Historical Linguistics: Evolution of English
Introduction to the Stories of English by David Crystal
Two Main Perspectives:
Standard English Story
Standard English is defined as “a variety of a language which has acquired special prestige within a community.” However, the real definition and history are more complex.
- 449: Germanic tribes arrived in Britain, displacing the native Celtic population and establishing Anglo-Saxon (Old English).
- The West Saxon dialect was preserved.
- Norman invasion led to “Middle English.”
Real Story
The other stories have never been given their rightful place in English linguistic history. There is tension between nonstandard and standard varieties. It’s hard to discuss this because of the lack of tape recorders, camcorders, etc.
- The Standard Tradition: English as a lingua franca. Most English speakers do not speak Standard English. Nonstandard varieties have been marginalized.
Variation within Standard English
Formal English is used by politicians, clerics, etc. But what about the rest? What about informal contexts like drinking and partying? Why has informal English been marginalized?
- Standards and Formality: Further stories include Northern Hemisphere hegemony. What about Jamaica, Australia? Literature, television, and the internet show some grades of formality within nonstandard varieties.
Language Change (David Crystal)
- Languages are always in a state of flux (language = society). Why do languages change?
- What changes? Mostly pronunciation and vocabulary.
- Sound Change: Sound shifts (sounds of related languages corresponded to each other in systematic ways) = sound laws (the first one was Grimm’s Law in 1822). Grimm realized that some words that began with ‘p’ in Latin used ‘f’ in Germanic languages.
Types of Change
- Assimilation: One sound is influenced by the pronunciation of a nearby sound: *noctern* (night) became *note*, the /k/ assimilated to /t/.
- Dissimilation: A sound moves away from the pronunciation of a neighboring sound: *Kartoffel* was *Tartuffeln*.
- Merger or Coalescence: Two sounds become one, /ae/ /e/ became /i/ as in *sweet*.
- Split: One sound becomes two: s /z/ s.
- Loss: A sound disappears from the language: /x/.
- Haplology: The loss of a sound because of its similarity to a neighboring sound: England / Englalond.
- Syncope: The loss of medial sounds: *Domina*—*donna*.
- Apocope: The loss of final sounds: *help*—*helpe*.
- Prothesis: The introduction of an extra initial sound: *schola*— *escuela*.
- Epenthesis: The introduction of an extra medial sound: *Ofn*—*Often*.
How Do We Know What Old Languages Sounded Like?
Contemporary accounts, poetic evidence, alphabetic evidence, comparative reconstruction, and tape recordings.
Grammar Change
The most noticeable way is through analogy. Irregular patterns are changed in accordance with regular patterns that already exist, as well as systematic patterns. For example, *help*, *holpen* became *helped*.
Semantic Change
This is the most fascinating part, involving new words, old words, and borrowing.
- Extension: A word widens its meaning (e.g., *virtue* used to be male).
- Narrowing: A word becomes more specialized in meaning (e.g., *mete*).
- Shift: A word moves from one set of circumstances to another (e.g., *navigator*).
- Amelioration: A word loses an original sense of disapproval.
- Pejoration: A word develops a sense of disapproval.
How Does Language Change?
- Change from above: Social classes influence each other.
- Change from below: Influence from lower to higher classes.
Why Does Language Change?
Geography, new vs. old, imperfect learning, social prestige, linguistic factors (easy articulation, analogy, randomness).
Backgrounds of English
- (Based on *The Origins and Development of the English Language* by Algeo and Pyles, and *Growth and Structure of the English Language* by Otto Jespersen, chapter 3)
Old English
- We don’t know when the Germanic tribes’ invasion began; it was a constant invasion.
- The original population was Celtic; however, the Celtic language did not survive.
- Invasion, supremacy, and Latin influence.
- England was also Christianized, leading to pagan and Christian elements (church) with short-term loans.
A History of the English Language
Old English
The Languages in England Before English
Celts brought bronze to the island. It was probably the first Indo-European tongue to be spoken in England.
- The Romans in Britain: Julius Caesar’s invasion (he didn’t succeed at all); they lost prestige.
- The Roman Conquest: Emperor Claudius conquered part of the island.
- Romanization: Changes in ways of life, houses, baths.
- The Latin Language in Britain: Influence from the military and official class.
- The Germanic Conquest: 449
- Anglo-Saxon Civilization
- The Names “England” and “English”: Angles—*Englaland*—England.
- The Origin and Position of English: West Germanic group.
- The Periods in the History of English
- The Dialects of Old English: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, and Kentish.
Some Characteristics of Old English
- Pronunciation: Especially long vowels; genuine differences.
- Differences of Spelling: Two characters to represent the sound of *th*: *p* and *d* – thorn and eth, as in the word *wiþ* (with) or *ða* (then).
- Words: Latin influence; the vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic.
- Grammar: Modern English is analytic; Old English is a synthetic language (inflection). Its grammar resembles modern German.
- The Noun: Distinction of number (singular and plural) and case. It has only four cases.
- Grammatical Gender: Often, the gender of Old English nouns is quite illogical.
- The Adjective: Twofold declension of the adjective: strong declension (*god*) and weak declension (*goda*).
- The Definite Article: Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article.
- The Personal Pronoun: Dual number: *git*.
- The Verb: Only two tenses by inflection: present and past; weak and strong verbs.
