Hello,
If you land here by accident, you may have noticed that I haven't been posted much.
Yes, I have to rethink the model of this blog, and I don't have much time for that.
I will rebuild this blog sooner or later, but nothing further for now. If you have something to tell me, leave a comment.
Two thousand and eight hundred years ago, Rome was founded. From a village in the middle of Lazio, the city evolved into a Republic and in 340 BC began to expand its territory until they conquered the whole Italy and later to all Southern Europe and some lands in Africa and Asia Minor. In 4th Century AD, the Western Roman Empire collapsed and the area it occupied was then occupied by the Germanic invaders.
It's no news, I know. When conquering new lands, Romans introduced Latin into the conquered lands. In some places, like today's France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, Latin (despite the fall of the Empire) continued to be used. However, since there were no longer a central power (the Empire), Latin lost its unity. Distinct dialects differentiate into distinct languages*. Note that I'm not saying that the invasions forced Latin to change. Latin was already changing (and it never stopped changing) and we do have accounts from first and second century AD about deviations of the popular Latin from standard (classic) Latin.
Two thousand years after Latin was spread throughout Europe, we have now many languages derived from it. Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Catalan, but also less known languages such as Galician, Asturian, Occitan, Sicilian and many others.
Not that this case is special. Contrarily, it is the rule, with no exception, for all languages in the world. They change and in one thousand years they can become unrecognizable. If it happens to be a language spread throughout a great territory, such as Latin, distinct dialects will see their differences grow until speaker of one of them cannot understand the speaker of the other dialect. However, if a language is confined to a smaller territory (and the group of speakers have a more integrated society), the changes in one dialect will eventually "contaminate" other dialect and the language will evolve more uniformly. That is more or less the case of Greek (from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, two completely different languages) or most modern national languages (in a shorter time span, such as two hundred years).
Anyway, language change over time, always. For instance, try read a text written in English (or in your own language) fifty or one hundred years ago. Although you can understand most of it, it's clearly not the same language you speak today.
Finally, it nice to remark that although the linguistic change from Latin to Romance languages is not special at all, is very interesting since it is the most documented case of a linguistic change over time. Latin is fully documented with a phonetic-based alphabet (contrarily to Chinese, for instance) and so are the Romance languages since the 9th century.
Note:
* I won't discuss in this post the distinction between language and dialect which is, after all, quite arbitrary.
Every place in the world you go, there will be a human community with elder people and younger people. Approaching to an old man (or woman) you'll ask them: "is the young people's language good?" (young people's English, young people's Portuguese, young people's Koasati, you name it...). They're most likely to answer: "no, they talk in a very wrong way..."
The old people's language is different from the young people's language. Not only the slang and other lexical expressions, but also pronunciation, grammar... Everything. This difference is not so dramatic - people of different ages still can have a talk - but it's at least noticeable.
Young people speak bad English/Portuguese/other language. They (actually, we) make many mistakes older people don't. Is it true? Actually yes. But it is not because they are wrong. The languages change as time passes.
I'll be more clear and objective in another post. It's all, by now.
I'm continuing my posts about history of the language studies. (note that this post isn't about linguistics itself, but about its predecessor, especially traditional grammar)
The writing (in the Western world, at least) was invented more than three thousands years ago, in Sumeria. It was a syllabary, or, in other words, each symbol represented a syllable. The writing took a long road. Many ancient people created their own writing systems. In 9th century BC, Greeks imported the Phoenician writing system (which only represented consonants, not the vowels) and created the first alphabet in the narrower sense of the word: it had symbols for the consonantal sound and the vocalic sounds.
Again, no linguistics here. It's just alphabet. However, in Greece something interesting happens. The Greeks started to study music (musikē), which also included poetry. In 6th century BC, they were able to differentiate vowels, semivowels and consonants and distinguish consonantal articulation zones, such as labial (p, b) and dental (t, d).
A few centuries later, the written texts become more important. They are no more a easier way to remember a poetry, they become a way to register and transmit information. The study of language that already existed in music evolves into tékhnē grammatiké, grammar. It was more or less a kind of "grammar" we still have today. It established what were the "good" and "right" way to talk and the "wrong" and "ugly" ways (based of course, on the that times high-class's speech). Also, thanks to things like democracy in Athens, Rhetoric (the discipline that teaches how to convince people) had an important role in the studies of language.
