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Language Families and History of Languages

This document discusses language families and the history of languages. It provides examples of how internal reconstruction can be used to analyze irregularities within a language to deduce its earlier states. Specifically, it notes that irregular plurals ending in "-en" and those formed by vowel change in English are predicted to reflect earlier forms before the dominant "-s" plural ending emerged. Similarly, the use of "-er" and "-est" to form comparatives has been replaced by forms using "more" and "most". German retains reflections of these earlier stages in English development.

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Anamie Dela Cruz Paro
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55 views2 pages

Language Families and History of Languages

This document discusses language families and the history of languages. It provides examples of how internal reconstruction can be used to analyze irregularities within a language to deduce its earlier states. Specifically, it notes that irregular plurals ending in "-en" and those formed by vowel change in English are predicted to reflect earlier forms before the dominant "-s" plural ending emerged. Similarly, the use of "-er" and "-est" to form comparatives has been replaced by forms using "more" and "most". German retains reflections of these earlier stages in English development.

Uploaded by

Anamie Dela Cruz Paro
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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FILAMER CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Autonomous Status – CHED


GRADUATE SCHOOL
Roxas Avenue, Roxas City 5800, Capiz, Philippines
Tel. No. (036) 6212-317 ; Fax No. (036) 6213-0725
Website: http://www.filamer.edu.ph

Descriptive Linguistics
(Eng.408)

ANAMIE F. DE LA CRUZ DR. MARIA TERESA D. COSICO

MAT- English Professor

Language families and History of languages

The reconstruction of language when it is no longer there is a difficult task. One


distinguishes two methods: comparison between languages, and other internal
reconstruction. The later applied in absence of comparative evidence. One observes
certain irregularities in the language and proposes a solution in terms of a possible
development of the language.

It is observed, for example that irregular inflection is older than regular


inflection. For example in English there are plurals in /en/ (oxen),(vixen) and plurals in
vowel change (women/,mice/). These are predicted by internal reconstruction to reflect
an earlier state of the language where plurals was formed by addition of /en/ and vowel
change and that the plural /s/ was a later development.

Why do a few words take -en instead of -s or -es to become plural? You may
have heard that English is a Germanic language. The -en ending on plurals is something
we get from our German roots. In Old English, some nouns were made plural with -
s and -es as they are today, but many nouns took -en to become plural.

The s-form plurals became dominant in northern England first, while the en-form
hung on in southern England. By the 14th century the s-form became dominant
everywhere, but people didn't let go of the en-form completely; as late as the 16th
century the plural of eye was eyen and the plural of hose was hosen. Today only a
few en-forms survive; the most common are oxen and children. And, of course, another
Germanic way of forming plurals is by vowel change, as in mouse -> mice, man ->
men, woman -> women (double vowel change, in fact, but not reflected in the
spelling!), goose -> geese etc.

Likewise, this method predicts that the comparative in English was once formed
using /er/ and /est/, but at some point got replaced by forms involving /more/ and
/most/. In both cases, German reflects the earlier stage of English.

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