History of English Flashcards
Historical Background
Old English
Middle English
Early Modern English
Present Day English
The end of Roman rule in Britain facilitated the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain,
OE: 449 - 1066
Germanic conquest (499) (incl. Anglo-Saxons)
Viking invasions
ME: 1066-15th c. Norman Conquest (1066) French occupation 100 Year War: (1337–1453) War of the Roses: the House of York and the House of Lancaster. The Lancastrian Henry Tudor ended the War of the Roses and established the Tudor dynasty in 1485.
EME: 15th - 18th c.
reestablishment of English reign
Printing press by Caxton in 1476
PDE: from 18th c. on
spread of English to the New World
Declaration of Independence in 1776
However the division is somewhat arbitrary… bound to historical events but the lg didn’t change so suddenly as the division suggests!
Also this considers the history of standard English, particularly after 1500
compare diff. periods of English typologically, in regard to standard variety
Concerning:
- vocab
- word order
- case system
- standard variety
- orthography
OE:
highly inflectional
– relatively free word-order,
– mostly Germanic vocab (some Latin and Celtic loans),
– free syllable structure,
– Latin alphabet with some Germanic runes,
– West Saxon dialect serves as standard
ME:
- few inflections,
- loss of gender,
- more rigid word order SVO,
- many French loan words,
- canonic structure (long vowels in open syllables, short vowels in checked syllables),
- runes replaced by Latin letters,
- French serves as standard lg
EME:
- pronunciation of all long vowels changes (Great Vowel Shift),
- vowel length not distinctive any more,
- rigid word order,
- even fewer inflections,
- borrowings from French, Latin and Greek,
- dialect of London becomes written standard
PDE:
- borrowings from a great variety of lgs,
- development of several standards (e.g. American English, Australian English…)
Development of Standard English
When?
-> in EME period (written std by 1500, spoken develops in the course of 16th and 17th c.)
Why then?
-> invention of the printing press, availability of education to the middle class, higher mobility trigger need for a more uniform lg
How?
–> mix of London plus Midland features; steps:
selection, acceptance, elaboration and codification; many grammars, dictionaries (Samuel Johnson, Dictionary 1755)
Semantic change of English throughout its History?
First name different types of semantic change, i.e. in which regard the semantic meaning may change.
types of change:
- extension (broadening of meaning):
e. g. dog, development of hyponym into hypernym - specialization (narrowing of meaning):
e. g. wife - amelioration (more positive meaning):
e. g. knight (Knecht -> Ritter) - pejoration (more negative):
e. g. mistress - shift (total change of meaning):
e. g. gay - connotation:
e. g. sweater (loss of connotation; cheap (development of new connotation)
_____
Semantic change through development of the English lexicon
- history of borrowing:
– Invasion of Vikings (beg. 8th c.) –> many Scandinavian loans (common terms of everyday lg, grammatical words, place names);
– great influence of French (Norman Conquest, 1066: for 200 yrs official lg of gov., administration and education) Latin and Greek loans
- word formation:
borrowings assimilated quickly into the system of Engl; loss of some OE prefixes and suffixes due to the wealth of new material - present characteristics:
more than 50% of the vocab based on Romance words; many doublets (e.g. as-demand), dissociation (in word-fields connection not clearly seen by word itself), common core vocab mostly Germanic
Morphology change in History of English?
Causes and changes on the different linguistic levels.
First name the ways in which the changes can occur.
Causes for grammatical change:
1. loss of distinction due to sound changes
–> need for new marking of distinctions as a result of this loss
2. contact with other lgs leads to gain or loss of constructions
3. free variation is eliminated by loss or semantic differentiation
4. regularzation by analogy: high frequency affected last
_______
changes in short:
loss and development of categories, change by analogy/regularization, explanation of modern grammar
• loss of categories
- grammatical gender (= specific form of noun class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles, pronouns, or verbs)
- noun declension,
- adjective declension,
- article now invariant,
- paradigm of strong verbs reduced,
- person marking on verbs
• development of categories -- continuous aspect (I am speaking Spanish vs. I speak) -- perfect tense more frequent and with new meaning (I have not been to Paris yet) -- prepositions replace case markings -- future tense markings (I will leave, I'm gonna leave) -- medio-passive development (the book sells well) -- development of modal auxiliaries (must I pay? She may be smart)
• change by analogy, regularization
– linguistic sign is changed (form or meaning) to reflect another item in the lg system on the basis of analogy or perceived similarity.
