Da Old English a Present Day English (Modulo Teorico)

ACK OWELS

u: əʊ

o: u:

ɔ: o:

In poetry from this EME we may find that words like tea and day rhyme with one another.

tea /ti:/

day /deı/

They would rhyme together because the pronunciation would be /te:/ and /de:/.

tea originally has in ME /tɛ:/ that in EME becomes /te:/

day derives from OE /dæg/ that didn’t have a diphthong. It was æ + g [not two vowels].

From OE to ME we lose old English diphthong, but new of them arrived in ME out of combination like a + y

day [dɛı].

[ɛı] later on become a monophone again day /dɛ:/ [ɛ:] and [e:].

In EME in system II day didn’t have a diphthong but the vowel [e:].

In this system we see also that word like name (PDE /neım/) in system II in EME [ne:m]. The reason is that

the system we use doesn’t derive from system II but rather from system III.

S III

YSTEM

F V

RONT OWELS

i: əı meet, meat

e: i: name

a: e: eı

Used by migrants from East-Anglia (easterners) these people have a system in ME which is similar to the

system I. What’s the import of this?

In ME words like meet, meat would have the same vowel.

In PDE meet and meat are pronounced the same (like green and clean).

name instead, differs from meat.

In the front we don’t distinguish between the two ME <e> sounds. ME close and open <e> are no longer

distinguished nowadays, they both have become [i:].

B V

ACK OWELS

u: əʊ

o: u:

The point is that as far as back vowels are concerned, we do use system II because if we take:

- boot in ME would have a close [o:]

- boat in ME would have an open [ɔ:]

In the back we distinguish between the two <o> sounds from ME. OE close and open <o> are kept still

nowadays because one become [u:] and the other a diphthong [əʊ]. 

In general the idea is that we use a system based on system III rather than system II PDE is based on an

East-midlands dialect not a southern variety.

Moreover, these set of changes occurring in the South of England, whereas in the North Scotland there is a



different set of changes GVS behave differently in the north and in the south.

There are always exceptions as we said before* – words spelled <ea> which doesn’t correspond to /i:/, /eı/.

/eə/

- bear

/ıə/

- tear (v)

- tear (n)

 originally there was a <r> sounds that account for the second element of the diphthong. The [ə] has to

do with the disappearance of the <r>.

In system II from ME we had:

- [e:] > [i:]

- [ɛ:] > [e:]

In system III ME we got:

- [e:] > [i:]

The spelling [ea] tell that originally we would expect an open [ɛ:]. However here we have a vowel that is not

a [i:]. So, this [ɛ:] derives from [ı] so from system II.

???

 tear the spelling tell that we had an open [ɛ:] sound. Where does it come from [ı]?

From system III [ɛ:] > [ı:]



/ti:r/ i: becomes a diphthong because <r> is lost /tıə/

short

/e/

- bread

- red

- tread

- spread

- thread

- breath

- health

- feather

- sweat

Here the spelling go back to an open [ɛ:]. We saw that in system II [ɛ:] becomes closer and long [e:].

So, what we see here is a set of examples where the origin is system II (because we have a [e:] sound), but

the [e:] sound has been shortened because it has been kept and it hasn’t become anything else.

[e:] derives from an open [ɛ:] which has become a close <e> which then become short [e].

/ɛ:/

- Earnest

- earth

These two have to do with the presence or <r> which later on is dropped.

Again, they have an originally open [ɛ:] which has become an unrounded central vowel [ɜ:].

Lezione 5.04

Review: GVS one of the most important changes in the history of the English language of the period.

The Early Modern English period (EME) is the period when the confidence of English language is growing. In

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very brought term is the period from the beginning of the 16 century to the middle of the 17 century or

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the beginning of the 18 century. Period characterised by 3 cultural and historical events of great

importance:

• Renaissance (from Caxton’s time to 1650s) – the rediscovery of classical texts and literature. Worth to

pointing out that the English Renaissance takes place a century after the Renaissance in Italy (during the

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15 century);

• Reformation - is very important for the history of the language because it means that religious debate and

texts are in English rather than in Latin. A wider audience had access to texts than before;

• Restoration (1660-88) – important changes that took place during this period:

- at the end of the ME period there was the introduction of the printing press in England (1476). It means

that in a short period of time a huge number of books starts to be published.

