Historia de la Lengua Inglesa

INTRODUCTION

-In the study of linguistics, we can appreciate 2 main approaches:

Studying a language as a system which operates from a given point of time. For example, NOW. This is the SYNCHRONIC point of view.

Establishing the connection between the different “NOWS” and linking them for getting the essence. This is the DIACHRONIC point of view.

It is important to know that BOTH complement each other.

-There are several reasons for studying the history of a language:

1. For the same reason as studying the history of a country

2. Because we have to know what happened in the past and as a group of citizens, we are responsible for our changes.

3. Because the place we are born conditions us

4. Our language is the product of society

5. There have been historical inventions and conditions. As a result, new words have born and we have to give them new names. “To coin a word”.

6. English has borrowed words from other languages but English is superior in some fields.

7. Because we want to understand the great pieces of literature in the original language without having a translator.

8. Because grammar rules keep on changing

9. To understand apparent irregularities.

We also have to distinguish between INTERNAL and EXTERNAL history:

-Internal history: the history of a language must include the study of the language structure.

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Situations:1. Phonetics: and Phonology are affected by diachrony

Ex: In Old English the word house was /hus/, whereas in Middle English it was added [au].Ex: I know not thee (Middle or Early Modern English) = I don´t know you

2. Syntax is also affected:

-External history: it gives us the knowledge about the different factors that had influenced English: political issues, cultural facts, scientific events…

Both, internal and external, have the role of making English and both, complement each other.

But…. Why does a language change?- due to dynamism and… How do languages change?- there are two main reasons:

Innovation: the introduction f a new variant from which at the beginning might have been a considered error. It can made catching on or dying off.

Diffusion: spreading a variant form from the point when it was used. “The greater the place is, the bigger diffusion takes”

Also, there are variations in different fields:

-Variations in pronunciation: Ex: tomato (U.K VS U.S)

-Variations in vocabulary: Ex: Autumn (U.K)/Fall (U.S) or Toilet (U.K)/Restroom (U.S)

-Variations in syntax:

WHY DOES A LANGUAGE CHANGE?: there are 3 main types of engines which diffuse changes :

1. Structural2. Social3. Functional

1.Structural pressure may develop in any part of a language.

Bread-uncountable-----------------more bread-----------------------less bread

Loaf/Loaves-countable------------more bread-----------------------fewer loaves

2.Social changes: languages are not only used for communication. They are also used in order to state the group you belong to, as a way of interacting marked by a social class although it may be vary.

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Ex: More Better Blues

-Judgement of a user of standard English : WRONG

-Judgement of a non-user of standard English: RIGHT

Ex: We goes down the road…

-present English used by a non-standard speaker but from a historical point of view and particularly in the north of England, this is correct.

Ex: I never done it!

I have never done it

I never did it

-non-standard use

The option of choosing a past tense (done instead of did) marks that is not coming from a standard English speaker.

3.Functional changes: vocabulary or expressions which are fresh enough. A pragmatic use of words which shape the discourse.

Ex: Very out of fashion nowadays and not strong enough

Extremely

Absolutely

Really vocabulary to impress

Dead easy

Dirt cheap

Ex: economy of effort = change of pronunciation

Fasten: dropping the “t” or dropping the schwa

Often: dropping the “t”

We also have some extra linguistic factors like for example using an acronym instead of the entire name in the fields of practical life and science (Ex: L.E.D). This is because inertia is more powerful than change. Moreover, the presence of Standard English helps our use of English to be homogeneous.

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How an abstract idea of language can makes a shape?

Sushi: introduced by the end of the 19th century in the dictionary. Only few people knew it the word by this time, but today, everybody knows it.

Twock: coined by the british police in the 1990s. It means “taken without the owner´s consent”.

Gate: can be a word or can be a suffix (Watergate) used by journalists when a political scandal occurred.

3 main areas:

1.Grammar:

Can I borrow…

Could I borrow…

Would you mind…

May I… the one which has been taught. Now is decreasing

Mayn´t I… used in the 20th century

2.Phonology:

H.R.T= High Rising Tone (use of an intonation for a statement, not for a question)

Ex: Are you okay?

-A.Q.I= Australian Question Intonation (originated in Sydney working women classes)

-Valley Girls (1980s, California)

-All scholars agree on the same thing: pragmatics are involved and it´s genre patterned

3.Sociolinguistics

UNIT 1:

English: An Important Language

Any language lives if there are people who speak it. There are six thousand languages in the world but half of the world's population speaks only ten. English is the single most dominant of all western languages and this, had a lot to do with British history and colonialism which initiated its spread across the world. Today English has been spoken nearly everywhere and it has become even more important since the Second World War. Politics are also involved in a language. The importance of a language is not connected to its linguistic issues, it is related to social issues. There are 3 main reasons why English is important: first language, second language and pidgin and creole varieties.

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Newer options

-English is used as the first language by about 375 million of people

-Largest language of the western languages

-Importance: not only about the territory, linked with the political role who used it and their influence

-English today is very widely used as a second language and this is in part what gives its importance.

-Importance of Spanish: a question of numbers (growing population in South America or the Hispanic community in United States)

-English is being used as the basis of pidgin and creole varieties in areas where English is not the first language.

- English may function all around the world as a mother tongue, official Dom or a s a second language.

