HISTORY OF ENGLISH I

Why study history of a language?
To see how and why languages in general change
To be able to account for “irregularities” in language in its current state (Present-Day English, spelling in particular!, also forms like “children”, why is r pronounced as /a:/?)
To notice how a language keeps changing

Causes for language change
Language-internal
Language-external

Language-internal causes
There is always variation in the speech of members of a group (idiolects!)
Variation more marked in oral/illiterate cultures
Variation more marked between generations
Changes take root more easily in
a) oral/illiterate cultures and
b) cultures with a shorter life-span for individual members

Language-external causes
Influence of other languages,i.e.
language contact – mainly
borrowing.

The extent of borrowing
depends on socio-economic factors, e.g.:
number of speakers of the foreign language, their geographical distribution
their socio-economic position (social and economic power of the language)
the prestige of the foreign language

Periods of the history of English
Old English – Anglo-Saxon 449 to 1066/1100/1154
Middle English – up to 1485/1500/1533
Modern English
Early Modern English up to 1700
Modern English up to the 20th century
Present-Day English

Old English:
Fyrst forth gewat. Flota wæs on ythum,
Bat under beorge. Beornas gearwe …
Middle English:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The drought of March hath pierced to the roote…
Modern English:
Time passed. The ship was on the waves …
When April with its sweet showers
Has pierced the dryness (drought) of March to the
root (i.e. utterly destroyed it)

Lord’s prayer (excerpts)
Old English:
Fæder ure, thu the eart on heofonum, si thin
nama gehalgod …Urne gedæghwamlican
hlaf syle us to dæg.
Middle English:
Fader oure that is i heuenm blessid be thi name .. Oure ilk dau bred gif
us to day.
Early Modern English:
Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name …
Give us this day our daily bread.
Source: John H. McWhorter “The Power of Babel. A Natural History of
Language”, Perennial, 2003

Periods in the History of English I:
Old English (Anglo-Saxon)
449 – first Anglo-Saxons leave the continent, land in Britain
Cut off from other Germanic tribes,
language starts to develop independently

Relatively few loanwords in Old English:
Celtic (Introduction to Old English by Oleg Mutt, p. 36) (12 words – “down”, “brock” – a synonym of “badger”, ektc,plus place names). “Welsh” comes from “alien” (Gmc. *walχaz foreign, alien (Celtic or Roman)):
Celtic not prestigious
2) Latin (p. 34) – two layers:
words borrowed on the Continent (caupo> cheap, strata > street)
words borrowed after the adoption of Christianity (Northern England – 4th century – Irish, end of 7th century – St Augustine came to Kent from Rome)

Celtic loans
“Cross” etymology:
Middle English cros, from Old English, probably from Old Norse kross, from Old Irish cros, from Latin crux (Genitive crucis)

Word lists - Celtic loan-words - From Old English to Standard English 3rd edition 1
CELTIC
Old English
Celtic date MnE
Old Northumbrian asal fr Celtic 1000 ass
Gaelic bannach 1000 bannock
Irish brat - cloth 950 brat

Gaelic broc - badger 1000 brock
cp Irish & Gaelic donn - brown 953 dun (a)
Gaelic torr - a peak 847t or
14th century
Celtic date MnE
cp Irish and Gaelic creag 1300 crag
Irish ceithern - foot-soldier 1351 kern
Gaelic loch 1375 loch

15th century
Celtic date MnE
Gaelic and Irish bard 1450 bard
Gaelic clann - family, stock, race 1425 clan
Gaelic gleann - mountain-valley 1489 glen
Welsh gwylan, Cornish guilan = Breton goelann 1430 gull

16th century
Celtic date MnE
Irish or Gaelic bogach a bog 1505 bog
Irish and Gaelic brog - shoe 1586 brogue
Gaelic caber 1513 caber
Gaelic carn 1535 cairn
Welsh corwgl 1547 coracle
Irish and Gaelic gall-oglch, from gall - foreigner, stranger + oglch - youth; a
class of retainers formerly by Irish chiefs.
1515 galloglass
Gaelic gille a lad, servant - an attendant on a Highland chief. 1596 gillie
Welsh me∂∂yglyn healing + llyn liquor; mead 1533 metheglin
Irish pillín, Gaelic pillin - a saddle 1503 pillion
Gaelic plaide 1512 plaid
Irish seamrog 1571 shamrock
Gaelic sluagh-ghairm (from sluagh host + gairm cry, shout); original meaning
war-cry.

