The English language: A historical

introduction
Terminology

Phoneme
A phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound (e.g.: /m/, /i:/, ...). A
phoneme could be thought of as a family of related phones, called allophones.
English language has about 45 phonemes.

Morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful element in a language. There are two
kinds of morphemes: bound morphemes and free morphemes. A bound
morpheme cannot exist except when it is joined to other morphemes (e.g.: re-).
A free morpheme can exist on its own (e.g.: fill). A word may consist of one
morpheme or of many.

Affixation
Affixation is one of the commonest methods of word-formation. There is a
distinction between prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes occur at the beginning of a
word (e.g.: un-, re-) whereas suffixes occur at the end (e.g.: -ness, -ize).

Compounding
Compounding is one of the commonest methods of word-formation. A compound
word is formed by the joining of two or more free morphemes. Compound words
are nearly all nouns and the commonest type is Noun + Noun (e.g.: waterdock).
There are also a fair number of the type Adjective + Noun (e.g.: Frenchwoman)
and of the type Verb + Noun (e.g.: scrape-penny).

Conversion
Conversion is one of the commonest methods of word-formation. It is the process
by which one word is derived from another with no change of form. Three types
are especially common: the formation of verbs from nouns (e.g.: to gossip), the
formation of nouns from adjectives (e.g.: an ancient) and the formation of nouns
from verbs (e.g.: an invite) or verb phrase (e.g.: a handout).

Blends/portmanteau words
Blending is a method of word-formation. It is the process by which a part of one
word is combined with a part of another word (e.g.: brunch, motel). Such blends
are sometimes called "portmanteau words".

Back-formation
Back-formation is a method of word-formation. It is the creation of a new word by
reinterpreting an earlier word as a derivation and removing apparent affixes from
it (e.g.: the verb to resurrect, which was formed from the Latin-borrowed noun
resurrection).

Derivation versus inflection

Inflection is the process of adding inflectional morphemes to a word, which may
indicate grammatical information such as case, number, person, gender or tense
(e.g.: cat/cats, eat/ate/eaten). Compare with derivation, which create, a new
word from an existing word by using affixes, sometimes by simply changing
grammatical category like turning a noun into a verb (e.g.: gloryà glorify, drink
à drinkable).

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Rhotic versus non-rhotic
Rhotic varieties of English are varieties in which the loss of final and pre-
consonantal /r/ does not take place (e.g.: North American English, Irish English).
Non-rhotic varieties of English are varieties in which the loss of final and pre-
consonantal /r/ takes place (e.g.: Australian, South African English).

Intrusive "r"
In a dialect with intrusive "r", a "r" is added in the pronunciation after a word that
ends in a non-high vowel or semivowel if the next word begins with a vowel,
regardless whether the first word historically ended with "r" or not (e.g.: I saw(r)
a film today, vodka(r) and orange).

Polysemy
A word can in time come to have numerous meanings, this phenomenon is called
polysemy (e.g.: the English word horn, which can mean a pointed projection of
the skin of various animals, or a music instrument, or a person who plays such an
instrument, or a motor-car's klaxon, etc).

Synthetic versus analytic languages

An analytic language is one that uses very few bound morphemes (e.g.: Chinese
is a highly analytic language). A synthetic language, by contrast, uses large
numbers of bound morphemes, and often combines long strings of them to form
a single word (e.g.: Turkish is a highly synthetic language). Most languages lie
between these extremes. English language, in the course of its history, has
become less synthetic and more analytic.

Absolute and implicational universals

The search for linguistic universals was given considerable impetus by the work of
Noam Chomsky. He maintains, because of the ease with which children learn
language, that human language is innate and that all languages have the same
underlying structure and that it should be possible to demonstrate the existence
of universals. Some proposed universals are absolute i.e., they apply for all
languages (e.g.: the fact that all languages have vowels). Implicational
universals, on the other hand, are more strong tendencies than universals
because there are counter examples. They are of the type "If A, then B" (e.g.: "If
a language has V-S-O as its basic word-order, then it invariably has
prepositions”).

Names of characters:

Ÿ Yogh
The letter yogh (represented by the symbol 3) is descended from Old English
script and was used in Middle English and Middle Scots, representing y (/j/) and
various velar phonemes.

Ÿ Thorn
The symbol þ (called thorn) is equivalent to the modern th. It was a letter in the
Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets.

Ÿ Eth
Eth (represented by the symbol Ð) is a letter used in Old English and present-day
Icelandic. It was replaced by d.

Ÿ Ash
Æ was a letter used in Old English texts and commonly called "ash". It is
pronounced like the vowel of the word hat in Received Pronunciation.

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Ÿ Wynn
Wynn (represented by the symbol ρ ) is a letter of the Old English alphabet. It
was used to represent the sound /w/.

Futhorc
The English from the Old English Period used a form of the runic alphabet which,
from its first six letters, is known as the "futhorc". Runes were used for short
inscriptions, they were of angular form and they were thought to have magical
power.

Phonological changes:

Ÿ Assimilation
Assimilation is the changing of a sound under the influence of a neighbouring one
(e.g.: the word scant was once skamt, but the /m/ has been changed to /n/
under the influence of the following /t/, which is articulated in the same place). It
is a very common kind of change.

Ÿ Haplology
Haplology is the fact that a whole syllable is dropped out when two successive
syllables begin with the same consonant (e.g.: temporary, which in Britain is
often pronounced as if it were *tempory).

Ÿ Metathesis
Metathesis occurs when the ease of pronunciation apparently leads us to reverse
the order of two phonemes in a word (e.g.: wasp, which by regular development
would has been *waps).

Analogical change
Analogy is the process of inventing a new element in conformity with some part
of the language system that you already know (e.g.: a child learns pairs like
dog/dogs, bed/beds, ... and is then able to form other plurals). The way in which
analogy can lead to change is seen when the child learns words like man and
mouse, and forms the analogical plurals *mans and *mouses.

Combinative change
Let's begin with an example: the prehistoric Old English form of heath was
something like hapi; the final -i caused the á to change to w, and was later itself
lost by a regular sound law. Dependent sound-changes of this kind greatly
complicate the task of establishing correspondences and are called "combinative
changes”.

Language family
A language family is a number of languages that are related. They have grown by
a process of continuous change out of a single original language, but because of
divergent development there are now many languages instead of one (e.g.:
Romance languages i.e., Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, ... which have all
evolved from Latin). A language which has arisen by the process of divergent
development may itself give rise to further languages by a continuation of the
same process (e.g.: Semitic languages). It would not be surprising if many of the
world's languages, or indeed all of them, went back ultimately to some common
ancestor.

Proto-lndo-European (PIE)
The PIE is the hypothetical common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. It
must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some comparatively small

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body of people in a relatively restricted geographical area. Here are some
characteristics of the PIE:

Ÿ Inflectional system
It was a highly inflected language. It had at least 8 cases (nominative,
accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, vocative, locative ...). There were also
3 genders (singular, plural and dual). Noun and adjective inflections were the
same. There was also a great array of inflections for verbs.

Ÿ Phonology
PIE probably made great use of musical accent (also called free accent) i.e., the
accent could fall on any syllable of a word. There was also a rich array of stop
consonants.

Ÿ Vowel system
The 3 most important vowels in PIE were a, e and o, each of which could be
either short or long. There was also short i and u, which could operate either as
unstressed vowels or as consonants (i.e. [j] and [w]) according to their position,
and could also be combined with any of the 3 main vowels to form diphthongs.
There were also a disputed number of vowels used only in unstressed syllables,
and a number of syllabic consonants. The vowels played an important part in the
grammar of PIE, because of the way they alternated in related forms (as in our
sing/sang/sung).

Kentum and Satem languages

There was an early division of the Indo-Europeans, which had already taken place
round about 1500 BC, into two main areas: an Easter group and a Western group.
There were a number of differences in phonology, grammar and vocabulary. The
Easter group spoke the so-called Satem languages whereas the Western group
spoke the so-called Kentum languages. One of the distinctive differences in
phonology between the two groups is the treatment of Proto-Indo-European
palatal k, which appears as a velar [k] in the Western languages, but as some
kind of palatal fricative, [s] or [∫ ], in the Easter languages.

Isogloss
An isogloss is a dividing line on a map that marks the border between two
linguistic regions, insofar as they have different dialectical features (e.g. use of a
particular word on one side of the line and not on the other, different
pronunciations, etc.).
For instance: isogloss for the use of the word "lop" in North-Eastern England (as a
loan from Scandinavian) as opposed to the word "flea", which is used on the
other side of the line.

Declensions
Declensions are patterns, or sets of cases, i.e. particular groups of inflecting
features determining the function of a word or a group of words in a sentence
(e.g. nominative case for subject or subject complement, accusative for direct
object, etc.). If a word fits into one declension, it will adopt its way of inflecting,
and not that of another declension.
For instance: the first declension in Latin (nominative -a) is basically composed of
feminine nouns, the second (nominative -us or -um) of masculine and neuter
nouns respectively.

