Lezioni, Lingua Inglese I

OLD ENGLISH

MIDDLE ENLGISH →

MODERN ENGLISH EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

→ LATE MODERN ENGLISH

OLD ENGLISH

(c. 450 – 1066)

This language is spoken by the Anglo, Saxons and Jutes with Scandinavian influences, in parts of

what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland. These were pagan tribes, tolerant with

Christianity.

– They founded 7 kingdoms, always at war with one another.

– The four main dialects of Old English were Mercian (spoken near London in Middle Ages,

Standard Modern English descents from this), Northumbrian, Kentish, and West Saxon. Each of

those dialects were associated with an independent kingdom on the island.

The Old English corpus (most of it written in Wessex dialect) includes:

- Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

- Beowulf

- Caedmon's Hymn

Old English was written originally in runic alphabet (fell into disuse when Roman alphabet became

preferred). Runes were used in Northern Europe, it means “whisper”, “mystery”.

Lexical Influences

The Old English vocabulary is almost purely Germanic (Dutch – German – Icelandic – Norse –

Norwegian). There is the influence also of others :

→ Vicking = they were pirates form Norway, Danmark, Sweden; their invasions began in 800-850

and had a distructive impact. They brought many North Germanic words in England.

→ Scandinavian*(-son > Stevenson Johnson; pronouns; verb to be; prepositions to/for)

→ Latin

Structural Development

Old English has a grammar similar to Latin and present-day German; is a language rich of

morphology diversity maintains several distinct cases.

→

It is a synthetic language language with a high morpheme-per-word correlation.

Word order in OE is generally SVO such as Modern English (questions > subject-verb inversion /

negative > “ne” + v + s )

MIDDLE ENGLISH

(1066-1500 between the high and the late Middle Ages)

Norman (northern French) conquer England in 1066 and their dominance lasted 150 years. English

(developed out of the East Midland dialect) was the language of the masses

Latin was used in administration education and worship.

→

French was the language of the court two varieties of French : – Anglo-Norman

– Central French

There were simultaneous borrowing of Latin and French words. French was the official language

for legal proceeding and in Church until 1362.

The body of literature written in English increased in 1250 with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and

with the advent of pinging in 1476.

Structural development

Word order was still SOV, there was also a reduction of inflections and introduction of prepositions.

EARLY MODERN ENGLISH

(1500-1800)

This period was both a time of language expansion (with vocabulary and pronunciation changes)

→

and standardization. S. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language

– England became a Protestant country and their Reformation promoted the acceptance of English

in religious contexts – Shakespeare – Colonial expansion

→ Great Vowel Shift

A change in vowel pronunciation that began around 1400 and separated Middle from Modern

English; the reason of this change is probably the social mobility and urbanization. GVS caused all

long vowels to be pronounced with an elevation of the tongue and mouth closed and a great

divergence between sounds and spelling.

→

non-high high

→

high diphthongs →

At the end of this period the structure of English was close to the one of the Present-day English.

analytic type : loss of inflection / negation could be formed with or without do /

in question there could be an auxiliary after the subject / taboo of multiple negation / progressive

and passive form.

LATE MODERN ENGLISH

(1800-present) →

It is much more an analytic language ( is a language that conveys grammatical relationships

without using inflectional morphemes) with a rigid SVO order and the increase of nominalisation. It

preserve just some inflections (-s 3d person/plural/ -ed passive form -ing gerund form..)

Lexical expansion due to main reasons : industrial scientific technological revolutions

British Empire.

NEOLOGISMS: – Latin and Greek roots (oxygen) – English roots (airplane)– and recent

neologisms (cyber/hard-drive).

→ > combinations of existing words (Euroskeptic)

> affixation – prefix (unfreedom) suffix (hospitalize) -

ACRONYMUS (ymca – EU)

FUNCTIONAL SHIFT when words are created with slightly different nuances from existing words.

ENGLISH IN ITALIAN main categories of Anglicisms :

Loanwords : maintain the original E form or are modified according to the orthography

/morphology of Italian. These can be : – Unadapted > scooter, babysitter

– Adapted > dollaro, dribblare

Calques : reproduce the foreign language with Italian elements :

– Calques Renderings > translation of only part of the foreign item (aftershave – dopobarba

checkpoint – posto di controllo)

– Calques Translation > the E form is close to the Italian one (handball – palla a mano

honeymoon – luna di miele)

– Calques Creation > they have calqued for the concept (waterpolo – pallanuoto)

– Semantic loan > take one meaning of the foreign equivalent (backhand – rovescio)

Pseudo-loan :

– Lexical p-l > combination of English lexical terms to create a word that in E does not really exist.

