A Brief History of

English
Class # 25
LING 2301 11-18-08
 History of English Timeline (from
Fennell, B. 2001. A History of English.
Blackwell)
 General Outline (p. 1, 15)
 Pre-History before 500 AD (or CE)
 Old English CE 500 – 1100
 Middle English 1100 – 1500
 Early Modern English 1500 – 1800
 Modern English 1800 – present

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 Selected Dates from Prehistory of
English (pp. 15 – 17)
 see time line handout.
 5200 BC First farmers of central Europe spread NW as far as the Netherlands
 3250 BC Earliest writing from W. Mesopotamia: Pictographic clay used for
commercial accounts
 1900 BC Cretan hieroglyphic writing
 2300 BC Beginning of full European Bronze Age
 1650 BC Linear A script (Crete and the Cyclades)
 1400 BC Linear B script (mainland and islands of Greece)
 750 BC First Greek Alphabetic inscription
 690 BC Etruscan script developed from Greek
 600 BC Latin script
 First Greek Coins
 460 BC Parchment replaces clay tablets for Aramaic administrative
documents
 CE 125 Hadrian's Wall built
 CE 449 Angles, Saxons and Jutes invade Britain
Things to look up if you want to know more:
Proto-Indo European (PIE): Grimm's Law, Verner's Law (Consonant shifts in Germanic from PIE)
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 Old English Period (p. 55).
 55 BC Julius Caesar attempts to invade Britain
 CE 43-50 Emperor Claudius invades Britain
 CE 410 Romans withdraw from Britain
 CE 449 Angles, Saxons and Jutes invade Britain
 597 St. Augustine of Canterbury re-introduces* Christianity to the English
 787 Scandinavian invasion begins (Vikings)
 878 King Alfred defeats the Danes at Eddington (Ethandun)
 Treaty of Wedmore (allows a truce b/t Scandinavians who settle on outskirts and
the Anglo-Saxons in Alfred’s territory which established a line between Anglo-
Saxons and Danes – Danish side referred to as Danelaw.
 899 King Alfred dies
 1014 King Æthelred driven out by a new wave of Danish (political)
aggression
 1016 Danish King Cnut rules England
 1042 Accession of Edward the Confessor (Æthelred's son) to the throne
(died w/o an heir in 1066)

(* see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine_of_Canterbury for more detail)

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 General OE properties
 When Anglo-Saxons move in the land was inhabited
by Celts/Scots/Picts
 OE synthetic/fusional rather than analytic/isolating
 N, V, Adj, Det, ProN were highly inflected meaning
word order would not be very ridged
 Strong and weak declensions of nouns and adjectives
 Strong and weak conjugations of verbs
 Word formation by compounding, prefixing and
suffixing rather than borrowing
 Gender (like other Indo-European languages) – was a
grammatical feature (based on formal linguistic
criteria, not logical or "natural" classes)
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 OE Consonants (very similar to
modern day English)
bilabia labio- Inter- alveola Alveo-
velar
l dental dental r palatal
-vce stop p t k
+vce stop b d g
-vce affr ʧ
+vce affr ʤ
fricative f {v} θ s ʃ {ʒ] h
nasal m n
lateral l
retroflex r
semi-vowel w j
 {voiced fricatives} were allophones – predictable by rules in context of
voiceless segments (no contrast as in present day fan & van)
 It also included some clusters that no longer exist phonetically: /kn/ /gn/
(knee, gnaw)

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 Vowels in OE:
 A major feature of vowels in OE from Germanic is called "front
mutation" or "i-umlaut"
 If a stressed syllable was followed by an unstressed syllable
containing [i] or [j],
 the vowel sound of the stressed syllable was fronted or raised (or
partly assimilated to the following high front [i] or [j]).
 The vowel that caused the mutation would then be dropped out of
the changed forms (so it does not occur itself in the new forms)
 Example:
 The plural for mūs 'mouse' would have been mūsiz. The vowel
of /-iz/ raised and fronted the /ū/
 Then the /iz/ would be dropped
 Thus changed to mȳs 'mice'
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_Umlaut
 Also produced vowel mutation plurals forms such as 'foot'  'feet'
 And adjectives strang, strengra, strengest & old, elder, eldest
 And some verb forms lie/lay, sit/set
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 OE syntax
 also used case inflections for grammatical function of
nouns (different suffixes on nouns showing the
following relations within the sentence)
 An example of Cases that would be inflected:
 Nominative case  subjects
 the DOG put the bone on the pillow.
 Accusitive case  direct objects
 the dog put THE BONE on the pillow.
 Genitive case  Possessives
 the dog put HIS bone on the pillow.
 Dative case  for indirect objects
 the dog put the bone on THE PILLOW.
 Instrumental case  "with/or by means of" phrase (rare in
OE)
 the dog chewed the bone WITH HIS TEETH.
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 Words from Latin in OE:
 Some probably from regular Roman life
 street, wine, butter, pepper, cheese, silk, copper,
pound, inch, mile.
 Some came in with the Church
(St. Augustine 597)
 bishop, candle, creed, mass, monk, priest

