A History of the English Language PDF

www.ebook3000.com A History of the English Language www.ebook3000.com www.ebook3000.com A History of the English Language Revised edition Elly van Gelderen Arizona State University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia www.ebook3000.com 4- The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gelderen, Elly van. A History of the English Language / Elly van Gelderen. -- Revised edition. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. English language--History. 2. English language--History--Problems, exercises, etc. I. Title. PE1075.G453 2014 420.9--dc23 isbn 978 90 272 1208 5 (Hb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 1209 2 (Pb ; alk. paper) isbn 978 90 272 7043 6 (Eb) 2014000308 © 2014 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 ME Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 · USA www.ebook3000.com Table of contents ix xii xiv xvi xix Preface to the first edition (2006) Preface to the revised edition Notes to the user and abbreviations List of tables List of figures 1 The English language 1 1. The origins and history of English 1 2. Modern English compared to earlier English and other languages 3. External and internal change 7 4. Conclusion 12 Topics for class discussion and exercises 13 2 5 English spelling, sounds, and grammar 15 1. English spelling 15 2. Why English spelling is irregular 17 3. The phonetic alphabet 19 4. Phonetics and sound change 21 5. Some grammatical terminology 26 6. Conclusion 30 Exercises 31 3 Before Old English 33 1. Origins of language 33 2. Earliest writings 37 3. Indo-European to Germanic: Sound changes 38 4. Indo-European to Germanic: Changes in morphology and syntax 42 5. Reconstruction methods 44 6. Politics and reconstruction 46 7. Conclusion 47 Exercises 48 www.ebook3000.com vi A History of the English Language 4 Old English: 450–1150 51 1. Sources and spelling 51 2. Old English sounds 55 3. Old English grammar 59 4. Old English morphology 60 5. Old English syntax 71 6. The Old English lexicon 77 7. Old English dialects 79 8. Conclusion 81 Exercises 81 Appendix A 83 Appendix B 85 Appendix C 86 Appendix D 88 Appendix E 89 Appendix F 92 5 From Old to Middle English 95 1. Celtic loans 95 2. Latin loans 98 3. Scandinavian influence 100 4. French influence 104 5. Other languages 107 6. The result: A lexicon of multiple origins 108 7. Implications for the status of Middle English 111 8. Conclusion 113 Exercises and review questions 113 6 Middle English: 1150–1500 1. Texts and spelling 115 2. Middle English sounds 121 3. Middle English morphology 125 4. Middle English syntax 131 5. Middle English word formation 139 6. Middle English dialects 140 7. Conclusion 144 Exercises 145 Appendix A 148 Appendix B 149 www.ebook3000.com 115 Table of contents Appendix C 151 Appendix D 156 Appendix E 157 Appendix F 158 7 Early Modern English: 1500–1700 1. Printing, literacy, and texts 159 2. Early Modern English spelling and sounds 3. Early Modern English morphology 170 4. Early Modern English syntax 174 5. The Early Modern English lexicon 179 6. Attitudes towards a standard 183 7. Regional and register varieties 188 8. Editorial and authorship issues 190 9. Conclusion 194 Exercises 194 Appendix A 195 Appendix B 196 Appendix C 198 Appendix D 200 Appendix E 202 8 159 163 Modern English: 1700–the present 1. External history and sources 207 2. Modern English spelling and sounds 210 3. Modern English morphology 213 4. Modern English syntax 218 5. The Modern English lexicon 224 6. Attitudes towards linguistic differences 227 7. Some regional and register varieties 232 8. Conclusion 236 Exercises 237 Appendix A 238 Appendix B 240 Appendix C 241 Appendix D 244 Appendix E 247 www.ebook3000.com 207 vii viii A History of the English Language 9 English around the world 251 1. External history and sources 251 2. Spelling and sounds 257 3. Grammar 261 4. The lexicons of the World Englishes 267 5. English-influenced pidgins and creoles 270 6. Consequences of the spread of English 274 7. Conclusion 276 Exercises 276 Appendix A 277 Appendix B 278 Appendix C 279 Appendix D 280 10 Conclusion 283 1. From Old English to the present 283 2. Theories of language change 284 3. The linguistic cycle: Synthetic to analytic to synthetic again? 4. Some theories about language 287 5. Resources 289 6. Conclusion 290 Excerpts from texts 291 Practical projects 292 Paper projects 293 286 Appendices I. Possible answers to the exercises and some additional information on in-text questions II. How to use the OED III. Chronology of historical events 295 311 315 References 321 Index 335 Companion website can be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/z.183.website www.ebook3000.com Preface to the first edition (2006) There are a number of well-known histories of the English Language (Baugh & Cable, Pyles & Algeo, Barber, and Fennell). The justification for yet another book on the history of English comes from having taught a course on this topic at the undergraduate and graduate levels for almost 10 years and not finding any of the books completely satisfactory. The present book will be different from others in being more grammatical and typological in focus, i.e. language-internal, although this can of course not be a course on Old and Middle English or on historical linguistics and therefore only parts of the grammar are covered. I have used the change from synthetic to analytic as a leitmotiv. A lot of emphasis is placed on linguistic (phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic) analysis of Old, Middle, and early Modern English texts. This means students will learn how to approach older texts and to work with these. Most examples and texts will be authentic and the use of facsimile editions is encouraged. Incorporating these texts in this book, rather than in an (optional) workbook, makes it easier to see working with texts as an integral part of a class on the history of English. I have provided possible answers to the in-text questions and the other exercises. In my classes, we usually go over the texts and exercises and the answers provide a review. Having the answers in the back makes the book usable for self-study as well. The book differs from, for instance, Fennell in that there will be less emphasis on sociolinguistic theories, though many descriptions will be given of, for instance, h-deletion, prescriptive forces, and pronoun shift. External history is dealt with in Appendix III (where a timeline of historical events is provided), in Chapter 1 (in general), Chapter 5 (for Old and Middle English), Chapter 7 (for Early Modern English), Chapters 8 and 9 (for the modern period). There are sections on literacy, the re-emergence of English, the printing process, authorship debates, and world Englishes. Throughout most of the book, I use the term English in its general sense, including all varieties, but I sometimes use British or American if this makes the point clearer. There are many smaller differences in emphasis between this book and similar histories of English. In Chapter 1, I divert from the usual chronological order by going into the history of English a little before discussing phonetics, grammar, and Indo-European. This is done to justify Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 