Most Significant Characteristics of Old English
Five Major Changes Between Indo-European and Proto-Germanic (Pyles)
- Lexicon Became Typically Germanic: Several Germanic words with no known cognates in other languages.
- Simplification in the Verbal System: Distinctions of tense and aspect were lost, except for the present and past.
- Germanic Developed a Past Tense Form with a Dental Suffix (containing or ).
- Two Ways of Declining Adjectives: Weak declension and strong declension.
- Free Accentual System of Indo-European Changed into a More Regular One.
Phonological Changes Between Indo-European and Proto-Germanic (Jespersen)
Stress-shift and consonant-shift and their impact. Why are they important?
The stress-shift and consonant-shift are important because they perhaps contributed more than anything else to make Germanic words look strange. The consonant shift was not a fast change; it must have taken centuries. Some examples of this change are:
- p was changed to f, as in *pater* (Latin) – *father* (English)
- t was made into th, as in *tres* (II) – *three* (II)
- k became h, as in *cornu* (II) – *horn* (II)
This change is important to the modern philologist because it is the clearest and least ambiguous criterion of the Germanic languages.
The stress-shift affected the general character of the language even more thoroughly. Where previously the stress was sometimes on the first, second, or third syllable, now nearly all words were stressed on the first syllable. The exceptions were words that had a verb beginning with one prefix, as in PDE *beget*, *forget*, *overthrow*, etc. Verner has shown that this shifting of the place of the accent happened later than the Germanic consonant-shift.
If we look at the importance of both changes, the second one (stress-shift) is the most important because it matters very much whether the language has a rational system of accentuation or not and because it allows us to know the origin of a word. Also, because it has left a mark on the structure of the language and has influenced it more than any other phonetic change.
Grimm’s Law
Grimm’s law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift or Rask’s rule) is a set of statements named after Jacob Grimm describing the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic (the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family). Grimm’s law consists of three parts which form consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift (a set of sound changes affecting a group of phonemes). The phases are usually constructed as follows:
- Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
- Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless stops.
- Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops or fricatives (as allophones).
Language Changes (Crystal)
- Grammatical, lexico-semantic, etc. What is the most frequent mechanism of change?
- Grammatical Change: This type of change is realized most frequently in the form of analogies: irregular grammatical patterns are changed in accordance with the regular already existing patterns in the language.
- Lexico-Semantic Change: Probably the most obvious area of linguistic change. Connected with the life, literature, and culture of a community.
Four Relevant Characteristics of Old English Grammar
- OE personal pronouns had distinctive forms to indicate singular and plural (“ic” and “wē”); however, they also had a set of forms for two people or things, the dual number (e.g., “wit”).
- OE verbs had two classes: the strong verbs, which indicated tense by changing just the vowel of the root (as in “sing”, “sang”, “sung”), and the weak ones, which were affected by the addition of another sound.
Two Major Changes in Pronunciation (Jespersen)
From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Refer to the impact that these changes had on the English language. Do not mention different features of the same characteristic separately.
- Consonant Shift: It was very important to modern philologists because it allowed them to recognize if a word was a Germanic word or a loanword. This can be seen in the change from k to h, as in “cornu” to “horn.”
- Stress Shift: The most important change in pronunciation, according to the author, because it affected the stress rules and consequently simplified them.
Three Different Contributions of the Scandinavian Invaders
(Jespersen, Baugh and Cable, Algeo and Pyles, etc.)
- The development of the “sk” pronunciation as in “skin” or “sky” are solid examples of Scandinavian influence in English – Baugh and Cable.
- There have been counted more than 1,400 Scandinavian place-names. Place names ending in -by (Whitby, Derby), -thorp (Althorp, Gawthorpe), -thwaite (Applethwaite, Braithwaite) are of Scandinavian origin. -Baugh and Cable.
- The meaning or use of some English words were modified due to the influence of Scandinavian language, as in the pairs of “sick” and “ill,” “from” and “fro.” -Baugh and Cable.
Five Major Changes from Indo-European to Germanic (Algeo & Pyles)
- Germanic has a large number of words that have no known cognates in another Indo-European language.
- All Indo-European distinctions of tense and aspect were lost in the verb, except the present and the past tenses.
- Germanic developed a preterit tense form with a dental suffix.
- All the older forms of Germanic had two ways of declining their adjectives: weak and strong declension.
- Some Indo-European vowels were modified in Germanic; for instance, Indo-European “a” became “o” (as in Lat. “mater” to OE “modor”).
Three Different Methodologies Used in Historical Linguistics
To reconstruct the speech sounds of a language before the invention of sound recording technologies.
- Poetic Evidence: Poems’ metrical patterns provide clear evidence about where the stress fell on a word and the way vowels were pronounced.
- Alphabetic Evidence: Alphabets borrowed symbols from other alphabets already in use elsewhere, mostly Latin. Then people would add or modify these symbols whenever they came across sounds which the older alphabet could not deal with.
- Comparative Reconstruction: This procedure works backward from languages whose pronunciations are known, using the comparative method to reconstruct earlier forms.
Definitions
- A paradigm is… The set of different forms of the same lexical item that correspond to the different syntactic functions that the lexical item may perform.
- Declension is… The arrangement of lexical items of a particular grammatical category into groups because they share the inflections for the different syntactic functions they perform.