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Words Borrowed from Scandinavian
(the Danes) into OE:
 /sk/ shall, fish, shirt, skirt, sky, scale
 birth, egg, guess, root, seat, sister, tidings
 Other factors from Scandinavian —
pronouns (they, them, their) replaced 3 rd Pl
inflected forms
 prepositions (till, fro – as in to and fro),

 infinitives (att + do as in 'ado')

 and parts of the verb 'to be' (are)

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 Middle English (p. 94).
 1066 Battle of Hastings; Norman Conquest (William, Duke of
Normandy [2nd cousin to Edward] takes throne by force as
William the Conqueror whose son William Rufus succeeded
him)
 1100 William II Rufus dies suspiciously in a hunting accident
and his younger brother Henry takes the throne as Henry I.
 1189 Richard I (the Lionheart of Robin Hood fame spoke little
or no English and only spent 6 months in England) succeeds
Henry II (Henry I’s Grandson)
 1199 Richard died w/o heirs and his brother John was crowned
King
 1204 King John looses lands in Normandy (his own and that of
the Barons)
 1205 John looses war with France and Norman Lands belonging
to Norman rulers in Britain given up
 1215 The Magna Carta signed (forced upon King John by the
Barons to limit the king's will to the rule of law)*
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 Middle English (p. 94).
 1216 Henry III acquires the throne
 Thus marking the end of Northern French domination
and began Southern French domination
 1272 Edward I (Henry III’s son) takes the throne (as the
"first King for generations to have a good command of
English")
 1362 Parliament opened in English
 (Time of Chaucer 1340–1400)
 1381 Peasants' Revolt (increased the importance of
English to give the lower persons a voice in the affairs of
the country)
 1476 Caxton introduces the printing press (by 1500
35,000+ books have been printed – most in Latin)
 1489 French no longer used as the language of
Parliament
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 General Changes
 During the Middle English period saw changes such as the loss of inflections,
the development of more fixed word ordering and a great deal more borrowing.
 While many consonants did not change some did. For instance —
 Loss of w between Consonants and /o/ Vowel: swa  so & hwa  ha
('who')
 Loss of some final consonants: drivan  drive
 Simplification of /sw/ cluster: swuster  suster 'sister'
 Loss of initial /h/ in words: hring  ring & hrof  rof ('roof'')
 Loss of inflections (suffixes on the ends of words to indicate case)
 Gaps in inflection system gave space for new prepositions
 conversion of other forms: along (OE adj  prep)
 compound prep: out + of, in + to  into,
 borrowed : except from Latin, till from ONorse,
according to, around, during from French

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 ME Vowels
 Long vowels: raised and rounded of /a/
 so /a/  /o:/ ban  bon 'bone' & bat  bot 'boat'
 unrounding of /y:/ to /i:/ bryd  /brid/ 'bride'
 One of the most significant changes in ME was the "general obscuring
of unstressed syllables" which is one of the fundamental causes of the
loss of inflection.
 Many unstressed vowels  schwa /ə and many unstressed final vowels
were eventually lost
 OE oxa  ME oxə 'ox' OE foda  ME fodə 'food'
 Other vowels were lengthened before /ld/, /mb/, & /nd/ such as:
 ʧɪld  ʧi:ld 'child' (but not if a 3rd syll as in ʧɪldrən)
 a, e, and o also got longer in "open syllables of disyllabic words“ (meaning
those syllables in a word that are CV rather than CVC) namɛ  na:mə
 Or shortened in some context like before double consonants and clusters
 cepte [ke:ptɛ]  cept [kept]
 Also diphthongs started to develop where vowels were followed by
glides (/w/ & /j/) and the velar fricative /ɤ/, and as in claw, day, new, grow,
bow, owe, & joy.