first explains the need for a phonetic alphabet and all the phonetic terminology before actually giving it. In Chapter 3, there is information on language prehistory based on Cavalli-Sforza’s and Greenberg’s work, not found in most textbooks. This is an area students (and the general public) are interested in. Most other textbooks start with Indo-European. The chapters on Old, Middle, and Early x A History of the English Language Modern English are relatively standard, but each chapter includes many examples and has additional texts at the end. The texts are chosen because they represent the typical ‘canon’ and also because audio versions exist on the web in most cases. Chapters 8 and 9 examine English after 1700, the different Englishes around the world, and the role English as an international language, with some emphasis given to the plight of endangered languages as an example of drastic change leading to elimination. The organization in these chapters differs from other textbooks, in that I have tried to group linguistic phenomena together rather than group them as varieties. I have only looked at spoken and written English since ASL, BSL, and other signed varieties require a different expertise than mine. Chapter 10 provides a brief introduction to some theories of language, language change, and acquisition. Another difference between this book and other history of English books is the incorporation of electronic resources in the textbook and exercises. Recent years have seen a wealth of electronic resources for historical linguistics research, more so perhaps than in any other humanities field. The OED online is invaluable; the Old and Middle English corpora so helpful; websites with Old and Middle English audio files are abundant, as are sites focusing on the history and providing detailed maps; and pictures of manuscript facsimiles are very easily accessible. No earlier textbook incorporates these. I will attempt to do so with a particular focus on using the OED (and even without online access, this should be possible). For the printed version, I will only include URLs that can be expected to remain up, e.g. university sites. The associated website (www.historyofenglish.net/hel/) contains many more links, and these links will be updated regularly. The ones in the book that will ‘fail to open’ after a while will be listed on that website too. As mentioned, I will focus on internal changes, in particular on the change from synthetic to analytic. I also discuss the influence of external factors on internal changes. The book is not theoretical in orientation. I do not discuss sociolinguistic theories, or theoretical issues in historical linguistics, except for mentioning e.g. grammaticalization in the context of the change from synthetic to analytic and briefly in Chapter 10. The book can be used at the advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate levels. It is designed for a semester, but, depending on what other courses the particular institution offers, it can be used for a shorter course, e.g. by leaving out Chapters 3, 8, or 9. The book has many idiosyncrasies due to the author being a non-native speaker, having taught English and linguistics in the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States. Electronic texts provided by the Oxford Text Archive, the Gutenberg Project, and the Dictionary of Old English project have been extremely valuable; the concordance program used is MonoConc. I would most like to thank Johanna Wood for thinking through many problems of content and organization with me and for extensive comments on the writing and examples. Viktorija Todorovska is the best (copy-)editor I know; she is someone who understands the issues and has such a grasp of the English language in all its forms. Tim Gades was wonderful in developing the website that accompanies this book; he was creative and knowledgeable. I am very grateful to Olga Fischer for going through the chapters very carefully Preface to the first edition (2006) and for giving me so many good suggestions which I hope I have incorporated. For other comments and lots of assistance, I would like to thank Harry Bracken, Chen Chen Sun, and Shane Drews. I would also like to thank several anonymous reviewers and Mariana Bahtchevanova, James Berry, Jean Brink, Jade Corn, Nancy Hawkes, Lisa Genuit, Dhira Mahoney, Nicteha Martinez, Brenda McTighe, Donka Minkova, Elizabeth Moreau, Laura Parsons, Amy Shinabarger, Lynn Sims, and many others. Using this book before it was published was very helpful and Emily Hsu, Kristen LaRue, Tyler May, Victor Parraguinaldo, John Ryan, and Olena Tsurska really helped discussing this text in a small seminar. xi Preface to the revised edition The year “2006 was a bumper-crop year for books on the history of English” as Donka Minkova writes in a 2009 review in Language. Apart from the first edition of the current work, several other works appeared in 2006: A History of the English Language edited by Richard Hogg and David Denison, The Oxford History of English edited by Lynda Mugglestone, The Handbook of The History of English, edited by Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, and The English Language: a linguistic history by Laurel Brinton and Leslie Arnovick. The current book remains sufficiently different from these to warrant a new edition. It remains the most succinct and accessible yet comprehensive of linguistic histories. I am very lucky to have John Benjamins as publisher, not only in being willing to put out a revised edition and also for their always incredibly beautiful, fast, and accurate work. It is much appreciated! The history of English in its complex shapes and forms changes fast and, after eight years, chapters such as 8 and 9 need refreshing with more current examples and some of the research I report on in Chapter 3 needed to be updated. A number of suggestions brought up by users and reviewers have been incorporated as well, e.g. the unclear origin of Chancery English in Chapter 2, a family tree for Germanic in Chapter 3, and more on Celtic influence in Chapter 5. Some reviewers commented that the ‘why’ of linguistic change was ignored. I have written on the ‘why’ questions, e.g. in my 2011 The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty, but didn’t want to push a particular theoretical position on the reader here. I have added more detail on internal and external change in Chapter 1 and I hope that helps. I have also mentioned the stress shift as a possible reason for the change from synthetic to analytic (although that begs the question why the stress changes). Chapter 10 listed some theories on the causes of change are and I have left it that way; One of the main challenges in any work on the history of a particular language is to attribute the ideas on changes to the first people who came up with them. For instance, I don’t know who first suggested that English was losing the endings on nouns and verbs. It was probably ‘in the air’ in the same way that a linguistic cycle was implicit in the work of many (e.g. de Condillac 1746, Bopp 1816, Gardiner 1904). The philosophy of the revised book remains the same with an emphasis on the linguistic history and on using authentic texts. In my own use of the book, I divide the core