Unit 1: A History of 15 Centuries PDF

UNIT 1 A History of 15 centuries o Intrinsic feature: insularity (Churchill) ▪ Celtic aisle ▪ Roman invasion ▪ Germanic settlement ▪ Christian monks...

UNIT 1 A History of 15 centuries o Intrinsic feature: insularity (Churchill) ▪ Celtic aisle ▪ Roman invasion ▪ Germanic settlement ▪ Christian monks ▪ Viking conquest ▪ French/Norman influence o Anglo-English + Norman French → Present-day English The Britons Britons/ Celts o A tribe from the continent. o Arrived in Britain in 1000 BC. o Widespread throughout the continent: west (Hispania, Galia) and east (Poland, Romania, Asia, etc) o They funded Galatia in the 2nd century. o Iron Age (progress in everyday life: agriculture, cattle raising, war materials) o More powerful than the Romans at eh beginning. *Map of Celtic languages Linguistic influence: o Slight influence on the English English: ▪ Place names: Kent (Canti/Cantion), Devonshire (Dummnii), Cornwall (Cornubian Welsh), Cumberland (land of the Cymry), Exeter. ▪ Rivers: Thames, Avon, Usk, Esk, Exe, Wye. ▪ Loanwords Colloquial words (oral transmission): binn (basket); bratt (xloak); luh (magician); dum (dark coloured); etc. Religious words introduced by irish monks: anor (hermit) cross, dry (magician) clugge (bell), etc. o Some Celtic words soon died out and others acquired only local currency. The Romans Two invasions: o Julius Caesar (55 B.C:): ▪ It was not hugely successful, and it took a further year and another invasion for Caesar to establish a settlement in Britain (54 B.C.). ▪ Moderate success. ▪ To secure the borders of the Roman empire. o Claudius (one hundred years later, 43 A.C): ▪ North and West of Britain ▪ Shortcomings: 61 A.C. - Boudica (Boadicea), a widow of a native leader of the Britons, led a revolt against the occupying forces - over 70,000 Romans killed.  Picts' and Scots' threats - Hadrian's wall (122 A.C.) and Antonine's Wall (142 A.C.) - Purpose: a) to keep intact the empire; b) to control inmigration, smuggling and custom; c) to reflect the power of Rome. o Not a Romanization process as in the continent: rather an administrative and a commercial occupation. Influence of the Romans - like other provinces of the Roman empire. o Major roads were built o Towns and cities had bath houses o Houses with water supplies and heating o Theatres and places of worship o To secure the borders of the Roman empire. Latin (bilingualism): o Prestige value - spoken by the Romans together with the upper-class native inhabitants of cities and towns. o It declined after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. Influence on English -› 3 periods: 1. Continental borrowings (prior to the Roman settlement): o Agriculture: camp (battle), wall (wall) strat (street), mil (mile). o Trade: ceap (cheap), pund (pound), wine, etc. o Domestic life: L discus > disc, L cuppa > cuppe o Foods: pipor (pepper), caseus > ciese (cheese), plume (plum), minte (mint), etc. 2. Celtic transmission (contact between Romans and Celts): o Place names: L castra > ceaster > Chester, Colchester, Dorchester, Manchester, Gloucester, Leicester. o L portus > port; L mons > munt (mountain) ; L vicus > wic (village) 3. The Christianizing of Britain : o Religious terms: pope, bishop, priest, monl¡k, abbot, Easter, preach, pray, etc. The Anglo-Saxons Why did they arrive? Background before the arrival. o The last Roman legion left Britain in the year 41’. Why? ▪ The Roman empire was being seriously attacked by the Goths In the continent. ▪ They left to secure the Roman borders in the continent. o After the Romans departure, the people in Britain feeling the effects of the occupations were: the Britons, the Picts and the Scotts. ▪ The Britons, throughout the isle. ▪ The Picts had arrived in Britain from Scythia and had settled in what is now Scotland. The Picts had come to Scotland via Ireland, where the native inhabitants, were called Scots. The Scots refused to let the Picts settle in Ireland and so they were forced to move on, ending up in Britain. ▪ The Scots, despite their apparent uncongenial treatment of the Picts, tried out Britain, and numerous groups settled in Pictish areas... (Map) A problem: o During the Roman occupation, the attacks of Picts and Scots I the border regions had been easily suppressed. o Now, the Britons were not able to defend themselves.  