Besides that, in 4th century BC, Greek philosophy also becomes interested in language as something strongly related to thought. They tried to create a logic model for the structures of language and developed a reasonable knowledge on syntax.
(By the way. The strike in the University is over. I'm having classes again since this Tuesday)
When I (or any linguist) say "language", I'm (they are) referring to the spoken language. Strictly, there is no such a thing like a "written language". After all, writing isn't anything but a representation of speech. The interesting things happen in the spoken language.
Two different photos of me doesn't make two of me. Two different writings systems for the same language aren't two different languages, are just two different ways to represent a language. Thus, a writing is not language at all.
(thanks to Sírio Possenti for the photo metaphor)
When you start to discuss a subject, a common way to introduce it is by giving a historical background. Let's do this, then.
Many cultures have developed some sort of traditional knowledge on languages. Rhymes and verses, for instance, shows that some primitive understanding of phonetics is present.
The first (if not the first, one of the oldest and most important) systematic analysis of the speech was the alphabet. Although the alphabet doesn't tell us a lot about many linguistic features, it does denote a remarkable understanding of phonemes. (ok, I'll discuss phonemes later) In other words: you don't create a writing system just like that. You must think a bit about language and find how it works. When the ancient cultures began to write, they were forced to thought about language and they did. In some cases, it didn't go any further. In other cases it did. I'll discuss it later in another post.
Ok, linguistics is the science that studies the language. You got it. But what would be "language"? You may know it, but you can't define it, can you? At least, not so easily.
When Saussure published his book (actually he didn't published it himself, but it doesn't matter now) "Course in General Linguistics", he said that the "aims" of linguistics are:
Pay special attention to the third item. You can interpret it as: "we don't really know what language is and that's exactly what we will try to find".
In other words, one of the goals of any general theory of linguistics is to provide a nice definition of language. In other words, again, what I am trying to say is that there is no final definition of language and each author will give us their own definition. A definition that works nicely with their theory.
Thus, in the next posts, I will provide you some authors' definitions of language. Keep reading.
Before we start, I want to have you to pose this question: what is linguistics? The answer is simple:
Linguistics is the science that studies language.
Simple as that. A science, just like Physics, Biology, Sociology or Chemistry.
But please don't mix up things. A linguist is not someone who study many languages. Who talks many languages is a polyglot, not a linguist. We can study some of them, but it's not the main goal. (if you want polyglots, go to this fine website)
Moreover, linguistics is not grammar. Grammar, in a narrower sense, is a traditional (and mostly unscientific) study born two thousand years ago in Greece. Linguistics works with different methods and has a much broader point of view. It's much like Alchemy versus modern Chemistry. Although Alchemy has a point about some stuff, it is not a science at all.
This thing that is commonly known in the school as the study of grammar has as its main concern the differentiation between "right" things and "wrong" things. For instance, grammar may say that "he do" doesn't exist. Well, a significant number of people say it, so it does! You may not like it, but it's there and it's part of a certain variety of language. It's pretty much like an astronomer saying that "the Moon is wrong". It can't be right or wrong, it just exists. (This subject is quite polemic and I'll talk about it again. For now, it's enough saying that it is not a blog on grammar).
Finally, "grammar", as in the scientific study of the structures of a language (without the right-or-wrong stuff), is a science and its a field of linguistics. Again, linguistics is not grammar. There are many other fields in linguistics, the grammar being just one of them.
Hello! This is the first post in my blog. (and I think you have already noticed that)
Some time ago I decided that I was going to study linguistics in college. Although I have always had some inclination for it, I don't know when I first met with this subject. But sometime in the past three years I made my decision and here I am, in the last month of my first semester in college. I have been enjoying it, so far.
I have had this idea for a few months: building a blog about linguistics. (I'm also a computer worker and I work with some websites) I tried to lauch it three months ago, with a one-lecture-one-post model, but it didn't work, due to many reasons. Now, after a two weeks long strike in the University, I am officially lauching it.
I will post mostly stuff about linguistics. I will avoid to talk about personal or University stuff, because isn't interesting for most readers. It's enough telling you that I am Brazilian, studying at Unicamp (State University of Campinas).
By the way, I'm Brazilian and (I think you have already noticed that, too) I'm writing this blog in English. My reasons: there aren't many blogs written by linguistics students, even in English. Thus I'm writing it in an international language so that more people can reach it.
That's enough chating for now. Let's go on.
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