Purism
Linguistic purism consists in a (somewhat nationalistic) desire for the language to
remain "pure", i.e. free of any foreign influences such as loan-words. Purists
instead champion the introduction of neologisms.

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For instance: in 1573, Ralph Lever invented new technical terms with native
elements, such as "endsay" (conclusion), "saywhat" (definition) and "witcraft"
(logic).

Inkhorn terms
Are borrowings from another language (usually Latin), that have no utilitarian
function, i.e. that were not borrowed in order to define a new thing or concept,
but as fashionable replacements for already existing terms in English. They are
often very pompous, and thus ridiculed because they can be regarded as a
symptom of sheer ostentation and superficiality. However, some of those words
are nowadays considered perfectly neutral.
For instance: two pompous inkhorn terms are "furibund" (furious) and "turgidous"
(swollen, puffed up). Another that was once considered pompous, but no more:
"reciprocal".

Dummy auxiliary
"Do" as an auxiliary (as opposed to a full verb) is considered empty in meaning,
thus a dummy auxiliary. It occurs immediately before "not" in a negative
sentence, before the subject in a question or at the end of the sentence when
questioning and repeating the beginning; it can also be used emphatically. "Do" is
used in these four cases when none of the meanings of other auxiliaries is
required.
For instance: "You do not mean it"; "Do you mean it?"; "You do not mean it, do
you?"; "Alright, you do mean it".

Internal loan
An internal loan consists in borrowing terms from regional or professional dialects
to expand the general language of the same country.
For instance: since the Industrial Revolution, a gradient on a British railway is not
called a hill, but a "bank" (from northern dialect).

Antipodean English
Used as a general definition for the varieties of English that are spoken in
Australia and New Zealand. (???)

Pidgins & Creoles

A pidgin is an "intermediate" language between two or more languages coming in
contact with one another, which has the purpose of facilitating communication
(e.g. for trade matters) between users of these different languages. It is usually a
simplification of the dominant one with influences from the other(s).
When a pidgin becomes the first language of a group, it is called a creole.
For instance: the "Gullah" creole is spoken by about 250 000 people living along
the South-Eastern coastal areas of the USA.

Slang
Describes the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not
considered standard in a given language. It is very often specific to a particular
context or group. For instance: "square" means "conventional, old-fashioned" in
jazzmen's slang.

Malapropism
A malapropism is the incorrect placement of a word by using it instead of the
correct, similar-sounding term; as it is a kind of slip, it usually has comic effect.
The origin of the word comes from Mrs. Malaprop (whose name is probably
derived from French "mal à propos"), a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's
comedy "The Rivals" (1775) who always commits this kind of mistake.
For instance: "He is the very pineapple of politeness": "pineapple" is wrongly used

5
instead of "pinnacle".

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Translations

King James Bible (1611) Parabol of the Prodigal Son, early Modern
English, p. 34
Now the elder son was out on the farm; and on his way back, as he approached
the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked
what it meant. The servant told him: "You brother has come home, and your
father has killed the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound". But he
was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and pleaded with him, but he
retorted: "You know how I have slaved for you all these years, I never once
disobeyed your orders, and you never gave me so much as a kid, for a feast with
my friends. But now that this son of yours turns up, after running through your
money with his women, you kill the fatted calf for him". "My boy", said the father,
"you were always with me, and everything I have is yours. How could we help
celebrating this happy day? Your brother here was dead and has come back to
life, was lost and is found".

Excerpt form Ælfric's Colloquy (c. 990), Old English, p. 124

Teacher: Do you have any companion?
Pupil: I have a certain boy driving oxen with goad-iron, who likewise now hoarse
is on account of cold and shouting.
Teacher: What more do you do during the day?
Pupil: Certainly then more I do. I have to fill mangers of oxen with hay, and water
them, and dung of them carry out [that is, carry out their dung].
Teacher: Oh! Oh! Great labour is it.
Pupil: Sir, great labour it is, because I am not free.

Excerpt from "The Nun's Priest's Tale", p. 168

"I dreamt that I was strolling up and down in our yard, where I saw an animal
(which) was like a dog, and (which) wished to seize my body and to kill me. Its
colour was between yellow and red, and its tail and both its ears were tipped with
black, unlike the rest of its hairs; its muzzle (was) slender, with two glowing eyes;
I still almost die of fear at its look. This caused me my groaning, undoubtedly."
"Really!" she said, "Fie on you, spiritless. Alas", she said, "for, by God above, now
have you lost my heart and all my love. I cannot love a coward, by my faith. For
assuredly, whatever any woman may say, we all wish, if possible, to have
husbands that are brave, wise and generous, and discreet, and no miser and no
fool, nor one that is frightened of every weapon, nor a boaster. By God above,
how did you dare, for shame, to say to your love that anything could make you
frightened? Do you lack the courage of a man, and have a beard?"

End of the parable of the Progigal Son, short piece of Nigerian pidgin, p.
260
"The father said: "My child, you know that you have always been with me, and
everything I have is your own. But (???) happy, because your brother had died
and he has returned from death again; was lost and we found him again."

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Questions

Ÿ Chapter 2: The flux of language

How is the history of English usually divided into periods, and why?
History of the English language: 3 periods
1. The Old English period: from the 1st Anglo-Saxon settlements in England to ±
1100. Late Old English: 900 - ± 1100
2. The Middle English: 1100- 1500
3. The Modem English (= New English): 1500 - now. Early modern English 1500
- 1650

Through history we can see that the space of change varies, which makes it
convenient to divide English in three broad periods. For example, we can see that
the 12th and 15th centuries are periods of rapid change in English.

Which language-external and language-internal reasons can be

considered valid to explain changes in pronunciation over time?
The changes in pronunciation have caused a lot of disagreement.
Reasons for the changes in pronunciation:
Ÿ The influence of one language on another;
Ÿ The speech habits of non native speakers modify the foreign language;
Ÿ Historical changes: conquering minority that imposes its language on a
conquered population has its language modified by its victims;
Ÿ Fashion: a person imitates another and people with the most prestige are
more likely imitated. Fashion is exclusive. Social groups using
characteristic styles of language to mark themselves off from other
groups. A group of high prestige may find that its style of speech is being
imitated by other groups and then its members may begin to change it,
perhaps by exaggerating its distinction characteristics;
Ÿ The principle of ease;
Ÿ Geographic and climatic (mountain/plan);
Ÿ Biological and racial with thick lips;
Ÿ That children grow à vocals organs.

Explain what makes the so-called "principle of ease" possible, but also
what imposes limitations on it.
The principle of ease (= the minimization of effort) = change in pronunciation of a
word to economize energy.
The principle of ease is possible because a language always provides more signals
than the absolute minimum necessary for the transmission of the message, to
give a margin of safety: like all good communication-systems, human language
has built into it a considerable amount of redundancy.
BUT there is a limit:
Ÿ The necessities of communication, the urgent needs of humans as users of
language, provide a counterforce to the principle of minimum effort.
Ÿ An excessive economy of effort would lead to an utterance that is not
understandable or misunderstood (and so the sayer would have to repeat it).
There is a constant conflict between the principle of minimum effort and the
demands of communication.

Ÿ Chapter 3: The Indo-European languages

To which branches of the Indo-European language family do Gothic, Old

English, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit belong?
The Indo-European language is a large family that includes most of the languages

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of Europe and India and that is divided in many branches.
Ÿ Sanskrit belongs to the Aryan branch and more precisely to the Indian branch.
It was standardized in the 4th century and has since then been the learned
language of India;
Ÿ Greek belongs to the Greek branch;
Ÿ Latin belongs to the Italic branch;
Ÿ Old English belongs to the West Germanic branch and more precisely to the
Anglo-Frisian subbranch;
Ÿ Gothic belongs to the East-Germanic branch.

Explain briefly the traditional and the more modern view on who the
'Indo-Europeans' were and how and when their expansion began. What
technical factor may have been very important in this expansion?
The traditional view argues that Indo-Europeans were a nomadic or semi-
nomadic people who invaded neighbouring agricultural or urban areas and
imposed their language on them.
According to this theory, the expansion would have begun around 4000 BC or
later. The expansion is considered as conquering armies and mass-movements of
populations.

The more modern view is the one argued by Colin Renfew, according to which
the initial expansions of the Indo-Europeans was simply the pushing-out of the
frontiers of an agricultural people, who over centuries introduced agriculture into
the more thinly populated country round their periphery, inhabited by hunters
According to him, the expansion would have begun in about 7000 BC.

At the moment there is insufficient evidence to decide between the two.

