Historical Linguistics and Language Change

Question 1

Celtic populations that inhabited England (3)

Answer 1

Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish

Question 2

the ___ occupied most of modern Europe from 1st to 5th Century.

Answer 2

Romans

Question 3

West Germanic people that crossed over to Britain after Roman troops withdrew. (3)

Answer 3

Angles, Jutes, Saxons

Question 4

What did the Anglo-Saxons do with the English language?

Answer 4

Began to write the language down using Latin symbols.
Extensive case-marking system
Large corpus of Literature

Question 5

The Dane Law - when, what.

Answer 5

800 AD
Vikings from Scandinavia (North Germanic) moved to Britain.
Influence on OE from Scandinavian languages, mainly lexical.

Question 6

The Norman conquest - who, what, when, what effect?

Answer 6

1066AD
William the Conqueror of Normandy invaded England.
Originally Viking settlers but spoke French by 1066AD. Profound effect on English Language.
End of Old English Era.

Question 7

Describe Middle English

Answer 7

circa 1200
Simplification of paradigms
Spelling largely standardized, although much variation
Class English became apparent
Norman French loanwords

Question 8

Phonological features of Old English

Answer 8

no contrast between voiced/voiceless

Question 9

Phonological effects of Norman French on English

Answer 9

introduced voiced fricatives

voiced/voiceless fricatives became distinct.

Question 10

Why is written English orthography so inconsistent? (3)

Answer 10

1. The latin alphabet
2. Sound change (assimilation)
3. the great vowel shift

Question 11

Describe the great vowel shift

Answer 11

long vowels - diphthongs
pronunciation deviated
- Rhymes/puns no longer worked.

Question 12

What are formal English words derived from?

Answer 12

Latinate

Question 13

What are informal English words derived from?

Answer 13

Germanic

Question 14

two languages are ___ ____ when they share a common ancestor.

Answer 14

genetically related

Question 15

English, German, Dutch, and Scandinavian languages are all a part of the ____ family.

Answer 15

Germanic

Question 16

Germanic is a branch of the __-______ family.

Answer 16

Indo-European

Question 17

____-____-_______ is a hypothetical ancestor language of all members of the IE family.

Answer 17

Proto-Indo-European

Question 18

What is a proto language?

Answer 18

hypothetical reconstruction of language

We use asterisk (*) to show that a form has been reconstructed.

Question 19

What does Grimm’s law prove?

Answer 19

Germanic is IE

Systematic sound changes

Question 20

Sound changes from Grimm’s law (3)

Answer 20

Voiceless stops / p t k / became fricatives
Voiced stops / b d g / became voiceless / p t k /
Aspirated voice stops became non-aspirated (see book for table)

Question 21

What type of analysis is used in reconstructing proto-languages?

Answer 21

Comparative method

Question 22

What is a cognate?

Answer 22

Words of similar form and meaning found across a set of languages.
Not due to chance or language change
Must be inherited by common ancestor

Question 23

Possible cognates: shared/ core vocabulary (3)

Answer 23

Body parts
Kinship terms
Natural phenomena

Question 24

What does the comparative method help to understand?

Answer 24

IE languages

Question 25

What is George Kingsley Zipf’s principle?

Answer 25

Of least effort

- Sound change tends towards reducing effort expended.

Question 26

Explain Zipf’s principle of least effort.

Answer 26

words that are most frequent tend to be shortest
Freq of words is an indicator of phonological methods
Groups of words reduced to single word
Words become affixes

Question 27

Effects of grammaticalisation

Answer 27

Reduced phonetically and broadened semantically.

Question 28

What is a cognate set?

Answer 28

A set of words descending from the same ancestor in the protolanguage.

Question 29

What are sound correspondences?

Answer 29

Set of sounds found in same position across set