1. MODULE 1
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Part One
History of the English Language
2nd Semester 1432-1433 AH
Dr. Abdel-Fattah Adel

2. HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
 The two types of linguistic studies:
Synchronic and Diachronic
Linguistics
 The Definition of Historical
linguistics
 The main Concerns of Historical
linguistics
 Studying language change
 Two axes of the historical study of
language
 Four Myths of Language.

4. The Definition of Historical
linguistics
 Historical linguistics (also
called diachronic linguistics) is the
study of language change.

5. The main Concerns of
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics has five main concerns:
 to describe and account for observed changes in
particular languages
 to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and
determine their relatedness, grouping them
into language families (comparative linguistics)
 to develop general theories about how and why
language changes
 to describe the history of speech communities: a
group of people who share a set of norms and
expectations regarding the use of language
 to study the history of words, i.e. etymology: their
origins, and how their form and meaning have
changed over time.

6. Three tools for the study of
language
 1. Articulatory phonetics:
 2. Sociolinguistics:
 3. Comparative philology:

7. Four specific areas of
language change
 1. pronunciation
 2. grammar and morphology
 3. meaning (semantic change)
 4. attitudes toward language change

8. The evidence for language
change
 A. Surviving written evidence
 B. Knowledge of speech sounds
 C. writing about language

9. Language is a form of social
and human behavior
 No language is inherently better or
more grammatical than any other
 Languages have rules and
conventions of successful
communication; and yet, throughout
history, people have judged language,
language performance, and individual
linguistic competence.

10. Two axes of the historical
study of language
 Prescriptive
 Descriptive

11. Four Myths of Language.
 A. The myth of universality:
 B. The myth of simplicity
 C. The myth of teleology:
 D. The myth of gradualism