– contrast to regular sound change: analogy is driven by idiosyncratic cognitive factors and applies irregularly across a language system.
–> This leads to what is known as Sturtevant’s paradox: sound change is regular, but produces irregularity; analogy is irregular, but produces regularity.
Analogical change in morphology:
– involves changing the items in one inflectional paradign to fit with the pattern observed in another on the basis of phonological similarities.
EXAMPLE:
plural of octopus?
– Greek borrowed word, so should take a plural form octopodes. However, English has many nouns of Latin origin with singular forms ending -us and plural forms ending -i, such as cactus/cacti, radius/radii, etc. Thus, an analogical proportion can be established: On the basis of this analogy, the plural octopi is established. (Some varieties may have octopuses instead, which is instead derived from the productive plural rule of English morphology.)
• morphological leveling
– generalization of an inflection across a linguistic paradigm
–> when a language becomes less synthetic: often a matter of morphological leveling.
EXAMPLE:
conjugation of English verbs, has become almost unchanging today (see also null morpheme), contrasting sharply for example with Latin, where one verb has dozens of forms, each one expressing a different tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number.
–> English sing has only two forms in the present tense (I/you/we/they sing and he/she sings)
_______
• serves as explanation of modern grammar
– tenses
(new construction: will- and going to-future; old form, new meaning: present perfect, continuous aspect)
– aspects,
(Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time.)
– do-periphrasis (= do-support?)
periphrasis: usage of multiple separate words to carry the meaning of prefixes, suffixes or verbs, among other things, where either would be possible. Technically, it is a device where grammatical meaning is expressed by one or more free morphemes (typically one or more function words accompanying a content word), instead of by inflectional affixes or derivation.
EXAMPLE:
- Dare I say that? > Do I dare to say that?
- Need I tell you? > Do I need to tell you?
– irregular verbs
Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems.
EXAMPLE
– keep - kept (vowel shortened in old version and also today)
–> force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time, as irregular verbs switch to regular conjugation patterns (for instance, the verb chide once had the irregular past tense chid, but this has given way to the regular formation chided). This is more likely to occur with less common verbs (where the irregular forms are less familiar); hence it is often the more common verbs (such as be, have, take) that tend to remain irregular.
–> FREQUENCY plays a role.
See: leave - left (310/mio. words)
and weep - wept (4/mio words)
– etc.
Phonological change in History of Engl, overview
• Great Vowel shift
– all long vowels affected,
– vowels that could not be raised were
diphthongized
• mergers:
–> (unstressed syllables merge under schwa),
splits:
–> (voiced fricatives are allophones in OE, but phonemes in ME),
shifts
• the changes in quantity :
regularization of syllable structure from OE to ME:
– lengthening in open syllables:
e.g. cepan;
– lengthening before lengthening groups: e.g. climban → climb;
– shortening in closed syllable:
e.g. softe→ soft;
– shortening in antepenultimate syllables
• syllable changes:
– dropping of unstressed syllables from OE to ME
• assimilation (e.g. munecas → monk), deletion (e.g. Englaland → England), epenthesis (e.g. OE: slumerian → slumber)
• conditioned versus unconditioned change
(Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned, meaning that the change only occurs in a defined sound environment, whereas in other environments the same speech sound is not affected by the change.)
Explanation of PDE irregularities
• spelling
(see-sea; sight-site-sit; mood-blood-foot; some-sum…) → regularization of
phonology was not represented in the regularization of orthography; orthography was just beginning to be standardized
• grammar
irregular verbs, plural (brought, given, could, children, feet, sheep…)
Comment on Change of Engl in History
Phonologically
- Great Vowel Shift
- mergers, splits, shifts
- the changes in quantity (regularization of syllable structure from OE to ME)
- syllable changes
- assimilation, deletion, epenthesis
- conditioned versus unconditioned change
(Sound changes can be environmentally conditioned, meaning that the change only occurs in a defined sound environment, whereas in other environments the same speech sound is not affected by the change.)