The technical factor which played a part in the expansion and conquests of
Indo-Europeans is the use of horse-drawn vehicles, which was characteristic of
Proto-Indo European society.
It is the use of wheeled vehicles, especially the fast horse-drawn chariot that
enabled them to overrun such a large part of the Eurasian continent.

At the start of its expansion, would you say PIE was a single language
without significant dialect differences, or not? Why?
No: The Indo-European language is divided in many branches and even
subbranches. But sometimes, a language shows the closest resemblance to a
language that doesn't belong to the same branch at all. And there is no way of
removing those discrepancies by juggling with the different branches.
So, at the start of the expansion, PIE had already broken up into a number of
dialects before the dispersal began. Indeed, changes can occur in various centres
of the same region, influenced by their neighbours (who were speaking a different
language than the other neighbours at the other end of the region).
At the start of the expansion, PIE had already broken up into a number of dialects
before the dispersal began. Indeed, changes can occur in various centres of the
same region, influenced by their neighbours (who were speaking a different
language than the other neighbours at the other end of the region).

What does PIE vocabulary tell us about the world the 'Indo-Europeans'
lived in?
The vocabulary tells us a lot about the world of the Indo-Europeans.
à If words existed, the things they denoted existed too and must have been
familiar to them.

BUT:
Ÿ The absence of a word doesn't mean that the object didn't exist. The loss of

9
 words is indeed common;
Ÿ We may be deceived by loan-words (words borrowed to another language).

The world of the Indo-Europeans:

Ÿ They had cattle and sheep (à (semi)-nomadic pastorals) and other domestic
animals: dog, pig, goat & goose. They also had horses;
Ÿ They had vehicles of some kind (Wheel, axle, nave & yoke);
Ÿ Cheese & butter;
Ÿ Grain, plough & furrow à agriculturists;
Ÿ Tools & weapons à made of stones (arrows);
Ÿ Metal: copper, bronze, gold & silver;
Ÿ Familiar with pottery & weaving;
Ÿ House, door but no window (more than a tent);
Ÿ Rain, snow but hot summer à continental climate;
Ÿ Wild animals: wolves, bears, otters, mice, hares & beavers (but no tigers,
lions & elephants à cool tempered zone, farther West);
Ÿ Beach tree, salmon & eel;
Ÿ Rivers & streams (but no sea & ocean) à inland people;
Ÿ Ships to cross the river or for fishing;
Ÿ Family relationship (family important, women lived by husband's family);
Ÿ Gods: personification of natural forces (Sky God: prominent).

This enables to guess where they lived. However all these clues are not sufficient
to pin down a particularity, although there have been many attempts to it.

Ÿ Chapter 4: The Germanic languages

Which present-day languages (if any) derive from North, East and West
Germanic respectively? Which of these is most closely related to English?
To North Germanic belong the modern Scandinavian languages: Norwegian,
Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Forese and Gutnish (Faroese) (language of the island
of Gottond).
To West Germanic belong: the High German dialects of southern Germany, the
low German dialects of northern Germany, Dutch, Frisian and English.
No East Germanic language has survived into our own times. Dialects as the
Goths and Gothic were the only languages spoken.

The language most closely related to English is Frisian, which was once spoken
along the coast of the North Sea from Northern Holland to central Denmark, but
which is now heard only in a few coastal regions and on some of the Dutch
islands.
The Anglo-Saxons must have been near neighbours of the Frisians before their
migration, and we can postulate a prehistoric Anglo-Frisian dialect.

Which grammatical features of nouns, adjectives and verbs are

characteristic of both Proto-Germanic and Old English (OE), but have not
survived into Present-Day English (PDE)?
The inflectional system of Proto-Germanic.
Proto-Germanic is a highly inflected language. It makes indeed great use of
variations in the endings of words.
In Modern English, word-order is used to show who carries the information but in
an inflected language, the information is carried by the inflection which does the
work of a preposition in some case.

The nouns are so inflected for case. In Latin there are for example 6 different
cases: Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative.

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Moreover there are separate inflections for the singular and the plural. Latin
inherited this system from PIE, like Proto-Germanic.
In Proto-Germanic, there was no single set of case-inflections used for all nouns
alike, but several different sets. That is, there were various declensions of nouns.
All nouns, furthermore, had grammatical gender and had to be either masculine,
feminine or neuter.

Similar considerations apply to adjectives.

They had to be put in the same case and number as the man they were attached
to, they had also to agree with the noun in gender.
Magnus dominus
Magnum opus
In Proto-Germanic, two distinct sets of inflections for the adjectives developed,
which were called the strong and the weak declensions and had not survived in
ME.

There was also a system of cases for the pronouns and articles.
Where ME has the one form "the" Proto-Germanic had a whole series of form
according to the case, number and gender of the noun that followed.
There was also inflections to mark the passive.

PIE also had a great array of inflections for its verbs. Proto-Germanic retained
many of these, but it simplified the system. For example, it had only two tenses
of the verb – a present and a post tense. Within these 2 tenses, Proto-Germanic
had different endings for different persons and numbers (conta-contat-contant)
Proto-Germanic had two sets of inflections for the verbs, one indicative and one
subjunctive.

Ÿ PG: Two distinct sets of inflection for the adjectives à the strong and weak
declensions of the adjective;

Ÿ OE: Also strong and weak forms of adjectives.

Cases:

Ÿ PG: system of cases for articles, pronouns and similar words. For
articles: whole serie of forms according to the case, number and
gender of the noun that followed.

Ÿ OE: also the declension of the definite article and of the personal
pronouns.

Verbs:

Ÿ PG: Strong verbs = change of tense by changing the vowel of their

stem. Weak verbs = past tense by adding an inflection to the verb-
stem (-ed)

Dominant in Germanic language

Ÿ OE: Weak verbs are already the majority. Since then, many strong
verbs (=minority) have changed over weak (=norm)

Which important phonological difference distinguished Proto-Germanic

from PIE, and what was its most far-reaching consequence in the
Germanic languages?
In pronunciation, PIE underwent considerable changes in developing into Proto-

11
Germanic. One big change is in the matter of accent. The accent on a syllable
depends partly on stress, partly on intention, but some languages rely more on
one than on the other. PIE mode great use of musical accent (intonation), but in
Proto-Germanic, the stress accent became predominant. At the same time, there
was a tendency in Proto-Germanic to stabilize the accent on the first syllable of a
word. This was not the case in PIE where the accent could fall on any syllable of a
word.
The tendency in Proto-Germanic to stabilize the accent on the first syllable,
together with the adoption of a predominantly stress type of accent had
consequences: indeed, it led to a weakening and often to a less of unstressed
syllables, especially at the end of a word.
This trend moreover continued in the Germanic languages throughout their
history. For example, the PIE form of the verb "bear" was something like
*bheronom, which in Proto-Germanic became something like *beranan. The final
"-an" had been weakened and then lost and so the Old English form is beran.
In early Middle English, beran became beren. The final "n" was then lost, and the
word became bere. At the end of the Middle English Period, this final e of bere
was also lost, the modern form is bear.

Explain briefly the main features of Grimm's Law. (Page 93 – 94)

"The Grimm’s Law" or sometimes "the first sound shifting" represents the most
important series of changes in the system of stop consonants underwent in Proto-
Germanic which were analyzed after the early 19th century by the philologist
Jakob Grimm.
The main features of the first sound-shifting are shown here :

Aspirated Voiced Voiceless Voiceless

voiced stops stops stops fricatives
bh -------------------> b -------------------> p -------------------> f

dh -------------------> d -------------------> t -------------------> θ

gh -------------------> g -------------------> k -------------------> h

PIE /p/ became Germanic /f/:

pedem in Latin - fot (foot) in Old English
PIE /t/ became Proto-Germanic voiceless /θ /; in some cases this has become
voiced /ð/:
tres in Latin - three in English
PIE /k/ became in Germanic the sound [x]. In Old English and other early
Germanic languages it usually appears with the spelling h
cordem in Latin - heart in English

The Indo-European voiced stops /b/, /d/ and /g/ became in Germanic the
corresponding voiceless stops /p/, /t/ and /k/
edo in Latin - eat in English
gelidus in Latin - cold in English

PIE had a series of phonemes which appeared in Sanskrit as bh, dh, and gh and
in Greek as the letters phi, theta, and chi. The exact nature of the original
sounds is disputed, but traditionally they have been called aspirated voiced stops,
and represented by the symbols bd, dh, and gh. They have changed in Proto-
Germanic /b/, /d/, and /g/.
The English verb to bear corresponds to Sanskrit bharami and Greek phero.

