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How to teach historical linguistics
It was 1991, and I was an engineering student who was not interested in engineering, and for whom the joy of mathematics had recently been killed by the “Shut Up And Learn The Formula” approach to the proof of Fourier Transforms. I met a girl at a party, and followed her into a linguistics course. It was Historical Linguistics, taught at the time by Ilia Pejros. Twelve years later, I would lecture that course. Sixteen years later, the University of Melbourne would cease offering that course. Aber alles Irdische ist übel, selbst das Geld geht in Verwesung über.
But it was 1991, and I just grinned through the entire course. The linguistics undergrads, leery of the loud engineering student who suddenly turned up among them, assumed that I was grinning at Ilia’s accent. I was in fact grinning because I didn’t believe a word of it. Historical reconstruction is a special kind of magic, and when you convince yourself it works, it’s breezy and amazing. But you need to be convinced that it works first, and I wasn’t being convinced by Ilia’s assertions that it was obvious.
I convinced myself a couple of years later, but you need some special circumstances to be convinced.
- You need to take a proto-language that you know reasonably well.
- And a daughter language that you know at least somewhat.
- And the daughter language must in at least some ways look nothing like the proto-language.
- Yet the phonological changes from the proto-language to the daughter language need to be reasonably regular,
- So that, finding out about one rule, you unlock a whole suite of correspondences where you did not expect them.
For me, the stars lined up with Tsakonian, which is one of the reasons I ended up liking Tsakonian so much.
- The proto-language is not quite Doric, as the enthusiasts will tell you; there’s bits of Doric in there, but most Tsakonian words, you can reconstruct armed just with v AD Koine Greek; and you can usually get to v AD Koine Greek straightforwardly from the historical spelling of xxi AD Modern Greek.
- Tsakonian has dictionaries and grammars, so you can see the words in action.
- Tsakonian really looks nothing like Greek should—not just morphologically, but phonologically as well: the clusters have melted away, and the language is pretty much CV syllables (as long as you allow aspirated stops and affricates to be a single C).
- But the rules for how the phonological meltdown happened are pretty regular, and in fact continued in productive use into the 19th century: ειρηνοδίκης [irinoðicis] “justice of the peace”, a calque from German, ended up quite regularly as ρζινοδίτχι [r̝inoðitɕi], and γραμματική [ɣramatici] “grammar” as γραμμακιτχή [ɣramacitɕi].
- And once you know the phonological rules, a lot of opaque words suddenly make sense: /tʰuma/ is /stoma/, /ʎuke/ is /lykos/, /atʃe/ is /aðros/, and so forth.
(Btw, I’ve snuck in there an orthographic reform I’d like to see if Tsakonian does go online with the wikipedia and what-not. Posting on that separately.)
For students in Europe, the stars traditionally lined about around Romance. Everyone knew Latin; everyone knew French (and could be convinced about Portuguese); neither particularly look like Latin in their core vocabulary; but explain the core changes, and suddenly chère does connect to carus, and hui to hodie. In fact, one of my students at the time—who’s now my colleague in my day job—told me at the time that his stars-lining-up moment was realising in my final lecture, through a combination of Grimm’s Law and velarisation, that French peau was cognate to English fell “the skin or hide of an animal; pelt.”
Now, if you’re teaching historical linguistics in the University of the South Pacific, as the late Terry Crowley used to, French and Portuguese aren’t going to convince your students about the validity of the comparative method. Moreover, given how close the Polynesian languages are to each other, Fijian and Tongan and Maori will convince your students, because after all, you are at the University of the South Pacific. Which means that Terry Crowley writing a historical linguistics textbook based on Polynesian examples was an entirely appropriate and sensible thing to do.
I would also like to suggest that using a textbook based on Polynesian examples in Australia, for students who don’t know any Fijian or Tongan or Maori—but a lot of whom have had high school French or German—is paedagogically lame, and deserves all the grins that loudmouth engineering students can muster. Because Tongan will not convince people who know neither Tongan nor Hawaiian that the comparative method works. Sorry, OUP, you got no sales from me; the also late Larry Trask did instead. (I thought it was a bit on the easy side, myself; but apparently my course was the hardest one some of my students ever took in linguistics, so one should err on the side of caution.)
And I can only shake my head at the prof whose very first page of lecture notes on historical linguistics illustrated a phonetic change (I think it was lenition)… with the development of an Australian proto-language into an Australian daughter language. Dude, noone in the room knows Pitjantjara (except for you—we ain’t in Bachelor College), and certainly noone in the room knows proto-Pama-Nyungan. INCLUDING YOU. That’s just circular reasoning, and its risible to put it in your first lecture. Prove to me lenition happens with languages someone else in the room can nod along to; then get back to me with proto-whatever.