chapters 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 into several parts: sources/spelling/sounds, morpho-syntax, vocabulary, and something special to the period. I use a class period to work on each aspect and we then use a text (from the Appendices) and an audio version (where relevant) to discuss the state of that particular stage of the language. The goals of the class and the book are to 1SFGBDFBOE"DLOPXMFEHFNFOUT YJ Preface to the revised edition xiii BHSBTQPGUIF&OHMJTIMBOHVBHFJOBMMJUTGPSNT5JN(BEFTXBTXPOEFSGVMJOEFWFMPQJOH UIFXFCTJUFUIBUBDDPNQBOJFTUIJTCPPLIFXBTDSFBUJWFBOELOPXMFEHFBCMF4PNFPGUIF SFTFBSDIXBTDPOEVDUFEXIJMF*XBTBGFMMPXBUUIF$FOUSFGPS"EWBODFE4UVEZJO0TMP come to recognize English from various time periods, to be able to read each stage with JOUIFGBMMPG*XPVMEMJLFUPUIBOLUIFGFMMPXTUIFOQSFTFOUGPSFYUFOTJWFDPOWFSTB a glossary, to get an understanding of typical language change, internal and external, and UJPOT JO QBSUJDVMBS )FOOJOH +PIO 0MFthrough "TLFEBMthe 5PMMJ &ZUIPSTTPO 5FSKF to understand something about"OEFSTFO languagetypology emphasis on the +BO synthetic 'BBSMVOE %BH)BVH BOE,KBSUBO0UUPTPO"SJ[POB4UBUF6OJWFSTJUZQSPWJEFEBA2VBMJUZ to analytic cycle. PG6OEFSHSBEVBUF&EVDBUJPO(SBOU *BNWFSZHSBUFGVMUP0MHB'JTDIFSGPSHPJOHUISPVHI My audience remains undergraduates (and beginning graduates) and I have therefore UIFDIBQUFSTWFSZDBSFGVMMZBOEGPSHJWJOHNFTPNBOZHPPETVHHFTUJPOTXIJDI*IPQF* ignored such topics as Indo-European vowels and laryngeals, the satem/centum divide, IBWFJODPSQPSBUFE'PSPUIFSDPNNFOUTBOEMPUTPGBTTJTUBODF *XPVMEMJLFUPUIBOL)BSSZ most discussion on stress, and the distinction between phonemes and allophones. I know #SBDLFO $IFO$IFO4VO BOE4IBOF%SFXT*XPVMEBMTPMJLFUPUIBOLTFWFSBMBOPOZNPVT having the latter would make various discussions easier but it is a real road-block for some SFWJFXFSTBOE.BSJBOB#BIUDIFWBOPWB +BNFT#FSSZ +FBO#SJOL "OOF$PF +BEF$PSO students not majoring in linguistics. /BODZ)BXLFT -JTB(FOVJU %IJSB.BIPOFZ #SFOEB.D5JHIF %POLB I have minimized the use of URLs in this/JDUFIB.BSUJOF[ edition to very safe ones. The website con.JOLPWB &MJ[BCFUI .PSFBV -BVSB 1BSTPOT "NZ 4IJOBCBSHFS -ZOO 4JNT BOE NBOZ nected to this book has updated information and should be used for additional sources. I PUIFST6TJOHUIJTCPPLCFGPSFJUXBTQVCMJTIFEXBTWFSZIFMQGVMBOE&NJMZ)TV ,SJTUFO typically start a chapter by going over the electronic resources in class and the timeline for -B3VF 5ZMFS.BZ 7JDUPS1BSSBHVJOBMEP +PIO3ZBO BOE0MFOB5TVSTLBSFBMMZIFMQFEEJT the period in the appendix. The OED recently changed its interface so I have changed that DVTTJOHUIJTUFYUJOBTNBMMTFNJOBS"TVTVBM FWFSZPOFBU#FOKBNJOTIBTCFFOXPOEFSGVM in the appendix and made it less dependent on a particular interface. Unfortunately, the *XPVMEMJLFUPTJOHMFPVU,FFT7BFTGPSTQFDJBMUIBOLT OED is still not freely available and we can only use it via a library. I will point out ways to use freely available sources whenever possible. 2006 As before, I would most like to thank Johanna Wood forApache makingJunction, extremelyMay valuable suggestions as she was using the book in a very different context (Denmark). Remus Gergel, Lynn Sims, Grover Furr, and James Berry have provided excellent feedback. Eric Haeberli, Donka Minkova, Jeannette Marshall Denton, Susan Fitzmaurice, and Steven Gross have made many valuable points in published reviews and I thank them for their very helpful work. Further thanks are due to Victor Parra-Guinaldo, Hui-Ling Yang, Yvonne Maat, Kagnarith Chea, Robert Mailhammer, Charles Edmisten, Ed Keenan, David White, Jerzy Nykiel, and Uthairat Rogers. 'JHVSF 8IZTUVEZ)&- ¥+BO&MJPU3FQSJOUFEXJUIQFSNJTTJPOPG6OJWFSTBM1SFTT Figure 0.1 Why study HEL? ©2003 Jan Eliot. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press 4ZOEJDBUF"MMSJHIUTSFTFSWFE Syndicate. All rights reserved. Notes to the user and abbreviations In the text, I use italics when a certain word is discussed. So, if I am talking about the word word, it will be in italics. If that word is a foreign word, e.g. mot, I will put the translation right after it in single quotation marks: mot ‘word’. Once in a while, a new concept appears in bold. There are two kinds of glosses to the Old and Middle English examples. The one is a word-for-word gloss, using abbreviated symbols; the other, enclosed in single quotation marks, provides a freer translation. Both are not always provided since the meaning is often clear from the word-by-word gloss; and sometimes a word-by-word gloss is redundant. If there is a gloss, the example will be in italics. The glosses only list morphological features such as accusative (acc) in cases where this is relevant for our discussion. Abbreviations ACC ADV ASL BBC BCE BNC BP BSL c CE CED cf. CHEL CSE CT CV DAT DECL e.g. EIL ELF accusative (case) adverb American Sign Language British Broadcasting Company before common era British National Corpus (cited according to BNC abbreviations) before present British Sign Language circa, i.e. around common era Chronological English Dictionary short for ‘see’ Cambridge History of the English Language Corpus of Spoken (Professional American) English Canterbury Tales consonant-vowel sequence dative (case) declarative short for ‘for example’ English as an International Language English as a Lingua Franca Notes to the user and abbreviations EModE EFL ESL F F1 FAM GEN GVS HC ICE i.e. IE INF KJV LALME LLL LOC M ME ModE N NOM OE OED ON PL PAST PC POL Q1 SG UG 1 2 3 * ~ > < ‘…’ Early Modern English English as a Foreign Language English as a Second Language feminine First Folio familiar genitive (case) Great Vowel Shift Helsinki Corpus (see primary sources) International Corpus of English short for ‘namely’, from Latin id est Indo-European infinitival ending King James Version Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English Love’s Labor’s Lost locative masculine Middle English Modern English neuter nominative Old English Oxford English Dictionary Old Norse plural past tense Peterborough Chronicle (see Thorpe 1871) polite First Quarto singular Universal Grammar first person second person third person reconstructed word, or ungrammatical sentence, or wildcard in a computer search nasalized sound becomes derives from encloses gloss xv List of tables Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 1.3 Table 1.4 Table 1.5 Percentages of English word origins 4 The first, second, and third 1,000 most frequent words and their origins Some terms for styles and varieties of English 7 Examples of external and internal change 8 Periods of English 11 Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 2.6 Table 2.7 Phonetic symbols for English vowels 20 Phonetic symbols for English consonants 20 English consonants 24 Palatalization in the history of English 25 Metathesis from Old to Modern English 26 Characteristics of analytic and synthetic languages Cases and their main functions 29 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 European and Middle Eastern languages 39 Cases for Sanskrit -a stems for deva ‘god’ 43 [k] and [ʃ] correspondences in Romance 45 Words in native American languages 48 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 4.5 Table 4.6 Table 4.7 Table 4.8 Table 4.9 Table 4.10 Table 4.11 Table 4.12 Table 4.13 Table 4.14 Table 4.15 Table 4.16 Table 4.17 Table 4.18 Some works in Old