History of English Language Introduction PDF

 Definition of Language  Language as CONVENTIONAL  Language as SYSTEM  Language CHANGE  Grammatical signals  Language VARIATION  Language as SIGNS  Language as HUMAN  Language as VOCAL  Language as COMMUNICATION  Writing and Speech  Other Characteri...

 Definition of Language  Language as CONVENTIONAL  Language as SYSTEM  Language CHANGE  Grammatical signals  Language VARIATION  Language as SIGNS  Language as HUMAN  Language as VOCAL  Language as COMMUNICATION  Writing and Speech  Other Characteristics of Language  Gestures and Speech  Why Study the History of Language  Definition of Language A language is a system of conventional vocal signs by means of which human beings communicate.  Language as SYSTEM  We speak in patterns.  A language is not just a collection of words. It is also the rules or patterns that relate our words to one another.  Every language has two levels to its system—a characteristic that is called duality of patterning.  Language as SYSTEM Duality of Patterning Meaningful Meaningless Units Units (lexis, or vocabulary, and (sound system, or its grammatical system, or phonology) morphosyntax)  Language as SYSTEM Duality of Patterning  Lets us build an immensely large number of meaningful words out of only a handful of meaningless sounds.  It is perhaps the chief characteristic that distinguishes true human language from the simpler communication systems of all nonhuman animals.  Grammatical SIGNALS  Parts of speech are grammatical categories into which we can classify words. The four major ones are noun, verb, adjective, and adverb.  Affixes are one or more added sounds or letters that change a word’s meaning and sometimes alter its part of speech. o When it comes at the front of a word, it is a prefix, such as en- , un-, …etc. o When it comes at the back of a word, it is a suffix, such as the -ist, -tion, …etc.  Grammatical SIGNALS  Concord, or agreement, is an interconnection between words, especially marked by their inflections. Thus, “The bird sings” and “The birds sing” illustrate subject-verb concord.  Word order is a grammatical signal in all languages, though some languages, like English, depend more heavily on it than others do.  Function words are minor parts of speech (for example, articles, auxiliaries, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and certain adverbial particles) that serve as grammatical signals used with word order to serve some of the same functions as inflections.  Grammatical SIGNALS  Prosodic signals, such as pitch, stress, and tempo, can indicate grammatical meaning. The difference between the statement “He’s here” and the question “He’s here?” is the pitch used at the end of the sentence. All languages have these kinds of grammatical signals available to them, but languages differ greatly in the use they make of the various signals. And even a single language may change its use over time, as English has.  Language as SIGNS  Signs are what the system organizes.  A sign is something that stands for something else. (For example, a word like apple stands for the familiar fruit)  Linguistic signs are not words alone; they may also be either smaller or larger than whole words.  The smallest linguistic sign is the morpheme, a meaningful form that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts.  Language as SIGNS There are two kinds of Morphemes. Bound Free Morphemes that can be Morphemes that can be combined with other used alone as words, like morphemes, like –s as in apple. apples. A word cannot be divided into morphemes just by sounding out its syllables. Some morphemes, like apple, have more than one syllable; others, like -s, are less than a syllable.  Language as VOCAL The signs of language—its words and morphemes—are basically vocal, or oral-aural, being sounds produced by the mouth and received by the ear.  Language as VOCAL Writing and Speech Because writing has become so important in our culture, we sometimes think of it as more real than speech. Human beings have been writing (as far as we can tell from the surviving evidence) for at least 5000 years; but they have been talking for much longer, doubtless ever since they were fully human. When writing developed, it was derived from and represented speech  Language as VOCAL Writing and Speech It is as though we were “programmed” to acquire language in the form of speech. On the other hand, it takes a special effort to learn to write. To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not, however, to disparage the latter. If speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized. Writing has some advantages over speech. It is more permanent, thus making possible the records that any civilization must have.  Language as VOCAL Writing and Speech Writing has some advantages over speech: Writing is also capable of easily making some distinctions that speech can make only with difficulty. We can also indicate certain types of pauses more clearly by the spaces that we leave between words when we write than we ordinarily are able to do when we speak. Grade A may well be heard as Gray day, but there is no mistaking the one phrase for the other in writing.  Gestures and Speech  Such specialized gestures as the indifferent shrug of the shoulders, the admonitory shaking of the finger, the lifting up of the hand in greeting and the waving of it in parting, the widening of the eyes in astonishment, the scornful lifting of the brows, the approving nod, and the disapproving sideways shaking of the head—all these need not accompany speech at all; they themselves communicate.  The tones and gestures that accompany speech are not language, but rather parallel systems of communication called paralanguage.  Other vocalizations that are communicative, like laughing, crying, groaning, and yelping, usually do not accompany speech as tones of voice do, though they may come before or after it.  Language as CONVENTIONAL  Writing is obviously conventional because we can represent the same language by more than one writing system. We can change the conventions of our writing system merely by agreeing to do so.  