HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS
(GENERATIVE PERSPECTIVE)

III WSL 2008/2009

MATERIALS GATHERED FROM VARIOUS SOURCES…

SOMETIMES EVEN UNABLE TO EXHUME 

COMPILED BY JĘDRZEJ LUBICZ

 Fonologia generatywna 7
|+| HISTORIA BADAŃ JĘZYKOZNAWCZYCH ________________1
1. FERDINARD DE SAUSSURE (1857 – 1913) ___________________ 1 |+| SPEECH ACTS THEORY ________________________________ 7
a) Język 1 Language and action: Austin’s Theory of Speech Acts: _______________ 7
b) La langue vs. la parole 1 Indirect speech acts _____________________________________________ 8
c) Rozdział językoznawstwa historycznego i badań nad językiem Direct speech acts ______________________________________________ 8
w danym momencie 1
History of writing ______________________________________________ 8
d) Znaki językowe i podział języka na dwa elementy 1 Early drawings, pictograms, ideograms, picto, Sumerian writing system 8
e) Semiologia 1 Rebus principle, hieroglyphs, Phoenicians, word writing system (modern),
f) Język jako forma 1 syllable writing (modern), alphabetic writing (modern) 9
g) Wartość elementu w języku 1
h) Mechanizm funkcjonowania → 2 typy związków 1 |+| ZAGADNIENIA DO LICENCJATU Z JĘZYKOZNAWSTWA 10
2. JAN BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY (1845 – 1929) _____________ 2 1. Zakres i cele badań językoznawczych___________________________ 10
a) Rozdział między statycznym a dynamicznym aspektem języka 2 2. Działy językoznawstwa i zakres ich zainteresowań. _______________ 10
b) Rozdział języka i mówienia 2 3. Systemowy pogląd na język naturalny, podsystemy i jednostki ______ 11
c) Językoznawstwo historyczne 2 4. Cechy języka naturalnego (uniwersalia językowe) ________________ 11
d) System języka 2 5. Uniwersalia językowe a gramatyka uniwersalna __________________ 12
e) Fonem - pierwsze koncepcje 2 Podział uniwersalii, gramatyka uniwersalna 12
f) Propozycja odrębnej transkrypcji fonetycznej i fonemicznej 2 6. Kompetencja językowa i performancja językowa _________________ 12
g) Wyższość gramatyki nad fonologią 2
7. Kompetencje językowe a gramatyka, rodzaje gramatyk ___________ 12
3. STRUKTURALIZM AMERYKAŃSKI - 2 czynniki wpływające __ 2 Rodzaje gramatyk, gramatyka systemowa 12
a) Badania nad językami i kulturami indiańskimi 2 8. Teorie pochodzenia i rozwoju języka naturalnego_________________ 13
b) Psychologia behawiorystyczna 2
c) Cokolwiek użytkownik danego języka powie, jest to gramatyczne 2 |+| FONETYKA I FONOLOGIA _____________________________ 13
d) Opis języka chronologcznie: fonologia, morfologia, składnia 2 1. Opis i klasyfikacja dźwięków mowy (fonetyka artykulacyjna) ______ 13
e) Badania korpusu 2 2. Fonem i alofon, dystrybucja kontrastywna i komplementarna ______ 13
f) Przewaga języka mówionego nad pisanym 2 3. Różne sposoby definiowania fonemu____________________________ 13
g) Nowy okres dla językoznawstwa – dystrybucjonalizm 2 4. Fonologia suprasegmentalna __________________________________ 14
FRANZ BOAS (1858 – 1942), EDWARD SAPIR (1884-1939) 3
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF (1897 – 1941), LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
5. Procesy fonologiczne _________________________________________ 14
(1887 – 1949), Neobloomfieldowcy (językoznawstwo dystrybucyjne) 4 6. Cechy dystynktywne _________________________________________ 15
4. GRAMATYKA GENERATYWNO – TRANSFORMACYJNA ____ 5 7. Struktura sylaby, typy sylab __________________________________ 15
NOAM A. CHOMSKY (1928 - ) 5 8. Elementy fonologii generatywnej ______________________________ 15
Wczesna semantyka, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax,
|+| MORFOLOGIA I SKŁADNIA____________________________ 15
Gramatyka przypadku 6
 1. Nouns_____________________________________________________ 15
2. Pronouns __________________________________________________ 16
|+| SUMMARY AND REFERENCE SHEET FOR [BEGINNINGS TO
1600] HISTORY OF ENGLISH ______________________________16
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) ____________________________________ 17
Phonological system of PIE, morphology, verb, syntax 17
Proto-Germanic (PG) _________________________________________ 17
Phonemes, noun, verb 18
Syntax 19
Old English (OE) _____________________________________________
OE phonemes, umlaut, noun
Adjective, pronoun, verb, syntax, vocabulary
Literature, dialects, Viking invasions, end of OE period
Middle English (ME) __________________________________________
Phonemes
Inflection of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, verb
Syntax, vocabulary, dialects
Early Modern English of the 1500s ______________________________
“do-support”, other stuff
|+| SUMMARY AND REFERENCE SHEET FOR [1600 & LATER]
HISTORY OF ENGLISH ___________________________________24
Early Modern English of the Elizabethan era______________________ 24
Orthoepists __________________________________________________ 25
Changes after 1700____________________________________________
Phonology, splits in ModE vowel system
Consonant system, morphosyntax, vocabulary
Standard English, RP and “Estuary English”
English standards and dialects today
|+| ENGLISH LANGUAGE HISTORY (STUFF) ________________29
The methods of historical linguistics _____________________________ 29
Historical comparative grammar
Method of internal reconstruction, philological method,
family tree theory, wave theory 30
Language continuum __________________________________________ 31
Strata _______________________________________________________ 31
Causes of linguistic changes _____________________________________ 31
Interference of languages 31
Major: physiological reasons, digression on standards;
minor: metaphorical thinking, taboo, folk etymology, analogy 32
Old English declension _________________________________________ 33
Grammatical categories, declensions - nouns 33
19
Declensions - adjectives; adverbs, numerals 34
19
Pronouns (personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative) 34
20
Old English conjugation ________________________________________ 34
21
Verbs (weak, strong; preterite-present forms; anomalous) 35
21
21 |+| ENGLISH LANGUAGE HISTORY – SKRZYPIEC NOTES __ 35
22 Periodization of the English language _____________________________ 35
23 The history of historical linguistics _______________________________ 36
23 Pre-scientific period, scientific period 36
24 The methods of historical linguistics ______________________________ 36
The philological method, the method of internal reconstruction,
the historical comparative method 37
Indo-European languages_______________________________________ 37
2nd Germanic Consonant Shift __________________________________ 38
Grimm’s law, Verner’s law _____________________________________ 38
25
26 Germanic invasions on the British Isles ___________________________ 38
27 Periodisation of English (one of many) ____________________________ 39
28 Old English dialects ___________________________________________ 39
29 Old English __________________________________________________ 39
Declensions & conjugations, genitives, declensions,
conjugations, mutation 40
Verbs (weak vs. strong; Bēon: Present tense) 40
29
Changes between Old English and Middle English 42
HISTORIA BADAŃ JĘZYKOZNAWCZYCH iii. istnieją in absentia (łączy się w pamięciowym szeregu potencjalnym)
1. FERDINARD DE SAUSSURE (1857 – 1913)
Kurs językoznawstwa ogólnego (1916) 2. JAN BAUDOUIN DE COURTENAY (1845 – 1929)
a) Język a) Wprowadził rozgraniczenie pomiędzy statycznym a dynamicznym aspektem języka
a. Jest to zjawisko społeczne i istnieje jako zespół norm społecznie obowiązujących (dzięki nim można się a. Badaniem równowagi języka zajmuje się statyka; prawa statyczne działają w synchronicznym stanie
porozumieć); zespół tych norm jest stały (możemy zrozumieć wypowiedzi, których wcześniej nie języka
słyszeliśmy i możemy tworzyć nowe) b. Badaniem praw ruchów języka – to dynamika; prawa dynamiczne warunkują rozwój języka
b. Istnieje jako suma języków w głowie każdego użytkownika b) Rozgraniczył język (abstrakcyjny kompleks elementów) od mówienia (konkretnej indywidualnej realizacji
c. Jest to abstrakcyjny system elementów i stosunków zachodzących pomiędzy elementami języka)
d. Bardziej istotne wydaje się rozumienie langue jako zdolności do tworzenia i rozumienia nieskończonej c) Językoznawstwo historyczne – rozważania na temat trwałości pewnych elementów językowych wobec
ilości zdań zmienności innych
b) Odróżnia on język (la langue) od jego konkretnej manifestacji użytej przez jednostkę (mówienie – la parole). d) Język tworzy system składający się z mniejszych elementów
a. La parole nie jest społeczne, bo jest indywidualne, chwilowe i zmienne. e) Pierwsze koncepcje fonemu – jednostka dyferencyjna (różnicuje znaczenie dwóch elementów)
b. Jest sumą indywidualnych aktów mowy a. Uważał, że jest to minimalna, abstrakcyjna jednostka znakowa (należy do języka, a nie mowy)
c. Jest to konkretna realizacja abstrakcyjnego systemu języka (realizacja się różni) b. Cechami fonemu są cechy różnicujące
d. Bardziej konkretne jest rozumienie parole jako konkretnego użycia zdolności w langue c. 1910 – wprowadza oznaczenie koncepcji z 1894 (fonem to artykulacyjno-fizjologiczny proces +
c) Rozdzielił on językoznawstwo historyczne od badań nad językiem w danym momencie (rozwinął poglądy szkoły reprezentacja akustyczna) rozłożenia fonemu na mniejsze elementy: Kinema, Akusma
kazańskiej) f) zaproponował wprowadzenie odrębnej transkrypcji fonetycznej i fonemicznej
a. Wprowadza terminy: językoznawstwo synchroniczne i diachroniczne g) wyższość gramatyki nad fonologią
b. Ilustruje to na przecięciu się dwóch osi – oś pozioma to oś równoczesności (język bez względu na aspekt
czasu), oś pionowa to oś następstw (stosunki synchroniczne dla każdego rozwoju języka + zmiany w nim) 3. STRUKTURALIZM AMERYKAŃSKI - 2 czynniki wpływające na tę szkołę:
c. Dla niego badanie języka powinno odbywać się z jednego punktu, bez interferencji kontekstu a) Badania nad językami i kulturami indiańskimi
historycznego – tylko tak można badać język w czasie. b) Psychologia behawiorystyczna (wszystkie różnice pomiędzy ludźmi uwarunkowane są środowiskiem, a zachowanie
d) Język dla niego to zbiór elementów posiadających znaczenia (znaki językowe). Składa się on z 2 elementów: to ciągła reakcja na bodziec z zewnątrz)
a. znaczonego (signified) – pojęcie (drzewo, koń) – znak jest arbitralny (różne języki różnie mówią na jedno a. W wyniku tego odrzucono spekulacje i podejścia mentalistyczne, a skupiono się na faktach, które można
pojęcie w świecie) zanalizować; ograniczono badania nad znaczeniem
b. znaczącego (signifier) – realizacja akustyczna – jest linearny – elementy układają się jeden po drugim c) Cokolwiek użytkownik danego języka powie, jest to gramatyczne
(tworzą łańcuch) – jeśli coś zmienimy w szyku, zmienia się znaczenie d) Opis języka należało zacząć od fonologii, potem przejść do morfologii, a na końcu do składni (wszystko musiało
c. wszystkie te znaki mają charakter psychiczny i tworzą niepodzielną strukturę (porównuje ją do stron kartki być badane w izolacji od reszty)
papieru – jedna bez drugiej nie istnieje) e) Badano korpus (skończony zbiór zdań jednego lub więcej użytkowników)
e) Saussure postulował za stworzeniem semiologii – nauki o znakach, jako że język to system znaków a. Na podstawie tego budował gramatykę
f) Język jest formą – abstrakcyjnym schematem relacji elementów (nie można go opisać w kategoriach fizycznych) i. wyłaniał jednostki i struktury, określał ich dystrybucję (wszystkie pozycje, w jakich te elementy
a. Język to nie wyrazy i dźwięki, ale schematy zależności pomiędzy nimi mogą występować)
g) Wartość danego elementu w języku zależy od związków i różnic pomiędzy resztą elementów ii. naczelnym zadaniem było więc wykrywanie jednostek językowych (Discovery procedure)
h) Mechanizm funkcjonowania języka opiera się na 2 typach związków iii. nacisk na klasyfikację przyczynił się do nazwania językoznawstwa strukturalnego mianem
a. Związki syntagmatyczne – między elementami języka w wypowiedzi (co dany element poprzedza i co językoznawstwa taksonomicznego
występuje po nim) – szeregują one elementy języka w wypowiedzi i pozwalają na łączenie ich w złożone iv. każdy język był badany w jego własnych kategoriach
struktury; istnieją in praesentia (parę elementów obecnych w rzeczywistym szeregu) f) przewaga języka mówionego nad pisanym (Indianie nie mieli żadnych form pisemnych); język jako tekst został
b. Związki paradygmatyczne – między elementami systemu języka: zepchnięty do zjawisk pochodnych (język to transmisja języka mówionego za pomocą znaków)
i. Janek idzie spać / On idzie spać – zachodzi tu związek paradygmatyczny (oba wyrazy to podmiot 1933 Bloomfield wydaje książkę Language:
w zdaniu, są w identycznej relacji z innymi wyrazami) a) nowy okres dla językoznawstwa – koniec koncepcji mentalistycznych, początek behawioryzmu, który potem rozwinie
ii. płot-ek, kot-ek, dom-ek – pierwsze człony są w relacji paradygmatycznej względem siebie (tworzą się w dystrybucjonalizm
pewną klasę elementów łączących się z sufiksem –ek)

