1 a history of english chapter 2 the pre-history of english
TRANSCRIPT
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A History of English
Chapter 2
The Pre-history of English
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The Indo-European Languages and Linguistic Relatedness
The Beginnings
Timeline: from the first indications of nomadic tribes in Lapland around 8000 BCE to the settlement of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes in 449 CE
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700 English
500 Armenian
400 Gothic
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200 Latin
400 Classical Sanskrit
800 Greek
1000 Old Persian
1200 Hittite
1500 Vedic Sanskrit
3000 Proto Indo-European
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Sources:
Archaeological record
Linguistic reconstruction
Insights from modern dialectology
Anthropology (Agriculture)
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The Development of Historical Linguistics
Evolutionary Nature: Charles Darwin
Analogy to biological theories: life-cycle, genealogy, family tree, common ancestors
August Schleicher, Family Tree Theory/Stammbaumtheorie
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Genetic Relatedness
Indo-European language family and its sub-families
Biological metaphor: various languages belong to different families and bear offspring
Family tree metaphor
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Genetic RelatednessExampleEnglish German Swedish Finnish
one eins en yksi
two zwei två kaksi
three drei tre kolme
four vier fyra neljä
five fünf fem viisi
six sechs sex kuusi
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Numerals in Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages
English Gothic Latin Greek Sanskrit Chinese Japanese
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
ains
twai
Trija
fidwor
fimf
saihs
sibun
ahtau
niun
taihun
unus
duo
tres
quattuor
quinque
sex
septem
octo
novembe
decem
heis
duo
treis
tettares
pente
heks
hepta
okto
ennea
deka
ekas
dva
trayas
catvaras
panca
sat
sapta
asta
nava
dasa
i
erh
san
su
wu
liu
ch’i
pa
chiu
shih
hitotsu
futatsu
mittsu
yottsu
itsutsu
muttsu
nanatsu
yattsu
kokonotsu
to
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Sound correspondences in IE English Latin Greek Irish
fishfatherfootfor
sixsevensweetsalt
newnightnine
piscispaterped–pro
sexseptemsuavissal
novusnoct–novem
ikhthyspaterpod–para
hexaheptahedyshal
neosnykt–(en)nea
iasgathairtroighdo
seseachtmillissalann
nua(in)nochtnaoi
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Genetic RelatednessExample
Mann, man, manHand, hand, handTier, djur, deer
The individual differences depend on the history of each language after it has split off from the larger group and developed independently
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Genetic RelatednessCognates
English German Swedish French Italian Spanish
winter Winter vinter hiver inverno invierno
foot Fuss fot pied piede pie
two zwei två deux due dos
me mich mig moi me me
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Sir William JonesThird Anniversary Discourse Calcutta 1786The Sanskrit Language, whatever be ist antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Celtic […] had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the Old Persian might be addded to the same family.
