with the English dialects; they are converging rather than diverging
due to the pressure of the standard and the mass media.

1 The Wave Theory

In order to overcome the shortcomings of the Comparative Method and the metaphor
of the Family-tree as put forward by August Schleicher, the German linguist Johannes
Schmidt (1872) propounded the existence of what is known as Wave Theory. In the view
of linguistic variation that he proposes changes would spread as waves in the water from
a politically or historically important centre, and as with waves, not all the changes have
to reach the same area. This explains the fact that when two languages are compared,
there exists a certain correlation between geographic distance and the influence that one
specific change has. Thus, the farther an area is, the less consequential a specific change
will be. Bynon (1981: 266-8) offers an enumeration of the different situations that can
take place:
The ideal case consists of a linguistic territory that has not been “disturbed” by external
influences. A centre appears, which can be political, commercial, cultural, etc. Next, some
innovations occur which only reach part of the territory where the language is spoken,
while the rest of the territory is ruled by the pre-existent centre. It turns out that isoglosses
will start to rise until, with time, the speakers of the two territories will lose mutual
intelligibility, and two different languages remain.
As we saw above, not all linguistic changes lead to divergence between languages, the
opposite case may also occur. After two languages have become independent they can
start sharing certain features. The example Bynon suggests is that of two dialects that are
clearly differentiated but geographically adjacent. If the territories where they are spoken
become integrated under a political force with a single administrative and cultural centre,
some isoglosses will start to disappear and common traits will be shared. Also innovations
which apply to the totality of the new territory will promote the convergence of the two
languages.
ANEXO I: Historical and Comparative Linguistics 389

The spreading of common traits is not limited only to languages that are previously
related; it can also occur with languages that are geographically close, whether related or not.
Bynon (1981: 268) concludes that the situation presented by the family-tree is of
continuity in the course of time, since the evolution of language is presented in an ideal
temporal-spatial frame. It is what this author calls “a relative chronology” of the changes
that a language is likely to undergo, but it does not deal with actual innovations which take
place in real time and space. Vandeloise (1984: 34) distinguishes between historical and
logical time, “logical time is idealized historical time.” He uses this distinction to explain
the path semantic evolution followed. His starting point is this postulate: “Words evolve
from a simple toward a complex meaning.” However, for him, logical and historical time
do follow parallel routes: “Indeed in historical time a word can simplify itself, either by
fusion of two usages or because one of its usages becomes obsolete. I believe however that
the preceding postulate keeps a statistical value and that logical time roughly parallels
historical time.” Therefore, considering Vandeloise’s arguments it is understandable why the
family-tree has become common in the representation of linguistic evolution. We believe
that it is sometimes necessary to idealise actual facts so that general theories about linguistic
variation and relatedness can be constructed. However, when more emphasis is placed on
how variation is determined by geographical or social factors, the Wave Theory should
be used. Thus, as it usually occurs in linguistic studies, these two approaches to linguistic
change can be considered to complement rather than to exclude one another.

1 The Notion of Proto-language

A proto-language is a hypothetical reconstruction of the earlier form of a language.

No written records exist of a proto-language and its reconstruction draws upon the
comparison of related words and expressions of the different languages that derived from it.
Thus, the proto-language is the ancestral parent language of all the derived languages. The
extent to which a proto-language can be reconstructed with more or less accuracy depends
on the evidence available to linguists. In the case of Proto-Indo-European, linguists have
been successful in reconstructing a great deal of the phonological, morphological, and
lexical systems.

1 Linguistic Genealogies

There exist two basic ways in which languages can be classified: typologically and
genetically. A typological classification of languages is based on similarities in the linguistic
390 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

structure. Typological classifications have been particularly frequent in the structuring of

unwritten languages. When scholars observe that these languages could also be grouped
on genetically grounds the genetic classification is usually preferred. However, the use
of typologies is again gaining relevance in the study of the world’s languages, as the one
devised by Matthew S. Dryer at Buffalo University which draws upon grammar structure.
There are scholars who have focused on lexical typologies. These are particularly useful
for anthropologists, since they bring along a large amount of data on social organization
and cultural spaces. Typological classifications of language lead to the establishment of
language families which consist of language stocks that are considered to be related by
common origin because of cognates in vocabulary. Concerning the notion of language
family, the student must also be acquainted with the meaning of phylum. This category
encompasses a number of language families and very often the term phylum is equated with
that of language family and both terms are often used interchangeably. Occasionally, one
can come across a family that is made up of just one language, the label for this is language
isolate. These two distinct methods of classifying languages are not mutually exclusive,
rather they can be combined. For instance, once a genetic classification has been established,
a typological classification can be superimposed to observe the variation in linguistic type
within the same phylum or language family.
Finally, for the sake of example we will include here a typological classification of
languages that, as Traugott states “was in the air during the first decades of the nineteenth
century (1994: 19).” Following this typology, there exist three main types of languages:
Isolating (also known as analytic), agglutinative, and Inflectional (also known as Synthetic).
In isolating languages, words are typically made up of a single morpheme, that is why it is
also called analytic, among the world’s isolating languages we find Classical Chinese and
Vietnamese. In agglutinative languages, words consist of a series of morphemes, each of
them represents a single grammatical category. Some examples of agglutinative languages
are Japanese, Turkish, and Finnish. When it comes to inflectional languages, one of the
main features is that a single morpheme in one word may represent several grammatical
categories. Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are prototypical examples of inflected languages.