1513 slogan
Irish trius, Gaelic triubhas - trousers, breeches. 1568 trews
2 Word lists - Celtic loan-words - From Old English to Standard English 3rd edition
17th century

Celtic
Irish and Gaelic dun - hill, hill-fort 1605 dun (n)
Irish go leor, Gaelic gu leor - plenty 1675 galore
Irish lupracán 1604 leprechaun
Irish ogham - an alphabet of 20 letters used by the ancient British and Irish. 1677 ogham
1 in the 17th century, Irish outlaws, who plundered and killed the English
settlers and soldiers; often applied to any Irish Papist or Royalist in arms.
2 from 1689, the name of one of the two major political parties in England,
and (later) in Great Britain
Tory

18th century
Celtic date MnE
Irish bean sidhe - a spirit supposed by the Irish & Scottish Highland peasantry to
wail under the windows of a house where one of the inmates is about to die.
1771 banshee
Gaelic beann 1788 ben
Irish Blarney (cf the Blarney stone) - flattering talk, nonsense 1796 blarney
Gaelic claidheamh mor - ‘great swordí 1772 claymore
Gaelic Sasunnach - an Englishman 1771 Sassenach
Shillelagh - (the name of a village in Co. Wicklow); an Irish cudgel 1773 shillelagh
Irish spailpín - 1 a labourer, 2 a rascal 1780 spalpeen

19th century
Celtic date MnE
Irish céilidhe, Scots Gaelic ceilidh 1875 ceilidh
Irish cailin - girl 1828 colleen
Welsh cwm - valley 1853 cwm
Irish caoine - weeping lamenting 1830 keen
Gaelic mo chroidhe - (of) my heart, my dear 1829 machree
Irish mo my + cuisle vein, pulse (of the heart). 1887 macushla
Irish mo mhurnín - my darling. 1800 mavourneen
Breton men hir ‘long stone’ 1840 menhir
Irish poitín ‘little potí, short for uisge poitín ‘little-pot whiskyí 1812 poteen
Gaelic sporan 1818 sporran
20thcentury
Celtic date MnE
Welsh cor- dwarf + gi, from ci - dog. 1926 corgi

The Old English word rice--a noun meaning "kingdom" (cf. Ger. Reich), is almost certainly Celtic in origin, but this word was probably adapted by Germanic tribes on the continent long before the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain. A few other Old English words such as ambeht ("servant"), and dun ("hill, down") might be Celtic loan-words, but scholars are still uncertain. Algeo (277) suggests about a dozen other Celtic words are probably genuine borrowings from the Celtic peoples during the Anglo-Saxon period, including these mostly archaic terms:
bannuc ("a bit")
binn ("basket, crib")
bratt ("cloak")
brocc ("badger")
cine ("gathering of parchment leaves")
clugge ("bell")
dry ("magician")
gabolrind ("geometric compass")
luh ("lake")
mind ("diadem")
The Anglo-Saxons borrowed these words and used them for a few centuries, but these later fell out of common use. They simply didn't "stick" linguistically.

