Historical Change Flashcards
The study of language's history
Tristam
“Celtic may have had effect on low status spoken varieties of Old English and morphology”
Weale
“There is genetic evidence for immigration to central England with displacement of male Celtic speakers”
Kroch & Taylor
“Scandinavianised dialects of Middle English could have developed different word orders from southern dialects”
Keene
“There are documents that identify names of individuals that moved to London over time”
Schwartz
“Rail networks by 1914 allowed travellers to open up to new forms of English”
Cassidy & Hall
“Slave trade has a lexical importance in American English’s history”
Fisher
“Civil War losers were non rhotic resulting in an increasing prestige of 20th century rhotic dialects”
Alston & Michael
“Practical English grammars began to appear around 1710”
Romaine
“Factors influencing language change are internal and external factors”
Hockett
“Random mistakes lead to language changing such as predictive text changing works”
Deutscher
“Language changes for economical, expressive and analogical reasons”
Halliday
“Language changes according to user needs”
What was the very first language spoken in the British Isles?
Celtic
List two parts of the British Isles that the Romans captured
England and Wales
What language did the British Isles use when the Romans took over?
Latin
List two Brythonic languages which the modern English language has in it
Celtic and Pictish
What caused the Germanic people to come to the UK?
Romans departure left large UK cultural vacuum
Name the three tribes of Germanic people
Angles, Saxons and Jutes
When was Old English spoken?
Around 5th and 6th century
State one difference between Old and Modern English
Phonology
List three examples of languages that Old English stole from
Old French, Norse and Danish
Who invented Middle English and where was it first used?
Geoffrey Chaucer in his work “The Canterbury Tales”
Name a language that began to creep from religious sources and remained a language of power in the Catholic Church
Latin
Explain whether English or French survived as a language
English triumphed as language of England but the French lexis changed English
Define “Early Modern English”
A well documented language of Shakespeare marked by some standardising spellings
When was the Renaissance period and what was so significant about it?
Late 13th/ early 14th century, a period where forgotten texts covering all subjects were found
Besides the British Isles, name a continent that adopted English as their dialect
East coast of North America
What officially established the standardising of spelling and why was this historically significant?
An introduction to printing presses brought down price of publishing books and letters massively
List six external forces that continued to mould Modern English, where it was marked by standardisation from 1750
Development of international trade, development of British Empire, industrial British supremacy, World Wars in 20th century, burgeoning technology and influence of American English
Define “Coinages & Neologisms”
Words created from scratch, often to do with technology
