History of English

words that have a common etymological origin

• examines the historical development of a language, i.e. language change

• All languages change continuously in systematic ways

• External factors, e.g. colonization, wars, political and social revolutions, language policies, prescriptivism

• Internal factors, e.g. need to regularize irregularities within the system, sound change triggering another

• Old English (ca. 450 – ca. 1150)

• Middle English (ca. 1150 – ca. 1500)

• Early Modern English (ca. 1500 – ca. 1700)

• Modern English (since ca. 1700)

• 410 AD: Roman troops withdrawn from Celtic Britain

• ca. 449 AD: Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) settle in England; Celts are driven to the North and the West

• Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: the country has 7 kingdoms with constantly changing status

• Old English dialects emerge: West-Saxon, Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian

• 6th Century: beginning of Christianisation from Rome

• 9th Century: Wessex gains influence under Egbert until all England acknowledge him as leader

• West-Saxon is the predominant dialect and becomes literary standard

• 9th – 11th Century: Scandinavian invasion

1. Early raids

2. Invasion of large armies and extensive settlement; establishment of the Danelaw in the Treaty of Wedmore between King Alfred and Guthrum

3. Period of political adjustment and

assimilation

• Old English influenced by Old Norse

• Predominantly Germanic vocabulary

• Highly inflected (synthetic), e.g.

• marking of nouns, pronouns and

adjectives for case, number and

gender

• marking of verbs for person, number,

tense, mood, etc.

• Free word order

• 1066: Battle of Hastings, Norman Conquest

• Harold, the king of England, is killed in battle

• William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, is crowned king of England

• Removal of Anglo-Saxon nobility and clergy; introduction of Norman nobility

and clergy

• Norman French becomes the language of the court and the upper

classes; the lower classes speak English

• Extensive contact between English and French and strong influence of

French on the English language

• Massive borrowing from French especially with regard to

administration, law, art, architecture, court, etc. (ca. 30-40% of PDE

lexicon is French in origin)

• Simplification of inflectional system -> English becoming more

analytic (as opposed to synthetic)

• As a result, emergence of fixed word order (SVO)

• Loss of gender distinctions

• Beginning of the Great Vowel Shift

• 1476: William Caxton introduces the printing press in England ->

beginning of the standardization of English

• 16th Century: Renaissance; growing interest in ancient languages and

promotion of arts and humanities

• Beginning of the British Empire: colonialization of India and the

Americas

• Large influx of Latin and Greek borrowings; ‘inkhorn terms’, e.g.

anacephalize 'to recapitulate'

• Loss of remaining noun inflections (except s-genitive and plural)

• Verbal inflections reduced to -s, -est, -eth (e.g. thou goest, he

goes/goeth)

• Completion of the Great Vowel Shift (ca. 14th – 17th Century)

The Great Vowel Shift

• The Great Vowel Shift started in the 14th Century and was completed

roughly by 1700.

• It affected the seven Middle English long vowels /i:, e:, ε:, a:, ɔ:, o:, u:/

which were systematically raised or diphthongized.

• 1755: First dictionary by Samuel Johnson

• English as a world language (through colonization) and lingua franca

• Sub-period: Present-Day English (since ca. 1900), rise of Received

Pronunciation (RP)

• Little inflection (8 inflectional morphemes) -> analytic language

• Only traces of the Old English case system: possessive -s and object (him, her, them) vs. subject (he, she, they) pronouns

• Opposition between thou/thee and you given up in favour of you

• Disconnect between spelling and pronunciation

• Celtic: place names, e.g. London, Kent, York, Cumbria

• Latin:

• Roman invasions (55 BC and 43 AD): street, mile, pound, mint, wine, mass

• Roman dominance (until 410 AD): place names ending in -chester, -wick, -caster

• 6th Century missionaries: words from religion and education (e.g. priest,

school)

• Middle English & Early Modern English Period: words from science,

philosophy, religion; ‘inkhorn terms’

• Germanic: articles, most pronouns, primary verbs (be, do, have), key lexical verbs (e.g. come, make, put, etc.), body parts

• Scandinavian/Old Norse: everyday words (e.g. knife, egg, sky), some pronouns (e.g. them, their, they), place names in -by, -kirk

• French: words from court, administration, law, art, food, architecture

(e.g. chocolate, detail, entrance)

• Colonies: e.g. kimono, sushi, coffee, kiwi, curry

• Comparatively large lexicon

• Many synonyms on different stylistic levels (e.g. freedom vs. liberty)

• Semantic differentiation

• Morphological dissociation (e.g. mouth – oral vs. Mund– mündlich)