Structural classification of lgs: syntactic (according to word order) SVO (Eng, Pl), VSO (Irish, classical Arabic), SOV (Turkish, Japanese) – the most popular (subj before obj – more natural), OVS, OSV,VOS, free word order;
morphological (study of the structure of words):
analytic(isolating)- one morpheme expresses 1 meaning: Eng, Chinese, - - synthetic(inflecting):Polish,
agglutinative(wide use of agglutination – sklejanie): Turkish Finnish,
incorporating(polysynthetic) – you only need 1 word to express the whole sentence: Australian lgs, Eskimo lg
infixing: Bontoc
English was originally inflecting or semi-inflecting; now – analytic lg
Genetic classification of lgs:
historical linguistics (study of lg. history +change),
comparative linguistics (relations b/w lgs)
comparative reconstruction (determines the relations b/w lgs)
internal vs. external history of lg (internal – ppl decided on changes; changes imposed by external conditions),
dialect (variation of a lg. e.g.: in terms of accent) vs. lg (ppl speaking different dialect will understand it),
synchrony (study of lg. in a specific point in time) vs. diachrony (looking at lg. change and development in course of time)
Lgs of the world: Caucasian lgs – you can have 7 consonants in a row (Pl. 4 – pstryk), Vietnamese – 55 vowels (Pl. 6-8), Austronesian 7 Indo-Pacific lg – the most lgs in this family – 1200 out of 6000 in the world, Hebrew – the only lg that died (2000 y. ago) and was revived.
- Tone – if lgs don’t have inflections, they have tones.
- Lg isolates with no known relatives– eg. Basque, Etruscan (20 in the world)
Indo-European lgs: half of population of the world, each spoken by a large no. of ppl, the only family that increases in number of speakers, southern Russia – home of IE lgs, two counting (tens and dozens)
SATEM lgs (east: Pl, Russian, Sanskrit): palatal ks, velar kk,
CENTUM(west: Latin, Germanic, OE, Italian: kh) lgs: pk and vk k
Distant cousins of the Eu lgs: Hittite- the oldest lg in the IE family (1700 BC),
- Slavic lgs:
East(Russ, Belarusian, Ukr),
West (Pl, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian),
South:(Bulg, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian)
Baltic tongues: Lithuanian, Latvian.
9TH CENT. – First written Slavonic lgs. Codex Zographensis – canonical monument of Old Church Slavonic.
CELTIC LGS: P-Celtic (kp): Welsh, Breton, Cornish (dead), Q-Celtic (kk): Irish, Gaelic, Manx(dead) Frisian – the closest relative to Eng
Indo-European to Proto Germanic: It’s own lexical stock: wife, drive, drink – only in Germanic lgs; IE tenses: only present and preterit morphologically marked (ablaut: sing-sang grammatical change of the vowel), weak verbs- regular (-ed), strong – irregular/change of vowel/ (exception: if there’s t at the end of past form (brought, thought weak!)
weak declension (adj) – ba geongan ceorlas (the young fellows)
strong decl – geonge ceorlas – change of inflection on account of the article
IE vowels underwent Germanic modif: o a Latin: octo, Gothic: ahtan, ā õ L. mater, OE modor
1st Consonantal Shift (Grimm’s Law – 2000-500 bc) : pf, tth, kx(h);
Bh – b, Dh – d, Gh – g
B – p; d – t, g – k
aspiration – you don’t aspirate word finally, but at the beginning you have to (loss of aspiration; voiceless stops became voiceless fricatives)
Verner’s Law – Proto Germanic voiceless fricatives (f, th, x) became voiced (β, ð d, γ) when they were in voiced environment and the IE stress was not on the immediately preceding syllable. Ðd – strengthening (‘fa:ðer -> the more ele. the sound has, the stronger it is; stops are stronger than fricatives)
‘H’ – the weakest sound
Rhotacism – s/zr e.g.: flos floris (flower)
Germanic to West Germanic: PG (West G – Dutch, Eng, Ger, East – Gothic, North – Scandinavian lgs)
1.PG –az ending (Nom. Sing. Nouns) NG –r, EG –s, WG – Ø (wulfaz NG - ulfr, EG (Ghotic) – wolfs; WG – (OE) wulf/wolf),
In NG 2p. sing.ending in the present came to be used also for 3 person, NG developed a definite article that was suffixed to nouns – ulfr – wolf, ulfrinn – the wolf. No such thing in EG or WG, NG and WG had vowel alterations (mutation) – mann – men. Gothic – regular
Second Consonantal Shift – High German Shift (500-700 ad) – ttS: two – zwei, tno change: stone – stein,
ppf: apple – Apfel, pf: up –auf, pno change: spear, speer,
kx: book – Buch
Great Vowel Shift (1500-1600) – only long vowels affected (also diphthongs):
i:ai – li:f laif,
e:i: - fe:t fi:t,
ε: e: - br ε:k bre:k –diphthongizationbreik,
u:au – hu:shaus,
o: -> eu
e: -> ei
i:- ai
u:-> au
o:u: - fo:tfu:t---shorteningfut, ɔ: o: - br ɔ:kbro:k—diph. brɘuk, a:e:- bra:k bre:k –dipthbreik
GVS blocked when “r” is the following consonant – floor – flo: not ME: flu:, lowering – u ʌ
OE: a: -> o: -> eu (RISING)
Fromting: a -> ae
Anglo-Frisian innovations – loss of nasals before fricatives and compensatory lengthening: munth –CLmu:th –GVSmauth + zniknęło n (loss of nasal)
ENGLISH LG DIVISION - OLD ENG: Pre-OE(449-700 wasn’t written), Early OE (700-900 – first written records), Late OE (900-1100/1150), Middle English: Early ME (1100/1150-1300 – not much writing), Late ME (1300-1500 – influx of writing – Chaucer), Modern English: Early ME (1500-1750), Late ME (1750-1970), PDE: 1970 – present
OE letters:
- æ – ash – [æ],
- Þ – thorn – [ð] or [th],
- ð – eth – [ð] ot [th],
- ʒ - yogh – [j],[g],[y],
- p,u(u) – wynn or wen – [w]
- 7 / & - Tironian sign/ ampresaand ‘and’
Palatalisation – consonants aquire palatal place of art. Usually stopsfricatives. Ddż – did you?