1 2
Prekursor prądu: c) BENJAMIN LEE WHORF (1897 – 1941)
a) FRANZ BOAS (1858 – 1942) – antropolog a. Widzenie świata jest względne – zależy od języka, którym się operuje. (teza Sapira-Whorfa); Potem to obalono
a. W książce Handbook of American Indian Languages opisał 19 języków indiańskich + teoretyczne podstawy (lata ’40 i ’50) – do dziś nie wiadomo, czy język może narzucać pewną orientacją filozoficzną
opisu i klasyfikacji materiału d) LEONARD BLOOMFIELD (1887 – 1949)
i. Zwrócił uwagę na fakt, że język jest tworem semantycznym a. Antymentalistyczne podejście do języka
ii. W fonologii i gramatyce język wykorzystuje tylko niewielką ilość elementów, którymi operuje i łączy b. Język należy opisywać jako część zachowania się języka na zasadzie bodźców (stimulus) i reakcji (response):
w większe jednostki (mogą być modyfikowane)
b. Koncepcje są całkowicie synchroniczne – język jest taki, jakim go się widzi. S r…sR

c. Język dla niego to la parole

c. Znaczenie możemy zdefiniować i określić, posiadając naukową wiedzę o wszystkich jego składnikach – o
d. Naturalną jednostką wyrażenia jest zdanie, a nie wyraz; wyrazy formalne znaczeniowo puste (posiłkowe,
użytkowniku języka, jego historii, procesach neurologicznych w nim zachodzących, procesach
spójniki)
neurologicznych, doświadczeniu życiowym i językowym. Według niego możemy jedynie w języku badać
b) EDWARD SAPIR (1884-1939)
różne znaczenia. Analiza semantyczna możliwa tylko za pomocą znaczenia dystynktywnego
a. Przyjmuje tezę o systematyczności
i. Język - dwa systemy: idealny + fizyczny (ten drugi jest realizacją pierwszego) d. Opis dźwięków mowy
1. System idealny człowiek ma w sobie (coś jak zestaw gotowych matryc, czy wzorów –
patterns). Są one realizowane fizyczne w odpowiedni sposób i. Dźwięki = cechy dystynktywne + cechy niedystynktywne
2. Sapir twierdził, że dwa języki mają wspólne elementy fizyczne, ale różne elementy organizacji
ii. Na zasadzie cech dystynktywnych – człowiek potrafi rozpoznać zespoły tych cech i je wypowiedzieć
tych systemów (różne wzorce fonologiczne – phonological patterns.) Podobnie jest w
(są to fonemy)
gramatyce i semantyce
e. Formy językowe:
b. Fonem – idealny dźwięk, w ściśle określonym wzorcu dźwiękowym. Ludzie mają do niego dostęp intuicyjnie
i. Swobodne (free forms) → mogą występować samodzielnie
i. Teoria ta opierała się na 3 elementach:
ii. Wiązane (bound forms) → występują tylko w połączeniu z innymi elementami
1. Percepcji
iii. Złożone – wykazują częściowe podobieństwo fonetyczno-semantyczne do innych form (Jan idzie / Jan
2. Uznania istnienia idealnych wzorców fonologicznych
jedzie; bieganie, skakanie etc.)
3. Dystrybucji (otoczenie, w jakim dany dźwięk może występować)
iv. Formy językowe mogą łączyć się w większe konstrukcje
c. Morfofonem – grupa fonemów, która się zastępuje w różnych kontekstach (c – cz – k w ręce – rączka – ręka)
f. Konstrukcje syntaktyczne:
d. W książce Language opisuje badanie formy językowej:
i. Endocentryczne – fraza należy to tej samej klasy, co jeden z jej składników (biały dom : dom)
i. Z punktu widzenia podstawowych pojęć komunikowanych przez język
ii. Egzocentryczne – fraza (połączenie kilku form) nie należy do żadnej z klas jej składników
ii. Z punktu widzenia metod formalnych (służy do łączenia i modyfikowania pojęć)
bezpośrednich (Piotr wyszedł – nie można zamienić na piotr ani na wyszedł)
e. Procesy gramatyczne
e) Neobloomfieldowcy (językoznawstwo dystrybucyjne)
i. Szyk wyrazów
a. Jeszcze bardziej rygorystyczne odrzucenie kryteriów semantycznych
ii. Kompozycja (formowanie wyrazów złożonych)
b. Opis języka
iii. Afiksacja
i. Jest to zbiór operacji prowadzący do opisu języka w oparciu o tekst (corpus) doprowadzi do odkrycia
iv. Wewnętrzna modyfikacja rdzenia wyrazowego lub elementów gramatycznych (alternacje
gramatyki tego języka (grammar discovery procedure); chomsky jednak dowiódł, że tak się nie da
samogłoskowe – sing / sang / sung)
c. Trzy poziomy w języku (każdy z poziomów składa się z elementów mniejszych należących do poziomu niżej,
v. Reduplikacja
mieszanie poziomów (mixing levels) prowadzi według nich do fałszywych wniosków)
vi. Zróżnicowanie akcentuacyjne (w języku navaho akcent może zmienić znaczenie gramatyczne)
i. Fonologiczny
vii. Zdanie jest podstawową jednostką, a nie wyraz
ii. Morfologiczny
f. Cztery podstawowe pojęcia w języku
iii. Syntaktyczny
i. Konkretne – wyraża je rdzeń wyrazu lub morfem
d. Opis obiektywny to opis prawdziwy
ii. Derywacyjne – mniej konkretne niż pierwsze, wyrażane przez afiksy
e. Elementarne jednostki języka wyodrębnione za pomocą segmentacji tekstu i analizy dystrybucyjnej
iii. Konkretno-relacyjne – coraz większa abstrakcja (rodzaj i liczba)
jednostek; klasy jednostek ustalane są na podstawie substytucji i analizy na składniki bezpośrednie
iv. Czystko relacyjne – przypadek rzeczownikowy (w każdym języku muszą występować 2 typy (i. + iv.
f. Analiza dystrybucyjna
– bez tego nie ma leksyki i składni).

3 4
 i. Dystrybucja uzupełniająca (complementary distribution) → jednostki tekstowe nie występują w a. Komponent frazowy; sentencje = NP + VP
identycznych otoczeniach – są wariantami jednej jednostki b. Komponent transformacyjny → reguły transformacyjne
ii. Dystrybucję kontrastową (contrastive distribution) → różne jednostki tekstowe w tym samym 1. Obligatoryjne (muszą występować w derywacji zdania) → zdania jądrowe (I see a dog)
otoczeniu – zmiana znaczenia 2. Fakultatywne (gramatyczność tego nie wymaga – konstrukcja bierna)
iii. Wymianę swobodną (free variation) → różne jednostki w tym samym otoczeniu – bez zmiany d) Komponent morfofonemiczny (fonologiczny)
znaczenia (francuskie r) a. Składa się z reguł przepisywania: rządki wyrazów i morfemów  rządki fonemów
g. Fries i jego prace e) Duży wpływ strukturalizmu Bloomfielda (semantyka won, składnia rulet)
i. Zdanie składa się z klas form
1. Klasa wyrazów funkcyjnych (np. the) Wczesna semantyka:
2. Klasy wyrazów mających treść semantyczną (content words) a) 1963 i 64 Katz i Postal opisali teorię semantyczną
3. The concert was good ( A – I – II – III) a. Powinna ona opisać i wyjaśnić zdolność użytkownika do interpretowania różnych znaczeń danego zdania,
ii. Za pomocą substytucji elementów, można określić przynależność wyrazów do odpowiedniej klasy. określenia ilości tych znaczeń, odróżniani anomalii od zdań normalnych i które zdania są parafrazami.
b. Semantyka podporządkowana składni
4. GRAMATYKA GENERATYWNO – TRANSFORMACYJNA i. Słownik
Gramatyka generatywna to teoria (zbiór reguł) określająca dokładnie, które ciągi elementów języka są poprawne (należą 1. Znaczniki fonologiczne
do języka) i jaka jest ich struktura. Ajdukiewicz wysunął w latach ’30 koncepcję opisu języka w kategoriach poprawnych a. Informacje o wymowie
zdań (gramatyka rozpoznawcza) 2. Znaczniki syntaktyczne
NOAM A. CHOMSKY (1928 - ) a. Określa kategorię wyrazu
a. Syntactic structure: 3. Znaczniki semantyczne (ilość ograniczona)
Uważa on język za skończony lub nie zbiór zdań → gramatyka musi mieć reguły rekursywne – pozwalające a. Znaczenie wyrazu
na tworzenie nieskończonych zdań; skończona jest ilość reguł w języku b. Distinguishers (cechy semantyczne dla danego wyrazu)
Przykłady gramatyk generatywnych c. Selectionals restrictions (możliwość łączenia wyrazów w większe konstrukcje)
a) finite state grammar – urządzenie, tworzące określony symbol (wyraz) ii. projection rules
a. stan początkowy i końcowy – między nimi następuje tworzenie zdań (język ze skończoną liczbą stanów) c. Amalgamacja – proces łączenia elementów leksykalnych
i. dodajemy zamkniętą pętlę i można jeszcze więcej wygenerować Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
b) gramatyka struktur frazowych a) komponent syntaktyczny (generatywny)
a. skończony zbiór symboli + reguły przepisywania a. Baza (struktury głęboki w postaci znacznika bazowego)
b. symbole dzielą się na i. komponent kategorialny
i. terminale (wyrazy, morfemy) ii. Leksykon
ii. nieterminale (NP lub VP) 1. Nieuporządkowany zbiór jednostek
c. dwa typy gramatyk a. Cechy kategorialne (wskazują kategorię jednostki)
i. kontekstowa (przepisuje jedne elementy w postaci drugich) b. Cechy ścisłej subkategoryzacji (otoczenie kategorialne)
ii. bezkontekstowa (jeden symbol zastąpiony drugim, nie patrząc na kontekst) c. Cechy selekcyjne (otoczenie leksykalne)
Gramatyki te nie wyjaśniają dwuznaczności fraz i mają za dużo wyjściowych konstrukcji zdaniowych. b. komponent transformacyjny (przekształca znaczniki bazowe we frazowe – z reguły są obligatoryjne)
Wczesne stadia gramatyki generatywno-transformacyjnej b) komponent semantyczny
a) pojęcie transformacji gramatycznej (1957 – Chomsky) c) komponent fonologiczny
a. składnik frazowy + składnik transformacyjny Chomsky – rozróżnienie kompetencji językowej od performance
b. transformacja – reguły gramatyki generatywnej zmieniające jeden znacznik frazowy w drugi przez a) definiuje on pojęcia podmiotu (fraza nominalna NP.), orzeczenia i dopełnienia
kombinację elementów
b) reguła transformacyjna Gramatyka przypadku
a. indeks strukturalny – uproszczony znacznik frazowy a) FILLMORE
b. zmiana strukturalna – operacje zachodzące w znaczniku a. W zdaniu istnieją związki zachodzące między elementami (nie można ich wyrazić w strukturze
c) Składnia powierzchniowej i powierzchniowej – frazy nominalne i czasowniki)

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 i. Ich funkcje semantyczne powinny być reprezentowane w bazie (Waldek wybił szybę kamieniem) i. It’s me again (intention of the speaker to apologize – no truth value)
ii. Funkcje te nazywane są głębokimi przypadkami e. Perlocution – the effect the utterance might have
b. Przesuwa on środek ciężkości z rzeczownika (Chomsky – rzeczownik decyduje o subkategoryzacji czasownika) i. It’s me again (the effect of it is difficult to foresee – might mollify the addressee, or make him angry)
na czasownik (decyduje on o występowaniu odpowiednich przypadków) INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS
Fonologia generatywna 1. Indirect speech acts:
a) M.HALLE The sound pattern of russian (1959) a. It’s me again – an indirect utterance
a. Zadaniem komponentu fonologicznego jest opisać każde zdanie w języku jest wymawiane b. When form of a sentence and function of the utterance don’t match, then it is an INDIRECT SPEECH ACT:
i. Poziomy reprezentacji i. I wonder when the train leaves (declarative form + question function)
1. Leksykalna ii. Have a good journey (imperative form + assertion = I hope you will have a good journey)
2. Fonologiczna (tworzona z leksykalnej dzięki regułom dopasowania) iii. Tell me why you say that (imperative form + question function)
3. Fonetyczna c. Who likes fish? (used as an indirect act asserts that no one likes fish)
b. Fonologia strukturalna – najpierw klasyfikacja materiału fonetycznego, potem wydzielenie fonemu 2. Direct speech act:
i. Fonologia generatywna – związek fonologi ze składnią (od abstrakcyjnego fonemu do a. Can anyone do any better?
konkretnego dźwięku, używając informacje gramatyczne) i. Interrogative form is used to ask a question – każdy zrozumie to dosłownie i zareaguje odpowiednio
c. Reprezentacja fonetyczna ii. However, it can also be understood indirectly – as indirect request/invitaion/order
i. Rządek segmentów fonetycznych b. When form of a sentence (declarative/imperative/interrogative) and function of the utterance
1. Cechy dystynktywne (fonetyczne) (assertion.order/request/question) matches, then it is a DIRECT SPEECH ACT:
2. Ma postać matrycy cech i. Naturally, I hate music (declarative + assertion)
3. Cechy diakrytyczne (morfologiczne – deklinacja etc.) ii. Please turn the music down (imperative + order)
d. Reguły fonologiczne (charakter abstrakcyjny)
i. Transformacyjne HISTORY OF WRITING
1. V[‘stress] /X – C0] NAV – element (?) leksykalny ma akcent pierwszego stopnia na 1. Early drawings made by the ancient were the basics for writing
ostatniej samogłosce jeśli w strukturze powierzchniowej jest rzeczownikiem, a. Cave drawings (literal portrayals of aspects of life)
przymiotnikiem lub czasownikiem (NAV); C0 – szereg spółgłosek lub zero 2. Pictograms evolved – a direct image of an object it represents
2. Są cykliczne a. Non-arbitrary relationship between the picture and the object it represents
ii. Nietransformacyjne b. They didn’t represent the sound of spoken language
1. z[-voice] / -+ive – matryca cech reprezentowana przez z ubezdźwięcznia się przed c. It was found around African tribes, American Indians, Alaskan Eskimos, Incas of Peru, people of Oceania.
sufiksem –ive d. They can be understood by anyone
2. są niecykliczne e. They could represent the attributes of the object they represent
iii. reguły redundancji fonologicznej i. Sun – meaning warmth, light, daytime etc.
1. tylko wewnątrz jednostki leksykalnej 3. e. represents Ideograms – representing ideas rather than objects
e. fonem → segment kontrastujący z każdym innym segmentem w reprezentacji fonologicznej Later, the ideograms and pictograms were stylized, because the drawings were poor and people could misunderstand
them. They started to become arbitrary signs (without knowing the system, you couldn’t understand the sign), thus
SPEECH ACTS THEORY linguistic symbols
Language and action: Austin’s Theory of Speech Acts: 4. A symbol could stand for the a word in any language – Andre Eckardt and Karel Johnson invented PICTO
a. The distinction between the meaning of sentence (true or false) and understanding what the sentence really a. Very simple sentences through words like “I have house in town/Ich haben Haus in Stadt” (in every language)
means. 5. Sumerian writing system
b. She tells about performative (action-completing) use of certain formulas: a. They lived 5000 years ago and they had the oldest writing system (pictography)
i. PASS (in mastermind) – it is not a true or false statement about the world; it has narrow circumstances i. Later they developed a cuneiform writing (pismo klinowe) – it didn’t represent the object to which it
to say it referred
c. Locutionary act – uttering a sentence with a non-ambiguous meaning (determinate sense) Later on Sumerians were conquered by many nations, who borrowed their writing system to their own languages and
i. It’s me again (the speaker was here before) – truth value they used it to represents sounds of the syllables in their languages: ‘Each syllable is represented by each symbol’
d. Illocutionary act – performing an act by uttering a sentence Persians by the reign of Darius, were using writing system representing syllables, not whole words.