In general, two types of Celtic loan words were likely targets of permanent Anglo-Saxon adaptation before the Norman Conquest:
(1) Toponyms or place-names. For instance, Cornwall, Carlisle, Avon, Devon, Dover, London, and Usk are all originally Celtic names. Other places like Lincoln and Lancaster are semi-Celtic in origin; i.e., they have a -coln ending that originally comes from Latin colonia or a -caster ending that originally comes from Latin castra via Celtic ceaster, which were Latin loan words the Celts borrowed from the Romans, but which in turn the Anglo-Saxons adopted as loan-words from Celtic languages. Many Celtic toponyms are hidden in the first syllable of other modern names, such as the first syllable of Lichfield, Worcester, Gloucester, Exeter, Winchester, and Salisbury. Other general geographic features--cumb (a combe, a valley) and torr (projecting hill or rock, peak, as in modern Glastonbury Tor)--attach themselves to a large number of place-names.

(2) Latin words the Celts borrowed from Rome, which were in turn borrowed by the Anglo-Saxon invaders--including words like candle (Latin candelere, "to shine") and ass (Latin asinus).
Possibly the word cross and the verb cursian (which gives us and the Anglo-Saxons the ability "to curse") were originally Celtic words--though cross may have been borrowed from the Old Norse. Less used today, the word "anchorite” comes from Celtic ancor ("hermit").

Ironically, the largest number of Celtic borrowings occurred not during the Anglo-Saxon period, when the Angles and Saxons first lorded it over the conquered Celts, but they occurred centuries later during the Middle English period. Algeo notes these Johnny-come-lately Celtic terms include Scots Gaelic words--such as clan and loch. In the 17th century or thereafter, Scots Gaelic also offered words like bog, cairn, plaid, slogan, and whiskey. Welsh words like crag also appeared at about this time. In the 17th century, Irish Gaelic offered English words such as banshee, blarney, colleen, and shillelagh. More recently, words like cromlech and eisteddfod have entered English from Welsh as well (277), leading up to perhaps a couple hundred Celtic loan words if we generously count second- and third- hand borrowings of originally Celtic words imported from Romance languages like French, Italian, and Spanish sources later in the Renaissance.

Celtic languages today
Welsh
Irish (Gaelic, 1% native speakers, unpopular in Ireland, however, official language of the EU)
Scottish Gaelic (NB! NOT the same as Scottish English. Scottish English is a more conservative/archaic form of English: situated further away from the continent plus Scandinavian influence)
Breton (in Bretagne in France)

External influences in Old English: the Vikings (“Danes”, Northmen)
Raids first (793 Lindisfarne, Northumbria), settlement followed, particularly in northern parts.
King Alfred, 878, the Danelaw (Danelag).
The Viking settlers and the indigenous Anglo-Saxons were given equal rights, hence friendly relations, intermarriages.
Cf endings –by and –ton in placenames in northern parts of Britain.

Old English was a synthetic
language (complex
morphology):
the period of full endings
(e.g. “stanas” – stones)

Endings hindered communication
therefore started to be dropped, or
more exactly, stressed less and less (Otto Jespersen)
NB! Old English still a language of full endings, but the trend towards levelled endings started in the period.

stan
Nominative plural
Old English (full endings):
stanas
Middle English (levelled endings):
stones
Modern English (lost endings):
/stounz/
Modern English - an analytical language (little
morphology, fixed word order)

Old English fairly similar to present-day German and Scandinavian languages (and particularly present-day Icelandic!)

Trend towards the loss of vowels
In Present-day English, /ə/ the most
common vowel (20% of the text),
Cf the English and French words for, e.g., “revolution”

Norman barons lived among Anglo-Saxons.
Words related to court, army, justice, fashion etc. borrowed.

Periods of the history of English II:
Middle English
1066 – the Battle of Hastings
During the next century approximately
200 000 Normans settled in Britain.
(Norman) French was prestigious.
Ample borrowing.

Teutonic = Germanic
Otto Jespersen:
“The Norman invasion broke the proud
Teutonic backbone of the English
language”
From now on, English open to loanwords (cf
Renaissance below)

However:
Flower, forest, valley, river*, face** – Norman French
loans (Anglo-Saxon bloom, cf German Blum, wood, dale
cf German Tal, stream).
Nouns denoting landscape features, family members, parts
of body, numbers – the core vocabulary of a language.
Thus, borrowing reached the core vocabulary
of Anglo-Saxon.
*Anglo-Saxon íegstréam; ea; lagustream
**Anglo-Saxon andlwlita, onsyn http://www.mun.ca/Ansaxdat/vocab/wordlist.html
http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm

The re-emergence of English
Starting with the 14th century.
A relatively unique phenomenon:
conquerors do not leave but the
language of the conquered returns.

