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85-498: This field is grounded in the Uniformitarian Principle , which posits that the processes of language change observed today were also at work in the past, unless there is clear evidence to suggest otherwise. Historical linguists aim to describe and explain changes in individual languages, explore the history of speech communities, and study the origins and meanings of words ( etymology ). Modern historical linguistics dates to

170-508: A boat trip along the Berwickshire coast with John Playfair and the geologist Sir James Hall , and found a dramatic unconformity showing the same sequence at Siccar Point . Playfair later recalled that "the mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time", and Hutton concluded a 1788 paper he presented at the Royal Society of Edinburgh , later rewritten as a book, with

255-628: A common ancestor and synchronic variation . Dialectologists are concerned with grammatical features that correspond to regional areas. Thus, they are usually dealing with populations living in specific locales for generations without moving, but also with immigrant groups bringing their languages to new settlements. Immigrant groups often bring their linguistic practices to new settlements, leading to distinct linguistic varieties within those communities. Dialectologists analyze these immigrant dialects to understand how languages develop and diversify in response to migration and cultural interactions. Phonology

340-457: A distinction between strong and weak verbs is less useful than a distinction between "regular" and "irregular" verbs. Thus, the verb to help , which used to be conjugated help-holp-holpen , is now help-helped-helped . The reverse phenomenon, whereby a weak verb becomes strong by analogy, is rare. Some verbs, which might be termed "semi-strong", have formed a weak preterite but retained the strong participle, or rarely vice versa. This type of verb

425-415: A given time, usually the present, but a synchronic analysis of a historical language form is also possible. It may be distinguished from diachronic, which regards a phenomenon in terms of developments through time. Diachronic analysis is the main concern of historical linguistics. However, most other branches of linguistics are concerned with some form of synchronic analysis. The study of language change offers

510-413: A hybrid known as phono-semantic matching . In languages with a long and detailed history, etymology makes use of philology , the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. Etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By analysis of related languages by

595-497: A perfect aspect, meaning that they came to lack a past tense form in Germanic once the perfect had become the past. Not having a past tense at all, they obviously also had no vowel alternations between present and past. To compensate for this, a new type of past tense was eventually created for these verbs by adding a -d- or -t- suffix to the stem. This is why only strong verbs have vowel alternations: their past tense forms descend from

680-426: A required first principle in scientific research. Other scientists disagree and consider that nature is not absolutely uniform, even though it does exhibit certain regularities. In geology , uniformitarianism has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the key to the past" and that geological events occur at the same rate now as they have always done, though many modern geologists no longer hold to

765-523: A single idea: None of these connotations requires another, and they are not all equally inferred by uniformitarians. Gould explained Lyell's propositions in Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle (1987), stating that Lyell conflated two different types of propositions: a pair of methodological assumptions with a pair of substantive hypotheses . The four together make up Lyell's uniformitarianism. The two methodological assumptions below are accepted to be true by

850-501: A strict gradualism. Coined by William Whewell , uniformitarianism was originally proposed in contrast to catastrophism by British naturalists in the late 18th century, starting with the work of the geologist James Hutton in his many books including Theory of the Earth . Hutton's work was later refined by scientist John Playfair and popularised by geologist Charles Lyell 's Principles of Geology in 1830. Today, Earth's history

935-475: A valuable insight into the state of linguistic representation, and because all synchronic forms are the result of historically evolving diachronic changes, the ability to explain linguistic constructions necessitates a focus on diachronic processes. Initially, all of modern linguistics was historical in orientation. Even the study of modern dialects involved looking at their origins. Ferdinand de Saussure 's distinction between synchronic and diachronic linguistics

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1020-503: A word the stress fell on in PIE, this could change to * o (o-grade), or disappear altogether (zero grade). Both e and o could also be lengthened to ē and ō (lengthened grade). Thus ablaut turned short e into the following sounds: As the Germanic languages developed from PIE, they dramatically altered the Indo-European verbal system. PIE verbs could occur in three distinct aspects :