Ÿ Chapter 5: Old English

12
Discuss briefly the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain (don't forget to
situate in time as well). How did it affect the culture and language of the
people living there at the time of this Anglo-Saxon conquest? (p.100 à
102)
Anglo-Saxon were composed of more than one Germanic tribe: they were the
Saxons, the Angles and the Jutes coming from North-West Germany (at that
time, the Germanic people were in a state of flux and movement). After the
Roman legions had withdrawn from Britain in AD 410, various uncoordinated
bands of adventurers arrived in different parts of the country in the middle of the
fifth century.
The Anglo-Saxon settled in Britain, they struggled with the population living
there: the Romano Celtic population. By about 700, the Anglo-Saxons had
occupied most of England and a part of southern Scotland (not Wales). Closely
related in language (even though there was dialect differentiation) and regarding
them selves as one people, they defeated the language of the Celtic population.
Their language was indeed dominant; Celtic lost his influence and received a low
status. There are few traces of Celtic in Old English (except: nouns of river,
towns, …). There were defeated people and their language had no prestige.

By what time and because of which language-external factors did a kind

of standard language (or at least a literary standard) arise in the Old
English period? (p. 104)
The unification of England under the West-Saxon kings led to the recognition of
the West Saxon dialect as a literary standard during the 9th C. (Alfred saved the
South and West of England from the Danes, Alfred’s successors reconquered the
North and the East,…). England was durably unified from the 10th C. onwards.

There were at that time, in fact, four main dialects (Kentish, Mencion,
Northumbrion dialects and West-Saxon) but due to the tendency for manuscripts
to be copied by West-Saxon suites (and so, to be put into West-Saxon four) the
West-Saxon dialect became the literary standard.

What was the most important linguistic consequence of the conversion to

Christianity? Situate in time as well. (p.106-107)
Christianity introduced the Anglo-Saxons to writing (which was in the hands of
the clerics). The conversion of the English to Christianity began about the year
600 and took a century to complete. The English had already a form of writing,
‘runes’ (go back to some sort of the Greek alphabet), but these were used only
for short inscriptions. When the clerics introduced writing to England, they used a
Celtic version of the Latin alphabet, but eked it out with runic symbols from the
futhorc. A lot of changes occurred in pronunciation. OE shows show phonological
developments of its own compared with the other Germanic languages. A number
of combinative sound-changes took place ("front-mutation", "breaking" or
"fracture"). Changes also occurred in morphology, syntax and vocabulary
(suffixation, compounding).

True or false? "Like PDE, OE had /f, v, s, z, θ , ð/ in its phoneme

inventory." Explain briefly why this is true or false. (p.109-110)
Old English had no [v], the symbol [f] was used to represent both [f] and [v].
The reason is that, in Old English, [f] and [v] were members of the same
phoneme. It was pronounce [v] before a voiced sound and was not doubled
(giefan < to give), [f] in all other positions (faeder).

OE had no [z], but [s] was used to represent both [z] and [s]. The reason is that,
in Old English, [s] and [z] were members of a single phoneme.
It was pronounced [z] before a voiced sound, [s] in all other position.

13
The voiceless [θ ] and the voiced [ð] were represented by two symbols: the runic
symbol þ, called "thorn" and the symbol ð, called "eth". They used them both
indiscriminately and the distribution of the allophones was he same as in the
other two pairs.

In the 3 cases, Old English has a single phoneme consisting of a pair of voiced
and voiceless allophones, where PDE has 2 separate phonemes.

Compare briefly OE and PDE word order. (p. 118-119-120)

Because of its inflectional system, Old English had greater freedom of word-order
than present Day English.
It favoured 3 particular types of word-order:
Ÿ S – V – O in normal clauses;
Ÿ S – O – V in subordinate clauses;
Ÿ V – S – O in questions when the clause begins with an adverbial expression.
Whereas PDE uses SVO and SSO (in questions)

The word-order in the noun phrase is quite similar: determiner – adjective – noun
But there are of course some exceptions, these precede the determiner:
Ÿ "eall" (all)
Ÿ " begen" (both)
Ÿ adjectives ending in –weard
It is even possible for a determiner to follow the noun, especially if it is emphatic.
Titles of rank usually follow the name they qualify.

What sort of loanwords were borrowed into OE? (p. 120-121-122)

OE made a considerable use of its native language material. In order to enlarge a
vocabulary, OE had inherited many ways of forming new words from PIE,
especially by the use of prefixes and suffixes.
OE did however borrow a small number of words from other languages, especially
for the concepts and institutions of Christianity.
e.g.: OE cirice or cyrce "church" is derived form the Greek kuriakón, meaning
"(house) of the Lord".

Most of the words connected with Christianity date from after the Conversion and
are from Latin. E.g.: munuc "monk", Latin monachus.

Sometimes existing words were simply transferred to Christian use as with

Easter, hell and holy.

Ÿ Chapter 6: Norsemen and Normans

Explain the circumstances that led to the establishment of a so-called

"Danelaw". Situate in time as well. (p. 127, 128)
The harrying (destruction, ravagement) of Europe by the Scandinavian Vikings,
which took place between about 750 and 1050, was the last phase of the
expansion of the early Germanic peoples. Its basic cause was perhaps
overpopulation in a region of poor natural resources, but there were other
contributory causes. The custom of leaving the inheritance to the eldest son
meant that there were always younger sons wanting to carve out inheritances for
themselves. Political conflicts drove many noblemen into exile. And then, in the
late eighth century, Charlemagne destroyed the power of the Frisians, who had
hitherto been the greatest maritime power of North-West Europe, and thereby left
open the sea-route southward for the Vikings. At about the same date, the
ancient craft of boat-building in Scandinavia reached the stage at which it could
produce the magnificent ocean-going sailing-ships which served the Vikings for
trade, piracy, and colonization.

14
The Vikings were great traders, but it is for their more predatory activities that
they are most remembered. Their attacks varied from piratical expeditions by
single ships to the invasion of a country by enormous fleets and armies.
The Vikings consisted of Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes. The Swedes mostly
went eastwards, to the Baltic countries and Russia, while the Norwegians and
Danes tended to go westwards and southwards. The Vikings who attacked
England were referred to by the Anglo-Saxons as Dene "Danes", but there were
also Norwegians among them. The first attack probably took place round about
800, and by 838 they had become serious. At first there were mere piratical raids
in search of a plunder; then large groups took to spending the winter in England,
as happened in 850 in 854; then large armies stayed for longer periods; and
finally came conquest and settlement, which began in the last few decades of the
ninth century. The Vikings came very near to conquering the whole of England,
but King Alfred held the South and the West against them, the turning-point
being his defeat of Guthrum at Chippenham in 878; the boundary between
Alfred's territories and the Danelaw ran roughly along a line from London to
Chester. In the tenth century, the West Saxon Kings reconquered the North and
East, but in the meantime the Vikings established kingdoms in those areas, and
there was massive Scandinavian settlement.

Compare the influx of Old Norse and Old French loanwords into English in
terms of the period in which and the extent to which words were
borrowed from these languages, and in terms of the type of vocabulary
borrowed.
Most of the Scandinavians loan-words first appear in writing in the Middle English
period, but their form shows that they had been taken into English in the late OE
period, for they have undergone the sound-changes that mark the transition from
Old to Middle English. They do not appear earlier in writing because at that time
there was no literary tradition in the Danelaw, and most surviving texts are in the
West Saxon dialect, which was the one least influenced by Old Norse. A few loans,
however, do occur in OE texts. In the early days of the Vikings raids there was
probably not much opportunity for conversation between Englishmen and Vikings;
the only loans from this period are a few words for Viking ships and weapons,
which have not survived into the modern language. Later, when the Vikings had
begun to settle in England, a number of words were borrowed relating to law and
administration, for the Danes had a Highly developed legal sense, they include
thrall and the word law itself.
But what is most striking about the Scandinavian loan-words as a whole is that
they are such ordinary words. The English and the Scandinavians had very similar
cultures, and the fusion of the two peoples was a close one; many of the words
taken over, in consequence, were homely everyday ones, words belonging to the
central core of the vocabulary. The names of close family relationships are part of
the central core of vocabulary, so are the names of parts of the body. Other
common nouns include bag, cake, dirt, fellow, fog, knife, skill, skin, sky, and
window. Everyday adjectives, everyday verbs and some grammatical words are
from Scandinavian, namely the conjunctions though, till, and until, and the
pronouns they, them and their, which in Old English were hie, him, and hiera. The
Scandinavians pronouns no doubt had an advantage because they were less likely
to be confused with the words for him and her. The total number of Scandinavian
loans is in fact rather small, compared with the number of words later borrowed
from French and Latin; on the other hand, many of them are words in very
frequent use, and there is a Scandinavian enclave in the very central regions of
the English vocabulary. In the areas of densest Viking settlement, a larger
vocabulary of Scandinavians loanwords is preserved in regional dialects, so that
there are still parts of England and Scotland where you can hear good
Scandinavian words.
French loanwords, on the contrary, first appeared most densely around London,

15
the centre of fashion and administration, and spread northwards and westwards
from there; by the fourteenth century, they were being used freely all over the
country. An enormous number of French loan-words came into the language
during the English Middle period. We have to treat the datings of these loan-
words with some caution: there are fewer texts in Early Middle English than in
Late Middle English, and some of the loans first recorded in the fourteenth
century may have enter the language much earlier. Nevertheless, it seems clear
that they came in fastest when French was dying out. In the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, when French was the unchallenged language of the upper classes, the
number of words borrowed by English was not great, but in the thirteenth, and
still more the fourteenth century, there was a flood of loan-words.
The influx of French words differed in several ways from the influx of the
Scandinavian words. The Scandinavian words spread from the Danelaw, whereas
French words tended to spread from London and from the court, and locally from
the lord's castle. Moreover, the French words were on the whole not such homely
ones as the Scandinavians words: the Vikings had mixed in with the English on
more or less equal terms, but the Normans formed a separate caste that imposed
much of their culture on their subordinates; many of the French loanwords reflect
this cultural and political dominance: they are often words to do with war,
ecclesiastical matters, the law, haunting, heraldry, the arts, and fashion. For the
same reason, French words tended to penetrate downwards in society, whereas
the Scandinavian words came on the ground floor. Finally, the French words were
entirely new ones, with no obvious resemblance to anything in English, whereas
many of the Scandinavian loans were merely dialectical variants of their English
counterparts, titles of rank tended to be taken from French.

