Exploring the history of english

1.

EXPLORING THE
HISTORY OF
ENGLISH
Albina Koshtura
Lokotosh Dmitry

2.

LANGUAGE FAMILY TREES
One common way of representing the
development of languages is to use a
family tree to show the various
relationships that exist between them.
If you trace the line back you can see that
it is a language of West Germanic descent,
which itself derives from a language called
Indo- European.

3.

THE FUTHORC
One of the most significant
consequences of this was the
development of a script for writing
Old English, based on the Roman
alphabet. Prior to this, the method
of writing Old English was to use
what are known as runes .
The set of Anglo- Saxon runes is
commonly known as the futhorc.
There were approximately 32
runes in use during the AngloSaxon period

4.

REGIONS AND
DIALECTS
DIALECTAL DIFFERENCES
In an Old English text what we know
about Old English dialects is as a result
of studying texts that exist in multiple
versions.

5.

PLACE NAMES
Studying place names can give us an insight into
the geographical settlement of particular groups
of people, including when such groups settled.
Knowing this can help us in tracing the origins of
English and can sometimes provide insights into
the origins of particular dialects.

6.

TYPES OF PLACE NAMES
A habitative
■
■
A habitative place name is one which denotes inhabited
places such as farms, buildings, enclosures, etc. An
example is Lenham, which is developed from a compound
of the personal name Lēana and hām, the Old English
word for ‘village’ (literally, ‘Lēana’s village’).
many habitative place names are a compound of two
elements;
Example is Heckmondwike , a compound of the personal name
Hēamund and Old English wīc (‘house’, ‘dwelling place’ or
‘village’).
Topographical
■
Topographical place names describe some feature of the
landscape – either natural or artificial; for example, a
tree, a ford, a river, etc.
■
Compounding of elements is common and this gives us
such names as Bradford (broad + ford), Whitchurch
(white + church; ‘white’ perhaps in reference to white
limestone), and Millbrook (mill + brook). It is also
common to find personal names as the first element in a
topographical compound. An example is Huddersfi eld ,
which derives from a compound of the Old English
personal name Hūd(a) or Hūdrǣd and feld, meaning ‘open
land’ (or ‘field’ in Present Day English).

7.

FROM OLD ENGLISH TO MIDDLE ENGLISH
English
Loanwords
In the early part of the Old English period, borrowing was uncommon
though some of the vocabulary of Old English was Latin in origin,
having originally been borrowed into Germanic dialects before the
arrival of the Anglo- Saxons in England.
During the Middle English period, borrowing as a source of new
words increased and Latin and French loanwords entered English.
When investigating the borrowing of words into English, we need to
be aware that words are not always borrowed directly. For example,
word charter , which was borrowed into Middle English from the Old
French chartre, which itself came from the Latin charta.
Latin And
French

8.

Scandinavian
loanwords
Unsurprisingly, the arrival of the Scandinavians led to the
borrowing of numerous words from Scandinavian dialects
into Old English.
Of those still used in Present Day English that have a
Scandinavian origin, Björkman ( 1969 ) lists, among many
others: anger , bask , booth, meek , rotten , rugged , same
and sly.
Latin loanwords
In the Middle English period, Latin
borrowings included the
following: implement ,exorbitant,
legitimate, simile, cardamon and so on.
French loanwords
Serjeantson (1935) lists the following words, among
many others, as being borrowed into English from
French during the Middle English period. Those are:
capon , court , rent , ginger , justice , grace , bacon ,
chaplain , cardinal , mercy , purple , nunnery , acquit ,
debt , challenge.
.

9.

As we saw, one of the possible explanations
for why such changes occurred is a social
CODIFICATION
AND ATTITUDES
TOWARDS
ENGLISH
explanation; namely that attitudes towards
particular varieties of speech may have caused
speakers to alter their way of speaking. The
important point here is that attitudes to
language use can often determine its
development.

10.

A TABLE ALPHABETICALL
The first monolingual English dictionary
was Robert Cawdrey’s A Table
Alphabeticall , published in 1604. From
the perspective of modern linguistics, it
is easy to be critical of the problems with
such early work on the English language,
and so it is important to remember the
pioneering steps that such early writers
on language were taking.

11.

Problems with
prescriptivism
In linguistics, being prescriptive involves telling
people how they should use language – e.g. telling
them that they should always use a capital letter at
the start of a new sentence.
A descriptive rule is simply a rule based on having
observed what people do when they use language.
A descriptive rule regarding Standard English, for
example, is that we put an inflection on the thirdperson singular form of the verb.

12.

FURTHER ELEMENTS OF GRAMMAR IN EARLY MODERN
ENGLISH
In Early Modern English the second- person pronoun was socially marked, as well as having
different forms depending on whether it was first, second- or third- person, singular or
plural. A person’s social status could be acknowledged in the pronoun you chose to address
them with (compare, for example, thou and you )

13.

GRADABLE ADJECTIVES
Adjectives modify nouns can appear
Gradable adjectives are those that have
before the head noun of a noun phrase or
comparative and superlative forms. For
they can follow a verb and relate back to
example, big (base form), bigger
the noun phrase that is the subject of the
(comparative form), biggest (superlative
sentence.
form).

14.

ENGLISH IN THE NEW WORLD
As English developed in North
America, it was subject to contact with
the languages of other settlers and with
those languages of the Native
Americans. And as American English
progressed into the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, it became a
powerful vehicle for the expression of
national identity.

15.

LOANWORDS IN AMERICAN ENGLISH
Contact with other languages
inevitably led to the borrowing of words
into the varieties of English spoken by the
colonists. A selection of loanwords
includes vocabulary taken from the
following languages.

16.

THE POLITICS OF SPELLING
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the American lexicographer Noah
Webster took an opposing view to Swift and
his companions and was more interested in
radically changing the language rather than
preserving it in the way that Swift and others
had proposed. He saw his efforts as
contributing to the development of a growing
American national identity.

17.

Carney summarises some of Webster’s initial
proposals for spelling reform as follows:
Superfluous vowels
Superfluous
vowelssuch as wordfinal <e>, should be
removed:definit ,
disciplin , doctrin ,
granit , imagin , maiz ,
nightmar , vultur
Superfluous
consonants
Superfluous consonants
should be removed:
chesnut ,crum ,
diaphram , ile , thum
Vowel digraphs
Vowel digraphs should
be simplified:fether ,
lepard , cloke , juce.

18.

PRESENT DAY
ENGLISHES
CIRCLES OF ENGLISH
In the Inner Circle are those countries
where English is the first language of the
majority of the population.
The Outer Circle countries are those where
English is not necessarily the first language
of the majority of the population but where
English has some form of official
recognition, perhaps as the official language
of government.
Finally, the Expanding Circle countries are
those where English is not a first language
and has no official status but where it is
spoken widely as a foreign language.

19.

Types of word formation:
Acronymisation
formed from the initial letters of some
or all of the words in a particular phrase.
found as names of organisations(for
example NATO-North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation),
in institutions, where they are used as a
form of shorthand among people
familiar with the full terms (ASISApplicant and Student Information),
in everyday life(ASAP-‘as soon as
possible’ , LOL -‘laugh out loud’) and
many others.
Clipping
Clipping involves the
Blending
Blends are formed by taking
deletion of syllables from a
elements from two existing words
polysyllabic word.
and combining them to form a new
Examples include
prof(professor),
lab(laboratory), flu
(influenza),
uni(university).
word – in effect, ‘blending’ two
existing words together.
For example, glamping, a blend of
glamorous and camping