1105-415: Is (weer) hólpe for the plural but either (ich) halp or (ich) hólp for the singular. In the process of development of English, numerous sound changes and analogical developments have fragmented the classes to the extent that most of them no longer have any coherence: only classes 1, 3 and 4 still have significant subclasses that follow uniform patterns. Before looking at the seven classes individually,

1190-428: Is aspirated , but the p in spin is not. In English these two sounds are used in complementary distribution and are not used to differentiate words so they are considered allophones of the same phoneme . In some other languages like Thai and Quechua , the same difference of aspiration or non-aspiration differentiates words and so the two sounds, or phones , are considered to be distinct phonemes. In addition to

1275-437: Is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. Languages may be related by convergence through borrowing or by genetic descent, thus languages can change and are also able to cross-relate. Genetic relatedness implies a common origin among languages. Comparative linguists construct language families , reconstruct proto-languages , and analyze

1360-401: Is a sub-field of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language or set of languages. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages. Phonology studies when sounds are or are not treated as distinct within a language. For example, the p in pin

1445-406: Is an innovation. The first 5 classes appear to continue the following PIE ablaut grades: Except for the apparent ē-grade in part 3 of classes 4 and 5, these are in fact straightforward survivals of the PIE situation. The standard pattern of PIE is represented in Germanic by classes 1, 2, and 3, with the present (part 1) in the e-grade, past indicative singular (part 2) in

1530-512: Is available, such as Uralic and Austronesian . Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect , the varieties of a language that are characteristic of particular groups, based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features. This is in contrast to variations based on social factors, which are studied in sociolinguistics , or variations based on time, which are studied in historical linguistics. Dialectology treats such topics as divergence of two local dialects from

1615-488: Is considered to have been a slow, gradual process, punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events. Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817) proposed Neptunism , where strata represented deposits from shrinking seas precipitated onto primordial rocks such as granite . In 1785 James Hutton proposed an opposing, self-maintaining infinite cycle based on natural history and not on the Biblical account. The solid parts of

1700-532: Is fundamental to the present day organization of the discipline. Primacy is accorded to synchronic linguistics, and diachronic linguistics is defined as the study of successive synchronic stages. Saussure's clear demarcation, however, has had both defenders and critics. In practice, a purely-synchronic linguistics is not possible for any period before the invention of the gramophone , as written records always lag behind speech in reflecting linguistic developments. Written records are difficult to date accurately before

1785-421: Is in contrast with the previous two philosophical assumptions that come before one can do science and so cannot be tested or falsified by science. Stephen Jay Gould 's first scientific paper, "Is uniformitarianism necessary?" (1965), reduced these four assumptions to two. He dismissed the first principle, which asserted spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws, as no longer an issue of debate. He rejected

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1870-441: Is linguistic change in progress. Synchronic and diachronic approaches can reach quite different conclusions. For example, a Germanic strong verb (e.g. English sing ↔ sang ↔ sung ) is irregular when it is viewed synchronically: the native speaker's brain processes them as learned forms, but the derived forms of regular verbs are processed quite differently, by the application of productive rules (for example, adding -ed to

1955-600: Is most common in Dutch: An instance of this phenomenon in English is swell, swelled, swollen (though swelled is also found for the past participle, and the older strong form swole persists in some dialects as the preterite and past participle and has found new use in recent years. ). As an example of the conjugation of a strong verb, we may take the Old English class 2 verb bēodan , "to offer" (cf. English "bid"). This has

2040-433: Is occasionally found as well, but it was apparently a relic formation with no other examples of alternation elsewhere. In the northwest Germanic languages, which include all modern surviving Germanic languages, class 7 was drastically remodelled. Reduplication was almost eliminated, except for a few relics, and new ablaut patterns were introduced. Many attempts have been made to explain this development. Jasanoff posits

2125-464: Is that most strong verbs have their origin in the earliest sound system of Proto-Indo-European , whereas weak verbs use a dental ending (in English usually -ed or -t ) that developed later with the branching off of Proto-Germanic . The " strong " vs. " weak " terminology was coined by the German philologist Jacob Grimm in the 1800s, and the terms "strong verb" and "weak verb" are direct translations of