Morphologically
- loss of categories
- development of categories
- change by analogy, regularization
- explanation of modern grammar (tenses, aspect, do-periphrasis, etc.)
Semantically
- diff. types
- why change of lexicon?
- -> prototype theory, shifts in meaning
- ->
What features of present day English (PDE) show the history of English?
- i-mutation (Old English forms, similar to other West Germanic lgs)
- strong-weak verbs (typical germanic feature)
- spelling and sounds don’t seem to fit well
- lexicon shows many loan words, borrowings
Please comment on the past tense of mouse and foot
I-mutation
Phenomena Shared with German.
Plural form of Gast used to be Gasti.
The ending gave the first vowel i-coloring, which turned It into Gästi.
Ending was later dropped and so now it’s Gäste.
Similar to some forms in English. Mouse - Mice; foot - feet
_____
I-mutation is caused by the very human habit of laziness: taking the shortest distance between two points. The plural of man in ancient West Germanic, the ancestor of Old English, used to be a word something like *manniz.
So after hundreds of years of this, the plural came out as *menniz, or something similar, when people said it. Eventually, the shifted vowel itself comes to stand for the plural, and since laziness dislikes doing the same job twice, the syllable at the end of the word slowly shriveled and dropped off.
Most such suffix vowels were gone by the Old English period, but their effects remained and in a few cases still do. Some of the main places you can still find evidence of i-mutation are:
- Abstract nouns formed from adjectives by adding -ith: foul-filth, hale-health, long-length, slow-sloth, strong-strength, wide-width, deep-depth.
- Verbs formed from noun or adjective roots by adding -jan: doom-deem, food-feed, tale-tell, full-fill, blood-bleed, hale-heal.
- Causative verbs formed from preterites of strong verbs by adding -jan: drank-drench, lie-lay, rose-raise, sat-set, drove-drive. Fell-fell is also an example, though it’s not so obvious now.
- Noun plurals in -iz: man-men, foot-feet, tooth-teeth, goose-geese, louse-lice, mouse-mice. Along with woman-women (derived from wif-man) these are the only survivors of this class, which was numerous in Old English and included such words as the ancestors of modern book, goat, and friend, which now have gone over to the -s plural.
- Comparatives in -ir: old-elder, late-latter.
- I-mutation turns up in an adjective formed from a noun by adding -ish in at least one important case: English (Old English Englisc) from the people called Angles.
Major differences between Early Modern English and Present Day English?
- Main difference is that English is now globally represented and there exist many standard varieties of English
- also some new innovations:
e. g. present perfect passive progressive
Major differences Old English and Middle English?
- from inflectional to analytical language
- vocabulary, many French loan words, but also still Germanic, Latin
Phonology:
- OE distinction vowel and diphthong length
- vowels lost full vowel quality in endings (e.g. hopa-hope)
- OE allophones became phonemic /v/ and /f/
Morphosyntax:
- less inflectional
- ‘do’ started to be used more grammatically
Major changes/differences between Middle English and Early Modern English?
Phonology:
- Great Vowel Shift
(Long vowels were raised and those that couldn’t be raised were diphthongized)
Morphosyntax:
- EME more frequent use of do-periphrasis
- also more frequent use of progressive
General:
- standardization?
(Bc of printing press and general education?)
Why is English so different from other Germanic languages (give examples)?
How did it develop into a lg with an easy grammar, a complex and large vocabulary, and a chaotic spelling system?
Answer: language contact situations!
- Celts and Romans ‘to begin with’
- Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Frisians next
- -> mix of Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Danish
5th century:
Contact with Vikings/Old Norse
–> OE
End of 11th c.:
Contact with Normans/Norman French
–> ME
Till end of 15th c.
