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CONTENTS

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HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

Noam Chomsky Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Language is an anonymous, collective and unconscious art; the result of the creativity of thousands of generations.

Edward Sapir

Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.

Giles Lytton Strachey Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.

Richard Chevenix Trench Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.

Walt Whitman

COURSE OUTLINE

Introduction to the History of English

1.Subject and aims of the course.

2.Sources of the language history.

3.Method of Comparative Linguistics.

4.The Indo-European group of languages. Germanic branch.

5.Difference between Proto-Germanic and Indo-European languages.

6.Classifications of the main periods in the history of English.

History of English Sounds and Spelling

Topic 1. Proto-Germanic Period (PG)

1.1.Germanic vowel system. Germanic modification of vowels.

1.2.Germanic consonant system.

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1.2.1.Grimm’s Law (Consonant Shift).

1.2.2.Verner’s Law.

1.3.Sound peculiarities of West-Germanic languages.

1.3.1.Doubling of consonants (Gemination).

1.3.2.Rhotacism.

1.4.Anglo-Saxon dialects and their sound peculiarities.

1.4.1.Development of vowel [a].

1.4.2.Loss of nasal consonants.

Topic 2. Old English Sound System and Spelling (OE)

2.1. Vowel changes.

2.1.1.Front (palatal) mutation.

2.1.2.Changes of PG diphthongs.

2.2.Consonant changes.

2.2.1.Palatalization of velar consonants.

2.2.2.Voicing of fricatives.

2.3. OE system of sounds and letters.

Topic 3. Middle English Sound and Spelling Changes (ME)

3.1.ME spelling changes.

3.2.ME vowel changes.

3.2.1.Development of unstressed vowels. Levelling of unstressed endings.

3.2.2.Development of stressed vowels.

A. Development of monophthongs: Quantitative and Qualitative changes.

Quantitative changes:

3.2.2.1.Lengthening of short vowels before consonant clusters ld, mb, nd.

3.2.2.2.Shortening of long vowels.

3.2.2.3.Lengthening of [a, o, e] in open stressed syllables of disyllabic words. Qualitative changes:

3.2.2.4.Development of monophthongs [a, æ, , y, , å].

B. Development of diphthongs in ME.

3.2.2.5. Development of OE diphthongs.

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3.2.2.6. Development of new ME diphthongs [ei, ai, aυ, υ, eυ]. Diphthong [li].

3.3.Consonant changes.

3.3.1.Simplification of some consonant groups (hr, hl, hn).

3.3.2.Development of sound [γ].

3.3.3.Vocalization of [j] and [w] after vowels.

Topic 4: Early New English Sound and Spelling Changes (ENE)

4.1.ENE spelling changes.

4.2.ENE vowel changes.

4.2.1.Changes in long vowels: the Great Vowel Shift.

4.2.2.Changes in short vowels.

4.2.3.Development of diphthongs.

4.2.4.Combinative changes of vowels.

4.2.4.1.Influence of [r].

4.2.4.2.Influence of [l].

4.2.4.3.Influence of voiceless fricatives and some consonant clusters.

4.3.ENE consonant changes.

4.3.1.Development of ME sound [χ] denoted by gh.

4.3.2.Voicing of fricatives.

4.3.3.Simplification of some consonant groups (kn, wr, ng, wh, gn).

4.3.4.Development of new sibilants and affricates [t∫], [dʒ], [∫], [ʒ].

Historical Development of Grammar and Vocabulary

Historical Morphology

Topic 1. The Noun.

Topic 2. The Adjective.

Topic 3. The Pronoun.

Topic 4. The Adverb.

Topic 5. The Article.

Topic 6. The Numeral.

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Topic 7. The Verb.

Historical Syntax

Topic 1. Old English Syntax.

Topic 2. Middle English Syntax.

Topic 3. Early New English Syntax.

Historical Development of the English Vocabulary

Topic 1. The Indo-European and Germanic Heritage.

Topic 2. Word-building and Loan Words.

Topic 3. Anglo-Saxon and Foreign Elements in Place-names

Topic 4. Loan Words

Topic 5. English as a Global Language.

LECTURE NOTES

Introduction to the History of English

You might be interested in the fact that …

Germanic invaders brought to Britain a rough method of writing magical formulae and epigraphs called runes. This runic writing consisted at first of some 24 symbols to be scratched upon or coloured into stone or hard wood or metal-signs which generally by means of straight lines could very roughly represent common sounds. These runes, at first the secret of a priestly class (the OE word rūn means ‘secret’), were employed in England to some extent after the conversion to Christianity for religious inscriptions such as that on the Ruthwell Cross, and also at times more widely; but they were unsuitable for any sort of continuous writing and remained only as tokens of antiquarian interest in the late OE period. Runes could be inscribed and read either from left to write, or from write to left.