2210-496: Is the study of patterns of word-formation within a language. It attempts to formulate rules that model the knowledge of speakers. In the context of historical linguistics, formal means of expression change over time. Words as units in the lexicon are the subject matter of lexicology . Along with clitics , words are generally accepted to be the smallest units of syntax ; however, it is clear in most languages that words may be related to one another by rules. These rules are understood by

2295-474: Is to say, of interpreting the past by means of the processes that are seen going on at the present day, so long as we remember that the periodic catastrophe is one of those processes. Those periodic catastrophes make more showing in the stratigraphical record than we have hitherto assumed." Modern geologists do not apply uniformitarianism in the same way as Lyell. They question if rates of processes were uniform through time and only those values measured during

2380-641: The Austronesian languages and on various families of Native American languages , among many others. Comparative linguistics became only a part of a more broadly-conceived discipline of historical linguistics. For the Indo-European languages, comparative study is now a highly specialized field. Some scholars have undertaken studies attempting to establish super-families, linking, for example, Indo-European, Uralic, and other families into Nostratic . These attempts have not met with wide acceptance. The information necessary to establish relatedness becomes less available as

2465-413: The aorist , present and perfect aspect. The aorist originally denoted events without any attention to the specifics or ongoing nature of the event ("ate", perfective aspect ). The present implied some attention to such details and was thus used for ongoing actions ("is eating", imperfective aspect ). The perfect was a stative verb , and referred not to the event itself, but to the state that resulted from

2550-466: The comparative method and internal reconstruction . The focus was initially on the well-known Indo-European languages , many of which had long written histories; scholars also studied the Uralic languages , another Eurasian language-family for which less early written material exists. Since then, there has been significant comparative linguistic work expanding outside of European languages as well, such as on

2635-400: The comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction . Less-standard techniques, such as mass lexical comparison , are used by some linguists to overcome the limitations of the comparative method, but most linguists regard them as unreliable. The findings of historical linguistics are often used as a basis for hypotheses about the groupings and movements of peoples, particularly in

Historical linguistics - Misplaced Pages Continue

2720-475: The comparative method , linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary. In that way, word roots that can be traced all the way back to the origin of, for instance, the Indo-European language family have been found. Although originating in the philological tradition, much current etymological research is done in language families for which little or no early documentation

2805-459: The history of geology are to be accepted. The present may not be a long enough key to penetrating the deep lock of the past. Geologic processes may have been active at different rates in the past that humans have not observed. "By force of popularity, uniformity of rate has persisted to our present day. For more than a century, Lyell's rhetoric conflating axiom with hypotheses has descended in unmodified form. Many geologists have been stifled by

2890-474: The origin of language ) studies Lamarckian acquired characteristics of languages. This perspective explores how languages adapt and change over time in response to cultural, societal, and environmental factors. Language evolution within the framework of historical linguistics is akin to Lamarckism in the sense that linguistic traits acquired during an individual's lifetime can potentially influence subsequent generations of speakers. Historical linguists often use

2975-516: The Germanic languages. It was changed significantly, but rather differently in Gothic on the one hand, and in the Northwest Germanic languages on the other. Reduplication was retained in Gothic, with the vowel ai inserted. However, as in all other strong verbs, consonant alternations were almost eliminated in favour of the voiceless alternants. The present and past singular stem was extended to

3060-415: The affected areas. In Britain, geologists adapted this idea into " diluvial theory " which proposed repeated worldwide annihilation and creation of new fixed species adapted to a changed environment, initially identifying the most recent catastrophe as the biblical flood . From 1830 to 1833 Charles Lyell 's multi-volume Principles of Geology was published. The work's subtitle was "An attempt to explain

3145-484: The basic form of a verb as in walk → walked ). That is an insight of psycholinguistics , which is relevant also for language didactics , both of which are synchronic disciplines. However, a diachronic analysis shows that the strong verb is the remnant of a fully regular system of internal vowel changes, in this case the Indo-European ablaut ; historical linguistics seldom uses the category " irregular verb ". The principal tools of research in diachronic linguistics are