Renaissance: Latin, Greek, French, Italian
–> Early Modern English
17th c onward: --> modern English Many influences from all over the world through Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindi, Malay \+ Spanish, American Indian \+ the internet --> many English standard varieties
Where do you still see the Scandinavian lg influence in PDE?
Place names:
-by (village, town) > Selby, Wetherby
- thorp (secondary settlement) > Comanthorpe
- kirk (orig. meaning church) > Ormskirm
What linguistic influence did the Vikings have on English?
- massive borrowing of vocab
–what kind?
. Common terms of everyday lg: band, bull, dirt, egg
. Adjectives :
flat, odd, rotten, sly
. Verbs:
bait, call, clip, die
. Grammatical words
they/their/them, though, are, ado
. Place names - phonological effects (new combos of phonemes)
- even grammatical influences
- loss of inflection
- function words
- grammatical patterns
What morphosyntactic effects did the Vikings (Old Norse) have on English lg?
- conjunctions: though, although
- verb forms: am, are
- pronouns: they, their, them
Also changes typology of English lg:
- -> English becomes a mainly ANALYTICAL language through leveling of endings
- -> because stress is shifted to the first syllable in all Germanic lgs
- and bc endings cause confusion due to lg influence
- -> in PDE relations in a sentence are no longer indicated through inflection
OE still have relatively free Word Order though
Morphosyntactic effects - Syntax
- omission of relative pronouns
- omission of ‘that’ as complementizer
- clause-final Position for prepositions
Summarize contact type and effects of Vikings on lg
Contact type:
- Vikings came and stayed
- very intimate relation on equal voting with full integration and lots of intermarriage
- the lgs were mutually intelligible
Effects:
- massive borrowing of everyday vocab (leading to new sound combinations)
- speeding up of major typological change (loss of endings)
- new grammatical patterns and grammar words
Name Characteristics of Norman French (little before and after Norman conquest..?) borrowing
- humble trades retained Anglo-Saxon names (Baker, Miller…)
- more skilled trades adopted French names
(Mason, painter, merchant…) - animals of the field generally kept E names
(Sheep, cow, ox, calf, swine…) - in culinary sense, once cooked, became French
(Beef, mutton, pork, bacon, veal, venison)
- more prestigious words from French: ask vs. demand wedding vs. marriage motherhood vs. maternity child vs. infant fight vs. battle
Features of French borrowed vocab?
Typical differences can be seen today:
- concrete - abstract
- wedding/marriage
- feed/nourish - reflection of social standing
- harvest/autumn, ox/beef, house/mansion, ask/demand - formal versus informal lg
- way out/exit, acquire/buy, dream/aspire, try/attempt, etc.
Many abstract nouns
- ending in the suffixes “-age”, “-ance/-ence”, “-ant/-ent”, etc.
- starting with the prefixes “con-“, “de-“, “ex-“, “trans-“ and “pre-“
____
Many of them related to matters of:
- crown and nobility
- gov. and administration
- court and law
- war and combat
- authority and control
- fashion and high living
- art and literature
Which word formation processes occurred due to Norman French influence?
Many word formation patterns involve French morphemes
- brotherhood (all English)
- hindrance (E root, Fr derivational suffix)
- involvement (Fr root, E suffix)
- coverage (Fr root and suffix)
Changes in phonemic system due to Norman French?
- voiced fricatives become separate phonemes
–> ‘view’ versus ‘few’
–> in OE only allophones variants, e.g. ‘heofan’
or <u> start to occur for /v/ e.g. 'heuene'</u> - /dg/ occurs in initial position in French words
- -> ‘bridge’, ridge’ versus ‘gender’, ‘gentle’, ‘giant’</u>
Summary Contact Type and Effects of Norman French Contact
- social imbalance
- long-standing contact situation
from virtual trilingualsm
- -> real balanced bilingualism
- -> English plus
(English “survival” due to OE being too well established, intermarriage and Anglo-Normans lost control over French territory in 12.c.)