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6. Rebus principle ZAGADNIENIA DO LICENCJATU Z JĘZYKOZNAWSTWA
a. It is a representation of words or syllable by pictures of objects whose names sound like the intended syllable. Językoznawstwo i języki naturalne
Thus the picture of an eye may mean “eye” or “I”
7. Hieroglyphs 1. Zakres i cele badań językoznawczych
a. Originally these were pictographs, but later it began to represent syllables Zakres badań językoznawczych w przypadku językoznawstwa generatywnego ogranicza się do badań linguistic competence,
b. It was borrowed by many civilizations, i.e. by Semitic people – they invented West Semitic Syllabary (by 1500 czyli to co wszyscy mamy w głowie, kiedy posługujemy się jakimś językiem. Żeby opisać to zjawisko, językoznawcy stworzyli
B.C.) – a single symbol = Consonant + following Vowel grammar, które jest jednoznacznym systemem złożonym z elementów i reguł potrzebnych do tworzenia i interpretowania zdań.
8. Phoenicians Gramatyka to zbiór reguł, które można stosować, w celu utworzenia (generate) tylko zdań, które są poprawne gramatycznie w
a. They first let one symbol stand for one consonant, then the Greeks borrowed it for their language (however, danym języku, dialekcie. Taką definicję podał Noam Chomsky. Stwierdził, że gramatyka wyznacza strukturalny opis zdaniu.
Phoenicians had too much consonants than Greek, and what was left started to represent vowel sounds). First Termin Językoznawstwo generatywne na początku 1960, był kojarzony z językoznawstwem transformatywnym (wg.
alphabetical system was invented Chomskiego).
i. In alphabetical system each symbol represents each phoneme Celem językoznawstwa teoretycznego jest próba budowania modeli służących opisywaniu poszczególnych języków oraz
b. Etruscans took the Greek alphabet, passed it to Romans, then Christians passed it to many nations teorii dotyczących uniwersalnych aspektów języka.
c. The alphabet wasn’t invented – it was discovered Zakres grammar jest dość rozległy – u podstaw tego pojęcia leży analiza językoznawcza. Grammar posiada:
9. Word writing system (modern) Wstęp do działów językoznawstwa i zakresów ich zainteresowań:
a. One written symbol represents one word or a morpheme. a) Phonetics – artykulacja i odbiór dźwięków mowy
b. Chinese writing has a system of characters – each represents the meaning of the word, not the sound. b) Phonology – układy dźwięków mowy
c. It can be understood in every part of China, or Arabic numerals in every part of Europe, America etc. c) Morphology – formacja wyrazów
10. Syllable writing d) Syntax – formacja zdań
a. Japanese system e) Semantics – Interpretacja wyrazów i zdań
i. All words can be represented by 100 different syllables (CV-type, consonant – vowel type) f) Pragmatics – dziedzina zajmująca się badaniem zdań w kontekście ich użycia (dosłownego bądź przenośnego).
ii. They have two syllabaries g) Discourse analysis – badanie zdań i wyrazów w kontekście ich miejsca w zdaniu
1. 45 syllable letters + several diacritics for each (Katakana – loan words; Hiragana – native
words alone + Chinese words) 2. Działy językoznawstwa i zakres ich zainteresowań.
iii. They borrowed the system from Chinese. Językoznawstwo można podzielić na parę grup:
iv. Japanese is highly inflected - Językoznawstwo synchroniczne zajmuje się formą języka w danym momencie; językoznawstwo diachroniczne
11. Alphabetic writing odkrywa historię języka (grupy języków) i zmiany jego struktury na przestrzeni czasu.
a. They were invented on the basis of phonemic principle (one letter represents a phoneme with allophones) - Theoretical (or general) linguistics próbuje budować modele służące opisywaniu poszczególnych języków oraz teorie
b. 12th century “The First Grammarian”, an Icelandic scholar, developed an orthography taken from Latin dotyczące uniwersalnych aspektów języka; językoznawstwo stosowane usiłuje wdrażać te teorie w praktyce.
i. It was based on phonemic principles - Makrolingwistyka lub językoznawstwo kontekstualne bada dopasowanie języka do otaczającego świata, a więc
1. he used minimal pairs to show distinctive contrast funkcje społeczne języka, proces nauki i wzbogacania języka, procesy wytwarzania i odbioru języka.
2. for him, voiced units were allophones of voiceless ones (/g/ for /k/ etc.) - Mikrolingwistyka lub językoznawstwo niezależne rozważa język jako taki, a więc jako byt niezależny od otaczającego
c. Hankul (Korean alphabet) had 11 vowels and 17 consonants (a phonetic alphabet) – each symbol represented świata.
some place of articulation
i. /l/ and /r/ had one symbol – they were allophones of a one phoneme Contextual linguistics Critical discourse analysis to zestawienie języka z
d. Alphabetic sounds ( reading ) ; alphabetic characters ( writing ) Językoznawstwo kontekstualne zawiera badanie retoryką i filozofią.
e. Most European languages make use of Latin characters (slight differences exist) językoznawstwa w stosunku do innych dyscyplin Psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics – mowi samo
i. Spanish added a ~ over the ‘n’, Germany added umlaut – these are called diacritics akademickich (czyli, w jaki sposób język współgra, za siebie.
ii. Digraphs – sh / ch / ng – two characters representing one sound oddziałuje na świat.) Inne zakresy badań to language acquisition,
iii. Turkish, Indonesian and Swahili adopted Latin alphabet Sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, and evolutionary linguistics, computational linguistics
f. Cyrillic is straightly derived from Greek, with no Latin. linguistic anthropology są naukami społecznymi, w (języokoznawstwo komputerowe) and cognitive
których bada się interakcje zachodzące pomiędzy science.
językiem a resztą społeczeństwa.

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 Applied linguistics Today, the term 'applied linguistics' is used mostly to ii. nie posiadających znaczenia – dźwięki lub litery (reprezentują elementy znaczące w języku)
Whereas theoretical linguistics is concerned with refer to "second language acquisition." Top applied c) produktywność języka – zdolność użytkownika do tworzenia i rozumienia nieskończonej ilości nowych zdań w
finding and describing generalities both within linguistics programs are usually the ones that have good sposób naturalny (nieświadomy)
particular languages and among all languages, applied emphasis on second language acquisition either from d) stosunek układu dźwięków do znaczenia jest przypadkowy i konwencjonalny
linguistics takes the results of those findings and applies linguistic or cognitive point of view. e) posiada trzy podsystemy:
them to other areas. Often applied linguistics refers to a. semantyczny (znaczeniowy)
the use of linguistic research in language teaching, but Diachronic linguistics b. syntaktyczny (łączenie elementów w zdania)
results of linguistic research are used in many other Whereas the core of theoretical linguistics is concerned c. fonologiczny (dźwiękowy)
areas, as well. with studying languages at a particular point in time
(usually the present), diachronic linguistics examines 5. Uniwersalia językowe a gramatyka uniwersalna
Many areas of applied linguistics today involve the how language changes through time, sometimes over a) wszystkie cechy języka są uniwersalne (poszczególny język wybiera sobie określoną liczbę tych cech)
explicit use of computers. Speech synthesis and centuries. Historical linguistics enjoys both a rich b) pewna ilość cech jest uniwersalna, reszta jest idiosynkratyczna (tylko dla danego języka).
speech recognition use phonetic and phonemic history (the study of linguistics grew out of historical
knowledge to provide voice interfaces to computers. linguistics) and a strong theoretical foundation for the PODZIAŁ UNIWERSALII:
Applications of computational linguistics in machine study of language change. a) uniwersalia materialne – elementy używane w teorii języka (czasownik, rzeczownik, cechy dystynktywne w fonologii)
translation, computer-assisted translation, and natural b) uniwersalia formalne – właściwości i sposoby operowania w języku reguł (np. transformacja).
language processing are extremely fruitful areas of In universities in the United States, the non-historic
applied linguistics which have come to the forefront in perspective seems to have the upper hand. Many GRAMATYKA UNIWERSALNA
recent years with increasing computing power. Their introductory linguistics classes, for example, cover a) teoria językoznawstwa, mówiąca o tym, iż istnieją uniwersalne reguły gramatyczne dla wszystkich języków, z którymi
influence has had a great effect on theories of syntax historical linguistics only cursorily. The shift in focus to człowiek się rodzi.
and semantics, as modelling syntactic and semantic a non-historic perspective started with Saussure and b) Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn,
theories on computers constrains the theories to became predominant with Noam Chomsky. there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as universal
computable operations and provides a more rigorous grammar.
mathematical basis. Explicitly historical perspectives include historical- c) Pozwala ona na stwierdzenie, czy dane zdanie jest gramatyczne czy nie poprzez określanie reguł, jakimi języki się rządzą
comparative linguistics and etymology. a. Geoffery Sampson opposed this view – He assumed, grammatical generalizations are just observations and not
predictions what is possible in the language
3. Systemowy pogląd na język naturalny, podsystemy języka i jednostki języka 6. Kompetencja językowa i performancja językowa
Jest to podstawowe założenie współczesnego językoznawstwa strukturalnego (badanie języka jako systemu. Pogląd ten Terminy te po raz pierwszy wprowadził Noam Chomsky
wysunął Ferdinand de Saussure (twierdził, że język stanowi jeden globalny system, w którym wszystko się trzyma). a) Kompetencja językowa – znajomość języka przez idealnego użytkownika
Współczesny pogląd uważa raczej, iż język jest systemem systemów (wielosystemowy) i wielostrukturalny: b) Performancja językowa – użycie języka w konkretnej sytuacji
a) Występowanie elementów w systemie to konieczność każdorazowego wyboru jednego elementu z pewnej
określonej liczby możliwości. (SYSTEM TO CIĄGŁY WYBÓR POJEDYNCZYCH ELEMENTÓW) 7. Kompetencje językowe a gramatyka, rodzaje gramatyk
a. Stąd systematyczny pogląd na język jest paradygmatyczny (wzorcowy). Inaczej ‘jeden zamiast drugiego’ Teoria strukturalistów amerykańskich, iż cokolwiek użytkownik danego języka powie, jest to gramatyczne. Chomsky
b) system jest zbiorem zamkniętym – skończona liczba elementów, które się wzajemnie wykluczają. uważa, że to linguistic competence
c) System można przedstawić jako układ pionowy elementów – tylko jeden element w danym momencie może być w RODZAJE GRAMATYK:
miejscu (np. różne przypadki w zdaniu – tylko jeden ze zbioru może być użyty.) a) Preskryptywna – opisującą reguły, których użytkownik powinien się ściśle trzymać
d) Elementy języka to jednostki abstrakcyjne – jak np. dopełnienie, podmiot, biernik etc. b) Opisowa – opisująca zjawiska zachodzące w jednej z podsystemów języka
c) Uniwersalna – reguły dla każdego języka
4. Cechy języka naturalnego (uniwersalia językowe) d) Pedagogiczna – selektywna, dla różnego rodzaju zaawansowania
a) posiada funkcję komunikacyjną – jest używany przez ludzi do porozumiewania się GRAMATYKA SYSTEMOWA
b) dwoistość struktury języka (Martinet): Halliday wysunął swoje teorie, bazując na koncepcjach Firtha: gramatyka ma trzy płaszczyzny:
a. język składa się z dwóch warstw: a) substancji – aspekt materialny języka (fonia + grafika, zapis)
i. elementów posiadających znaczenie b) formy – gramatyka + słownik

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 c) kontekstu – stosunek formy do cech sytuacji pozajęzykowych. a. Jakobson w 1932 – fonem to zespół współwystępujących cech dźwiękowych, które używane są w danym
Cel – gramatyka, która może opisać każdy język naturalny. języku dla odróżnienia wyrazów w różnym znaczeniu.
b. Fonem posiada kryterium semantyczne i może być rozłożony na cechy – teoria cech dystynktywnych (lata
8. Teorie pochodzenia i rozwoju języka naturalnego ’50), podstawa dla fonologii generatywnej:
i. Fonem jest realizowany przez konkretne warianty w konkretnych kontekstach (dark l in English)
FONETYKA I FONOLOGIA ii. Wariant najmniej zależny od otoczenia – wariant główny; wariant najbardziej zależny od innych
1. Opis i klasyfikacja dźwięków mowy z punktu widzenia fonetyki artykulacyjnej dźwięków – wariant kombinatoryczny
2. Pojęcie fonemu i alofonu, dystrybucja kontrastywna i dystrybucja komplementarna iii. Fonem jest fonemem paradygmatycznym
a) Predictable sounds that are phonetically similar, and that do not kontrast with each other, are grouped in a unit called iv. Opozycja fonologiczna – pozwala odróżnić fonemy od siebie:
phoneme. 1. Korelacja fonologiczna – jedna cecha i różne fonemy (dźwięczność: p i b, t i d etc.).
b) Variants of the phonemes, which are in complementary distribution – allophones fonemy mające cechę są nacechowane (‘+’), te co nie mają, są nienacechowane (‘-‘).
c) Voiceless and voiced ‘l’ are in complementary distribution – jednostki tekstowe nie występują w identycznym c. Niektóre fonemy nie występują w opozycja fonologicznej, ng i /h/ nie występują w tym samym miejscu –
otoczeniu. (aspirowane p ‘pan’, nie aspirowane p ‘pride’) mają małe obciążenie funkcjonalne.
d) Dystrybucja kontrastywna – różne jednostki tesktowe mogą występować w tym samym otoczeniu – wprowadzają 4. Fonologia suprasegmentalna: długość samogłosek i spółgłosek, akcent, ton; leksykalne (języki tonalne) i nieleksykalne
różnice znaczeniowe (-ed i –ing bombed : bombing). Elementy tekstu należą do różnych jednostek języka (intonacja) – wykorzystanie tonu.
3. Różne sposoby definiowania fonemu: Vowels – are more sonorous than consonants – louder and longer lasting. They can thus make a syllable (a peak of
a) Mentalistyczny (de Courtenay/ szkoła kazańska) – fonem z punktu widzenia funkcjonalności. Fonem to sonority surrounded by less sonorous segments)
jednostka dyferencyjna – różnicuje znaczenie dwóch elementów (p i b w prać : brać – p i b pozwala zróżnicować te a) Tense vowels – greater vocal tract constriction than in non-tense vowels – they are longer than non-tense. E.g. i:, a:,
2 wyrazy o wspólnej cząstce –rać) diphthongs
a. Fonem to minimalna, abstrakcyjna (tym różni się od dźwięku) jednostka znakowa należąca do języka (a nie b) Lax vowels – less constricted articulation as in tense vowels (they are a bit shorter than tense ones). I, e, schwa.
mowy). Wyrazy jednosylabowe nie kończą się na lax vowel.
b. Dźwięki to jednostki posiadające cechy fizyczne, fonemy – jednostki posiadające cechy, które pozwalają c) Consonants – may be voiced or voiceless;
fonemy zróżnicować. a. Made with narrow or complete closure in vocal tract
c. Fonem potem ma się podzielić na mniejsze części (wg. Baudouina) d) Stress – syllabic segments perceived as relatively more prominent are stressed. It is a combined effect of pitch,
i. Kinema (reprezentacja artykulacyjno-fizjologiczna) loudness and length (resulting in dominance of a particular syllabic segment)
ii. akusma (reprezentacja akustyczna) a. English stressed vowels are longer, higher in pitch and louder than unstressed ones.
iii. Kinema + akusma = kinakema b. Primary stress and secondary stress
b) Fizyczny (Jones) - fonem to zbiór dźwięków spełniających pewne warunki dystrybucji i podobieństwa; e) Tone – when differences in word meaning is signaled by differences in pitch
c) Funkcjonalny (Bloomfield, strukturalizm amerykański) – fonem to najmniejsza jednostka języka zdolna do a. Level tones that signal the difference in meaning – register tones.
różnicowania znaczenia (ale sama jest znaczenia pozbawiona - najmniejszą jednostką znaczącą jest morfem); b. Moving pitches that signal the difference in meaning – contour tones
a. Dźwięki składają się z cech dystynktywnych i niedystynktywnych (zawsze występują razem) f) Języki tonalne – Chinese, Sarcee (language spoken in province of Canada), Mandarin, Bini (Nigeria), North and
b. Człowiek rozpoznaje te cechy dystynktywne – ich zespoły to właśnie fonemy. South America, sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia
c. Test komutacyjny – wyrazy jak pin, fin, sin czy Tin. Człowiek od razu widzi, że p, f, s czy t to niezależne g) Intonation – Pitch movement that doesn’t change the meaning of a word.
jednostki, a –in już nie. Jak zestawimy pin z pig, pill to widać że –n też jest jednostką niezależną. A już jak a. Teriminal contour – falling intonation at the end of a sentence
zestawimy pin z pat, put to widzimy że – i – też jest niezależne: wyraz pin składa się z trzech fonemów: p b. Non-terminal contour – rising intonation at the end of a sentence (signal incompleteness)
+ i + n. h) Dowdrift – each high tone is always lower than the preceding high tone, but higher than the lower tone that
i. Jednostki te są dystynktywne, bo przy zmianie każdej z nich, zmienia się znaczenie immediately precedes it. (taki wodospad albo schodki =] ).
d. Rozróżnia : formę językową (składa się ona z określonej kombinacji fonemów – każda forma fonemów i) A tone language show intonations of all types.
wyraża pewne znaczenie) i znaczenie językowe. Stąd fonem nie jest formą językową (tylko ją tworzy), 5. Procesy fonologiczne:
bo nie posiada znaczenia – to wyłącznie JEDNOSTKA DYSTYNKTYWNA a) Assimilation – an influence of one segment on another
d) Przy pomocy cech dystynktywnych (szkoła praska) – najpierw zdefiniowany jako niepodzielna, podstawowa a. regressive assimilation – nasalization of a vowel before a nasal consonant
jednostka fonologii: b. progressive assimilation – nasalization of a vowel after a nasal consonant (gaelic scots)
c. voicing assimilation – two kinds: devoicing and voicing (in English it is a regressive assimilation)

