English Language Change notes
How to analyse/checklist
Lexis e.g. archaic, out dated, old fashioned, formal, quotations used? Field specific or specialist lexis
Semantics-meaning can change e.g. gay
Grammar; e.g. syntax (word order), complex sentences, coordinating conjunctions (e.g. ‘and,’ ‘but’), embedded clauses (can lift out of sentence-unnecessary), quotes, direct commands, conditional clauses (e.g. ‘if’)
Spellings e.g. realise or realize
Genre of the text e.g. newspaper
Phonology e.g. onomatopoeia, alliteration, list of 3
Graphology-adapted for intended audience?
Context e.g. time period-stereotypes at the time and social hierarchy-affect the content?
Audience-e.g. Upper class-how affects content and language style
Purpose e.g. entertain, Newspaper, inform, persuade
Text used-e.g. Verbosity of author (too many words used than necessary), complex sentences
Pragmatics-what need to know to understand text
Dialect- e.g. ‘I were’ and slang, colloquial
Formality of text-colloquial, pompous? Patronising tone RP and Standard English
Suggestions
· …the e on the end of the word was subsequently dropped
· There is a modern tendency…
· Words now omitted
Before English began-up to 450 AD
· British (Celtic) tribes-language related to modern Welsh, Scots Gaelic and Irish- only real connection with Modern English is in lexis-mostly place names.
· Romans invade in 55BC-Latin-word Englaland shortened in AD 1000. Roman Empire left a mark on the language
Origins of English- 450 AD to 1066
· Anglos and Saxons arrive from North Germany.
· Language (Old English) is at first spoken
· Only writing is runes · Written form comes from Latin-speaking monks, who use Roman alphabet, with new letters (æ, ð and þ - spoken as "ash", "eth" and "thorn")
· About half of common vocabulary of modern English comes from Old English
· Lexis - terms for law and politics from Norman French · General expansion of lexis
· After the Norman Conquest the language of government is mediaeval French. French scribes started to introduce their spelling patterns: qu replaced cw (cween to queen). Reversed word order of letters eg hw to wh =hwere to where.GU added to words like guide, guise and guard
· In 1362 (under Edward III) English becomes the official language and acknowledged as the language for law and state business, rather than French or Latin
· The Black Death in 1347-1350 killed between a quarter and a third of the population of Britain of 4 million-many priests died (communal disease)-spreads- loss of Latin
· Writers concerned about change-want to stabilize language ·
· 1458 - Gutenberg invents printing (1475 - Caxton introduces it to England) -the press enables some standardizing But note that there is no widespread standard form of spelling nor of punctuation. Some publishers may attempt in-house consistency. Also, for some time after the invention of printing, more books than previously are produced by hand - printing is at first reserved to books likely to justify the time taken to set up type. The press provides the technical means to guarantee standardizing of spelling, but this will wait for some 300 years.
· Practice of doubling letters to indicate length especially ee and oo
· Some unphonetic spellings eg son, monk, come-instead of letter ‘u’ which sounds like it
The ‘Great Vowel Shift’ (1300-1500)
Change in the pronunciation of all long vowels-vowels in this period had acquired their present pronunciation
· Rise of nationalism (patriotism) linked to desire for more expressive language but Latin perceived by many to be a superior language
· Flowering of literature and experiments in style · idea of elevated diction · Vocabulary enlarged by new learning (Renaissance) · imports from Greek and Latin-and ideas in maths and science
· Lexis expanded by travel to New World, · English settlers begin to found colonies in North America. Trade and discovery bring about rapid change, especially in the lexicon, and while some settling down of spelling may appear, it is far from being standardized.
· On the other hand, modern editions of Elizabethan poetry may retain archaic spelling variants - as (in John Donne's poetry, say) of personal pronouns ending in -ee - mee, hee or shee (like thee).
· Also the disuse of the pronouns ‘thou’ ‘thy’ and ‘thee’ by 16th C these forms had disappeared leaving only the plural forms (ye, your, you) the thou/thy/thee used when addressing children, social inferiors and familiars plural forms as a mark of respect when addressing a social superior.
