FORMS OF ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT
CONTENTS OF LECTURE
è overfew of history of English
è socio-historical background
è history of English is a continuos process – started in the 5th century and is still going on today
PERIODS OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
è Old English (450-1150)
è Middle English (1150-1500)
è Early Modern English (1500-1700)
è Modern English (1700-present)
o in 1700 grammar was already very close to present
OLD ENGLISH
è 5th century (449)
o Britain was invaded by Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes)
o Germans brought along their own dialect
o from their arrival on language is called “Old English”
è very different from Modern English
è nouns had masculine, feminine and neuter gender as in German
è nouns took case endings: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative
è verbs had more endings than in Modern English
è OE is an “inflected language”
o language has endings for nouns and verbs
è word order in OE was more free
o inflection in words indicates the function in the sentence
è vocabulary was mostly of Germanic origin
è also some Latin and Celtic loan words
MIDDLE ENGLISH
è 1066: Britain was invaded by some Norman troops under William the Conqueror
è almost the entire British nobility died in the battle of Hastings
o Britains lost because Normans had cavalry, Britains had only infantry
o Harold II (Bayeux Tapestry) à last Saxon leader
è Normans took over as the ruling class in Britain
o brought along French dialects
o very little to do with e.g. French in Paris
è time of strong French influence on English
è many French loan words were adopted
è OE case endings were produced less clearly and eventually lost
è word order became more important
è “time of levelled inflections”
è ME texts written shortly after the Norman conquest did not differ significantly from early texts
o slowly they became ME
è 1150: dividing between OE and ME
EARLY MODERN ENGLISH
è beginning marked by introduction of the printing press by William Caxton in 1476
o before books were handwritten by monks
o every single book was unique
è printing had an effect on the standardization of the language
è Reformation in the early 16th century and the Renaissance had great influence on the English language
è many Latin and Greek loan words were adopted
è leveling of inflections continued
MODERN ENGLISH
è 17th and 18th centuries à codification of Standard English
o RP à received pronunciation
§ = kind of English we find in dictionaries
è many dictionaries and grammars were published
è books on right spelling, pronunciation and right use of words
è English developed into a world language
è Lingua Franca – language of science, technology, tourism and commerce
è official language in about 60 countries around the world
è has more speakers than any other language
o if you count native and non-native speakers
FUTURE OF MODERN ENGLISH
è Internet and international communication
o different varieties (American English, Indian English, Australian English…) influence each other
è dominance of American entertainment industry
o influence on non-American varieties of English
è changes on the level of pronunciation, word and sentence structure will be unavoidable
DIAC.....[read full text]
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Please downloadthe paper. The spread of the language can be attributed to two theories. The I-E people either wanted to conquer their neighbors or look for better farming land. Either way, the language spread to many areas with the advancement of the people. This rapid and vast spread of the I-E people is attributed to their use of horses for transportation.
Germanic Languages: The subgroup of Germanic languages contains many differences that set them apart from the other I-E languages:
1. Grimm's Law (or the First Sound Shift) helps to explain the consonant changes from P-I-E to Germanic. Verner's Law explains other exceptions that Grimm's law does not include.
a. Aspirated voiced stops became Unaspirated voiced stops (Bʰ, dʰ, gʰ
became b, d, g)
b. Voiced stops became Voiceless stops (B, d, g became p, t, k)
c. Voiceless stops became Voiceless fricatives (P, t, k became f, θ, x (h))
2. Two Tense Verbal System: There is a past tense marker (-ed) and a present tense marker (-s) on the verb (without using auxiliary verbs.)
3. Weak Past Tense: Used a dental or alveolar suffix to express the past (such as -ed in English, -te in German, or -de in Swedish.)
4. Weak and Strong Adjectives: Each adjective had a different form whether it was preceded by a determiner or no determiner.
