Linguistica Inglese (Storia della lingua dalle origini e Lessicografia)

Module C: Historical perspectives

From an insular minority language to the billions of speakers today

Language structure and use

Language can be described as a structured formal system (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics) or a system of signs (de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale, 1922). Language use is an inherently social phenomenon (it is used to communicate with other people, it reveals something about speakers' identity, worldview, level of education, provenance; social factors influence linguistic choices and how they are perceived by others).

Variation in language

• Temporal variation (diachronic)
• Geographical variation (diatopic)
• Social variation (diastratic)
• Functional variation (diatypic)

Terminology and conventions

• Cognate shares the same etymological origin with others, meaning may be different.
• Germanic languages are English, Dutch, Scandinavian... Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language conjectured to exist and a branch of IE languages.
• * stands for a reconstructed form (historical linguistics); or means ungrammatical
• > means ‘develops into’; < means ‘develops from’ (OE cyning > PDE king)

Present-day educated standard British English is to some extent an abstraction: it is a codified form of language accepted by and serving as a model to a large speech community. English is in fact an assortment of national and regional varieties (world Englishes) and always has been (historical perspectives).

• Inner circle → UK, USA
• Outer circle → where English is a recognised majority language (Nigeria)
• Expanding circle → any other country

English as an Indo-European language

English is an Indo-European language; it is a Germanic language of the western branch. Indo-European languages → Cognates: Forms display clear similarities, especially in the pronunciation – this is good linguistic evidence for proposing a family connection. In order to establish family connections we look at cognates = a word in one language that has similar form and is used with a similar meaning in another language. On the basis of cognates we hypothesize the existence of a common ancestor. Two pairs of cognates indicate the four languages share a same common ancestor. Two other pairs tell us that either the hypothesis is wrong or the situation is a bit more complicated → differentiation in branches.

About 1400 years of documented history show that English has borrowed extensively and systematically from other languages. This process is at the heart of its exceptional mixed lexicon. Nonetheless, English is a Germanic language:

• Morphosyntax retains much of the basic structure of its origin, for example the alternation strong/weak verbs.
• Phonologically, e.g. it shows Germanic consonant shift (p>f; stops to voiceless fricatives, Grimm-Verner); main accent on first syllable and weakening of endings; I-mutation).

Barely recognizable historical varieties of English from about a thousand years ago provide a clear indication of the change that the language has gone through. What happened?

• External factors of language change
• Internal factors of language change

External factors: Summary

• Beginning - 5th century:
  • Celtic substratum
  • Roman Britannia, degree of integration between Celts and Romans, Latin influence
  • Angles, Saxons, Jutes speaking Germanic dialects
• From the 5th century:
  • Constitution of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
  • Latin again, through the Bible and preaching
  • Scandinavian invasion and language contact in the Danelaw.

Supremacy of one kingdom → predominance of that kingdom’s dialect in culture, administration, and written documentation.

Celtic Britain

• From the middle of the first millennium BC presence of Celtic populations all over Europe.
• The Celts were attacked by the Romans on the Continent (Roman Gallia) and pushed to the North and West.
• Historical Celtic Languages:
  • Continental: Celtiberian, Galatian, Gallaecian, Gaulish, Lepontic, Noric
  • Insular: Brittonic (Welsh, Cumbric, Cornish, Breton), Gaelic (Irish, Manx, Scottish Gaelic)
• Celtic Languages today (geographical distribution reflects historical events)
  • Gaelic or Goidelic in Ireland, Isle of Man, Hebrides, Scotland.
  • British or Brythonic in Wales, Brittany.

