1. History of English: An Historical Example
Language Change
History of English: An Historical Example

2. English History Overview
5000 BC – Proto-Indo-European (PIE), Indo-European
1000 BC – Celts settle British Isles
0-400 AD – Roman Empire
450 – 1100 – Old English
AD – Germanic tribes defeat Celts: English ancestors (Angle/Saxon/Jutes) spoke different dialects of Low German & some borrowings from Latin (defeat of King Arthur, a Romanized Celt)
ca. 600 AD – England converted to Christianity: Latin influence
750 AD – Beowulf, one of earliest extant texts
ca – Alfred the Great (Norse influence: they, their, them, are, 3rd singular /-s/, steak, die, loan….)

3. Beowulf
The image above contains the first line and half of Beowulf from the first leaf of the manuscript: HWÆT WE GARDE na in gear dagum þeod cyninga
“What! We Spear-Danes in yore-days tribe-kings’…” Because there were sounds in Old English ( AD) that were not thought to be represented by the Roman alphabet, Old English used runic characters for those sounds. The runes were "asc" (pronounced "ash") (æ), "eth" (ð), "thorn" (þ), and "wen" (looks similar to a "p" but with a smaller curved bow).

4. English History (con’t)
1066 AD – Norman Conquest: French influence
1200 AD – Normandy and England are separated
13th-14th c. – Growing sense of Englishness
– Chaucer
– Early Modern English
1476 – First English book printed
– Shakespeare (Greek and Latin borrowings)
16th-19th c. – Imperialism (Swahili, Hindi, Tamil, Chinese, etc. via the colonies)
1700-Present – Modern English

5. Linguistic Chronology of English
Prehistory
Dates
Important events
Literature/lang.
Proto-European to Germanic
Pre-500 AD
Celts – Romans – Germanic (Anglo/Saxon/Jutes) – Anglo/Saxon
Grimm’s Law: First Germanic Consonant Shift
OLD
ENGLISH
600 – 1100 AD
Conversion of Anglo-Saxons to Christianity
Latin alphabet
Norman Conquest (1066)
Beowulf
Loss of /x/, gain //, allophones become phones, lose of case endings, more rigid word order
MIDDLE
1100 – 1500 AD
Printing introduced to English by William Caxton (1475)
Chaucer
Initial consonant clusters simplified
Great Vowel Shift in stressed syllables
Final vowel deletion [] in unstressed syllables
Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)
King James Bible (1611)
1st English Dictionary (1603)
MODERN
Early and Late
1700  present
English Renaissance
English Grammar (based on Latin model)
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary (1755)
Webster’s (American) (1828)
Oxford English Dictionary (12-volume)

6. Sound familiar? house, mouse, louse, out Old English: Modern English:
[ū]: [hūs], [mūs], [lūs], [ūt]
Modern English:
[aw]: [haws], [maws], [laws], [awt]
Virginia dialect (US) sounds like more like Old English than Modern English

7. The Regularity of Sound Change
Gradual
Every instance of the sound in question will eventually undergo the change, not in just one or two words only.
Eventually affecting all speakers of the language

8. Grimm’s Law (or the First Germanic Consonant Shift)
Aspirated voiced stops in Proto-IE became unaspirated in Proto-Germanic:
*bh, dh, gh become *b, d, g
Unaspirated voiced stops in Proto-IE became voiceless in Proto-Germanic;
b, d, g  become p, t, k
Voiceless stops in Proto-IE became voiceless fricatives in Proto-Germanic.
p, t, k  become f, þ, h
Demonstration
Web Link

10. Grimm’s Law at Work…

11. Practice Sanskrit pitar bhinádmi bhrátar Greek pater pheídomai phráter
Explain how the following sets of words do or do not illustrate Grimm’s Law (note: do not consider only initial consonants).
Sanskrit
pitar
bhinádmi
bhrátar
Greek
pater
pheídomai
phráter
Latin
findō
frāter
English
father
bite
brother

12. More Changes… Old English to Middle English
Loss of /x/ and //(voiceless velar fricative)
Spelled –ht (brought, night)
Sounded like German ich
Allophonic variants became phonemes:
‘wife’ and ‘wives’ – [v] was allophone of [f]
[f]/[v]: safe [sef] and save [sev]
Also: [s]/[z], []/[], []/[]
Loss of inflectional endings, resulting in more rigid word order.
Residuals: /-s/, /-th/, /-ende/ (later became /-ing/)

13. More Changes… Middle English
Simplification of some initial consonant sequences:
[kn] became [n] (knee)
]hl] became [l] (hlaf to loaf)
[hr] became [r] (hring to ring)
[wr] became [r] (wrong)
Vowel deletion in unstressed final syllables
name [ne•], laughed [•]
became [], []

14. Great Vowel Shift Middle English to Early Modern English
Affected seven long vowels and diphthongs in stressed syllables.
From: [Saw it is team to say the shows on the sarm fate noo.]
To: So it is time to see the shoes on the same feet now.
However, spelling often did not change!
[] = [team]
name [] became []

15. Great Vowel Shift (cont’d)

16. The Way We Were…. The Lord’s Prayer in Old English Form
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, Si þin nama gehalgod. to becume þin rice, gewurþe ðin willa, on eorðan swa swa on heofonum. urne gedæghwamlican hlaf syle us todæg, and forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgyfað urum gyltendum. and ne gelæd þu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfele. soþlice.
Old English version of the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), as given in the West Saxon Gospels

17. The Way We Are…
English Today