3230-445: The belief that proper methodology includes an a priori commitment to gradual change, and by a preference for explaining large-scale phenomena as the concatenation of innumerable tiny changes." The current consensus is that Earth's history is a slow, gradual process punctuated by occasional natural catastrophic events that have affected Earth and its inhabitants. In practice it is reduced from Lyell's conflation, or blending, to simply

3315-441: The development of the modern title page . Often, dating must rely on contextual historical evidence such as inscriptions, or modern technology, such as carbon dating , can be used to ascertain dates of varying accuracy. Also, the work of sociolinguists on linguistic variation has shown synchronic states are not uniform: the speech habits of older and younger speakers differ in ways that point to language change. Synchronic variation

3400-420: The different root-vowels caused by PIE ablaut became markers of tense. Thus in Germanic, * bʰer- became *beraną in the infinitive (e-grade); * bar in the past singular (o-grade); * bērun in the past plural (ē-grade); and * buranaz in the past participle (zero-grade). In Proto-Germanic , the system of strong verbs was largely regular. As sound changes took place in the development of Germanic from PIE,

3485-403: The event ("has eaten" or "is/has been eaten"). In Germanic, the aorist eventually disappeared and merged with the present, while the perfect took on a past tense meaning and became a general past tense. The strong Germanic present thus descends from the PIE present, while the past descends from the PIE perfect. The inflections of PIE verbs also changed considerably. In the course of these changes,

Historical linguistics - Misplaced Pages Continue

3570-450: The following definition: If language was normally acquired in the past in the same way as it is today – usually by native acquisition in early childhood – and if it was used in the same ways – to transmit information, to express solidarity with family, friends, and neighbors, to mark one's social position, etc. – then it must have had the same general structure and organization in the past as it does today, and it must have changed in

3655-435: The following forms: ic bēode þū bīetst hē bīett wē bēodað gē bēodað hīe bēodað ic bēode þū bēode hē bēode wē bēoden gē bēoden hīe bēoden ic bēad þū bude hē bēad wē budon gē budon hīe budon ic bude þū bude hē bude wē buden gē buden hīe buden – bēode! – – bēodað!, bēode gē! – While the inflections are more or less regular,

3740-480: The following series of events within the history of Northwest Germanic: Stages 4 and 5 were not quite complete by the time of the earliest written records. While most class 7 verbs had replaced reduplication with ablaut entirely, several vestigial remains of reduplication are found throughout the North and West Germanic languages. Various other changes occurred later in the individual languages. *e in class 7c

3825-460: The following strong roots based on the work of Elmar Seebold (1970), Robert Mailhammer (2007) and Guus Kroonen (2013). Proto-Germanic had aorist-present roots, a remnant of the aorist aspect found in Proto-Indo-European . These verbs used the former aorist as a present tense form. The aorist had a zero-grade vowel, like parts 3 and 4 of the perfect. So these verbs have an anomalous vowel in

3910-402: The force of analogy is called " levelling ", and it can be seen at various points in the history of the verb classes. In the later Middle Ages, German, Dutch and English eliminated a great part of the old distinction between the vowels of the singular and plural preterite forms. The new uniform preterite could be based on the vowel of the old preterite singular, on the old plural, or sometimes on

3995-422: The former changes of the Earth's surface by reference to causes now in operation". He drew his explanations from field studies conducted directly before he went to work on the founding geology text, and developed Hutton's idea that the earth was shaped entirely by slow-moving forces still in operation today, acting over a very long period of time. The terms uniformitarianism for this idea, and catastrophism for

4080-477: The general developments that affected all of them will be noted. The following phonological changes that occurred between Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic are relevant for the discussion of the ablaut system. In West Germanic, the 2nd person singular past indicative uses the vowel of Part 3. Its ending is also an -i of unclear origin, rather than the expected -t < PIE * -th₂e of North and East Germanic, which suggests that this state of affairs

4165-409: The historical changes that have resulted in the documented languages' divergences. Etymology studies the history of words : when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. Words may enter a language in several ways, including being borrowed as loanwords from another language, being derived by combining pre-existing elements in the language, by

