Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Richard W]

Exactly. And in this case there are no convenient historical events that we can firmly peg a transition in our periodization to (such as how 1066 is used as a demarcation between Old and Middle English).

Nitpick: The Old to Middle transition is normally dated to 1200, for which the historical peg would be the collapse of the Angevin Empire in 1204.

[Travis B.]

Exactly. And in this case there are no convenient historical events that we can firmly peg a transition in our periodization to (such as how 1066 is used as a demarcation between Old and Middle English).

Nitpick: The Old to Middle transition is normally dated to 1200, for which the historical peg would be the collapse of the Angevin Empire in 1204.

Quoth the Wiki (emphasis mine):

Middle English (abbreviated to ME[1]) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but Oxford University Press specifies the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1100 to 1500.[2] This stage of the development of the English language roughly followed the High to the Late Middle Ages.

[zompist]

Wikipedia is not an authoritative source here.

David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: "The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain, but it does not acutally identify the boundary between Old and Middle English. It was a long time before the effects of the Norman invasion worked their way into the language, and Old English continued to be used... "

He goes on to say that early sources are slim (the elite after all was writing in French... or in OE) and seem to show multiple varieties and rapid change.

[WeepingElf]

Wikipedia is not an authoritative source here.

David Crystal in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: "The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain, but it does not acutally identify the boundary between Old and Middle English. It was a long time before the effects of the Norman invasion worked their way into the language, and Old English continued to be used... "

He goes on to say that early sources are slim (the elite after all was writing in French... or in OE) and seem to show multiple varieties and rapid change.

I have long been entertaining the notion that the impression that languages change faster in times of social upheaval than in times of social stability may be a mirage resulting from the conservatism of written norms which are only broken up and realigned with the spoken vernacular in times of social upheaval. One sees this pattern in English, and also in Egyptian.

[zompist]

I have long been entertaining the notion that the impression that languages change faster in times of social upheaval than in times of social stability may be a mirage resulting from the conservatism of written norms which are only broken up and realigned with the spoken vernacular in times of social upheaval. One sees this pattern in English, and also in Egyptian.

That seems very likely. Another example might be Mandarin: if people just looked at the written language they'd notice a huge change in lexicon and syntax around 1920. And it was a time of social upheaval; but the change is due to the replacement of wenyan with baihua, the vernacular-- which had been developing for the last millennium.

[WeepingElf]

I have long been entertaining the notion that the impression that languages change faster in times of social upheaval than in times of social stability may be a mirage resulting from the conservatism of written norms which are only broken up and realigned with the spoken vernacular in times of social upheaval. One sees this pattern in English, and also in Egyptian.

That seems very likely. Another example might be Mandarin: if people just looked at the written language they'd notice a huge change in lexicon and syntax around 1920. And it was a time of social upheaval; but the change is due to the replacement of wenyan with baihua, the vernacular-- which had been developing for the last millennium.

Another example is Vulgar Latin. Classical Latin remained the literary standard until the very end of the Western Roman Empire and beyond, but graffiti in places like Pompeii, curse tablets and similar items of informal writing already show an increasing number of the changes that distinguish Romance as a whole from Classical Latin.

[Richard W]

When Lithuanians sort lists in Lithuanian alphabetically, do they use the same order as dictionaries? I ask because I've seen evidence that some at least consider 'e' and 'ė' as as different as 's' and 'š' (definitely different letters when the brain is engaged), while happily disregarding ogoneks or 'i' v. 'y'.

[Otto Kretschmer]

When did do support first appear in English?

[keenir]

When did do support first appear in English?

according to Dr McWhorter, back in the days of Welsh, Cornish, and other Celtic languages.
(it was brought into English from there, so its been here the whole time)

[Travis B.]

When did do support first appear in English?

according to Dr McWhorter, back in the days of Welsh, Cornish, and other Celtic languages.
(it was brought into English from there, so its been here the whole time)

Key thing there is according to -- it seems that this position may not be universal.

[Linguoboy]

When did do support first appear in English?

according to Dr McWhorter, back in the days of Welsh, Cornish, and other Celtic languages.
(it was brought into English from there, so its been here the whole time)

McWhorter is, IMNSFHO, full of shit here.

This construction appears to arise in the 13th cent. (no certain examples occur in Old English) and becomes especially frequent after 1500, first as a simple periphrastic form without perceptible difference of sense (in which use in south-western English regional dialect it practically takes the place of the simple form of the verb). In standard English from the early 17th cent. onwards it becomes restricted to contexts where it is functionally parallel to other auxiliaries (perfect, progressive, and modal). Thus simple affirmative with inversion of word order after certain adverbs: ‘So quietly did he come that..’ (like ‘So quietly has he come’). Emphatic: ‘He did drink’, ‘and drink he did’ (like ‘I will go’, ‘and go I will’). Interrogative: ‘Do you hear?’ (like ‘Will you hear?’). Negative: ‘They do not speak’ (like ‘They will not speak,’ ‘They have not spoken’.)

