Riassunto esame Lingua inglese 1, Prof. Riboni Giorgia, libro consigliato Handbook of a present day english, Pulcini

Language Change and Variation in English

1. Language change, variation and history

All languages can be considered as open and dynamic entities which adapt to the history and culture of the speech communities in which they are. Language change happens through the adoption and diffusion of a certain language form, or variant: e.g. a phoneme, a word or a syntactic construction. As a consequence, equivalent variant may coexist within a speech community for either a long or short time until one predominates over the other.

According to sociolinguistics, or the study of the relation between language and society, all varieties of language have the same status. Sociolinguistics has mainly contributed to the understanding of how language behaviour and language variability are influenced by social factors, such as social class, social network, sex/gender, ethnicity and age and, at general level, by the context in which the interaction takes place, the people we address and our willingness to accommodate or dissociate from them. Language change and variation do not emerge exclusively in relation to their social and structural status at a given time, or synchronically, but they take place diachronically, that is along historical continuum, or ordered chronological sequencing of events.

There are two approaches to historical language change:

• Comparative linguistics: Which is based on the concept of proto-language, usually a reconstructed language, and language family, the latter being divided into sub-families. For example, English is a Germanic language.
• History of language: Which is the study of the changes undergone by a single language over the centuries. Literature on history of language has usually distinguished between external and internal causes for change. External causes are extralinguistic or social factors, which contribute to language change, such as technological innovation, the introduction of new concepts and the vocabulary to express them and so on.

Traditional histories of English have mainly focused on the history of the standard variety and its speakers have conceived the HEL as divided into three main period:

• Old English (OE c.700-1150)
• Middle English (ME 1150-1500)
• Modern English (ModEngl 1500-1900)

This approach has been supported by the ideology or discourses according to which the development of English has happened in sociolinguistic vacuum, where language change has been considered exclusively as an internal or structural matter, and phenomena such as language contact and mixing have been simply disregarded or overlooked. In what follows we have attempted to expand our historical account of the language to present-day-English (PDE) in order to include both the historical/diachronic and synchronic/social dimension of language and the highlight sociolinguistic matters of language identity, function and use.

2. Types of changes

2.1 Phonological change

Phonological change deals with any mutation within the sound system of a language and can be both sporadic and regular. Sporadic change refers to change which affect the sounds of limited number of words, e.g. the loss of <r> in OE sprec> speak (PDE), or the aspiration of PDE voiceless plosive /p, t, k/ in words such as pool. A further distinction concerning phonological change refers to the differentiation between an unconditioned and a conditioned change.

An unconditioned change refers to sound change regardless of the phonetic context in which it happens as in the case of the so-called Great Vowel Shift (GVS), which started in the 15th century and affected ME long vowels. It caused a major reorganization of the vowel system through a push chain process. Some scholars described this as a drag chain process, whereby the vowel /i:/ was the first to change, becoming a diphthong. According to other scholars the process started the fronting of /e:/ and /o:/ which pushed /i:/ and /u:/ into diphthongs and therefore it should be explained as a push chain process. These changes partly explain the inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation in PDE.

A conditioned change refers to a phonological change which is conditioned by a specific phonetic environment, as for example the development of PDE fricative phonemes. θ/. In OE only one set fricative phonemes existed, namely /f, s, Each of them was used to represent two different allophones:

• wif wife/f/> [s] and [v], e.g. OE [f] (PDE )
• soe sea/s/> [s] and [z] e.g. OE [s] (PDE )
• ð θ ð θpynne thin/p/> [ ]> [ ] and [ ], e.g OE [ ] (PDE )

2.2 Morpho-syntactic change

Morpho-syntactic change refers to any change in both the morpho-phonematic and syntactic systems of a language. The main mechanisms of morpho-syntactic change are:

• Analogy: the process of modelling a language form in relation to an already existing form of that language;
• Hypercorrection: or speakers' awareness of the social value of the different language varieties within their speech community;
• Backformation: or the creation of a language form which is not historically documented.

Two main examples of syntactic change are: word order, or the order of the elements within the sentence, and grammaticalization, or the phenomenon by which a grammatical function is given to a previously autonomous word.

