November 1, 2017

Lecture 2 Chapter 1

Fennell:
B/HS2 Linguistics
Introduction

The importance of different

Time periods in the history of invasions and migrations on the
English English language and British society

 The Celts: 4th century B.C.

 Old English (OE): 450-1100
 The Romans: 55 B.C. and A.D. 43-410
 Middle English (ME): 1100-1500
 Early Modern English (EModE): 1500-1800  The Anglo-Saxons: 5th century A.D.
 (Late Modern English (LModE): 1700-1900)  The Vikings: 9th century A.D.
Present-day English (PDE) 1800-present

 The Normans: 1066-

Important events marking the Linguistic evidence at the end

end of the time periods
 CE 500: arrival of Anglo-Saxon tribes after
450-
 1100: the conquest of Britain by William,
Duke of Normandy
 1500: the beginning of the Renaissance,
introduction of the printing press
 1800: independence of American colonies
of the time periods
 CE 500: the formation of Old English
 1100: the breakdown of the Old English inflectional
system, start of 400-year French influence
 1500: the end of French dominance, beginning of
Latin influence, spread of literacy
 1800: Colonialism, the US, new loan words, the
rise of a new English variety

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English 1

Factors involved in language change
 A. External factors
 1) Language contact: pidgins & creoles
 2) Imperfect learning
 3) The substratum effect
 4) Fashion and prestige
 B. Internal factors
 1) Analogy
 2) Reanalysis
 3) Randomness
Linguistic properties of pidgins
and creoles
 Extreme forms of analytic languages
 Great simplification in phonology and grammar,
fewer phonemes, little morphology
 No plural, no verb agreement, simplification of the
pronominal system, no do-support, no progressive
 Grammatical meaning carried by particles and lexical
words: lexicalization
 Lexical items get new meanings: chop, bif, saber
’know’
 mi no luk-im pikipiki bulong iu.
 I not see-him pig belong you
Fashion & Prestige
 Some features are more prestigious than
others:
 The case of -ing in Upper Middle Class
speakers
 The long i-sound in Lidingö, Stockholm
 Gender: Women are especially sensitive
to linguistic prestige features in the
Western world
Lecture 2: The pre-history of
English
November 1, 2017
Language contact:
Pidgins and Creoles
 Pidgin = a contact language (remains an
L2)
 Creole = a pidgin that develops into an
L1 (native speakers)
 Post-Creole continuum
 Basilect > Mesolect > Acrolect
(Creole) (Standard English)
Substratum hypotheses
 A conquering minority having its language
modified by a conquered population
 The progressive form in English is, by some
scholars, regarded as one example of a
substratum change: it is used frequently in
Hiberno English, it occurs in all Celtic
languages
 Even Middle English, the very rapid loss of
inflections in Old English has been regarded
as a form of substratum change from Celtic
slaves.
Imperfect learning
 An old idea which is still promoted by
some scholars: the question of whether
language is innate or acquired
 The idea that children receive ”incorrect”
input
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Minimization of effort Assimilation

 Example:  Skamt > scant
fussy /fʌsı/ CV CV unvoiced-voiced  Football as foopball
fuzzy /fʌzı/ VCV all voiced  Metathesis: waps > wasp, bren > burn
 Swedish: en bil /n > m/, pannkaka /n > ŋ/
 One form of assimilation

Some system-internal factors in Organization of morphemes

language change (see Yule, The study of language)

 Ease of articulation  Free / Bound

 Analogy: extending a change to others  Free 
by association Lexical = Open word classes
Grammatical = Closed word classes
 Reanalysis: for example, dummy-do
 Bound 
 Randomness Inflectional = expressing grammatical
categories
Derivational = creating new words

Fennell’s phonetic notation:

p. 12


Fennell
i
IPA
i:
Example
feel
Same or different symbol
different
Chapter 2
 ɪ ɪ hit same
 e eɪ rain different
 ɛ e set different
 æ æ fat same
 u u: root different
 ʊ ʊ look same
 ʌ ʌ cut same


o
ɔ
əʊ
ɒ
spoke
dog
different
different Fennell:


a
ə
ɑ:
ə
father
above
different
same The Pre-history of English
 aj / aɪ aɪ find different
 aʊ aʊ house same
 ɔj / ɔɪ ɔɪ boy different

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Major branches of
Language families Indo-European
 *Proto-language: *gosiz  1) Indo-Aryan: Indian / Iranian
 Reconstruction  2) Hellenic: Greek
 3) Italic: French, Spanish, Italian
 Cognate languages: based on regular
 4) Celtic: Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic
sound correspondences
 5) Balto-Slavonic: Russian, Polish
 Examples of major Indo-European
 6) Germanic: English, Swedish,Dutch
language families
 Note the absence of a Celtic family in Figure
2.1 on page 22!