13 14
 d. Flapping – a dental or alveolar stop articulation changes to a flap [r]; it changes a stop (non-continuant a) noun-marking signal – noun-determiners:
segment) into a continuant segment in the environment of vowels (other continuant segments). a. they precede the noun they mark (immediately, or with words between)
b) Dissimilation – two sounds becoming less alike each other (the result is easier to hear sounds – like fifths it is i. the/ a or and, my, your, our, their (the last four are pronouns)
changed into /fifts/ ii. some determiners mark the nouns in the plural (thus with {-es} inflection
c) Deletion – removes a segment in a certain context (e.g. schwa if the next vowel is stressed); fifths – fifs (th znika) b) two inflections:
d) Epenthesis – inserts a syllabic or non-syllabic segment: warmth – warmpth, something – somepthing ( a co- a. plural {-es}- it has three allomorhpes: -s, -z, -iz
articulation phenomenon) b. possessive {-‘s} – it has four allomorphs: -s, -z, -iz, th
e) Metathesis – reorders the sequence of segments (resulting in an easier articulation): perquisite – perquisite, spaghetti i. three types of nouns
– pesghetti 1. two-form nouns cat : cats
f) Vowel reduction – schwa reduction. 2. three-form nouns wife : wives (/s/ - possesive or /z/ plural possesive)
6. Cechy dystynktywne 3. four-form nouns man : man’s (/z/) : men : men’s (/z/)
a) The units of phonological structure (make up segments) c) various noun-marking derivational suffixes (added to stem or other words):
b) Features capture natural classes a. nouns: {-age}/{-er}/{-ee}
c) Voice is a distinctive feature – voiced – voiceless contrast b. adjectives: {-ce}/{-ness}
Major class features: c. other nouns: {-ian}/{-ist}/{-ship}
Consonantal (major obstruction in vocal tract), Syllabic (vowels + liquids + nasals), Sonorant (vowels + glides + d. bound stems: {-ism, -ist}/{-ity}
liquids + nasals) d) Characteristic position in relation to other parts of speech:
Laryngeal features: a. just before a verb
Voice, Spread glottis (SG; distinguishes aspiration), Constricted glottis (CG; glottal stop) b. a noun cannot be marked just by position alone
Place features: e) Certain superfixes
Labial (one or both lips involved), Round (rounded vowels and rounded labiovelar glide (w); +round = +labial), a. ‘imprint : impr’int / ‘suspect : sus’pect
Coronal (tongue raised), Anterior (front of palate-alveolar region), Strident (noisy fricatives and affricates) 2. PRONOUNS
Dorsal features: a) Distinctive forms (Subjective / objective / first possessive / second possessive); they function as noun-substitutes
High, Low, Back, Tense, Reduced (only schwa) a. I, we, they – have four distinct forms
Manner features: b. You, he, she, who – three distinct forms
Nasal (velum lowered), Continuant (free or nearly free airflow (e, s, j, r)), Lateral (boczne; l and its varieties), c. It – two distinct forms
Delayed release (affricate consonants) b) First person I & we
7. Struktura sylaby, typy sylab (otwarte, zamknięte, mocne, słabe) c) Second person You & you
d) Third person He, she, it, they
a) Syllable – composed of a nucleus (usually a vowel) and its non-syllabic segments
a. Nucleus (N) – obligatory member – makes a core of the syllable SUMMARY AND REFERENCE SHEET FOR [BEGINNINGS TO 1600] HISTORY OF ENGLISH
b. Coda (C) – what follows the nucleus (Rhyme – nucleus + coda) English belongs to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European (IE) family of languages. Using the comparative method,
c. Onset (O) – precede the rhyme in the same syllable historical linguists can reconstruct the (unattested) Proto-Indo-European language which is the ancestor of all the known ancient
b) Typy sylab: and modern Indo-European languages, and similarly the Proto-Germanic language which is ancestral to all the Germanic
a. Closed syllable – syllable with a coda languages.
b. Open syllable – syllable with no coda  The Indo-European languages include 12 major branches: Germanic, Italic (Latin and other languages of ancient Italy,
c. Strong syllable – closed or open syllable with two rhythmic elements in the rhyme and the Romance languages descended from Latin), Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Indo-Aryan
d. Weak syllable – a syllable with a short vowel (one rhythmic beat, or simple center – no diphthongs, one (Sanskrit, modern Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, etc.), Iranian (Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, etc.), ancient Anatolian (Hittite, etc.),
consonant in the coda or no coda) and Tocharian. There are also a few others, poorly attested.
8. Elementy fonologii generatywnej: reprezentacja podstawowa, reprezentacja fonetyczna, reguły fonologiczne  The Germanic languages may be divided into three branches:
1) East Germanic (Gothic)
MORFOLOGIA I SKŁADNIA 2) North Germanic (Runic and Old Norse, modern Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish)
1. NOUNS:

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 3) West Germanic (English in its various forms, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, Low and High German and their variants,
Yiddish)
Proto-Indo-European (PIE)
Most scholars now agree on the reconstructed phonological system of PIE.
 PIE had three series of stops: voiceless *p, *t, *k, *k, *kw; voiced *b, *d, *g, *g, *gw; and voiced aspirated *bh, *dh, *gh,
*gh, *gwh. There was also *s and three sounds of unknown phonetic detail, usually written *h1, *h2, *h3 (the so-called
“laryngeals”), plus the usual six sonorants *m, *n, *l, *r, *y, and *w and their syllabic counterparts *m, *n, *r, *l, *i, *u
(compare Serbo-Croatian Srb, Czech vlk, English syllabic m in bottom).
 PIE had five short and five long vowels; most common were *e, *o, and *ē. Diphthongs were just sequences of (usually)
short vowels with *y or *w. • Stress in PIE could fall on any syllable of the word; it was a property of individual
morphemes (like Russian, unlike Polish).
PIE had a very complex system of inflectional and derivational morphology.
 Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns could agree for three numbers (singular, dual, plural) and eight or nine cases. The dual
has been lost in almost all modern IE languages, but relics survive in English two, both and Polish dwa/dwie, oba/obie,
as well as oczy, uszy, ręce. Polish and many other Slavic languages preserve seven cases (nominative, accusative,
genitive, dative, instrumental, locative, vocative); PIE also had an ablative (motion away from) and an allative (motion
towards).
 The basic structure of the PIE noun was Root + Suffix + Ending. The largest and most regular class of nouns had a
“thematic” vowel *-o- (or *-e-) as the suffix; these are the so-called “thematic” stems or o-stems. There were many
others, which had complex alternations of stress and vowels; such vowel alternations are called ablaut.
The PIE verb was also complex.
 Many verbs had three aspectual stems: imperfective (“present”, I am doing, I was doing), perfective (“aorist”; I did,
period), and stative/resultative (“perfect”, I remember, I have done). These inflected for three persons and three numbers.
 As with nouns, most verbs consisted of Root + Suffix + Ending. Various suffixes were used to form verb stems, which
could denote future, desiderative (want to X), or intensive meaning as well as aspect.
 In most IE languages, including Germanic, “thematic” verbs with a suffix containing the vowel *-e- ~ *-o- became the
majority type. The other, archaic types had the same kinds of stress and vowel (ablaut) alternations as in the noun.
 There were also four moods: indicative, subjunctive (for conditions or hypothetical statements), optative (for wishes,
requests), and imperative (commands).
PIE syntax was right-headed: adjectives preceded nouns, nouns preceded prepositions (so they were really “postpositions”;
compare Japanese Tōkyō-e ‘to Tokyo’), and predicates preceded verbs. The verb was last in its phrase, so the normal sentence
type was SOV. Most such languages allow stuff to move to the right of the verb, so PIE probably did as well. The ancient
language Hittite preserves this state of affairs fairly well; other IE languages have developed at least some prepositions, and many
evolved from SOV to SVO or even VSO.
Proto-Germanic (PG)
PG had the following phonemes:
17
PG merged the PIE “palatal” and “velar” consonants (e.g. *k and *k both became PG *k), but the labiovelars remained distinct in
at least some cases, e.g.
PG *kwēn- > OE kwēn > ModE queen. The two major innovations in PG phonology were Grimm’s Law/Verner’s Law and the
fixing of stress on the first syllable.
 Grimm’s Law shifted the three series of PIE stops, e.g. PIE *dh > PG *d (door vs. Sanskrit dhvár-), PIE *d > PG *t (two
vs. Latin duo, Polish dwa), PIE *t > PG *þ (three vs. Latin trēs, Polish trzy).
 However, if the stress was NOT on the preceding syllable, voiceless stops became voiced fricatives. Thus we have
*brōþer- > OE brōþor ‘brother’ (compare Sanskrit bhrātar-) but *fadar > OE fæder ‘father’ (compare Greek patér-,
Sanskrit pitár-), both from PIE *t. This is Verner’s Law, which is also responsible for consonant alternations in the past
of “strong” verbs.
 Then the stress was fixed on the initial syllable of the root. This is still mostly true in English for native words (rúnn-ing,
hópe-less-ness, fríend-ship, be-wítch-ing), but English has borrowed so many words from French and Latin that most
words now follow another stress pattern. German preserves the older situation (Ún-halt-bar-keit, be-áb-sicht-ig-en).
The PG noun system was greatly simplified compared to PIE.
 The dual was almost entirely lost, except in the first- and second-person pronoun (“I”, “we two”, “we”; “you”, “you
two”, “you”).
 The ablative and locative cases were merged with the dative, so PG had nominative, accusative, genitive, dative (as still
in German), plus instrumental and vocative.
 The major innovation of PG in the noun was the creation of “strong” (indefinite) and “weak” (defnite) adjective endings,
familiar from German ein jung-er Hund ‘a young dog’ vs. der jung-e Hund ‘the young dog’, or neu-e Kleider ‘new
clothes’ vs. meine neu-en Kleider ‘my new clothes’. While most “strong” adjective endings go back to thematic (o-stem)
noun and pronoun endings, the “weak” endings go back to n-stem nouns, originally denoting a specific individual (e.g.
Latin catus ‘squint-eyed’ —> Catō, gen. Catōn-is ‘the squint-eyed one, Squinty’; compare Italian naso ‘nose’ —>
nasone ‘Big-Nose’).
The PG verb was also greatly simplified from PIE.
 The aspect system is reinterpreted as a tense system, with only two tenses, present and preterite (past). PG also had a
contrast of indicative, subjunctive (from the PIE optative), and indicative (commands); the old subjunctive was lost.
 Almost all perfective (“aorist”) stems were lost, so most PG presents go back to the PIE imperfective (“present”). Most
so-called “strong” verbs descend from thematic presents (suffix *-e- ~ *-o-), but most “weak” verbs have a present that
goes back to a complex suffix (mostly PIE *-ye- ~ *-yo-).
 The past tense has two origins. “Strong” verbs have a past that goes back to the PIE perfect (I have done —> I did;
compare French j’ai parlé ‘I spoke’). Most of these have vowel alternations between the indicative singular and the other
forms.
 On the other hand, “weak” (regular) verbs have an innovative past containing a suffix with *-d- (originally, probably
from did: I X did —> I Xed). This is another major innovation of PG, and the ancestor of modern English past -ed, Dutch
-de, German -te.
 Traditional Germanic grammar distinguishes seven strong and four weak classes of verbs. The different strong classes
survive today in patterns like ride-rode-ridden (I), fly-flew-flown (II), swim-swam-swum (III), speak-spoke-spoken (IV),
give-gave-given (V), shake-shook-shaken (VI). They had similar endings in the present, but different endings in the past
(strong past vs. weak past).
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  An interesting innovation of Germanic is the development of “preterite-present” verbs. These are mostly modal verbs,  Most nouns belonged to one of two major patterns, called “strong” vs. “weak”. Strong masculine and neuter nouns go
which most often govern another verb. They are traditionally called “preterite-present” because their presents go back to back to so-called “a-stems” in PG, because the suffixal vowel was *-a- (< PIE o-stems). Strong feminine nouns go back
PIE stative perfects (know, own, have to, be able, etc.); the preterites were created in PG. As a result, they have to PG “ ō-stems” (< PIE ā-stems). Examples: masculine stā n ‘stone’, dæ ‘day’, plural stān-as, da-as; neuter scip
distinctive endings from other presents (as still today in English: I can, s/he can), and are the only presents to have vowel ‘ship’, word ‘word’, plural scip-u, word; feminine gief-u ‘gift’, lār ‘story’, plural gief-a, lār-a (or -e). See the texts for
alternations within the singular (compare German ich weiß, er/sie weiß but wir, sie wissen). typical paradigms.
 The “weak” declensions go back to PG and PIE n-stems; most of the endings have merged in OE as -an. Examples:
PG syntax was clearly verb-final, or SOV. This is the original PIE situation, preserved in Homeric Greek, classical Latin prose,
masculine nama ‘name’, hana ‘rooster’; feminine sunne ‘sun’, tunge ‘tongue’; neuter ēae ‘eye’, ēare ‘ear’ (only two).
and some other old IE languages (and still in modern German dependent clauses). The verb-second restriction probably also arose
 There were also small classes of other types, which disappeared in late OE or early ME (e.g. “u-stems”, whose endings
in PG, since it is found in all old Germanic languages (see below).
mostly had no u in them). The most important minor type is the “root nouns”, which go back to PG and PIE nouns that
had no suffix (so just Root + Ending). As a result of umlaut, these were marked by umlaut in the plural, e.g. mann ‘man’,
Old English (OE)
plural menn ‘men’ or mus ‘mouse’, plural mys ‘mice’. OE had over 20 of them, but only seven survive today.
OE has the following phonemes:
The adjective maintains the two declensions from PG, The pronoun reflects the PG situation, with four (or five)

 The voiceless and voiced strong and weak. Many comparatives (in -ra) and cases. OE still has three-way number contrast in ic ‘I’, wit
superlatives (in -est) show umlaut, as still in modern
fricatives are variants ‘we two’, wē ‘we’ and þu ‘thou’, it ‘ye two’, ē ‘ye’.
(“allophones”) of a single phoneme: voiceless at the beginning and end of a word, voiced between vowels. They are German: eald ‘old’, ieldra ‘older’, ieldest ‘oldest’.

spelled f, þ or ð (either one can stand for [þ] or [ð]!), and s. Thus wolf [wolf] ‘wolf’, but plural wolfas [wolvás] ‘wolves’
(the origin of modern alternations like wolf-wolves or path-paths!)
 The fricative x was spelled h, and probably pronounced [h] initially, [x] next to back vowels and [ç] next to front vowels,
e.g. hēah [hæ:ax] ‘high’, cniht [kniçt] ‘knight’ (compare German ach vs. ich). Similarly, the fricative з was [γ] next to
back vowels and [j] (basically []) next to front vowels, e.g. dæз [dæ] ‘day’ vs. plural daзas [daas].
 Also, c [k] was pronounced like “ch” [t] next to front vowels, which is why cyrice [tirite], cinn [t inn] became church,
chin. (This is sometimes written c in modern editions of OE texts, so cyrice, cinn.)
 The vowels y, y were rounded high front vowels, like French u or German ü.
 The long diphthongs were definitely separate phonemes. The short diphthongs had marginal status; most were just
The definite article in OE, as in German, goes back to a demonstrative ‘that’, and contrasts with a near-demonstrative ‘this’; there
is also an all-purpose relative pronoun þe.
The OE verb shows a number of innovations compared to PG.
 OE had about 200 or so “strong” (irregular) verbs, as compared to only a few dozen today. All seven classes have been
preserved from PG; see the texts for paradigms.
 The four “weak” classes of PG have been reduced to three, and the third had only a few members, so most weak verbs
belong to one of two major types.
 The old 3rd plural form is used for all three persons of the plural (also in some other West Germanic languages, but not
High German). Thus in the subjunctive, there are only two forms: singular -e, plural -en.

variants of the corresponding short vowels i, e, æ. (Note that æa, æa are written ea, ea.)  The PG consonant alternations resulting from Verner’s Law are mostly maintained, but PG *z becomes r (as everywhere
except Gothic). Thus PG *was, *wēzun become OE wæs ‘was’, wæron ‘were’!

