The Language Change The History of English Language.

The Language Change

The History of English Language

Languages Change With Time

1. Linguistic changes are slow.

2. We know a great deal of the English

language because it has written records.

(a) 449-1066 Old English

(i.)449 Saxons invade Britain

(ii.)658 Caedmon’s “Hymn”

(iii.)8th C. Beowulf

(iv.)1066 Norman Conquest

3.The history of English reflects nonlinguistic history to some extent:

 (b) 1066-1500 Middle English

(i.)1387 Canterbury Tales

(ii.)1476 Caxton’s printing press

(iii.)1500 Great Vowel Shift

(c) 1500~Modern English

4.Changes in a language refer to changes in the grammars of the speakers of the language,including phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantic components of the grammar.

The Regularity of Sound Change

1.The regular sound correspondences are due to

the changes in the languages’ phonological

system. It’s sounds that change, not words.

2. Regular sound correspondences can be

found among older and newer forms of

English, different languages as well as dialects

of one language. There are also regular sound

correspondences in the Native American

languages Cree and Ojibwa.

e.x.

(a.) Middle English Modern English m\s /mu:s/ mouse/maws/ h\s /hu:s/ house /haws/ g\s /ge:s / geese /gi:s /

(b.) English French Spanish / f / / p / / p / father pBre padre fish paisson pescado

(c.) Southern English Non-Southern

pie / pa: / pie / paj /

/ a: / / aj /

3. Genetically related languages were dialects of the same languages at an earlier stage. That is, they developed from the same “parent” language. For example, English and French are genetically related languages.

Ponological Change

1.     Ponological Change:(a.) Old English Modern English

(i.)night [ni:xt] [najt]

(ii.)drought [druxt] [drawt]

(iii.)saw [so:] [s]

(b.) / x / / k /

eolh [(lx] [(lk]

(c.) / x / / o /

holh [hlx] hollow [hlow]

2. An interaction of phonological rules may

result in the addition or loss of phonemes

and in changes in the lexicon.

e.x

. The /s/ in the verb “house” and the // in

the verb “bathe” were pronounced /z/ and

// because of the rule “When a voiceless

consonant phoneme occurs between two

vowels, voice that consonant.

Later, the final vowel was deleted from

the verbs “house” and “bathe” because of

the rule “deleting unstressed short vowels

at the end of words.”

3.The set of phonological rules can change

both by addition and loss of rules. (The

two rules mentioned above were lost

eventually.)

The Great Vowel Shift (See pp. 326-7)

The Great Vowel Shift is a primary source

of many of the spelling “inconsistencies”

of English because our spelling system

still reflects the way words were spelled

before the Great Vowel Shift took place.

Morphological Change

1.The suffix-ize means “to make---“ : finalize to make final privatize to make private

2.Classical Latin case endings were added to

a noun sten according to its function in the

sentence.

Case Noun Stem Case Ending

nominative lup + us lupus The wolf runs.

genitive lup + i lupi A sheep in wolf’s

clothing.

dative lup + ō lup ō Give food to the wolf

accusative lup + um lupum I love the wolf.

ablative lup + e lupe Run from the wolf.

vocative lup + e lupe Wolf, come here!

 Case OE Singular OE Plural

nominative stān “stone” stānas “stones”

genitive stānes “stone’s” stāna “stones’”

dative stāne “stone” stānum “stones”

accusative stān “stone” stānas “stones”

Modern English lengthens the “stem”

vowel and reduce the “suffix” vowel of

words. Certain short unstressed vowels

are dropped out finally.

 Syntactic Change

1. Modern English is an SVO(Subject-Verb Object)

language. The syntactic rules permit less variation

in word order. In Modern English, negation is

expressed by adding not or do not. We may also

express negation by adding words like never or no:

I am going I am not goingI went I did not goI go to school I never go to school.I want food. I don’t want any food;

I want no food.

2. contraction rules: do not don’t will not won’t

ME : the negative element occurs at the

end of the word because “not” is

put after the auxiliary

OE : the negative element occurs at the

beginning of the contraction because

it preceded the auxiliary in sentences.

3. “comparative” and “superlative”

constructions:

ME : We form the comparative by

adding - er to the adjective or by

inserting more before it, the

superlative is formed by adding – est

or by inserting most.OE : Double comparatives and double

superlatives occur, which today are

ungrammatical : more gladder, more

lover, most royallest.

Lexical Change

Lexical changes include:

(1) the addition of new words

(2) changes in the meanings of words

(3) the loss of words

1.  New Words

Methods to form new words:

(a) Compounding: the recombining of old words

to form new ones with new meanings. ex. bigmouth, chickenhearted, egghead … etc.

(b) Derivational processes ex. Uglify uglification finalize finalization

(c) Other methods: word coinage, deriving

words from names, blends … etc.