English 52 Special symbols in Old English 53 Palatalization 56 Breaking 56 Fronting 57 Old English consonants 58 Old English pronouns 61 Demonstratives in Old English 64 Some Old English strong noun endings 65 Some Old English weak noun endings 65 Old English noun classes 66 The forms of the adjective ‘good’ in Old English An Old English strong verb 67 Old English weak verbs 68 The forms of the verb beon ‘to be’ 69 Characteristics of Old English 76 Words relating to speech and grammar 78 Semantic change involving lexical items 79 66 27 4 List of tables xvii Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 5.6 Table 5.7 Table 5.8 Table 5.9 Some loans from Celtic 97 Some early loans from Latin 99 Palatalization differences 100 Some loans from Scandinavian 102 Place names 102 Leveling of present tense verbal inflections 103 French loans 105 Influence of different languages on OE and ME 107 Thomason & Kaufman’s (1988) scale of influence 112 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 6.5 Table 6.6 Table 6.7 Table 6.8 Table 6.9 Table 6.10 Table 6.11 Table 6.12 Some works in Middle English 117 Some Old to Middle English spelling changes 121 Changes in g /ȝ 122 Gradual deletion of [w] 122 Changes in nasals and liquids 123 Middle English consonants 124 Late Middle English pronouns 125 Late Middle English articles and nouns 129 Late Middle English present and past tense verb agreement Characteristics of Middle English 138 Some synonymous Germanic and Romance suffixes 139 Middle English dialect characteristics 141 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 7.3 Table 7.4 Table 7.5 Table 7.6 Table 7.7 Table 7.8 Table 7.9 Table 7.10 Table 7.11 Table 7.12 Table 7.13 Early Modern English authors, in chronological order 163 Dates of GVS changes 166 Some sound changes in Early Modern English 169 Early Modern English pronouns 170 Second person pronoun changes 170 Characteristics of Early Modern English 178 All of the new words for the year 1505 and some for 1605 180 Origin of Early Modern English loans 182 Some Early Modern English word lists 186 Latinate and polysyllabic words in different works 192 Contraction in two plays by Fletcher and three by Shakespeare 192 Contraction showing possible collaboration 193 Compositors and the spelling of has in Hamlet 193 Table 8.1 Some (late) 17th and 18th century writers in Britain and the US, in chronological order 208 Some 19th century writers in Britain and the US, in chronological order 209 Some regional differences in Britain going back to earlier varieties 211 Pronouns in (standard) Modern English 213 Table 8.2 Table 8.3 Table 8.4 129 xviii A History of the English Language Table 8.5 Table 8.6 Table 8.7 Table 8.8 Table 8.9 Table 8.10 Table 8.11 Table 8.12 Table 8.13 Present tense verb variation 215 That versus who in the CSE 221 ‘Errors’ observed in 1915 223 Characteristics of Modern English 223 New words by specialization 224 New sources of vocabulary 225 New words for 1940–2000 226 Some new words from 2003 226 Early dictionaries 231 Table 9.1 Table 9.2 Table 9.3 Some literary figures writing in English outside the US/UK 257 Spelling differences between British, American, and Canadian English 258 Palatalization choices in RP, American, Canadian, New Zealand, and South African English 259 Characteristics of World Englishes 266 New words due to contact with indigenous languages 267 Words adopted into (American) English through later contact with other languages 268 American, British, Canadian, and Australian vocabulary alternatives 269 Pronouns in Early Jamaican Creole (Bailey 1966) 272 Creole features in sounds 273 Table 9.4 Table 9.5 Table 9.6 Table 9.7 Table 9.8 Table 9.9 Table 10.1 Some instances of grammaticalization 286 Table 10.2 Some HEL URLs 290 List of figures Figure 0.1 Why study the history of the English language xiii Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6 Map of Germanic migrations starting 1,500 years ago 3 Text marked for loanwords 3 Keep off as Key Poff 6 ‘Eh’ as a marker of identity 9 New words throughout history, from the OED 10 External influences on English and pre-English 10 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Some spelling irregularities 16 Five vowel system 21 English vowels 21 The main direction of the GVS 22 Places of articulation 24 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 3.4 Figure 3.5 Figure 3.6 Figure 3.7 Figure 3.8 Genetic relationships between people 34 Mitochondrial DNA in various populations 35 Linguistic relationships 35 Egyptian logograms 37 The branches of Indo-European 39 Grimm’s Law, or the First Consonant Shift: correspondences between languages 40 Some of Grimm’s correspondences in more detail 41 The branches of Germanic 42 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3 Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5 Figure 4.6 Figure 4.7 Figure 4.8 Figure 4.9 Figure 4.10 Beowulf facsimile 52 The Overchurch runes 54 Runic alphabet 54 Old English vowels 58 Old English dialects 80 Facsimile of the Peterborough Chronicle 84 Caedmon’s Hymn 86 A facsimile of Riddles 7 and 8 88 A facsimile of Wulf and Eadwacer 91 Facsimile of the Wanderer 93 Figure 5.1 Map of Scandinavian settlements Figure 6.1 Facsimile of Layamon’s Brut 118 101 xx A History of the English Language Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4 Figure 6.5 Figure 6.6 Figure 6.7 Figure 6.8 Facsimile of Cursor Mundi 119 A page from Caxton’s Morte d’Arthur 120 Middle English vowels 124 The Late Middle English distribution of them and hem Middle English dialects 140 Some internal changes 145 Facsimile of Gawain 153 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2 Figure 7.3 Figure 7.4 Figure 7.5 Figure 7.6 Figure 7.7 Figure 7.8 A quire of two sheets 160 Outer and inner sides of a sheet of a quarto 161 Facsimile of Richard II 164 The GVS 166 Percentage of does/do’s/doe’s compared to all third person singulars 172 Mulcaster’s recommended spelling 184 Coote’s first page of hard words 185 Cawdry’s first page of hard words 186 Figure 8.1 Figure 8.2 Figure 8.3 Figure 8.4 Figure 8.5 The different meanings of can 218 A new prefix 226 To profound in Johnson’s Dictionary Murray in the Scriptorum 231 Modern dialects in England 233 Figure 9.1 Figure 9.2 Figure 9.3 Figure 9.4 Map of English spoken natively and non-natively 254 Kachru’s Circles of the 1980s 256 Lexical choices in Canada and the US 269 Map of English-based creoles and pidgins 271 228 Figure 10.1 Universal Grammar and the acquisition of grammars Figure II.1 Figure II.2 The OED partial entry for very 311 The OED partial entry for with 313 127 285 Chapter 1 The English language Language is a fundamental human faculty used for the expression of our thoughts and creative ideas, face-to-face communication, scientific inquiry, and many other purposes. Most humans are born with the ability to acquire language automatically and effortlessly if provided the right input by their environment. It is estimated that there are 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world. We differentiate languages from dialects based on whether they are mutually understandable, but this distinction gets murky and many linguists consider a language to be a “dialect with an army (or navy),” i.e. a political construct. The number of languages is