Most typically front vowels cause palatalisation, k cz – rok – roczek
Fricative voicing – only voiceless fricatives were phonemes, voiced fricatives were allophones of phonemes. They were context sensitive, voiced f appeared in a voiced environ.
4 Germanic tribes: Frisians, Saxons, Angles, Jutes, 449 – arrived at British Isles --_ beginning of OE.
First examples of Eng written in Runic(Futhorc) alphabet.
Franks Casket, Ruthwell Cross – artifacts on which runes can be found – Northumbria.
Features of OE: synthetic, noun,verb,adj,det,pronoun – highly inflected, word order not as rigid, weak and strong declensions of nouns and adj, weak and strong conjugations of verbs, vocab overwhelmingly Germanic (85% of OE vocab isn’t used in ModE)
Sound changes in OE: front mutation (i-mutation, i-umlaut) – when j or i followed a stressed syllable low vowel raises, back vowel fronts; fricative voicing (wife-wives),
o: -> e:; e.g.: fo:tiz fe:tiz fe:t fi:t (i-u; loss of inf. ending, GVS)
u: -> i: e.g.: mu:siz mi:siz mi:s mais (i-u; loss of inf. end.; GVS)
palatalisation, breaking – some verbs disappeared, some became weak.
OE syntax – no articles; SOV VSO SVO possible word orders because of inflection, subjectless sentences, no operators
OE Vocab- most borrowings from Latin and Old Norse, but overall not a lot of borrowings, strength of Eng- ability to form new words through suffixes and prefixes;
4 main dialects of OE: Northumbrian; Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon, (ModE is based on Mercian)
History- Alfred the Great – chronicles (Peterborough chr), Boewulf 1000(bbut must’ve been written 300 years earlier),
- 597 – Augustine coverts the English, sets up Canterbury Cathedral,
- Bede – Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, by 700 – all of Anglo Saxon England Christian.
Vikings: North Germanic – sksk or sc(sz), k,g k,g or cz, sz, ai ei,e; or a:. Scandinavian borrowings: sea, law, bak, cake, gramm. Borrowings: till, their, they, them, though, are
MAIN TYPES OF SOUND CHANGES:
- Assimilation- making a sound more like an adjacent sound: partial,complete, anticipatory/regressive, preservative/progressive, distant,
- Dissimilation – unpredictable replacement of sound that co-occurs within a word : Tartuffeln-Kartoffeln, PL: arbitralny vs Lt: arbitrarius
- Palatalisaton – change of consonants to (alveo-) palatal affricates or fricatives
- Loss(deletion):
- apocope(loss of final sound) e.g.: OE blawan ME blow
- synocope(loss of medial sound) e.g.: OE elnboga elboga (elbow)
- aphaeresis(loss of initial sounds):
- misdivision (based on analogy) e.g.: OE a naddre ModE an adder
- simplification of consonantal clusters eg. Hn,hr, hl – hnacodenaked)
- haplology- the loss of a similar phoneme or their group: OE Englalond ModE Englanda
- Epenthesis – (insertion of an extra medial sound) e.g.: thymel thimble
- Prothesis – (extra initial sound) e.g.: LT: schola –-> SP: escuela
- Metathesis – sporadic reordering of adjacent segments e.g.: frost and forst = ‘frost’
Types of semantic change:
- Widening (broadening of meaning) e.g.: dog’a (specific hunting breed) vs. dog – all races of dogs,
Narrowing (specialization) – meat – food in general vs. nowadays’ meat (flesh)
- Degeneration (pejoration) – Latin: putta – girl vs. It. Putta – whore,
- Elevation (amelioration) – Fr. ‘nice’ = foolish, stupid vs. English nice (positive)
- Cluster shortening: shepherd – sheep – ph caused ee shortening to e.
- Borrowings:
- French: crown, jury, prayer, ruby, army, noun, music, pain
- Scandinavian: skirt, skip, wake, break
- Latin(learned) – ascend etc.
Adjectival affixes from French - -ent/-ant, -al, -ous, -ive, -able/-ible
words starting with ‘al’ = Arabic orgin e.g.: Algebra
yocht – Dutch orgin
w,z – French orgin
Levelling of inflectional endings – OE compared to Middle Eng: infinitive: an-en, as-es, on-en, Dative pl – um – Ø/e, e- Ø
Anglo-Norman Innovations: cwqu – cwenequeen, htght – niht night, c[cz] ch – cildchild, sc[sz] sh – scipship, hwwh – hwiwhy, [u:] indicated by ou – hous [hu:s]