ЛЕКЦИЯ ОБ ИСТОРИИ ПОЯВЛЕНИЯ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА
В ЛЕКЦИИ ОСВЕЩЕНЫ ОСНОВОПОЛАГАЮЩИЕ ФАКТЫ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА И ЕГО ИСТОРИИ.
ПОДОЙДЕТ ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВЭ
Историю английского языка многие филологи и лингвисты делят на три периода: древнеанглийский, среднеанглийский и новоанглийский. Однако деление это достаточно условное, потому что язык существовал у племен, населявших Британские острова, задолго до завоевания Британии Цезарем или распространения на территории страны христианства.
LECTURE 1
ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND
AN OUTLINE
Historical Linguistics. The Comparative method.
The Concept of Proto-Germanic (PG)
Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law.
Periods in the History of English.
The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles
OE Heptarchy. OE Dialects.
Christianity and writing
Historical Linguistics.
The Comparative method.
19th centuries
late 18th
and
SIR WILLIAM JONES (1746-1794)
Sanskrit
Latin Greek Persian Gothic Celtic
The English scholar and diplomat William Jones (18th c.), working in India as a
British judge, noticed certain features in the vocabulary and grammar of
Sanskrit (the ancient classical language of India) that were shared with Latin
and Greek and other European languages.
He asserted that these languages developed from a common
source language. He identified the source language as Sanskrit
Interest in the discovery mounted and, early in the 19th century,
Sanskrit was being studied in the West.
the 19th century is the era of historical-comparative
linguistics, led by German scholarship:
the Dane Rasmus Rask
the Germans Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm
The comparative method is a technique for studying the
development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature
comparison of two or more languages with common descent
from a shared ancestor.
The German scholar Franz Bopp
was the first to work out some of
the relationships between the
languages, showing how they
were related.
The Danish scholar Rasmus
Rask recognized that there were
regular sound shifts between
languages,
but it was left to a German
scholar Jacob Grimm who
deduced regular rules of sound
change
August Schleicher (1821–68) set about reconstructing the
hypothetical parent language from which most European
languages were derived – the protolanguage.
He also devised the genealogical family-tree model of the Indo-
European languages.
2. The Concept of
Proto-Germanic (PG)
SCHEME OF INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS
FROM CA. 4000 TO 1000 BC
the “Satem” languages
the “Centum”
languages
The Indo-European family of languages, has developed out
of some single language, which must have been spoken
thousands of years ago by some comparatively small body of
people in a relatively restricted geographical area.
This original language we can call Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
The prefix proto- was introduced to indicate a hypothetical
language that had left no documentation, but which could be
reconstructed by the method of comparison
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) - some single language, which
must have been spoken thousands of years ago by some
comparatively small body of people in a relatively restricted
geographical area
Proto-Germanic (PG) - a dialect of Indo-European all Germanic
languages are descended from
We have no records of the PG.
We can reconstruct it by comparing the various daughter
languages, especially valuable are languages with early literary
records, Gothic in particular.
Proto-Germanic
West Germanic
North Germanic
East Germanic
North Germanic
(Old Norse)
West Scandinavian:
Icelandic
Norwegian
Faroese
East Scandinavian:
Danish
Swedish
Gutnish
East Germanic:
Burgundian
Vandal
Gothic:
Visigothic
Ostrogothic
In the 4th c. Goths were Christianized by a missionary named Ulfilas (311–383).
Our knowledge of Gothic is almost wholly due to a translation of the Gospels and
other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas.
Except for some runic inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of a
Germanic language we possess.
Gothic is important in giving information about early forms of Germanic.
WEST GERMANIC
Old High German High German
Old Saxon Low German
Old Low Franconian Dutch
Old English English
Old Frisian Frisian
One important aspect of PIE is that it was an inflected
language.
PG is a highly inflected language, like PIE.
In PG the stress was put on the 1st syllable (fixed accent),
in PIE – it could fall on any syllable (free accent).