decreasing rapidly as some languages disappear and a few others – Chinese, English, Spanish, Indonesian/Malay, and Hindi – become more widespread. The focus of this book is the English language. The word ‘English’ has a number of widely different meanings. For instance, it describes the people from a particular part of Great Britain. It also refers to a particular language, the English language, and is used very broadly in this sense. English is Germanic in origin but roughly half of its words derive from contacts with French and Latin. As we will see, English has expanded from having a few speakers in one area to having many speakers in many geographic areas. One way to define English is through its origins and history and we will do so in this book, briefly in Section 1 and in more detail later on. We find Celtic and Roman presence in Britain before the coming of the Germanic tribes who brought with them what is to become English. Later, we also see Scandinavian, French, and Latin influences. Another way to define English is to compare it to other languages and earlier stages. In Section 2, we will apply this approach and compare Modern English to Old English and other languages. We will keep this approach in mind since we will see English changing from one type of language to another in fewer than 1,500 years. Finally, Section 3 of this chapter will examine some reasons for language change – linguistic (or internal) and sociohistorical (or external). This too will be relevant throughout the remainder of the book. 1. The origins and history of English As mentioned earlier, the meaning of ‘English’ can be given through its origin and history. The British Isles have been inhabited by different peoples for a long time and before they were islands. The excavations at Boxgrove in southern England show that early humans were present possibly 500,000 years ago in what we now call England. These hominids, however, are assumed not to have had language. They used tools to wound and kill big animals and may have continued to live there until the Ice Age. After the Ice Age, humans 2 A History of the English Language again start to occupy Britain around 10,000 years ago and 5000 years ago sees the construction of Stonehenge. We know very little about the pre-Indo European languages these people spoke. Vennemann (2003b) argues that the ancestors of one of them, Pictish, may have spoken a Semitic language. After the coming of the Celts around 3,000 years ago, we start to know a little more. The Celts encountered the Pictish speakers and possibly influenced that language. Celtic languages were spoken all over Europe and there were many tribes and some migrated to England/Britain. One of these tribes may have been given a name such as pritaini from which the names Britain and British may derive (see Snyder 2003). In Britain, the Celtic languages survive to the present in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Irish English and Scottish English are varieties of English influenced by the Celtic languages. Just as the Celts displaced or mixed with the people inhabiting Britain before them, they and the languages they spoke were later displaced and pushed further west. Nowadays, some of these languages are being revitalized (e.g. Welsh in Wales and Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland). The Celts in Britain came into contact with the Romans and Latin when the Romans came to Britain 2000 years or more ago. The Roman Empire ruled much of Europe up to that time. It collapsed and the troops were withdrawn from Britain around 410. Because of the political power of the Roman Empire, Latin was spoken in parts of Britain and the European continent and it exerted a strong influence on Celtic and Germanic languages. Words such as wall, kitchen, wine, mile and street were borrowed from Latin into Germanic and came into English via Germanic. The settlements and roads of the Romans were extensive and remained important even after they left the island in 410. The Latin influence continues through medieval and renaissance times, not through actual migrations but through the Catholic Church and intellectual developments such as Humanism and the Renaissance. English officially starts when the Germanic tribes and their languages reach the British Isles, in 449. One account tells of Hengist and Horsa being invited by the Celtic king Vortigern to help fight the northern Picts and later turning against Vortigern. There are of course earlier contacts between the continent and Britain. For instance, during the Roman occupation, many speakers of Germanic dialects served in the Roman army; there were many trade contacts as well. Slavery was also widespread in Europe, and it provided another means of contact between Celtic and Germanic speakers and Roman culture. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, one version of which was completed in 1154, tells the history of England from the time of Julius Caesar to 1154 (available in Modern English at www. omacl.org/Anglo). As the map below shows, several Germanic tribes – the Frisians, the Angles, the Saxons, and possibly the Jutes – occupied the British Isles. The word ‘English’ derives from one of these tribes – the Angles. The Germanic tribes (e.g. the Franks, Goths, Angles, Saxons, Vandals, and Lombards) differed culturally from each other, but it is not clear how distinct their languages were. Some of the ones around the North Sea may have spoken a North Sea Germanic. Chapter 1. The English language Atlantic Ocean NORSE PICTS SWEDES North Sea JUTES IRISH DANES F S RI IA NS AN GL ES BRITISH SAXONS FRANKS Figure 1.1 Map of Germanic migrations starting 1,500 years ago (from Millward 1996: 78) What started as a Germanic dialect spoken in a small part of England is now a language spoken by over a billion people in many parts of the world (as a first or second language). Even though it is a Germanic language, English has adopted a large number of words from other languages. We will examine the influence of other languages on English in Section 3; it is estimated that half of the vocabulary of English comes from French and Latin. To get an idea for the level of borrowing, please look at the text below, where the loanwords are in bold, and the words of unclear origin in italics. Involuntary Conversions, Preemptive Counterattacks, and Incomplete Successes: The World of Doublespeak There are no potholes in the streets of Tucson, Arizona, just “pavement deficiencies.” The administration didn’t propose any new taxes, just “revenue enhancement through new user’s fees.” Those aren’t bums on the street, just “non-goal oriented members of society.” There are no more poor people, just “fiscal underachievers.” There was no robbery of an automatic teller machine, just an “unauthorized withdrawal.” The patient didn’t die because of medical malpractice, it was just a “diagnostic misadventure of a high magnitude.” The U.S. Army doesn’t kill the enemy anymore, it just “services the target.” And the double speak goes on. Figure 1.2 Text marked for loanwords, adapted from Lutz’s Doublespeak (1990: 1) 3 4 A History of the English Language As you can see, the most frequent words – the, a(n), did, it and of – are ‘native’, as are the affixes – plural -s and third person singular -s. Mostly, they are the shorter, more general words. The above text is a bit extreme in the number of French and Latin loanwords; almost half of the words are borrowings and many of them are euphemisms. Euphemisms make things seem better than they are: filing a property irregularity report means having to tell an airline that it lost your bags (and this phrase was used by British Airways). French and Latin loanwords are also used in English to add formality to language. As we will see, some people prefer ‘native’ words or more archaic speech for this purpose. Table 1.1, taken from Roberts (1965), shows the origin of the 10,000 most frequent English words, and Table 1.2, from Williams (1975: 67), shows the origin of the first, second, and third thousand most common words. Table 1.1 Percentages of English word origins Old English French Latin 32 45 17 Other Germanic Other 4 2 Table 1.2 The first, second, and third 1,000 most frequent words and their origins 1000 2000 3000 Old English French Latin Scandinavian Other 83 34 29 11 46 46 2 11 14 2 2 1 2 7 10 We will come back to loanwords and text types in Chapter 5. The language we currently refer to as English is the partial result of the borrowings discussed above and it can be defined as the collection of words that were selected to appear in a particular dictionary. The collections of different dictionaries differ in number considerably: some contain 60,000, others 600,000 words. Most native speakers of English are estimated to have a vocabulary of 40,000 to 60,000 words (see Bloom 2002). (It is debatable whether pairs such as read and reader are two words or one, and that affects the numbers). The Oxford English Dictionary (hence OED) is undoubtedly the best resource on the English language and its history. Many libraries nowadays have access to the OED online and we will use it often later on in this book. However, even if we knew all the words in the OED (and many are archaic), we still would not ‘know’ the English language. We need rules to put the words together into sentences or, in other words, a grammar. Grammar generates a language: the structure of the sounds (phonetics and phonology), words (morphology), sentences (syntax) and the rules for understanding the meaning (semantics) and appropriate use (pragmatics). The goal of this book is to describe the structure of English and how its words and structures have emerged and changed over the last 1,500 years. In the next section, we briefly examine the structure of English by comparing Modern English and earlier stages of English; this examination of the structure of English will be revisited in more detail later. Chapter 1. The English language 2. Modern English compared to earlier English and other languages Even though we lack the technical vocabulary to discuss in detail differences among languages – that vocabulary will come in Chapter 2 – we will examine some of the major differences on three levels: sounds, words, and sentences. Read the first sentence of the famous Caedmon’s Hymn, from a manuscript dated 737, and compare it with a word-byword gloss and the Modern English translation. Glosses for Old English (OE) are usually done as in (1). I have put in the hyphens to show the endings but they are not in the Old English manuscripts; look at the list of abbreviations for what pl, and inf, and gen mean. You can also listen to it at http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/noa/audio.htm. What do you observe? (1) Nu scyl-un herg-an hefaenrica-es uard Now should-pl praise-inf heaven.kingdom-gen guardian ‘Now we should praise the guardian of the heavenly kingdom’. You might notice that there is no letter v in hefaen ‘heaven’ and that the u in uard ‘guard’ is pronounced differently – like w and unlike the present day u in guard or tune. It is not completely clear how the Old English sc and g are pronounced: sk and g or sh and y. With respect to the words and sentences, we notice the lack of grammatical words such as of, the, and a. The Old English sentence in (1) contains five words, whereas the Modern English one has twice as many. The additional words in Modern English fulfill a grammatical function performed by endings such as -es in Old English. As is obvious, quite a number of changes have occurred on all three levels mentioned above. First, we will look at the sounds of Modern English. Depending on the variety, Modern English has 13 or 14 different vowels: bit, beet, bait, bet, bat, but, bye, boy, boat, boot, bout, bath, and bore all contain different vowel sounds. Languages such as Inuit and Navajo have four vowels and Hawaiian and Spanish have five. However, Navajo has nasalized and lengthened vowels (and a few other extras). Thus, every language has a unique sound system. English has at least 25 consonants. Other languages have different numbers: Polish has 35, Hawaiian eight, and Finnish 13 (not counting the ones used only in loanwords). The most unusual English consonant is perhaps the one spelled as th, which, as we will see, represents two different sounds. Many other languages, and many varieties of English, do not have this sound. When speakers of such languages first learn a variety of English where th does occur, they often pronounce th as d in that, as t in thing, as f in mouth, or as v in mother. In New York City English, for instance, that is often pronounced dat. Substituting d, t, f, or v for th does not happen randomly, as we will see in Chapter 2. English syllable structure is complex: there are English words such as strikes and splits, with three consonants at the beginning of the syllable/word and two at the end. Czech has more elaborate structures as in zmrzlina, meaning ‘ice-cream’, as does Croatian in cvrst, meaning ‘hard’. Japanese, Korean, Navajo, and Hawaiian do not have consonant clusters and use special strategies for adapting loanwords from English. For instance, strike will 5 6 A History of the English Language sound like suturaike in Japanese, with the consonant clusters broken up. Spanish speakers will adapt an initial sk-sound, as in school, to eskool. Across the world’s languages, perhaps the most common syllable pattern is consonant-vowel (or CV) and that is what languages like Japanese have. Even in English, CV seems preferred, as shown in Figure 1.3. Figure 1.3 Keep off as Key Poff To make sense, sounds need to be combined into words and words into sentences. One of the major functions of language is to indicate who does what to whom (and where, when, how, and why that occurs). Languages differ in how they mark these functions – through endings on the verbs and nouns or through word order and grammatical words (prepositions and pronouns). Languages such as Chinese have almost no endings and use word order and grammatical words to mark the functions of the different elements in a sentence. On the other hand, many languages of the Americas have multiple prefixes on the verb and the verb can represent an entire sentence. For instance, Navajo naashné has two prefixes and a stem (na-sh-né), and it means ‘around-I-play’; English would translate that as ‘I am playing’, using three words. Modern English is more like Chinese than like Navajo, since no marking on the verb (or the noun) is required to understand a sentence like (2). Even if