Introduction to the

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• Introduction to the
• History of English
• Week 2

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• Language change is...
• gradual
• almost imperceptible (unless on a larger temporal
  scale)
• usually the result of two (or more) rivalling
  forms coexisting for some time, then one giving
  way to the other
• the phenomenon that creates a historical
  continuum
• a universal fact

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• Language change operates on all levels
• phonetic change (e.g. apocope, syncope)
• phonemic change (e.g. Grimms Law)
• morphological change (e.g. loss of inflections)
• syntactic change (e.g. word order)
• lexical change (e.g. loan words, use of words)
• semantic change (e.g. extension of meaning)
• pragmatic change (e.g. address terms)

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• Periodization
• OLD ENGLISH (OE) ca. 450-1100
• MIDDLE ENGLISH (ME) ca. 1100-1500
• MODERN ENGLISH (MdE) ca 1500-
• Early Modern English (EMdE) ca. 1500-1650
• Late Modern English (LMdE) ca. 1650-1800
• Present Day English (PDE) ca. 1800-

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• historical variation (diachronic) vs.
• geographical/social variation (synchronic)
• geographical variation in Old English
• Northumbria
• Mercia (incl. East Anglia)
• Wessex
• Kent

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• geographical variation in Middle English
• North
• West Midlands
• East Midlands
• South
• Kent
• geographical variation in Modern English...

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• external history
• Celtic Britain
• Roman Britain
• Celts Romans (55BC) Scots/Picts (ca.350AD) -
  Anglo-Saxons (449AD)
• 3. Anglo-Saxon England

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Evidence in historical linguistics

• Data available for living languages?
• Introspection (linguist native speaker)
• Elicitation (informants native speakers)
• Observation ( use of corpora)
• Data available for historical linguistics?
• More restricted ? no introspection, no
  elicitation
• Corpus of written texts as a record of actual
  language use

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Historical data - corpora

• The further back we go in time, the more sparse
  and unreliable the data become (Schendl 2001
  11)
• ? cf. Helsinki Corpus (1992) most important
  corpus for studies of OE, ME EModE
• OE Old English (c 500 1100)
• ME Middle English (c 1100- 1500)
• EModE Early Modern English (c 1500 1700)

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Other historical corpora

• Penn-Helsinki Corpora of Middle Early Modern
  English
• Toronto Corpus (OE)
• Middle English Medical Texts (MEMT)
• Corpus of Early English Dialogue (CED)
• Corpus of Early English Correpondence (CEECS)

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Written evidence

• Data exclusively written in nature
• ? no spoken evidence before 20th c.
• Written evidence in English since ca. 700 A.D.
  
• (AD Anno Domini vs. BC Before Christ)
• ? No writing gt Reconstruction

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Reliability of written evidence

• How phonetic is phonetic spelling?
• Use a spelling system developed for another
  language
• Conservative spelling mixing of different
  spelling conventions due to cultural contact
• Handwriting errors
• Translations

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Reconstruction

• Ideas behind reconstruction
• a proto-language
• common source from which languages may originate
• language family
• genetically related languages ? show systematic
  and recurrent formal correspondences

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• IE family tree

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Reconstruction 2

• mother, daughter and sister languages
• How can we represent relations?
• ? family tree model
• Why diverge?
• geographical distance and isolation (internal)
• social factors and political developments
• contact with other languages

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Reconstruction 3

• Reconstruction how?
• cognates
• words which are similar in form and meaning and
  which go back to a common source
• ? similarities not because of borrowing or
  coincidence but because of genetic relatedness!!!
• frequent in basic vocabulary (e.g. concepts
  such as kinship, body parts, or the basic
  numerals)

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Example
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• IE family tree

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Methodological principles

• Two Principles
• Phonetic Plausibility
• Majority Principle

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Grimms Law

• voiced aspirated stops gt voiced stops
• /bh, dh, gh/ gt /b, d, g/
• voiced stops gt voiceless stops
• /b, d, g/ gt /k, t, p/
• voiceless stops gt voiceless fricatives
• /k, t, p/ gt / f, ?, x/
• ? an unconditioned sound change affecting all the
  stop consonants of Germanic
• ? a chain reaction (a push or a drag chain)

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Verners Law

• According to Grimms Law
• where Latin has /t/ ? a Germanic language should
  have /?/
• BUT pater father, mater mother ? /ð/
• Verners Law
• a subsequent change to the voiced fricative
  when
• it did not occur in word-initial position
• it occurred between voiced sounds
• the preceding syllable had been unstressed
• e.g. father the consonant word-medial,
  between two voiced vowel sounds and the first
  syllable of the word was historically unstressed

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PIE Reconstruction 1

• Greek pater
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir
• (Old Irish p-loss is Common Celtic)

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PIE Reconstruction 2

• Greek pater
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir

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PIE Reconstruction 3

• Greek pater
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p t
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir

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PIE Reconstruction 4

• Greek pater
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p t r
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir

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PIE Reconstruction 5

• Greek pater
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p ? t e r
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir

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PIE Reconstruction 6

• Greek pater Indo-European
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p ? t e r
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir

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PIE Reconstruction 7

• Greek pater Indo-European
• Sanskrit pitar
• Latin pater IE p ? t e r
• Gothic fadar
• Old Irish athir proto-language