 All living languages undergo constant changes in which all aspects of language structure are affected from changes in phonology to changes in the vocabulary. The discussion of all of these would be too much however. So we have to confine ourselves in this e-lecture to the first two, namely phonology and morphology and we'll discuss and postpone other changes, syntax and vocabulary to another e-lecture. So let's start with phonological change. Now in comparative philology, the earliest days of the predecessor of linguistics, people like Jacob Grimm discovered that cognates, that is related words across the languages of the world are similar somehow. For example in Sanskrit, one of the classical languages, we had a word for father which is peter. The same word, father in Greek, in classical Greek was pater. And in Latin, a language which some of you might speak or have learned at school, it was pater. So in looking at these three words, we can see a large number of similarities. They all start with an initial voiceless plosive, they have an internal dental plosive and so on and so forth. If we now compare such words with words of present day English, for example the word father, then we see some sort of principled relationship that the p, for example, in the classical languages corresponds to f to a labial dental fricative in English. Now these and other relationships were defined as we said by Jacob Grimm earlier on, who lived between 1785 and 1863 as the first continental shift. What I thought that the Grimm brothers were famous for their collection of fairy tales and songs. Well Jacob Grimm was also a comparative philologist and he discovered these sound correspondences which were later named after him as Grimm's law. Now today we know that there are numerous processes that affect sound change. Let us illustrate some of them in more detail. So shall we look at assimilation first? Yes, assimilation is defined as a sound change where one phoneme is influenced by the pronunciation of a neighboring sound. As in our example from Latin Noctem, we have the c, and the t, whereas in Italian, not t, we only have the t. So the vila plosive c changes to t in Italian, not t, under the influence of t. Hence some sort of regressive assimilation takes place. Okay then this here, this must be an example of merger where we have the two words c, and c, that merge into c, well I can only simulate American English in North American English. So what about the one in the middle? The split. The split is a phonemic change where one phoneme is split into two. The short r words of North American English can serve as an example here. Before voiceless, fricatives and nasals, they involve a long a, whereas before plosives such as the t in our example, they remain short. So this is then ham and hat. Exactly. Okay, well the remaining changes here, the remaining phonological changes are primarily losses and insertions. So if you lose something in the middle of a word, then you call it syncopy. If you lose something at the end, you call it apocopy. If you insert something in the middle of words, you label it appendices. The insertion of something at the beginning is called prosthesis, and if two phonemes change their place, you call it metathesis. Right. Well, if you want to learn more about phonological changes, you could either consult the VLC Closary or load the virtual session Principles of Language Change. But let us now continue with the morphological changes. Okay, here we are. There are numerous labels to distinguish the types of processes of morphological changes. A good deal of morphological modification appears to follow from phonological processes. For example, the weakening of the old English case system from five cases to two cases in present-day English. It seems to have its source in the phonological reduction of syllables in polycylabic words. Even though the structural details of morphological changes are language specific, generalizations can be made which reflect the patterns of morphological processes. So let us now look at some processes of morphological change in detail. Let's start with paradigmatic leveling. Okay, most paradigms in old English did not contain the maximum number of possible differentiation. Here we have the paradigm which stands for present-day English tail. Sayu talu means the tail. Now theoretically, we could have ten different forms. Five for the singular, five for the plural. But really, we only have four. The singular, talu tala, and in the plural, tala and talum. So the functional distinction between subjects and accusative objects is only possible in the singular but no longer in the plural. In other words, we can observe a leveling or a reduction of the inflectional paradigm. Let us look at analysis and synthesis next. The separation of words into individual units is the most obvious result of a morphological change towards analysis, towards a language being more analytic. A trend in this direction presupposes the occurrence of more and more additional words such as auxiliary verbs or determiners or prepositions and so on. So, for example, in old English, we have each louvier which stands for I will love and which consisted of two words. And now in present-day English, we have three words and additional auxiliary. In early modern English, beautifullest was a form which was used, for example, in Shakespeare's works. One word was now split into a periphrastic form consisting of two words, most beautiful. And in Latin, we had amabo, which is I will love, which in vulgar Latin became amare jabeo. But we have to be careful here. The other way around is also possible, that is from analytic to synthetic. In the Romance languages, for example, the originally synthetic future form in Latin became analytic again as we have just seen. In vulgar Latin, we have amare jabeo, two words. And in Italian, we have one word again. Should we now turn our attention to the principle of analogical restructuring? Yes, I think we should. Analogical restructuring is the most noticeable way in which morphological systems change. In this process, irregular patterns become regular in accordance with other examples of the same language. For example, in the verb system of English, we can observe this process. Several irregular verbs have become regularized in the development of English. Here we have an example from Old English, where we have the infinitive form helpan, which means to help. The past tense form help, and the past participle helpan, and today we just have two forms help and helped. Yes, I see. The PDE forms have been remodeled by analogy with forms such as walk-walk or play-plate, and so on and so forth. But doesn't analogical restructuring take place in PDE as well? Couldn't we say that the deletion of whom in present day English is also an example for analogical restructuring? I think we could. Yes, so the question whom or who could be answered by means of exactly this process. So if you look at this paradigm, we have in the neutral form, we have an identity between the nominative or the subject marking and the object marking form. We have that. In the non-personal one, which I saw, for example, we have also identity between the subject marking and the object marking form. But only in the personal one, we have this archaic form whom, which distinguishes the nominative from the object case form. And so it is relatively reasonable to assume that whom is disappearing from the English language because of this principle of analogical restructuring. The paradigm, the personal paradigm will be restructured by means of analogy with the others. Well, I think that's it for morphology and phonology, which should stop here and postpone the syntactic and lexical aspects of language change to another e-lecture. So this is what is going to come next. So we will be back.