2.3 Semantic change

Semantic change refers to any mutation in the meaning of individual lexical items, which is commonly influenced by external factors such as socio-cultural change, scientific innovation and foreign language influence, namely borrowing. There are two types of change which involve a change of meaning:

• Widening: or the use of a particular item in more than one context (PDE dog, which originally meant “a particular powerful breed of dog”);
• Narrowing: it indicates the opposite process (PDE meat, was originally used with the meaning of food”);

and there are two types of change which affect connotation:

• Pejoration: it is linked to speakers' social attitude and prejudice (PDE silly derives from ME sely meaning “happy, innocent”);
• Amelioration which refers to a change denoting a positive attitude towards a certain word (PDE queen comes from OE cwēn “woman, wife”).

3. The history of English

3.1 Old English (OE - 700-1500 AD)

The original inhabitants of the British Isles were the Celts, Indo-European people who had lived in Europe since 2000 B.C., and inhabited the British Isles since 100. B.C., before the Roman and Anglo-Saxon invasion names of Celtic origin included names like Avon, from the Celtic word of ‘river’. The history of the English language, however, starts in the mid-5th century A.D, when group of West-Germanic tribes settled in the southern and eastern part of the island. Two important historical episodes profoundly affected the history of England during this period: the arrival and occupation of England by Scandinavian populations from the 8th century on and the Norman conquest in 1066.

The first Scandinavian settlers were Vikings located in the north-eastern part of England, who by the year 867 had almost conquered the island. This dialect is commonly the first standard written language, or the language associated with political, military and cultural power in society. At that time the Anglo-Saxon court was one of the most important political, religious and cultural centres in Europe. After 1066, West-Saxon was substituted by Anglo-Norman, the variety of French spoken by the Norman conquerors.

Historically English is a Germanic language. The event that mostly contributed to the shaping of the OE language was the Christianization of the Island, starting from the 6th century, the main consequence of this being the introduction of the Latin alphabet and the progressive abandonment by the Anglo-Saxon of the Runic alphabet. OE distinguishes case (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative), number (singular and plural) and gender (masculine, feminine and neuter) for nouns, adjectives and pronouns. The inflections of nouns are divided into two categories: strong (masculine and neuter) and weak (consonant nouns, three genders).

The most striking differences in relation to PDE concern the forms and functions of the definite article (PDE the) and demonstrative pronouns (PDE sing. this/that and pl. these/those). Language continuity from OE to PDE can be traced with reference to personal pronouns which show four main cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative), three persons (first, second and third) and three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter). In OE as in PDE there are two main types of verbs: strong (irregular) and weak (regular). Both strong and weak verbs show: two tenses (present and preterite), three moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative), two infinitive forms and two participle (present and past).

There also two main verbs sub-categories, the so-called preterite-present verbs and anomalous verbs. The former show a preterite form as present and for the past they create a new form. These are important ‘cause they’re modal verbs like can, shall and may. The influence of foreign languages such as Latin and Scandinavian is also attested during this period. For Latin, two major stages of influence can be distinguished:

• The first period related to the conquest of part of the British Isles by the Romans (54 B.C.);
• The second stage of influence concerns the period of Christianization of the island from the 6th century, when many religious terms were borrowed with minimal phonetic accommodation.

The Scandinavian influence on OE vocabulary during this period is limited to technical terms for ships, warfare and legal institutions.

3.2 Middle English (ME - 1150-1500)

The Norman conquest of England in 1066 is traditionally considered as the starting point of the Middle English period. We can distinguish three main stages for ME:

• A transitional stage (1066-1150): When sociolinguistic changes occurred. The Norman conquest represented the end of the advanced Anglo-Saxon social and cultural systems. The main evidence for language maintenance in Early ME is the continuity of the late Anglo-Saxon literary tradition, in particular the religious prose tradition, which was copied, read and interpreted in monasteries for at least a century and a half after the conquest.
• An early ME period (1150-1350): During which English gradually recovered its status of official language as is testified by the increasing number of legal documents and literary writings in vernacular.
• A late ME period (1350-1430): From the 14th century on, many socio-cultural changes took place in England, such as urbanization, in particular the growth of London and the rising of new social classes, namely middle classes, technological discoveries, particularly the introduction of the printing press by William Caxton in 1476.

These events are linked to matters of education and standard language. During the ME period three main languages were spoken in England: French (language of power), Latin (language of learning, education and Church) and English (spoken by the majority of the population). The ME period has been described as the stage of the language in which complex phenomena of dialectal variation, language contact and attempts to standardize language co-exist.

We will limit our discussion to the so-called classical ME variety, in particular:

• The levelling of the OE inflections case system;
• The fixing of SVO word order as in PDE;
• A marked foreign influence on ME vocabulary.

