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LEL1B > Historical Linguistics > Flashcards

Historical Linguistics Flashcards

1
Q

Introduction of English to Britain

A

brought about by contact with Anglo-Saxon settlers who came to Britain as military support, invaders, traders, and immigrants. These settlers quickly dominated Britain linguistically (they spoke dialects of West Germanic - an ancestor of Old English)

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2
Q

Introduction of English to Britain

A

brought about by contact with Anglo-Saxon settlers who came to Britain as military support, invaders, traders, and immigrants. These settlers quickly dominated Britain linguistically (they spoke dialects of West Germanic - an ancestor of Old English)

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3
Q

transcription of written form

A
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4
Q

Old English Grammar

A

inflectional for nouns, adjectives, pronouns

  • gender
  • case (nom, acc, gen, dat)
  • number

reduced during Middle English period - through a process of ANOLOGICAL LEVELLING, the strong masculine nouns were used for most other noun categories

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5
Q

Old English Grammar

A

inflectional for nouns, adjectives, pronouns

  • gender
  • case (nom, acc, gen, dat)
  • number
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6
Q

Semi-Standard Written Form of OE

A

West-Saxon

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7
Q

Danelaw

A

political territory controlled by the Vikings (many place names in this area still find their roots in settlement - Rugby, Derby, Corby…)

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8
Q

Influence from Norman French

A

English borrowed many lexical items

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9
Q

diglossia

A

a situation where there is two languages and one is considered more prestigious than the other

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10
Q

diglossia

A

a situation where there is two languages and one is considered more prestigious than the other

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11
Q

Great Vowel Shift - push chain

A

a series of changes whereby the phonetic realisations of phonemes change in step to avoid merger
- affected long vowels, which all rose in height in the vowel space:
the two high long vowels diphthongised

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12
Q

Orthography of Old English

A

only one series of fricatives, underlyingly voiceless (but pronounced as voiced between vowels and voiced consonants)

= /f/ = [f] and [v]

language also contrasted long and short vowels
- used a macron [-] above the letter to signify it was a long vowel when written down

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13
Q

Old English Grammar

A

inflectional for nouns, adjectives, pronouns

  • gender
  • case (nom, acc, gen, dat)
  • number
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14
Q

Semi-Standard Written Form of OE

A

West-Saxon

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15
Q

High German Sound Shift (=/= prestige)

A

(the second sound shift)

plosives become fricatives (intervocalically and word finally) and affricated (word initial)
number of voiceless stops significantly reduced

p -> pf (-> f)
t -> ts (-> t)
voiceless stops -> affricate -> fricatives)

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16
Q

Influence from Norman French

A

English borrowed many lexical items

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17
Q

Relationship between OE and Old Norse

A

contact led to the adoption of many Old Norse words in English:

  • vocab items (sister, sky, egg)
  • production of some doublets (church-kirk)
  • 3rd plural pronouns (they, them, their)
18
Q

diglossia

A

a situation where there is two languages and one is considered more prestigious than the other

19
Q

Neogrammarian Hypothesis

A

sound changes are regular and exceptionless
- if /p/ changes to /f/, then all instances of /p/ in the ancestor language change to /f/ in the descendant language, all other things being equal

20
Q

Great Vowel Shift

A

a series of changes whereby the phonetic realisations of phonemes change in step to avoid merger

21
Q

proto-language

A

common ancestor language

22
Q

proto-Indo-European

A

hypothesis that all Indo-European languages ultimately emerged from a single ancestor

  • hypothesised as a mainly head-final language
  • can be reasonably confident that nouns could be inflected for number, gender and case, and verbs could be inflected for tense and mood
23
Q

Grimm’s Law

A

a set of changes that all Germanic languages have undergone (the first sound shift)

Generalisations:
voiceless plosives become fricatives
voiced plosives become voiceless
voiced ‘aspirated’ plosives become deaspirated

p -> f
k -> x
b -> p 
d -> t
g -> k 
d^h -> d
g^h -> g
24
Q

High German Sound Shift (=/= prestige)

A

(the second sound shift)

plosives become fricatives (intervocalically and word finally) and affricated (word initial)

25
Q

assimilation

A

adapting a sound to a neighbouring sound

- can be place, manner or voicing assimilation

26
Q

voice

A

voicing an obstruent between two vowels

27
Q

lenition

A

deleting or weakening of an obstruent

28
Q

Neogrammarian Hypothesis

A

sound changes are regular and exceptionless
- if /p/ changes to /f/, then all instances of /p/ in the ancestor language change to /f/ in the descendant language, all other things being equal

29
Q

Vowel Harmony

A

when a sound, in particular a vowel, adapts itself to the place of a vowel in a following syllable

30
Q

Paragoge

A

when a new sound is inserted at the end of a word

31
Q

Prothesis

A

when a new sound is inserted at the beginning of a word

32
Q

Epenthesis

A

when a new sound is inserted/shows up in the middle of a word

33
Q

Aphesis or Procope

A

when a new sound disappears from the beginning of a word

34
Q

Syncope

A

when a sound disappears in the middle of a word

35
Q

Apocope

A

when a sound disappears at the end of a word

36
Q

Conditioned sound change

A

when a sound change only takes place in only certain contexts - it is restricted by its environment

37
Q

Unconditioned sound change

A

when a sound change is not restricted by it’s environment

38
Q

secondary split

A

some allophones of a phoneme abandon the original phoneme and join another phoneme instead, leaving a gap in the environments in the language where the phoneme can occur

39
Q

primary split

A

the total number of phonemes in a language increases - new phonological contrasts are produced

40
Q

excrescence

A

insertion which refers to a consonant being inserted between other consonants (results in easier pronunciations)

41
Q

haplology

A

repeated sequences of sounds are simplified into a single occurence:
- library pronounced libry

LEL1B (7 decks)

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