Henwest and Horsa are the names of two brothers who are said to have led the settlement of England by the Anglo-Saxons. The name Henwest means ‘stallion’ and the name Horsa means ‘horse’.

During the earliest period of recorded English language usage, the Old English period from about the seventh to the twelfth centuries, English vowels and consonants were pronounced in just about the same way as those of other European languages.

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The most important dialect of OE was West Saxon (W-S), the form of the language spoken and written in the southwestern part of the country. This was the dialect of King Alfred (d. 899), of the seat of government of the Anglo-Saxon people that emerged in the late ninth and early tenth century, located in Winchester, and of the church. Most manuscripts of OE literature are in the W-S dialect, either because they were commissioned and read by individuals in this area, or because they took earlier documents from other dialects and, in effect, translated them into the W-S dialect. For all intents and purposes, when we read “Old English” in modern editions, we are reading texts in the W-S dialect.

TIMELINE

4th – 3rd millennium BC – An agricultural people originating in southeastern Europe is believed to have spoken a language which scholars consider the original Indo-European.

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1st millennium BC – The Germanic-speaking peoples separate out of the IndoEuropean group.

c449 (5th – 7th centuries AD) – The groups, or tribes, known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes make incursions and ultimately settlements into the British Isles.

7th century – Introduction of Christianity in Britain. Foundation of monasteries in Northumbria, in northern England. Period of Northumbrian religious and cultural efflorescence. Age of Cædmon and Bede.

c700 – First surviving written evidence of Old English. 8th – 9th centuries – Viking raids. Scandinavian invasion.

late 9th century – Reign of King Alfred (871-899); establishment of West-Saxon hegemony over Anglo-Saxon England and the foundation of schools and scriptoria for the teaching and writing of Old English; translations of classic Latin texts.

878 – Battle of Edington, in which Alfred triumphs over Vikings and agrees on areas of Scandinavian settlement (later to be known as the ‘Danelaw’).

from c890 – Production of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

c1000 – Date of the Beowulf manuscript, text of the earliest major long poem in English. 1066 – Norman Conquest. Invasion of England by Norman French-speaking noblemen and soldiers.

1362–ParliamentisaddressedforthefirsttimeinEnglish(butrecordsarestillkeptinFrench). 1380s – John Wycliffe supervises translation of the Bible into Middle English.

1475 – Printing of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye by William Caxton in Bruges—the first book to be printed in English.

1476 – William Caxton sets up his printing press in Westminster and publishes the first printed books in England.

c1440s – 1550s – The Great Vowel Shift takes place, changing permanently the pronunciation of long stressed vowels in English, and as a consequence determining the sound of Modern spoken English.

1564 – Birth of Shakespeare.

1616 – Death of Shakespeare.

1623 – Publication of the First Folio edition of Sheakespeare’s plays.

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Test yourself:

The following short extracts (1-4) are taken from some texts written in different periods of the English language historical development. Match them with the periods (A-D) they represent and explain your choice:

Just for fun …

Some interesting facts from the life of Early Britain and its people:

The biggest Anglo-Saxon towns, such as Winchester, had fewer than 10,000 people;

It took about 18 trees to provide enough wood to build an Anglo-Saxon house;

Anglo-Saxon door keys were often made of deer antler;

Candles were made of tallow (animal fat) and were smoky and smelly;

Bread and cheese was the original Anglo-Saxon ploughman’s lunch;

Hot bean stew made a family evening meal in a poor Anglo-Saxon home;

Poor people in Early Britain used bottles made of leather, glass was for rich people only;

Measuring skeletons shows that many Anglo-Saxon males were tall, about 1.8m / 6 feet or taller;

William, Duke of Normandy, was illegitimate and many nobles in Normandy felt he should not be king, there even were attempts to kill him.

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History of English Sounds and Spelling

Starter activity

You may know the rhyme given below. Read it aloud, in small groups discuss the possible reasons for the obvious difference in modern English spelling and pronunciation:

Of Moths and Mothers, Coughs and Boughs

I take it you already know

Of tough and bough and cough and dough? Others may stumble, but not you

On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through. Well done! And now you wish perhaps

To learn of these familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word,

That looks like beard and sounds like bird. And dead: it’s said like bed not bead,

For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!

Watch out for meat and great and threat, They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,

Nor both in bother, broth in brother,

And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s does and rose and lose – Just look them up: and good and choose,

And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go and thwart and cart –

Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!

A dreadful language? Man alive, I’d mastered it when I was five!

(Anonymous)

Quoted by Vivian Cook and Melvin Bragg 2004, by Richard Krogh, in D. Bolinger & D. A. Sears, Aspects of Language, 1981, and in Spelling Progress Bulletin March 1961, Brush up on your English.

Do you know that the following sentence contains at least eight ways the combination "ough" can be pronounced in English? Can you read the sentence properly? Try to suggest your explanations why this phenomenon has become possible.

A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.