History of English I

Chaucer (1340 – 1400? wrote the Canterbury Tales towards the end of his life, the work is unfinished

Canterbury Cathedral today

“Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” Murder in the cathedral

Pronunciation
http://academics.vmi.edu/english/audio/GP-opening.html

Canterbury pilgrims by William Blake

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The drought of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every vein in swich licour,
Of which vertue engendred is the flour,
And Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes. And the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours y-ronne,

And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen all the night with open ye,
So priketh hem nature in here courages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seeken straunge strondes
In ferne halwes couthe in sondry londes.
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende
The hooly blisful martyr for to seeke
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

Red words are (Norman) French loans in
Middle English. Chaucer himself borrowed a
great deal (was fluent in French).
(It should be borne in mind that we can never say
precisely when and by whom a loan was
introduced since we do not have all documents of
that age plus there was always oral speech;
however, the likelihood that Chaucer was the first
user in many cases is quite considerable).

Deterioration of meaning and loanwords
Wyrm in Old English meant ‘serpent
(dragon)’, now worm
Stol in Old English meant ‘throne’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGUhHbBB0x4
&feature=related
Not obligatory!
For those temporarily tired of studying, something
directly based on this (yet historically, obviously, totally
inaccurate!!! Thomas à Becket was born c.1118 and was
murdered on December 29, 1179, having been Archbishop
of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170. Becket was canonised
after his death, his burial place – Canterbury cathedral –
became a destination for pilgrimages).
The “Black Adder“ episode above (in 6 parts) plays on
the very real strife between the church and the king (that
did not end until the Reformation in 1533) and,
inspired by the story of Becket, pretends that all
Archbishops of Canterbury meet an early and violent death.

Norman French influence on spelling I
u for /ju:/
y for /i/ (i is also kept, y used for calligraphic
reasons!)
o for /u/ in cases where there are many
upward sticks (e.g., yonge sonne /junge
sunne/ – for reasons of legibility, also
influence of Norman French ou for /u:/
ou/ow/ouu for /u:/ (v=u)

Norman French spelling II
Loss of thorn-letter and edh-letter – th
instead
sh instead of sc for /S/
gh for ich-Laut and ach-Laut
In loanwords g stands for /dz/ (engendred, courages, pilgrimages, straunge), ch for /tS/, c for /s/, z for /z/, ph for /f/

Norman French influence on pronunciation
Diphthongs changed: /ea/, /eo/ gone, /au/,
/oi/, /ai/, etc entered the language.
/ü/ gone (turned into /i/), the respective
French sound pronounced as /ju:/.

However, in the main the pronunciation did
not change, this was still a pre-Great-
Vowel-shift time:
e - /e:/, i - /i:/, a /a:/, ow - /u:/, etc.
Ich-Laut, ach-Laut still there.
Short vowels also have the so-called
continental pronunciation.

Important: e at the end of words and even
word-internally could be pronounced but
did not have to be pronounced. In the
case of Chaucer the main rule is: pronounce
them if this is called for by the metre (iambic
pentameter).
For a time this was forgotten, hence Dryden called
Chaucer a “rough diamond” – i.e. a genius who
was not able to keep the metre – wrong!

Grammar: levelled endings.
The principle of analogy:
Old English:
fot – fet /fo:t/ - /fe:t/
boc – bec /bo:k/ - /be:k/
But :
stan – stanas – far more frequent

Analogy
ston – stones (from Old English Stan –
stanas)
boc – X
X = boces/bookes.
Two opposing tendencies in the history of any
language
1) ease of pronunciation (sound laws – regular, but
produce grammatical irregularity)
2) Link between sound and sense (analogy –
irregular but produces grammatical regularity)

Iconicity
Analogy produces iconicity: a relation of
equivalence between sense and sound.
Most obvious case of iconicity:
onomatopoea.
However, there are many more types of iconicity:
No known language has a plural form that is shorter than the respective singular,
Same ending for the same meaning:
stones, books, etc (i.e. all plurals end in s)
Order of clauses the same as order of events
(“They married and had a child” versus “They had a child and married”), etc.

The grammar of Middle English more
iconic than that of Old English, that of
Modern English even more so.

