Historical Grammar

Syllabus:

Language families

Germanic languages

Old English

Middle English

The Renaissance 1500-1650

The Temper of the 18^th century

The 19^th century and after

Present Day English

Language evolution:

Internal change: happens within the language

External change: influences from external (geographical, political, social)

Language is assumed to have appeared between 150.000 and 50.000 BC. Present-day humans and homo sapiens skulls.

Language family – languages that are genetically related to one another because they have all developed from a single ancestral language:

-daughter languages

-subfamilies, branches

Isolated language – a language which has no family; a language that bears no affinity to any known language, e.g. Basque in Europe, Ainn in Japan.

Dead/extinct language – not used nowadays as a native language.

Cognates – words which have the same origins.

Words like nome (Italian), nome (Galician), nome (Portuguese) came from Latin, they belong to the one family; word which has the same meaning ingoa in Maoni belongs to the other family.

English – water and German - wasser = Germanic family: Proto – Germanic

Russian – voda, Polish – woda, Czech – voda = Slavic family: Proto – Slavic

Proto is used to devote a reconstructed language.

Comparative reconstruction:

• 19^thc linguistics: Jacob Grimm and August Schleicher

Indo – European family:

• 437 lngs

• Parent lng: Proto – Indo – European

• 6% of speakers

• “Kurgan” culture: the first Indo – Europeans

• William Jones, worked on:

• Sanskrit: a classical lng of India, which is still used as a religious and ceremonial lng

• Relationship between Sanskrit and the lngs of Europe

• Franz Bopp: compared Latin, Greek and Sanskrit to German (1816)

• Rasmus Rask: added Lithuanian and Slavic lngs (1818)

• Jacob Grimm: formulated the laws illustrating the phonological changes

• August Schleicher: tried reconstructing the Proto-Indo-European on the basis of Sanskrit, Greek and Lithuanian

• The first comparative grammar of Indo-European was published between 1833 and 1852 by Franz Bopp

• A new grammar was published by Jerry Kuryłowicz (1968)

Proto-Indo-European:

• Rich in inflections

• Has three genders

• Eight cases of the noun

• The verb had a complex system of tenses, moods, aspects

• Had 19 consonants

• Vowels: probably short and long, and diphthongs

• Vocabulary:

• Family relationship ( father, mother, brother)

• Parts of human body ( arm, ear)

• Plants and animals (cow, mouse)

• Tools and equipment (door, wheel)

• Numerals from 1 to 10

• Split into several lngs

• The earliest records date from between 2000 and 1000BC

• A gradual simplification of grammar

• Synthesis – analysis

SATEM LNGS:

• Italic:

• Umbrian, Venetian: and other extinct lngs used in antiquity in the northern parts of Italy

• Romance: Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese

• Classical Latin – a literary lng with an elaborate grammar

• Vulgar Latin – the spoken lng of the masses, simpler in inflection and syntax and different in vocabulary

• Germanic:

• East Germanic: Gothic, Vandal

• North Germanic: east Scandinavian (Swedish, Danish), West Scandinavian (Old Norse, Norwegian)

• West Germanic: Anglo-Frisian group (English, Frisian), Netherlandic-German group (German, Dutch)

• Celtic:

• Continental Celtic: Gaulish, Celtiberian, all were used between 5^thc BC and 4^thc AD

• Insular Celtic: Goidelic (also Q-Celtic or Gaelic) which includes Scottish, Irish, and Brythonic (also British or P-Celtic) which includes Welsh, Breton, Cornish

• Indo – Iranian:

• Indo-Aryan group: Sanskrit, Bengah, Hindi

• Indian group: Old Persian, Persian, Kurdish

• Balto-Slavic/Slavonic:

• Baltic lngs: Latvian, Lithuanian

• Slavonic lngs, deriving from Old Church Slavonic:

• East Slavonic: Russian, Ukrainian

• South Slavonic: Bulgarian, Slovenian

• West Slavonic: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Sorbian

• Tocharian lng: northern Chinese

• Armenian lng

• Anatolian lng

• Albanian lng

Hellenic lng: Ancient Greek, Modern Greek

Germanic lngs:

• Proto – Germanic – a parent

• Spoken around 2000BC

• Tacitus “Germania” in AD 98

Germanic tribes:

• First they lived in a small area of today’s Schleswig and Denmark

• Expansion started in the 5^th or 4^thc BC

• Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Piets

• The Norsemen: northwards up the Scandinavian peninsula

• Saxons and Franks: westwards into present day North-West Germany and Holland

• Alemanic and Bavarian tribes: southwards into present day South Germany and Bohemia

Translation of the Bible by Bishop Wulfila in the middle of the 4^th c. He translated it on Goths lng.