- English used as a medium of education

- English also works as a lingua Franca (language which is used among people who don't have another language in common)

- British colonies usually achieved independence after the Second World War. India became independent in 1947 but others in the decade of the 50s, 60s... When they became independent, the new governments had to come to terms with a territory which was multilingual and they had to give some orders to the new situation. The reality was that the new nations had the need of a national language for representing them. That choice was extremely difficult due to internal revolts and the influence of super power nations. In some cases, they chose local languages thinking that it could be partially representative but the problem is that many local languages are not spoken by a majority. In Africa, governments chose English because it had been working pretty well as a lingua Franca and proved to work well for intercommunication. Those nations who chose a local language had retained the English as well as a second language (India).

- English in Africa: South Africa, English is the main language but is only one of the eleven languages. In Cameroon, English and French are the main ones. In Nigeria, English and the main local language are officials.

Easy and Difficult things in English:

There are things which are difficult as well as other which are easier to learn. English has become easier because declinations disappeared many years ago. English is an infective language.

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For nouns: Ex: paper (sing) // paperS (plural)= regular or analogical plural // man (sing) // men (plural) = irregular plural.

For adjectives: is even easier. Ex: a nice child// nice children. It remains invariable independently its of function, genre or number.

Verbs: adding an “s” in the third person singular (present tense) there's no conjugated verbs nowadays in English but it is not like it used to be. English has simplified its grammar.

Grammatical gender: implies that you have to learn and memorize the gender which is not grammatically or semantically connected. This happened many years ago and after the 14th century, people started to use natural gender. It means that all nouns which refer to living brewing a are masculine or feminine according to the sex of the individual and the other nouns are neutral. There are cases in which a man is referring as a woman for example sheep but this is a question of rhetoric.

Besides, is there a link between pronunciation and how a word is written? We can safely say that we can't pronounce a word just by looking how it is written.

Ex: honour//heritage. It is a question if time. Heritage came before and honour after and we need more time to adapt its pronunciation. This is the case of foreign words in English.

Ex: [ i: ] - see -receive- leave -be-machine /// [f]- shoe -ocean-nation-chaperon -fuchsia-issue

There have been different attempts to making easier the pronunciation of English. Roosevelt tried to get a degree of simplification in the pronunciation of English. But it seemed that this advantage was not enough for formal conservatism. Ex: island (inserting an s in the 16th century). Spelling is very difficult to get rid of graphemes due to its conservatism. Ex: subtle

Pidgins and Creoles languages: Loreto Todd, 1990, Routledge

Pidgins and Creoles are found in every continent and they have received academic attention but there is a way a different way to looking to the same linguistic fact. They have been thought to have been a broken version of other standardized versions of English. In academic circles for the last 25 years there have been serious attempts to remove these varieties. Pidgin and Creoles have been regarded as broken forms of English, primitive and inferior languages. Now, we try to detach this idea.

Pidgin: it is defined as a marginal language which arises to fulfill certain restricted communication needs among people who have known common language. The birth of a variety appears when there is contact between people who speak different languages. In the first stages mainly for businesses, they used small vocabulary and few words which are usually provided by one of the main languages. The syntactic structure is less complex and less flexible than the syntactic structure of English.All languages have a certain range of redundancy.

Ex: les deux grands journaux 4/4 spelling but 3/4 pronouncing (plurality is marked)The two big newspaper: English is less redundant than French Tupela bik pepa: no redundancyEx:

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Verb aller in French - no repetitions in its formsVerb go in English - invariable except for the third person singularVerb go in Tok Pisin- totally invariable

Nouns are also invariable in Tok Pisin and there are no markers of plurality

Ex: ten men// one man ( mutation of the vowel ) in Tok Pisin is tenpela man ( numeral marks number )

Ex:Lots of men have no wife (English)- plenty man i no get meri (Tok Pisin) so there is not gender distinction

Ex: Mi=I // yu=you // em = he,she,it // mipela/yumi =we/you and I // yupela= you // ol (all)= they

Vocabulary: they built new words from words which already existed

Hen = paulmeri= gallina// cock= paulman=Gallo // pikinini meri=girl // pikinini man=boy

They used an adverbial for indicating past These are essentially spoken varieties It also depends on the age, place, how much standard English they know

Pronunciation can be very variable as well:

Discovery of phonological correspondences ever since the 19th century comparison were established between languages in order to guess whether they had a common parent tongue. If you take German and English we find correspondences in the following examples:

OE: ban (a has a macron which marks a double vowel) - Bein Stan ( a has a macron too) - stein

Conclusion: English and German are related and they come from the same descendent. But, not only between English and German, also between English and Latin

Nefa in old English =nephew // nepos in Latin

Different forms and account for them in a single way

The nature of English is Germanic and it has a quite a lot of points in common with German and other Germanic ,a gauges but the problem is that almost all are knowledge of them has to be known by means of reconstructions because there are no written documents of the earliest forms of Germanic and we have to guess. We don't face the same situation talking about Spanish, French or Italian because they are Romance languages. They don't offer such a a great difficulty because we have quite a lot of information about their ancestors. We know a lot about Vulgar Latin. A latin knowledge derives from literary written texts. We can say that at the beginnings, the first form of Germanic languages, were the different sub branches which weren't so much different but with the passing of the time they have become main languages. Old English is the first form of Germanic since the 7th century in AEngland. All High German can be the first form from the 8th to the 11th century for people who lived in Austria, Switzerland and some parts of Germany. How do we see linguistic change? -It's because people who spoke old English created their own particularities and the

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language grew in a different way from other languages. Many times, due to geographical distances or by means of mixing with foreigners and this provoked linguistic change.

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