Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
TYPES AND
THEORIES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE.
a) Old English.
Anglo-Saxon invasions:
In the year 450 (after the Romans had withdrawn from England on 410), the Celtic king Vortigern
invited Hengest and Horsa (Anglo-saxon chieftains) to fight against the Picts and Scots. In 455,
Hengest rebelled against Vortigern and started the invasion of Britain. However, the Anglo-Saxon
settlement must not be thought of as the arrival of a unified invading army, but as the arrival of
various uncoordinated bands in different parts of the country. This led to a profusion of small
kingdoms and dialect differentiation, but dialect differences probably came from the start, for
although they were closely related, the incomers came from more than one Germanic tribe.
Eventually, they came to regard themselves as one people: the word Engle 'the Angles' was applied
to all the Germanic settlers in Britain, and Englisc was applied to all these peoples and their
language, not just to the Angles.
As a result of the Danish rule, OE got mixed with the Scandinavian language. An example is the
verb 'to take', which is from Old Norse taka (OE uses niman). Some grammatical words also came
from Scandinavian, namely the conjunctions though, till and until; or the pronouns they, them and
their, which in OE were hie, him and hiera.
OE dialects:
The most important OE dialects were West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the last
two often being group together as Anglian). The most important one was West Saxon, although it is
not the direct ancestor for modern standard English, which is mainly derived from an Anglian
dialect.
The conversion of the English to Christianity began in about the year 600, and took a century to
complete. It was carried out from two directions, the Celtic church penetrating from the north-west
and the Roman church (Augustine sent by Pope Gregory) from the south-east.
Christianity introduced the Anglo-saxons to the Roman alphabet for writing extensive texts. They
already had one form of writing, the runes, but these were used only for short inscriptions. The
English developed a distinctive form of the runic alphabet called the 'futhorc', and when the clerics
introduced writing to England, they used a version of the Latin alphabet, but eked it out with
symbols from the futhorc. For example, they used the symbol to represent the OE /w/ phoneme.
2. English in ascent (1204-1348). Although French was for a long time the prestige-language in
England, it was never the mother tongue of the majority of the population. After King John's loss of
Normandy to the French crown, the ties with Normandy were fewer, and the ex-Norman nobility
gradually became English. The English crown went on importing Frenchmen to its court, but the
English nobility resented such royal favouritism, and in the Barons' Wars against Henry III there
was a good deal of anti-foreigner propaganda.
3. English triumphant (1348-1503). The Black Death caused of the population in England to
die. This increased the labour shortage which in turn raised the prestige of English, because it was
the language of the working class. Also the Hundred Years War led to the loss of all continental
colonies, whereas the English no longer had any reasons for learning or using French.
Literature was written more and more in English, and in the 2nd half of the 14thc. there was a great
literary upsurge, with Chaucer as one of its major figures. In 1362 Parliament is addressed in
English for the 1st time, and in the same year an Act was passed making English the official
language of the law courts instead of French, though their records were to be kept in Latin.
When Henry IV seized the throne (1399), England acquired, for the first time since the Norman
Conquest, a king whose mother tongue was English. His successor Henry V became king in 1412
and in order to get money and support from the merchant class of London (the wealthiest in the
country) for the war with France, he started writing all of his correspondence in English through the
Signet Office. The impact of this can be seen in the Brewer's Guild Pronouncement (1422), which
marks the point when the guild records start to be kept in English. Also from this point on we find
many, many more private letters by women, because women could now control their own letters.
Chancery (future Public Record Office): Office connected with the chancel (chapel),
where the chaplains wrote the king's letters. The chancellor (later Prime Minister) was entrusted
with the king's seal. According to Richardson, at the very top of the Chancery there were 12 clerks
who oversaw the production of important documents (like decrees, etc), and underneath these 12
were a large number of people of intermediate status who did nothing but copying and writing.
Because not more than 3% of English population could read, most of the writing until 1500 was
done by dictation, where different scribes transcribed the given message and then read it for the
person who was supposed to receive it. The capability to write became more of a reality as the
vernacular became more accepted in the 15th century., when the shift in the trust of the written word
over the spoken word grew, and both government and individuals started keeping records in
English.
Consonants.
c: [k] (cyning king; caeg key)
[] (niht night)
: [w]
Double consonants like bucca he-goat and cuppe cup indicate that the consonant was pronounced
double or long, rather as in modern Italian.
2. Morphology.
a) Personal Pronouns.
SINGULAR
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. ic u he heo hit
ACC. me/mec e/ec hine hie hit
GEN. min in his hire his
DAT. me e him hire him
PLURAL
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. we ge hie
ACC. us eow hie
GEN. ure eower hira
DAT. us eow him
b) Dual Pronouns.
c) Demonstratives: there are only two demonstratives: se the, that and es this.
d) Strong Nouns.
Nominative
stanas scipu
Accusative giefa
Genitive stana scipa
Dative stanum scipum giefum
e) Weak Nouns.
Nominative
naman eagan tungan
Accusative
Genitive namena eagena tungena
Dative namum eagum tungum
1 ws
2 singular wre
PAST IND.
3 ws
plural wron
3. Syntax.
OE favoured 3 types of word order: S-V-O, V-S-O, S-O-V.