WHEN?
Ÿ Old Norse loanwords have been taken into English in the late OE but
first appeared in writing in ME;
Ÿ Old French Loanwords came into English during the ME period. In the
10th c they were wed freely all over the country.
WHAT?
Ÿ Old Norse loanwords:
Ÿ Related to low administration (the Danes had a highly
developed legal sense);
Ÿ But mainly ordinary words, from homely everyday life:
Ÿ Family relationship,
Ÿ Parts of the body,
Ÿ Everyday adj, verbs, grammatical words (till, they,…)
Ÿ Old French loanwords:
Ÿ refled the Normans’cultural political dominance:
Ÿ War,
Ÿ Ecclesiastical matters,
Ÿ Law,
Ÿ Hunting, heraldry, arts, fashion,
Ÿ Title of ranks.
WHERE / WHO?
Ÿ Old Norse loanwords:
Ÿ Spread from the Danelaw;
Ÿ Came on the ground floor.

Ÿ Old French loanwords:

Ÿ Spread from London, from the court from the Card a castle;
Ÿ Tented to penetrate downwards in society.

Discuss briefly the language and culture of the Normans of the "Norman

16
invasion" in comparison with the Anglo-Saxons (situate in time as well).
(p. 134, 135)
By the middle of the eleventh century the Normans had long lost their
Scandinavian speech: they spoke French and were essentially French in culture.
People sometimes talk, therefore, as though the Norman Conquest were the
coming of a higher civilization to the backward and Barbaric Anglo-Saxons. This,
however, is a misapprehension. Six hundred years had passed since the Anglo-
Saxon invasion of Britain, and in that time the English had developed a
sophisticated civilization.
The Normans demonstrated their superiority in military techniques, for they had
the new heavy cavalry that had been developed on the continent by the Franks,
while the Anglo-Saxons still fought on foot behind a wall of round shields. The
Normans also showed themselves superior at the construction of castles, and
after the conquest they built some fine churches and cathedrals. But it is difficult
to see in what other ways they were culturally superior to the people they
conquered.
The Anglo-Saxons had a fine literature both in verse and in prose. They had
traditions of scholarship which went back to the 7th century, and when
Charlemagne, at the end of the eighth century, wanted to reform his educational
system, he imported an Englishman to do it for him. This tradition had been badly
disrupted by the Vikings invasions, but there was a revival under West-Saxon
leadership in the second half of the tenth century. The Anglo-Saxons were also
fine artists and craftsmen: they produced beautiful carved crosses, jeweller's
work, and illuminated manuscripts to compare with any of the world. They were
also famous for their needlework, and the celebrated Bayeux Tapestry was
probably made in England.

Following the Norman Conquest, which language(s) was or were the

prestige language(s)? By which time and why was English re-established
as the dominant language, and which variety of English in particular
became the (literary) standard? (p.140, 141, 142, 144, 145)
After the Norman Conquest the prestige languages in England were Latin and
French. Latin was the international language of the church, of scholarship, and of
international communication; after the Conquest it was also important for
administration, but it gradually gave way to French. The invaders of 1066 spoke
Norman French, a northern dialect of the language, and in England this developed
characteristics of its own, and its then called Anglo-Norman. In the thirteenth
century, however, when the central French dialect of Paris had begun to exert a
strong influence on the rest of France, the Anglo-Norman dialect lost some of its
prestige in England: it was regarded as rather old-fashioned and rustic, and the
courtly language was Central French. In the thirteenth century, French was still
being spoken at the English court, and literature was being written in French for
the nobility of England; but it is this century that sees the tipping of the balance
away from French and back to English. Although French was for a long time the
language prestige in England, it was never the majority of the population. A
considerable number of Normans settled in England after the conquest, but they
never outnumbered the English in the way the Anglo-Saxon must have
outnumbered the Britons, and ultimately the French died out in England. An event
which contributed to the triumph of English was King John's loss of Normandy to
the French crown in the opening years of the thirteenth century. Many of the
English nobility had estates in Normandy as well as in England, and now had to
decide which of the two they belonged to. A common solution was for one son to
inherit the English estates, and the another son the Norman estates, and this can
be seen going on in the first half of the thirteenth century. Thus the ties with
Normandy were severed, and the ex-Norman nobility gradually became English.
The English crown, indeed, continued to own lands in France, especially in
Southern Aquitaine, and went on importing Frenchmen to its court, but the

17
English nobility were jealous of such royal favourites, and in the Baron's wars
against Henri III, in the middle of the century there was a good deal of anti-
foreigner propaganda. National feeling was beginning to arise in England, as in
other countries of western Europe, and this must have raised the prestige of the
English language.
The 14th century sees the definitive triumph of English. French was now rapidly
ceasing to be the mothertongue even of the nobility, and those who wanted to
speak French had to learn it. Literature, even the most courtly literature, was
written more and more in English, and in the second half of the century there was
a great literary upsurge, with Chaucer as its major figure. English was also used
more and more in administration. In 1362 the King's speech at the opening of
Parliament was made in English, and in the same year an Act was passed making
English the official language of the law's courts instead of French, though their
records were to be kept in Latin. The fourteenth century also saw the switch from
French to English as the medium of grammar-school education.
With the re-establishment of English as the language of administration and
culture came the re-establishment of an English literary language, a standard
form which can be regarded as the norm. In fact there were two standard forms
of English, that of England and of Scotland, the latter now usually being called the
Middle Scots. In England the new standard language which arose in the late
Middle Ages was not descended from the West-Saxon literary language. It was in
fact based on the east Midland dialect of Middle English. An East Midland dialect
was the basis of London speech, and London was the seat of government and the
cultural centre of the nation, besides being the largest city of the country. The
establishment of a standard language did not take place overnight. Gradually the
prestige of the London language grew, and in the 15th century its influence was
increased by the introduction of printing. In the sixteenth century there was wide
recognition of the language of the court at Westminster as the "best" English but
even then it was no disgrace for a gentleman to speak with a regional accent.
Nevertheless, the literary language had been largely standardized by the end of
the fifteenth century, and in the Modern language period you cannot tell what
part of the country people come from by examining their writings, as you could in
the Middle English period.

Ÿ Chapter 7: Middle English

Explain the influence of spelling on the change from OE to ME.

The conquest made the change from OE to ME looh more sudden than it really
was by introducing new spelling conventions. West Saxon tented to be
conservative in its spelling: changes occurred in pronunciation but the scribes
often went on writing the words in the traditional way.
But the Norman scribes disregarded traditional English spelling and simply spelt
the language as they heard it, using many of the conventions of Norman French.
Ÿ Many changes that had not been reflected in OE emerged (or which
had appeared only in occasional spellings) now emerged clearly.
Ÿ New spelling conventions were introduced:
Ÿ E.g.: a new symbol g was introduced for the stops represented

z
by OE , and the OE symbol was retained only for the
fricatives.
The Norman also introduced a continental style of writing, which also fed EO
changes in spelling. Indeed, with the now style of writing, some groups of letter
(e.g. wu, un, …) were difficult to distinguish from one another
There were changes in spelling:
Norman scribes disregarded traditional English spelling and simply spelt the
language as they heard it.
Ÿ Many changes that had not been reflected in OE emerged clearly;

18
 Ÿ New spelling conventions.

OE ME
S Z was introduced besides S though not
consistently

The diagraph; th 1300 found up (symbole voir )

1400 this symbol remained common until

about 1400

There were pairs of allophones
There were separate phonemes /f/ and /v/
and /z/ and symbol and / ../ In the
spelling, however, this fact was only fully
recognized for /f/ and /v/ still remains the
case today.