o The Britons appealed to Rome for help, but Rome had problems of its own and was not able to help. o Vortigern: a leader of the Britons, appealed to the grammatic tribes of the North-West Germany and Denmark for help in repelling the attacks. The Saxon agreed to come to the aid of the Britons → 449 AD. o Irony: ▪ For a start, the Anglo-Saxon newcomers were invited. ▪ Once arrived, they betrayed the Britons and subjugated them. ▪ He Anglo-Saxon were not unified, invading army. Instead, they came in relatively small groups, and they eventually decided to settle in Britain. The Anglo-Saxon Who were they: o Much of what is known comes from the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Of the English People (731), a rich part source of information about the Old English period. ▪ The Angles: they came from Danish mainland and islands. They settled in the middle north of Britain. ▪ The Jutes: they came from northern Denmark. They settled in Kent, Hampshire and the isle of Wight. ▪ The Saxons: they came from north- west Germany. They settled along river Thames, including Middlesex and Essex (south of Britain). In some areas the Britons and the Anglo-Saxon might have lived together peaceably. In some other areas, i.e. West Saxon area, there was considerable fighting → the Britons were then forced into Cornwall and Wales. o Wales > OE wealas “foreigner” Where does England/English come from: o There were originally three separate communities: the Angles, the Jutes and the Saxons. o Bede, however, uses the Latin terms Anglii and Saxones interchangeably. ▪ Anglii/ Engle/ Englalande: referred to any inhabitant of the country. ▪ Angli Saxones: to differentiate it from the Old Saxons living in the continent. ▪ 11th-onwards: Britain was elsewhere referred to as England and English. The Anglo-Saxon heptarchy: o By the 7th century, a number of significant settlements had become established, politically organized into 7 main kingdoms. ▪ Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex. ▪ The boundaries between these kingdoms were by no means stable and over the next 200 or so years, the balance of power fluctuated between them. th In the 7 century, Northumbria experienced a blossoming of scholarship and monastic culture. Monasteries of Jarrow and Lindisfarne. Its political and cultural power declines in the 8 th century because of the Viking raids. Mercia had some influence in the 8th century. From the late 8th century, the kingdom of Wessex was the most important for several reasons: o The supremacy of king Alfred.  o Alfred’s school of translation. The Old English dialects: o The four main dialects of Old English are the following: ▪ Northumbrian, Mercia, Kentish and West Saxon. ▪ Northumbrian: the dialect of the Angles and spoken by the people living north of the Humber. ▪ Mercian: the dialect of the Angles spoken in large area between the River Thames and the River Humber (excluding Wales) ▪ Kentish: the dialect of the Jutes who has settled around Kent. ▪ West Saxon: the dialect of the Saxons and spoken south of the River Thames. ▪ There was not a clear dividing line between them. ▪ Mutually understandable. ▪ Cases of Michsprache (misunderstanding in German) Why Wessex Saxon viewed as prestigious? o The language variety used by the group that has a considerable degree of political and economic power. o King Alfred: political and cultural supremacy. Chronology: o For all these reasons, the terms Anglo-Saxon/ West Saxon/ Old English are used to refer to the same language. o For convenience, it is usually divided into two sub-periods. ▪ Early Old English: (Alfredian Old English): 7th – 9th centuries. ▪ Late Old English (classical of English): 10th -11th centuries. The Vikings /Norsemen Who were they? o They were the old brothers of the Anglo-Saxon → They came from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. o The Anglo-Saxon were not immune to attack. The Vikings settled in England and exerted their own influence on English. When did they come? 3 stages: o 1st stage (787-850): in small groups, particularly in the North. The monasteries of Lindisfarne and Jarrow were spoilt. o 2nd stage: (850-878): ▪ The raids increased in scale → +350 ships. ▪ First settlements ▪ Canterbury (850), East Anglia (865), York (867) ▪ First attack on King Ethelred’s Wessex (870). He was defeated but his brother Alfred paid off the Danish attackers. rd o 3 stage: ▪ New attack on Wessex (875). The Danes were pushed back and Guthrum accepted Christianity. ▪ Danelaw (866). A treaty through which the Vikings agreed to settle In a territory to the east of a line from the Thames to Chester → Danish law applied there.  3rd stage: o The Battle of Maldon (991): Old English poem narrating how Byrhnoth, an East Saxon leader, was defeated by a Viking army led by Olaf Tryggvason. o Tryggvason (king of Norway) and Svein Forkbeard (king of Denmark) (994) continued the attacks and managed to control London. o Svein Forkbeard and his son Knut manage to defeat the second king Ethelred and was eventually crowned the king of England. o Knut becomes the king of England (1016), Denmark (1019) and Norway (1018). The Viking influence on English: o Phonological changes: ▪ Velarization: OE / Scand : sky, skin, skill, whisk. Shirt (OE scyrta) vs. skirt (ON skyrta) ▪ Preservation of /k/ and /g/: kit, dike, get, give, egg. o Morphological borrowings: ▪ 3rd person pronouns: they, their, them. ▪ - s inflection on third person