____
Effects:
- large vocabulary (400,000-500,000 words)
- dissociation of word fields
- many word pairs with typical meaning and or style differences
- many doublets
- hybrid orthographic tradition
compare two contact situations between Vikings/Old Norse and Normans/Norman French
- Old Norse and Old English are mutually intelligible
- French is so different that it has to be learned to be understood
- Vikings and English people are socially equal and intermarry
- Normans rule the country and do not have much contact with the English
peasants; the English nobility becomes French-speaking - intimate every day words and even function words and grammatical
constructions are borrowed from Old Norse - French loans more abstract and formal, often from specific domains like law, administration… massive borrowing from French but no effects on grammar
Explain structure of OE
- phonological characteristics
- Morphophonemic Alternations
- Grammar
- Syntax
Phonological Characteristics
- consonant and vowel length distinctive
- all combinations of long and short vowels possible –> free syllable
structure
- near-complementary distribution for /k/ and /ʧ/ –> cat - chin
- fricatives: allophones in complementary distribution
–> leaf – leaves /leaf/ - /leaves/
____
Morphophonemic Alternations
- I-Mutation:
- suffix /i/ colors the preceding vowel of the stem –> since /i/ is a high front vowel, the affected vowel is raised and/or fronted
- at some point, the vowel in the ending is lost, but the alternation is kept
- the coloring becomes phonemic and is responsible for a morphophonemic alternation
____
Grammar NOUNS - 4 cases + instrumental - weak or strong declension --> stem ends in a consonant (weak) or vowel (strong)
ADJ.
- 3 genders
- 4 cases
- 2 numbers
- weak and strong form
- -> following a demonstrative possessive, definite article (weak) or when standing alone (strong)
Pers. Pronouns
- distinction between 1st, 2nd, 3rd ps singl and pl
- dual forms (we two, you two)
- familiar and polite form for 2nd p.
- PDE ‘you’ from the dative ‘eow’
- -> familiar form has died out
Demonstrative/Articles
- inflected for case, no. and gender
- articels also used as demonstratives
- may function as relative pronouns and personal pronouns
VERB Phrase
- inflected for tense (past/present)
- mood (indicative/subjunctive)
- strong verbs (form past by vowel alternation, 7 classes) versus weak (past by adding dental suffix, 3 classes) verbs
____
Syntax
- relatively free word order –> sense reltions are clear through inflections
- coordination vs. subordination?
– often difficult to decide whether a sentence is a main clause or subordinate
– may also be a typically oral feature
Where does i-mutation occur?
in OE
I-Mutation occurs in:
- 2nd and 3rd person of strong verbs
- -> helpe – hilpst – hilpþ
- some word formations
- -> strang – strengu
- some comparatives/superlatives
- -> eald – ieldra – ieldesta
- females with suffix –enn
- -> god – gydenn
- certain plurals
- -> fot – fet
Why does the sound system/language used in Chaucer’s time (when?) seem so different from that found in Shakespeare’s (when)?
Chaucer - 14th c.
Shakespeare - 1564–1616
Great Vowel Shift (GVS) or Tudor Vowel Shift
- long vowels begin to change around the 15th century
- developments lasted until the 19th century
- started in the London area
- either diphthongized or raised?
- long vowels change in quality and quantity
Great Vowel Shift explains what irregularities in PDE?
GVS involved the raising and fronting of the long, stressed monophthongs (i: -> ai)
Name –> name
hus –> house
–> chain shift (pull/push)
- orthography
EXAMPLES:
–> sin vs side <i> represents /I/ but also /aI/
–> beet and beat, used to sound differently, but both e sounds merged
–> about sounded like /abu:t/, was then diphthongized to /ebaUt/</i> - morpho-syntactic irregularities
–> irregular forms with vowel change, in cases where there was a long vowel underwent GVS; the short didn’t
e.g.
keep - kept
mean - meant
child children
–> i-mutation correlations are obscured
e.g. goose - geese; mouse - mice
(obscurred bc plural form now completely different vowel, even though ending is gone and the i-coloring is not obvious anymore. Didn’t change in singular form bc there was no i in following syllable)</i>
What consonant changes were there during Early Modern English?