An important change which took place (independently!) in prehistoric OE and other Germanic languages (Old High German, Old  The modal verbs are well preserved, e.g. ic can(n) ‘I know’, þu canst, hē /hēo can(n), wē / ē /h īe cunnon; but many of
Norse) is umlaut: before *i or *j, back vowels were fronted. Thus we have PG *m us > OE mus but PG *mus-iz > *mys-iz > OE the meanings have shifted over the last 1000 years.

mys ‘mice’, or OE strang ‘strong’, *strang-iþō > strengþ. This is a classic example of partial assimilation: *i and *j are
OE syntax has been well studied in recent years. Like other OE vocabulary is mostly of Germanic origin, but there are
pronounced in high front position, so a preceding back vowel moves to the front to be more like it. Most ModE vowel alternations
old Germanic languages, the primary word order was SOV, some early Latin loanwords. Some go back to the days
outside the verb go back to this change: strong ~ strength (long ~ length, broad ~ breadth), proud ~ pride, full ~ fill, old ~ elder
but we find the beginnings of a change towards SVO in late before the Angles, Saxons, etc. came to England; others
(older).
OE. OE also had the “verb-second” word order typical of came to England with Christianity (dēofol ‘devil’, apostol
Germanic: in most cases, the verb appeared in second ‘apostle’). Unlike later periods of English, OE was fond of
The OE noun reflects the PG situation, but sound changes have led to the collapse of some distinctions.
position in its clause, after some phrase (not necessarily the creating neologisms using native resources, e.g. þīr -nes
 Like all Germanic languages except for Gothic, there is no special vocative; the nominative is used instead (cf. Russian
subject), a noun phrase, prepositional phrase, or adverb. ‘trinity’ (it really means ‘three-ness’!) or tungol-cræft
Piotr vs. Polish Piotrze ‘Peter!’). OE has also merged the instrumental with the dative except in a couple of pronouns, so
(Compare modern German, except that German verbs are ‘astrology’ (tungol ‘star’, cræft ‘knowledge’).
there are four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative (like modern German).
still “underlyingly” final, and famously appear at the end of
 OE nouns were of masculine, feminine, or neuter gender, just like in modern German (but not quite as arbitrary, since the
a dependent clause.)
endings were more distinct).

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OE stands out among early medieval European languages
for its literature, both in poetry and in prose. The famous
epic Beowulf is the longest surviving epic poem from the
Old Germanic period; it was probably written before 700, in
the alliterative style inherited from PG (at least two words in
each line must begin with the same consonant, or a vowel).
There are also several shorter poems, on both religious and
secular themes, and a set of famous riddles in verse. In
prose, major early medieval Latin words such as Pope
Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis were translated into OE. From
later on, we have original saint’s lives in OE; the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, begun by King Alfred; and some
narratives, including travel accounts of merchants who
sailed to the Baltic and White Seas.
OE dialects are usually divided into West Saxon (old
Wessex; southwestern England), Kentish, Mercian
(Midlands), and Northumbrian (north of the Humber;
northern England and very southern Scotland). In early OE
times (600s, early 700s), the great monasteries were in
northern England, such as Lindisfarne, home to the
Venerable Bede. But Wessex became the center of English
literary and cultural life during the time of King Alfred the
Great (late 800s), so the great majority of our literary texts
are in West Saxon. Scholars usually distinguish between
“Early West Saxon” of Alfred’s time (c. 900) and “Late
West Saxon” of the time of Ælfric (c. 1000).
Middle English (ME)
The phonemes of Chaucer’s English:
 Note that the fricatives f, v and s, z
become separate phonemes, as a
result of loss of word final vowels
(e.g. house vs. the verb house ‘to put someone in a house’) and borrowings from French. The southwestern English
dialects generalized voiced fricatives in initial position, and a few words like vat, vixen were taken into standard English.
 Under the Normans, the characteristic OE letters æ, , þ, ð were eliminated from writing (though fl survives longer, and
also Ω in the north).
 The OE vowels y, y are unrounded and merge with i, ī. OE ā became ME  (I hope you remember this!), e.g. OE stn >
ME stoon [st: n], while OE æ > ME  , e.g. OE dæl ‘part’ > ME deel [d:l].
The Viking invasions had an enormous impact on the
development of the English language. The Vikings
conquered northern and eastern England, but were defeated
by King Alfred, who divided England between Wessex and
the “Danelaw” (area under Danish law). Many locals were
killed or fled during the wars, and the area was later heavily
settled by Norse speakers from modern Denmark and
Norway. After coexisting for a long time and intermarrying,
these Scandinavians shifted to speaking English, but they
made typical learner’s mistakes, and since they were much
(or the majority) of the population, those “errors” became
part of the local English dialects. Forms of Scandinavian
origin include the pronouns they/them/their, the prepositions
till ‘up to’ and fro ‘from’ (now only in to and fro), and many
words such as sky, skin, skirt (vs. shirt; plus others in sk-),
give (Old Norse gefa, vs. OE iefan), egg (Old Norse egg
vs. OE æ), window (Old Norse vind-auga ‘wind-eye’), die
(Old Norse deyja, vs. OE steorfan, now starve). Northern
ME and ModE dialects, including Scots, contain many more
such Scandinavian words.
The end of the OE period is usually given as 1066 (the
Norman Conquest), but the last poem that is usually
considered “Old English” is from 1104 (Durham), and the
continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the
Petersborough Chronicle from Petersborough, ends in 1154.
However, te language of the Petersborough Chronicle is
often considered to be early ME; it represents a transitional
phase in the language.
21
 Vowel length is indicated by doubling the mid vowels, so ee stands for [:] (meet ‘meat’, deel ‘deal’; later spelled with
ea) or [e:] (meet ‘meet’, seem), and oo stands for [:] (stoon, boot; later spelled with o-e or oa) or [o:] (too, good). Long
[u:] is usually spelled the French way, as ou.
 Many short vowels were lengthened in early ME times, before certain consonant clusters (blind > [bli:nd] ‘blind’, haldan
> [ha:ld(n)] > [h:ld(n)] ‘hold’) and in open syllables (OE macan > [ma:k(n)] ‘make’, OE wefan > [w:v(n)]
‘weave’). After final schwa (-e) is lost during the 13th and 14th centuries, many more words ended in a consonant, and
these “new” long vowels were now in closed syllables: [ma:k], [w:v] > make, weave.
 The OE consonant  [] becomes [w] in ME, and forms a diphthong with a preceding vowel, e.g. OE lagu > ME lau >
law, OE boga > ME bou > bow. (The same happens with some instances of [v], e.g. hafoc > hawc > hawk.) The variant
[j] also forms a diphthong, e.g. OE dæ > ME dei > day, OE ren > ME rein > rain.
 OE h [x] mostly survived, although sometimes it was confused with [f] (cf. spellings like dofter for doughter).
Consonant clusters like kn-, gn-, wr- were reduced in late ME, giving us the silent initial letter.
The inflection of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns becomes much simplified in ME times.
 Many of the case endings (and verbal endings) are lost or merge as a result of sound changes:
1) final vowels are reduced to schwa, written -e;
2) final -n is (mostly) lost; and 3) final -m > -n.
 The process of generalizing the strong masculine endings (the stā n type), which was beginning already in OE times, is
completed. By the 13th century, almost all ME nouns have genitive -(e)s and plural nominative/accusative -(e)s. The
genitive and dative plural soon generalize -(e)s as well.
 The two types of adjective declension, strong and weak, are mostly eliminated. By the 1300s, the ME adjective is down
to a single ending -e, used in definite phrases (the old “weak” declension) and in indefinite phrases with plural nouns
(not too different from modern Dutch or Scandinavian languages). With the loss of final -e, this distinction disappears as
well, and the only adjective endings are comparative -er and superlative -est.
ME borrowed so many words from French (see below) that several derivational suffixes from French were taken over into
English and applied to words of (Old) English origin. These include -ate, -ation, and -ity.
 In the pronoun, the biggest change is the spread of the originally Norse pronoun thei, them, their from northern dialects
to the south. Chaucer has thei, but still hem ‘them’ and hir(e) ‘their’. (Modern unstressed ’em in e.g. I see ’em is the last
survival of the OE 3rd plural pronoun.)
 Most other forms continue their OE ancestors, except for she (OE hēo should have become “he”). This distinctive
feminine form arose in some dialect and spread widely.
 Under Norman influence, ME speakers began to use ye/you as a polite or formal form of thou/thee, for addressing a
single person of higher status (compare French tu and vous).
The ME verb is also greatly simplified from OE.
 The subjunctive almost entirely disappears, since final vowels all become schwa (OE plural lufod-on ‘loved’, subj. lufod-
en > ME loved-e(n)). In southern England, the subjunctive plural ending -en is extended to the indicative, replacing OE -
a fl.
 Word-final -n is lost in the 13th and 14th c., so the infinitive and plural verbs now end in -(e)n.
22
  In the late ME period, the vowel alternation of singular vs. plural in the “strong” preterite is eliminated. Some verbs
generalize the singular (I rood ~ we ridde(n) —> rood(e) ‘rode’), others generalize the plural (I boot ~ we bitte(n) —>
bitt(e) ‘bit’).
As for syntax, ME word order by Chaucer’s time has become primarily SVO, much like Modern English. In addition, late ME
also gradually abandons verb-second word order. According to a recent view, the northern ME dialects had a type of verb-second
syntax similar to modern Scandinavian languages or German (the result of language shift from Norse), but the southern dialects
had a different type of verb-second syntax, where the verb is in second position in most main and dependent clauses. These two
types came into contact in late medieval London, and the resulting variation and confusion led to the loss of verb-second order.
ME has famously borrowed lots of vocabulary from French (Norman and then Continental French), but the influence of French
is actually very limited before the early 1200s. It appears that the main influx of French words began around 1220-1230, and was
connected to the loss of Normandy by the English kings, which cut off the Norman aristocrats from the continent. Anglo-Norman
French went into rapid decline around this time; as the nobility developed a new sense of their English identity, they incorporated
many French (and a few Latin) words into their English, and these words were gradually adopted by the rest of the (monolingual)
population. The peak of borrowing was roughly during the period 1330-1430. Most French loanwords naturally came from areas
of life in which Norman ways, institutions, or concepts were dominant (military, government, law, the court, cuisine and refined
things, medieval chivalry, religion and philosophy). The influence of Latin was limited during this time, and only really took off
after 1500 with the Renaissance.
The percentage of French loanwords depends on geography (more in the south than the north, for obvious reasons) and literary
genre, and undoubtedly also was related to social class and other factors (London vs. countryside, gender). Thus Chaucer used a
much higher percentage of French words in his Troilus and Criseyde and Canterbury Tales (late 1300s) than authors writing a
century earlier, or those in the north, and more than we would find in more
“ordinary” writing.
The main division in ME dialects is between north and south, i.e. between the northern dialects which were heavily influenced by
Norse (and/or are the result of language shift from Norse to English) in the old Danelaw, and the southern dialects which continue
the OE Wessex, Kentish, and southern and western Midland dialects.
 For example, the present inflection of a typical verb in the north is I drink(e), thou drink(e)s, s/he drink(e)s, we/ye/thei
drink(e)s (-s <— - fl; see above), but in Chaucer and other southern authors we have I drink(e), thou drinkest, s/he
drinketh, we/ye/thei drinke(n).
 We saw a sample of northern ME in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written in the mid-1300s somewhere probably in
the northwestern Midlands. The text retains the OE letters þ and  (for southern gh or y). Note also the survival of OE
alliteration, rather than the French model of end-rhyme, as the main principle of poetic organization.
Early Modern English (EModE) of the 1500s, Shakespeare’s plays, and the King James Bible does not look too different from
Chaucer’s language, but would have sounded very strange to Chaucer. The main reason is the Great Vowel Shift, a chain shift
which affected most of the late ME long vowels.
[i:] > [a] (my, ride, light) [u:] > [a] (now, house)
[e:] > [i:] (meet, seek) [o:] > [u:] (too, food, cool)
[:] > [e:] > [i:] (meat, sea) [:] > [o:] > [o] (go, stone, road)
[a:] > [æ:] > [e:] > [e] (make, late)
23
also [æI] > [e] (day, laid)
In the pronoun, the object form you begins to be used for ye, and ye/you comes to be used more and more in the singular, until by
the late 1600s only the Quakers are still using thou/thee/thy/thine. So by the end of this process, we have a single form you for all
second person pronouns.
In the verb, northern 3rd singular -s comes to London, and gradually becomes more and more common. Shakespeare uses it as a
convenient variant of -eth, but it remains excluded from “higher” speech; the King James Bible has only -eth. By 1700, -s has
won out. The other major innovation of EModE is “do-support” in the verb.
 In OE and ME, do behaved syntactically like most other verbs, but EModE speakers begin to use do as a “dummy” verb.
This process seems to have started in imperative (command) clauses (Do eat your dinner! Do not go home!) and spread
to other clauses.
 Ultimately, this auxiliary do was generalized in all questions (positive and negative: Did I see my shirt? Didn’t I see my
shirt?) and negative declarative sentences (I did not see my shirt), but after initial popularity, it gradually declined in
positive declarative sentences and became pragmatically restricted (I see my shirt, vs. emphatic I do see my shirt).
 As a result, the only verbs which allow subject-verb inversion in questions, and which can be negated by simply adding a
following not, are be, auxiliary have (and main verb have in British English: Have you the time? vs. American Do you
have the time?), auxiliary do, will, and the modal verbs (can, shall, may, etc.).
From the Elizabethan period and throughout the 1600s, we have a large number of documents by members of the new and
increasingly powerful middle classes of young, upstart, educated men. These include the “orthoepists” with their descriptions of
people’s speech “errors” and the “correct” way to speak (very valuable for tracing the history of English phonology), and
lexicographers or dictionary compilers. Most of their work falls into the period after 1600, but they are responsible for introducing
many, many new words from the classical languages Latin and Greek, and for fixing modern English spelling in often arbitrary
and outrageous ways.
SUMMARY AND REFERENCE SHEET FOR [1600 & LATER] HISTORY OF ENGLISH
We begin with Early Modern English (EModE) of the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare’s plays, and the King James Bible.
 By 1600, the Great Vowel Shift was mostly complete, so most of the long vowels and diphthongs had approximately the
same phonetic values as in standard (British) English today.
 The old second-person singular pronouns thou, thee, thy, thine were beginning to be replaced by plural/polite you,
your(s), but this process is just beginning in Shakespeare’s time. By the early 1700s, you has become the accepted
standard form for all second-person usage, singular and plural. Thou, etc. survived in many dialects, especially in
northern England, and was also used by the Quakers to emphasize the equality of all humans (still today, but only in
religious meetings).
 The originally northern 3rd singular -s was in competition with southern -eth throughout he early modern period in
London, gradually becoming more common during the 1500s and 1600s. The King James Bible has only -eth, but this
was certainly quite conservative by the standards of the early 1600s. By 1700, only hath and doeth, doth were still
regularly used in standard English writing, and soon after these too were replaced with has and does. The old variant -eth
survives marginally in English today, at least among educated speakers, who use it for pseudo-archaic and/or comic
effect, e.g. My salad bowl runneth over (a recent McDonald’s advertisement in the USA) or Ozzy Osbourne’s album The
24
 Ozzman Cometh. Among such speakers, -eth is still associated (at least subconsciously) with the King James Bible and
early modern English literature.
 The evolution of “do-support” was also largely complete by 1700, except in positive declarative clauses, where it
declined and became restricted to emphatic or assertive meaning (I do believe you). As with 3rd singular -eth, many
educated speakers of modern English can use the older constructions in highly elevated register or for comic effect, e.g.
U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country” (instead of “Don’t ask...”), or an indignant response “I think not!” (instead of “I don’t think so!”).
 Impersonal verb constructions such as methinks, meseems, melikes were still used by Shakespeare, but disappeared from
the spoken language in early modern English. As a result, English today has nothing corresponding to Polish wygląda
mi, poboda mi się, German mir gefällt, or Spanish me gusta – a significant surface difference between English and most
modern European languages, and a constant source of confusion for English speakers learning foreign languages.
 I mentioned debt, which was borrowed from medieval French dette, spelled det and pronounced [dɛt] in the time of
Chaucer. The lexicographers knew the word was ultimately related to Latin debitum, so they inserted a silent b to
“improve” the spelling, i.e. make it closer to Latin. (Debit is an early modern borrowing, direct from Latin.)
 Similarly, the legal term indict ‘charge someone formally with a crime’ goes back to medieval indit(e) [ɪnd’i:t] (also
from medieval French), which became [ɪnd'ɑɪt] by the Great Vowel Shift. The French word is ultimately from Latin
indictus (literally ‘shown in’), so the lexicographers inserted a c into the spelling – which means that now we have indict
pronounced one way, and predict, verdict, interdict, etc. another! (Once again, the latter were adopted from Latin in early
modern times.)
 Middle English cedule was yet another borrowing from French and had an initial [s-]. The lexicographers changed the
spelling to schedule after Medieval Latin schedula, the source of the French word. In this case, they also succeeding in

changing people’s pronunciation habits, which is why you learned to say [ʃɛdju:l]. (Daniel Webster’s dictionary is
By 1700, then, the English spoken by educated middle-class Londoners was similar to that of modern standard British English in
responsible for my American pronunciation, with initial [sk-]!)
all essentials.

