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Lecture 11. a Short History of the Origins and Development

The document outlines the history and development of the English language, starting from the 5th century AD with the arrival of Germanic tribes. It details the evolution from Old English to Middle English, and then to Early and Late Modern English, highlighting significant influences such as the Norman Conquest and the Industrial Revolution. Additionally, it discusses lexical and semantic changes in the language, including the impact of colonization and borrowing from other languages.

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5 views

Lecture 11. a Short History of the Origins and Development

The document outlines the history and development of the English language, starting from the 5th century AD with the arrival of Germanic tribes. It details the evolution from Old English to Middle English, and then to Early and Late Modern English, highlighting significant influences such as the Norman Conquest and the Industrial Revolution. Additionally, it discusses lexical and semantic changes in the language, including the impact of colonization and borrowing from other languages.

Uploaded by

mohizarismoilova2005
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A SHORT HISTORY OF

THE ORIGINS AND


DEVELOPMENT OF
ENGLISH
• The history of the English language really started with
the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded
Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the
Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North
Sea from what today is Denmark and northern
Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain
spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic
speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders
- mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland.
The Angles came from Englaland and their language
was called Englisc - from which the words England
and English are derived.
Germanic
invaders
entered Britain
on the east and
south coasts in
the 5th
century.
Old English (450-1100 AD)
• The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which
in Britain developed into what we now call Old English. Old
English did not sound or look like English today.
• Native English speakers now would have great difficulty
understanding Old English. Nevertheless, about half of the
most commonly used words in Modern English have Old
English roots. The words be, strong and water, for example,
derive from Old English. Old English was spoken until around
1100.
Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old
English.
Middle English (1100-1500)
• In 1066 William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy (part of
modern France), invaded and conquered England. The new
conquerors (called the Normans) brought with them a kind of
French, which became the language of the Royal Court, and
the ruling and business classes. For a period there was a kind
of linguistic class division, where the lower classes spoke
English and the upper classes spoke French. In the 14th
century English became dominant in Britain again, but with
many French words added. This language is called Middle
English. It was the language of the great poet Chaucer (c1340-
1400), but it would still be difficult for native English speakers
to understand today.
An
example
of Middle
English by
Chaucer.
Early Modern English (1500-
1800)
• Towards the end of Middle English, a sudden and distinct
change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift) started, with
vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the 16th
century the British had contact with many peoples from
around the world. This, and the Renaissance of Classical
learning, meant that many new words and phrases entered the
language. The invention of printing also meant that there was
now a common language in print. Books became cheaper and
more people learned to read.
• Printing also brought standardization to English. Spelling and
grammar became fixed, and the dialect of London, where most
publishing houses were, became the standard. In 1604 the
first English dictionary was published.
Late Modern English (1800-Present)

• The main difference between Early Modern English


and Late Modern English is vocabulary. Late Modern
English has many more words, arising from two
principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and
technology created a need for new words; secondly,
the British Empire at its height covered one quarter of
the earth's surface, and the English language adopted
foreign words from many countries.
Varieties of English

• From around 1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the
creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English
pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America. In some ways,
American English is more like the English of Shakespeare than modern British
English is. Some expressions that the British call "Americanisms" are in fact
original British expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for
a time in Britain (for example trash for rubbish, loan as a verb instead of
lend, and fall for autumn; another example, frame-up, was re-imported into
Britain through Hollywood gangster movies). Spanish also had an influence
on American English (and subsequently British English), with words like
canyon, ranch, stampede and vigilante being examples of Spanish words that
entered English through the settlement of the American West. French words
(through Louisiana) and West African words (through the slave trade) also
influenced American English (and so, to an extent, British English).
The Germanic Family of Languages
Language change and
historical linguistics
• The branch of linguistics which studies language
change is called historical linguistics. It has
basically two aspects. First, it deals with language
change in general: how and possibly why languages
change. It describes the mechanisms of language
change and attempts to discover the common types
of change in all human languages.
• This aspect can be called theoretical. On the other
hand, historical linguistics also studies the history of
individual languages: this aspect can be called
applied.
Lexical change
• Lexical loss is hardly ever sudden, of course: first, a
given word is more and more rarely used, so that over
a couple of generations’ time it becomes first old-
fashioned (used by older speakers only), then it
turns archaic (i.e. not used by anyone at all, unless
for specific purposes, but still understood at least by
educated people), after which it may become
completely obsolete, i.e. dead: it is neither used nor
understood by any speaker, not even an educated
one (unless he or she has had special training in the
history of the language).
Lexical enrichment
• The most frequent instance of the birth of new words is via
word formation, either by compounding (such as facebook,
cellphone, etc.) or affixation (such as demote, replay,
holiness, priceless; the first two exemplify prefixation, while
the latter two illustrate suffixation). Word formation is quite
productive, so much so that it is often used by speakers rather
intuitively, even unconsciously. For example, there is a suffix –
like in English, added to nouns to form adjectives, as
exemplified by the word catlike – meaning ‘resembling a cat’.
• Another instance of lexical enrichment is when a language
borrows words from another. Such words are called
loanwords (or loans for short). English, for example, has
borrowed quite many words from a variety of languages,
especially from French, Latin, Scandinavian (= North
Germanic, roughly, Danish and Norwegian) and Greek.
Examples include chair, dance, rule, machine (from French),
interrogate, separate, quorum (from Latin), take, law, skirt
(from Scandinavian), or geology, atom, astronomy (from
Greek). Other languages have also contributed to the
enrichment of the English word stock, though to a lesser
extent – examples include Italian (e.g. cello, pizza), Spanish
(e.g. macho, tortilla), Arabic (e.g. algebra, algorithm), but even
Hungarian (e.g. hussar, goulash, or coach – from Hungarian
kocsi).
• Words may also come into existence by abbreviation (also called
clipping), whereby a longish word is “cut short”. Examples include ad
(from advertisement), telly (from television) or math(s) (from
mathematics).
• Back formation is also found. A classical example is the verb to edit,
being back- formed from editor. Speakers of English interpreted the word
editor as ‘someone who edits’ – in other words, the suffix –or was cut off
from the noun, yielding the verb to edit. Such back formations are the
result of speakers feeling that there is a suffix, where originally, there had
been none.
• Acronyms are also sources of new words. They arise when the initial
letters of phrases are used. Examples include EU (for European Union) or
USA (for United States of America). In these examples, the initial letters are
pronounced separately, according to their alphabetic value. Often,
however, acronyms are read out as complete words, exemplified by items
such as NATO (for North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
Semantic change

• Semantic change – a change in the meaning of


words – is often difficult to distinguish from
lexical change
• Semantic shift happens when a word’s meaning simply
becomes different. The word silly, to take another example,
used to mean ‘blessed’, then it came to mean ‘clean, simple’,
and finally, ‘stupid’.

Broadening of meaning takes place when a word acquires a


more general meaning. In Old English, for example, the noun
dog meant a special type of dog; now it refers to any animal
belonging to the species.

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