Gramatyka historyczna 18.01.2013

Caedmon’s hymn – composed 670? –

731 – będę finishes Ecclesiastical History (a work in Latin) – an OE version comes from many years later

Before 950 – when we start counting………

• Alfredian translations of Bede’s Ecclesiastical

• Consolation of Philosophy

• Augustine’s Soliloquies

c970 – Exeter book copied Early poetry; contains Riddles, the Wanderer, the Seafarer

c975 – Vercelli Book copied

990s : AEfric’s Catholic Homilies and Lives of Saints

c1000: Beowulf copied

Peterborough Chronicle continuations

Christianization

Took place in the 7^th century of the New Era, although it started at the very end of the 6^th century. Very peaceful process. In fact Christian religion was not unknown on the British Isles, because the Celtic people were Christian before, when Britain was a part of the Roman Empire. New monasteries were founded, Latin and Greek were taught. Some transtations of the bible were made in the monasteries, Bede was the author of the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. New borrowings in English language like: abbot, hymn, candle, oil, master, school, apostle, pope, monk, mass, verse, etc. Words assumed new meanings: heahfeader ‘ patriarch’, etc.

VIKINGS invasion

3 periods of invasion, Alfred the Great, the Danelaw

What is important from the linguistic point of view, is the way to distinguish borrowings from Old Norse in English.

Germanic

North Germanic (Scandinavian) West Germanic (English)

/sk/

Skirt vs. shirt, scatter vs. shatter, skip vs shift

/sk/ /ʃ/ <sc>

/k/, /g/

/k/, /g/ /t ʃ/, /j/ break vs. breach, wake, watch, stick, stitch, dike, ditch

/ai/

/ei/, /e:/ /a:/

Flower, bloom bloom ingot of iron

Gift, present gift price of a wife

An agricultural tool plow a measure of land

Loanwords of Scandinavian origin are associated with the sea, law and a variety of everyday objects, activities, qualities etc. They include words like anger, band bank etc.

Grammatical words: till, their, they, them, though, are (sindon)

Main types of sound changes:

Assimilation (making a sound more like an adjacent sound):

1. Partial - Latin ag ‘do’ + tus (pass. Part.) >actus G changes into k because the following d is voiced

2. Complete: L exactus (exact)> Italian essatto, L octo >It otto

3. Anticipatory/regressive (Change of the prior phoneme) : L factum (fact)>it fatto

4. Preservative/progressive (change of the proceeding phoneme): Proto-Germanic */fulla-/ >OE full ‘full’

5. Distant – consonantal change: IE */penkwe/ >Latin quinque, PG *femf(e)/’five’ – p and k do not stand next to each other

Dissimilation – (unpredictable replacement of a sound that co-occurs within a word) – 17^th German Tartuffeln> Modern German Kartoffel, or the Polish arbitralny that derives from Latin word arbitrarious with three r’s. L peregrinus ‘foreigner’ >It. Pellegrino

Palatalization - (a change of consonants to palatal or alveolar-palatal affricatives of fricatives): PG */tajkjan/ > OE taecan ‘teach’, WG */ik/> OE ić ‘I’

Loss (delition) (the dropping of a segment)

1. Apocope – (the loss of final sound(s)): OE blawan> ME blow, OE sunu> ME son

2. Syncope – (the loss of medial sounds): WG */kussjan/ >OE cyssan ‘kiss’, OE elnboga > elboga ‘elbow’. Polish Trzeba Trza

3. Aphaeresis – (the loss of initial sounds):

   1. Misdivision (this type of change is based on analogy) – OE a naddre > ModE an adder, OF naperon >eMe a napron >ModE an apron

   2. Simplification of consonantal clusters e.g. hn-, hr-, hl-, hnacode naked, hring

4. Haplology (the loss of a similar phoneme or a group of similar phonemes in an adjacent position): OE Englalond>ModE England

Epenthesis (the insertion of an extra medial sound): IE */sr/>/str/, Pol. Siostra ‘sister; but L soror, thymel>thimble

Prothesis – (the insertion of an extra initial sound): L schola >Sp. Escuela

Metathesis – (sporadic reordering of adjacent segments): ascian and axian ‘ask’, fiscas and fixas ‘fishes’, frost and forst ‘frost’ – often the vowel and the r change places and vice versaThree, third

Rhotacism

Compensatory lengthening

Breaking

Final devoicing

Intervocalic voicing

Nasal assimilation

Diphthongisation

Monophthongisation (coalescence)

Vowel raising

Vowel lowering

Nasalisation

Gemination – like lengthening in vowel

Degemination – like shortenening in vowel – so it is about consonants

Spirantisation – a change of stop into a fricative – Grimm’s Law includes it.

Lengthening

Shortening

Weakening or lenition.

Typically recognised types of semantic change

Widening (generalisation, extension, broadening) – an increase in the number of contexts in which a word can be used – the word becomes more general

Dog’ a (specific) powerful breed of dog > all breeds or races of dogs

Narrowing (specialization, restriction) – the range of meanings is decreased so that a word can be used appropriately only in fewer contexts than before the change.

Meat ‘food’ in general > ‘food or flesh’ (cf. sweetmeat ‘candy’, Sw. mat ‘food’)

Hound ‘dog’(G hund) > ‘long-eared hunting dog’

Degeneration (pejoration) – the sense of a word takes on a less positive, more negative evaluation in the minds of the users of the language.

It. Putta and Sp. Puta whore< girl (L putus’boy’, puta ‘girl’)

Fr. Cretin ‘stupid’<’Christian’

Elevation (amelioration) – shift in the sense of a word in the direction towards a more positive value in the minds of the users of the language

Nice’ foolish, stupid, senseless’<Fr. Ni(s)ce ‘ foolish, stupid; <L nescius ‘ignoratnt, unaware’: (Sp. Necio ‘foolish’, ‘imprudent’)

MIDDLE ENGLISH

Edward the Confessor, 1066, Battle of Hastings,

From the Middle of the 13^th century, there was an increasing number of sermons and prayers, songs and romances, letters, wills, and other documents written in Middle English. In the c. 14^th came the main flowering of ME literature.

Wycliff translation of the Bible.

Langland’s Piers Plowman,

The anonymous Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,

Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales.

Words borrowed from French in the field of:

• Administration:

• Law

• Religion

• Army

• Fashion

• Food

• Learning

• The Arts

• Medicine

We can easily spot them, they start with “v”. No native words of English started with it. Most of the names of the precious stones come from French.