The heavy borrowing from Latin during Early Modern English gave rise to the doublets I described in class, in which one word
We have already discussed the orthoepists, who from the 1500s to 1700s published invaluable -- if not always fully reliable --
comes from French, the other from Latin: royal ~ regal, debt ~ debit.
guides to pronunciation, which allow us to trace the development of early modern English phonology (especially the vowels) and
even to reconstruct some of the sociolinguistic variation of the time. The dramatic expansion of the vocabulary which began in
Changes after 1700
the Renaissance continued apace, with thousands of new words entering the language, mostly from the Western classical
languages: Latin and, through Latin, Ancient Greek. As in the case of other major Western languages (and languages
Phonology
everywhere), most of this was the work of the lexicographers, whose tradition goes back to Elizabethan times. These also were for
We have already seen how certain combinations of vowels merged in Early Modern English. Thus Middle English (ME) long ā
the most part members of the middle classes who played such an important role in driving England’s commercial, economic, and
[a:] became [æ:] and then [e:] > [eɪ], merging with ME [aɪ] > [eɪ], so mane and main sounded the same. Similarly, ME long [ɔ:]
colonial expansion. The most important of them, Dr. Johnson, has been immortalized for his authoritative 18th-century dictionary,
which established the definitions of many new words and fixed numerous spellings. became [o:] > [oʊ] and merged with [oʊ] in the standard language (nose ~ knows, sole ~ soul), but the distinction has
been preserved until today in a number of dialects.
The new words covered all possible semantic fields. Many The lexicographers (and to a lesser extent the orthoepists) The Great Vowel Shift raised ME [e:] to [i:], e.g. meet [mi:t], and ME [ɛ:] to [e:], e.g. meat [me:t]. However, unlike the ME back
were borrowed to express new things and concepts are also responsible for further obscuring English spelling,
vowel [ɔ:] which became [o:] > [oʊ] and stayed there, this new vowel [e:] was raised further to [i:], and fell together with [i:]
associated with military and scientific technology, which had already been greatly obscured, not so much by
from ME [e:]. Thus words with ee and ea are both pronounced [i:], e.g. meet ~ meat, or green and dream. This merger was
government, philosophy, and literature. Another result of the Great Vowel Shift, but by the merger of many
not complete until approximately 1700, and did not reach all of the British Isles. In particular, Irish English retained the older
the obsession of educated Englishmen with classical (combinations of) sounds (meet ~ meat, pane ~ pain, nose ~
learning was that English, to a greater extent than any other knows, ate ~ eight) and the simplification of consonant pronunciation, which is why the Irish poet Yeats [jeɪts] does not rhyme with the English Romantic poet Keats [khi:ts]; note also
Western language, acquired words which are composed of clusters. (Modern Icelandic has undergone its own vowel names like Kean(e) [kheɪn].
Latin morphemes but did not actually exist in Classical shift, but the shift has been so regular that Icelanders have
Latin. (Some of these were later borrowed into other no trouble using the traditional spelling system, and can still
The two most important splits in the Modern English vowel system began around 1700 in the southeast of England.
European languages, including Romance languages enjoy the famous Old Norse sagas of their medieval
 Short u split into two phonemes, [ʊ] (put, pull, full) and unrounded [ʌ] (but, cup, luck, rush, and most other words
descended from spoken Latin.) Some writers delighted in ancestors.) They were guided by etymological
spelled with u). This split did not take place in the dialects north of the famous line from Bristol to The Wash, so a well-
filling their writing with these Latinate words, critics to call considerations, as well as a belief in the supreme logic and
them “inkhorn words” (i.e. words coined from the pen and perfection of the classical languages, which led them to known stereotype of northern English regional dialects is the use of [ʊ] in all “short u” words. However, it was brought
ink of overlearned elitists), but many of them were propose some “illogical” changes. to North America, which is why I have the same distribution as the British.
ultimately accepted into the language. Note that some words with ME [o:] were not raised all the way to [u:], but only to [ʊ], where they joined the “short u”

words: good, cook, look, etc. A couple of them were unrounded to [ʌ]: blood, flood.

25 26
  Short a developed two allophones, which seem to have become separate phonemes during the 1700s: short [æ] and long made up (e.g. gas, a distortion of chaos) or, increasingly, derived from personal or place names: guillotine, Pullman, chauvin-ism,

or “broad” [ɑ:]. The original distribution of the two sounds has been obscured by all sorts of analogical changes and pasteur-ize; Burgundy (wine), Cheddar (cheese), frankfurt-er, china, afghan.

adjustments in both directions, so now one simply has to learn which words contain [æ] and which [ɑ:]. (We always find
The latter examples illustrate a pattern which became increasingly common from the 19th century, i.e. the adoption of new
[æ] before voiceless stops, and usually [ɑ:] before [f], [s], and many clusters, as in half, pass, past, answer – but note vocabulary from peoples all around the world with whom English speakers came into contact. The most important European
h influence was obviously French, since France was the undisputed center of Western high culture into the 20th century; it remains
mass [mæs] vs. class [k lɑ:s] (and Catholic Mass [mɑ:s]), or fancy [æ] vs. dance [ɑ:].)
an important source of words dealing with fashion and cuisine. The other major west European languages, Italian, Spanish, and
The northern English dialects also did not share in this change, so those dialects have one phoneme where RP/standard
German, also contributed many terms during the modern era.
English has two. The split of short a also reached North America, but today it is confined to a few eastern U.S. dialects

(eastern New England, New York, Philadelphia), where the long phoneme went the other way to [æ:ə] > [ɛ:ə] > [e:ə] >
Words from Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Turkish,
[i:ə]. Most other American dialects have eliminated the contrast, so for me, as for northern English speakers, class and Persian) began to enter English through Italian and French
mass rhyme, and aunt and ant sound the same. already in the Middle Ages (alcohol, algebra, camel, cotton,
magazine, admiral), but others were taken over directly as
The consonant system underwent few major changes from Shakespeare’s time to the 20th century. Britain expanded its control over the Middle East (fakir,
 ME gh ([x] ~ [ç]) had already been lost by Shakespeare’s time in London and most of England, but survives to this day kabob, kiosk, sheikh). Many words from Hindi/Urdu and
in some Scottish dialects – and in the spelling. other South Asian languages were adopted by the British
 Standard English maintains the ME distinction between w [w] and voiceless wh [ʍ] in initial position. However, most during their long presence in India, e.g. pajama, curry.
southern English dialects and most North American speakers have merged them as [w], so that witch and which, weather Other sources include Swahili and other African languages
and whether now sound alike. (savannah, safari), Japanese (typhoon, futon), and languages
 Most recently, since the 1960s, the interdental fricatives have undergone rapid change in the speech of southeast of the Pacific (boondocks, (run) amok). Finally, North
England: voiceless [θ] > [f] and voiced [ð] > [d-] initially, [v] elsewhere. Hence free ‘three’, somefing (somefin’) American English has acquired words like chipmunk,
moccasin, canoe, and squash from Native American
‘something’, dose ‘those’, [wɛvə] ‘weather; whether’.
languages.
Although the process goes back a long way, modern English
in particular makes vibrantly productive use of the
derivational suffix -Ø to derive verbs from nouns or
adjectives, and vice versa. (In the words of the American
cartoon character Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes, “verbing
weirds language.”) This is of course a consequence of the
loss of most inflectional endings during Middle and Early
Modern English. As a result, almost any new noun may be
converted into a verb, sometimes with the aid of an
adverbial: I blinged myself out for the party; Wow, she feng
shuied her apartment very nicely; But can he out-Blair
Blair?

Morphosyntax
Standard English, RP, and “Estuary English”
English morphosyntax has not undergone major changes over the past three centuries.
 Like other Western languages, English has seen a rise in the use of the passive voice, at least partly under the influence
Standard English is based on the dialect of educated peculiarities, especially speakers from northern England
of the written language.
speakers in London, the political, cultural, and economic who lack e.g. the phonemic split of [æ] vs. [ɑ:].
 The system of complex verb tenses was gradually expanded during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, until now we have
center of England since at least the 14th century. The accent
the full range of possible progressive, perfect, and passive forms: I have/had/will have been watching, I have/had/will
known as Received Pronunciation or RP arose gradually
have been watched, I am/was being watched, etc. RP thus served during Victorian times and into the 20th
during the modern period, and was well established by the
 English dialects show a greater range of variation in morphosyntax, ranging from nonstandard verbal agreement century as a devastating mark of social class distinctions
19th century. It was (and still is) associated with the elite
(uniform present -s in northern Britain, e.g. I walks, you walks, s/he walks, etc.; uniform present -Ø in East Anglia, and, in the perception of many, symbolized the gap between
“public” or boarding schools of southeastern England, the
African American English, and some other varieties, so I walk, you walk, s/he walk) to double modals (southern U.S. We Britain’s ruling elites and the rest of society. From its
most famous of which is Eton. Aristocrats and other
might could do it). Many of the usages proscribed in standard English are well established in the spoken language, such founding in the 1920s, the BBC adopted the practice of
upperclass children – and from the Industrial Revolution on,
as preposition stranding (the tree (that) we sat under; That’s what I’m talking about!) or case neutralization in having (almost) exclusively RP-speaking newsreader and
members of the new upper middle class as well – came from
hosts, which led many to call the accent “BBC English”.
coordinated clauses (Me and Sergio met for dinner; between you and I).
all over the British Isles to attend these schools from a
(The label “The Queen’s English” is less justified, as it is
young age, so they were able to acquire all the phonetic
Vocabulary not at all restricted to the monarch and her/his family, but it
details of RP in full. Those who are not exposed to RP in
The process of adding new vocabulary intensified from in the 1700s, as the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions led to an is true that the royals are generally RP speakers.)
early childhood find it almost impossible to master all of its
explosion of new words for scientific discoveries and technological innovations. Many of these were created from classical Latin
and Greek roots, for fields ranging from astronomy to medicine to linguistics to philosophy. Other neologisms were
It is important to remember that RP is a specific accent of standard English, distinct from standard English as spoken by e.g. an
educated Scot from Edinburgh or an American from Boston. Thus English speakers generally pay far more attention to phonetic

27 28
variation than to morphosyntactic features when trying to determine if someone is speaking RP or not. RP is also special in that it description of very old lng. Jones noticed striking similarity between Sanskrit and European lngs; nobody thought that there could
is not geographically defined, i.e. it should be impossible to determine where an RP speaker was born from his or her speech. RP be any relationship between them. Thanks to that discovery, people also noticed that comparing history of some lngs the further
does of course have its own vocabulary, which differs from that of other standard Englishes, and may be spoken in different styles we go, the more similar they are. Sometimes a predecessor can be found (e.g. Latin for ESP, FR, IT, RUM). This predecessor lng
and registers. split at one moment in time – which didn’t happen in the blink of an eye. This root lng is called proto-lng. It also comes from
another lng so we can go further back in time. The furthest we can go in case of most of European lngs is Proto-Indo-European
A supposedly new variety called “Estuary English” was first reported in the mid-1980s, and has since been the subject of endless (PIE).
(and mostly confused) media reporting and public debate in the UK. EE seems not to be a new dialect, much less a “threat” to RP, Some lngs are better documented than others. E.g. lots of stuff in Latin, nothing in Proto-Slavonic. The same with Proto-
but rather a compromise accent between RP and the working-class dialects of southeastern England, i.e. Greater London and the Germanic (the oldest stuff comes from 4c. and it’s in Gothic). Lots of proto-lngs must be reconstructed. Hypotheses marked with
Home Counties (“Londonized” RP, or RP-adjusted Cockney). Due to social changes in Britain, these accents are now heard in an asterisk, e.g. *ber (“brew” in PIE). These hypotheses must be supported by proving that it’s possible to explain them with
contexts, e.g. the BBC, political life, or even the royal family, where they would have been completely unacceptable even 30 regular changes in lngs. It can be proved for instance that <b> transformed into <z> because there are no such changes
years ago. RP remains the high-prestige accent, but covert prestige and the desire to sound less “posh” and more “cool” whatsoever in lngs.
have lessened its appeal, so it is no longer seen as the sole target pronunciation for people in southeastern England. The Method of internal reconstruction:
geographical distribution of EE also suggests that it will remain a local accent, at least for the near future; it has had no effect on Operates on one lng only and is useful when we come across a gap in the history of that lng – there are former and latter forms of
Scotland or Ireland. the word, but from the mentioned period there’s nothing. It also has to be proved that our hypothesis fits into the chain of changes
in the lng.
English standards and dialects today Philological method:
English today shows enormous geographical and social Alongside the different standard forms of English (English, Analyzing texts – working on the sources only. This method doesn’t exclude the two other methods, which have to be used if we
variation, which has been studied using both traditional and Scottish, American, etc.), there is a whole range of (now come across something not present in the sources.
more “modern” fieldwork methods. The discipline of mostly disappearing) traditional rural dialects and modern
sociolinguistics emerged in the 1960s, and most of its major urban dialects. Contrary to expectations, the modern urban Family tree theory:
findings on linguistic and social variation were based on dialects are not necessarily becoming more alike with the We use tree diagrams to use the relations between the lngs.
studies of British and North American English. Since the spread of mass media and universal education, but in some A, B i C lngs make a family, thus they’re related languages. Moving back in time we
1980s, scholars have also been increasingly focusing on the cases are actually diverging can see that they are more and more similar, and we reach D lng which is a proto-lng.
colonial or “new” Englishes, leading to the growth of from each other. As the center of gravity of the English- The biggest lng family – Proto-Indo-European family which separated into 10-12
studies on “English as a world language”. The study of speaking world shifts from the British Isles and North (various resources) families which split into thousands of different lngs.
pidgin and creole studies and language contact has also America to the non-Western world, “new” Englishes of However, sometimes when we examine a group of similar lngs it turns out that the further we go back, the more these lngs differ:
grown remarkably since the 1960s; much of the research has countries such as India, Kenya, and Singapore will probably
naturally been concerned with English in contact with other play a ever more important role on the world stage. In this case the similarities are not the result of the same origin, but of the mutual influences (e.g.
languages. between bordering/neighboring lngs). Such a group is called the league of lngs.
It can be even more complicated – some of the similarities may result in the same origin, other may
ENGLISH LANGUAG E HISTORY result in mutual influences.

