Module 1Historical LinguisticsPart 2

History of the English Language2nd Semester 1432-1433 AHDr. Abdel-Fattah Adel

Topics• History and Development of Historical

linguistics• Comparison of Traditional and Modern

Historical Linguistics• The History of the English Language as a

Cultural Subject.

History and Development of Historical linguistics

History and Development of Historical linguisticsEarly Interest:

• People have thought about the origin of languages for a long, long time.• Like other early looks into nature and the universe, the early ideas about language where at best obvious (realizing that two very similar languages were related) or lucky guesses, at worst dead wrong, and almost always ethno-centric (only paying attention to nearby languages.• This, of course, wasn't always their fault, since communication was so slow.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Greeks

• The Greeks simply considered most languages in Europe to be "Barbarian", even though there were certainly several distinct "Barbarian" languages).

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Romans

• One of the earliest observations about language was by the Romans. They noticed that Latin and Greek were similar. However, they incorrectly assumed that Latin came from Greek. The reality is that both came from Indo-European.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Middle Ages

• There were lots of people looking at languages in the middle ages. However, most of them were trying to show Hebrew giving rise to all of the world's languages, specifically European languages. This never really worked, since Hebrew is not directly related to Indo-European languages.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Early Modern Age

• When Europeans started travelling to India about 300 years ago, they noticed that Sanskrit, the ancient literary language of India, was similar to Greek, Latin, and other languages of Europe.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Early Modern Age

• In the late 18th century, it was first correctly theorized that Sanskrit and the languages of Europe had all come from the same language, but that that language was no longer living.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Early Modern Age

• This was the beginning of Indo-European. Since then, many languages from all over the world have been studied, and we are starting to get a good idea of how all the world's languages may be related.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Modern Age

• Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology, the study of ancient texts and documents dating back to antiquity.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Modern Age

• At first, historical linguistics was comparative linguistics. Scholars were concerned chiefly with establishing language families and reconstructing prehistoric proto-languages, using the comparative method and internal reconstruction.

• The focus was initially on the well-known Indo-European languages, many of which had long written histories.

History and Development of Historical linguisticsThe Modern Age

• Since then, there has been significant comparative linguistic work expanding outside of European languages as well.

• Most research is being carried out on the subsequent development of these languages, in particular, the development of the modern standard varieties.

Comparison of Traditional and Modern Historical Linguistics

Areas of Comparison1) Focus of Effort1) Internal vs. External Factors1) Centrality of Language Use1) Primary Subjects of Interest1) Methods1) Subject Matter

Focus of Effort

Modern TraditionalModern historical linguistics, however, focuses on the progress of language change, trying to analyze the cause or motivation, the spread and the modality of language change.

The focus of traditional historical linguistics lies in keeping records of language change in past times of a language or language family.

Internal vs. External Factors

Modern TraditionalModern historical linguistics puts its focal point on external factors, e.g., the social surroundings.

Traditional historical linguistics concentrates on language and its changes regarding internal factors.

Centrality of Language Use

Modern Traditional

In modern historical linguistics, the language use and the user are centered, claiming that grammar is shaped by discourse, and language is changed by the speakers.

For traditional historical linguistics the language structure and the language system are very important.

Primary Subjects of Interest

Modern Traditional

In modern historical linguistics, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics are also taken into account.

Traditional historical linguistics is mainly interested in phonology and morphology and not so much in syntax and semantics.

Methods

Modern Traditional

Modern historical linguistics is both qualitative and quantitative.

Traditional historical linguistics is based on qualitative assessments.

Subject Matter

Modern Traditional

Modern historical linguistics is also concerned with spoken language.

Traditional historical linguistics deals only with written language.

The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject

The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject

• The diversity of cultures that find expression in the English language is a reminder that the history of English is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1,500 years.

The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject

• It understates matters to say that political, economic, and social forces influence a language. These forces shape the language in every aspect, most obviously in the number and spread of its speakers, and in what is called “the sociology of language,” but also in the meanings of words, in the accents of the spoken language, and even in the structures of the grammar.

The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject

• The history of a language is intimately bound up with the history of the peoples who speak it.

The History of the English Language as a Cultural SubjectEnglish

• The English language of today reflects many centuries of development. The political and social events that have in the course of English history so profoundly affected the English people in their national life have generally had a recognizable effect on their language. • The Roman Christianizing of Britain in 597 • The Scandinavian invasions • The Norman Conquest • The Hundred Years’ War

The History of the English Language as a Cultural Subject

English

• References in scholarly and popular works to “Indian English,” “Caribbean English,” “West African English,” and other regional varieties point to the fact that the political and cultural history of the English language is not simply the history of the British Isles and of North America but a truly international history of quite divergent societies, which have caused the language to change and become enriched as it responds to their own special needs.

The Cycle of Language's Life• Moreover, English, like all other languages, is

subject to that constant growth and decay that characterize all forms of life. It is a convenient figure of speech to speak of languages as living and as dead.

The Cycle of Language's Life• Although we rarely think of language as

something that possesses life apart from the people who speak it, as we can think of plants or of animals, we can observe in speech something like the process of change that characterizes the life of living things.

Dead Languages!• When a language ceases to change, we call it a

dead language. • Classical Latin is a dead language because it has

not changed for nearly 2,000 years.

Change in Languages!Vocabulary• The change that is constantly going on in a living

language can be most easily seen in the vocabulary. Old words die out, new words are added, and existing words change their meaning. Much of the vocabulary of Old English has been lost, and the development of new words to meet new conditions is one of the most familiar phenomena of our language.

• Nice in Shakespeare’s day meant foolish; rheumatism signified a cold in the head.

Change in Languages!Pronunciation• Less familiar but no less real is the change of

pronunciation. A slow but steady alteration, especially in the vowel sounds, has characterized English throughout its history. Old English stān has become our stone; cū has become cow. Most of these changes are so regular as to be capable of classification under what are called “sound laws.”

Change in Languages!Grammar• Changes likewise occur in the grammatical forms

of a language. These may be the result of gradual phonetic modification, or they may result from the desire for uniformity commonly felt where similarity of function or use is involved. The person who says I knowed is only trying to form the past tense of this verb after the pattern of the past tense of so many verbs in English. This process is known as the operation of analogy, and it may affect the sound and meaning as well as the form of words.

Change in Languages!• Thus it will be part of our task to trace the

influences that are constantly at work, tending to alter a language from age to age as spoken and written, and that have brought about such an extensive alteration in English as to make the English language of 1000 quite unintelligible to English speakers of 2000.