It is commonly assumed that during the ME period the OE noun case system underwent a process of re-adjustment owing to the collapse of vowels in unstressed syllables. As regard ME adjectives, by the end of ME period the distinction between strong and weak types was lost. This process of language levelling also involved determiners and pronouns. The verb system of ME keeps the OE differentiation between strong and weak verbs, though some changes occur in relation to person endings.

The most innovative aspect of the ME verbal system is the development of new tenses, in particular:

• The future tense (in OE there isn’t future tense);
• The progressive/continuous tense.
• The passive voice.

In late ME the predominant order SVO as in PDE, thought variation is still present. For example the SVO is present in statements, and with dependent clauses. ME is the period in which a large number of French words entered the English language. Latin continued to exercise great power on English as the language of the Church and scholarship and to a lesser extent of the law.

3.3 Modern English (ModEngl - 1500-1900)

The modern English period is commonly divided by scholars into early Modern English and Modern English. The foundations of the power of Britain on the seas were laid during the reign of Elizabeth I. The queen encouraged the first naval explorations, financed naval warfare, especially against Spain, England’s sworn enemy at that time, and supported the creation if the first colonies in New World. In 1707 the Act of Union united England and Scotland into One Kingdom by the name of Great Britain.

Britain led the industrial revolution with innovations that sped up manufacturing process, like mechanized cotton spinning and the steam engine; new machine tools were produced, and new chemicals were introduced. The industrial revolution also provided a stimulus for the creation of specialist terminology. The growth of standard English took place through a long process of selection, acceptance, elaboration and codification. While selection and acceptance are linked to positive attitude towards the standard variety due to its association with the powerful emerging upper-middle classes in England at that time, elaboration and codification are complex phenomena, closely linked to the political, social and cultural dimensions of this period.

In the course of these centuries English became the language of those domains where Latin and French were previously used, that is government, law, religion and education. The expansion of vocabulary gave rise to the opposition between the so-called Neologisers and Purists. The former language contributed to introducing a certain number of words into English, mainly from Latin and French. Purists believed in the preservation of native vocabulary through processes of word formation like prefixation and suffixation. During the ModEngl period several glossaries and both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries were compiled (in 1611 by John Florio and in 1755 by Samuel Johnson).

Towards the end of this period distinction between strong and weak declensions of nouns and adjectives disappeared. Though the distinction between strong and weak verbs continues, strong preserve vowel mutation. The main features of ModEngl syntax can be summarized as follows:

• Inversion of subject in declarative sentences
• Multiple negation
• Omission of the subject

Though the efforts of prescriptives to codify the English language brought about a certain degree of structural stability, which was reinforced by a diffused sense of shared usage, standardization remain a fictitious process. Several political, economic and social factors contributed to this process, in particular in British colonialism and imperialism. Three main stages can be distinguished:

• The increasing activity of British trading companies and the slave trade, starting from the beginning of the 17th century thus, from the contact between English and, for example, West-African languages new varieties of English emerged, namely Pidgin English and Creoles, which functioned as a sort of lingua franca for trade and commerce;
• The establishment of stable colonial settlements in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa;
• The institutionalism of English within colonies: this means that English started to be used as a second language and become the official language of government, bureaucracy, education and religion.

4. The sociolinguistic status of present-day English

This new framework of language investigation is commonly defined as the Englishes paradigm and can be explained in terms of research interests, focusing on users or uses of English, or both, for example

• Geographical location (American English);
• Linguistic and ethnic association (Chinese English);
• Activities such as commerce, education, culture and technology (legal English, standard English, policespeak...);
• Combination of location and activity (American legal English) and so on;
• Fusion of English with other languages (Frenglish).

The major parameters of the pluralization of English are its geographical spread and the number and typology of its speakers.

4.1 The diaspora of English

The diaspora of English worldwide is characterised by three main stages. The first stage refers to the expansion of English within the British Isles, namely Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Though we can define them as minority languages, they are still spoken as a second language (L2) by a large number of people thanks to their promotion and revitalization by local institutions. The second stage is associated with the discovery of new territories and the establishment of the British colonies in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. This stage of the spread of English mainly regards the formation of the colonial standards, or new Englishes. Political independence from British colonial after the Second World War contributed to their recognition as autonomous, standardized varieties of English, which diverge from both the British and American standards, developing endonormative norms. The third stage, or the 2nd diaspora of English, concern its diffusion and use.