(It’s liberating to be able to say this kind of thing, now that I’m no longer anywhere near trying to get a linguistics job…)
That, incidentally, is why dialects are really helpful for convincing yourself of the validity of phonetic change: they’re close enough that the cognates are obvious, but still have all the range of phonetic change that languages display. Unfortunately English dialect does more vowel change than consonant change; but its not like you can’t find plenty of palatalisation, or cluster reduction, or analogical change…
Pontic in Cyrillic orthography
I’m perusing that Russian Pontian forum some more. The Pontic is done in Roman script by some (default foreign script these days, I suppose), and Cyrillic by others. The Mariupolitan I’d seen in print had a systematic mapping, including Дъ and Тъ for ð and θ. Things are more chaotic here: θ is usually ф—the default Russian transliteration—or с *shudder*, and ð is just д. On the other hand, at least one poster came up with гь for ɣ; and to my delight, one poster dealt with the notorious minimal pair of kʰi “not” vs. ki ‘and” by transliterating the former Tsakonian-style, as кхи. (Greek historical orthography ignores the phonetics here, and uses etymology instead: ‘κι < ουκί vs. κι. The Pontic spoken in Turkey maintains the initial vowel in uç, so they don’t have that problem.)
As happens in longstanding diasporas (and as Greeks in Greece prefer to ignore), the Russian Pontians do not immediately feel that Standard Greek is their language, or that they are Greeks (as opposed to “the same as Greeks”). I liked this exchange. (Pardon any misinterpretations—or better, comment to correct them.)
- Elena S: И Кардия му тосо поли харисе гьяти акуса ромейка! Нэ, препи на вруме то Прасинос, ксери поли кала ромейка! “My heart was so gladdened to hear Romeic. [Which is what Pontians outside Greece call Pontic.] Yes, we must find Prasinos, he knows Romeic very well.”
Better than Elena, presumably, since she’s slipped up and used a Standard Greek subjunctive. As Dima points out immediately…
- Дима Топалов: Эко кхи ганево эленика. Калачепсон ромейка… “I don’t understand Hellenic. Speak Romeic!”
- Elena S: мборо мборо алла ти мон ти глосса ине меси эллиника то ксеро поте имун стин еллада его ивра 70% ромейка логия.Ке кексеро кала ромейка нунизо, фело ке на мафено па. “I can, I can; but my language is half Hellenic, I know! When I was in Greece I found 70% of the words were Romeic. And I don’t know Romeic well, I know; but I am trying to learn.” [I was guessing a bit there, the Pontic dictionaries are at home.]
- ЯнисСПБ: не, маса ти ромейка,хасон та эллиника.Ан са пас син Эллада панда эпорис акека кала намасанц ато ти хлосса. “Yes, learn Romeic, lose the Hellenic. If you go to Greece you can always learn that language quite well there.”
- Дима Топалов: хриса лоя!!! “Golden words!”
- Elena S: Ксерите педья оти ипе енан филос му а по тин еллада, Оти ромеяс ке елленес ехи ена ема. 🙂 “You know guys, what a friend of mine from Greece said. Romei and Hellenes have the same blood *wink*”
Indeed. Interestingly, a lot of the posters did end up in Greece—there’s been continuous migration from the former Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia, Ukraine) over the past 15-odd years. Haven’t got the time yet to check whether they stuck with Cyrillic or switched to Latin; but I didn’t notice Greek script from them 🙂
Greek in Turkish orthography
In the history of Greek, Greek adjusts to the orthography of the culture it falls under; and cultures have their own scripts. So the Catholic Greeks, and the Greeks of the Venetian cultural sphere, wrote in Roman script with Italian spelling. The Greek-speakers of Southern Italy now write Greek in Roman script with Southern Italian spelling (ddh for [ɖː], for instance). When Mevlana Rumi and Sultan Walad wrote their few verses of Greek scattered among their divans (and I need to post the transcriptions, they’ve really changed over time), it was in Arabic script. The little bits of Yevanic we have are all in Hebrew script. The Mariupolitan Greeks have settled on a Cyrillic orthography. And of course it went the other way round: Orthodox Albanians used Greek script, Catholics used Latin, Muslims used Arabic. The Karamanlides, Turkish-speaking Christians, used Greek script for Turkish.
H/t my friend George, the latest instance of this is the Muslim Pontic speakers, who have remained in Turkey, using Turkish orthography. Take this from romeyika.com:
Paleya temeteri i trani ontan uç eksernan alo ğlosa çe ethelenan kati na leğun t’ enan t’ alo, eleğan aletera çe eğriçenan aletera. Emis pa estekam çe eterenamatinus çe tipo uç eporenam n’ eğrikume. Aytika esane pola ama ata pal exathan çe epiğan. Ula enespalamata. Eğo oso erthan so num çe oso eporesa na sorevo apada ce apaçi, esorepsa çe eğrapsata. Ada katu na diğo sas eliğa apata nto esorepsa çe esis pa an erxuntan so nusuna aytika, enositeta apo katu. Na min anespalkuntan çe xantane çe pane.