Roman Britain

• In 43 BC the Romans arrived in Britain and subdued the Britons
• Important settlement about 40,000 people, the north-most was Vindolanda, at Hadrian’s Wall, marking the maximum extension of the Roman empire.
• The Romans left streets (< OE stræt < Lat. strata), towns, schools, administration
• 5 main towns: Verulamium (St. Albans), Gloucester, Colchester, Lincoln, York
• By 410 AD the Roman troops had left to help defend their empire on the Continent

Christianization

• Celts’ christianization (314 AD: Council of Arles, attended by bishops from London, York, and Colchester)
• Monastic type of Christianity, especially from Ireland and Scotland, monks literate copied the Bible and brought it with them in their missions.
• Circulation of the gospels and prayers in Latin. This was a second channel through which Latin got into England and its use and knowledge were strengthened.
• Augustine sent by Pope Gregory the Great (597 AD) → Christianization II
• Conversion of King of Kent, later intermarriage with Northumbria → around 627 Christianization of Kent and Northumbria
• Conflict between Christianity from Ireland and Christianity from Rome.

Germanic peoples

• The Celtic communities were destroyed or pushed back into the areas now known as Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, and the Scottish borders.
• Many (Romano-)Celts remained in the east and south, perhaps as slaves, perhaps intermarrying, but their identity would after a few generations have been lost within Anglo-Saxon society.
• No real contact between Celtic and Germanic → Germanic language(s) completely taking over, Celtic elements residual.
• Fundamental turning point into the history of the language(s) spoken in the British Isles.

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms

• Gradually the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes organised their territories into seven kingdoms, aka the Heptarchy → Northumberland, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Kent.

Political fragmentation connected to linguistic fragmentation. Each area its own dialect / historical variant of English. Political and cultural predominance moved from North to South.

Evidence of written documents:

• Northumbria – Caedmon’s Hymn, Glosses, Durham
• Mercia – charters, Glosses, Matthew’s Gospel
• Kent – Charters, poetry
• Wessex – Beowulf, Historia Ecclesiastica, Cynewulf…

Scandinavian conquest

• Scandinavian incursions from late 8th century inwards.
• 865: Danish army occupies East Anglia and Northumbria (Mercia occupied in 874)
• 870: Wessex attacked, resistance led by king Aethelred and younger brother Alfred (to be king)
• This was a conquest, not an invasion, the older Germanic peoples and the Scandinavians cohabited and languages were in contact.
• 879: Alfred’s final victory vs the Danes of the Danelaw
• 886: London conquered by Alfred

Lexis

• Marked Germanic character
  • Germanic roots of English;
  • Limited contacts with other languages during the Anglo-Saxon period;
  • Basic lexis: eorþe, wæter, sæ, land, fæder, modor, fot, hand, toþ
• Linguistic evidence of the predominance of the Germanic invaders
  • The Anglo-Saxons named the Celts and the Romans walas, which means ‘foreign, enemy, Roman’. It continues into Wales, Cornwall, welsh, Walsh, Wallace…
  • They named their country Engla-land; Ham (village; ted. Heim, es. Nottingham); Tun (enclosure, town); burh (fortified town), -byrig (Salisbury, Newbury, Canterbury)
  • The Germanic suffix -ing (= son of) very productive, it is found in OE cyning; -ingas (= descendants of) and in several place names Reading, Worthing, Barking, Hastings; Buckingham, Nottingham, Birm -ing -ham (village of the descendants of…)
  • Germanic material mixed with Latin: Lat. via strata > OE stræt, stret found in Stratford, Streatham with OE ford and OE ham (Bradford, Stamford, Oxford)

We conventionally distinguish phases:

• Old English (until 1100) → roughly 700 yrs
• Middle English (1100-1500)
• Early modern English (1500-1700)
• (Late) Modern English (1700 - 1900)
• Present day English

Caedmon's hymn

Late 7^th century, late 10^th century

Nu sculon herian heofonrices weard, Metodes meahta ond his modgethanc, weoirc wuldorfaeder, swa he wundra gehwaes, ece Drihten, or astealde. Now we should praise Heaven-kingdom's guardian the maker's might and his mind-thoughts, the work of the glory-father. As he of wonders of each eternal Lord a beginning established.