Y was no longer used to represent a front It was simply used as an alternative to i ---
rounded vowel. hing ans kyng :::same pronunciation

-y (y avec - au-dessus) Spelt u or i

OE ME
OE (dz voir) never occured in word - initial ME loanwords from French like'
position, only medially and finally judge'( habve (dz voir ) in initial position .

Q and y were superfous, was not a

satisfactory spelling for (u: ) because it
was also, used to represent two different
Me diphthongs; ONE

ODDITY of Me spelling which is still with us

was the result of a change of script.

OE ME
There was an insular script of OE The Normans scribes introduced a
continental style of handwriting. -it was
difficult to, tell how many stokes had been
made when letters like m, n, v, w, and u
occurred together.

19
 The groups like wu, un, uv, um were
difficult to distinguish from one another.

So scribe took the writing o instead of u

when it occurred in groups of this kind.

Oe sunun, cumin, lufu Me comen sone love

This was a change in spelling, not in

pronunciation

The OE, as many other established literary languages, is quite conservative in

spelling: the changes occur in pronunciation but the written language remains the
same.

The change from OE to ME was really marked when the spelling also changed,
reflecting the changes in the oral language. This change was caused by the
Norman Conquest that introduced new spelling-conventions. The Norman scribes
disregarded the traditional English spelling and simply spelt the language as they
heard it, using many conventions of Norman French. As a consequence, many
changes that had not been reflected in OE spelling emerged clearly. The new
spelling gave English writing a new look.

Besides the new spelling, they also introduced a new handwriting which made it
difficult to distinguish groups like "wu" "un" "uv" "um". So, the scribes took to
writing "o" instead of "u" when it occurred in group of this kind. So, changes also
in words because of the new spelling ( ex: "luv" à "love").

What was the most important morphological development in ME? What

caused it, and what were its syntactic consequences?
The most important morphological development in ME was the reduction of the
inflectional system from the OE. There were a number of causes for this.
One was the mixing of OE with Old Norse. As a result there was a confusion about
the correct form of ending the words had to have. People had to rely on other
grammatical devices. The existence and growth of such others devices must itself
have contributed to the decay of the inflectional system.
Another cause was phonological: the loss and weakening of unstressed syllables
at the ends of words destroyed many of the distinctive inflexions of OE. Many
endings became identical (-e, -en, -es, -ep à -e) and the effect on the inflectional
system was disastrous. It was simplified and the number of different cases was
reduced.
Examples:
Ÿ Two main declensions were generalized for the nouns. However a few relics of
others declensions were still found in mutated plurals, uninfected plurals or
words borrowed from Latin and Greek;
Ÿ The same process of a loose of case-distinctions took place in adjectives and
demonstratives. Towards the end of the ME period, the adjective became
indeclinable as it is today and "the" is the only form of the definite article.
As a consequence of this development the word order in the clause became more
important and people had to use separate words to perform the functions
formerly carried out by word-endings.

20
What kind of impersonal construction was not uncommon in OE and ME
but sounds very strange to a speaker of PDE? (p.163)
Cfr p. 171 + "The Nun’s Priest’s Tale" p.168
"Me mette" à "I dreamed" (translation) but literally "(it) dreamed to me". "Me"
being a dative.
Such constructions are not uncommon in OE and ME, giving expressions like "him
hungreth" à "he is hungry" and "me lyst raedan" à "it is pleasing to me to read".
They were rare by the sixteenth century, but one survival is "methinks", from OE
"me think(e)th" à "it seems to me".

Discuss briefly the position of Scots from the 16th century up to the
present day.
Records of the Scots literature language date from the second half of the 14th c.
16th century: Scots was increasingly influenced by the Southern language.

Reasons:
Ÿ Prestige of the English poets (Chaucer, Gower,...);
Ÿ Influence of Biblical translations à The Reformation was marked by a
whole series of such translations in English, but not in Scotland. (e g the
Geneva Bible);
Ÿ Late 16th century. Many books in the Southern language were printed in
Scotland;
Ÿ In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. The Southern
influence increased;
Ÿ By the end of the 17th century the Scots literary language had practically
ceased to exist. The great 18th century Scots thinkers and men of letters
(Adam Smith, David Hume) wrote in the Southern literary language. This
doesn't mean that people in Scotland stopped speaking Scots, but simply
that in writing they adopted the convention of the South.

This, combined with Scots national feeling, led to the creation of a Scots dialect
literature. But having a dialect literature is still different than having a standard
literary language. Father of the movement was Allan Ramsay (1886-1758)
Key figure: Robert Burns.
This literary movement still continues today.
Since the 18th century, there have been works of literature in Scots, but the
history of books and the contracts and the chemistry text-books have been
written in the Southern literary language, with few especially Scottish variations.

Ÿ Chapter 8: Early Modern English

In the 16th and 17th centuries, what caused the defeat of Latin in favour
of English? In spite of its rapid decline, in what area was Latin very
influential in this same period? (p. 176)
1st factor: the religious disputes that raged from the 15th to the 17th c. caused
the defeat of Latin in favour of English. During the Reformation, people engaged
in controversy (Protestants) wanted to be read by the largest public.
Ÿ People attracted by Protestantism often lacked a classical education;
Ÿ Controversial books + pamphlets written in English (Ex: Milton à
controversial prose);
Ÿ Bible translated into English + church services in English;
Ÿ Protestants regarded Latin as a Popish language, used to keep ordinary people
in ignorance.

2nd factor: increase in national feeling

The medieval feeling that a person belonged to Christendom was replaced by the

21
modern feeling that a person is English/French/Italian/...(belongs to a specific
country). Nationalism led to conscious efforts to create a vernacular litterature.

3rd factor: the rise of social and occupational groups, which had little or no
Latin but which wanted to read and learn in English. (ex: navigators, explorers,
soldiers,... whose subjects were practical: geometry, warfare,...) à they wanted
books in English.

In spite of its rapid decline, in what area was Latin very influential in this
same period?
Latin was influential in literature, history, rhetorical theories and in language. The
Renaissance was the period of the rediscovery of the classics in Europe.

What is meant by the Renaissance "etymologizing" or "remodelling" of

words? Give an example. (p. 180)
Because of Latin influence, existing words had to be reshaped (= remodelled) in
accordance with their real or supposed Latin etymology.
For example: debt and doubt à their earlier spellings were dette and doute,
which were their forms in Old French. They have been "remodelled": the b was
inserted through the influence of Latin debitum and dubitare.

PS: Some of these Renaissance remodellings are based on false etymologies

(combining pedantry with inadequate scholarschips) à advance remodelled from
ME avance. The modern forms obviously arose from the belief that the initial a
represented the Latin -ad but in fact both words derive from French avant, which
comes from Latin ab ante.

What was the functional difference between you and thou in Early
Modern English? (p.186)

YOU THOU

In the plural

In the singular: choice

When addressing sby by When addressing sby by

their title or surname Mr their first name Mary,
Jones, you ... thou...

Addressing children,
animals

Lower-class speaker Higher-class speaker People of the lower classes

addressing sby of decidedly addressing people of a to one another
higher rank (compulsory!) lower social class

Emotionally-charged form
of the "polite" classes
(intimacy, affection, anger,
contemption)

22
 Addressing deity
abstractions, material
objects

17th-c: supplanted thou in Used in literary language

the speech of the gentry Esp. in poetry
and the citizenry

End of 17th-c: normal form Lower classes

Survives in modern dialects

(N&W England)

The form you is used for both nominative and accusative. By Shakespeare’s time,
you was the normal form, and the original nominative ye was a less common
variant; both of them could be either nominative or accusative. There is also the
pronoun thou. In the plural, only you could be used, but in the singular there was
a choice between you and thou. The difference between them was somewhat like
the present-day different between addressing somebody by their first name,
"John, Marie" (= thou), and addressing them by their title and surname "Mr
Jones, Mrs Smith" (= you). Children and animals were addressed as thou; so
were people of a decidedly lower social class, but in this case the higher- class
speaker might fluctuate between thou and you, sometimes being more
patronizing, sometimes more complaisant; for the lower-class speaker, however
you was compulsory, for it was insulting to say thou to somebody of decidedly
higher rank. People of the lower classes normally used thou to one another.
Among the ‘polite’ classes, thou was the emotionally-charged form: it could be
used to express intimacy and affection, but also to express anger and contempt.
It was also normal to use thou when addressing the deity, or abstractions, or
material objects. During the seventeenth century, you gradually supplanted thou
in the speech of the gentry and the citizenry, and by the end of the century was
the normal form; thou, however, continued to be used in the literary language,
especially in poetry. The lower classes, too, continued to use thou, and it survives
in some modern dialects in northern and western England.

