Sir William Jones realized that Sanskrit, ancient Indian language, shared similarities with European languages like Greek and Latin. He proposed they all descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European influenced languages like Germanic, Celtic, Italic, and Indo-Iranian. The document then discusses evidence for Proto-Indo-European through cognates in different languages and periods of change for the English language from Old to Modern English due to multiple influences.

1. Language history and change
• In 1786, Sir William Jones came up with the
idea that all languages descend from one
common ancestor. What was his clue? He
realized that after studying Sanskrit, the
ancient language of the Indian Court, place
where he was working at the time.

2. The term used to refer this common ancestor was
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN
• Which refers to the original form of a language
PROTO
• Which refers to the place (sub-Indian continent)
INDO where this original form was spoken
• Which refers to the place (Europe) where this
EUROPEAN common ancestor influenced new languages
Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Helenic, Balto-Slavic
and Indo-Iranian languages are branches of PIE.

3. We may think that only one language cannot
influence so many languages as PIE, this common
ancestor, did, but there are signals of how
important it was.
Sanskrit Greek Latin Meaning
Cognates: words that
Pitar Patêr Pater Father have a similar meaning in
Bhrâtar Phrâtar Frâter Brother different languages
It is very unlikely to find several similar words
on a row, but it is a good way to prove that PIE
is the common ancestor for real.

4. Lchange of the English language can be divided into:
The
ANGUAGE CHANGE
OLD MIDDLE MODERN
ENGLISH ENGLISH ENGLISH
600 1100
- - 1500
1100 1500 -
TODAY
AD AD

5. The Anglo Saxons
OLD ENGLISH PERIOD invaded the Great
Britain and they
brought their Germanic
dialects.
From the 8th century, Vikings came to Great
Britain and their Scandinavian dialects
influenced the language
Anglo Saxons were
converted to
Christianity and
Latin influenced the
language

6. Middle English Period
The Normans conquered England
French: Latin: English:
Language of Language Language of
the Upper of the the Low class
class, Court, Church
Law, Science
and Literature. During this period and after the influence
of these 3 languages, English started to
look like we know it today

7. These
processes
produced
Syntactic Lexical
changes changes
A new order for
sentence elements New words
and new structures
Diachronical
Variation