English and Historical Context

Question 1

What languages was spoken in Britain before English

Answer 1

Celtic languages.

Question 2

Why the name “English”

Answer 2

The language spoken in Great Britain after the Germanic invasions = Old English, Anglo-Saxon
Germanic peoples = the Angles, the saxons.

Question 3

Why can we say that English has a double origin?

Answer 3

English is a descendent of Proto-Indo-European
==> The branch of Indo-European that English belongs to is called Germanic.

Question 4

Indo-European languages

Answer 4

a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe

Question 5

About the Germanic group

Answer 5

Consists of about a dozen of languages
two groups : North and West Germanic
English belongs to the West Germanic family

Question 6

Proto-languages

Answer 6

languages reconstructed by linguists.

Question 7

What is the great vowel shift?

Answer 7

English used to be pronounced “normally”, like any European language. [i] was pronounced /i/ and not /ai/ for exemple.

Question 8

What are the two model used to understand language evolution?

Answer 8

• Tree model
• Wave model (considers external factors)

Question 9

What are the 5 “stages” of English?

Answer 9

1/ Old English (450-1150): Originates in the dialects spoken by the Germanic invaders.

2/ Middle English (1150-1500): lexical borrowings, loss of inflexional endings.

3/ Early modern English (1500 – end of 17th century): Great Vowel Shift. Do becomes an auxiliary.

4/ Late Modern English (18th & 19th centuries): lexical innovations (industrial revolution) & new borrowings (rise of the British Empire).

5/ Contemporary English (from early 20th century)

Question 10

What is the the uniformitarian principles?

Answer 10

“The same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe.”
So, Historical processes can be inferred from the study of processes today.
→ Old English /k/ > /tʃ/ : Kin -> chin ; so all /tʃ/ sound used to be /k/ in Old English

Question 11

What changed a ‘p’ in indo-european to ‘f’ in germanic?

Answer 11

→ p in english = aspiration
Could be interpreted as a f by people talking another language.

Question 12

How de we know how the language used to be pronounced?

Answer 12

• Roman alphabet : The letters « represent » certain sounds.
• People’s writings, particularly the writings of the barely literate.
• Poetry (rhymes)
• Written testimonies: People commenting on the language of their time, « Official » books: dictionaries, grammar books, etc.
• Reconstruction: deducing what language used to be when knowing a sound used to be another one.

Question 13

Core words

Answer 13

the most common words in English; including function words (pronouns, prepositions..)

Question 14

Did English borrowed and changed a lot through other languages?

Answer 14

Yes, the most core words are native, but in the dictionary there are more non-native words than native words.

Question 15

Explain the Celtic legacy on English language.

Answer 15

Celtic survived through Irish, Scottish and Welsh.
→ Celtic words can be found in place names (e.g. comb, loch) but then influence nonexistent
→ meaningless do, be+ing

The movement of purity = dicrimination when it comes to the origin of language, words that could come from celtic are not official.
e.g. baby in dictionary = unknown origin ; but the celtic word is very similar.

Question 16

Meaningless DO

Answer 16

use of the word do in question sentences and negative sentences.
“You walk,” → “Do you walk?” and → “You do not walk.”

In the world’s 6,000 languages, this is found only in the Celtic languages,
and one dialect of Italian.

Question 17

Explain the Latin legacy on English language.

Answer 17

• 43 : Roman invasion → architecture, laws, new roads.
  Once they left the country though, latinization of the country stopped. Trace : mostly place names “chester”.
• Bussines between Anglo-Saxons and Roman empire = first wave of borrowings.
• Then introduction of Christianity in Britain: New borrowings
• Renaissance & Early modern = Revival of interest in classical literature ; A need to improve English for translation and to be “up to standard” = borrowings
• Norman invasion

Question 18

Explain the Old norse legacy on English language. (Scandinavian)

Answer 18

The Danelaw in 878 : a large area in the north of England where the Danes and Vikings were allowed to live peacefully.
→ Towns with Danish name (-by as in Grimsby; Whitby)
→ they, them, their
→ everyday words (kid, egg, law, skin..) a lot of velars /k/ and /g/ as the palatalisation of velars didn’t occur in Old Norse.
→ removed end of verbs (pidgin)

Question 19

Explain the Normans legacy on English language.

Answer 19

1066 William the Conqueror crowned king of England ; Influence on Middle English as it took time for french to have a real influence
→ no other historical event has had such an impact on English
→ The court in England spoke French, and the new nobility in England largely spoke French. (The kings were sometimes bilingual in French and English, but some probably knew little to no English.)
→ Diglossia : French H Language, English L language.
→ lexical borrowing

Question 20

Diglossia

Answer 20

a situation in which two languages (or two varieties of the same language) are used under different conditions within a community, often by the same speakers. The term is usually applied to languages with distinct ‘high’ and ‘low’ (colloquial) varieties

Question 21

Why didn’t England become a French-speaking country for good? (6 reasons)

Answer 21

1/ Demographics : It is estimated that no more than 2 percent of England’s population ever spoke French as their only language, and those people were largely concentrated in the nobility.

2/ English had a long history and tradition 200 – 300 years wasn’t enough.

3/ 1204 : the king of England lost control of Normandy. The nobility who chose to stay in England probably started to identify more with England and English.

4/ The Hundred Years’ War : only served to increase English nationalism and hostility toward French.

5/ The Black Death (an epidemic) It killed somewhere between one-third and one-half of the population in England mainly in cities (death of people who could pass on the language)
→ widespread labour shortages and English speakers moved into higher positions

6/ Lack of prestige of the Norman variety with the emergence of Central French (Parisian French).

Question 22

What is the inkhorn controversy?

Answer 22

End of the 16th Century, about whether this massive borrowing was a good idea.
→ The name comes from the inkpots scribes used as they wrote. These new borrowed words, which were often long, used up too much ink.
= language change and borrowing caused anxiety in the past, just as it does in the present.

Question 23

What impact had the rise of the British Empire?

Answer 23

Discovery of new worlds = need for new words
Linguistic contact : new words are borrowed into the English language from America, Africa and Asia.
At the end of the 16th century, English = a real international language.

Question 24

About the Germanic group

Answer 24

Consists of about a dozen of languages
two groups : North and West Germanic
English belong to the West Germanic family

Question 25

Philology

Answer 25

The traditional term for the study of language history

Question 26

In what order did English spread to English speaking countries

Answer 26

• 1600s : North American
• Northern Ireland (Scottish English variety)
• 1700s Southern Ireland
• Wales
• 1800s Australia, New Zealand, South Africa