4250-403: The inorganic world, there are eight different systems of beliefs in the development of the terrestrial sphere. All geoscientists stand by the principle of uniformity of law. Most, but not all, are directed by the principle of simplicity. All make definite assertions about the quality of rate and state in the inorganic realm. Lyell's uniformitarianism is a family of four related propositions, not

4335-425: The late 18th century, having originally grown out of the earlier discipline of philology , the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity. Initially, historical linguistics served as the cornerstone of comparative linguistics , primarily as a tool for linguistic reconstruction . Scholars were concerned chiefly with establishing language families and reconstructing unrecorded proto-languages , using

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4420-686: The late 19th and early 20th centuries, most geologists took this interpretation to mean that catastrophic events are not important in geologic time; one example of this is the debate of the formation of the Channeled Scablands due to the catastrophic Missoula glacial outburst floods. An important result of this debate and others was the re-clarification that, while the same principles operate in geologic time, catastrophic events that are infrequent on human time-scales can have important consequences in geologic history. Derek Ager has noted that "geologists do not deny uniformitarianism in its true sense, that

4505-606: The majority of scientists and geologists. Gould claims that these philosophical propositions must be assumed before you can proceed as a scientist doing science. "You cannot go to a rocky outcrop and observe either the constancy of nature's laws or the working of unknown processes. It works the other way around." You first assume these propositions and "then you go to the outcrop." The substantive hypotheses were controversial and, in some cases, accepted by few. These hypotheses are judged true or false on empirical grounds through scientific observation and repeated experimental data. This

4590-522: The minimal meaningful sounds (the phonemes), phonology studies how sounds alternate, such as the /p/ in English, and topics such as syllable structure, stress , accent , and intonation . Principles of phonology have also been applied to the analysis of sign languages , but the phonological units do not consist of sounds. The principles of phonological analysis can be applied independently of modality because they are designed to serve as general analytical tools, not language-specific ones. Morphology

4675-434: The o-grade, and remaining past (part 3) and past participle (part 4) in the zero grade. The differences between classes 1, 2, and 3 arise from semivowels coming after the root vowel, as shown in the table below. As can be seen, the e-grade in part 1 and o-grade in part 2 are shared by all of these five classes. The difference between them is in parts 3 and 4: Class 6 appears in Germanic with

4760-467: The opposing viewpoint, was coined by William Whewell in a review of Lyell's book. Principles of Geology was the most influential geological work in the middle of the 19th century. Geoscientists support diverse systems of Earth history, the nature of which rests on a certain mixture of views about the process, control, rate, and state which are preferred. Because geologists and geomorphologists tend to adopt opposite views over process, rate, and state in

4845-425: The original German terms starkes Verb and schwaches Verb . Strong verbs have their origin in the ancestral Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language. In PIE, vowel alternations called ablaut were frequent and occurred in many types of word, not only in verbs. The vowel that appeared in any given syllable is called its "grade". In many words, the basic vowel was * e (e-grade), but, depending on what syllable of

4930-444: The original PIE perfect aspect, while the past tense forms of weak verbs were created later. The development of weak verbs in Germanic meant that the strong verb system ceased to be productive: practically all new verbs were weak, and few new strong verbs were created. Over time, strong verbs tended to become weak in some languages, so that the total number of strong verbs in Germanic languages has decreased over time. The coherence of

5015-585: The original structure of the root, much like the first five classes. The first three subclasses are parallel with classes 1–3 but with e replaced with a : Class 7a is parallel to class 1, class 7b to class 2, and class 7c to class 3. The following is a general picture of the Proto-Germanic situation as reconstructed by Jasanoff . Earlier reconstructions of class 7 were generally based mostly on Gothic evidence. The situation sketched above did not survive intact into any of

5100-408: The participle. In English, the distinction remains in the verb "to be": I was, we were . In Dutch, it remains in the verbs of classes 4 & 5 but only in vowel length : ik brak (I broke – short a ), wij braken (we broke – long ā ). In German and Dutch it also remains in the present tense of the preterite presents . In Limburgish there is a little more left. E.g. the preterite of to help