- fricatives voiced in the following environments:
- -> s > z in endings after voiced sounds: dogs, boys
- -> ө > ð voiceless dental to voiced, initially, in unstressed words: the, then, that
- -> all fricatives finally in unstressed words: with, of, as
- 14th century: final /b/ and /g/ dropped after nasals
- -> tongue, ring, lamb
- 14th to 17th century: /hw/ reduced to /w/ or /h/
- -> witch and which homophonous, ‘who’ versus ‘what’
- 14th – 16th century: /x/ and /Ç/ dropped, compensatory lengthening of the
preceding vowel
–> bought, night (exceptions: cough, tough, laugh) - 14th century: initial /g/ and /k/ dropped before nasals
- -> gnaw, knight, knock
- -> cluster /wr/ reduced to /r/
- -> write, wrong
- 17th and 18th century: /r/ restricted to prevocalic position in Standard
British English
–> except for linking and intrusive /r/
–> examples: gardener, port, for, law and order
What are reasons for the major typological change from inflectional to analytical lg?
How were grammatical relations conveyed instead of using inflectional endings?
reasons:
- intial stress causes final reduction
- Viking influence: confusion leads to ignoring endings
___
- ) SVO word order
- the girl saw the dog
- the gardeners always welcome the king - ) prepositions
- look at, laugh at, bet on, show to, dispose of - ) periphrastic constructions
- I am going to win
- she didn´t work
- they have done it again
- he will not stop
Name a difference in phonemic system from OE to ME
What are some of the causes?
In Old English, [v], [ð], [z] were allophones of /f/, /θ/, /s/, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants.
–> led to many alternations:
EXAMPLE
hūs (‘house’) [huːs] vs. hūses (‘of a house’) [ˈhuːzes];
wīf (‘woman’) [wiːf] vs. wīfes (‘of a woman’) [ˈwiːves].
In Middle English, voiced allophones become phonemes, and they are solidly established in Modern English as separate phonemes by several sources:
- Borrowings from foreign languages, especially Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old French: introduced foreign sounds where they had not occurred: modern fine vs. vine (both borrowings from French); ether (from Greek) vs. either (native).
- Dialect mixture between Old English dialects (like Kentish) that voiced initial fricatives and the more standard dialects that did not. Compare fat vs. vat (both with f- in standard Old English) and fox vs. vixen (Old English fox vs. fyxen, from Proto-Germanic *fuhsa- vs. *fuhsin-).
- Analogical changes that levelled former alternations: grass, grasses, grassy and glass, glasses, glassy with /s/ replacing the original /z/ between vowels (but to graze and to glaze, still with /z/, originally derived from grass and glass, respectively). Contrast wife vs. wives; greasy, still with a /z/ in some dialects (such as that of Boston) and staff, with two plurals, analogical staffs and inherited staves.
- Loss of final /e/, resulting in voiced fricatives at the end of a word where only voiceless fricatives had occurred. That is the source of the modern distinctions house vs. to house, teeth vs. to teethe, half vs. to halve.
Reduction of double consonants to single consonants. That explains the contrast between kiss, to kiss (Old English coss, cyssan, with a double s) vs. house, to house with /z/ in the verb (Old English hūs, hūsian, with a single s).
A sound change that caused fricatives to be voiced when preceded by a fully unstressed syllable.[1] This change is reflected in the modern pronunciation of the endings spelt -s (the noun plural ending, the 'Saxon genitive' ending and the ending for 3rd person present indicative), which now have phonemic shape -/z/, having developed in Middle English from -[əs] to -[əz] and then, after the deletion of the unstressed vowel, to -/z/ (e.g. halls, tells with from earlier halles, telles). The sound change also affects function words ending in original -/s/ that are normally unstressed. Contrast this with /s/ vs. is with /z/; off with /f/ vs. of with /v/, originally the same word; with with /ð/ in many varieties of English vs. pith with /θ/.
Some major changes over time in morphosyntax of English
OE. very inflectional –> synthetic lg; close to german, weak/strong declension
ME. French! became more analytical, endings lost and new french derivational morphemes;
EME: Shakespeare! Do-periphrasis, Progressive form develops,
analytical lg, which also for humans; double negatives and comparatives
PDE:
- grammaticalization, regularization of irregular morphology, fully included progressive form
Explain the plural of mouse or foot historically.
i-mutation
not only in plurals..
e.g. lead lead (past tense)
How was the vowel system different in OE compared to today?