2. Borrowings

Borrowing from other language is another

important source of new words. It occurs when

one language takes a word or morpheme from

another language and adds it to the lexicon.

(a) Two divisions:

(i) native words

(ii) nonnative words (loan words)

(b) Ways:

(i) directly ex. Feast

(ii) indirectly ex. Algebra

(c) Introduce what languages did English

borrow from ? Similarly, other languages

borrow words.

e.x. Japanese from Chinese and European words

(esp. American English)

3.  Loss of Words

A word is lost through inattention: nobody thinks of it; nobody uses it; and it fades out of the language.

4. Semantic Change

(a) Broadening: become widen and general

ex. Holiday, picture

(b) Narrowing: become specific

ex. Meat, deer

(c) Meaning shifts

ex. Bead, silly

Reconstructing “Dead” Languages

1.The branch of linguistics that deals with

how languages change, what of changes

occur, and why they occurred is called

historical and comparative linguistics.

2. In 1786 Sir William Jones suggested the

three languages (Sanskrit, Greek, and

Latin) had the same origin.

3. Rasmus Rask pointed out the relationships among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Persian, Germanic, Lithuanian, and Armenian. He was the first scholar to describe formally the regularity of certain phonological differences between related languages.4 . Grimm’s Law can be expressed in terms of natural classes of speech sounds:(a.) voiced aspirates deaspirated(b.) voiced stops voiceless(c.) voiceless stops fricatives

5.  Verner’s Law:

When the preceding vowel was unstressed, f, , and x underwent a further change to b, d, and .

6. Neo-Grammarians:

They viewed linguistics as a natural science and believed that laws of sound change were unexceptionable natural laws.

7. Stammbaum (family tree) theory:

Some linguists thought that languages had a “life cycle” and developed according to evolutionary laws. Each language can be traced to a common ancestor.

8. The comparative method is the method

of reconstruction of a parent language

from a comparison of its daughters.

9. Nineteenth-century linguistic, beginning

with August Schleicher in 1861, were

able to initiate the reconstruction of the

long-lost parent language so aptly

conceived by Jones, Bopp, Rask, and

Grimm.That is the language called Indo-

European.

Historical Evidence

1. Earlier pronunciation is provided by

non-English words used in the

manuscripts of English.

2. Misspell words according to the way

they pronounce them.

3.Clues are provided by the writings of the

prescriptive grammarians of the period.

4.Clues to earlier pronunciation are provided

by puns and rhymes in literature.

5.By comparing the pronunciation of

various words in several dialects, we can

reconstruct earlier forms and see what

changes took place in the inventory of

sounds and in the phonological rules.

6.The different spellings are also a clue. Linguists have been able to establish

language families and reconstruct the

histories of such individual languages.

They first study the languages and

dialects spoken today and compare the

sound systems, the vocabularies, and

the syntax, seeing what correspondences

exist.

The Genetic Classification of Languages1. Historical and comparative linguists classify languages into families and reconstruct earlier forms of the ancestral languages.

(a.) Fifth century, Germanic is the parent of

Modern English and Modern German.

(b.) English and German are sisters.

(c.) An early form of Germanic and an early form of Latin were sisters. The respective offspring are cousins.

2. A language dies when no children learn it.

(a.) All the speakers of the language are

amihilated by some cataclysm.

(b.) The speakers of the language are

absorbed by another culture that speak

a different language.

Why Do Languages Change?

1.  No one knows how or why languages

change.

2. Linguistic changes do not happen

suddenly; changes are more gradual,

particularly changes in the phonological

and syntactic system.

3. A basic cause of change is the way children acquire the language.

4. The reason for some changes are relatively easy to understand.

5. Phonological changes in languages:

(a) Some sounds and combinations of sounds are “earlier to pronounce” than other.

(b) Vowels are frequently nasalized before nasal consonants.

6.  Internal borrowing: We borrow from one part of the grammar and apply the rule generally. It is also called analogic change.

7.  Many factors contribute to linguistic change:

simplification of grammars, elaboration to maintain intelligibility, borrowing and lexical additions.8.  Language changes for the same reason all things change: that it is nature of things to change.

Languages of the World

At the end of this chapter, Table 8.1, which includes a number of the world’s languages, shows genetic relationships, the principal geographic areas where the language is spoken, and the number of speakers.

1. Evidence of linguistic change is found in the

regular correspondences.

2.  Phonological, morphological, syntactic,

lexical and semantic changes occur.

3.  Words, morphemes, phonemes, and rules of

all types may be added, lost or altered.

4. The meaning of words and morphemes may

expand, narrow or shift.

5. The study of linguistic change is called

historical and comparative linguistics.

6. A particularly effective technique for

reconstructing “dead” languages is the

comparative method.

7. There are language universals as well as

differences.