HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Survey course
● A little bit of everything will be discussed.

Language
● unique to humans because we are the only species that can use it.
● a reflection of who we are
● change because humans change
● used to get things done, which also changes. The way we relate with people changes
too.

Applied linguistics
● Language in use
● How it is being used by the speakers and in written form

From Obscurity to Prominence

● History of the english language is speculative at best
● English started somewhere in the eastern European continent with some influences from
the Asian continent through conquest, trade, exploration, and human conflict.
○ The English language is not an English thing, but it just became an English thing.
○ A consequence of human movement—dias kora (?)
○ Slow migration patterns at the time
○ Small villages and settlements (no more than 100 people) near water.

The Language Gift

● We use language in encoding and decoding information
● We are not singularly endowed with language
○ Animals have “language”---they have a different system than human language.
○ Human languages are more sophisticated than animal language
○ No other species use language as sophisticated as humans do
● “Human species are the only species that are capable of lying”
○ Humans use language to manipulate, mislead
○ Regulated by free will
○ Based on instinctual; basal
● Language is a mean of identification—cultures, dialects that can’t be traced to a specific
culture, soft dialects
○ Wherever there is a group of [people who communicate on a daily basis with the
same language, the language eventually changes to serve those needs
○ Language becomes a reflection of the people using it
○ Yeyeleng—Iligaynon gay speak
■ The first one to be mapped out extensively
■ There is some similarities between the gay speak of Manila and Davao
● Sophistication
 ○ Lord of the Rings
■ Elven language was created with the help of a linguist (conlang)
■ High Valyrian and Dothraki in Game of thrones too.
● Conventional—repeating patterns
● Behaviors can be mapped out

Language as system: a study in patterns

● Every language has two levels to its system—a characteristics that is called duality of
patterning
● Duality of patterning is a design feature of human language (meaning that all human
languages have it) while it is also unique to human language.
● Made up of meaningful elements (words or morphemes; lexis or vocabulary)
○ Virtually limitless inventory
■ Morpheme - the most basic form of a word/language (stem of a word)
■ Vocabulary - the collection of all these words; always adding words to the
English language
■ Exposure - you don’t use words that you have not been readily exposed
to.
● You easily stick to the vocabulary that you are used to.
● The inventory doesn’t increase unless you expose yourself
● Determinant of capability
● Made up of meaningless elements (sounds or phonemes)
○ Limited inventory of sounds
○ 35 distinct sounds

Language as system: interdependence between lexis & grammar

● Lexis or vocabulary
○ Lexis, meaning word or speech in Greek
○ Lexicon - a person’s vocabulary, language, or branch of language
○ Lexicology - study of lexis and lexicons
○ Lexicalization - process of adding words and word patterns of a language
○ Word formation processes: coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending,
clipping, backformation, conversion, acronym, derivation, prefix and suffix, and
multiple processes.**
● Grammar
○ Collection of principles of how to put together a sentence
■ Word order (syntax)
■ Word structure (morphology)
○ Provides various techniques of relating words to one another
■ Having a mastery of grammar improves your communication skills
■ Meaning and structure come together to make up language
● “Grammar is passe because you need to be communicative”
● The way that we put things together determines the sophistication
of language
 ● Communication is not pagalingan ng grammar
● Make sure that you are able to accommodate the limited range of
other language users
○ The rules by which we play and as long as you play by the rules, the sky’s the
limit for its use.
○ Relation of words to one another

Language as Signs
● Semiotic aspect of language
○ When we look at “A”, it signals to our brain that it has an equivalent sound
○ These symbols are there to signal you what sounds to produce, what each
sign/alphabet sounds like
● Linguistic signs are not words along; they may also be either smaller or larger than
whole words
○ You have the smallest linguistic sign - morpheme
● Free morphemes vs. bound morphemes
○ Free morphine - can be used alone
○ Bound morpheme - must be attached to other morphemes
○ Putting the morphemes together creates a pattern

Language as vocal
● Can be expressed in many ways
● Means of expression is default
● You learn to speak before you learn to read
● The signs of language are basically vocal because we learn to utter them first before
writing them.
○ Historically, the technology to write came later.
○ A fixed writing system took such a long time to proliferate
○ Earliest forms of writing: Cuneiform and Hieroglyph
■ A picture is equal to one sound with many letters
○ The modern writing system is already sophisticated because of the availability of
needs and opportunities for these things to come about.
● Oral-aural: spoken and heard
○ Becomes the basis of why we learn the vocal aspect of speech earlier than
reading
○ As a child, you can imitate the speech through sight and audio
● Because sounds follow one another sequentially in time, language has a
one-dimensional quality (like the letters we use to represent it in writing), whereas
gestures can fill the three dimensions of space as well as the fourth dimension of time
○ Letters in an alphabet have a one-to-one meaning
○ Whereas gestures can be interpreted in many ways based on any cultural
context
● If you are able to decode the system,you are able to read and write the language.
Gestures and speech
 ● The meaning of gestures differ from one culture to another
● Can take over the absence of speech

Language as conventional
● There are rules, even gestures, ocileses,
● A set of agreed, generally accepted standard, norms, social norms, or criteria

Word Formation Processes

1. Coinage - invention of totally new words; usually for commercial purposes
● Kodak, Honda
2. Borrowing - using words from other languages
● “Umbrella” is borrowed from Italian
3. Compounding - joining two different words to create a new word and meaning
● Wall+paper = wallpaper
4. Blending - joining parts of words together
● Breakfast+lunch = brunch
5. Clipping - shortening a longer word
● Brother → bro
6. Backformation - a word (noun) is reduced to form another word type (verb)
● Babysitter → babysit, donation → donate
7. Conversion - changing the function of words (i.e. from noun to verb) without reduction
● Butter (n.) → butter (v.), empty (adj.) → empty (v.), permit (v.) → permit (n.)
8. Acronym - creating a new word through the initials of an existing word
● Automated Teller Machine → ATM
9. Derivation - affixes (prefix, infix, suffix)
● Unhappy, unhappiness, rearrange