The methods of historical linguistics: Tree diagrams were invented by August Schleicher, but became criticized quite quickly. It was suggested that
1. Historical comparative grammar they may lead to serious misunderstandings. Firstly, they may imply that lng splits are immediate while in fact
2. Method of internal reconstruction they proceeded gradually. Secondly, lngs were always used in a certain space, which tree diagrams do not
3. Philological method show.

Historical comparative grammar: Wave theory:

It was the first scientific approach to the study of language. Before – various non-scientific reflections, but non-systematic too.
Historical comparative grammar dominated throughout 19c., in 20c. → structuralism. In other words – transition from diachronic
approach (examining of lng changes in time) to synchronic approach (describing what lng is at present).
Historical comparative grammar appeared in the middle of 18c., when British philologist and traveler, Sir William Jones (?),
“discovered” Sanskrit. This lng was described c. 500 BC – 5k rules and used in that form since then. Thus, access to the full
Wave theory was invented to make up for the above-mentioned flaws. It assumes that every change occurs in a certain place and
then spreads similarly to waves. The further another land is from the place the change occurred, the more time it will take till the
change appears in that area and the smaller its impact is. (this sounds really weird…)

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It is useful when we have two pronunciations of a word and we don’t know which one is older. We have to perform field research
and it might turn out that one is present in an area surrounded by the area of the other pronunciations’ occurrence. Then it means
that the second one is older.
Language continuum:
It’s connected with wave theory. It helps to explain how it is possible
that two very different lngs border (e.g. PL and DE). Let’s assume that
there are four areas of inhabitance, thus four lngs on four lands.
Differences between these lngs arise gradually, there are no striking
differences – western B users understand eastern A users and eastern B users
understand western C users. It happens so because of the wave theory:
It might happen so, however, that one lng will be so important (politically,
culturally, economically, etc.) that it will deepen the differences between the
two neighboring lngs.
This example illustrates that C’s influence is so big that it makes helluva
difference between A and B.
Also – natural barriers (mountains, rivers, etc.) which reduced the merging of
lngs. It applies to long gone times. Today it is not necessary to be physically
close to achieve influences of tongues. (well… not necessarily )
Strata:
Main point for this theory: while examining one lng we can find changes which cannot be explained with the processes going on
in that lng. E.g. “komputer” in Polish. It’s not caused by forces within one language.
This theory treats lngs as strata covering some space, the newer stratum covers the older one. Let’s assume that there’s an influx
of a group of people because of, let’s say, invasion. The invaded land is inhabited by A lng speakers – it’s the stratum covering
this land. Invaders speak in B lng – B stratum covers A stratum. Three possibilities:
1. A users can abandon their lng and acquire B. If it’s done quickly, hundreds of A lng’s features affects B (vocabulary,
semantics, collocations, etc.). E.g. Ireland after British invasion – Irish adopted but changed English. We say that B
develops on the substratum of A.
2. Converse situation – B speakers adopt A, also lots of features flowing between lngs. It happened e.g. in 1066 when
French as a new stratum covered OE, but disappeared after some time and OE under French influences transformed into
ME. A had the superstratum.
3. A & B users neighbor and none of the lngs disappears, features are exchanged. It happened in Switzerland. We call it
adstratum.
Causes of linguistic changes:
Interference of languages:
Already mentioned: wave theory. It doesn’t belong to the lng itself, doesn’t result from forces of evolution in the lng but from the
contact with other lngs. Other causes occur in the lng without contacts with other lngs.
31
Physiological reasons:
Our speech organs tend to simplify pronunciation (assimilation, voicing & stuff). These changes start up as little trends but may
be formed into rules applying to the whole lng. Pronunciation change may cause the change of the whole morphology – as it
happened in English, where inflectional endings disappeared thanks to simplifications of pronunciation. Empty slot was left –
nothing suggested relations between parts of the sentence. Syntax and (in a smaller degree) prepositions took that role over.
We have to remember that there is no objective definition saying what is easy to pronounce and what is not. What for a Polish
may seem easy, for an Englishman it may be difficult. Thus we cannot predict what simplifications will appear in the lng unless
we examine tendencies. Additionally, changes were quicker in long gone times because the lng wasn’t so standardized. Nowadays
standard is taught in schools, can be found in dictionaries, so changes are much slower.
Digression on standards: it is quite common to account a view that the lng is deteriorating. (take a look at Pyles, Chapter 1). Lngs
have always changed and it is hard to judge what is better or worse. If something is used, it means that it’s effective enough.
Standard is considered as something better only because our approach. We have to remember that standard is not set
automatically, but is set by a specific group of experts saying that this form is better and that worse (they’re not consistent, too).
The other criterion can be approach of a bigger group of users which simply use the form and thus it’s considered as standard.
Other four causes come from social and psychological mechanisms:
 Metaphor and metaphorical thinking. It’s not only about literary metaphors, but also these commonly used in
everyday life. They influence changes in semantics, phraseology or collocations.
 Taboo.
 Folk etymology.
 Analogy.
Taboo:
Taboo = a social rule that prohibits to use some part of language. It can be connected only with a limited area (e.g. vulgarisms), or
every single situation (e.g. Jews cannot pronounce the God’s name). These prohibitions are circumvented by euphemisms (instead
of God’s name Jews say Adonai, i.e. “My Lord”) and word deformation (e.g. instead of “kurwa” people say “kuźwa”)
Theoretical examples with taboo problems: we examine three lngs A, B, C. They come from one proto-lng and before the lngs
split, X word appeared in that lng. We assume then that words meaning X in those three lngs will be cognates, related words,
coming from one form. After research it turns out that A and B have X, but C has Y, a different word. It means that either at some
point we were wrong (e.g. C split with proto-lng before X appeared) or we deal with taboo. It is possible that C users put taboo on
X and substituted it with Y, a euphemism, which, with time, made X fade away. It has to be proven, of course.
Real life example: an animal called bear in EN and niedźwiedź in Polish in PIE was most likely called *arktos. It means that PIE
users knew the animal and named it. In English and Polish it has names which cannot be linked with the PIE one. It is also hard to
assume that the split appeared before the animals appeared on Earth. A bear is a very dangerous animal which Germans and Slavs
certainly feared. The name became taboo (‘let sleeping dogs lie’) and euphemisms came instead. Bear and niedźwiedź can be
easily traced back to PIE. Bear comes from *ber, brown, and niedźwiedź in Old Chuch (?) Slavonic medvedi from *madhu
(honey) and ed (eat).
Folk etymology:
A common man doesn’t study the unknown word he comes cross, he tries to split it into pieces looking for elements similar to the
ones he already knows. Thus zakrystia (sacristy) is being disjointed this way: za + Chrystus (behind + Christ) which even makes
sense, because sacristy is behind the cross on which the Christ is. When people make sure that this etymology is the correct one,
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they can even change the pronunciation to fit the given etymology – therefore zachrystia (with x sound). The truth is the word Declensions – adjectives:
comes from Latin sacre, which turned into sacristia or something alike. The same with cmentarz (cemetery), which was linked by They had gender, number, case and degree, with gender, number and case follow/agree with the noun. Strong declension was
someone with smutny or smętny (sad, wistful) and thus smętarz. Example from English – apron – once it was napron, but as its used when there was no determiner before an adjective, weak declension when it was preceded by determiner, demonstrative or
used with an article, someone changed the borders of words and it became an apron. possessive pronoun.
1. Strong declension of adjectives with a light stem.
Analogy: 2. Strong declension of adjectives with a heavy stem.
When we are not sure about inflection of a word, we tend to look at inflection of a similar word. Sometimes it is the correct 3. Weak declension.
inflection, sometimes not and then the given element is moved from one group to another. Usually inflection of less commonly Comparative was made by adding -ra, superlative adding -ost, and in Early West Saxon -est.
used words is based on inflection of more commonly used ones. It was like that in OE, where a few endings of nominative plural Suppletive comparison – used roots not linked etymologically (i.e. these forms came from different words and became
existed, but only one survived because about 80% of words used it, and other words took it over. comparison of one word), e.g. gōd (good) – betra/betera/bettra – betsta/betesta/besta.

Adverbs:
Old English declension: Early PIE didn’t have adverbs. Some of the nouns and pronouns lost their declination and started to function as adverbial
Grammatical categories: modifiers – these we call primary adverbs. Examples - þa (then), nū (now). Secondary adverbs come from adjectives to which in
1. Cases: nominative (N), genitive (G), dative (D), accusative (A) & instrumental (I), (the last one occurs only in adjectives OE ending –e was added, e.g. dēope (deep). Adjectives ending with–līc were turned into adverbs (e.g. frēondlīce – friendly). With
and some of the pronouns) time–līce ending started to function as an adverbial marker and added to another adjectives, e.g. earnostlīce (earnestly).
2. Gender: masculine (M), feminine (F), neuter (N). (it was a grammatical category, so the same as with Polish, it didn’t
relate with the meaning of the word. Thus wīfmann (woman) is masculine, cwene (woman too) – feminine, and wīf Numerals:
(wife) – neuter. In PIE numerals inflected, but in OE inflection applied only to 1to 5.
3. Number: singular (sg), dual, plural (pl). Dual – personal pronouns only.
4. Person: first, second, third. Pronouns:
Personal pronouns in first and second person also had dual Possesive pronouns were genitive personal pronouns to
Declensions – nouns: number. Pronouns in second person singular (þū, þīn) which strong adjectives inflection endings were added.
1. Strong declension. 85% of all nouns belonged here transformed into thou, thine itp., but these forms are not These from the third person were not inflected.
a. Strong Masculine Declension (SM). Almost all masculine nouns ending with a consonant or -e. used anymore because of social conventions. They were
b. Strong Neuter Declension (SN). Almost all neuter nouns ending with a consonant or -e. It included four substituted with a form of plural. Later in second person Two types of demonstrative pronouns – one served as a
typical paradigms and some combinations. plural dative ēow (you) substituted nominative gē (ye). In definite article, the other one was purely demonstrative, by
c. Strong Feminine Declension (SF). Almost all feminine nouns ending with a consonant or -u. Also four typical third person, similarly to the present situation, three genders most likely they did not overlap 100%. It’s hard to establish
paradigms. existed, but none of this forms resembled today’s “she” – this now. Today’s system is based on these two groups,
2. Weak declension. About 15% of nouns this word appeared in ME, but has obscure origins and we which were mixed, merged and today we have four
a. Weak Masculine Declension (WM) don’t know where it comes from. his, him in neuter demonstratives + the. Speaking of which, in that first group
b. Weak Feminine Declension (WF) disappeared late, almost in ModE. The same with plural in masculine and feminine nominative began with <s>, other
c. Weak Neuter Declension (WN) forms (hī(e), hi(e)ra), they don’t resemble today’s ones. It’s cases with <ð> -- with time, through analogy, <ð> was also
3. Minor declensions. About 10% of nouns, which is a problem because altogether it’s 110… because they, them, etc. don’t come from there, but were inputted to nominative and ðē was the result, which later
a. Masculine u-declension. taken from Scandinavian (Vikings). transformed into the.
b. Feminine u-declension.
c. Nouns changing the root vowel during the declension. Interrogative pronouns were not used as relative pronouns – there were different words for that purposes. WH-words come from
d. Neuter nouns with -ru, -ra, -rum plural endings. In plural in N, G and D had these endings interrogative pronouns.
e. Nouns denoting relationships (father, brother, and the likes).
Old English conjugation:
Grammatical categories:
1. Number: singular, plural.
2. Person: first, second, third (only in singular, in plural – one person).

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 3. Tense: present, preterite – the same as nowadays – no future tense, which is characteristic for Germanic lngs. The history of historical linguistics:
4. Mood: indicative, subjunctive, imperative. Subjunctive is used not for expressing facts, but feelings and other subjective Pre-scientific period:
cases. Today it has almost disappeared and it’s a syntactical structure (I demand that he stay) – we simply use bare Patanjali & Panini – Indian “linguists” (800-400 BC). Panini was interested in morpho-syntax (i.e. what’s traditionally called
infinitive. In OE it was another form of a verb. grammar) and created ~400 rules of using Sanskrit (i.e. sacred/holy lng of ancient India). In 10th and 11th c. AD → Hebrew
grammarians who determined relationship of Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic (Semitic family). In 16th c. it was determined that
Verbs: there are following families: Romance, Germanic, Slavonic & Celtic. Łukasz Górnicki’s work “Dworzanin polski” (1566) was an
1. Weak verbs (3 classes). attempt to systematize knowledge about Slavonic lngs. In 1660 – “Grammair Gènerale” comparing French, Latin, Greek and
2. Strong verbs (7 main classes with subclasses). Hebrew.
3. Preterite-present verbs.
4. Anomalous verbs (4 classes). (most probably) Scientific period:
It may seem that weak/strong verb division lasts till today as regular/irregular verbs, but it’s only partially true. Verbs moved Sir William Jones delivered a paper in 1786. He was a British colonial officer, a judge in India, also an amateur linguist. Jones
from one group to another and it mixed up a bit since then. said that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin are related, suggested that are related also with Gothic, Celtic and Old Persian.
In 19th c. development of historical linguistics under influence of:
Weak verbs:  Above-mentioned Jones’ paper
3 forms (infinitive, preterite, past participle). Preterite tense & past/passive participle are made by adding a dental suffix.  Romanticism
Past/passive participles often had ġe- prefix which is oftentimes omitted in books because it slipped out of OE pretty quick (np.  Darwinism (evolution theory)
lufian, lufode, (ġe)lufod). In some verbs of the first class root vowel changes under the influence of phonological processes, but it In 1816 Franz Bopp wrote “About the Conjugational System of Sanskrit in Comparison with That of Greek, Latin, Persian, and
is not ablaut. Third class is comprised of four verbs not matching any other class. Germanic”. He compared not single words, but whole systems of verbal conjugation, thus a part of grammar.
In 1818 Rasmus Christian Rask, Dutch, examined evolution of Old Nordic (Icelandic) vocabulary and grammar in comparison
Strong verbs: with Germanic, Slavonic, Lithuanian, Latvian, Greek, and Latin. He also examined phonetic equivalence and genetic relations
Preterite tense and past/passive participle are made by changing the root vowel (the process is called ablaut). That is why we give between them.
four forms (infinitive, preterite 1st and 3rd person, preterite other persons, past participle) and altogether we have all the roots we In 1822 Jacob Grimm (one of the Grimm Brothers) wrote “Deutsche Grammatik”, which was a comparative compendium of
need. Seven basic classes, but further division is under discussion. Germanic languages. In the book He presented First Consonant Shift in Germanic (pierwsza germańska przesuwka spółgłoskowa)
and formulated Grimm’s law. Described how Proto-Indoeuropean (PIE) developer into Proto-Germanic (PGrmc).
Preterite-present forms: August Pott dealt with comparative phonetics of Indoeuropean languages and wrote “First Etymological Dictionary of
Originally – perfect forms of verbs, but in Proto-Germanic they got present meaning. Indoeuropean Languages”.
August Schleicher in 1861 wrote “The Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indoeuropean Languages” and
Anomalous verbs: introduced the method of internal reconstruction. He also wrote a fairy tale “About a Wolf and a Sheep” in hypothetic PIE.
Four verbs that don’t apply to any different group. wesan/bēon (be), dōn (do), gān (go) and willan (will). They have suppletive Neogrammarians (known also as Young Grammarians and Young Turks) is a group of grammarians working between 1965 and
inflection – their forms come from different roots (as go and went). 1916, who tried to discover laws ruling the development of languages. The most important among them: Karl Brugmann,
Berthold Delbrück, Antoine Meillet, Jan Łoś, Jan Rozwadowski.
English Language History – Skrzypiec notes Neogrammarians thought that language laws are similar to natural laws, but function only in a limited time and on a limited area.
If there is an exception from a specific law, it means that the exception was made or loaned after the law stopped to apply.
Periodization of the English language: Ferdinand de Saussure in 1916 started a period of synchronic linguistics.
 Old English:
 Pre-Old English: 499-600 The methods of historical linguistics:
 Early Old English: 600-800 1. The philological method.
 Middle Old English: 800-900 2. The method of internal reconstruction.
 Late Old English: 900-1100 3. The historical comparative method.
 Middle English: 1100-1500. 4. The majority principle.
 Modern English: 1500-1900. 5. The feasibility principle.