present simple singular forms of the verb. ▪ Present plural are. o Lexical borrowing: ▪ Placenames: -by (a farm, town): Grimsby, Whitby, Derby; -thorp (village): Althorp; -toft (piece of ground) Brintoft Eastoft; -thwaite isolated piece of land Applethwaite ▪ Family names -son: Williamson, Johnson, etc ▪ Lexical words: take, die, wrong, call, law. ▪ Structural words: though, till, both, same The Norman conquest Why? o Succession: ▪ After Cnut’s death → his son Harthacnt (1040- 1042) ▪ Edward the Confessor (Hatharcnut’s half- brother) → a restoration of the Saxon line after many years of Danish king. ▪ Emma of Normandy (married to Cnut and Ethelred the Unready) ▪ Brought up in Normandy, he filled the court with the French advisors → the French and the English language came into contact to a considerable degree. When?: o After Edward’s the Confessor death in 1066 → he died childless o Harold Godwinson was proclaimed king (Earl of Wessex) → he claimed that Edward has promised him that he would be his successor to the throne. o William of Normandy (second cousin of Edward) → he claimed that Edward had promised him the throne during a visit that William made to England in 1052. o Battle of Hastings (1066): William landed at Hastings with a formidable army while Harold’s forces were in the north trying to repel an invasion by the King of Norway. o Harold was eventually killed, and William of Normandy (the Conqueror) was crowned King of English in Westminster on Christmas day 1066. Effects:  o England became trilingual: ▪ French → the vernacular language of the Royal Court. ▪ Latin → the language of administration and of religion. ▪ English → the status of English downgraded, spoken by the Saxons. ▪ French was coming into contact with English. ▪ French attained the prestige that English had formerly enjoyed, as it was the language of the ruling class. ▪ English developed from being the language of officialdom to being primarily a spoken language. It was the language spoken by the majority of people in the country. Linguistic consequences: o Inflectional simplification o Casual simplification o Grammatical gender vs. natural gender o Stricter word order (dependence on prepositions) o Vocabulary the source of a lot of new vocabulary in English (Anglo-Saxon + Scandinavian + French) o Spelling Middle English: o Term used to refer to English from around 1100-1500 ▪ Not dated from the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066 because linguistic change is not overnight and takes several years ot start having an influence on English. ▪ Early Middle English: from 1100 to 1300 ▪ Late Middle English: from 1300 to 1500 ▪ The status of English was to rise again after a gradual decline in the use of French. The revival of English: o The use of English increased throughout the 14th century. ▪ The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) between England and France: using English emphasized the division between the English and the French and worked to create a greater sense of national identity. ▪ The Black death (bubonic plague) arrived in England in 1348: a third of the population killed → it reduced the country’s workforce and inevitably pushed up workers’ wages. ▪ The working classes were able to climb the social ladder attaining a level of prosperity the language spoken by that group is considered to be as prestigious. Middle English dialects: o No standard form of English, either written or spoken ▪ Northern (Old Northumbria) ▪ West Midland (Old Mercian) ▪ East Midland (Old Mercian) ▪ South West (West Saxon) ▪ South East (Kentish) ▪ The East Midland dialect becomes now the more prominent variety → the origin of present-day English → the triangle London → Cambridge – Oxford and Chancery English. Middle English dialects characteristics: o http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/-chaucer/dial-exp.html  o http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE.DialectsMiddlcEnglish.ha Early modern English Chronology: more similar to Present-day English o Linguistic change is not overnight, so there is no consensus among scholars about when EModE should begin and end. o 1500-1700: different historical events help us propose those dates. ▪ The Great Vowel Shift (1400-1650): a gradual modification in the pronunciation of the long vowels in English → the GVS have may been motivated by the merchant classes being influenced by varieties of English viewed as more prestigious. ▪ The translation of the Bible into English: John Wycliffe, an Oxford professor, produced an unauthorized translation of the Bible into English (1380-1380). Wycliffe’s Bible was distributed by the Lollards (itinerant priests) around the country, and this produced an increase in literacy among common people. ▪ The Chancery English: the form of English preferred by the chancery, i.e., the Royal bureaucracy. Increasingly, English began to be used in