5. Fixed Stress: The stress of words was fixed on the first syllable.
6. Vowel Changes (Proto Germanic)
a. Short o to short a (Latin: hortus, English: garden)
b. Long a to long o (Latin: mater, OE: modor)
Proto-Indo European
è hypothesis: languages of a large part of Europe and Asia were at one time identical (=Proto-Indo European)
è close kinship between English, German and Latin
o e.g. Milch-milk, Fleisch-flesh, Wasser-water, Pater-father, Frater-brother
è 2 branches
o Eastern: “Satem”
§ “Satem” = word for hundred “sto”
§ Indian, Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic and Albanian
o Western: “Centum”
§ “Centum” named after the word for hundred “Kmtom”
§ Hellenic, Italic, Germanic and Celtic branches
è Centum-Satem division of languages: result of a sound change in the eastern section of the Indo-European speech community
o Eastern: K à s/sch à Satem/Sanskrit
o Western: K à C (pronounced k)
§ e.g. Caesar à Kaiser (Centum) – Zar (Satem)
Grimm’s Law
è German philologist
è 1882: formulated an explanation that explained correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic languages and those found e.g. in Sanskrit, Latin and Greek
è /p/ in Indo-European was preserved in Latin and Greek and changes to /f/ in Germanic languages
o Lat.: opiscis à fish
o pēs à foot
è p, t, k were changes to fricatives f, Đ, h
o tres à three
o centum à hundred
è the cause of change is not known
Verner’s Law
è 1875: when the Indo-European accent was not on the vowel immediately preceding, such voiceless fricatives became voiced in Germanic
o Đ à d
è past participles verbs in OE showed a /d/ e.g. cweden (to say)
Germanic
è Proto-Germanic à common from that Germanic languages had before they became separated
è Gothic: principle language of East Germanic
è missionary Ulfila also known as Wulfila (311-383) translated the gospels and other parts of the New Testament
è North Germanic: in Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland, Faroe Islands
è Scandinavian languages fall into 2 groups
o Eastern group: Swedish, Danish
o Western group: Norwegian, Icelandic
è Old Icelandic: The Elder or poetic Edda
o collection of poems from the 10th and 11th century
è The Younger prose Edda (Snori Sturluson 1178-1241)
è West Germanic divided into 2 branches
o High German
o Low German
è 600 AD second sound shift: p, t, k, d were changes into other sounds
o e.g. centum – hundred
Low German
è Old Saxon
o basis of modern Low German (Plattdeutsch)
è Old Low Franconian (Fränkisch)
o basis of Modern Dutch
è Old Frisian
o Frisian survived in the Netherland province Friesland
è Old English
High German
è Old High German (before 1100)
è Middle High German (1100-1500)
è Modern High German (since 1500)
è High German: popularized by Luther’s translation of the bible
Celtic
è at the beginning of the Christian area languages were widely spread
è Celts were found in Gaul, Spain, Great Britain, Western Germany and Northern Italy
è steady retreat of Celtic: surprising phenomenon
è today Celtic languages only found in far comers of France and the British Isles
è Celtic: language of Celts that were conquered by Caesar
è Goidelic or Gaelic Celts were the first to come to England
è may have been driven to Ireland, from there to Scotland and the Isle of Man
è modern languages: Scottish, Irish, Gaelic, Manx (form of Gaelic spoken on the Isle of Man)
è Brythonic Celts: were driven westward by Germanic invaders in the 5th century
è their language was the basis for modern Welsh, Cornish (became extinct in the 18th century) and Breston
Hittite and Tocharian
è Hittites: references in the Old Testament (“Children of Heth”)
o Heth being son of Canaan
è 1907: discovery of Hittite capital in Asia Minor (east of Ankara, by Hugo Winckler)
è 10 000 clay tablets (Tontafeln) were found
è texts in Babylonian cuneiform characters (Keilschrift)
è Tocharian: fragmentary texts discovered in western China
OLD ENGLISH
è 450-1150
è earliest texts date from around 700
o glossaries of Latin words translated into English and some are early descriptions and poems
è most extant OE manuscripts date from the late 9th and the 10th centuries
The Old English language (also called Anglo-Saxon) dates back to 449 CE. The Celts had been living in England when the Romans invaded. West Germanic invaders from Jutland and southern Denmark: the Angles (whose name is the source of the words England and English), Saxons, and Jutes, began to settle in the British Isles in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.
They spoke a mutually intelligible language, similar to modern Frisian - the language of the northeastern region of the Netherlands - that is called Old English. Although they invaded twice, they did not conquer the Celts until 43 CE and Latin never overtook the Celtic language. The Romans finally left England in 410 CE as the Roman Empire was collapsing, leaving .....
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Please downloadthe paper. The infinitive of verbs ended in -an. In the present tense, all verbs had markers for number and person. The weak past tense added -de, while the strong past tense usually involved a vowel change. Old English also had many more strong verbs than modern English.
Adjectives could be weak or strong. If preceded by a determiner, the weak ending was added to the adjective. If no determiner preceded the adjective, then the strong endings were used. They also agreed in gender, case and number with the nouns they described.
The comparative was formed by adding -ra to the adjective, while the superlative had many endings: -ost, -ist, -est, and -m. Eventually the -ost and -m endings combined to form the word "most" which is still used before adjectives in the superlative today. Adverbs were formed by adding -e to the adjective, or -lic, the latter which still remains in modern English as -like. The syntax of Old English was much more flexible than modern English becase of the declensions of the nouns. The case endings told the function of the word in the sentence, so word order was not very important. But as the stress began to move to the first syllable of words, the endings were not pronounced as clearly and began to diminish from the language.