The tendency in PG to stabilize the accent on the 1st syllable had
profound consequences. It led to a weakening and often loss of
unstressed syllables, especially at the end of the word
PIE verb “bheronom”
PG beranan
OE beran
ME beren, bere
PDE bear
3. THE FIRST CONSONANT SHIFT.
GRIMM’S LAW
“the 1st soundshifting”;
after the early 19th c. philologist
Jakob Grimm, who analysed it.
Grimm began with the assumption that Sanscrit, Greek, Latin
and other European languages had a common ancestor.
This common ancestor, which we will call Proto-Indo-European,
can be reconstructed by examining its descendants.
FATHER
Sanskrit – pitar
Latin – pater
Ancient Greek – pāter
English – father
Because the “p” sound appears in a wider variety of languages,
it is assumed to be ancestral and the “f” in English to be derived
from a consonant shift.
GRIMM’S LAW
It consists of 3 major consonant
changes.
PIE ASPIRATED VOICED STOPS > GMC VOICED
STOPS
Bh > b
Sans. bharami – ModE bear
Dh > d
Sans. rudhiras – ModE red
Gh > g
Gr. chen – Ger Gans
PIE VOICELESS STOPS > GMC VOICELESS
FRICATIVES
P > f
L. pater – ModE father
T > th
L. dentis – ModE tooth
K > h
L. cornu – ModE horn
PIE VOICED STOPS > GMC VOICELESS
STOPS
b > p
L. turba – ModE thorp
d > t
L. dens – ModE tooth
g > k
L. ager – ModE acre
VERNER’S LAW.
THE SECOND CONSONANT SHIFT (1875)
Certain apparent exceptions to
Grimm’s Law were subsequently
explained by Karl Verner (a
Danish scholar) and others.
VERNER’S LAW.
Karl Verner showed that voiceless
fricatives became voiced if the
preceding syllable was unstressed, but
otherwise remained unchanged.
Latin centum English hundred.
VERNER’S LAW.
PIE f > Gmc v
PIE th > Gmc d
Lat pater – Gth fadar
PIE k > Gmc g
PIE s > Gmc z > r in North and West Germanic) =
rotacizm
Gth. raisjan – OE ræran
THE HIGH GERMAN CONSONANT SHIFT
The High German Consonant Shift or the Second German
Consonant shift was a series of sound changes which
separates the Upper High German dialects from other West
Germanic languages such as Modern English, Dutch, and
Low German.
There are three major steps of this sound shift,
The first stage is where the three voiceless stops became
weakened into the closest fricative equivalents:
/p/ → /f/
/t/ → /s/
/k/ → /x/
Cf. English grip – German Grif
The second stage of the shift involved the same voiceless
stops as the first stage. However, this only afected geminated,
liquid-adjacent (-l, -r) and nasal-adjacent forms. Those stops
became Africates.
/p/ → /pf/
/t/ → /ʦ/
/k/ → /kx/
Cf. Gth. twai, OE twa – OHG zwei
The third part of the stage involves the Voiced stops becoming
voiceless stops. This involves the following:
/b/ → /p/
/d/ → /t/
/g/ → /k/
Cf. English flood – German Flut
for greater understanding go to the chart on p. 13
[Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П., Беляева Т.М.
Практикум по истории английского языка. – Cпб.,
2005]
4. PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Traditionally, the history of the English
language is divided into 3 major periods.
This division was first proposed by an
English philologist, Henry Sweet, in
1873.
PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Old English (AngloSaxon) (5 c.1066) =
the period of full inflexions;
Middle English (1066 – 1485) = of
levelled inflexions;
Modern English (1485 ...) = of lost
inflexions.
5. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS
OF THE BRITISH ISLES.
The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles, whose language we
can reconstruct, were Celtic speakers.
The Celts had been living in England until being invaded by the
Romans (the Emperor Claudius) in 43 AD
But, Latin never overtook the Celtic language.