The earliest examples we have of possible auxiliary uses of "do" in Welsh also date to the 13th century. So it takes some pretty heroic assumptions to assert that English adopted this construction from Welsh (or Cornish)--especially when the usage is so different between languages. (Contemporary Welsh usage has more parallels to the use of due as an auxiliary in Alemannic dialects that it does to English do-support.)

[keenir]

When did do support first appear in English?

according to Dr McWhorter, back in the days of Welsh, Cornish, and other Celtic languages.
(it was brought into English from there, so its been here the whole time)

McWhorter is, IMNSFHO, full of shit here.

To be fair, thats not an exact quote I was using; he was - in his book - rebutting against the suggestion that, despite the periphrasic(sp) "do" appearing in various Celtic languages, there were those who suggested that the "do" arose independently in English or was from another, nonnative (to the British Isles) language.

Its I who added those up in my brief reply, into "it was brought in, so its been here all along".

[Linguoboy]

To be fair, thats not an exact quote I was using; he was - in his book - rebutting against the suggestion that, despite the periphrasic(sp) "do" appearing in various Celtic languages, there were those who suggested that the "do" arose independently in English or was from another, nonnative (to the British Isles) language.

I'm familiar with McWhorter's arguments beyond what you've quoted here and I don't find them particularly convincing. Who was it who said that substratum arguments only make sense for the first generation of speakers and can't be used to explain changes which appear centuries later? Yet that's what we see here: Old English lacks contemporary do-support. It does include some precedents, chiefly emphatic use of do in imperatives. So the substratum argument would have to be that some form of it was present in the speech of Anglo-Saxons beginning shortly after the invasions and yet didn't manifest in writing until the 13th century, which seems dubious at best. AFAICT Old Welsh lacks periphrastic use of "do" entirely, so there's not even the most speculative grounds for a substratum argument here.

[Travis B.]

I'm with Linguoboy here -- the reasons against the substratum hypothesis for do-support seem quite strong, and I am not going to repeat them here because they have already been stated in this thread.

[foxcatdog]

english clearly stole do support from conlangs everyone claim are bad for copying it

[keenir]

Yet that's what we see here: Old English lacks contemporary do-support. It does include some precedents, chiefly emphatic use of do in imperatives. So the substratum argument would have to be that some form of it was present in the speech of Anglo-Saxons beginning shortly after the invasions and yet didn't manifest in writing until the 13th century, which seems dubious at best. AFAICT Old Welsh lacks periphrastic use of "do" entirely, so there's not even the most speculative grounds for a substratum argument here.

okay, I stand corrected; my apologies. and thank you for explaining how and why he was wrong.

[keenir]

english clearly stole do support from conlangs everyone claim are bad for copying it

You just now realized the Real True Ineffable Reason why conlangers discourage copying from English.

[Glass Half Baked]

If I had a precise enough laser that I could target individual neurons, I would delete the phrase "Celtic Substrate" from the minds of every linguist in the world.

EDIT: actually, "Celtic" is optional.

[Glass Half Baked]

OK, I have a question for any French experts out there: when and how did mathématiques become plural? And is it related in any way to the English phenomenon?

As I understand it, the original word in Latinized Greek is mathematica, in the neuter plural. This neuter plural was then reanalyzed as a feminine singular in most or all Romance languages. Spanish, for example, still works this way. French used to do the same: mathématique. But at some point both French and English decided to add a plural ending. In French they subsequently treated the word as fully plural, while in English the plural agreement is inconsistent and varies by dialect ("maths is..." etc.).

The English suffix seems to be a learned attempt to mimic the neuter plural of Latinized Greek, a theory bolstered by the fact that the rank and file of English speakers seem to find the whole thing confusing. But was this the motivation behind mathématiques as well? Was this a parallel development, or did the English copy France's homework?

(p.s. I believe Catalan has the same issue, so maybe this process runs deeper than it first appears...)

[zompist]

OK, I have a question for any French experts out there: when and how did mathématiques become plural? And is it related in any way to the English phenomenon?

I'm no expert, but I do have a Larousse, which says the word was singular or plural till the 18th century; while Etymonline says the English word became plural in the 17th century.

while in English the plural agreement is inconsistent and varies by dialect ("maths is..." etc.).

I don't think it's random: it's "math" in the US and "maths" in the UK.