Appunti esame Lingua Inglese I, Bibbò - Stewart

Lingua inglese I - Week 1

A brief history of English / Why languages change?

There are different ways of classifying languages:

Typological classification

• Families of languages, languages that are related
• Based on Morphology: e.g., agglutinative, isolating and fusional languages
• Agglutinative languages have words which may consist of more than one, and possibly many, morphemes.
• Isolating languages (Chinese, words don’t change) have sentences composed entirely of free morphemes, where each word consists of only one morpheme. They allow no affixation (inflectional or derivational) at all. Sometimes analytic languages allow some derivational morphology such as compounds (two free roots in a single word).
• Fusional languages may have morphemes that combine multiple pieces of grammatical information. There is not a clear 1 to 1 relationship between grammatical information and morphemes.

No language has a pure type, most of them fall between two types (English = Isolating and fusional).

• Based on syntax: e.g., unmarked word order
• Markedness: In linguistic and semiotics, the phenomenon, noted by Roman Jakobson, in which one term and/or concept is highlighted as (markedly) different from another. The unmarked form is typically dominant (e.g., statistically within a text or corpus) and is often used as a generic term while the marked form is used in a specific sense.
• - there is an emphasis, there is a stress on a particular meaning
• - marked and unmarked word order convey a different meaning

Genetic classification

• Families of language with common features and common history
• Reconstruction through comparative method (e.g., cognate vocabulary)
• English is part of the Indo-European family:

How Indo-European Languages evolved

Whenever we speak of English in the singular, we are simplifying things.

• In synchronic (depending on the place) terms: diatopic (America English, British English, Australian English etc.), diastatic, diamesic, diaphasic varieties.
• In diachronic (across a time-span) terms: Old English, Middle English, Modern English, Modern English and Contemporary English.

This does not separate people, but different situation we want to use as many varieties of English as possible. Important: using the correct style in the correct situation. Where did English come from? How has English changed in so many years? (There is no English Academy (Italy Accademia della Crusca))

• Old English (AD 400-1100) - Cases, numbers, genders, but similar word order (words are quite similar).
• Middle English (1100-1500) incredibly different from old English. Lost most cases, significant influx of French lexis food split between ruling class and working class.
• Early modern English (1500-1800) the pronunciation changes drastically - Great Vowel Shift; progressive standardization (King James Bible in 1611; Shakespeare’s first folio in 1623; Johnson’s dictionary in 1755, but no English Academy despite the attempts) - Birth of English.
• Modern English (1800-present)
• Contemporary English (present day and onwards)

The spread of English in the world

The use of English was very cited until the 1600s

• Arrival of English-speakers in the Americas (North America, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Caribbean)
• Progressively making inroads into Scotland and Northern Ireland (1600s) and Southern Ireland (1700s)
• Act of Union with Scotland: 1707
• Act of Union with Ireland: 1800-1
• Southern Hemisphere in the 1800s
• Patterns of expansion led to similarities and differences: e.g., North American English and Southern Irish English

Countries where English is an official language

• Varieties of English ENL: Countries in which English is a native language (ENL) - where people have English as their mother-tongue: Australia, Canada and Ireland. Varieties of English spoken in ENL countries are sometimes also referred to as ‘Inner Circle’ Englishes.
• EFL: Countries where English is a foreign language (EFL), as in Poland, China and Brazil - sometimes known as ‘Expanding Circle’ nations. There are places where people do not speak English natively and where, if they do speak English, they use it to speak to foreigners.
• ESL: There are places where English is a second language (ESL). in ESL or ‘Outer Circle’ countries such as India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Singapore, English is not typically spoken as a mother-tongue, but it has some kind of governmental or other official status; it is used as a means of communication within the country, at least among the educated classes; and it is widely employed in the education system, in the newspapers, and in the media generally. (Trudgill and Hannah 2017: 4-5)

Diglossia and bilingualism

“Diglossia involves the use of two languages in a community, with a strict functional separation between the High (H) and Low (L) variety.” (Hornsby 2014: 250)

“Diglossia may or may not involve individual bilingualism. In many diglossic situations, speakers control both varieties and use them according to the circumstances of the speech situation.” (Hornsby 2014: 249)

But this is not always the case. Diglossia is usually a transient state and can lead to language death. “Languages never die out because they are somehow ‘not good enough’; they die because their speakers’ economic or other needs induce them to use a dominant language in more and more domains, leaving the obsolescent language with fewer and fewer functions.” (Hornsby 2014: 252)

One way of saving endangered languages is to “create” a koiné, a standardized variant, a “mixed dialect”. This happened to Welsh, but it has not happened to Irish.

