1. Lingua Inglese I 2014-2015 Daniela Salusso
LAUREA TRIENNALE
I ANNO L-12 , CODE: LIN.0009
9 CREDITS, 54 HOURS
SCIENZE DELLA MEDIAZIONE LINGUISTICA

2. Information about the course
Class starts at 8:15 p.m. and ends at 9:45 p.m.
EXAM PROGRAMME
a written exam
it will consist in activities and questions, in English, based on the course contents and on the set book
it can be taken only once per session
students must have passed the first year prova propedeutica (or lettorato), whose result will be integrated with the mark of the lingua inglese course

3. EXAM SESSIONS
PROVE PROPEDEUTICHE (lettorato): 3 exams per year
1 in the Summer Session 2014, 1 in the Autum Session 2014, 1 in the Winter Session 2015
LINGUA INGLESE : 8 per year
4 in the summer session 2014 (1 in May, 2 in June, 1 in July)
2 in the autumn session 2014 (1 in September, 1 in November)
2 in the winter session 2015 (1 in January, 1 in February)

4. Course Timetable
Week 1: 9/10/11 February: Introduction – Language change and variation in English Week 2: 16/17/18 February :The history of English Week 3: 23/24/25 February: (follows) Week 4: 2/3/4 March: The pronunciation of English Week 5: 9/10/11 March: (follows) Week 6: 16/17/18 March: English grammar Week 7: 23/24/25 March: (follows) Week 8: 30/31 March/ 1 April: The English lexicon: from words to phraseology Easter break: 2-7 April – 8 April: No lesson Week 9: 13/14/15 Apr (follows) + exercises and exam practice This timetable is only “tentative” – if lessons are cancelled they will be added after the Easter break

5. Title of the course
“Introduction to present-day English: historical background, geographical spread and linguistic features”

6. Set book V. Pulcini, a cura di,
A Handbook of Present-day English, Carocci, Roma , 2009
(Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, pp )
* Chapter 5 will be covered in the second year

7. Becoming familiar with the handbook

8. Becoming familiar with the handbook
DIFFERENCES
SHARED FEATURES
Four chapters written by four lecturers in this university
(Mazzaferro, Pulcini,
Minutella, Prat)
(see Table of Contents pp. 7-9)
The history of English
The pronunciation of English
The grammar of English
English lexicon
Each chapter …
is composed of the main text, the chapter overview and a list of study questions and activities
is structured into titled and numbered sections
has key-terms and names in bold print (see analytic index)
has key concepts in the margin
has a selected bibliography of important references

9. Some features of an academic handbook
ACADEMIC ENGLISH
A handbook is written by experts to experts-to be.
e.g. concepts and terms, which are widely shared by the scientific community, are explained, or clarified through examples.
e.g. Different approaches and terminologies may be presented and compared
ACADEMIC CONVENTIONS
e.g. use of graphic devices (e.g italics), abbreviations and phonetic symbols (pp.11-15), cross-references (see Chapter 3, §4), bibliographic conventions in the text and in the final bibliographies

10. Aims of the course To understand where the English language comes from
To understand who speaks English, where and for what purposes
To understand how the English language works
To build good linguistic foundations for further research in any area of the English studies

11. Competences required
PRACTICAL COMPETENCE in the use of English, both spoken and written (language teaching and learning/EFL methodology)
SCIENTIFIC STUDY of English: based on data, making implicit knowledge explicit, using a metalanguage to talk about language (English linguistics)

12. Developing practical competence: self-study resources
Useful websites
BBC – learning English:
British Council – Learn English:
UsingEnglish.com:
Dictionaries
Oxford Paravia concise (EN-IT/IT-EN):
Cambridge Dictionaries Online (monolingual, different language varieties):

13. Why study linguistics?
5 Reasons: David Crystal on “Doing Linguistics”

14. Language change and variation in English

15. Language change and variation in English
Do languages change in time? Types of change: phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic
How do they change? Synchrony, diachrony, historical linguistics, history of the language, comparative linguistics, language family, Indo-European, Germanic family, Romance or Neolatin family
Why do they change? “external” (e.g. historical events, inventions, new ideas) versus “internal” (e.g. analogy, hypercorrection, push chain processes)
What is “the best form” of a language? (standard vs non-standard varieties)
What is the relationship between language and society? (sociolinguistics)
How and why did English spread in the world and become a global language? (from English to “Englishes”)

16. A very important question
Is the study of the history and varieties of English relevant to university students of English?