5185-546: The past tense by means of a dental suffix . In modern English, strong verbs include sing (present I sing , past I sang , past participle I have sung ) and drive (present I drive , past I drove , past participle I have driven ), as opposed to weak verbs such as open (present I open , past I opened , past participle I have opened ). Not all verbs with a change in the stem vowel are strong verbs, however: they may also be irregular weak verbs such as bring, brought, brought or keep, kept, kept . The key distinction

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5270-411: The past tense. It is generally believed that reduplication was once a feature of all Proto-Indo-European perfect-aspect forms. It was then lost in most verbs by Proto-Germanic times due to haplology . However, verbs with vowels that did not fit in the existing pattern of alternation retained their reduplication. Class 7 is thus not really one class, but can be split into several subclasses based on

5355-528: The phonological changes led to a growing number of subgroups. Also, once the ablaut system ceased to be productive, there was a decline in the speakers' awareness of the regularity of the system. That led to anomalous forms and the six big classes lost their cohesion. This process has advanced furthest in English, but in some other modern Germanic languages (such as German), the seven classes are still fairly well preserved and recognisable. The reverse process in which anomalies are eliminated and subgroups reunited by

5440-459: The phrase "we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end". Both Playfair and Hall wrote their own books on the theory, and for decades robust debate continued between Hutton's supporters and the Neptunists. Georges Cuvier 's paleontological work in the 1790s, which established the reality of extinction , explained this by local catastrophes, after which other fixed species repopulated

5525-457: The plural, leaving the reduplication as the only change in the stem between the two tenses. The vowel alternation was retained in a few class 7d verbs, but eliminated otherwise by generalising the present tense stem throughout the paradigm. The verb lētan "to allow" retained the past form lailōt with ablaut, while slēpan "to sleep" had the past tense form saislēp without it. The form saizlēp , with Verner-law alternation,

5610-463: The prehistoric period. In practice, however, it is often unclear how to integrate the linguistic evidence with the archaeological or genetic evidence. For example, there are numerous theories concerning the homeland and early movements of the Proto-Indo-Europeans , each with its own interpretation of the archaeological record. Comparative linguistics , originally comparative philology ,

5695-414: The present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores. Hence we find a reason to conclude: Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of

5780-476: The present tense, they decline regularly otherwise. Being the oldest Germanic language with any significant literature, it is not surprising that Gothic preserves the strong verbs best. However, some changes still occurred: Also, long ī was spelled ei in Gothic. Changes that occurred in the West Germanic languages: The following changes occurred from West Germanic to Old English : The following are

5865-415: The presumed primordial rock had been molten after the strata had formed. He had read about angular unconformities as interpreted by Neptunists, and found an unconformity at Jedburgh where layers of greywacke in the lower layers of the cliff face have been tilted almost vertically before being eroded to form a level plane, under horizontal layers of Old Red Sandstone . In the spring of 1788 he took

5950-400: The resulting a ~ ō behaved as just another type of vowel alternation. In Proto-Germanic , this resulted in the following vowel patterns: The forms of class 7 were very different and did not neatly reflect the standard ablaut grades found in classes 1–6. Instead of (or in addition to) vowel alternations, this class displayed reduplication of the first consonants of the stem in

6035-478: The same ways as it does today. The principle is known in linguistics, after William Labov and associates, as the Uniformitarian Principle or Unifomitarian Hypothesis. Germanic strong verb In the Germanic languages , a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel . A minority of verbs in any Germanic language are strong; the majority are weak verbs , which form

6120-738: The speaker, and reflect specific patterns in how word formation interacts with speech. In the context of historical linguistics, the means of expression change over time. Syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages . Syntax directly concerns the rules and principles that govern sentence structure in individual languages. Researchers attempt to describe languages in terms of these rules. Many historical linguistics attempt to compare changes in sentence between related languages, or find universal grammar rules that natural languages follow regardless of when and where they are spoken. In terms of evolutionary theory, historical linguistics (as opposed to research into

6205-470: The strong verb system is still present in modern German , Dutch , Icelandic and Faroese . For example, in German and Dutch, strong verbs are consistently marked with a past participle in -en , while weak verbs have a past participle in -t in German and -t or -d in Dutch. In English, however, the original regular strong conjugations have largely disintegrated, with the result that in modern English grammar,