Irish English

Northern Irish English (NIrEng) has its roots in Scottish English. Southern Irish English (SItEng) has its roots in the English spoken in the west and west Midlands.

Some features of SIrENG

Pronunciation of consonants:

• Irish English is rhotic. The /r/ is normally a retroflex approximant, as in NAmEng
• Treatment of the contrasts /t/-/θ/ and /d/-/ð/. In many varieties, the contrast is not preserved.

Southern Irish English. Some grammar features:

1. The auxiliary shall is relatively rare, as in ScotEng, NIrEng and NAmEng. Instead, will is general.
2. Progressive verb forms are more frequent and are subject to fewer restrictions than in other varieties of English. For example, they can occur with many stative verbs: I'm seeing it very well. This is belonging to me.
3. An aspectual distinction between habitual and non-habitual actions or states is signaled by placing do, inflected for tense and person, before the habitual verb: Habitual - He does be writing Vs. Non-habitual (on a single occasion) - He is writing
4. A calque (loan-translation) from Irish involves the use of the adverb after with a progressive where a perfective would be used in other varieties: Sir Eng - I'm after seeing him. Other Eng - I have just seen him.

Irish English featuring ESL characteristics that are now in the local ENL shift variety:

• I have hunger on me
• Q: Are you going? A: I am

Which English as a model in ESL countries? Should consistency be required? Errors?

Without errors of usage, languages would not change. Everyone is trying his/her best - Everyone is trying their best. Disinterested and uninterested: on the way to becoming synonyms? You/Youse/Ye/Y’all.

“A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” (James Joyce)

How and why languages change

All languages change all the time. The only languages which don’t change are the languages that nobody speaks, like Latin.

Change or evolution?

Some linguists, such as W. Croft, believe in the “evolution” of languages. Most experts prefer to use the word “evolution” metaphorically (a step-by-step change) and focus on the dialectics between internal and external influences.

• Internally influenced changes result from natural processes that all languages undergo. The loss of whom in in English gradual movement from a fusional to an isolating language.
• External influenced changes result from different kinds of language contact. The borrowing scale proposed by Thomason and Kaufman is a good tool to measure the entity of such contact. Five points from “casual contact” to “very strong cultural pressure.”

Latin influenced English in both light and heavy ways: culture-bound words (mass, abbot etc.) but also prepositions (sub, post etc.). Borrowing these latter words results in structural changes high in the borrowing scale.

Changes from below and changes from above

“Changes which people are aware of have been described as 'changes from above'. These are changes where people are conscious of their social significance as desirable or prestige features of speech." (Holmes and Wilson 2017: 217)

e.g., the lack of post-vocalic /r/ in RP English:

• It’s not far (no /r/)
• He’s far behind (no /r/)
• She’s far away (/r/ pronounced)

Changes from below, on the other hand, happen below people's level of conscious awareness.

Standard(s) of English

“The main subject of this book is Standard English. Standard English is the kind of English that this book is written in. There is nothing surprising about this - books, newspapers, magazines and nearly everything else that appears in print in the English-speaking world are written in Standard English. So we have not chosen to write this book in Standard English because we think it is better than other varieties of English, or because it is more expressive or clearer or more logical than other varieties - it isn’t. There is quite simply a social convention, which our publisher is keen for us to maintain, that books are not written in any variety of English other than Standard English.” (Trudgill and Hannah 2017: 1)

Differences between Standard English and nonstandard dialects

• Standard English does not distinguish between the past tense forms of the auxiliary verb to do and those of the main verb to do. The past tense form in Standard English is did in both cases: You did it, did you? But in most nonstandard dialects, all over the English-speaking world, did is the past tense of the auxiliary, but the main verb has the past tense form done: You done it, did you?
• Standard English has an irregular way of forming reflexive pronouns, with some forms based on the possessive pronouns: myself, yourself, ourselves, yourselves; and others based on the object pronouns: himself, themselves. Many nonstandard dialects have a regular system using possessive forms throughout, i.e., myself, yourself, hisself, ourselves, yourselves, theirselves.
• Standard English has irregular past forms of the verb to be, distinguishing between singular and plural, something which does not happen with other verbs: I was, he was but we were, they were. Most nonstandard dialects have the same form for singular and plural: I was, she was, we was, you was, they was; or I were, he were, we were, you were, they were.

What is standard English?

A variety is then selected as a standard (competing varieties might no doubt be selected by different parts of the community, yet only one of them might become the standard in the long run); this variety is now accepted by influential people, and then diffused geographically and socially by various means (official papers, the educational system, the writing system, discrimination of various kinds, both direct and indirect, against non-standard speakers).

