English SAC 1 Old English

Question 1

What are the modern languages derived from proto-Germanic

Answer 1

German, Dutch, English, Afrikaans. EGDA

Question 2

Latin and Germanic languages come from which earlier language

Answer 2

Proto-Indo-European

Question 3

Words with the same origin, often very similar in spelling, pronunciation, and meaning

Answer 3

Cognates

Question 4

Tracing back a word in time is called

Answer 4

Etymology

Question 5

Names of the invading German tribes into English in the 5th century

Answer 5

Angles, Saxons, Jutes

Question 6

Before the Germanic languages, what language family was spoken in England

Answer 6

Celtic

Question 7

What was the impact of the 1066 Norman Invasion on language

Answer 7

Norman French vocabulary (Latinate), simplifying of case system (How the syntax needed to be used to structure sentences to make sense), sound changes, syntax becomes more important.

Question 8

What is a semantic domain

Answer 8

A group or range of words that have related meanings, could be grouped into categorise like winter-snow-blizzard

Question 9

What semantic domains did Norman French words dominated in

Answer 9

Law, court, royal life, food, architecture

Question 10

Were words from Norman French considered more or less formal? Why?

Answer 10

More formal, language of the ruling class, language of administration and bureaucracy, foods only the wealthy were eating, etc.

Question 11

What language does Norman French belong to

Answer 11

Latin/Romance

Question 12

What important invention was introduced in Britain in 1476

Answer 12

William Caxtons Printing press

Question 13

Why was the printing press important for the English language

Answer 13

Standardisation, spreading the London dialect as the standard form of the language, thereby making other dialects of Middle English disappear over time.

Question 14

What are case endings also called

Answer 14

Inflectional morphemes

Question 15

Inflectional morphemes do what

Answer 15

Change a word for number, gender, or case (grammatical function - in Germanic, subject, direct or indirect object, possession)

Question 16

The cases in Old English were

Answer 16

Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, Instrumental

Question 17

What do case endings indicate

Answer 17

Grammatical role of subject / object / indirect object / possession, particularly for nouns, adjectives, pronouns.

Question 18

Why did case endings disappear

Answer 18

Language contact, including Norse, Norman, French, weak sounds tend to disappear over time, prepositions made them redundant

Question 19

How did syntax change to respond to the change in cases

Answer 19

Word order became more fixed as it was necessary to indicate subject-object relationships. SVO (subject verb object) became more typical.

Question 20

What did the sound “gh” make in Middle English

Answer 20

Voiceless velar fricative, the “ch” in Loch, scratchy throat sound, like a more aggressive h.

Question 21

How would knyght have been pronounced

Answer 21

Hard k, voiceless velar fricative, the “ch” in Loch, scratchy throat sound, like a more aggressive h, y is the short vowel “i” as in bit

Question 22

What was the function of y-prefix in Middle English

Answer 22

It formed a past participle, as -n forms the past participle suffix in “driven” in “had driven”

Question 23

What are some types of semantic change

Answer 23

Narrowing - meaning becomes more specific, shift - a word comes to mean something else.

Question 24

What does it mean when a word (lexeme) is archaic

Answer 24

An archaic lexeme has become old-fashioned when it only remains in use for historical or stylistic purpose.

Question 25

What does it mean a word (lexeme) is obsolete

Answer 25

An obsolete lexeme has gone out of use and may no longer be recognised at all

Question 26

Whats it called when a sound is dropped from a word

Answer 26

Elision

Question 27

What are some other examples of connected speech processes

Answer 27

Assimilation (make sound similar to a neighbouring sound), vowel reduction (make vowel sound weaker), insertion (introduce a new sound entirely)

Question 28

Elision is an example of what speech processes

Answer 28

Connected speech processes

Question 29

What is a diphthong

Answer 29

A sound formed by the combination of two vowels in a single syllable, in which the sound begins as one vowel and moves towards another (as in coin, loud and side).

Question 30

What was the Great Vowel Shift

Answer 30

A change taking place from the 14-18th century where the pronunciation of vowels changed. This widened phoneme grapheme correspondence - ie letter sounded less like how they were written, English became less reliably phonetic

Question 31

What are the two aspects of the Great Vowel shift

Answer 31

Diphthongisation - the two close vowels “i and u” became diphthongs (vowel breaking).

Vowel raising - The other ones went through an increase in tongue height