OE had ü and long/short vowel distinction
Can you explain the irregularities in spelling of PDE?
.
Can you explain the irregularity of the plural form of wife and leaf?
Due to OE the two sounds were allophones of same phoneme.
weef [wi:f] - weefes /wi:fes/ –> [wi:ves] spelled with f or v
–> only later became phonemic
actually even morphonomenic
In Old English, [v], [ð], [z] were allophones of /f/, /θ/, /s/, respectively, occurring between vowels or voiced consonants. That led to many alternations: hūs (‘house’) [huːs] vs. hūses (‘of a house’) [ˈhuːzes]; wīf (‘woman’) [wiːf] vs. wīfes (‘of a woman’) [ˈwiːves]. In Middle English, voiced allophones become phonemes, and they are solidly established in Modern English as separate phonemes by several sources:
Borrowings from foreign languages, especially Latin, Ancient Greek, and Old French, which introduced sounds (and letters) where they had not occurred: modern fine vs. vine (both borrowings from French); ether (from Greek) vs. either (native).
Common question:
What are the most important changes from ME to EME?
- or name all periods first, then she picks two and asks for differences
And why did the changes occur?
Phonological
- pronunciation of all long vowels changes (Great Vowel Shift),
- vowel length not distinctive any more,
Morphosyntacical
- even fewer inflections,
- rigid word order,
Lexical
– borrowings from French, Latin and Greek,
– dialect of London becomes written standard
What can we see today in terms of the GVS?
spelling
e.g. letter i –> /ai/
grammar
- plural and strong verbs often very different
Explain why sea and see is spelled differently but sounds the same?
Due to GVS.
Why are there so many homophones in English?
GVS!
Why do we make a distinction between EME and PDE?
In PDE no longer one standard but several bc English spread out all over the world!
So changes vary…e.g. rhoticity changes in UK but only there…
- also some new innovations:
e. g. present perfect passive progressive
How can you characterize English vocab and what are the reasons?
- English, rich vocab with many loan words and borrowings
- word fields dissociated EXAMPLE: table -- desk versus Tisch - Schreibtisch in German
[word field theory:
Jost Trier 1931.
- words acquire their meaning through their relationships to other words within the same word-field. An extension of the sense of one word narrows the meaning of neighboring words, with the words in a field fitting neatly together like a MOSAIC.
If a single word undergoes a semantic change, then the whole structure of the lexical field changes. The lexical field is often used in English to describe terms further with use of different words.
Trier’s theory assumes that lexical fields are easily definable closed sets,[1] with no overlapping meanings or gaps. These assumptions have been questioned and the theory has been modified since its original formulation.]
What does the vocab give away about it’s history?
- word fields dissociated
- lots of loan words, borrowings
- -> diversity shows it’s had lots of language contact
everyday words: sky
heaven - is the ‘old word’
must have been close contact
french words: higher register
e.g. autumn - nicer, colors
harvest - work
What is changing morphosyntactically in English nowadays?
PDE irregularities
- spelling influenced by many different languages, lg borrowing leads to different patterns
- regularization of old paradigms…some irregularities are survivors of older paradigms which is true for highly frequent ones, but many others are becoming regularized
learned vs. learnt
dreamed vs. dreamt
Major differences between OE and ME?
ME and EME?
OE ME
- inflectional to analytical
- vocab
ME EME
- GVS
- standardization
English lg shows lg contact, which characteristics are due to lg contact?
- vocab, spelling, doublets
- dissociative word fields
- more analytical than G.
- stress different
How? Which?
Which types of lg contact did English have and what did each cause?
Vikings
French
E has over 60% romance based vocab, could you say it’s romance instead of Germanic origin?
- lg relations:
–> which kind of words do you look at?
Everyday words and numerals
the 60% are lower frequency words, but family, animals, numbers are germanic