(beauty case - make-up bag)

– Morphological p-l > reduction of an element in E expression (gin tonic – gin and tonic)

– Semantic p-l > new meaning to an already existing word (speaker – newsreader)

MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is a sub-discipline of linguistics which studies the internal structure of words, the rules

that govern it as well as the ways of creating new words.

A Morphemes is the smallest meaningful unit (that cannot be subdivided) and a word must consist

at least of one morpheme. There can be different types of Words depending on the number of

→

morphemes they are composed of (words and morphemes are not the same thing)

– Mono-morphemic / Simplex (dream-shy-happy)

– Polymorphemic / Complex (dreamless–shyness)

They also can differ for other characteristics :

– Free Morphemes > can occur on their own

– Bound Morphemes > appear only in combination with others (ex. motherhood – management)

A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning, an abstract unit in the vocabulary of a language > the

different grammatical forms of a given lexeme are known as word-forms.

•The morphological processes are known as :

→

*Derivation

the process of forming a new word (or lexeme) on the basis of an existing word.

is

ROOT is a word that doesn't have a prefix or a suffix, the primary lexical unit of a word.

(roots=bases in simplex m.) may not have a meaning.

BASE unit to which elements can be added in word-formation. A meaning and can stand on its own

STEM is a form without any inflectional endings.

fear(root-base)>fearful (at the base fear is attached ful)>unfearful (base fearful is att. un)

This process creates bound morphemes and often involves the addition of a morpheme in the form

→

of affixes prefixes – suffixes – inflexes (doesn't usually happens in english)

[*irregular = there are words which do not obey the rules, for ex in the formation of plurals;

sheep > sheep (zero morph) mouse > mice (vowel alternation) ]

→

Inflection

is the formation of grammatical variants of the same word. It express grammatical informations and

rd

categories. Inflectional morphemes are only suffixes (-s for plural of nouns and 3 person in present

form verbs; -ed create the past tens for verbs; -ing creates the progressive form of verbs....), they

never change the word class and can be attached to every word of a given class. Derivational affix

may have different meaning, on the other hand inflectional affixes always have the same.

Morphemes are a unit of meaning and should not be confused with syllables, sometimes a single

morpheme has single morpheme and several syllables. For this reason syllables should be ignored.

→

A morpheme is made of a form (any kind of physical structure) and a the meaning both units

must be considered, not always the same sound express the same meaning.

– one form two meanings = two morphemes es. In > not (incapable) > into (invade)

– two forms one meaning = two morphemes (the forms can be different, or similar but came into E.

from different sources)

→

– two forms one meaning = one morpheme Allomorphs are the different realizations of the same

morpheme, it changes also depending on the context it is in. es. a/an > a cat – an animal

Word formation is an other thing morphology had to deal with, there are several categories :

A – New root formation formation of new roots from different sources

1) Inheritance : words inherited from Old English

2) Borrowing : roots that are taken form other languages (the largest group of borrowed terms

in English came from Norman-French. These borrowings can happen for different reasons.

→

Domination from another culture Norman domination in E., America adopt Spanish words

→

Need a foreign word expresses an idea better than an existing word (ex. tromp-d’oeil)

→

Prestige sophistication and worldliness (Greek and Latin were languages of educated

people)

Loanwords are imported into English and most of them have been anglicized. (tortilla, sushi)

3) Root Creation : create a new word. It is a rare process and there are two types.

→

– Motivated there is some logic, such as onomatopeic words (cuckoo)

→

– Ex-nihilo there is no logic behind it

B – Modification existing word is changed to form a new one. It taked place trough 3 proccesses :

1) Folk etymology : when unfamiliar words are altered to create a more familiar one.

ex. Dormouse (topo, from Anglo-Norman dormeus “che dorme”) > mouse

2) Functional Shift : shift of their grammatial function. It is a natural process that create new

words from a change of word class. (run as a verb > as a noun “let's take a run)

3) Abbreviation : there are 4 classes of abbreviations.

Initialisms = formed by initial letters but not considered a single word [CD – VIP – BBC]

Acronym = formed by initial letters and are single words [ Aids–RAM–Laser (Lightwave

amplification simulated emission of radar)]

Clipping = where elements have ben dropped in common use [ex. Front clipping : telephone

> phone, omnibus > bus – Back clipping : glamourus > glamour – Mixed c. refrigerator >

fridge – Middle c. vegetarian > vegan]

Back formation = when a clipped word has also a functional shift (v. edit < n. editor)

C &ndas