17. YES!!! For cultural reasons
To understand more about present-day English
- the gap between spelling and pronunciation
- the mixed nature of its lexis e.g. “liberty” vs “freedom”
- the existence of regular and irregular verbs
- the linguistic situation of present-day UK
To reinforce practical competence
- to improve pronunciation and grammatical correctness
- to expand lexical competence
- to be prepared to understand different varieties of English

18. Linguistic variability and change
Languages are living entities:
1) They change over time
2) They reflect the culture of the speech community in which they are employed
Language change along a historical continuum  the perspective is diachronic
Language variability according to socio-cultural factors  the perspective is synchronic

19. The synchronic approach

20. The synchronic approach …
... describes language as it is at a particular moment in time
... The object of its description is a variety referred to as ‘standard’
Standard variety: the language par excellence in terms of social prestige, language functions and domains of use.
Who speaks the standard variety of a language?
Educated people
In which contexts is the standard variety of a
language used?
Official circumstances (e.g. certain TV programmes – BBC news; political discourse; school; university)
Is it more likely to be based on spoken or written language?
Written

21. Standard and non-standard varieties
Development of a standard form of English through long processes of selection (London English) and codification through grammars and dictionaries
Development of a standard accent : The Received Pronunciation (RP)
There is no intrinsic value in the features that characterize the standard variety of a language:
Favor (AmE) vs. favour (BrE)/ center (AmE) vs. centre (BrE)
Cockney (working class, East End of London)
glottal stop /ʔ/in the pronunciation of /t/: Saturday; quite well
Th-fronting: the fricative sounds /θ/ or /ð/  /f/ or /v/: brother [‘br∧ðə(r)]  [‘br∧və(r)]; three [θri:]  [fri:]
Double negative (many non-standard varieties) I didn’t say nothing!

22. Standard and non-standard varieties
Prescriptive views
Descriptive views
A prescriptive view of language formulates rules for how language should be used
Non-standard varieties are considered as ‘irregular’, ‘unsystematic’. They do not have the same status as standard varieties.
Language teaching tends to focus on standard varieties (e.g. pedagogical grammars)
A descriptive view is concerned with the language that people actually use  to understand how languages work
All the varieties of a language have equal status
Language varieties are studied to understand the relationship between a certain language form, i.e. a variant (e.g. a new word, a specific syntactic construction, a vowel sound), and social variables (e.g. social class, gender, age)

23. Sociolinguistics
The study of the relationship between language and society
The aim is to understand how language variability is related to social factors such as:
class: e.g. working-class, middle-class, upper-class
social networks: e.g. professional networks (colleagues, customers), family and friends
sex/gender identities: women vs. men (sex as a biological fact)/ gender identity as a social phenomenon
age: childhood, adolescence, adulthood
ethnicity: factors that create a sense of belonging to macro-groups  it replaces the concepts of race, national origin and culture
Positive/negative attitudes (a variety may be perceived as less or more prestigious and useful than others)

24. Labov (1966): Linguistic variation and social class  positive attitudes
Labov studied the patterning of [r] pronunciation (r-full) in New York City before a consonant (fourth) and at the end of words (floor) as a sign of social prestige.
Speakers’ social class: (0-5) lower classes; (6-8) middle class; (9) upper-class.
Speech style: casual speech, careful speech, reading style, word lists, minimal pairs (god and guard, dock and dark)

25. Labov (1966): Linguistic variation and social class  positive attitudes
Hypercorrection: middle-class speakers conform to the prestige norm with higher frequency than the highest social class

26. Milroy (1992): Linguistic variation and social networks  negative attitudes
In Belfast urban vernacular, words such as pull, bull, wool are pronounced with the vowel sound [ʌ] instead of the standard sound [ʊ]
Milroy discovered that this non-standard variant was used considerably less by speakers with weak network ties with the local community
Strong networks support the maintenance of varieties even if they are stigmatized.
Milroy, J. (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell

28. The diachronic approach

29. The diachronic approach …
… focuses on language change over time
… defines the relationships among languages so as to understand how they ame to be as they are  comparative linguistics
… reconstructs the historical development of a specific language  history of language

30. Comparative linguistics
Which family does the English language belong to? Germanic languages
Which languages belong to the Germanic family? German, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Yiddish
What is the proto-language from which Germanic languages and other language families have descended? Indo-European

31. Indo-European Languages

32. Similarities among Indo-European languages
English: father mother three
Sanskrit: pitar matar trayas
Greek: pater mater treis
Latin: pater mater tres