Locate the Great Vowel Shift in time and explain in general terms which
vowels were affected in which way. (p. 191-192)
The Great Vowel Shift is a change in the quality of all the long vowels. It began
early in the 15th century and was not fully completed until late in the 17th
All vowels became closer in quality, except for the two which were already as
closed as they could be. The two became diphthongized; àchange the position of
the starting points of the diphthongs in questions.
Great Vowel Shift = asymmetrical: 4 long front vowels ó three long back vowels
In both Middle English and Early Middle English: sporadic shortening of long
vowels in words of one syllable, especially those ending in a single consonant. By
contrast, there was relatively little change in the short vowels.

Ÿ Chapter 9: English in the scientific age

What accounts historically for the difficult and inconsistent spelling of

English? (P. 201-2)
In Middle English and Early Modern English, there had been no standard spelling:

23
spellings varied from writer to writer and even within the work of a writer. Even
proper names were not fixed (cfr. Shakespeare).
Appearance of a force for standardization and widely accepted conventions
around 16th c. + end of Early Modern Period (17th c.): spelling had become
standardized in printed books. However, it was an archaic one, representing
pronunciation of English before the Great Vowel Shift.
Explains many of the oddities of present-day English spelling.
Examples:
Ÿ We still preserve letters in our spelling which represent sounds which long ago
ceased to be pronounced (k in knight, t in castle);
Ÿ Distinctions in spelling while none in pronunciation (meat/meet, sea/see).
Conversely à new distinctions have arisen without being recognised in
spelling, so that we use the same letter to represent the vowel of put and
putt.
Ÿ Diphthongs (as the vowel in mice) are often represented by a single letter
because the phoneme was a pure vowel in Middle English. Conversely à
modern monophthongs are sometimes represented by diagraphs, like "au" in
author or "ou" in cough.
+ Effects of Renaissance etymologizing, which accounts for such things as the b
in subtle and the p in receipt.
Such things have introduced considerable inconsistencies into our own spelling-
system.

If we compare 17th century to 18th century dictionaries of English, what

are the main differences? Which of the 18th century dictionaries is the
most important? (pp. 203-4)
Proposals for an English academy (1650-1760) whose functions would have been
to refine or correct the English language and to lay down correct usage came to
nothing.
BUT the 18th c. saw the publication of the first grammars and dictionaries of
English, which were considered as authorities, commonly regarded, not as
records of usage, but as prescriptions for correct usage. English dictionaries didn't
exist until the 17th c. Before then, there were 2 language dictionaries (French-
English; Latin-English).
The earliest dictionary devoted to English alone was published in 1604 (Dictionary
of "hard words" by Robert Cawdrey). Because of the great vocab expansion in the
later 16th c., a need was felt for works which would explain the meaning of
obscure words. Evidence of this expansion: 2,500 words in Cawdrey's whereas
25,000 Elisha Cole's in 1676.
Progressively, dictionaries included more information, such as etymology and
differences of style or acceptability.
Not until the 18th c., however, did dictionaries attempt to record the ordinary
everyday words of the language, the first being "A new English dictionary", 1702,
by John Kersey.
Ÿ 1721: Nathan Bailey
Ÿ 1755: Samuel Johnson (includes quotations from earlier authors to illustrate
word-meanings)
These dictionaries helped to stabilize spellings and word meanings.

17 th 18 th

English dictionaries (to English only!)

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Because of the vocabulary expansion and
inkhorn terms, a need was felt for works
which would explain the meaning of
obscure words

Progressively including more information Ordinary everyday words included

such as etymology and differences of style The first = A New English dictionary by
John Kersey

The most important: Samuel Johnson's

dictionary:
- it included extensive quotations from
earlier authors to illustrate word-meanings
- it helped to stabilize spellings and word
meanings à treated as authorities

Which kinds of criteria were used by prescriptivists? Give one example of

each type of criterion. (P.205)
The advocates of "correctness" had no clear criteria for their prescriptions, which
in consequence are often confused and contradictory.

Sometimes they appealed to logic, as when they condemned multiple negations

(2 negatives make an affirmative) as well as double comparatives and
superlatives, which were common use until the 17th c. (ex.: Shakespeare "more
nearer" or "the most unkindest").
Other idea behind these prescriptions: there is a universal grammar to which the
language should be made to conform. In practice, the Example turned out to be
the grammar of Latin, consequences à adverbs should be clearly distinguished
from adjectives; past tenses and past participles of strong verbs should also be
distinguished (ex.: early 18th c.: some writers said "I have wrote" or "I have
chose").

Etymology: in 2 domains:
Ÿ Word-meanings: the "correct" meaning of a word was the meaning of some
earlier form (English or Latin) from which it was descended. Ex.: mutual
means reciprocal and not common;
Ÿ Constructions: it was argued that averse from is preferable to averse to. à
Linked to the appeal to custom or usage, the usage of early 18th c. classics
like Pope or Addison was often attacked as well as Johnson's Dictionary from
including "incorrect" usages from earlier authors among its citations.

These 18th c. grammarians and correctors did not always agree with one another.
Because of the widely differing criteria appealed to, there were often hot disputes
about points of usage.

Has British English always been non-rhotic? Explain. (pp. 210-11)

NO.
Before 1700, the /r/ has always been pronounced in words like barn, person and
father.
Since 1700, there has been a change in pronunciation: the disappearance of /r/
before consonants and before a pause. (/r/ is only pronounced if it occurs
immediately before a vowel à father and mother)

The weakening of /r/ before consonants and before a pause had begun by the

25
16th c. The final disappearance of /r/ did not take place until the middle of the 18th
c.

BUT this disappearance did not take place in all varieties of English. Example:
most North American speech is rhotic, Scots- and Irish English and the West-
country of England. Australian, New Zealand and South African are non-rhotic,
like RP and England.

What sources have scientists drawn on to form the new scientific

vocabulary since the 18th century? Give one example of each kind of
source. (p.216)
Ÿ Take a word of everyday use and give it a special scientific meaning, which is
what the chemists have done with salt, the botanists with pollen and fruit, …
Ÿ Take over words directly from another language: abdomen, cortex, saliva
(Latin); ion, iris, larynx (Greek); cobalt, quartz (German). A few words are
derived from the names of modern European scientists: ampère, watt, volt,
etc;
Ÿ Extremely common way: invent them, using Greek (electron, zoology) and
Latin (atmosphere, hibernate) material; ???
Ÿ The Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius (16th c.) had a profound impact on
the Elizabethan imagination. That's why many words concerning the human
body come from this period (skeleton, tibia, tendon);
Ÿ French scientists (and esp. Lavoisier) played a major part in the foundation of
modern chemistry (late 18th c.: hydrogen, molecule, nitrogen, oxygen)
In our own century, the flow has continued, especially in the newer fields like
genetics and nuclear physics.

Discuss possible reasons for the loss of words. (p. 226)

Ÿ The word is no longer needed. For example, we do not need words for the
various parts of a suit of armour for everyday purposes (cuisse, greave,...)
But they may survive in historical contexts;
Ÿ There is a danger of confusion when phonetic change causes two words to
become homophones (queen & quean);
Ÿ A phonetic change makes a word too short to be distinctive. Speakers replace
it by a longer word, which gives a bigger margin of safety (OE word ea for
"river"). But, the fact that a word is reduced to a single phoneme does not
necessarily mean that it will disappear (eau).
à It is often difficult to say exactly what has caused one word to die out and
another to survive.

Name and exemplify five types of meaning change that words may
undergo. (p.228-232)
Ÿ Polysemy: when a new meaning co-exists with an earlier one, so that a word
can in time come to have numerous meanings. (Ex.: horn: original meaning
was "pointed projections on the heads oxen, sheep, etc.", in the OE period, it
was extended to mean the musical instrument. Later still, it was used to
denote noise-producing instruments like those on motorcars. + many other
meanings. These new meanings arose by a shift in the speaker's and hearer's
centre of interest when the word was used. (see p.229 for striking example
"bead");
Ÿ Words denoting occupation or social rank developing meanings referring to
the moral qualities of people in that station (Ex.: gentle which meant well-
born, of good family became generous, merciful, courteous because these
were the qualities often attributed to people of that class). (Other ex.:
bourgeois, villain);
Ÿ Sometimes a change of meaning is triggered by the form of a word: one word
is confused with another that it resembles in some way. In Early Modern

26
 English the word obnoxious often had the meaning of its Latin original. Its
modern meaning "offensive, objectionable", is due to the influence of the
word noxious;
Ÿ Euphemism: words for things which are unpleasant or which are hedged
about with taboos (sex, death, defecation) are often replaced by a
euphemism. Because of the human need to exaggerate for effect, such words
rapidly lose their intensity and have to be replaced by others. Ex.: hard of
hearing instead of deaf, to pass away instead of dying;
Ÿ Dead metaphors originally, a speaker referring to the foot of a hill or to the
mouth of a river was using a metaphor, but by constant use they have ceased
to be metaphorical and are simply 2 common meanings of the nouns in
question. Examples from our own time include ceiling "upper limit", headache
"problem".