V-S-O : common when the clause begins with an adverbial expression (especially a then
and r there) AND in questions (hwy didest u t? why did you do that?; hst u
nigne geferan? have you any companion?).
The periphrastic future. In OE future time was expressed by means of the simple present
(non past), sometimes accompanied by an adverbial designating future time. OE depended
largely on the context for disambiguation of the functional value of the simple present tense
form.
Ga ge on mine wingeard and ic selle eow t riht bi
Already in OE willan and sculan were used as potential future markers.
Noun Phrase Structure: quite similar to that of Modern English (det-adj-noun). Exceptions:
The forms eall all, begen both, and adjectives ending in -weard precede the determiner.
(eal es middangeard this entire earth; begen a gebroru both the brothers; on
sueweardum aem lande in the southern part of the land).
It is possible for adjectives to follow the noun, or for one to precede it and another to follow
it.
Titles of rank usually follow the name they qualify: Aelfred cyning King Alfred.
Negation: achieved by use of the particle ne (fram ic ne wille away I do not wish (to go)).
Nis (ne + is) is not; nolde (ne + wolde) did not want.
Multiple negation was common and made the negation more emphatic.
b) ME Morphological Simplification.
Nominative
stanas stones
Accusative
Genitive stana stana
Dative stanum stanum
Nominative
naman namen
Accusative
Genitive namena namena
Dative namum namum
In the course of the ME period the -es plural spread and displaced -en, and by the 15th century it was
almost universal. In Shakespeare's time we still find a few plurals in -en which have since
disappeared, like eyen, and housen. Today we have oxen, children and brethren.
Adjectives: the trend was towards the use of only the base-form (fair), and a form with the
ending -e (faire), which was used both for the plural and as the weak form.
Singular adjectives that ended in a consonant in OE have no ending in eME. These end in -e if
the word immediately follows an article, demonstrative, or possessive (the alde mann).
Singular adjectives which ended in a vowel in OE end in -e in eME.
Plural adjectives end in -e.
When the final -e was lost, these two forms became the same and the adjective became indeclinable.
Pronouns:
SINGULAR
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. ich, I ou he she hit
ACC. me e him hir hit
GEN. my, myn y, yn his hir his
DAT. me e him hie him
PLURAL
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. we ye ei
ACC. us yow hem
GEN. ure youre hir
DAT. us yow hem
Thou vs. ye: Although the plural of the first person had been used in OE for the authorial we
based on a Latin model, it did not come to be used for the plural of majesty until ME. This use is
a product of feudal thinking (king seen as the representation of the whole community). Also new in
ME is the use of you (plural) for the singular: extension from the majestic we; if the king speaks
in the plural, his subjects will address him in the plural too.
Thou: between equals and to inferiors.
Ye: representations of polite speech and to address a superior.
Definite Article: OE se, seo and ae disappeared, and the became used for all of them. This also
meant that grammatical gender disappeared, and was replaced by 'natural gender': we now tend to
refer to female creatures as she, males as he, and inanimate objects as it.
c) Changes in Syntax.
S-V-O became the dominant pattern, and separate words were used to perform the functions
formerly carried out by word-endings.
The system of inflections becomes much reduced, but a complicated system of tenses is built up
by means of the primary auxiliaries (be, have and later do) and the modal auxiliaries (shall,
should, will, etc). The future tense with shall and will is established in ME.
In the perfect, have spread at the expense of be, but be was common with verbs of motion and verbs
of change of state.
Verb endings were esentially the same as in OE, except that unstressed vowels were reduced to //.
Jespersen: drag chain. It started with the diphtongization of /i:/ and /u:/ to /i/ and /u/
respectively. At the next stage, /e:/ and /o:/ were dragged upwards to fill the notional vowel
space vacated by the diphtongization. Finally, the remaining three long vowels /:/, /:/ and /a:/
were raised.
Luick: push chain. The trigger of the change was the raising of the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/. On
their ways upward they evicted /i:/ and /u:/ from their slots. This was then followed by a drag of
lower vowels upwards.
Stenbrenden. The raising of the close-mid vowels and the close vowels were simultaneous,
which is why the close vowels did not have to diphthongise in order to avoid merger.
Changes in Middle English: Phonological change did not take place because of the Norman
Conquest, it was already underway in late OE and continued in ME. However, it became easier to
detect through spelling.
Changes of vowel quality.
OE ME
// (t) > /a/ (that)
/:/ (s) > /:/ (se)
/y/ (synn) > /i/ (sin)
/y:/ (hydan) > /i:/ (hiden)
// (hearm) > /a/ (harm)
/:/ (stream) > /e:/ (streme)
/e/ (heofon) > // (heven)
/e:/ (beon) > /e:/ (ben)
/a:/ (ban) > /:/ (bon)
Shortening.
Before double consonants and consonant clusters, except those that caused lengthening.
OE cepte /ke:pt/ > ME kepte /kpt/
In the first syllable of trisyllabic words.
OE Halid /ha:lijdj/ > ME halidai /ha:lidi/
Consonant changes. By the 14th c. most of the consonants were pronounced as in MnE.
Consonants that were pronounced in ME but have since become silent in certain positions are:
k before n knyght /knixt/
/x/ (gh) knyght /knixt/
g before n gnawe /gnauw/
l before f, v, k calf /kalf/ ; halve /halv/ ; folk /folk/
w before r write /wri:t/