33. Why and how do languages change in time?
External causes for change: they are extralinguistic or social factors
Technological innovation: e.g. online, freeware, netiquette; URL, HTML, PDF
New concepts and relevant vocabulary: e.g. sustainability, stakeholder, greenwashing
Military conquest: e.g. The Norman Conquest (XI century)  liberty, guardian, soldier, beauty, music, poet, dangerous, flower, pork, very […]
Immigration: Hispanic varieties of English in the USA  “Chicano English” of descendants of Mexican immigrants: distinct vowel sounds and intonation patterns
Internal causes for change: changes leading to balance and regularity in the language system
E.g. The Great Vowel Shift

34. How do new means of communication and technology change language?
Printing (1400 – 15th century) enabled new styles, new spelling and new punctuation systems to develop
The telephone (19th century) let new patters of dialogue emerge
With broadcasting (1920s) new styles came into being (sports commentaries, news reading, weather forecasting, chat shows)

35. How does the Internet affect the English language?
There have been no major changes in grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. Some changes are attested in punctuation, such as the use of emoticons. However, the English language has become expressively richer thanks to the development of new styles (e.g. the style used in chat rooms, virtual world games, the world wide web, s, etc.) (Crystal,

36. Is it possible to integrate sociolinguistics and the history of language?
The analysis of language use in social contexts applied to the history of language is difficult mainly for methodological reasons:
Lack of any spoken evidence for the earlier stages of the language
The difficulty of interpreting and dating changes in earlier written texts

37. Phonological change
It refers to any mutation within the sound system of a language
The Great Vowel Shift. Starting point: 15th century – Middle English period – end: 17th century - Modern English period

38. The Great Vowel Shift
A chain of changes affecting long vowels named push chain process
/i:/  [ɛi] [bi:t] > [bɛit] > [bəit] > [bʌit] (bite)
/e:/  /i:/ [me:t] > [mi:t] (meat)
/ɛ:/  /i:/  [mɛ:tə] > [mi:t] (meet)
In PDE meat and meet are homophones
/a:/  /ɛ:/ [nɑ:mə] > [nɛ:m] > [ne:m] > [neɪm] (name)
/u:/  [ɔu:] [u:] >[ɔu:]>[əu]>[ʌu]>[ɑu:] (house)
/o:/ /u:/ [bo:tə] > [bu:t] (boot)
/ɔ:/ /o:/ [bɔ:nə] > [bo:n] > (18th cent) [oʊ]/[əʊ] (bone, boat)
These changes partly explain the inconsistencies between spelling and pronunciation in PDE!!!

39. The Great Vowel Shift

40. Morpho-syntactic changes
Analogy: the extension of existing forms to create new forms, e.g. through suffixes and prefixes
E.g. complete/completion –> incomplete/incompletion
Hypercorrection: the speakers’ awareness of the social value of a given variant and the overuse of the more prestigious form
E.g. In some AmE varieties: fellow  *fella and yellow  *yella
umbrella  * umbrellow
Backformation: is the process of creating new forms, often by removing affixes:
E.g. editor  to edit; lazy  to laze

41. Semantic change
It indicates any mutation in the meaning of lexical items
It is commonly triggered by external causes, e.g. socio-cultural change, scientific and technological innovation and foreign language influence
Two main types of semantic change: change of meaning and change of connotation

42. Change of meaning Widening: the meaning of a lexical item is extended:
Dog (PDE) “any breed”  “a particular powerful breed of dog”
Cupboard (PDE) “a piece of furniture usually with shelves where to store food and crockery”  “a table upon which cups and other vessels were placed”
To grow (PDE) “to grow in any way”  “to get bigger”
Narrowing: the meaning of a lexical item is narrowed down to a specific meaning:
Meat (PDE) “edible flesh of animals”  “food”
To starve (PDE) “to die of hunger”  “to die”

43. Change of connotation
Pejoration: the meaning of a lexical item acquires negative connotations
Knave (PDE) “rogue, dishonest man”  cnafa (OE) “youth, child”
Silly (PDE) “foolish, lacking seriousness”  sely (ME) “happy, innocent”
Amelioration: the meaning of a lexical item acquires positive connotations
Queen (PDE) “a woman sovereign, the wife of the king”  cwēn (OE) “woman, wife”
Knight (PDE) “a warrior serving a king”  cniht (OE) “boy, servant”