The oldest recording of Old Norse lng is in the form of runic inscriptions (about 300AD).

In the Viking Age Old Norse lng split into several dialects which developed into modern Scandinavian lngs.

The west Germanic began to break up into dialects in the 4^thc and 5^thc AD.

Germanic lngs:

• Stress falling on the first or root syllable of the word

• In Proto-Indo-European accent was free

• Nominative: meter

• Genitive: meteros/metros

• The gradual loss of unstressed syllables in final position

• The systematic change of the root vowel of strong verbs – ablant, while forming the past tense and past participle

• OldEng: drincan-dranc-druncon

• The use of the dental suffix /t/ or /d/ in the formation of the past tense and past participle of weak verbs: OldEng: lufian-lufode-lufod, ModEng: love-loved-loved

First Germanic Consonant Shift:

• Formulated by Jakob Grimm in 1822

• Grimm’s Law

• Explains correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic lngs and those formed in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin.

• The cycle of Grimm’s Law:

• Aspirated voiced stops: /bh, dh, gh, gwh/ into voiced stops: /b, d, g, gw/

• Voiced stops: /b, d, g, gw/ into voiceless stops: /p, t, k, kw/

• Voiceless stops / p, t, k, kw/ into voiceless fricatives: /f, th, x, xw/

• Karl Verner in 1875 added further explanations to Grimm’s Law:

• Indo-European /p, t, k/ became in Tentonic /f, th, h/ if the accent rested on the preceding syllable

• /p, t, k/ became voiced and produced /b, d, g/ if the accent did not fall on the vowel immediately preceding the consonant

Germanic lngs:

• The grammatical system of Proto-Germanic

• 5 or 6 cases

• 2 numbers with the third one used marginally

• Verbal system: two tenses, present and past

• Two moods, indicative and subjunctive

• Two voices

• The passive form of a verb was abandoned, but it was still present in Hothic

• The perfect structures:

• Auxiliary ‘have’ or ‘be’ + the past participle of a verb

• The passive construction:

• The auxiliary ‘be’ or ‘become’ + the past participle of a verb

EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH:

OldEng: 450 – 1150

MidEng: 1150 – 1500

ModEng: from 1500

OldEng:

• Prehistoric or Primitive OldEng: 450 – 700

• Early OldEng: 700 – 900

• Late OldEng: after 900

The Celts:

• In the central Europe around 5^thc BC

• On the British Isles in the 4^thc BC

• First wave: in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man

• Second wave: England, Cornwall and Wales

• Celtic lngs and dialects on the British Isles until the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the 5^thc AD

• Names of rivers: Avon, Thames

• Names of cities: London, Dover, Cardiff

• The ‘root’ element in those names of the cities that possess the ending of the Latin origin: Manchester, Rochester, Winchester

• Some other names of regions: Kent, Devon

The Romans:

• Julius Caesar, summer of 55BC

• Emperor Claudius,43AD, the Romanization of the province

Sound changes in OldEng:

• Consonants:

• Voicing

• Palatalization

• Vowels:

• Breaking

• Fronting

Voicing: sound change from voiceless into voiced:

• Between two voiced sounds, e.g. wife, knife

Palatalization:

• The velars k, sk and g are fronted before a front vowels

Breaking:

• When the front vowels become diphthongs, they are broken into two sounds, before certain consonants, e.g. old, half

Fronting: also called i-umlaut:

• When a back or low vowel such precedes on /i/

OldEng grammar:

• The Noun:

• Four cases,

• Three genders,

• Two numbers

• Gender:

• Did not depend on the meaning

Agreement: the adjective and the demonstrative had to agree with the noun, had to be inflected for the same gender, case and number.

Declension:

• Three declinations:

• Strong (vocalic)

• Weak (consonant)

• A group of minor declinations:

• Endings for number, case, gender

• Irregular patterns: the change of the root vowel in Nominative Plural, the pronoun, the dual number – first and second person, and no reflexive pronouns

• Adjectives:

• Two declensions:

• Weak declension – when adjective was preceded by the demonstrative

• Strong deflection – when adjective was not preceded by the demonstrative

• The verb:

• One voice: active

• Passive meanings expressed by means of the auxiliary ‘beon’ and the past participle form of the verb

• Two tenses: present and past

• Articles:

• No articles in OldEng

• A complex system of demonstrative pronouns with 3 genders and 5 cases were used

• Se – masculine singular form

• Baet – neuter singular form

• Indefinite article was not marked

• Word order:

• ModEng: Subject – Verb – Object

• OldEng: Adverb – Verb – Subject – Object – linking adverbial preceded the subject

• Considerable freedom of word order, grammatical cases of nouns and pronouns

• Subject: nominative case

• Direct object: accusative case

• Indirect object: dative case

Morphology:

• An elaborate system of pronouns

• No real articles, only demonstratives

• Nouns have endings depending on whether they are subjects or objects

• Adjectives agree with the nouns in case, number and gender, and are weak and strong

Syntax:

• Free word order,

• No auxiliary verbs

• Multiple negations, before the verb

• Frequent use of coordination

The road towards Middle English:

• The Norman Conquest (1066)

• The relations between England and Normandy had been fairly close

• In 1002 AEthelred the Unready had married Norman wife

• His son Edward the Confessor brought up in France; in 1042 became a king of England

• Edward has no son

• Godwin, earl of the West Saxon was Edward’s principal adviser

• Godwin’s eldest son Harold succeeded to the throne of England

• William, the duke of Normandy, was a second cousin to Edward

• He decided to invade England, in September, 28^th 1066 he landed at Pevensey

• Harold drew up his forces on as broad hill at Senlac and awaited William’s attack

• The Battle of Hastings

• Harold died in the battle

• William the Conqueror was crowned king of England on Christmas Day 1066

Consequences of the Norman Conquest:

• The introduction of a new nobility of Norman origin

• The new ruling class knew no English, spoke French

• French was promoted by political connections with Normandy

• Through intermarriage and associations Englishmen started to learn French

• Many of the merchants were or Norman origin and spoke French

• A considerable body of French literature was produced in England

• English was now an uncultivated tongue, the lng of a socially inferior class

But:

• A knowledge of English was not uncommon among those who habitually used French

• William the Conqueror learned English as the majority of the population knew it

• Many people were bilingual

• The fusion of Normans and English was quite quick

• In 1204 King John lost Normandy

• He married Isabel of Augouleme, but at the time she was formally betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan, the head of a powerful family

• Philip, king of France, summoned John to appear before his court at Paris

• Philip invaded Normandy

• Normandy was lost to the English crown

• The loss of Normandy was wholly advantageous

• In 1204 the process of separation of England and Normandy started

• John’s son Henry III was wholly French in his tastes and connections

• French was popularity all over Europe

France – chivalrous society

French – first international lng of culture and fashion, the lng of upper classes, parliament and administration in England.

English was more and more popular among the upper classes; becoming stronger in the church and the universities.

French in England was not ‘good’ French, it was a mixture of northern dialects.

The Hundred Years’ War.

Middle English:

• Simplification and reduction

• Changes in grammar

• Changes in spelling and pronunciation

Middle English dialects:

• Southern

• Northern

• East Midland

• Kentish

• West Midland

Spelling:

• 1400 – the cursive minuscule called also the Chancery Hand

• Elimination of OldEng letters

• New letters added

• Changes in letter distribution

MidEng vocalic system:

• Quantitative changes (the length of a vowel is changed)

• Quantitative changes (the place of articulation or the position of lips is changed)

• Lengthening of short vowels took place

• In early MidEng all short vowels were lengthened in open stressed syllables of two-syllabic words

Tenses:

• More frequent use of perfect tenses

• The continuous tense – rare

• The future tenses – expressed by means of the defective verbs

Morphology:

• Pronouns change

• Case endings on nouns and adjectives disappear gradually

• Agreement on verb simplifies

• Strong verbs become weak

Syntax:

• Word order changes to S V O

• Subject pronouns are needed

• Pleonastic subjects are introduced

• Multiple negatives occur

• Auxiliaries and articles are introduced

Linguistic situation in Anglo-Norman England.

French influences – vocabulary:

• Two phrases of the influence: before 1250 900 in number, after 1250 the French upper classes carried over into English new borrowings

• Borrowings from Anglo-Norman and Parisian French:

• Government and administration

• Religion

• Church

• Law

• Army

• Navy

• Fashion

• Food and meals

• Medicine learning

• Entertainment

• Art, architecture, literature

• Adjectives

• Verbs

• Expressions

• 10 000 words borrowed, 75% still in use in modern English

Inkhorn – is any foreign borrowing into English deemed to be unnecessary or overly pretentious.

Inkhorn controversy - in the sixteenth century the influx of Latinate borrowings sparkled the Inkhorn controversy, a heated discussion of the extent, to which it was permissible and proper to import words into English from other languages.

Peterborough Chronicle - The Peterborough Chronicle (also called the Laud manuscript and the E manuscript), one of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, contains unique information about the history of England after the Norman Conquest.