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Sound correspondences between Sanskrit,
Latin and Greek
Sanskrit Latin Greek
asmiasiastismassthasanti
sumesestsumusestissunt
einieiestiesmenesteeisi
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The Indo-European Language Family: eminent early scholars
Franz Bopp (1816)
Rasmus Rask (1814): the first linguist to describe formally the regularity of sound changes
Jakob Grimm
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The Indo-European Language Family
Proto-language: unitary language
Ursprache; parent language
Grundsprache: Latin for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Rumanian
Sister language: Latin and Greek
Daughter language: French of Latin
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The language family metaphor
A parent language does not live on after a daughter language is born
Birth metaphor is incorrect
Contact is still there between sister languages
Languages diverge as well as converge
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August Schleicher
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Latin Old English Gothic
/p/ /f/
/t/ /θ/
/k/ /x/h/
/b/ /p/
/d/ /t/
/g/ /k/
pedumpiscis
trestu
cordemcentum
turba ‘crowd’
edodecem
agergenus
fotfisc
threethou
hearthundred
thorp ‘village’
eatten
acrekin
fotusfiskis
thrirthuu
hairtohund
itantaihun
akrskuni
IE Old English Gothic
/bh/ /b//dh/ /d//dh/ /d/
*bhero*dhura*ghostis
berandurugasts
baíradaúrgiest
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On comparative reconstruction
Internal reconstruction
Reconstruction of languages that do no longer exist
pater, */pEter/
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Indo-European 500 AD
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Indo-European 500 BC
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The Indo-European World
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Indo-European Subfamilies in Europe
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IE World
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Centum and Satem
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The Sun in Indo-European
Classical Greek: helios
New Greek illios
Latin sol
Italian sole
French soleil
Spanish sol
Rumanian soare
Old Irish grian
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New Irish grian
Welsh haul
Breton heol
Gothic sauil, sunno
Old Norse sol, sunna
Danish sol
Swedish sol
Middle English sonne
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Modern English sunDutch zonOld High German sunnaMiddle High German sunneNew High German sonneLithuanian sauléLettic sauleSerbo Croatian sunce
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Czech slunce
Russian solnce
Sanskrit suar
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CelticKeltoi (5th century BC), Proto-Celtic; Gauls; Insular Celtic (British Isles), Continental Celtic, *kw- either q- or p-P-Celtic: Brythonic; pedwarWelsh, Cornish, Breton. CumbricQ-Celtic: Goidelic; ceathairIrish, Manx, Scottish GaelicWelsh in Patagonia, ArgentinaGaelic in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, CanadaDramatic decline of Celtic languages: Cornish, Manx have died out; Celtic revivalIrish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh still spoken by bilingual speakers; about 20% claim knowledge of Welsh
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Germanic language zones
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Germanic languages
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Germanic
Proto-GermanicEast Germanic
Gothic: Ulfilas (4th CE); Crimean Gothic
North Germanic: Old Norse as common language
Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic
West GermanicLow Germanic: Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, EnglishHigh Germanic: German (Low, High)
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From Indo-European to Germanic
Prosody: from free pitch accent to strong fixed stress accent
The Consonant System: Sound Shifts
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Grimm’s Law or The First Consonant Shift
Stops Labial Dental Velar Labio-velar
Palatal
[-voice] p t k kw k’
[+voice] b d g gw g’
[+ voice][+ asp]
bh dh gh ghw g’h
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Germanic Consonant Phonemes from IE stopsf q h
p t k
b d g
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Sound Laws: ‘Grimm’s Law’
Voiceless stops > voiceless fricatives
Voiced stops > voiceless stops
Voiced aspirated stops > voiced stops
Exceptions dependent on phonetic environment
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Verner’s Law (1875)
centum, hundred, patér, fæder, wearD, worden, freas, froren, was, were
The new sound correspondences were in force when (1) the stress was not on the vowel immediately preceding, and (2) the sound in question was bounded by elements that had the feature [+ voice] (either vowels or voiced consonants)
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The Vowel System
I,e, a, o, u, Eei, ai, oi, eu, au, ou
ablaut, vowel gradation: sing, sang, sung
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Morphology in IE and Germanic
three numbers: sg, pl, dual
three genders: masc, fem, neutr
eight cases
strong and weak adjectives: after determiner, no determiner: se goda man, god man
verb marked person, number, aspect, mood (aspect reduced to two tenses in Germanic)
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Morphology continued
three voices: active, passive, middle
Germanic had five moods: indicative, subjunctive, optative, imperative, injunctive
seven major morphological verb classes
dental preterite verbs (weak verbs) in Germanic
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Typological classification
Syntactic universals: SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSVStrawberries taste good; Strawberries, I like, raspberries make me sickImplicational universalsMorphological Typology: isolating, agglutinating, fusional/inflectional, (polysynthetic, inorporating)Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Language Contact and Language Change
Why do languages change? The actuation problemGeography as a major factorLanguage Contact: adstratum, superstratum, substratumThe need to dispersalRetention of features as a counter tendency to language contact: spread of English as a case in point