the case of the pronouns is ‘wrong’, as in (3), we understand that her is the subject because it is in the position of a subject and I the object because it follows the verb. (2) That dog loves me. (3) Her gave Mary and I a cake. Old English is more like Navajo than Modern English because it has a number of endings; the difference is that in Old English the endings are on the nouns and the verbs, while in Navajo they are only on the verbs. The endings in Old English express what word order and prepositions do in Modern English. This is one of the major changes that occurred between Old and Modern English, a change from synthetic to analytic, and we will discuss Chapter 1. The English language it throughout this book. For now, don’t worry about these terms; more will be said in the next chapter. One last issue to be introduced is that of varieties within a single language. Linguists often distinguish among varieties of region, social class, and register, or level of formality. The branch of linguistics that is particularly interested in varieties is called sociolinguistics. What is often referred to as the standard language is the language of one social or regional group and is typically taught in schools, spoken (and written) by journalists. It is a formal variety or style or register. Formal styles use more (Latinate) loanwords, as shown in Figure 1.2 above. As we will see, throughout the history of English, standard varieties were established in a somewhat arbitrary fashion. For now, we introduce a few terms. Later, in Chapters 8 and 9, we will provide additional examples. Table 1.3 Some terms for styles and varieties of English Styles: Varieties: formal style, usually taught in schools and used by journalists/editors; it has grammars and dictionaries; often referred to as the standard colloquial, informal style, often used in speech, with slang as one kind of colloquial speech regional, variety typical for a region, also called dialect social, variety typical for a social group, e.g. African American, men, upper class, also called sociolect register, variety typical for an occupation or situation, e.g. computer engineers, church, chess or baseball game, also called jargon Varieties and styles overlap: regional speech is colloquial, and varieties due to register (e.g. computer jargon) can be related to social class. Slang, for example, can be used in colloquial speech as well as in regional and social varieties. The terms introduced above can also be used to discuss Australian or Kenyan English, for example, or varieties spoken by nonnative speakers, such as Chinese English, as we will discuss in Chapter 9. Some people are using the term English Language Complex (ELC) to refer to all varieties of English (see e.g. Mesthrie & Bhatt 2008). 3. External and internal change The question of language change is really a question of why varieties develop within a language. For instance, Canadian and South African English have developed their own identities even though they are still ‘English’ in their grammars. In this section, we discuss politically, geographically, and socially motivated change – known as external change – and linguistically motivated change, or internal change. External and internal change are sometimes ascribed to ‘chance’ and ‘necessity’, respectively (Lightfoot 1979: 405). Many times, internal and external change interact. 7 8 A History of the English Language External changes are brought about by language contact (between speakers of different languages), or innovations by speakers, or issues of political or social identity. Recent adoptions of new words such as goji berry, to overshare, and lol are instances of external change. Oceans may facilitate contact whereas mountain ranges may stop it. External changes are unpredictable since it is impossible to foresee who will migrate where, or what fashion will catch on. Looking at when loanwords first appear in a language gives a good clue to social change: the appearance of lots of French loans around 1250 tells us something about a change that happened to society as a whole. Appendix III at the end of the book provides a chronology of historical events and they are often responsible for starting external change in the language. Internal changes may have to do with ease of articulation. For instance, the sound represented by m is easier to say before a p than before a k and languages often change towards what requires less effort. However, Labov (2010: 89) chronicles vowel shifts that result in making communication harder, so ease is only one possible factor. Internal change also occurs when speakers stop using endings (or inflections) on verbs and nouns and start to rely on words such as of, for, the, and have. The traditional reason for the loss of endings is that the stress shifted in Germanic to a fixed position, namely the root of a word, and that the endings became phonetically less prominent. You could in turn ask what caused the shift of stress, and we don’t know! The loss of case marking on who and stranding the preposition in Who did you talk to are instances of internal change. Regularization, such as the loss of gone in favor of went in I shoulda(v) went, is also internal change as well as the change in the category of a word as, for instance, when prepositions start being used to introduce sentences, i.e. as complementizers. Like is a preposition in She swims like a fish but is extended to introduce sentences in She did like I said. Finally, changes in negatives are frequent and many varieties double the negative or use never for the weakened n’t, as in I never did that for I didn’t do that. Internal reasons have to do with children analyzing the language they hear in a slightly different way from the generation before them (and building their grammars accordingly). The two types of change are summarized in Table 1.4. There are, however, factors that inhibit internal change, namely prescriptive rules. These rules typically have to be explicitly taught in school and include ‘don’t split infinitives’ and ‘don’t end sentences with Table 1.4 Examples of external and internal change External Internal new words due to contact, e.g. capybara, cashew new words due to social change, e.g. aldultescent, oversharenting words going out of fashion, e.g. cool ease of articulation (= economy) loss of case marking, e.g. who did he see? regularization, e.g. I shouldav went (= economy) new use of old words, e.g. like as complementizer renewal of n’t, e.g. by never ")JTUPSZPGUIF&OHMJTI-BOHVBHF Chapter 1. The English language JOUSPEVDFTFOUFODFTJO4IFEJEMJLF*TBJEѮJTJTBOJOUFSOBMDIBOHF BTJTUIFMPTTPGDBTF aNBSLJOHPOXIPBOETUSBOEJOHUIFQSFQPTJUJPOJO8IPEJEZPVUBMLUP preposition’. They are based on a prestigious language such as Latin or on logic or on attempts to conserve anGBDUPSTUIBUJOIJCJUJOUFSOBMDIBOHF older stage of the language. Split infinitives, such as to boldly ѮFSFBSF IPXFWFS OBNFMZQSFTDSJQUJWFSVMFT go, have occurred in the English language since the 14th century, but prescriptive forces ѮFTFSVMFTUZQJDBMMZIBWFUPCFFYQMJDJUMZUBVHIUJOTDIPPMBOEJODMVEFAEPOUTQMJUJOêOJ still prevent many writers from using them. In cases such as these, native speakers seem UJWFTBOEAEPOUFOETFOUFODFTXJUIBQSFQPTJUJPOѮFZBSFCBTFEPOBQSFTUJHJPVTMBOHVBHF to enjoy being able to