Speech is also conventional. To be sure, all languages share certain natural, inherent, or universal features. The human vocal apparatus (lips, teeth, tongue, and so forth) makes it inevitable that human languages have only a limited range of sounds.  Language CHANGE The question of language change is really a question of why varieties develop within a language. Each individual is constantly and quite unconsciously introducing slight changes in his or her speech. There is no such thing as uniformity in language. Not only does the speech of one community differ from that of another, but the speech of different individuals of a single community, even different members of the same family, also is marked by individual peculiarities.  Language CHANGE External Internal Changes are brought about by language Changes occur when, for instance, speakers contact (between speakers of different stop using endings (or inflections) and start languages), or innovations by speakers, or to rely on words such as of, for, the, and issues of political or social identity. have. External changes are unpredictable since it They are more predictable. is impossible to foresee who will migrate where, or what fashion will catch on. It also occurs when the category of a word is reanalyzed as, for instance, when prepositions start being used to introduce sentences, i.e. as complementizers.  Language VARIATION Historical Is marked Contemporary (Diachronic) by (Synchronic) Concerned with the way in Concerned with language, as it which language has developed exists at one point in time. and evolved through time.  Language VARIATION Contemporary (Synchronic) Dialects Registers The variety of a language The variety of a language used for a associated with a particular place, particular purpose: sermon language, social level, ethnic group, sex, age restaurant-menu language, telephone- grade, and so on. conversation language, postcard language, and so on.  Language VARIATION The dialects we speak;  Help to define who we are.  Tell those who hear us where we come from, our social or ethnic identification, and other such intimate facts about us. The registers we use;  Reflect the circumstances in which we are communicating.  Indicate where we are speaking or writing, to whom, via what medium, about what subject, and for what purpose..  Language as HUMAN Language is a specifically human activity. Theories of the Origin of the Language  The ultimate origin of language is a matter of speculation since we have no real information about it.  The earliest languages for which we have records are already in a high stage of development, and the same is true of languages spoken by technologically primitive peoples.  Theories of the Origin of the Language  According to one theory, the early prelanguage of human beings was a mixture of gestures and sounds in which the gestures carried most of the meaning and the sounds were used chiefly to “punctuate” or amplify the gestures—just the reverse of our use of speech and hand signals.  We cannot know how language really began; we can be sure only of its immense antiquity. However human beings started to talk, they did so long ago, and it was not until much later that they devised a system of making marks on wood, stone, or clay to represent what they said.  Language as COMMUNICATION  The purpose of language is to communicate, whether with others by talking and writing or with ourselves by thinking.  Some, though not all, of the mental activities we identify as “thought” are linguistic in nature.  The language we speak must influence the way we think about the world and perhaps even the way we perceive it. The idea that language has such influence and thus importance is called the Whorf hypothesis after the linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf.  Language as COMMUNICATION  Efforts have been made to test the hypothesis.  The implications of the Whorf hypothesis are far-reaching and of considerable philosophical importance, even though no way of confidently testing those implications seems possible.  Other Characteristics of Language  An important aspect of language systems is that they are “open.” That is, a language is not a finite set of messages from which the speaker must choose.  Another aspect of the communicative function of language is that it can be displaced. That is, we can talk about things not present—about rain when the weather is dry, about taxes even when they are not being collected, and about a yeti even if no such creature exists. The characteristic of displacement means that human beings can abstract, lie, and talk about talk itself.  Finally, an important characteristic is that language is not just utilitarian. One of the uses of language is for entertainment, high and low: for jokes, stories, puzzles, and poetry.  Why Study the History of Language Language in general is an ability inherent in us.  one of the best reasons for studying languages is to find out about ourselves, about what makes us persons. A good approach to studying languages is the historical one. To understand how things are, it is often helpful and sometimes essential to know how they got to be that way.  Another reason for studying the history of English is that many of the irregularities in today’s language are the remnants of earlier, quite regular patterns.  Why Study the History of Language  Yet another reason for studying the history of English is that it can help us to understand the literature of earlier times. In his poem “The Eve of St. Agnes,” John Keats describes the sculptured effigies on the tombs of a chapel on a cold winter evening: The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seemed to freeze, Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails. Many a modern reader, taking a cue from the word emprison’d, has thought of the rails as railings or bars, perhaps a fence around the statues. But rails here is from an Old English word that meant ‘garments’ and refers to the shrouds or funeral garments in which the stone figures are clothed.