• Sculon > we should
• Heofonrices > kingdom
• Meahta > might
• Drihten > Lord

Old English Phonology

• Consonants - substantial changes from Germanic to Old English - large continuity from old to present day English
• Vowels - large continuity from Germanic to Old English - substantial changes from old to present day English (i.e. “i” mutation, Great Vowel Shift)

Examples

• Modor > mother
• Neaht > night (total change)
• Etan > eat
• Stan > stone → short vowels became long vowels (quantitative change)
• Cyning > king
• Hus > house
• Hof > hoof → qualitative change

Reconstruction of what Old English sounded like are conjectural but based on alphabetical logic, comparative reconstruction, sound changes, poetic evidence. The pronunciation of English words became fixed after the spelling did. (norm-wise)

Old English Morphosyntax

• Old English distinguishes case, number, and gender of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns. The inflections of nouns are strong pl. –s (stan, stanas) and weak pl. –en (ox, oxan). Strong plural –s is the most productive, extended by analogy to all loans. Weak plural –n survives in ox, oxen; child, children; brethren.
• A category of nouns had mutated plural (fot > fet) (<*fot-iz and i-mutation). Mutated plural survives today in foot, tooth, mouse, man, goose.
• OE zero plurals have become –s plurals by analogy, but others have survived: sheep, deer. Zero plural is still productive in some varieties like Caribbean English (I have two dog, the nr. marks the pl.)
• English develops into a predominantly analytic language from a predominantly synthetic one (rich in morphology).
• The period of most change is from OE → ME
• The factors of change are internal and external:
  • Internal: stress becomes fixed on the initial syllable
  • External: language contact between Old English and Old Norse in the North → phenomena of pidginisation and loss of morphological structure.

Effects of change: syntax becomes the locus of grammatical information, in particular the use of auxiliaries develops, SVO order is established, systematization of articles in the Noun Phrase, systematization of coordination and subordination.)

OE: [hē] feaht mid lytlum werode (mid + dative)

PDE: [he] fought with a small force

OE: ðā twā bec āwende

PDE: I translate the two books

(Note that the OE verb inflection clearly marked the person, and the pronoun could therefore be omitted, like Latin and PDItalian)

Old English Lexis

• Marked Germanic character (basic lexis, processes of word formation, vocabulary expansion)
• Toponymy from Anglo-Saxon invaders
• Celtic substratum
• Three different sources of Latin loans: Celts-Romans contact in Britain (55-410 AD); Contact between the Romans and the Germanic people on the Continent (Angles, Jutes, Saxons before they moved to Britain); Latin evangelizers from Rome after 600 AD. Each had a different impact, it happened at a different historical periods, it affected different semantic fields
• Old Norse influence: semantic loans; phonological loans; lexical (loanwords); place-names

West Saxon Standard

Age of predominance of the West Saxon standard was the 9th century. Crucial contribution given by King Aelfred the Great, who defeated the Scandinavians, unified the English territories and embarked on a process of cultural reconstruction that is still celebrated to this day. The primacy of the West Saxon dialect was due to external factors: political and cultural predominance. Although the West Saxon variety became an influential literary language, it is not the direct ancestor of modern standard English, which is mainly derived from an Anglian dialect.

Old English Alphabet

Old English was first written in the runic alphabet (Futhor alphabet), which consisted of 24 letters: The letters consisted of intersecting straight lines, purpose for engraving on stone, metal, wood and bone. → no long texts. Then came Latin alphabet, which was more practical for longer texts like the Bible. When the Latin alphabet was introduced it became the standard alphabet, because of the ease with which it was written and it was the vehicle of a great culture. A number of adaptations took place to represent those sounds that did not exist in Latin: (w, th, ae -palatalised a- ): Ƿ = wynn (joy) æ = ash from OE Latin alphabet as modification of lat. diphthong <ae>. On the other hand, sounds of Latin not necessary for OE were dropped, it is the case of <q> reintroduced only later.