So in modern English, word order is very important because we no longer have declensions to show case distinctions. Instead we use prepositions. The general word order was subject - verb - object, but it did vary in a few instances:
1. When an object is a pronoun, it often precedes the verb.
2. When a sentence begins with an adverb, the subject often follows the verb.
3. The verb often comes at the end of a subordinate clause.
Pronunciation was characterized by a predictable stress pattern on the first syllable. The length of the vowels was phonemic as there were 7 long and 7 short vowels. There were also two front rounded vowels that are no longer used in modern English, [i:] and [ɪ:].
The i-mutation occurred if there was a front vowel in the ending, then the root vowel became fronted. For example, fot becomes fot+i = fet (This helps to explain why feet is the plural of foot.)
Roman Britain
è 55 and 54 BC Julius Caesar attacked Britain
è met with fierce resistance from predominantly Celtic Britain
è Caesar’s expeditions were failures
è 43 AD Roman legions under Claudius were more successful
o built cities and a network of roads
o also built forts, e.g. Chester & York
o great defensive wall à Hadrian’s Wall
è Roman occupation was largely peaceful
è brought prosperity and orderly government
è a lot of soldiers were not Romans à they were mercenaries
è occupying soldiers and civil servants were mostly romanised Gauls from France and Celts rather than Roman
è it can be assumed that Latin never replaced the local Celtic languages
è widespread bilingualism
è 367 AD: Britain was attacked by two Cel.....
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Please downloadthe paper. è end of 7th century à all of Britain was christianised
è not all of England was converted by Roman missionaries
è parts of Northumbria were converted by missionaries from Ireland with a Celtic form of Christianity
è 664: Synod of Whitby à decision taken in favour of Roman Christianity
è monks brought literacy and learning
è scholarly monasteries were founded e.g. in Centerbury, Jarrow and York
è northern kingdom of Northumbria à Lindisfame gospels
o manuscript written in Latin
o illuminated by a monk called Eadfrith who later became the bishop of the island monastery of Lindisfame
è The Venerable Bede, a Benedictine monk, who lived from about 673-735, wrote The Ecclesiastical History of the English people (completed 731)
o written in Latin
o translated by Alfred the Great (871-899)
Viking Raids
è 9th century: golden age of Anglo-Saxon church came to an end
è attacks from peoples from Scandinavia, mainly Norway, Sweden and Denmark
è fearless seafarers searching for plunder
è England’s rich culture was not protected by an efficient army and not organized under a central government
è first raids took place in spring
è places not too far from the shore were plundered
è eventually Vikings decided to stay over the winter and settled the country
è fa.....
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è end of 10th century à Danes renewed attacks
è 1016: England submitted to the Danish king Canute (Knut ;)) and became part of a large Danish empire, including Denmark and Norway
è 26 years later à independent England under Edward the Conquerer
è Video the story of English episode 2
EARLIEST LINGUISTIC PLACES – PLACE NAMES
Latin Place Names
è -chester, after Latin “castra” (camp, town)
o Chester, Chichester, Colchester, Manchester, Winchester
o Portchester (Lat. portus = harbor, Lat. castra)
o Portsmouth (Lat. portus and OE mūða = estuary [Mündung])
è Celtic Place Names
o Celts and Anglo-Saxons used Latin elements when they created new names for new towns
o some place names that go back to Celtic
o Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Lichfield
o “London” and “Kent” were most probably originally Celtic
è Christianisation
o The first written documents date from a time when England had already been Christianised.
o Majority of Anglo-Saxon people were still illiterate
o Monks were trained in classical languages latin and Greek, literature, science, philosophy, theology, chronology and arts
.....
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è The Venerable Bede in his “Ecclesiastical History of the English people” tells the story of Cædmon
è Cædmon was an uneducated brother in the monastery of Whitby who received divine inspiration to create poetry through a messenger from heaven
è in Bede’s text Cæmon’s poetry is quoted in Latin
è in 4 copies of the text the poem appears in Cædmon’s Northumbrian dialect in the margin or at the bottom of the relevant page (Cædmon recited it in English since he was uneducated)
Translation
è under King Alfred of Wessex many Latin manuscripts were translated into English
è also portions of both the Old and the New Testament
è pope Gregory’s “Cura Pastoralis” (“Pastoral Care”)
Anglo-Saxon Poetry
è 30 000 lines of OE poetry have survived
è heroic subjects, historic poems, lives of saints, lyrics, riddles, gnomic verse (short poems to aid memory)
è poems are composed in alliterate measures (inherited from Germanic ancestors)
è originally many of the poems have been passed on orally from one generation to the next
è tw.....
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