Middle English: articles in place (i.e. compulsory).
While in Estonian the unstressed “see” and “üks”
also perform the function of articles, their use is
not regulated by obligatory rules (“Pane see
raamat lauale” – “Put the book on the table” – in
Estonian, we can say “Pane raamat lauale”, and it
would be very unidiomatic to say “Pane see
raamat sellele lauale”).

His – both in Old English and in Middle
English the genitive (possesive) form of
both he and hit was his.
Its is the latest addition to the English
pronoun system: Shakespeare (16th
century) used its and his as neuter
possessive (genitive) interchangeably. Milton (17th
century) was more of a linguistic purist, its was still
considered as a “vulgar” form, only 3 cases of
usage in his works.

Middle English: perfect tenses (hath y-
ronne): were formed roughly on the
following logic:
“I had this picture put up on the wall” – “I had
put this picture up on the wall”

drought - nowadays means “põud”, original
meaning: “dryness” (*driug – dry – a
Germanic root)

hath – has
(cf the Biblical idiom “pride goeth/goes
before the fall” – still used also in the old,
the Shakespearean idiom “Heaven hath no
fury like a woman scorned”)
Hath pierced – Present Perfect (see above
the introduction of analytical tenses into
English)

licour – Middle English from Old French
(liquid, beverage)
(cf Present-Day American English liquor –
strong alcohol; does also mean occasionally
other liquids – broth or juice as produce in
cooking, pharmaceutical liquids)

of which vertue – by virtue of which, by the
strength of which
(i.e. Present-Day BY VIRTUE OF – because
of, by the strength of)

engendred – created
TO ENGENDER – to bring into existence, to
give rise to, to produce, i.e.usually figurative,
but also: to procreate, propagate

Zephirus – (Greek mythology) west wind
(warm)

eek – also (German auch)
Cf EKE OUT (e.g., a salary by doing odd
jobs – Middle English eken – to increase)

holt – a grove, a copse (i.e. small wood) – can be found in the Heritage dictionary of English, marked as Archaic;
German: Holz - timber

heeth – HEATH
tendre – TENDER
croppes – shoots (võsud), cf to CROP UP
CROP (cultivated plants, yearly yield of such
plants, British HARVEST)

the Ram (Jäär) – the Zodiac sign of Aries
hath y-ronne – Present Perfect
Notice the prefix y! In Chaucer’s time it had
survived in the Kentish dialect (Chaucer
came from Kent), remnant of Old English
ge- (see the notes on Beowulf!).
YCLEPT, YCLAD – archaic past participle
forms, still recorded in dictionaries, especially the
former one(“so-called” and “clothed”, respectively).

fowl – check notes on “Beowulf”, notice the
new spelling, the pronuciation is still /fu:l/,
the meaning is still bird!
hem – accusative of the old form of they.
they (a Scandinavian loan – their –
combined with tha in Old English) was just
entering the language and replacing the old
hie. The transition is best exemplified in the line
“That hem hath holpen whan that they were
seeke”).

here – old form of their
courage – first meaning “courage”, metonymically means “heart” (courage was thought to be located in the heart, cf Present-Day English “TO TAKE HEART” = to pluck up courage; TO LOSE HEART = be discouraged, TO HEARTEN – to encourage; cf also Estonian “südant rindu võtma”, “süda saapasääres”). The interesting point here is that normally the concrete noun is used instead of the abstract one, here the abstract noun (courage) is used instead of the concrete one (heart).

thanne – then, THEN
longen (present plural) – long, yearn, want,
wish
folk - people (PEOPLE is a French loan),
FOLK – very much alive in American English
(“folks back home”, “my folks”, etc.,
particularly popular in the Southern states).
Cf Present-Day German Volk.

To goon – to go
Cf later wenden – turn, go (present plural).

Suppletivity = suppletion I
Present in languages of different families.
Present in Old, Middle and Modern English,
though the general tendency is towards
more regularity/iconicity so the number of
suppletive forms has decreased.
In the text:
goon – to go
wenden - to turn

Suppletion II
Gan was suppletive in Old English, past
form: eode.
Eode was supplanted by went (past form of
wenden) at the end of the Middle English
period.
To wend has survived in Modern English in
phrases such as
to wend one’s way, we wended homewards
(ironic usage).

