1. The History of English Language
The Language Change
The History of English Language

2. Languages Change With Time
1. Linguistic changes are slow.
2. We know a great deal of the English
language because it has written records.

3. 3.The history of English reflects nonlinguistic history to some extent:
(a) Old English
(i.)449 Saxons invade Britain
(ii.)658 Caedmon’s “Hymn”
(iii.)8th C. Beowulf
(iv.)1066 Norman Conquest

4.  (b) Middle English
(i.)1387 Canterbury Tales
(ii.)1476 Caxton’s printing press
(iii.)1500 Great Vowel Shift
(c) 1500~Modern English

5. 4.Changes in a language refer to changes in the grammars of the speakers of the language,including phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantic components of the grammar.

6. The Regularity of Sound Change
1.The regular sound correspondences are due to the changes in the languages’ phonological system. It’s sounds that change, not words.
2. Regular sound correspondences can be found among older and newer forms of English, different languages as well as dialects of one language. There are also regular sound correspondences in the Native American languages Cree and Ojibwa.

7. e.x.
(a.) Middle English Modern English m\s /mu:s/  mouse/maws/ h\s /hu:s/  house /haws/ g\s /ge:s /  geese /gi:s /

8. (b.) English French Spanish / f / / p / / p / father pBre padre fish paisson pescado

9. (c.) Southern English Non-Southern
pie / pa: / pie / paj /
/ a: / / aj /

10. 3. Genetically related languages were dialects of the same languages at an earlier stage. That is, they developed from the same “parent” language. For example, English and French are genetically related languages.

11. Ponological Change 1. Ponological Change:
(a.) Old English  Modern English
(i.)night [ni:xt] [najt]
(ii.)drought [druxt] [drawt]
(iii.)saw [so:] [s]
(b.) / x /  / k /
eolh [(lx] [(lk]
(c.) / x /  / o /
holh [hlx] hollow [hlow]

12. 2. An interaction of phonological rules may
result in the addition or loss of phonemes
and in changes in the lexicon.

13. e.x.
 The /s/ in the verb “house” and the // in the verb “bathe” were pronounced /z/ and // because of the rule “When a voiceless consonant phoneme occurs between two vowels, voice that consonant.
 Later, the final vowel was deleted from the verbs “house” and “bathe” because of the rule “deleting unstressed short vowels at the end of words.”

14. 3.The set of phonological rules can change both by addition and loss of rules. (The two rules mentioned above were lost eventually.)

15. The Great Vowel Shift (See pp. 326-7)
The Great Vowel Shift is a primary source of many of the spelling “inconsistencies” of English because our spelling system still reflects the way words were spelled before the Great Vowel Shift took place.

16. Morphological Change
1.The suffix-ize means “to make---“ : finalize  to make final privatize  to make private
2.Classical Latin case endings were added to
a noun sten according to its function in the
sentence.

17. Case Noun Stem Case Ending
nominative lup + us lupus The wolf runs.
genitive lup + i lupi A sheep in wolf’s clothing.
dative lup + ō lup ō Give food to the wolf
accusative lup + um lupum I love the wolf.
ablative lup + e lupe Run from the wolf.
vocative lup + e lupe Wolf, come here!

18.  Case OE Singular OE Plural
nominative stān “stone” stānas “stones”
genitive stānes “stone’s” stāna “stones’”
dative stāne “stone” stānum “stones”
accusative stān “stone” stānas “stones”
Modern English lengthens the “stem” vowel and reduce the “suffix” vowel of words. Certain short unstressed vowels are dropped out finally.

19.  Syntactic Change
1. Modern English is an SVO(Subject-Verb Object)
language. The syntactic rules permit less variation
in word order. In Modern English, negation is
expressed by adding not or do not. We may also
express negation by adding words like never or no:
I am going  I am not going I went  I did not go I go to school  I never go to school. I want food.  I don’t want any food;
I want no food.

20. 2. contraction rules: do not  don’t will not  won’t
ME : the negative element occurs at the
end of the word because “not” is
put after the auxiliary
OE : the negative element occurs at the
beginning of the contraction because
it preceded the auxiliary in sentences.

21. 3. “comparative” and “superlative” constructions:
ME : We form the comparative by
adding - er to the adjective or by
inserting more before it, the
superlative is formed by adding – est
or by inserting most.
OE : Double comparatives and double
superlatives occur, which today are
ungrammatical : more gladder, more
lover, most royallest.

22. Lexical Change Lexical changes include: (1) the addition of new words
(2) changes in the meanings of words
(3) the loss of words

23. 1. New Words Methods to form new words:
(a) Compounding: the recombining of old words
to form new ones with new meanings. ex. bigmouth, chickenhearted, egghead … etc.
(b) Derivational processes ex. Uglify  uglification finalize  finalization
(c) Other methods: word coinage, deriving
words from names, blends … etc.