1 The Neogrammarians

As stated above, despite the regularity attested in phonological changes there remain
exceptions that have led linguists to speak of tendencies instead of rules. One such case is
presented by Trask (1996: 224). Old English hūs, mūs, lūs, dūn, tūn, mū, have evolved into
house, mouse, louse, down, town, mouth, in present-day English, all with the diphthong /Au:/.
ANEXO I: Historical and Comparative Linguistics 391

This occurred due to the effects of the Great Vowel Shift, but we still have Old English rūm, also
with the sound /u:/ which has evolved into room, and has kept its original vowel sound. The
fact that Grimm’s law explaining the First Germanic Consonant Shift presented exceptions
seemed to confirm that phonological developments should not be placed under rules but
should be considered as tendencies. However, the linguist Karl Verner found an explanation
for those apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law, and showed that they were conditioned by the
phonological environment. This proved that every Germanic word had evolved in a predictable
regular way. This demonstration of regularity in phonological change encouraged a group of
young German linguists to publicly defend the view that this kind of change is always regular
and the apparent exceptions were for which no explanation was yet found. As mentioned earlier,
this position came to be known as the Neogrammarian hypothesis. Most of these linguists were
working at the University of Leipzig. Pejoratively, they were called by other fellow linguists
Junggrammatiker, literally ‘young grammarians’, translated into English as Neogrammarians
or into Spanish as Neogramáticos. By the end of the nineteenth century the Neogrammarian
Hypothesis had become part of what could be described as the orthodoxy in Historical
Linguistics.
Among the factors that can account for the successful reception of the Neogrammarian
Hypothesis in the linguistic community are the rigorous methodology employed in their
analysis and the scientific concern that this Hypothesis held. An example of this interest
in approaching language change can be identified in their attitude towards exceptions.
Exceptions were only apparent and it was a linguist’s work to find the rules that were behind
those apparent exceptions.

1 Internal Reconstruction

The method of Internal Reconstruction supplements Comparative Linguistics in the

reconstruction of earlier forms of a language. It focuses on the analysis of irregular linguistic
patterns and its main tenet is that they had developed from earlier regular forms. This
method has risen from the structuralist approach to language as the following example of
Internal Reconstruction in Latin shows.
In Latin we have forms such as honos -oris or orator -oris, which may lead one to believe
that the regular form of the genitive singular of honos was honosis, but at some point
intervocalic /s/ became /r/. Thus the reason why it is called internal is that it is not
necessary to examine other languages to reconstruct the earlier stages of a given language.
A further example of the application of the internal method in the reconstruction of earlier
forms of a language is provided by Trask (1996: 260) and it involves English past participles.
The past participle of English regular verbs is formed by the addition of the suffix -ed: love/
392 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

loved, paint/painted. In a number of strong verbs this past form is constructed using the
suffix -en instead: write/written, take/taken. As the student knows, this second pattern
is not productive anymore, since all the new verbs entering the language follow the first
pattern: access/accessed, commute/commuted, escalate/escalated. However, as Trask explains,
some older verbs show a curious pattern; even though they keep the suffix -ed for the
construction of their past participles, they have developed adjectival forms ending in -en.
Trask illustrates this fact with the following examples:
1. He has shaved but He is clean-shaven
2. The lead has melted, but This is molten lead
3. I have mowed the lawn, but This is new-mown hay
The conclusion that can be drawn after analysing this situation is that the original forms
of the participles showed the -en pattern, since they were strong verbs, but by analogy with
weak verbs the regular forms in -ed displaced the original strong pattern. Curiously the
adjectival form was not affected by this analogical development. If we take into account that
English displays a large number of adjectives derived from verbs that show the -ed ending,
this fact can be considered a strange development.
 ANEXO II
The Culture and Origin
of the Germanic People