· Not all words in Elizabethan period have been permanently retained-replaced by other words
· Biggest influx of words from classical texts e.g. Latin and Greek-language of the scholars-educated people-renaissance, inventions and concepts-continental Europe-classical words-medicine field developed e.g. skeleton
· English borrowing by no means confined to Latin/Greek-English vocabulary used words adopted from more than 50 languages esp. French, Italian and Spanish
· INK HORN debate-people object to long and obscure Latin terms-controversy- 1st formal dispute on English language-culminate in an academic row-shouldn’t be ‘polluted’ by other languages-‘clean and pure’
· Spelling (orthography) no generally accepted system in 16th century-use the pronunciation of words
· Words from this period are now indispensable e.g. atmosphere, benefit, disability
· Use interrogative form (i.e. question) without an auxiliary e.g. ‘think you I am handsome?’ (Do you think…)
· Scarcity of progressive aspect ‘I come’ instead of ‘I am coming.’
· Double negative perfectly accepted-used for emphasis, stronger negative and intensive
· Many scholars who revered (liked) Latin and ancient Greek became spelling reformers and tried to re-model English spelling on classical patterns. H inserted in words like ‘throne’ and ‘author’ because it was recognised that they came from Greek via Latin. ‘receipt’ ‘indict’ ‘reign’ ‘parliament’ also had letters added to give them a Latin look.
· By end of 16th century Latin still used but 10s of Latin words lost-other languages from Europe used
17th Century
· Influences of Puritanism and Catholicism (Roundhead and Cavalier) and of science · Puritan ideas of clarity and simplicity influence writing of prose· reasonableness and less verbose language
· English preferred to Dutch as official tongue of American colonies and New World
· English had 1st dictionary (1604) before many European states e.g. Spain-not an exhaustive collection but 1st one-book for ordinary people-growth in literacy-social context-1/2 population of 3 ½ million literate and growth in education.
· Authorized King James Bible 1611- 94% of words English and 6% Latin
· Theatres e.g. The Globe in London-hugely popular-the playwrites use slang-mix of society-English had a new audience e.g. Shakespeare “All the Worlds a Stage” Shakespeare ‘the biggest export’ (Melvyn Bragg) English develop around world-biggest contribution to vocabulary- estimated 2,000 words added and first used by him and phrases and compounds e.g. ‘fair-play.’ His 38 plays translated into 50 languages-described by Bragg as a ‘ambassador of the English language.’
· Great deal of tolerance of spelling variation-even Shakespeare spelt his name differently
· Spellings by 1660s mainly standardised and now the same as the modern usage
18th Century
· Age of reason · Ideas of order and priority
· During the 18th C language acquired a great deal of prestige and there was a great desire to fix the language and regularise and standardise spelling. From this time on dictionaries came to be regarded as the arbiters of correct spelling. Johnson' s Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 fix language and grammar fixed by Robert Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar in 1762 and Lindley Murray's English Grammar in 1794. Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the preface to his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, notes that "tongues…have a natural tendency to degeneration" It has some 40,000 words and has extensive quotations to support descriptions or definitions of words. Johnson had earlier sought to regulate and control the language - now, having considered its history more thoroughly, he recognizes this as folly. Nevertheless, his dictionary does establish models for spelling most of which are still accepted today.
· Classical languages are seen as paradigms (ideal models) for English · Romantic Movement begins
19th Century
· Interest in past · use of archaic words
· Noah Webster publishes American Dictionary of the English Language in 1828. Differences from Johnson's are relatively few but mostly notorious. Most familiar are variants on the affixes -our and -re (Webster has -or and -er: e.g., color, labor; theater, center). See USA section
· British Empire causes huge lexical growth · English travels to other countries and imports many loanwords
· James Murray begins to compile the New English Dictionary (which later becomes the Oxford English Dictionary) in 1879- he takes five years to reach ant.
20th Century and beyond
· Modern recording technology allows study of spoken English
· Influence of overseas forms grows · US and International English dominant · English becomes global language (e.g. in computing, communications, entertainment).
