Domande d'esame con risposte (storia + sociolinguistica)

History Module

Main stages in the development of the English language

Illustrate the main stages in the development of the English language, from its origins to the present status, from the structural viewpoint. What were some of the causes of the development?

We had this gradual passage from Old English (OE) to actual English, from a synthetic to an analytic type of language, but why did we have this passage? First because we have the progressive erosion of most endings (especially in Modern English). Another example is that by the end of the OE period, unstressed vowels were being reduced to (‘schwa’). The endings started to disappear. In the passage from Indoeuropean to Germanic, the primary stress on words was fixed on the initial or nuclear syllable. Also, David Crystal in his studies (2003) found a pidgin-like variety emerged with the arrival of Vikings, which concerns a simplification progress due to speaking with Vikings. So the loss of inflections in OE was partly due to the arrival of the Vikings: a pidgin-like variety emerged which simplifies word endings.

Lexical influences on English

Provide examples of the most important lexical influences on English from European and extra-European languages.

The Great Vowel Shift

Describe the Great Vowel Shift. When did it take place and which major changes did it bring about?

It is a substantial change in the vowel pronunciation that took place around 1400, even though it started earlier, it accelerated in Early Modern English, and separated Middle from Modern English; the reason for this change is probably the social mobility and urbanization. The Great Vowel Shift caused all long vowels to be pronounced with an elevation of the tongue and mouth close and a great divergence between sound and spelling. At the end of this period, the structure of English was close to the one of Present-day English.

Differences between Old English and Middle English

What are the main differences between Old English and Middle English?

Importance of word order in Modern English

Why is word order important in Modern English?

It is important to see all the word orders because it is the only way to understand the syntactic way of the language.

Historical events contributing to the standardization of English

Which historical events especially contributed to the standardization of the English language?

• Printing press establishment (Westminster) → literacy levels increase
• Publication of the first dictionary → in 1604, was called “The Cawdrey's Table Alphabetical”, but was not useful. In 1755, Samuel Johnson published the first official English Dictionary, which was the most influential dictionary, based on literary production, which is the best example of linguistic use.

Definition of "italese"

What is “italese”? Mention examples of Anglicisms and pseudo-Anglicisms in Italian.

Studied by De Mauro in 1999-2007, it is a language characterized by the mix of English and Italian constructions and expressions, in order to create a new language, a kind of “fake English”. Examples are words with the same spelling but different pronunciation (shampoo, spray, tunnel,..); morphological integration (the adaptation of the original language by gender (fiction, star) or by number (film, hobby) and the phonetic-spelling adaptation.

There are two different types of Anglicism (borrowings from English) in Italian:

• Loanwords → maintain original form or are modified depending on orthography, phonology and morphology of it. They could be adapted or non-adapted.
• Calques → reproduce the foreign words with Italian elements.

Classification of languages from a typological point of view

How can languages be classified from a typological point of view?

They can be classified on 4 levels:

• Polysynthetic → large number of morphemes often corresponding to the whole sentence
• Agglutinative → complex internal structure, each morpheme has a function
• Isolating → “monosyllabic languages”