44. Historical Periods and Linguistic Phases
1. The Anglo-Saxon period 2. The Norman period 3. Modern period 4. 20th Century
1. Old English, OE ( )
2. Middle English , ME ( )
3. Modern English, ModEngl. ( )
4. Present-day English (PDE)
(to the present)

45. The History of English in ten minutes

46. Old English

47. English is a Germanic language
The reconstructed proto-language from where Germanic derives is Indo-European
It is difficult to locate and date the origin of Germanic languages exactly  lack of relevant documentation

48. Old English period ( )
this term refers to Germanic dialects spoken by Jutes, Angles and Saxons: Kentish, West-Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian
the West-Saxon reign was the most important religious, military and cultural centre in Europe
West-Saxon was considered the first standard written language, associated with political, military and cultural power in society

49. Major historical events leading to the OE period
Stonehenge, about 3, BC
100 BC the first Celts appeared in Britain
55-54 BC Julius Caesar invaded Britain ( …and the Romans left it in the 5th century)
5th century: some Germanic tribes (Anglo-Saxons and Jutes) arrived in England and forced the Celts to move west and north

50. Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

51. The Celts
Indo-European people who lived in Europe from 2000 BC to 100 AD
they inhabited the British Isles before the Roman and Anglo-Saxon invasions
names of Celtic origin: London, Leeds, Avon, Thames, Kent, Cornwall
very few Celtic words in Old English
Celtic languages spoken today: Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic (Breton)

52. Stonehenge (2500 BC)

53. Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument, one of the most famous sites in the world.

54. The Roman period (55 BC – 400 AD)
The name Britain comes from the Greek word Pretani (PDE Britons) (Πρετανι), probably of Celtic origins. It was mispronounced by the Romans, and was used to name the Romance province of Britannia
In BC Julius Caesar invaded Britain, but the army occupied the island only a century later in 43 AD
Political and economic reasons for the Roman invasions:
The Celts of Britain were protecting and hiding the Gauls against whom the Romans were fighting
Britain was an important food producer because of its mild climate

55. The Roman baths of Bath

56. The Roman Baths complex is a site of historical interest in the English city of Bath. It is a well-preserved Roman site for public bathing. Clean spa water can be drunk by visitors.

57. Hadrian’s Wall

58. Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain
Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian, it was the first of two fortifications built across Great Britain.

59. Angles, Saxons and Jutes (c.400 AD – c.1150 AD)
In the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived in England.
The Romans had left the island in 409 AD following the progressive weakening of the empire due to Germanic attacks in European mainland.
The Celts had to defend themselves alone. They were gradually forced to move north and west.
Language: Old English period: 700 – c1150 AD
“Old English” refers to four Germanic dialects: Kentish, West-Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian
What happened between the 5th and the 8th century which led to the shaping of Old English?

60. Christianisation of Britain
6th century
introduction of the Latin alphabet
abandonment of the Runic alphabet by the Anglo-Saxons
from the 9th to the 11th centuries manuscripts were translated from Latin into Old English
Latin and Greek gave Old English a wide range of Gospel words related to religion and spirituality

61. Runic Alphabet (Futhark)

62. The Scandinavian invasion (8th century)
The first settlers were located in the north-east of England.
They expanded all through the island until King Alfred the Great, the head of the West Saxon region, defeated them in the 9th century (887 AD).
English toponyms in -by are Danish in origin: Rugby, Derby, Whitby (the Danish word by meant ‘farm’ or ‘town’).
Simple-life words borrowed into English from Danish: law, band, odd, rotten, rugged, die

63. Linguistic features of OE
Latin alphabet, with some differences from PDE (e.g. the consonant thorn, or þorn, <þ>)
nouns, adjectives and pronouns were inflected for case, number and gender (synthetic versus analytic language)
two types of verbs (strong and weak) = regular and irregular verbs in PDE
word order was free
lexis was mainly Germanic but included words of Celtic (names of places, e.g. London) , Latin (e.g. schol from schola) and Scandinavian origin (e.g. landes mann = native in PDE)

64. Ælfric’s Colloquy (c.998) OE:
We cildra biddaþ þe, eala lareow, þæt þu tæce us [...]
Latin:
Nos pueri rogamus te, magister, ut doceas nos [...]
PDE:
Master, we young men would like you to teach us [...]

65. Food for thought
on youtube: “The Story of English” Episode 2 The Mother Tongue
“The Story of English” Episode 1 An English-speaking World
Pronunciation of Old English,