1 Religion

Due to their early conversion to Christianity, we do not know much about the
autochthonous religious practices of the Germanic people. Only Scandinavians maintained
their original religious beliefs until late Middle Ages, thus there is a considerable amount of
scholarly knowledge about their gods and myths, particularly in comparison to the rest of
the Germanic peoples. Caesar contrasted their religious practices with those of Celts, and
explained that the Germanic people had no druids or sacrifices, and their gods included
Sun, Volcano (the fire god) and Moon.
There exists evidence in English and German vernacular texts of the practice of
charms. Charms are short –sometimes a two-line paragraph– invocations aimed at
solving problems of daily life. These problems were connected with people’s and cattle’s
illnesses, and occasionally dealt with interpersonal relations. We can mention the
Merseburg Charms found in a manuscript of c. 900, in alliterating verse. One of them
seemingly had the power of curing muscular strains and includes the name of seven
deities. A manuscript from the ninth century includes a baptismal vow in the Saxon
dialect. The postulant is encouraged to renounce the Devil and three tribal gods. In
Old English there exist a large number of extant texts dealing with charms and magical
practices, but they are not very revealing as regards to pre-Christian religion. The heroic
poem Beowulf is of Scandinavian origin and we can identify in this text a remarkable
number of Germanic symbols and images. For example, the battle of Beowulf against the
monsters is paralleled with the fight of Scandinavian heroes against the trolls.
394 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

As mentioned above, most of the information we have about Germanic religion

comes from Scandinavian literary sources. It is worth mentioning the manuscript known
as Elder Edda, which is composed of a number of lays. They are of two main types,
heroic and mythological. The mythological poems presents stories of Germanic gods, a
cosmogony of the world, the beginning and apocalyptic end of the ancient Scandinavian
world (Ragnarūk), as well as recommendations to lead a wise life. Its extension and
richness makes it impossible to summarise all its contents here, we will just mention
the Hávamál, a collection of aphorisms about daily life, wisdom, counselling and magic
charms attributed to Odin. By the scenery, and the lifestyle presented in this section,
it can be ascribed Norwegian origin in the Viking Age (ninth and tenth centuries).
Specially noteworthy are the myths telling Odin’s erotic adventure, which shows a cynical
attitude of men’s vision of women.

1 Social Organization

The migrations of the Germanic people, which lasted until the early Middle Ages, and
were responsible for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, cannot be considered simple
nomadic wanderings, rather progressive spread of an agriculture-based lifestyle. They
had a loose political structure which favoured the migration of some groups, while others
stayed in the original homeland. Still these migratory movements called for some type of
leadership, which promoted the appearance of a noble class whose members were eligible
for being the Kings of the community. After the Roman Western Empire disintegrated in
the fifth century, the Rhine became the back bone of the Franks’ kingdom, and later the
Carolingian empire.
The way the tribal life was organised was very much reflected in the so-called “Germanic
laws.” The first compilation of these “Laws” are the Leges Barbarorum (fourth – ninth
centuries) written in Latin, and including technical notions of Roman law, which shows the
Roman influence in the Germanic “legislation.” For Germanic peoples, law was not devised
by a central authority such as a king, instead they arose as the result of following fixed
customs of the tribe. In this sense, the Visigoths constitute an exception since it is the only
Germanic people whose codes were established by the king and the noble class, without
popular participation. Thus, these customs can be defined, to a large extent, as practices on
which there was general consensus. These laws were unwritten and were endowed with an
ethical and moral attitude to life. These laws were considered personal and belonging to
each of the members of a community. For this reason, after the destruction of the Western
Roman Empire when the Germanic people took over former Roman provinces, they did
not impose their law on the Roman citizens; they continued to abide by their own legal
ANEXO II: The Culture and Origin of the Germanic People 395

system. Thus, the Leges Barbarorum do not reflect the existence of a legal system as we
understand today, rather it is a compilation of customs. Due to the moral character that
defines these laws, they do not focus on issues that are taken for granted (viz. theft). Instead,
they dealt with questions that could be regarded as controversial. Many of these questions
were connected with the migrations and conquests and were quite specific. Before these
laws were declared as such by the king, they were discussed by popular assemblies.
The Germanic social system distinguished between free and un-free individuals.
The first category subsumes the nobles and ordinary free man. In some West Germanic
communities, there existed a third category, half-free. Individuals belonging to this
class could take part in certain transactions and get married, but had no political rights,
for example, they were not allowed to take part in the assembly. The government was
organised with a king, his council and a tribal assembly. The king had the highest military
and religious authority. He was also the most powerful figure in the assembly. The major
decisions affecting the welfare of the tribe, such as the election of king, declaration of war or
outlawing of individuals, were not decided by the king, but by the assembly. The tribe was
subdivided into clans (sib). The clans were comprised of all the tribal members that were
related by blood, however distant this relation may have been and each clan had its own
chief. Marriage involved the purchase of the bride by the groom for a price. This money
was not transferred to the bride’s family, but was kept by the husband to cover the eventual
needs of his wife. Divorce existed as a practice, but only the husband could divorce his wife
and he might be financially penalised by the tribe.