Einar Haugen’s 1966 standardization model:

1. Selection of norms
2. Elaboration of function
3. Codification
4. Acceptance

“While for linguists ‘all languages are equal’, it is certainly not the case that all languages enjoy equal prestige. In developed societies, a variety of high status, taught in schools and generally used for H functions, is known as a standard language, and the process by which it emerges and develops is called standardization.”

Error Analysis

1. “We do not consider a language variety according to his features but according to the country or region in which it’s spoken” - A rudimentary mistake but it is surprising how often students fall into this trap. Here the possessive adjective ‘his’ should be ‘its’ because it refers to ‘variety’.

2. “In the next paragraph it will be outlined a strategy of web presence”

   “In addition to this, it will be defined the concept of tourism and it will be analyzed its importance within modern society.”

   “Translators have to consider if the joke can be somehow understood by target readers or if it is necessary a substitution with something more familiar in the target culture”

   In these cases the “it” is redundant. Thus, for example the second sentence should be: In addition to this, the concept of tourism will be defined and its importance within modern society will be analyzed.

3. “Of course there is plenty of examples of this activity during the course of human history”

   “There is a couple of instances which clarify how the first maxim is undermined in some situations. The first is…”

   “According to the latest reports a number of people was involved in the raid.”

   “Plenty of”, “a couple of”, “a number of” have plural verbs, though “the number of” is used with a singular verb (“In recent times the number of complaints from customers has risen”). Analogous with ‘plenty of’, ‘a couple of’, ‘a number of’ is ‘the majority of’, which is most often used with plural nouns and a plural verb: The majority of people interviewed prefer TV to radio.

4. “This degree of interaction has never previously been possible in the whole history of communications.”

   “The entire Europe will be affected by the current situation in Ukraine.”

   “Whole” as an adjective is not followed by uncountable nouns; “entire” is slightly less rigid in this sense but avoid following it with uncountable nouns. So, in the first example use ‘all (of) human history’, and in the second ‘all (of) Europe’. However, if you use ‘whole’ as a noun, then you could write ‘the whole of human history’ or ‘the whole of Europe’.

5. “Ecologists highlight that, despite the number of shark attacks is increasing, the number of sharks is decreasing drastically."

   “This is a pretty new topic in academic research, despite it is far from new as a phenomenon.”

   The Italian benché/sebbene are usually rendered with ‘although’. Both ‘despite’ (not followed by ‘of’) and ‘in spite of’ correspond to malgrado, but they cannot be followed by a verb within the same clause. Therefore in the above examples ‘despite’ should be replaced by ‘although’. You should avoid the adverbial sense of ‘pretty’ in academic prose because it is very informal.

6. “The sad truth is that in modern times this strategy is no more adopted.”

   "No more” is fine for expressions of quantity (‘there is no more wine, there are no more potatoes’), but in modern English it is rarely used in expressions of time. To correct the sentence above you have three options: this strategy is no longer adopted, this strategy is not adopted any longer, this strategy is not adopted any more.

7. “When numerous actors participate to the same project, the need of efficient planning is essential.”

   Use ‘participate in’ or ‘take part in’, and ‘the need for’ when there is a following noun. However, be aware of the fixed expression ‘in need of’: he’s urgently in need of professional help.

Lingua inglese I - Week 2

Introduction to Morphology

RECAP

• A brief history of English - Different ways of classifying languages (typology, families etc.)
• The spread of English in the World - English as a native language (ENL); English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL)
• Can you speak Englishes? - Diglossia and bilingualism - Some features of shift varieties: Irish English
• Why languages change? - Internal and external changes

Morphology

It is the study of the structure/shape of words. This focus on “morphology” is common to other sciences in the 19th century: the morphology of cells, plants etc.

Biology, geology, chemistry, mathematics linguistic was influenced by hard-sciences. Morphology replaced an earlier term accidence (David Crystal) studied just the endings of words, different idea of the study itself (what is accidental is not essential to a word's identity it went out of favor in the 1930s, linguists started to understand the variety of the languages of the world when it comes to word-structure it is about suffixes, prefixes and infixes).

In the structure of words, we can find regularities that help us explore the way language works. It is relatively easy to identify certain meaningful elements in words, that contribute to their ability to “make sense”.

The “-s” in “elements” and in “words” marks the plural. The “-ly” in “relatively” turns an adjective “relative” into an adverb.

Main aim of morphology studying how this changes occur. Morphology studies how these changes occur.

Morphemes

It is relatively easy to find the word.