Why the re-emergence?

Scarcity value – a term in economics
In the case of English peasants – as the Black Death killed off so many of them, the nobility did not have enough people to till the land and generally work for them. Peasants had been serfs, tied to their land: whenever they tried to escape from a lord who treated them badly, they had nowhere to go (except towns) – another lord would have “extradited” them at once. Not so after the Black Death – all lords were happy to receive new working hands. So because there were few of them and their was a great demand for them, the peasants were finally able to dictate their own terms. Serfdom ceased to exist. Free peasants – yeomen – acquired a sense of dignity. Accordingly, their language – English – also came to be valued.

One of the many sources:
Linguistic perspectives on language and
education
Anita K. Barry, p. 89
http://books.google.ee/books?id=kw2TVjT6PtwC&pg=PA89&lpg=PA89&dq=Black+Death+reemergence+of+English&source=bl&ots=T1E8LvsN5z&sig=4UH0woWENfI_nNS5QbGX9k7yoLc&hl=et&ei=SNW5Sob-Ksns-AaLodC_BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=Black%20Death%20reemergence%20of%20English&f=false

Other causes of the re-emergence of English
The Black Death (1349) (“scarcity value”)
The Hundred Years’ War* - need for English identity (French fighting the French!)
need for money to finance the war (the merchants were English)
need for soldiers (the English archers!)
The genius of Chaucer (1340 – 1400)
The Wars of the Roses (1455 – 1485) – the remaining French-speaking noblemen killed one another off!
*actually lasted for 116 years: from 1337 to 1453

1362
English becomes the language of Parliament and the courts of law.
However, this is a new kind of English (heavily influenced by (Norman) French, new vocabulary).

Periods of the history of English III Early Modern English
1485 – end of the Wars of the Roses
1500 – turn of the century
1533 – Reformation (Henry VIII)

Reformation and Renaissance
Two interrelated but distinct events.
Unlike Protestantism on the continent,
Reformation in Britain was introduced from above
(Henry VIII needed a divorce, the Pope refused –
rift with Rome, the establishment of the Anglican
Church, king/queen head of church).
However, Britain also had the Puritans – closer to
Reformation on the Continent.

Reformation
Individual responsibility before God, no need for the mediation of the (Roman Catholic) Church
Need for religious literature, particularly the Bible, in the vernacular – the language of the native speakers (as opposed to Latin as a lingua franca)
Need for general literacy

King James’ Bible (1611)

Lord’s prayer according to King James Version (Matthew)
Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed
be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be
done in earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this
day our daily bread. And forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the
power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Renaissance (started in the 14th century, reached Britain in the 16th century)
Humanism, return to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome
Pride in the individual human being
Arts, sciences, navigation (Francis Bacon, Shakespeare 1564-1616, Walter Raleigh, Elisabeth I – patron of arts and sciences, the Golden Age)
Need for terminology and new (scientific, philosophical, etc) vocabulary in the vernacular

Renaissance and Reformation in many
ways contradictory movements (cf the
Reformation iconoclasts; Renaissance
flowered most in Catholic countries).

Renaissance versus Reformation

The two events – which in Britain
happened to unfold contemporaneously
– however, converged in bringing into
use (in the areas of art, learning and
religion) vernacular languages.
.

Whole-scale borrowing from Latin (as well as from Greek, Italian, Spanish)
English borrowed, German resorted to its own resources (the proud Teutonic backbone of English had been broken!)
Etymological triplets in English
(go up – Anglo-Saxon, mount – French*, ascend - Latin).
*French, of course, was a “daughter”, i.e. successor of Latin, but the French verb comes from the Latin noun “mons” meaning “hill, mountain”, i.e. Latin did not have the corresponding verb.