William Jones 1746-1794 Germanic reconstruction:

correspondence sets
 Sir William Jones was
an Anglo-Welsh
Relationships between English, German, Swedish, Latin words
philologist and scholar of Old English Modern German Swedish Latin
ancient India, particularly English

known for his proposition stan stone Stein sten

of the existence of a fæder father Vater fader pater

relationship among Indo-
European languages.

Comparative reconstruction: Isoglosses: marking language or

p, t, k dialect boundaries
 The line on the map of southern
IE form Sanskrit Greek Latin OE ModE England separates the area
where the vowel in a word such
*p pitá pater pater fæder father as cut is [ʌ] (black circles)
from the area where the
*t tráyas treis trēs þrēo three vowel is [ʊ] (crosses).

*katam satam ke-katón centum hund hundred

 kʊt [ʊ] = xxxx
*kwis kás tís quis hwā who  kʌt [ʌ] = ●●●●

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Language families
Proto-Indo-European: I

Proto-
language

Latin ?Proto-
Germanic

Old
Spanish French Italian Old Norse
English

Danish Icelandic English

Indo-European languages: Indo-European languages:

The Centum languages The Satem languages

Example of Germanic
The Germanic languages morphology
 Germanic (not German) languages The noun mearh (masculine, ‘horse’, cf. Sw märr) in
 1) North-Germanic: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Old English
Icelandic
 2) East Germanic: Gothic
 3) West-Germanic: Dutch, German, English
Singular Plural
 Sources of Proto-Germanic Nominative mearh mearas
 1) Reconstruction
Accusative mearh mearas
 2) Latin and Greek historians
 3) Loanwords in Finnish (400) and Lappish: Genitive meares meara
kunningas ‘king’, rengas ‘ring’, kauppias ‘seller’ Dative meare mearum
 4) A few early runic inscriptions

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Two sound changes that define Grimm’s Law: Correspondences

the Germanic languages in various languages: p > f
 1) Grimm’s Law (and Verner’s Law): Latin Greek Sanskrit Gothic OE
affected consonants pedem poda padam fotus fōt
pater > father, genu > knee, dentis > pecus pacu faihu feoh ’fä’
tooth (p. 36-38) piscis fisks fisc
 2) Gradation: vowel change to indicate
tense in ’strong verbs’: (p. 69)
sing – sang – sung
drive – drove – driven

Grimm’s Law: p, t, k > f, Ɵ, h Grimm’s Law: b, d, g > p, t, k

Proto- Proto- b Old Bulgarian p OE slæpan ‘sleep’

IE Germanic (rare) slabŭ ’weak’
p Lat. pater f OE fæder ‘father’ Lith. dubùs OE dēop, ON djupr
Lat. pedem OE fōt ‘foot’ Lith. trobà OE þorp
Lat. piscis OE fisc ‘fish’ d Lat. dentis t OE tōþ ‘tooth’
Lat. nepos OE nefa ‘nephew’ Lat. edere OE etan ‘eat’
Lat. pecus OE feoh ‘cattle’ Lat. videre OE witan ‘wit’
t Lat. trēs θ ON þrir OE þrī ‘three’ g Lat. genu k OE cnēo ‘knee’
Lat. tenuis OE þynne Lat. genus kin
Old Latin tongēre OE þencan ‘think’ Lat. ager OE æcer ‘acre’
Lat. tū OE þū > ‘thou’ Lat. gustō OE cēosan ‘choose’
k Lat. cordem h OE heorte ‘heart’ Lat. augere ON auk (Swedish ‘öka’)
Lat. centum hund(red) Lat. gelu ‘cold’ OE ceald ‘cold’
Lat. canis OE hund ‘dog’

Grimm’s Law, p. 36
Grimm’s Law: bh, dh, gh > b, d, g
 Voiceless stops  voiceless fricatives
bh Sanskrit bhrāmi b brother  p, t, k > f, Ɵ, h
Sanskr. bhēdāni OE beran,
Swedish ’bära’  Voiced stops  voiceless stops
OE bītan ’bite’
 b, d, g > p, t, k
dh Greek thura d OE duru ‘door’
 Voiced aspirated stops  Voiced stops
gh Greek chen g OE gōs ‘goose’
 bh, dh, gh > b, d, g
PIE *dhoghos OE daeg ‘day’

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Gradation (or Ablaut)

Fennell p. 69 Strong verbs / Irregular verbs

Seven classes of strong verbs in Old English  Weak verbs: -ed -ed
 Strong verbs: drive – drove – driven
I drifan ’drive’ draf drifon
II fleon ’flee’ fleah flugon
III drincan ’drink’ dranc druncon
 Regular verbs: -ed -ed
IV cuman ’come’ com comon  Irregular verbs: cut – cut – cut,
V gifan ’give’ geaf geafon sink – sank – sunk
VI standan ’stand’ stod stodon

