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Philology 3
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Week 1Languages, dialects, and standards:
A variety of a language is defined as a regionally, socially, situationally, or
otherwise specific subtype of the language. The identifying features of such a sub-
type can be orthographic (if we are dealing with the written language), phonetic,
grammatical, lexical-semantic or pragmatic (Mair 2008: 141).
What is a standard language?
Standard language can be defined as standard in terms of internal consistency, i.e., the
degree of variation is low in terms of spelling and inflectional morphology.
A standard language can be defined as standard in terms of its acceptance as a
‘common property’ (Benskin 1992: 75) that has a wide supraregional or national
currency.
A variety of the first definition “is obviously more likely to become a standard in this
second sense, than one that is not.”
Often directly equated with ‘a language’, ‘a representative’ of a given nation or
social group.
From a small dialect to a world language:
Growth of English:
o 5th century: 400 speakers of English
o 16th century: 4 million
o Today: 427 million mother tongue
o Today: over one billion: 2nd or foreign language!
Rise of new Englishes:
o Dunglish?
o English: a killer language?
Chronology:
Old English (OE): before 1100
o Before the Norman Conquest: very Germanic
Middle English (ME): ca. 1100 – 1500
o French influence, Chaucer, rising standard
Early Modern English (EModE): 1500 – 1700
o Printing press, Renaissance, Reformation, Shakespeare
Late Modern English (LModE): 1700 – 1900
o The language codified, prescription
Present-day English: past 20 years
History of English?
Then, what is a history of English?
Traditional model:
o Internal: sound shifts, changes in vocabulary, syntax, with historical events
being of secondary importance
o External: the social, demographic, and cultural factors affecting language and
language use
Views not mutually exclusive!
Cause and effect relationship unclear: when, where, and how to take effect?
,OE:
449 AD: Arrival of the Anglo-Saxon ‘invaders’
597 AD: Christianity is brought to Britain by St. Augustine (sent by Pope Gregory)
West-Saxon ‘standard’ King Alfred
Essentially GmC lexicon (e.g., wordhoard, modhoard)
Highly inflectional grammar (synthetic language)
ME:
1066 – Norman Conquest
No standard dialects!
Literary revival Chaucer!
Impact of French and Latin
Inflections largely disappear synthetic analytic
EmodE:
1476 – William Caxton introduced the printing press spelling standardized
Beginnings of Standardization shift in status
Inkhorn debate
Latin and Greek loan words
Further reduction of morphology
GVS
LmodE:
English further standardized: rise of prescriptivism
Laying down the rules for a standard: grammar rules and pronunciation guides
Stigmatization of non-standard varieties
Spread of English across the globe
Minor changes in Standard grammar
So, what is English?
Today, a global language:
o A lingua Franca
o In many different flavours and textures
o Has standardized varieties
Not necessarily uniform:
o British, American, Canadian, other Englishes
o Speech vs Writing
Week 2
,The fact of language change:
How drastically English has changed: from synthetic to analytic
Why do languages change: sources of change
o Language internal mechanisms
o Language external factors
Keep in mind that internal and external factors often interact!
OE is a synthetic language:
Synthetic languages rely on inflection/morphology to convey grammatical
relationships:
o OE: nouns, adjectives, articles are inflected for case (nominative, accusative,
genitive, dative etc.), grammatical gender & number:
E.g., Latin lupus ovem devorat or ovem lupus devorat.
Analytic languages rely more on syntax (word order, prepositions etc.):
E.g., PdE The wolf devours the sheep. The sheep devours the wolf.
History of English is characterized by a typological move from synthetic to analytic.
Sources of language change:
Incrementation through transmission: ‘A slight, often barely perceptible
augmentation’
Phonetic processes: economizing articulatory effort
Analogy: economizing brain processing power
Changes in lexicon: chapter on its own!
Language ‘external’ pressures: accommodation, contact, social prestige
Transmission and incrementation:
We never produce the exact same sounds twice
Adult language varies a lot due to physical and processing constraints
Children must deduce rules of language
Children introduce minute changes because of variation:
o E.g., SVO pattern already very frequent in OE pattern incrementally
reinforced
o E.g., co-articulatory tendencies: kirk – church
Added complication: variation is also socially conditioned
Minimizing articulatory effort:
Assimilation: a sound change in which some phonemes change to become more
similar to other nearby sounds
o Kinn – Chin
Dissimilation: the process by which one sound becomes different from a neighbouring
sound
o Epenthesis: the addition of one or more sounds to a word
Æmtig – Empty
o Metathesis: when 2 sounds or syllables switch places in a word
Task – Tax
Haplology/deletion (syncope): a sound change involving the loss of a syllable when it
is next to a phonetically identical (or similar) syllable
, o Angaland – England
o Baken – Bake – Bake
Analogy: the process of inventing a new element in conformity with some part of the
language system you already know
Regularization of irregular past tenses:
o Help – Holp – Holpen
o Dive – Dove – Dived
o Sneak – Snuck?
Overgeneralisation of plural forms:
o Deer – Deers
Reanalyses of word morphology: beggar – to beg
The lexicon:
Language internal devices: affixation, compounding conversion, coining
Language external:
o Borrowing: a lot to do with the status of the source language
o Cultural/social changes death of a word, shift or addition in meaning
(polysemy)
Perspire vs Sweat, Odour vs Stench, Veal vs Calf, Pork vs Pig
Semantic change:
o Shift: noise = sea-sick obtrusive sound
o Broadening: the process in which the meaning of a word evolves over time to
represent a more general concept or thing than it did originally dog
o Narrowing: a type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word
becomes less general or inclusive than its original meaning hound
o Taboo: ass, cock
o Pejoration: semantic change whereby a word acquires unfavourable
connotations ladies and gents, mistresses, spinster, madam…
o Amelioration: an improvement in the meaning of a word; it acquires more
positive connotations knight (Dutch = Knecht) (military follower of
King)
Dialect contact:
Accommodation and dialect contact:
o Lasting effect when contact is sustained
o Southern third person singular: she walketh she walks
o Social prestige plays a role: walkin walking
Lack of contact: language divergence
o Migration
o Political boundaries (or ideological ones!)
o Social boundaries
o Geographical boundaries
Language contact:
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