Example:

A cognate with other Germanic languages: Old Saxon quan, Old Norse kvan, Gothic quens, originally a woman, a wife. Semantic evolution: Queen = woman > female sovereign (narrowing) Quean = woman > impudent woman, spec. prostitute (pejoration) (Swedish kvinna has remained the neutral term for woman)

Broadening:

OE holy day (religious feast) > PDE holiday (general break from work)

Broadening / narrowing:

• OE docga= a particular breed of dog > PDE dog = all breeds
• OE hund= all breeds of dog > PDE hound = specific breed
• OE steorfan (to die, for any cause) > PDE to starve (to die from lack of food) → narrowing

Example 2:

ME nyht, nicht, nicst, nihht, neyƷt, nichte, niƷht... → night (PDE) From the point of view of spelling the term is very unstable, but there is phonological correspondence. Whichever graphic strategy is used the presence of <h>, <ch>, <hh>, <ȝ>, <ȝh> indicates that the sound /h/ was still being pronounced and heard. Why does the spelling becomes so problematic and unstable? After the Norman Conquest, French scribes introduced several new spelling conventions. A number of OE forms were replaced, such as <qu> for <cw>, <gh> for <h>, <ou> for <u> in house…

Spelling and pronunciation

There is no notion of ‘correct’ spelling before the beginning of stabilization. Stabilization gradually emerged after the introduction of the printing press and especially Caxton’s choice of the London standard as a printing norm (but printers from the Netherlands also introduced idiosyncratic practices, e.g. Ghost).

Debate about how words should be written was rife in the 16^th and 17^th centuries (should it borrow from Latin? Should it coin new terms? Should the spelling conform to the pronunciation or conform to the etymology of words? And so on…)

An even more dramatic change was brought about by the first dictionaries, which established a norm.

The Normans

Battle of Hastings 1066 → social consequences: a new elite in power

Linguistic consequence: Anglo-Norman, or Norman French, spoken on the island

William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Regum Anglorum (1100-1125 ca)

Nulla hodie Anglus uel dux, uel pontifex, uel abbas; aduenae quique diuitias et uiscera corrodunt Angliae, nec ulla spes est finiendae miseriae → There is today no English lord, nor bishop nor abbot; foreigners erode the wealth and the heart of England, and there is no hope that this desolation will end

Principles of language change

Internal ones:

• Analogy → modelling a form in relation to an already existing one (-s in all the plurals, -ed in the simple past of weak verbs)
• Economy → weak syllables > silent syllables
• Conditioned or unconditioned sound changes, difficult to know why

External ones:

• Contact between people: loans, military conquest, migration, political predominance, christianization, technological innovation.
• Pidginisation → grammatically simplified variety that develops between two or more groups that do not have a common language but need to communicate. (i.e. Contact between Scandinavian people and Saxons)

Medieval England

The year 1066 marks the beginning of a new social and linguistic era in Britain.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Peterborough MS for 1137

Þis gære for þe king Stephne ofer sæ to Normandi; & ther wes underfangen, forþi þat hi uuenden þat he sculde ben alsuic alse the eom wes, & for he hadde get his tresor; ac he todeld it & scatered sotlice. Micel hadde Henri king gadered gold & syluer, & na god ne dide me for his saule tharof. Þa þe king Stephne to Englaland com, þa macod he his gadering æt Oxeneford. & þar he nam þe biscob Roger of Serebyri, & Alexander biscop of Lincol & te canceler Roger, hise neues, & dideælde in prisun til hi iafen up here castles. Þa the suikes undergæton þat he milde man was & softe & god, & na iustise ne dide, þa diden hi alle wunder. Hi hadden him manred maked & athes suoren, ac hi nan treuthe ne heolden. Alle he wæron forsworen & here treothes forloren, for æuric rice man his castles makede & agænes him heolden; & fylden þe land ful of castles.

Bold: remaining OE features

Italic: innovations of French origin

(This year went the King Stephen over sea to Normandy, and there was received; for that they concluded that he should be all such as the uncle was; and because he had got his treasure: but he dealed it out, and scattered it foolishly. Much had King Henry gathered, gold and silver, but no good did men for his soul)