Grammatical features of
Case in Old English:
Proto-Germanic > Old English: Case
mearh ’horse’, Sw. märr
Indo-European cases: Old English cases

 Nominative (subject), Singular Plural

 Accusative (affected), Nominative / Accusative Nominative mearh mearas
 Genitive (possession), Dative Accusative mearh mearas
 Ablative (source), Genitive
 Dative (beneficiary / recipient), Genitive meares meara
(Instrumental)
 Locative (place), Dative meare mearum
 Instrumental (means),
 Vocative (addressee) Modern English only two:
common case
genitive case

Grammatical features of Gradation today:

Proto-Germanic > Old English strong verbs (irregular verbs)
1) Four cases (Modern English only two: common +

genitive)  sing – sang – sung
 2) Number: singular + plural + dual (= two of a kind)  drink – drank – drunk
 3) Grammatical gender: masculine, feminine, neuter
 4) Strong and weak declensions of adjectives  drive – drove – driven
 5) Strong and weak conjugations of verbs < drīfan -- drāf -- drĭfon
 6) Two tenses: the present and the past
(no future, progressive, or perfect)  Note in the last example how the long
 7) Mood: The subjunctive versus the indicative vowels (ī and ā) have changed, but not
the short one (ĭ).

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Syntactic universals:
Language typology Word order
 Typological classification of languages  Subject – Verb – Object
 Language universals  SVO, SOV, VSO, OVS, VOS, …
 Syntactic universals  Det + N or N + Det
 Morphological typology  Adj + N or N + Adj
 Prep + NP or NP + Postposition

Greenberg’s word order The Noun Phrase Accessibility

universals Hierarchy: relative clauses
Word order universals:

 VSO / Preposition / N Gen / N Adj
 Relative clause formation:
 SVO / Preposition / N Gen / N Adj  SU > DO > IO > Oblique > Possessive
 SOV / Postposition / Gen N / Adj N (N Adj)
 VO / Preposition / N Gen / N Adj  That is, subject is most easily relativized
 OV / Postposition / Gen N / Adj N (1) the girl who phoned me
 Operator (adjunct) Operand (head)
followed by object
 Object Verb (2) the girl who I phoned
Adjective Noun

 Genitive Noun
If a language can relativize on a particular
 Relative clause Noun function, then it can relativize on all functions
Noun Preposition

to the left.

Morphological typology: Polysynthetic languages: complete

Language types
 Synthetic languages: many bound morphemes
 Analytic languages: few bound morphemes
 Isolating (no morphology): Vietnamese
 Aggutinating (each morpheme is clearly
segmented): Turkish
 Flectional (fusional): (inflectional morphemes carry
more than one meaning) Latin, Russian
 Polysynthetic: Ennuit languages
 Question: where do you place English? Old English?
utterances as single words (Inuktitut)
 the language of Inuktitut in North America:
 qasuiirsarvigssarsingitluinarnarpuq >>
qasu+iir+sar+vig+ssar+si+ngit+luinar+nar+puq
 Morphemes:
 ‘tired+not+cause+to be+place for +suitable+find
+not+completely + someone +3p erson_singular,
=someone did not find a completely suitable
resting place

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From Old English to Modern Summary

English
 Old English: Synthetic (lots of inflectional endings)
 Language types, word order types,
 & þæt uuær-un þa æresta-n cyning-as þe Westseax- classes of morphemes
na lond on Weal-um geeod-on; & he hæf-de þæt ric-
e .xvi. gear, & þa he gefor, þa feng his sunu Cynric to  Language variation (and change)
þa-m ric-e & heold .xvii. winter. Þa he gefor, þa feng
Ceol to þa-m ric-e & heold .vi. gear. Þa he gefor, þa  Examples of Indo-European languages
feng Ceolwulf to his broþur, & he ricso-de .xvii. gear
 Grammatical properties of the Germanic
Modern English: Analytic

languages
 The most radical changes in Old English morphology  Grimm’s law and gradation
were completed around 1100.

Next time: Old English & Middle Next time:

English I. Old English
 The arrival of:  Old English: dialects and loan words
 Celtic influence: place-names and river names
 the Angles
 The end of Roman occupation in A.D. 410
 the Saxons  The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
 the Jutes  The Heptarchy: the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
 and the establishment  The unification under King Alfred (9th century)
of the English  One sound change: i-mutation (or i-umlaut)
language  Old English word order: for instance SOV, AVS
 The Scandinavian influence: the arrival of the
Vikings and the establishment of the Danelaw

II. Middle English

 Middle English: 1066-1500

 The arrival of the Normans in 1066
 French influence over a 400-year period
 The Canterbury Tales extract
 Introduction to the Great Vowel Shift,
which begins around 1400
 The emergence of standard English from
one particular Middle English dialect

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English 9