24. 2. Borrowings
Borrowing from other language is another important source of new words. It occurs when one language takes a word or morpheme from another language and adds it to the lexicon.
(a) Two divisions: (i) native words (ii) nonnative words (loan words)

25. (b) Ways: (i) directly ex. Feast (ii) indirectly ex. Algebra
(c) Introduce what languages did English
borrow from ? Similarly, other languages
borrow words.
e.x. Japanese from Chinese and European words
(esp. American English)

26. 3.  Loss of Words
A word is lost through inattention: nobody thinks of it; nobody uses it; and it fades out of the language.

27. 4. Semantic Change (a) Broadening: become widen and general
ex. Holiday, picture
(b) Narrowing: become specific
ex. Meat, deer
(c) Meaning shifts
ex. Bead, silly

28. Reconstructing “Dead” Languages
1.The branch of linguistics that deals with
how languages change, what of changes
occur, and why they occurred is called
historical and comparative linguistics.
2. In 1786 Sir William Jones suggested the
three languages (Sanskrit, Greek, and
Latin) had the same origin.

29. 3. Rasmus Rask pointed out the relationships
among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Persian,
Germanic, Lithuanian, and Armenian.
He was the first scholar to describe
formally the regularity of certain
phonological differences between related
languages.
4 . Grimm’s Law can be expressed in terms
of natural classes of speech sounds: (a.) voiced aspirates  deaspirated (b.) voiced stops  voiceless (c.) voiceless stops fricatives

30. 5.  Verner’s Law:
When the preceding vowel was unstressed, f, T, and x underwent a further change to b, d, and .
6. Neo-Grammarians:
They viewed linguistics as a natural science and believed that laws of sound change were unexceptionable natural laws.

31. 7. Stammbaum (family tree) theory:
Some linguists thought that languages had a “life cycle” and developed according to evolutionary laws. Each language can be traced to a common ancestor.
8. The comparative method is the method
of reconstruction of a parent language
from a comparison of its daughters.

32. 9. Nineteenth-century linguistic, beginning
with August Schleicher in 1861, were
able to initiate the reconstruction of the
long-lost parent language so aptly
conceived by Jones, Bopp, Rask, and
Grimm.That is the language called Indo-
European.

33. Historical Evidence 1. Earlier pronunciation is provided by
non-English words used in the
manuscripts of English.
2. Misspell words according to the way
they pronounce them.
3.Clues are provided by the writings of the
prescriptive grammarians of the period.
4.Clues to earlier pronunciation are provided
by puns and rhymes in literature.

34. various words in several dialects, we can
5.By comparing the pronunciation of
various words in several dialects, we can
reconstruct earlier forms and see what
changes took place in the inventory of
sounds and in the phonological rules.

35. language families and reconstruct the
6.The different spellings are also a clue. Linguists have been able to establish
language families and reconstruct the
histories of such individual languages.
They first study the languages and
dialects spoken today and compare the
sound systems, the vocabularies, and
the syntax, seeing what correspondences
exist.

36. The Genetic Classification of Languages
1. Historical and comparative linguists
classify languages into families and
reconstruct earlier forms of the ancestral
languages.
(a.) Fifth century, Germanic is the parent of
Modern English and Modern German.
(b.) English and German are sisters.
(c.) An early form of Germanic and an early
form of Latin were sisters. The respective
offspring are cousins.

37. 2. A language dies when no children learn it.
(a.) All the speakers of the language are
amihilated by some cataclysm.
(b.) The speakers of the language are
absorbed by another culture that speak
a different language.

38. Why Do Languages Change?
1.  No one knows how or why languages
change.
2. Linguistic changes do not happen
suddenly; changes are more gradual,
particularly changes in the phonological
and syntactic system.

39. 3. A basic cause of change is the way
children acquire the language.
4. The reason for some changes are
relatively easy to understand.
5. Phonological changes in languages:
(a) Some sounds and combinations of
sounds are “earlier to pronounce” than
other.
(b) Vowels are frequently nasalized before
nasal consonants.

40. 6.  Internal borrowing: We borrow from one part of the grammar
and apply the rule generally. It is also
called analogic change.
7.  Many factors contribute to linguistic change:
simplification of grammars, elaboration
to maintain intelligibility, borrowing and
lexical additions.
8.  Language changes for the same reason all
things change: that it is nature of things to
change.

41. Languages of the World
At the end of this chapter, Table 8.1, which includes a number of the world’s languages, shows genetic relationships, the principal geographic areas where the language is spoken, and the number of speakers.

42. Summary 1. Evidence of linguistic change is found in the
regular correspondences.
2.  Phonological, morphological, syntactic,
lexical and semantic changes occur.
3.  Words, morphemes, phonemes, and rules of
all types may be added, lost or altered.
4. The meaning of words and morphemes may
expand, narrow or shift.

43. 5. The study of linguistic change is called
historical and comparative linguistics.
6. A particularly effective technique for
reconstructing “dead” languages is the
comparative method.
7. There are language universals as well as
differences.