It was inevitable that the military conquest of Britain should
have been followed by the Romanization of the province.
By the beginning of the 5th century the Roman Empire was
under increasing pressure from advancing barbarians, and the
Roman garrisons in Britain were being depleted as troops were
withdrawn to face threats closer to home.
In A.D. 410, the same year in which the Visigoths entered and
sacked Rome, the last of the Roman troops were withdrawn and
the Britons had to defend themselves.
Facing hostile Picts and Scots in the north and Germanic raiders
in the east, the Britons decided to hire one enemy to fight the
other: they engaged Germanic mercenaries to fight the Picts and
Scots.
Germanic mercenaries were from three Germanic nations: the
Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.
The mercenaries succeeded quickly in defeating the Picts and
Scots and then being attracted by the British fertile lands began
to conquer England —a slow-moving conquest that would take
more than a century.
About the year 449 AD began the invasion of Britain by certain
Germanic tribes, the founders of the English nation.
The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain mustn’t be thought of as
the arrival of a unified invading army, but rather as the arrival
and penetration of various uncoordinated bands of adventurers
in diferent parts of the country, beginning in the mid 5th c. and
going on all through the 6th c.
But by about 700, the Anglo-Saxons had occupied most of
England and a considerable part of southern Scotland (the
exceptions being Cornwall and an area in the North West).
Wales remained a British stronghold
The language of Anglo-Saxons became the dominant one. The
failure of Celtic to influence OE doesn’t mean that the Britons
were all killed or driven out.
The Britons were a defeated people whose language had no
prestige compared with that of the conquerors.
6. OE HEPTARCHY.
In the 7th c. Germanic tribes set up seven kingdoms called the AngloSaxon
Heptarchy, rule of the seven kingdoms .
Kent
Northumbria
Mercia (West Midlands)
Wessex (central Southern England)
East Anglia
Essex
Sussex
At first, Kent was probably of major importance. It was to Kent
that the first Roman Christian missionaries came, notably St.
Augustine in 597
In the 7th c. the Northumbria was very powerful, and was a
great center of learning. The monasteries of Northumbria
produced beautiful manuscripts of the Bible.
In the 8th c. this leadership passed to Mercia
In the 9th c. = Wessex, centred at Winchester; and it was the
kings of Wessex who finally unified the country : (in the late 9th
c., the kings of Wessex, notably King Alfred, saved the South
and West of England from the Danes ((The Scandinavian Invasions
of England. The Viking Age IXXI c.),
886, the Treaty Wedmore: king Alfred established a truce with the Danish
leader . The Dane Law.
and in the 10th c. Alfred’s successors reconquered the North
and the East.
THE VIKING INVASIONS
793, the Vikings, from Scandinavia, sacked and burned the
monastery of Lindisfarne, beginning a century of destruction
and cultural collapse.
in 850, large Danish fleet began to arrive in England, and the
Vikings began to conquer as well as pillage.
Eventually almost all of northern and eastern England was under
their control.
Alfred, the king of Wessex, was able to rally his kingdom and
defeat the Vikings. This led to a treaty between the Viking king
Guthrum and Alfred, The Treaty of Wedmore (878).
The treaty defined the territory (from Chester to London) which
was to be subject to Danish law and is hence known as the
Danelaw.
In addition the Danes agreed to accept Christianity,
KING ALFRED
Wessex became the seat of AS intellectual,
literary, and political life;
ruled from 871 to 899;
brought together scholars to begin a project of
educational reform;
commissioned the translation of key works of
Latin learning into OE
OE DIALECTS
The surviving texts form the OE period are in 4 main
dialects:
West saxon! (the literary standard)
Kentish
Mercia
Anglian
Northumbria
Although West Saxon became the
literary standard of unified England, it
is not the direct ancestor of modern
standard English, which is mainly
derived from an Anglian dialect
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