5/28/2010

ENG4820 | History of the English 
Language with Dr. Getty
Summer 2010
WEEK 2: BASICS & OLD ENGLISH

A LITTLE MORE BACKGROUND
A Language is a System of Arbitrary
Symbols…
• Which of the following best captures the concept of ‘five’?

• Kannada aydu (South Asia)

• Basque bost (Western Europe) Answer: 
• Arabic xamsa (Middle East)
All of them and none
• Coptic tiw (Egypt)
of them.
• Somali shanti (Northeastern Africa)
• Hausa biyar (Western Africa)
• Yoruba erin (Western Africa)
• Guarani po (South America)
• Finnish viisi (Northern Europe)
• Indonesian lima (Southeast Asia)
• Japanese itsutsu (Eastern Asia)
• Mohawk wisk (North America)

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ENG4820 | Week 3

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‘LANGUAGE’ vs. ‘DIALECT’
• Within communities of people who all speak the same
'language,' there can be huge differences in grammar,
pronunciation, and word-stock.
• We often use the word ‘dialect’
dialect to refer to divergent segments
of a larger speech community: American vs. British, Southern
vs. Midwestern, Rural vs. Urban
• Except for clear-cut cases, where you draw the line between
language and dialect is a political and cultural question, not a
scientific one.
• Example: Walk blindfolded from Germany to the Netherlands.
German and Dutch are related but separate ‘languages,’ each
with its own traditions and institutions.
• But with only your ears, you wouldn’t be be able to tell when
you cross the border, because the linguistic variation is
continuous across the neat political divide between them.

ENG4820 | Week 3 3

ABOUT LANGUAGE GROUPS…
• Where you draw the line between dialect and language
is mostly a political and cultural question, not a
scientific
i tifi one.
• You will find no easier example than present-day
English:
– Northern England: I nearly did a runner when I saw the
courgettes I left on the cooker hood had gone mankey.
• Translation: "I almost ran away when I saw the zuchinni I left
on top of the stove had spoiled.”
– Somewhere in California: And there was this one chick
who was, like, jonesing for nachos and was totally stoked
when I scored her some.
• Translation: "I saw a woman who wanted to eat fried corn
chips and melted cheese and was very enthusiastic when I
obtained some for her.”

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ABOUT LANGUAGE GROUPS…
• One language or two?
• One if you focus on our common history and
still overwhelming areas of commonality.
• Two if you focus on this and plenty of other
moments of mutual incomprehensibility.

ABOUT LANGUAGE GROUPS…
• We find many more clear-cut cases ... such as the Germanic and
Romance languages

• English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
• German: Alle menschen sind frei und gleich an würde und rechten geboren.
• Swedish: Alla människor är födda fria och lika i värde och rättigheter.

• French: Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits.
• Spanish: Todos los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos
• Italian: Tutti gli esseri umani nascono liberi ed eguali in dignità e diritti.
Source: UN Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/navigate/alpha.htm)

The similarities within each group are easy to notice. Historically, we know that
this is because the languages within each group are descended from a
common ancestor, a single, mutually comprehensible language that over
time broke apart into distinct 'daughter' languages.
But notice the similarities between English and the Romance group…

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
What Linguists DO NOT Study …
• How to make aesthetic, artistic, and moral
j dgments
judgments.
– English is going downhill.
– Certain people are lazy when they talk and/or
write.
– Middle English is more poetic than Old English
• Spelling and punctuation for their own sake
– Matters of conscious convention that relate only
indirectly to what's really going on, most of which
is subconscious

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
What Linguists Study …
• 'Grammar'
Grammar is the system of rules and
principles that, when plugged into a
language's word-stock, can generate
an infinite number of utterances that
speakers will accept as consistent with
th t language.
that l

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.
• A morph is the smallest indivisible unit of meaning in a language. A
morph can be ...
– a free-standing g word:
dog, Brazil, red, go, you.
– a prefix, something smaller than a word that goes before
something else:
unwed, prefix, procreate, ex-wife
– a suffix, something smaller than a word that goes after something
else:
bothersome, rental, noonish, cats
– an infix, rare in English but common in other languages, that goes
inside a word:
abso-fuckin-lutely
– a more abstract piece such as the quality of a particular vowel, or
perhaps the placement of emphasis:
swim, swam, swum import ~ import, record ~ record, convict ~
convict, rebound ~ rebound

ENG4820 | Week 2 9

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.
• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like we did
with Superman
p and Clark Kent.
• We know that each of the words in column
(a) (b)
(b) means the thing in column (a) along
riot riots with something that means 'plural,' or
kid kids 'more than one.'
day days • With riot, day, and rose, we have a set of
regular affixes for words that end in
rose roses voiceless consonants, vowels, and the
ox oxen phonemes /s,z/.
/s z/ We can make up words
child children and automatically know what their plural
form will be.
sheep sheep
• With ox, child, and sheep, we see irregular
affixes that apply only to those words and
few others (brethren, deer, fish).
ENG4820 | Week 2 10

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.

• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like

we did with Superman and Clark Kent.
• We know that each of the words in column (b)
(a) (b)
means the thing in column (a) along with
relevant irrelevant something that means ‘not.’
logical illogical • The consonant sound in the prefix takes on…
possible impossible – the point and manner of articulation of any
consistent inconsistent following lateral or retroflex
– the point of articulation of any following
temperate intemperate
stop
articulate inarticulate – alveolar articulation everywhere else

ENG4820 | Week 2 11

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.

• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like

we did with Superman and Clark Kent.
/ PLURAL / / NOT / (The morpheme)

(The allomorphs)

/‐s/   /‐z/   /‐Iz/   /‐In/   /‐Ø/   … /Il‐/   /Ir‐/   /Im‐/   /In‐/   …

This is important. Sheep is just as plural as roses, but the morph is ‘covert,’
also called ‘null.’
It has no realization in speech, but it’s still there.

ENG4820 | Week 3 12

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WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
The -emes
Morpheme: An abstract mental representation that …
• Organizes different affixes into a single mental unit

– The words irrelevant, illogical, impossible, and inconsistent all

contain something that means NOT
– The words riots, kids, roses, oxen, children, and sheep all
contain something that means PLURAL

• BIG DEAL: If we see/hear an affix in some words, we can infer its

presence in related words that appear to not have it.

– The ‘null’
null plural morpheme: /kId + z/ vs
vs. /sip
v + Ø/

– Overt /-z/ vs. Covert /-Ø/ morphs

ENG4820 | Week 3 13

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
Regular vs. irregular morphemes

• Regular Morphemes Irregular Morphemes

– Rule-governed forms Arbitrary forms; No rhyme or reason!

– Apply to all new words Apply only to certain existing words
– Learned early by children Learned late by children
– Appear more frequently Appear less frequently

ENG4820 | Week 2 14

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WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
Regular vs. irregular morphemes
• Regular Morphemes Irregular Morphemes
– Rule-governed forms Arbitrary forms; No rhyme or reason!
– Apply to all new words Apply only to certain existing words

• Plural forms of nouns

– Nouns that end in [s,z]  /-Iz/ horse, rose
– Nouns that end in other, voiceless consonants  /-s/ mat, tiff
– Nouns that end in other voiced consonants  /-z/ lab, grave, name
• Past tense forms of verbs
– Verbs that end in [t,d]  /-id/ wait, raid
– Verbs that end in other, voiceless consonants  /-t/ thank, laugh
– Verbs that end in other, voiced consonants  /-d/ beg, bathe, name
v

• Pretend that the following made-up words are nouns or verbs:

biss, lozz, veck, drid
• You already know their plural forms if they are nouns, their past-
tense forms if they are verbs!

ENG4820 | Week 2 15

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
Regular vs. irregular morphemes
• Regular Morphemes Irregular Morphemes
– Rule-governed forms Arbitrary forms; No rhyme or reason!
– Apply to all new words Apply only to certain existing words

• Why oxen, children, and sheep instead of oxes, childs, and

sheeps?
• For that matter, why not ox, childen, and sheepren?
• Why ate, wrote, and swum instead of not eated, writed, and
swimmed?
• For that matter, why not ote, wrate, and swom?
• Pretend that the following made-up wordsv are nouns or verbs:
biss, lozz, veck, drid
– No one would guess plural forms like bissen, lozzren, and vock
– No one would guess past tense forms like bass, vock, or drod

ENG4820 | Week 2 16

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WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
Regular vs. irregular morphemes
• Regular Morphemes Irregular Morphemes
– Rule-governed forms Arbitrary forms; No rhyme or reason!
– Apply to all new words Apply only to certain existing words

• Language change tends to favor regularization and

reduction of overt morphology.
– As late as the 17th century, help was an irregular verb:
help ~ halp ~ holpen
– Wed and dive are on their way towards becoming completely
regular
• Especially true in the course of periods
v of extended contact
with other languages

• The bigger picture: Regularization and re-deregularization

probably run in cycles of many thousands of years. Ask me how!

ENG4820 | Week 2 17

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

• Notice the patterns of grammaticality (This is English!) and ungrammaticality (This

is not English!) below:

– He loves her
– *He loves she
– *Him loves her
– Whom/Who did you see at the party last night?
– *Whom went to the party last night?

• What you’re seeing here is the remnant of what was once a vast system of
p
correspondence between the form of a p phrase ((the p
presence or absence and
shape of various affixes) and the function of the person, place, or thing it denotes
within the action of a sentence.
• To illustrate, the king, the bishop, and the dog

ENG4820 | Week 2 18

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Dramatis Personae …

The King The Bishop The Dog

ENG4820 | Week 3 19

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

Consider these sentences … who gives what to whom depends on word order.

Giver Recipient Gift

The king gave the bishop the dog

The king gave  the dog the bishop

The bishop gave the king the dog

The bishop
The bishop gave the dog
the dog the king
the king

The dog gave the king the bishop

The dog gave the bishop the king

ENG4820 | Week 3 20

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

From the earliest stages of English through the twelfth, the function of a phrase
could be read from the presence or absence and shape of specific affixes
affixes.

First the words: cyning biscop hund

Pronunciation: <e> Always pronounced, in this case like <e> in debate

< þ > Pronounced like <th> in three.

The Giver The Recipient The Gift

The king se cyning þam cyninge þone cyning

The bishop se biscop þam biscope þone biscop

The bishop se hund þam hunde þone hund

ENG4820 | Week 3 21

THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

So in Old English, word order was relatively free, since everything about who gave
what to whom was encoded in the morphology…
p gy
Giver Recipient Gift

Se cyning geaf þam biscope þone hund

Se cyning geaf þone hund þam biscope

Þone hund geaf se cyning þam biscope

Þone hund geaf þam biscope se cyning

Þam biscope geaf se cyning þone hund

Þam biscope geaf þone hund se cyning

ENG4820 | Week 3 22

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THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

What happened between the 8th and 11th centuries?

• Phonological changes: Reduction of unstressed syllables, already underway

since the early Germanic period

– Loss of final consonants

– Loss of range of possible vowels

• Since overt case marking in Old English is realized in unstressed syllables, the
system collapses, leaving us with the essentially fixed word order system we
y
have today.

ENG4820 | Week 2 23

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