 Present day English: 1900-1980. Dr Skrzypiec doesn’t know what came next because he studied it in 70s. 6. The family tree theory (Stammbaum-Theorie)
7. The wave tree theory

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  Western Slavonic: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Lusatian (łużyckie)/ Sorbian languages, Kashubian
The philological method:  Southern Slavonic (come from Old Church Slavonic): Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Dalmatian†
Operates on one lng (usu. native) and compares texts in that lng from different periods. E.g. The Lord’s Prayer from different  Eastern Slavonic: (Great) Russian, White Russian (Belarusian), Little Russian (Ukrainian)
periods and examine changes (“…who is/are/art in heaven”). No sources from the earliest Slavonic. Old Church Slavonic for some time (most probably between 5 and 8c. AD) was lingua
Rural dialects are usu. more conservative, maintain older structures. Written rural dialects are much closer to the original spelling franca of early Slavonic Europe. There is also słowiński (according to dr Skrzypiec – Slovenian; according to Wikipedia –
for in those days orthography tended to resemble pronunciation. Slovincian).
Germanic group:
The method of internal reconstruction:  Western: North-Western (English, Frisian, Dutch), South-Western
Inventor: August Scheicher. Also one lng method. Two versions:  Northern: Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian
 the first one examines phonology. E.g. “śnieg” vs. “śniegu”(śniek vs. śniegu; both mean ‘snow’). Which one is older?  Eastern (†): Gothic, Burgundic, Vandalic
Because written lng is usu. More conservative, it can be concluded that /g/ is the older one, and /k/ is an innovation.
Basing on variants we examine which one is older. Eastern group extinct, but it was very important for Germanic lngs’ development. The oldest notes come from 4c. and are in
 the second one examines morphology. E.g. “prusiech” and “prusach” (Prussia) or “niebiesiech” and “niebiosach” Gothic (circa 331 AD Wulfilla(s) – a bishop – translated fragments of New Testament into Gothic).
(heavens), which one is older? –ach is more frequently used (ogrodach, domach, kwiatach, etc.), thus it’s modern. Unlike 2nd Germanic Consonant Shift is responsible for lng difference between northern and southern Germany. It doesn’t apply to
the first version, here more freq. used is the modern one. English because it happened most probably in 6th century AD, when some of Northern Germanic tribes tried to conquer Britain.

The historical comparative method: Grimm’s law:

It’s a development of method of internal reconstruction, operating on at least two different foreign lngs, which we suppose to be This law was formulated by one of the Grimm brothers, it describes the 1st Germanic Consonant Shift. It makes Germanic lngs
related. The aim of this method is to establish which of these lngs is the main source of the development of forms in these two different from other IE lngs. Between 2500 and 1000 BC it followed like this in PGerm:
languages. 1. Voiced aspirated stops changed into voiced non-aspirated stops.
2. Voiced non-aspirated stops changed into voiceless non-aspirated stops.
Indo-European languages: 3. Voiceless stops changed into voiceless fricatives.
Proto-Indo-European we should type as *PIE. Asterisk means that it’s a hypothetic, reconstructed lng. No examples of writing
in that lng. Linguists simply sat down and created it basing on the Latin. Latin is the only non-asterisk proto-lng. English was Verner’s law:
created somewhere around 4500 and 2500-2000 BC. Colin Renfrew, an archeologist, suggests, that PIE lng and civilization arose It’s a modification and development of Grimm’s law explaining exceptions from that law. <t> should, according to Grimm’s law,
around 7500 BC. The oldest known lngs are Sanskrit, Latin and Greek. Lithuanian is also considered as very old. develop into <>, but in OE we have modor, so it turns out to be <d>. Grimm’s law is fine for first syllables in words and
Thanks to comparing lngs, linguists figured out
accented syllables, but doesn’t work in different cases (?). To explain that, Verner used the case of accent in PIE. There are two
that PIE might not have its roots neither in Asia,
types of accent:
nor in the Mediterranean area, though archeologists
 Tone (melodic, tune-like).
say so. Most probably it developed in south-east
 Stress (dynamic, expiratory).
parts of Poland and south-west Ukraine. Because
In PIE tone existed, but in Germanic lngs it gradually became fixed on the root syllable and changed into stress. Between PIE and
of migrations PIE split. In the end Celts conquered
OE there was Proto-Germanic (PGMC), where this change occurred. Four phases of that:
the whole Europe.
1. PIE: mater - vCv - middle consonant was placed after unaccented vowel and before the accented one – the consonant
was [-voiced +stop]. According to Grimm’s law it should turn [-voiced +fricative].
(† means extinct group)
2. maer - vCv - accent unchanged, but the consonant turns [+voiced –stop]
Hellenic group: Old Greek, Modern Greek and
3. mader - vCv - accent still not changed but the consonant turns [+voiced +stop]
Old Macedonian. Modern Macedonian is Slavic.
Indo-Iranik = Indo-Iranian: Persian and Uranian among others. Today in India both IE and non-IE lngs are used. 4. OE: mader – vCv - fixation of stress on the root syllable.
Thraco-Armenian is French Western version of Armenian and Eastern Armenian.
Illyrian – Illyrians are most likely to be the ancestors of Albanians. However, so many loanwords from neighboring countries Germanic invasions on the British Isles:
were implemented that today’s Albania differs pretty much from the old one. Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians.
Baltic – Lithuanian, Latvian, formerly most likely Old Russian, and extinct in 14c. Jadvigans or Yotvingians lng.
Slavonic – a big group related with Baltic. Division:

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Venerable Bede in his chronicle (750 r.) writes that invasions started in 449 and lasted till 600. Most probably the first came Jutes Genitives: two types left in English::
and Frisians and settled in Kent. Saxons settled in Wessex, Sussex, Essex and partly in Mercia (Midlands). Angles came last  Saxon genitive (e.g. John’s house), classic declension.
settling in other parts of Mercia and Northumbria. Thus four dialects.  Norman genitive (e.g. the house of my brother), prepositional, took from French.
Declensions:
Periodisation of English (one of many): 449 is the beginning of Germanic invasion, 1154 is the end OE had:
449-1154: Old English: of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (it’s the last entry in OE). Some  singular, plural,
449-700: Pre-English say that in 1100 English was driven underground from  masculine, feminine, neuter
700-900: Early Old English everyday life. Our knowledge of English dates back to the  nominative, genitive, dative, accusative (though adjectives and some of the pronouns had the fifth one – instrumental)
900-1154 (1100): Late Old English Late Old English period. Noun gender was not set by anything specific (unlike today’s English) and e.g. cwene ‘woman’ was feminine, but wīfmann
1154-1500: Middle English: Early Middle English was still under huge influence from ‘woman’ was masculine. Additionally some of endings allowed to determine gender of a noun, but not all of them. Determiners
1154-1300: Early Middle English French. In between 1300 and 1500 these influences were and adjectives had to go along with the gender of a noun. Declensions:
1300-1500: Late Middle English gradually retracted.  Strong masculine (the most popular, 85% of nouns declined that way)
1500-1800: Early Modern English
 Strong feminine (not really popular)
1800-1900: Late Modern English
 Weak
1900-today: Present-Day English
 Minor declensions of nouns

Old English dialects:

Strong masculine based on the word stān (stone):
 Kentish – the most important till 6c.
Nominative: stān stānas 4 cases. Genitive singular –es ending turned into Saxon
 Mercian – basic diplomatic lng of 7th century
Genitive: stānes stāna genitive (stānes = stone’s), nominative plural –as is today’s
 Northumbrian – was the most important in 8c. but Viking invasions destroyed many English monasteries in which Dative: stāne stānum plural (stānas = stones).
Northumbrian scripts were preserved so it has hardly survived till now. Accusative: stān stānas
 West-Saxon – became the most important in 9th c., in times of Alfred the Great. Lots of documents, entries and
manuscripts in that lng, which represent Late OE. Weak masculine → hunta (hunter): Conjugations:
N hunta huntan Pronouns for genders look like this:
Early Germanic society: G huntan huntena ić (ja) wē (my)
What was Germanic life like when they invaded Britain? We know that from Tacitus and his work Germania (circa 98 AD). D huntan huntum þū (ty*) ġē (wy)
These people lived in north-west part of Europe. They lived in tribes, lived in scattered settlements because they hated cities. A huntan huntan hē/hēo/hit (on/ona/ono) hīe (oni)
Their houses were usually apart and often made of wood. They lived in pigs which were covered in rabbits. When hard winters * - „þū” refers to singular ‘you’ only
came, they lived in dug holes in the ground covered with branches and other stuff. They pastured e.g. sheep, farmed a bit, but
their farming wasn’t developed. They didn’t practice horticulture. Every year they changed farming grounds, allotting areas to the Mutation: the change of a sound. Division:
whole village and distributing land to cultivators in order of rank. Amount of especially old family members accounted. The more  Consonantal
old members, the more important the person. Kings were chosen by the members of their tribes for their valor. They worried
 Vocalic: ablaut (apophony) (?) (morphologically motivated), umlaut (phonetically motivated)
warred a lot. Chieftains had to be as brave as the king – if they were braver then shame on king and vice versa. Decisions were Verbs divide into three categories:
made together by voting. They believed in gods such as Wolden (gentile god, connected with messaging; thus Wednesday), Thor
 Weak verbs: 3 classes. Past tense is created by dental suffix {-ed(e)} or {-od(e)}
(god of war and smithery; thus Thursday), and Freia (fertility and Friday).
 Strong verbs: 7 classes. Past tense made by ablaut vowel mutation (przegłos samogłoskowy).
 Anomalous verbs: exceptions, among others „bēon” = „to be”.
Old English:

Weak vs. strong verbs:

Declensions & conjugations: OE was synthetic, not analytic.
Weak verbs → infinitive, past singular, past participle;
 Synthetic – lng in which declensions and conjugations appear, word function is determined by inflectional endings. E.g.
Strong verbs → infinitive, past singular, past plural, past participle;
Polish.
Example of weak verb („to love”): Lufian, lufode, (ġe)lufod.
 Analytic – English is such a lng since circa 1500-1600. In such a lng inflection is not that important, what is more
Example of strong verb („to drink”): Drincan, dranc, druncon, druncen.
important is word order and auxiliary words.
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As we can see, additional form of strong verbs comes from the fact that in past tense root is different for singular and plural. Magan: Dōn:
Present X Past Present X Past
Bēon: Present tense: mæġ magon X meahte/mihte meahton/mihton dō dōþ X dyde dydon
1. Expressing actual, real present time. meaht/miht magon X meahtest/mihtest meahton/mihton dēst dōþ X dydest dydon
2. Expressing habitual and/or future time. mæġ magon X meahte/mihte meahton/mihton dēþ dōþ X dyde dydon
Present 1 X Present 2 X Past (preterite indicative)
eom sind(on)/sint X bēo bēoþ X wæs wǣron Āgan: Gān:
eart sind(on)/sint X bist bēoþ X wǣre wǣron
Present X Past Present X Past
is sind(on)/sint X biþ bēoþ X wæs wǣron
āh/āg āgon X āhte āhton gā gāþ X ēode ēodon
Tidbit: Ić bēo mid eow alle dagas = I shall be with you all days.
āhst āgon X āhtest āhton gǣst gāþ X ēodest ēodon

Strong verbs: āh/āg āgon X āhte āhton

gǣþ gāþ X ēode ēodon
7 groups, the third has three subgroups, the fifth two and the seventh is curious. For every group there is a pattern given indicating Nāh, nāhte = ne + āh = not have

what major vowels are in root in every principial part and how many vowels are after (this is a distinction between the groups).
Citation from Reszkiewicza: „Class VII comprised old reduplicating verbs which in historical times formed their Preterite with Hwā (M/F) / hwæt (N):

the vocalism -ē- or -ēo-, and their Past Pariticple of which had the vocalism of the Present Tense.”
As a bonus – inflection of today’s “who/what”

Grupa Pattern Infinitive Past Singular Past Plural Past Participle Meaning N hwā hwæt

SV1 {ī, ā, i, i} + C drīfan drāf drifon drifen „drive” G hwæs hwæs

SV2 {ēo, ēa, u, o} + C crēopan crēap crupon cropen „creep” D hwæm/hwām hwæm/hwām

SV3 {eo, ea, u, o} + CC feohtan feaht fuhton fohten „fight” Acc hwone/hwænne hwæt

SV3 {e, æ, u, o} + CC helpan healp hulpon holpen „help” Instr – hwy*/hwon

SV3 {i, a, u, u} + CC drincan dranc druncon druncen „drink” * – modern “why”.

SV4 {e, æ, ǣ, o} + C beran bær bǣron boren „bear”

Changes between Old English and Middle English:
SV5 {e, æ, ǣ, e} + C metan mæt mǣton meten „mete” Had place „God knows when” – somewhere in between 900 and 1200 AD. OE ended between circa 1100 and 1154, ME started
SV5 {i, æ, ǣ, e} + C sittan sæt sǣton seten „sit” between 1100 and 1150 r., ended in 1500 r. Transition from OE to ME relates closely with the Norman Conquest (1066). First
contact with Normans took place before 1066, when Normandy was visited by Edward the Confessor who, died childless, passed
SV6 {a, ō, ō, a} + C faran fōr fōron faren „fare”
the throne to William, later called The Conqueror. Outcome of this contact is two changes in English phonology. Cannot be
simply explained.
Different chart for SV7.
1. Quantitative changes: Lengthening of vowels, Shortening of vowels.
SV7:
Lengthening of vowels:
Infinitive Past Singular Past Plural Past Participle Meaning
Worked before nonpreconsonantal voiced homorganic clusters, thus usually in the middle of the word. Homorganic =
faellan Fēoll fēollon feallen „fall”
used by the same articulators. Cluster = two or more consonants. Examples: climban → clīmban; wilde → wīlde; It had
bēatan Bēot bēoton bēaten „beat”
far-reaching consequences, for couple of hundreds years later, during Great Vowel Shift, [i:] changed into [ai] and thus
grōwan Grēow grēowon grōwen „grow”
today’s climb [klaim] and wild [waild].
cnāwan Cnēow cnēowon cnāwen „know”
Shortening of vowels:
hātan Hēt hēton hāten „call”
Worked before every other consonant clusters. Examples: wīsdom → wisdom; fīftene → fifteen; It justifies today’s
lǣtan Lēt lēton lǣten „let”
difference in pronunciation between wise and wisdom or five and fifteen. In wīse and fīf there was no consonant clusters,
shortening didn’t work and the vowel remained long; in Great Vowel Shift changed into [ai].
Other anomalous verbs: 2. Qualitative changes. As it can be seen, in quantitative changes only one feature of a vowel changed. In qualitative
Among others: witan – „know”, magan – „be able” (today’s „may”), āgan – „have” (today’s „owe”*), dōn – „do”, gān – „go” and changes we en dup with almost a different vowel. E.g. in cȳ cene bold vowel is the same sound as über, but unrounding
willan – „will”. took place and something else was the result.
* – after Norman Invasion in certain words <ā> ([a:]) became <ō> ([o:]) and thus from āgan we have owe.
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