- This means that education grows;

- specialised knowledge also grows (linked to rise of craftsmen, soldiers, navigators who needed treaties in

English) - people from the professions needing instruction which is not in Latin but in English;

- means of communication improve;

- there is a generalised increase in national feeling;

- self-consciousness about language.

All these are important factors during the Renaissance period. English during this time is not alone, indeed

other languages are facing similar problems: English starts replacing Latin as the language of scholars and

this obviously implies for example that you need a wider vocabulary because scholarly debate was carried

previously in Latin not in English or any other European languages. So, all the European languages are face

with the issue of increasing the size of their vocabulary in order to deal topic from science, philosophy...

Another problem for English was that of the establishing of a uniform orthography. We saw that English

was undergoing many phonological changes; that the spelling we use nowadays reflects an older stage in

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the pronunciation of the language (basically in ME rather than 21 century England) {episode of the eggs}.

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Problems for modern European language in the 16 century:

(1) English starts replacing Latin as the language of scholarly debate. There are various reasons for all this:

- one reason is related to the very nature of the Renaissance. Greek and Latin texts are translated from the

original into English. The type of Latin which is used during the Renaissance also changes up to now the

type of Latin was called "Medieval Latin", not the classical;

- during this period, by contrast, with the rediscovery of classical texts writers using Latin starts imitating

the style of Cicero – which means that the use of Latin becomes more limited to a scholarly elite;

- the importance of the Protestant Reformation (it should make texts dealing with religious issues available

to larger an audience who are not proficient in Latin at all).

- practical consideration according to the book market: in this period if you sell books, which books do you

like to sell during this period? The English books because more people were able to read and write in

English than in Latin, so in term of economy, the book market for English book is better. All these factors

contribute to the replacement of Latin with English although at first, we observe that English speakers are a

bit reluctant at using English; they have to defend themselves. At the beginning they justify why they

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should use English or Latin but at the end of the 16 century there is a growing consensus that to use

English was not a bad idea.

Famous quotation: I loue Rome, but London better, I favor Italie, but England more, I honor the Latin, but I



worship the English [language]. Names of languages like lain and English during this period are used with

the definitive article (The Latin).

(2) establishing the uniform orthography. There's been various attempt at solving this problem (made by

different people, for instance William Bullokar). What did they have in common? The attempt to develop a

phonetic writing system (they use special letters to represent sounds. But this is not what happened, lager

on because what we use is a system that doesn't really reflects a pronunciation.in any transparent way at

all.

Richard Mulcaster in his Elemnetarie says that you don't really have to use a new spelling system but rather

you should use the letters which are already available in the English language.

(3) enrichment of the vocabulary took place by borrowing words from Latin (scholarly languages of the

past), but also from other European languages. Sometimes we end up with words that have the same tooth

but different meanings. Examples:

Latin English word via French English words via Latin

corpus corps corpse, corpus

factum feat fact

historia story history

senior sir senior

Latin corpus: he same word is borrowed via French (corps) but also directly via Latin.

The same with factum, story. It is a process of specialization.

Among the writers who contributed more to the enrichment of the vocabulary, the person who is usually

mentioned is Shakespeare. Shakespeare contributed around 28,000 words the English language, but we

should take it with a pinch of salt. This number is a bit of exaggeration because doesn't actually correspond

to the words used (take and took considered as two different words, but it is not correct).

Some examples of words which come from Shakespeare and sometimes these words have a different

meaning than today. Ecstasy meant madness.

Many borrowings weren’t successful and therefore today we don't use them. Some words didn't

necessarily catch on.

We have many borrowings from classical languages and this is a bit of a problem in a sense that the roots

from classical languages are different from the roots from Germanic languages. So, this words which are

borrowed from Germanic languages are usually not easily understandable by people wh don't have a

classical education. Scholars from the time react sometimes negatively towards the borrowing of words

from classical languages, because they said that that terms were not transparent and that they shouldn't

borrowed them at all. They refer to this terms from classical languages as "inkhorn terms" - it was called

inkhorn controversy. Because inkhorn is associated with people who are able to write, meaning people who

have a classical education, meaning this are words felt to be of a learned natural character. So, we have

scholars who react negatively to this massive borrowing from classical language. But the result was

basically that scholars came to realize that it was necessary to distinguish between two types of inkhorn

terms. Some words were really needed, were words you need to use to describe content that were not

available in the English language (science, philosophy...). Some words are really borrowed out of necessity,

but sometimes this practice of borrowing words from the classical languages is exag