Some decidedly un-Turkish placement of ğ, of course, and x unapologetically for the voiceless velar fricative. And of course there’s no standard in place. Wikipedia (bless) in its article on Pontic notes dh for /ð/ (and h or kh for /x/); I just saw d and x. I note one of the commenters uses ä for [æ] (like Pontic written in Greek script uses α̈), while the website admin just uses e. The Soviet (pre-Stalin) Pontians, who had a phonetic Greek script with no diacritics (so ςς was [ʃ]) had the best solution: historically and phonologically [æ] is /ia/, so they just spelled it ια, and trusted you could do the phonetics in your head.
For jollies, let’s do it the way a Christian Pontian would. Only with more misaccentuations:
Παλαία τεμέτεροι οι τρανοί όνταν ουκ έξερναν άλλο γλώσσα και έθελεναν κάτι να λέγουν τ’ έναν τ’ άλλο, έλεγαν αλέτερα και εγροίκεναν αλέτερα. Εμείς πα εστέκαμ και ετέρεναμ ατους και τίπο ουκ επόρεναμ ν΄εγροικούμε. Αούτικα έσανε πολλά άμα ατά παλ εχάθαν και επήγαν. Ούλα ενέσπαλαμ ατα. Εγώ όσο έρθαν σο νου μ’ και όσο επόρεσα να σωρεύω απαδά και απακεί, εσώρεψα και έγραψα τα. Αδά κάτου να δηγώ σας ελίγα απ’ ατα ντο εσώρεψα και εσείς πα αν έρχουνταν σο νου σουνα αούτικα, ενώσητε (?) τα από κάτου. Να μην ανεσπάλκουνταν και χάντανε και πάνε.
(One thing: a Christian Pontian would say ‘κ, not ουκ̌. The Ancient Greek negator has survived with all its phonemes intact only in the Of valley. And the Christian Pontian will call his ancestral language “Pontic”—a modern learnedism—and not Romeic, or as this passage does, “Different.” Neither are eager to continue the old confusing habit of calling themselves Lazoi. But otherwise, the same blithe ignoring of subjunctive aspect, the same columnar stress, the same focus particles.)
Of course, there’s plenty of back story to the fact that Pontic gets written in two scripts. (Cyrillic too, according to Wikipedia; I’ve certainly seen Mariupolitan in Cyrillic, and I have no reason to doubt it for Pontic, I just haven’t seen any… Er, strike that.) The Muslim Pontians may be hospitable enough to the visiting Christian Pontians these days, but they’re pretty insistent about their Muslim identity, and they won’t be happy to be told that their script isn’t the Real Way of writing Pontic. Which makes me wonder what will happen to the Pontic wikipedia. It’s a Greek script (and Greece) affair so far, but “Start Writing in the Forum” does appear in both Greek and Turkish orthography.
I also note that the Pontic wikipedians have worked out their own diacritic lite orthography. Including dealing with the problematic [æ ø] as the non-Greekish (so non-confusable) εα εο. A bold and unfamiliar solution, which makes me uneasy—in other words, a resounding success!
But what is this I see? A Tsakonian Wikipedia? Έννι αραμού μακρζυά, όννι μπορού να γράφου γρούσσα πφ’ όννι νοού…
Little Grammar of Early Modern Greek
First up, it’s very little. I mean, srsly, very very little. But: the TLG has been entering Early Modern Vernacular Greek works for a little while into its corpus. The proofreaders are classicists, and they have on occasion tried to make these texts much more Classical than they need to be. (ποτέ in Modern Greek is NOT an enclitic.) To help avoid that kind of thing, I’ve put up some summary notes on how Early Modern Greek grammar differs from the Classical Greek they’re familiar with. It’s pretty slapdash and not referenced; it’s certainly not purporting to be a reference grammar. (And right now, the treatment of what’s happened with the imperfect is just embarrassing.) But if anyone out there has some suggestions or things they’re curious about, I’ll be happy (and surprised) to add to it.
Note that this is expressly intended as an Early Modern Vernacular grammar (the stuff the proofreaders are proofreading), not a Contemporary Modern Greek grammar. Greek linguistic development has actually gone backwards because of diglossia, so there will be things about Early Modern Greek grammar which will strike Modern Greek speakers as wrong. The story of how particular changes got reverse or split is interesting in itself, and may lead to marginalia down the road.