cite a rule only to ignore it in their own language. The use of the TVDIBT-BUJOPSPOMPHJDPSPOBUUFNQUTUPDPOTFSWFBOPMEFSTUBHFPGUIFMBOHVBHF4QMJU ‘proper’ case endings, such as whom, and the third person -s are also strongly encouraged. JOêOJUJWFT TVDIBTUPCPMEMZHP IBWFPDDVSSFEJOUIF&OHMJTIMBOHVBHFTJODFUIFUIDFO If these prescriptive rules were not reinforced in schools and writing programs, however, UVSZ CVUQSFTDSJQUJWFGPSDFTTUJMMQSFWFOUNBOZXSJUFSTGSPNVTJOHUIFN*ODBTFTTVDIBT they might not persist. UIFTF OBUJWFTQFBLFSTTFFNUPFOKPZCFJOHBCMFUPDJUFBSVMFPOMZUPJHOPSFJUJOUIFJSPXO As to external change, there has generally been little opposition to incorporating new MBOHVBHFѮFVTFPGUIFAQSPQFSDBTFFOEJOHT TVDIBTXIPN BOEUIFUIJSEQFSTPOTBSF words into English (but see Chapter 7 for the inkhorn debate), unlike in French. Perhaps BMTPTUSPOHMZFODPVSBHFE*GUIFTFQSFTDSJQUJWFSVMFTXFSFOPUSFJOGPSDFEJOTDIPPMTBOE French speakers doIPXFWFS not oppose loanwords, such as hotdog, e-mail, and computer, the XSJUJOHQSPHSBNT UIFZNJHIUOPUQFSTJTU"TUPFYUFSOBMDIBOHF HFOFSBMMZbut UIFSF French Academy establishes French equivalents, chien chaud, courrier électronique, and IBTCFFOMJUUMFPQQPTJUJPOUPJODPSQPSBUJOHOFXXPSETJOUP&OHMJTI CVUTFF$IBQUFS ordinateur respectively. The French equivalent for ‘e-mail’, i.e. courrier électronique, is very GPSUIFJOLIPSOEFCBUF VOMJLFJO'SFODI1FSIBQT'SFODITQFBLFSTEPOPUPQQPTFMPBO long the AcademyFNBJM has decided to allowCVUUIF'SFODI"DBEFNZFTUBCMJTIFT'SFODI courriel though most French speakers use XPSETand TVDIBTIPUEPH BOEDPNQVUFS e-mail. If they use courriel, it is only for official purposes (Daniele Robert p.c.). FRVJWBMFOUT DIJFODIBVE DPVSJFSÊMFDUSPOJRVF BOEPSEJOBUFVS Often the changes caused by external factors lead to changes in the actual grammar or 0ѫFOUIFDIBOHFTDBVTFECZFYUFSOBMGBDUPSTMFBEUPDIBOHFTJOUIFBDUVBMHSBNNBSPS sound system. As we will see in later chapters, the influx of French and other loan words TPVOETZTUFN"TXFXJMMTFFJOMBUFSDIBQUFST UIFJOëVYPG'SFODIBOEPUIFSMPBOXPSET may have led to the incorporation of v and z into the English sound system. The opposite MFEUPUIFJODPSQPSBUJPOPGWBOE[JOUPUIF&OHMJTITPVOETZTUFNѮFPQQPTJUFPDDVSTBT occurs as well. InternalTVDIBTUIFGSFRVFOUVTFPGMJLFCZDFSUBJOBHFHSPVQTPS$BOBEJBO changes, such as the frequent use of like by certain age groups or XFMM*OUFSOBMDIBOHFT Canadian eh, can in turn become markers of identity, as Figure 1.4 shows. If a factor such FI DBOJOUVSOCFDPNFNBSLFSTPGJEFOUJUZ BT'JHVSFTIPXT*GBGBDUPSTVDIBTJEFOUJUZ as identity helps a change, we consider that an external reason. IFMQTBDIBOHF XFDPOTJEFSUIBUBOFYUFSOBMSFBTPO 'JHVSF A&IBTBNBSLFSPGJEFOUJUZ¥+BO&MJPU3FQSJOUFEXJUIQFSNJTTJPOPG6OJ Figure 1.4 ‘Eh’ as a marker of identity. c2005 Jan Eliot. Reprinted with permission WFSTBM1SFTT4ZOEJDBUF"MMSJHIUTSFTFSWFE of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved. 'JHVSFQSFTFOUTBUJNFMJOFPGUIFNBKPSFYUFSOBMDIBOHFTJO&OHMJTIJOUIFMBTU The OED online has a very helpful timeline feature when you go to its homepage. The ZFBSTѮFEPUUFEMJOFTJOEJDBUFUIFJOëVFODFTPO&OHMJTICFGPSFBOEBѫFS(FSNBOJDXBT timeline will tell you when new words came into English, see Figure 1.5, and you can PēDJBMMZJOUSPEVDFEUP#SJUBJOBSPVOEѮFTUSBJHIUMJOFSFQSFTFOUT(FSNBOJDCFGPSF choose words in the arts or agriculture, or words that came in from African, or Australian BOE&OHMJTIBѫFS*OBMBUFSDIBQUFS BUJNFMJOFXJMMCFHJWFOGPSJOUFSOBMDIBOHFT languages, and many other choices. The reason the number for the last period is low is BѫFSXFIBWFEJTDVTTFEUIPTF because we have just started that period. Do you find it surprising that the peak is between "T'JHVSFTIPXT JO#$& +VMJVT$BFTBSDBNFUP#SJUBJOBOEJO&NQFSPS 1850 and 1900? $MBVEJVT MFE BO BSNZ PG BOE FWFOUVBMMZ TVCEVFE UIF QFPQMF PG XIBU JT OPX 9 10 A History of the English Language 42229 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 Figure 1.5 New words throughout history, from the OED Figure 1.6 presents a timeline of the major external changes in English in the last 2,000 years. The dotted lines indicate the influences on English before and after Germanic was introduced to Britain around 450. The straight line represents Germanic before 450 and English after 450. In a later chapter, a timeline will be given for internal changes after we have discussed those. 55BCE 43CE 449 C6–8 C8–C10 1066 1500 1600 .....Latin+Celtic............Latin..... street...Dover abbot ........Scandinavian... egg, odd, give ....French+Latin.... state, judge Latin+Greek ... ‘colonial’ languages emancipate..pharmaceutic..pajamas _____Germanic__________|||_________________English__________________________ Figure 1.6 External influences on English and pre-English (C stands for century) In 55 BCE, Julius Caesar came to Britain and in 43 CE Emperor Claudius led an army of 40,000 and eventually subdued the people of what is now England, excluding those in Scotland and Wales. These external influences are both indicated on the timeline. The words borrowed at this time are similar to those borrowed by other languages that came into contact with Roman civilization, and a few of them have been mentioned above, e.g. wine and street. Celtic, however, remained spoken during this time, as shown by the dotted line. It provided many geographical names, such as Kent, Avon, Dover, and loch, Chapter 1. The English language and possibly influenced the different regions in grammar and pronunciation. When the Germanic tribes began to settle in Britain around 450, the Germanic dialects eventually pushed out the Celtic languages to the periphery (e.g. to Wales; see Chapter 5 for a more complete story). In the 6th century, the conversion to Christianity introduced Latin words, such as abbot, altar, and hymn, into English, sometimes through Celtic since many missionaries came from Ireland. Between the 8th and 10th centuries, the Scandinavians raided Britain. They also started extensive settlements. Scandinavian may be the most important of the external influences on English grammar and vocabulary. Words such as bask, call, crave, egg, fellow, ill, keel, leg, odd, screech, and thrive are borrowed from it. The disappearance of Old English endings and the switch to a stricter word order might also be the result of the Scandinavian influence on the grammar. Scandinavian words are often not seen as ‘foreign’ since they are very similar to words of English origin and are often ‘everyday’ words. The latter shows the Scandinavian and English lived in close contact. In 1066, William of Normandy arrived and defeated Harold during the Battle of Hastings (see Appendix A of Chapter 4 for a contemporary account of this defeat). As a result, French became the language of the nobility and the court and much new vocabulary was introduced, shown in Tables 1.1 and 1.2 above. The borrowed words include many political and cultural terms, such as government, authority, and judge, in contrast to the ‘everyday’ vocabulary borrowed from Scandinavian. The external history after 1066 is described in Chapters 5, and 7 to 10. Important are the love in the Renaissance for Greek and Latin terms, the post-1700 spread of English to the colonies – resulting in new words being adopted and varieties being formed – and the changes in the technology from the 19th century to the present. Table 1.5 l

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