6290-405: The strong verb system, Germanic also went on to develop two other classes of verbs: the weak verbs and a third, much smaller, class known as the preterite-present verbs , which are continued in the English auxiliary verbs, e.g. can/could, shall/should, may/might, must . Weak verbs originally derived from other types of word in PIE and originally occurred only in the present aspect. They did not have

6375-563: The terms conservative and innovative to describe the extent of change within a language variety relative to that of comparable varieties. Conservative languages change less over time when compared to innovative languages. Uniformitarianism#Social sciences Uniformitarianism , also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle , is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in

6460-442: The third (uniformity of rate) as an unjustified limitation on scientific inquiry, as it constrains past geologic rates and conditions to those of the present. So, Lyell's uniformitarianism was deemed unnecessary. Uniformitarianism was proposed in contrast to catastrophism , which states that the distant past "consisted of epochs of paroxysmal and catastrophic action interposed between periods of comparative tranquility" Especially in

6545-414: The time increases. The time-depth of linguistic methods is limited due to chance word resemblances and variations between language groups, but a limit of around 10,000 years is often assumed. Several methods are used to date proto-languages, but the process is generally difficult and its results are inherently approximate. In linguistics, a synchronic analysis is one that views linguistic phenomena only at

6630-413: The two philosophical assumptions. This is also known as the principle of geological actualism, which states that all past geological action was like all present geological action. The principle of actualism is the cornerstone of paleoecology . Uniformitarianism has also been applied in historical linguistics , where it is considered a foundational principle of the field. Linguist Donald Ringe gives

6715-429: The universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It refers to invariance in the metaphysical principles underpinning science, such as the constancy of cause and effect throughout space-time, but has also been used to describe spatiotemporal invariance of physical laws . Though an unprovable postulate that cannot be verified using the scientific method, some consider that uniformitarianism should be

6800-429: The vowel changes in the stem are not predictable without an understanding of the Indo-European ablaut system, and students have to learn five " principal parts " by heart. For this verb they are bēodan, bīett, bēad, budon, geboden . These are: Germanic strong verbs are commonly divided into seven classes, based on the type of vowel alternation. This is in turn based mostly on the type of consonants that follow

6885-484: The vowel. The Anglo-Saxon scholar Henry Sweet gave names to the seven classes: However, they are normally referred to by numbers alone. In Proto-Germanic , the common ancestor of the Germanic languages, the strong verbs were still mostly regular. The classes continued largely intact in Old English and the other older historical Germanic languages: Gothic , Old High German and Old Norse . However, idiosyncrasies of

6970-522: The vowels a and ō . PIE sources of the a vowel included *h₂e , *o , and a laryngeal between consonants; possibly in some cases the a may be an example of the a-grade of ablaut, though the existence of such a grade is controversial. It is not clear exactly how the ō is to be derived from an earlier ablaut alternant in PIE, but believable sources include contraction of the reduplicant syllable in PIE * h₂ -initial verbs, or o-grades of verbs with interconsonantal laryngeal. In any event, within Germanic

7055-469: The vowels of strong verbs became more varied, but usually in predictable ways, so in most cases all of the principal parts of a strong verb of a given class could be reliably predicted from the infinitive. Thus we can reconstruct Common Germanic as having seven coherent classes of strong verbs. This system continued largely intact in the first attested Germanic languages, notably Gothic , Old English , Old High German and Old Norse . As well as developing

7140-469: The waters, two things had been required; Hutton then sought evidence to support his idea that there must have been repeated cycles, each involving deposition on the seabed , uplift with tilting and erosion , and then moving undersea again for further layers to be deposited. At Glen Tilt in the Cairngorm mountains he found granite penetrating metamorphic schists , in a way which indicated to him that

7225-485: Was replaced by *ē (> ia) in Old High German and Old Dutch, but by *eu (> ēo) in Old English. The following "Late Proto-Northwest-Germanic" can be reconstructed as descendants of the earlier Proto-Germanic forms given above. Note that ē became ā in northwest Germanic. The Proto-Germanic language most likely used more than 500 strong roots. Although some roots are speculative, the language can be reconstructed with

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