Suppletion III
Thus: suppletivity- suppletion – different
parts of one and the same paradigm come
from what were originally different
paradigms (different words with close
meanings or words in different but close
dialects).
Suppletion embraces verbs, adjectives,
nouns.

Suppletion IV
Be – was/were –been (Old English beon/wesan)
(am, art, is, are); in Old English some suppletive
forms were used parallel to one another)
Good –better – best
Bad – worse – worst
Much – more – most
Little – less – least
Estonian: hea – parem (cf “paras” – fitting, in Finnish “the
best” - metonymical link), palju - rohkem
Finnish: mennä (to go), lähteä (to leave)
Estonian: minema, mine, lähen, läksin
French: aller, je vais/nous allons, ira (future)

Suppletion V
Russian: chelovek –ljudi, French: personne-
gens, English: person – persons/people
byt’ – est’
hodit’ –idti – shol, shla.
horoshij – luchij
Essentially the same words suppletive in various
languages, including non-related ones.
The most common words (‘good’, ‘to be’, ‘to go’,
‘much’, “people”, etc).

Suppletion VI
General principle: the more frequently
used a word, the more one can “afford” it
to be irregular/non-iconic. (Frequent
words are not a burden to memory).
Suppletion perhaps the most drastic form of
irregularity/iconicity), covers mainly the most
frequent words.

Suppletion VII
Increase of iconicity/regularity appears to be
a general tendency in language history –
probably related to increased vocabulary
which means that every particular word is
used less frequently.
Latin was full of suppletive verbs (e.g. fero-
tuli-latum-ferre - to carry), many have
become regular in, say, Italian or French.

General principle: the more frequently used a
word, the more one can “afford” it to be
irregular/non-iconic.
This also applies to “less irregular” words: the so-called
strong verbs (German “starke Verben”) – those that have
their forms made up by
Ablaut/gradation, such as bear-bore-born(e) are also very
frequent in oral speech and texts. The number of such
verbs has shrunk in English (Old English just over 300 –
the same number as in Present-Day German! – Modern
English100; plus new irregular verbs such as let,
put, etc – here ease of pronunciation has been at work
(“letted”, “putted” difficult to pronounce)

The same applies, e.g., to irregular plurals such
as foot - feet, man - men, woman - women,
child - children, tooth-teeth, goose-geese, ox –
oxen, mouse - mice, louse-lice (in the case of
the latter two one must keep in mind frequency at
the time when analogy levelled all declensions
under one: mice, lice and oxen were common,
books were not!

Palmeres – pilgrims to remote shrines, esp.
Jerusalem (brought palm leaves back to
prove they had been there; could have got
these from Santiago de Compostela, which
was much nearer to England, with a less
dangerous journey!)

for to – in order to, to
(cf nursery rhymes:
“Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch a whale …”)

straunge – STRANGE, not just strange, but
also foreign (cf French étranger, à
l’étranger - abroad).
strond/strand – shore (THE STRAND in
London, STRANDED), cf German
Strand,Estonian rand

fern – distant, far-away (FAR). Cf German
fern (adjective and adverb – kauge, kaugel).
In Early Modern English er turned into ar,
sometimes this is reflected in spelling (as in
FAR, HARK(EN)), sometimes not (Derby, clerk,
Berkeley). In America, the change did not
occur, hence the pronunciations /de:bi/, /kle:k/,
/be:kli/, where British English has /a:/.

The name of the letter r turned from the
continental er to ar, later /r/ was dropped at
the end of syllables (in British English) so a
consonant is now pronounced as /a:/.

halwe – saint, metonymically shrine
HALLOW
Hooly – HOLY

halig – holy, HOLY
Long /a:/ turned into long /o:/ at the
beginning of the Middle English period. The
change happened in Southern England
only.
During the Great Vowel Shift long /o:/ turned
into /ou/. In Scottish English still forms such
as hame for home.

