- •2.Concept of ‘language change’.
- •Linguistic facts:
- •Archeological facts:
- •Lecture 2 Proto-Germanic language, its development from Proto-Indo-European
- •1. Archeological findings.
- •2. Modern Germanic languages.
- •3. The earliest descriptions of the Germans, the ancient tribes that spoke Germanic languages.
- •4. Eastern Germanic, Western Germanic and Northern Germanic groups of languages as Germanic.
- •West Germanic
- •North Germanic
- •Lecture 3 Old Germanic Writing
- •1. The runic alphabet. Old English alphabet and pronunciation.
- •2. Old English alphabet and pronunciation.
- •Lecture 4 Common phonetic characteristics of the Germanic languages.
- •1. Word Stress
- •2. Consonants. Proto-Germanic consonant shift.
- •3.. Changes in the system of vowels in the Germanic languages.
- •The development of vowels in Early oe consisted of the modification of separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels.
- •Development of diphthongs
- •Assimilative vowel changes: Breaking and Diphthongization
- •Lecture 5 Periodisation in the history of the English language, Old English written records
- •1. Periodisation
- •2. Old English written records.
- •3. Old English dialects.
- •Lecture 6 The Scandinavian invasions, the Norman Conquest & the way they influenced English
- •1. Economic and social conditions in the 11-12th centuries.
- •2. Scandinavian invasions.
- •3. The Norman Conquest.
- •4. Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation.
- •5. Changes in the alphabet and spelling in Middle English. Middle English written records. Changes in the alphabet and spelling in Middle English.
- •6. Middle English dialects. The London dialect.
- •7. Phonetic processes in Middle English (the system of vowels). Word Stress in me and Early ne
- •Unstressed vowels
- •Quantitative vowel changes in Early me
- •Qualitative vowel changes. Development of monophthongs
- •Development of diphthongs
- •Lecture 7 Middle English Grammar
- •1. Changes in the categories of the noun in Middle English.
- •2. The grammatical category of Case.
- •3. Middle English literature
- •In 1357 Geoffrey is found, apparently as a lad, in the service of Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence
- •In 1359, as we learn from his deposition in the Scrope suit, Chaucer went to the war in France.
- •Lecture 8 New English Period.
- •Economic and Political Unification. Conditions for Linguistic Unity.
- •2. Progress of Culture. Introduction of Printing
- •3. Establishment of the Written Standard
- •4. Normalizing Tendencies.
- •5. New English Vocabulary
- •Borrowings from contemporary languages:
- •Borrowings from contemporary languages:
- •Literature
- •Lecture 9 Modern English History
- •Essential knowledge and literary terms to understand Shakespeare
- •2. Standardization of the Modern English Language
6. Middle English dialects. The London dialect.
The dialect division which evolved in Early ME was on the whole preserved in later periods. In the 14th and 15th c. we find the same grouping of local dialects: the Southern group, including Kentish and the South-Western dialects (the South-Western group was a continuation of the OE Saxon dialects), the Midland or Central (corresponding to the OE Mercian dialect – is divided into West Midland and East Midland as two main areas) and the Northern group (had developed from OE Northumbrian). And yet the relations between them were changing. The most important event in the changing linguistic situation was the rise of the London dialect as the prevalent written form of language. The history of the London dialect reveals the sources of the literary language in Late ME and also the main source and basis of the Literary Standard, both in its written and spoken forms. The Early ME written records made in London – beginning with the PROCLAMATION of 1258 – show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon. Later records indicate that the speech of London was becoming more fixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the Southern features.
7. Phonetic processes in Middle English (the system of vowels). Word Stress in me and Early ne
In OE stress usually fell on the first syllable of the word, rarely on its second syllable. Word stress in OE was fixed: it never moved in inflection and seldom in derivation. This way of word accentuation was considerably altered in the succeeding periods. The word accent acquired greater positional freedom and began to play a more important role in word derivation. These changes were connected with the phonetic assimilation of thousands of loan-words adopted during the ME period. Gradually, as the loan-words were assimilated, the word stress was moved closer to the beginning of the word. It is known as the “recessive” tendency, e.g. vertu [ver´tju:] became NE virtue [və:t∫ə]. In words of three or more syllables the shift of the stress could be caused by the recessive tendency and also by the “rhythmic” tendency. Under it, a secondary stress would arise at a distance of one syllable from the original stress. Sometimes the shifting of the word stress should be attributed not only to the phonetic tendencies but also to certain morphological factors. Thus stress was not shifted to the prefixes of many verbs borrowed or built in Late ME and in Early NE, which accords with the OE rule: to keep verb prefixes unstressed, e.g. present. Corresponding nouns sometimes received the stress on the first syllable: NE ΄present n - pre΄sent v; ΄discord n - dis΄cord v. The latter pairs of words show that the role of word accentuation has grown: word stress performs a phonological function as it distinguishes a verb from a noun.
Unstressed vowels
In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguishes five short vowels in unstressed position [e/i], [a] and [o/u], Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables: [ə] and [i], e.g. OE talu – ME tale [΄ta:lə] – NE tale, OE bodiз – ME body [΄bodi] – NE body. The final [ə] disappeared in Late ME though it continued to be spelt as -e. When the ending –e survived only in spelling, it was understood as a means of showing the length of the vowel in the preceding syllable and was added to words which did not have this ending before, e.g. OE stān, rād – ME stone, rode [´stone], [´rode] – NE stone, rode. It should be remembered that while the OE unstressed vowels thus were reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones, as a result of various changes, e.g. the shifting of word stress in ME and NE, vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer, actor, where [er] and [or] became [ə].