“Language history and change”

1. “Language history and change” Name : Karen Poblete Course: Lexical Analysis of the English Language Date : September, 9th

2. Indo-European Languages are the widest language spoken in the world. Several languages from different geographical areas must have some common ancestors. In the 19th century a new term came into to describe that common ancestor. This term “Proto” was the original source of modern languages in India and Europe.

3. “Language History”

4. To see the relationship among languages, records of an older generation will be looked at. These are Latin and Sanskrit from which the modern languages have been developed. Sanskrit is a classical language of India that belongs to the family of the Indo-European languages. It means “refined” and “sanctified” and it is one of the 22 official languages of India. Sanskrit is considered as the greatest language of the world, more perfect than Greek and more refined than Latin, universally recognized, and the most magnificent literary instrument developed by the human mind.

5. Thanks to the tree ancient languages (Latin, Greek and Sanskrit) some characteristics of the basic European forms have been preserved. Aflter these three languages were studied, a new conclusion was drawn, and the Indo- European family emerged. With the Sanskrit evolution, new modern languages appear in India and different idioms are spoken in Europe and Asia.

6. Indo-European “Family Tree”I

7. The Proto-Indo European language is the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages spoken by the Proto-Indo Europeans. This concept was established as the great-grandmother of its family tree. To establish family connections between different languages, it will be seen two important pocesses: “cognates” and “comparative reconstruction”. • A cognate of a word in one language (English) is a word in other (German) that has a similar form and is or was used with a similar meaning

8. Thus, the English forms are cognates of the German. Mother Mutter Father Vater Friend Freund • The aim of the “Comparative Reconstruction” -the second process- is to reconstruct what must have been the original (or proto) form in the common ancestral language.

9. There are some principles that are very different, and establish how the proto form must have been like. On the one hand, “The majority principle” refers to the majority retained sound. If three words of a cognate begin with the same sound and one word begin with a different sound, then the majority sound is the one which retaines the original sound. Whereas minority has changed a little through time. e.g: cavallo caballo cheval cantare cantar cher In this case, two sets of of forms have /k/ sound and only one has /t / sound. So, in the original language, the words began with /k/ sound.

10. On the other hand, “most natural development principle” describes the most common sound-change patterns which enable the reconstruction of sound changes in cognates. • Vowels in the final position frequently disappear. e.g: vino -> vin • Voiceless sounds between vowels became voiced. e.g: muta -> muda • Stops turn into fricatives. e.g: ripa -> riva • If a consonant is at the end of a word it becomes voiceless. e.g: rizu -> ris

11. “English Language History”

12. To better understand how English has undergone substantial changes through time, three periods have been identified: • Old English (from 7th to the end of the 11th century) At the beginning, the British Isles were pupulated by Celts. In the 5th century, three peoples ( The Angles, The Saxon and The Jutes) invaded the British Isles and Celts had to fled. The Angles were converted to Chistianity and a number of terms from the the language of religion, latin, came into English at that time. Between 840-870, Vikings set up permanent encampments on English soil, and conquered the norther part of Britain.

13. Middle English(from 1100 to 1500)is marked by the arrival of the Norman Fench in England. These Fench-speaking invaders became the ruler class, so the language of the noblity, the gobernment, the law and civilized behaviour in England for the next 200 years was French. • Modern English (1500-present) began in England during the Elizabethan era which is also around the time of the great poet William Shakespeare. In Modern English the inflection ”th” is replaced by “s”

14. In 1006 the Normans crossed the English Channel and conquered Britain. Since there, French became the language of the Norman Aristocracy and more vocabulary was added into the English language. This conquest created one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe and engendered a sophisticated governmental system which for about 4 hundred years influenced English.

15. “English Language changes”

16. When comparing Old and Modern English, it is noticeably the quantity of changes that have been produced. There have been 5 phonetic changes: • Metathesis is a sound change which involves the change of position of two sounds within a word. e.g: frist > first, hros > horse, bridd > bird.

17. Epenthesis is the addition of a sound to the middle of a word. e.g: thun(o)r >thunder, spinel > spindle, timr > timber. • Prothesis is addition of a sound to the beginning of a word. e.g:schola > escuela, spiritus >espiritu • Apart from sound changes , some souds have dissareared from the general pronunciation of English. e.g: nitch /nixt/ nigth /nayt/ • Another change, is the quality of the vowel sound that have changed considerably. e.g: hu:s haws (house) wi:f wayf (wife) spo:n spu:n (spoon)

18. There have also been 3 lexical changes: • The number of borrowed words, especially words of Latin and Greek that emerged since the Old English Period. Furthermore, several words have ceased to be used. e.g:man> were werewolf • Broadening is a process that influence the meaning of lexical items, in which a words starts to be used with more general meaning than at the beginning of its use, as in the case of the English words: “holy day” meaning religious celebration, which broadened its meaning and turned into “holiday” which means a day free of work

19. Narrowinginfluenced the meaning as well. It means that a word starts to be used in less general meaning than at the beginning, for instance: the Old English “mete” which meant any type of food and which is now spelt “meat” and denotes edible animal flesh. Another comparison that can be made between these two periods are the syntactic changes, that in termsof structure includes word order and a large number of inflectional affixes.

20. The subject can follow the verb. e.g: “ferde he” (he traveled) • The object can be placed before the verb or at the beginning of a sentence. e.g: he hine geseah (he saw him) him man ne sealde (no man gave –any- to him) The loss of a large number of inflectional affixes is maybe the most sweeping change in the form of English sentences. e.g: sealde (he gave) sealdest (you gave) “These inflectional suffixes are no longer found in Modern Enlish”

21. Taking into consideration that languages will not remain stable, but that change and variation are inevitable, two different concepts have been studied. The difference between studying a language diachronically and synchronically is in time. e.g:English spoken today in America is somewhat different from the English used in England, and both are different from the varieties of English spoken in India. These are synchronic forms of English. English spoken by an English speaker in 2003 is different from English spoken in 1903, and different from the way they spoke in 1803. These are diachronic forms of English.

22. Sources • Yule, G. (1996). The Study of Language. UK: Cambridge University Press Chapter 19 Language Change and History • www.teach12.com/store/course.asp?id=800&pc=History%20-%20Modern - 51k –