Ÿ Chapter 10: English as a world language

Explain the difference between English as a foreign language (EFL) and

English as a second language (ESL), and discuss an example of a country
where English is a second language. (p.238)
A second language is used alongside one or more local languages for public
purposes and often for communication between different language-groups in the
community. e.g.: In India, English is used as a second language. It is one of the
official languages, alongside Hindi and others languages recognised as regional
languages. English is there widely used as a language of administration and
commerce.

A foreign language is not used to communicate with other people of one's

country (e.g.: Germany or Norway) but is a language learned and used to
communicate with foreigners only. There is no native tradition of English-speaking
in these countries and the learner will usually be taught either standard British
English or standard American English.

Name and exemplify two grammatical and two phonological differences

between present-day American and British English. (P.243 – 252)
Grammatical differences:
Ÿ With collective nouns (army, committee, crew, government, team... ), on the
one hand, RP English uses sometimes a plural verb and sometimes a singular
one: When they consider the group as a single unity, they use a singular verb.
When the attention is focused on the individuals of a group, they use the
plural verb form. On the other hand, American English prefers singular verbs
with collective nouns.
e.g.:
The army is a voluntary one.
The army art above average height.

Ÿ Concerning the use of past tenses of verbs:

Among pas tenses of verbs, some American English has the forms dove, fit, and
snuck (British dived, fitted, sneaked) and in a number of forms uses /-d/ where
British English has /-t/ (for example: burned, learned, spelled, spilled). In some
verbs of this latter type, British English changes the stem-vowel from /i:/ to /e/ in
the past tense, whereas in AE it remains /i/. In addition an American often uses
do have where a Briton uses have got.

Phonological differences:
Ÿ Present-day American English and RP English can differ in the realization of
many phonemes:

27
A difference in consonant-realization concerns /t/ and /d/:
/t/ is intervocalio in words like pretty and letter.
Americans, usually make the /t/ with a single rapid tap of the tongue, and
frequently also voice it. So that it sounds kike /d/.

Ÿ In RP, there are two main allophones of /l/:

- "clear [l]" has a front kind of vowel resonance, and is used before vowels and
before /j/, as in look and million.
- "dark [l]" has a back kind of vowel resonance, the tongue being raised towards
the position used for [u], as in old and mill.
American English has also the both /l/ but their distribution differs from that of
RP, since in general American English "dark [l]" is used in intervocalic position, in
words like Billy and yellow.

Discuss briefly the main phonological features (both segmental and

suprasegmental) distinguishing ESL from standard English. (p. 247- 249)
Main phonological features:
Ÿ The number of phonemes is often much reduced in ESL.
e.g.: Nigerian has only one phoneme corresponding to Standard English. For
example, there is only one phoneme corresponding to RP /I/ and /i:/ (i.e.: in
standard English, we have /I/ and /i:/ as in bead and bid, whereas in Nigerian
they don't make this difference and pronounce both word /bid/); only one
phoneme corresponding to RP /υ / and /u:/, so that look and Luke are both /luk/,
etc.

Ÿ Nigerian English also have no diphthongs: speakers tend to replace them by a

sequence of two vowels: the word ear, for example, is [i-a], pronounced as
two syllables.

Ÿ Nigerian English is syllable-timed, not stressed-timed. It means that all the

syllables in a phrase seemingly occur at equal intervals not just the stressed
syllables. ESL lacks the use of contrastive stress and tends to use pitch rather
than stress to mark syllable accent.

Ÿ There is also a reduction of the vowel-phonemes in African English (ESL).

Elsewhere: ESL tends to be nearer to RP in its phoneme system.

Ÿ In the varieties of ESL, the phonemes have a wide range of different

realization, depending on the first language of the speaker.

Ÿ In ESL, as for the distribution of phonemes, there is a tendency to use

spelling-pronunciation, and especially to replace unstressed /I/ and /schwa/
by other vowels suggested by the spelling. E.g.: suffixes like -able and -ence
are often given full vowels.

Explain and exemplify the following statement: "It will be seen that
pidgins are extreme forms of analytic languages" (p. 259)
An analytic language is a language that uses very few bound forms such as
prefixes, suffixes (re-, -all) and in the inflections (grammatical endings) of English
nouns and verbs (boxes, talkies, talked...).

Pidgins are extreme form of analytic language because they use very few bound
morphemes. They mostly lack inflection and rely on free morphemes to indicate
grammatical relations. Therefore is the word-order very important.
Ÿ The third person inflection -es is missing so that the same verb-form is
used throughout the present tense:
a kari or mi kari = I carry

28
 yu kari = you carry
I kari = he carries

Ÿ Nouns and verbs commonly have no plural form:

Wan man = one person
Ten man = ten persons
Plenty man = many persons

There is a simplification of the pronoun system: i = he, she or it; wi = we, us and
our; dem = they, them and their.

They have no past or future tenses: bin placed before the verb = past tense (i bin
kam = he came); don = perfect (I don kam = he has come); go = future (I go
kam = he will come).

Ÿ Chapter 11: English today and tomorrow

"In the English language today we can see both centrifugal and
centripetal tendencies" (p. 262): explain and discuss in relation to
English as a first and as a second language, and to English within Britain.
In the English language today we can see both centrifugal and centripetal
tendencies.

We can find the centrifugal tendency in countries where English is used as a

second language. There has been a trend during the past half-century for local
standards to become established, and for the language to develop independently
of British or American English. If this trend continues, these local varieties may
ultimately diverge widely from Standard World English, and become separate
languages.

On the other hand, the centripetal tendency is found in countries where English is
the first language. The major forms (in Britain, North America, Australia, New
Zealand) are not diverging any longer but seem to be converging and will
continue to constitute a more-or-less unified language as a major medium of
international intercourse.

The slowing down of the divergent trend has been due to the great development
of communications and the rise of mass media. These things have enabled the
different regional varieties of English to influence mutually one another, and so
reduce their differences. But the major influence is the language of the United
States. It is due to the economic and political power of the US but also because
Americans form the largest single body of speakers of English. This influence
penetrates everywhere where English is spoken as a first language, especially a
lexical influence (vocabulary). For example, tornado is an Americanism. Other
varieties of English have their own modest exports (Australia).

Another centripetal tendency is found in the English within Britain. The different
dialects are being mixed and levelled. This is due to the influence of the mass
media, the influence of universal and compulsory education (which has worked
against the broader dialect elements, both regional and social).
Moreover, the population has been more mobile: migration to the great cities, two
world wars in which men were mixed in armies. As a result, the traditional
dialects have vanished, and have been replaced by new mixed dialects, based on
the great urban centres.

Discuss briefly the notion of "ungrammaticality" in connection with

standard and non-standard varieties of a language. Include an example

29
of a common non-standard grammatical feature. (p. 264)
In non-standard English, people use the past participles as past-tense forms (I
seen him = I saw him; they never done it = they did not do it) and use the same
form for adjectives or adverbs (the lads played real good = the boys played really
well). Standard speakers describe these usages as "ungrammatical" but it is
actually not a good desparition.
Standard and non-standard English speakers both have a strict grammar but they
are different.
For non-standard English speakers seen and done are the past tense of to see
and to do.

What is meant by "continental pronunciations"? Give three examples

illustrating this phenomenon for words with different language origins.
(p.273)
Words borrowed from other languages get assimilated to an English style
pronunciation. Nowadays, however, such words are often given a "foreign" (=
"continental") kind of pronunciation again.
e.g.:
Ÿ armada, gaza, gala: in traditional pronunciation the stress are pronounced
/ei/, but in continental pronunciation, /a:/;
Ÿ beret, richochet, valet: pronounced with /t/, but in continental pronunciation
(now) without /t/;
Ÿ Marlowe's Dr Faustus is given the /aυ / of the German Faust instead of the
traditional English /o long/.

Discuss and exemplify three recent or ongoing changes in English

grammar. (p. 274-276)
Ÿ When we compare adjectives in comparison and superlatives: -er and -est are
less used than before. Tendency in recent year to use more and most instead
of -er and -est with two-syllables words (with whom we usually use -er and
-est): more common; most common (instead of commoner and commonest).
More and most have also been spreading to adjectives of one syllable: "J. is
more keen than R." or "It was more crude than I expected".

Ÿ Dare and need are basically auxiliaries but people tend to use them as
ordinary lexical verbs. It is thus increasingly normal to say: "Do you need to
go?" and "I don't dare to go" rather than "Need you go?" and "I dare not go".

Ÿ The group of learned nouns borrowed from Greek and Latin have original
plural forms: dogma/dogmata; formula/formulae; genus/genera... Such words
are more and more often given analogical pluralism in -(e)s: formulas,
genuses, dogmas...

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