Proto-Indo-European *kailo-
“whole, uninjured, of good omen” I
Proto-Germanic *hailaz
Old English hal – HALE (sound in health, vigorous, robust (HALE AND HEARTY), WHOLE
Old English halsum – WHOLESOME (e.g. WHOLESOME FOOD)
Old Norse heill (healthy) – HAIL (as a greeting), TO HAIL (to greet, also: to hail a taxi, also fig. to praise highly, to acclaim, as in “critics hailed her new book”), WASSAIL; German “Heil!” not used any more (“Heil Hitler! and the associated shame (just as with Reich)

Proto-Indo-European *kailo-
“whole, uninjured, of good omen” II
Germanic *hailitho > Old English hælth – HEALTH
Germanic *hailjan > Old English hælan – TO HEAL
Germanic *hailagaz > Old English halig,– HOLY
Germanic *hailigon > Old English halgian to
consecrate, to bless - TO HALLOW (as in “Our Father who
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,…”, to HALLOW
somebody – to venerate, to HALLOW something, as in “his
very presence hallowed the room”)
halga – sacred, a saint, Middle English halwe – HALLOW
meaning “saint” (the latter is a French loan (ALL
HALLOWS’ DAY, HALLOWEEN). (cf also Rowling “The
Hallows of Death” – “Surma vägised”)

Proto-Indo-European *kailo-
“whole, uninjured, of good omen” III
The metonymic link between “being in one piece”
and “being healthy” is fairly universal (cf. the two
meanings of the Estonian word “terve” – a Finno-
Ugric, i.e. a non-Indo-European word! – or Russian
“целый” (whole) and “целить” – to heal (NB!
modern medicine uses “treat” and “cure” – the
latter when the result is positive, “heal” is generally
used in alternative medicine as is “целить”, cf also
Healer and Целитель as names for Jesus).

Proto-Indo-European *kailo-
“whole, uninjured, of good omen” IV
The use of a word denoting “health” in greetings
and other ritual formulas ( as in HAIL!) is also fairly
universal (cf. Estonian “terviseks” and
“tere”<“terve”, Russian “здраздвуй(те)” <
“здоровье”; ancient Romans used “Vale!” – “be
healthy!” – as a parting formula).
The meaning of sacredness as in halig >
HOLY is related to magic/religion linked with
healing and being healthy (cf. Healer above).

sondry – various (ALL AND SUNDRY, TO
TEAR ASUNDER)
to ferne halwes couthe in sondry londes
– to distant shrines can (could) in various
lands

shire – county (as in present-day
placenames, e.g. Derbyshire). Shire +
reeve = SHERIFF (a disguised compound,
cf “Ohthere’s voyage”)
blissful – blessed (BLISSFUL nowadays
means “full of bliss, extremely happy”)

for to seeke – to (in order to) seek
holpen – notice that y- has already been dropped, but it is
still a strong (Ablaut/gradation) verb, just like the Present-
Day German helfen – half – geholfen – to help. German
only has this one word for “help”, whereas English has
borrowed aid, assist and succour from French
(plus rescue, and there are also phrasal units like
give somebody a hand”, etc).

HELP used less frequently due to the existence of
synonyms, has become iconic/regular (HELP,
HELPED, HELPED). A good example of how
expansion of vocabulary leads to more
grammatical iconicity (remember, Present-Day
English has 500 000 words, Present-
Day German 180 000, Present-Day French 130
000 – according to the largest dictionaries of the
respective languages).

whan that they were seeke – when they
were ill (American English SICK).

In many respects American English, though usually
associated with modernity and (often rightfully) with
innovation, has retained forms that were in the language in
Shakespeare’s time. (First settlement 1604, Shakespeare’s
death – 1616). British English has “a sick child”,
but “the child is ill” (“sick” after the copula would mean
actually vomitting), in American English “the child is sick” is
used for illness in general. Cf also the pronunciation of “er”,
the Subjunctive mood (“I move that the meeting be (British
should be) adjourned”).

Finally, an approximate translation:
When April with its showers sweet
The dryness of March has utterly destroyed
(“pierced to the root”)
And bathed every sap-vessel/crack in the
earth in such moisture
By virtue of which the flower is brought into existence

When Zephyrus also with is sweet breath
Inspired has in every grove and heath
The tender shoots (new plants); and the young sun
Has in the Aries its half-course run,
And small birds sing
That sleep all the night with open eye,
So pricks them nature in their hearts