government and it was necessary for civil service documents to be understood as far apart as London and Carlisle. ▪ William Caxton’s printing press (1476): more texts could be produced, and Caxton’s printing press help to standardize English spelling. ▪ William Tyndale’s translation of the Bible (1525): thousands ofpocket-sized copies were printed. People learned to read so that they could study the Bible in English. “Bible reading would be a strong motivation for learning to read in the first place, since it enabled readers to form opinions independently of the traditional authorities of church and state” (Knowles 1997:96). The Great Bible (1539): Henry VIII married his third wife, Jane Seymour, a follower of the new Protestant religion. She persuaded Henry that a new Bible in English was what the new religion needed the “Great Bible” because of its size. King James’ authorized version of the Bible (1610): based on the Great Bible together with both Tyndale’s and Wycliffe’s versions in an effort to create the definitive English Bible. The process of standardisation: o Present-day English derives ultimately from the East Midlands dialect.  o However, the development of this dialect into a written standard form was not a straightforward process. o Samuels 1963 identifies 4 types of written standard English used at one point before finally being subsumed by Chancery English ▪ Central Midlands Standard: the form of English found in the texts produced by the Wycliffe’s movement, considered the literary standard toward 1430. It died out towards the end of the 15th century. ▪ Early London English: in use until the late 1300s and included characteristics of the East Anglian dialects. ▪ London English: in use from around 1380 to around 1425 and includes elements of a central Midlands dialect. Examples: some versions of Chaunder’s The Canterbury Tales. ▪ Chancery standard: used in government documents for 1430 and includes characteristic of midlands and northern dialects suggesting that it was not solely a regional dialect from the London area, but from elsewhere. London English Chancery Standard The development of a written standard was more Nat Not complex than it has sometimes made to appear, [and Bot But government English is not the whole story benskin Switch(e) Such(e) 2004]. Thise Thes(e) Thurgh thorough Other institutions also played a part: civil service, law offices, ecclesiastical bodies business center. These institutions provided material written in London, and it would be London norms of usage that were gradually spread around the country. Not all these norms would necessarily have originated from Chancery. Caxton and the impact of the printing press: o Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster (1476) o He chose to publish books in English to establish the legitimacy of English as a language of learning (as opposed to Latin) as well as to contribute to the development of a standard form. o Standardization was lengthy and cannot be attributed to Caxton only. What variety did he choose? o Caxton's printing press was at Westminster, choosing London English as the variety of choice (type 3) also incorporating elements of Chancery standard (type 4) - the standard among the educated classes. o The impact of the printing press was huge more texts were produced for less cost. o The rapid spread of books and pamphlets meant the spread of a particular variety of English: the London standard which was used in book production. It incorporated features from the region but also from elsewhere around the country. Dictionaries and grammars: the fixing of the language  o First grammars: Jonathan Swift’s A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712) → it is possible to regularize and standardize a language. o First dictionaries: ▪ Bilingual dictionaries: ▪ Caxton’s English-French dictionary 1480 a bilingual dictionary allow to translation. ▪ Palsgrave’s English French dictionary 1530. ▪ Elyot’s Latin English dictionary 1533. ▪ Monolingual dictionaries: ▪ First monolingual dictionary: Richard Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabetical (containing 2500 hard words, items borrowed into English from other languages). ▪ Stephen Skinner’s A New English Dictionary (1702): 28000 common words. ▪ Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755): the most authoritative dictionary produced in the modern period with 43000 words. He added quotations from texts to illustrate the meanings. The spelling reform: early attempts o William Bullokar (1581): he proposed the total coincidence between sound and spelling. Therefore, proposing a new inventory of the number of letters of the alphabet. o Richard Mulcaster (1582): ▪ He considers that it is impossible to have a complete coincidence between sound and spelling. He proposed to regularize everything which can be, in his opinion, regularized: and → [f] and [k] / and