· Finally, computer technology provides a powerful means for encouragement of standard written forms with spell-checking and grammar-checking.
· Spellings are now generally fixed and highly resistant to change because in dictionaries, but even today there is still a degree of uncertainty or minor disagreement about how to spell some words.
· Most susceptible and less resistent to change is pronunciation is more flexible by individual’s speech. Change from situation to the next-context, purpose, who talking to and circumstances-Accents. Greater tolerance of a regional accent in areas where it would earlier have been a social stigma
· Language is constantly changing but this is deplored (criticised) and try to prevent these changes. Why is it changing? Schools, TV
· Is l\language deteriorating or decaying? Difficult to attribute reasons to account for language change. Declining standards?
· J Aitchison ‘It is natural and inevitable that a living language will change’ ‘is our language sick?’ argues it isn’t decaying and that change isn’t necessary a bad thing
· D Crystal ‘there is a widely held belief that change must mean deterioration and decay and standards have fallen.’ ‘Language change is inevitable’
· Americanisation of English language e.g. 24/7, collateral damage and war links
· Still use Latin root e.g. video, internet-technology
· 3% of population speak RP-Received Pronunciation
· British spelling has proved very resistant to change. In the USA though, Noah Webster published dictionaries in 1806, 1828 and 1840 that contained many revised spellings. But many of the spelling changes which Webster proposed were not accepted; and those that were usually already existed as alternative spellings. The modern Merriam-Webster Dictionary is as famous in the USA as the Oxford Dictionary is here.
· Suggestions which didn’t catch on were dropping the final ‘e’ in words like ‘fugitiv’ ‘medicin’ ‘deficit’ . Some of the proposals that did catch on though- but only in the USA:
o Replacing ‘or’ with ‘our’ in words like ‘armor’ ‘favor’ ‘color’
o Replacement of ‘-re’ with ‘-er’ as in theater, meter, caliber
o ‘-ize’ became the normal American suffix where English is ‘-ise’
Vocabulary
Accent-way in which you pronounce words
Amelioration-is a process by which words become more socially acceptable or prestigious
Archaic-word used to be used commonly but has fallen out of usage-old fashioned
Conditional clauses- (e.g. ‘if’)
Coordinating conjunctions- e.g. ‘and,’ ‘but’
Deregation-meaning changes for the worse
Derogative- says something bad about someone-insult
Diachronic or historical study-study of the development of language over time
Dialect-way to describe the different kinds of vocabulary and grammar a particular place uses
Embedded clauses- can lift out of sentence-unnecessary (?) part of a sentance
Euphemism-less strong a word e.g. passed away for dead
Neologisms-creation of brand new words e.g. ‘high tech’
Orthography-spelling
Pejoration-is a process by which words increasingly acquire negative meaningsPhonic-i.e. spelled as it sounds
Prefix-
‘Romance Languages’- languages of Latin origins e.g. French, Spanish, Italian and Latin itself
Semantics-meaning of words can change e.g. ‘gay’ used to mean happy but now homosexual
Suffix-
Verbosity of author-i.e. Used lots of words and only needed a few
S Russell-Grammar, Structure and Style-book 1996
· Modern English is made up of 3 layers of vocabulary;
1. Anglo-Saxon (with additions from the Viking language, Old Norse)
2. French
3. Latin (with additions from Greek)
1. Anglo-Saxon ‘Native English
· Extremely important-structure words e.g. ‘a’ ‘the’ ‘in’ and ‘that.’ Join sentences together and are indispensable words
· Personal pronouns e.g. ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘we’ ‘us’
· Demonstrative pronouns ‘this’ ‘that’ ‘these’
· Auxiliary verbs ‘can’ ‘shall’
· Conjunctions ‘as’ ‘and’ ‘but’ ‘so’ ‘then’
· Prepositions ‘on’ ‘in’ ‘under’ ‘over’ ‘down’ ‘up’
· Adverbs ‘when’ ‘where’ ‘while’
· Most parts of the body and numbers
· Also many Strong Verbs (form their past tense by changing the vowel) e.g. speak-spoke
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