As a result of the abundant borrowing
English has 500 000 words (Great Oxford Dictionary) (some estimates: 4 million words!)
German has 180 000 words (Duden)
French has 130 000 words (Grand Larousse)

Renaissance: copiousness, not correctness valued
Shakepeare, for instance, borrowed
unstoppably
Macbeth:
/This blood will/
“multitudinous seas incarnadine,
making the green one red”

in·car·na·dine
ADJECTIVE:
Of a fleshy pink color.
Blood-red.
TRANSITIVE VERB:
in·car·na·dined , in·car·na·din·ing , in·car·na·dines
To make incarnadine, especially to redden.
ETYMOLOGY:
French incarnadin, from Italian incarnadino, variant of incarnatino, diminutive of incarnato : in-, in (from Latin; see in- 2) + carne, flesh (from Latin caro, carn-; see incarnate, cf also carnal)

1992: ‘Basically I am a very good person.’ This from
the latest serial killer – destined for the chair, they say
– who, with incarnadine axe, recently dispatched half
a dozen registered nurses in Texas. — Donna Tartt,
The Secret History
1955: 'The chaplain glanced at the bridge table that
served as his desk and saw only the abominable
orange-red, pear-shaped, plum tomato he had
obtained that same morning from Colonel Cathcart, still
lying on its side where he had forgotten it like an
indestructible and incarnadine symbol of his own
ineptitude.' - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Lack of standardisation
The word “book” spelt in 7 different ways.
Shakespeare’s name spelt in many different ways.
English has never been standardised to the extent of, e.g., French.

The Great Vowel Shift
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750. First studied by Otto Jespersen, who coined the term.

The phonetic values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
Originally, these vowels had "continental" values (like in Estonian!)

Middle English [a:] (ā) (fronted to [æ:] and then raised to [ɛː], [e:] and in many dialects diphthongised) in Modern English to [eɪ] (as in make).
Middle English [ɛː] (raised to [e:]) and then to Modern English [i:] (as in beak).
Middle English [e:] raised to Modern English [i:] (as in feet).
Middle English [i:] (diphthongised to [ɪi], which was most likely followed by [əɪ] and finally) Modern English [aɪ] (as in mice).
Middle English [ɔː] (raised to [o:], and in the eighteenth century this became) Modern English [oʊ] or [əʊ] (as in boat).
Middle English [o:] raised to Modern English [u:] (as in boot).
Middle English [u:] (was diphthongised in most environments to [ʊu], and this was followed by [əʊ], and then) Modern English [aʊ] (as in mouse) in the eighteenth century. (Before labial consonants, this shift did not occur, and [u:] remains as in room and droop)).
Middle English [aʊ] turned into Modern English [ɔ:] as in law

Causes of the Great Vowel Shift largely a mystery; possible causes (notice that all are related to social-historical events)
the mass immigration to the South-East of England after the Black Death. The different dialects and the rise of a standardised middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city.
The sudden social mobility after the Black Death may have caused the shift, with people from lower levels in society moving to higher levels.
The medieval aristocracy had spoken French, but by the early fifteenth century, they were using English. This may have caused a change to the "prestige accent" of English, either by making pronunciation more French in style, or by changing it in some other way, perhaps by hypercorrection to something thought to be "more English"
The great political and social upheavals of the fifteenth century, which were largely contemporaneous with the Great Vowel Shift.

Because English spelling was slowly but steadily becoming standardised in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Great Vowel Shift is responsible for many of the peculiarities of English spelling, including the peculiarities of the pronunciation of the alphabet /ei/, /bi:/, /si:/, etc.
Spellings that made sense according to Middle English pronunciation were retained in Modern English because of the adoption and use of the printing press (invented by Johann Gutenberg in Germany around 1440, and introduced to England in the 1470s by William Caxton and later Richard Pynson).