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 “Social Status” of French and
Borrowed Words:
 With William I's conquest much of the nobility in
both church and state was now made of Normans
rather than English.
 Thus "French" was associated with higher status while
English was the language of "the masses". THUS,
many of the native terms for livestock remained
 – ox, sheep, swine, deer, calf…
 The French words were used for the flesh of these
however, as it was probably more commonly eaten by
the upper classes (the lower class diet consisting of
more grains and such).
 beef, mutton, pork, bacon, venison, veal…

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 Words from French (cont):
 Similarly the power dichotomy is seen in the French
origin of:
 master, servant, bottle, dinner, supper, banquet
 (smith & baker remained from OE origin)
 while butcher, barber, carpenter, draper, grocer, mason &
tailor are all French.
 The core of family life remained English (possibly
used more regularly):
 Mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter
 But extended family was influenced by French:
 uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece
 or hybrids: grandmother, grand— father, son, daughter, etc.
 Numbers and body parts generally kept their English
names except for the word face.
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 Other French semantic fields of
borrowed words:
 Government & Administration:
 parliament, bill, act, council, county, tax, custom
 Law & Property:
 court, assize, judge, jury, justice, prison, chattel, money,
rent
 Titles:
 Prince, duke, marquis, viscount, baron
 War:
 battle, assault, siege, standard, banner, fortress, tower

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 Early Modern English (p. 135).
 1509 Henry VIII
 1534 Act of Supremacy (Henry’s succession from the
Catholic Church and influence of Latin)
 1536 Monasteries dissolved and England becomes a
Protestant country
 Statutes incorporates all of Wales with England
 1539 English translation of the Bible in every church
 1574 First company of Actors and the building of
theatres
 (time period of William Shakespeare 1564 – 1616)
 1584 Colonist at Roanoke
 1600 English E. India Co. Formed

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 Early Modern English (p. 135).
 1603 James I in Power
 1607 Colony planted by London Co. at Jamestown
 1611 King James Bible published
 "To provide a politically more acceptable alternative to the
Geneva Bible and to shore up the position of the king, while at
the same time criticizing the clergy and casting aspersions on
'Popish persons'." Later became "the Authorized Version" used
overwhelmingly in Britain until 1960's
 1616 John Bullokar publishes An English Exposition (English
dictionary)
 1640 approximately 20,000 book titles available in English
 1755 Samuel Johnson publishes a 2 volume set comprising of 2300
pages and 40,000 entries A Dictionary of the English Language
(The original purpose was “to 'fix' the language and establish a
standard for the use of words and their spellings”)
 1775-1783 American war of Independence
 1788 Penal Colonies established in Australia
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 EME Change in Consonants:
 Loss of /l/ after low back vowels and before labial or
velar consonants
 almond, folk, palm but not after other vowels film, hulk…
 Loss of /t/ or /d/ in consonant clusters with /s/
 castle, hasten, handsome, landscape
 loss of initial /k/ and /g/ before /n/
 knock, knee, knight, gnome,…
 Loss of /w/ before /r/
 wreak, wrong …
 Loss of /r/ before /s/
 ME bares  bass (a type of fish)
 In 18th century /r/ was lost in standard English before
a consonant and word finally.
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 EME Changes in Vowels:
 Unstressed vowels were reduced to [ɪ] or [ə] in
ME and continued in EME
 The Great Vowel Shift
 http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/seehear.htm
 http://facweb.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/what.htm
 http://courses.fas.harvard.edu/%7Echaucer/vowels.html
(see other ppt and handout on language change
 Clark Language… p 250, 337

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 EME Pronouns:
 Main Significant change in Early Modern
English was the shift to using you for 2nd
person over other choices of 2nd person
pronouns

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 EME Verbs:
 100+ of around 300 previously strong verbs {those
irregular forms like ride/rode/(has) ridden or
sink/sank/(has) sunk}
have been made weak {jump/jumped}. For Example:
 help, brew, climb, bide (from bide/bided instead of
bode/bided/bidden), crow, flay, mow (mow mowed
mowed/mown), dread, wade
 verbs that are still irregular (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_i
rregular_verbs
)
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 EME Nouns:
 Possessives based on a contraction of the possessive
pronoun (e.g. his)
 The King his crown  the King's crown

 But was attached to the head noun as in

 "The King's Crown of England" (maybe would

have been like The King his Majesty of England)
 Rather than our modern day
"The King of England's crown".

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 EME Vocabulary:
 Due to increased communication and the expansion and
new experience due to colonialism English speakers
were coming into contact with ideas and phenomena that
they had not encountered before.
 The vocabulary had to adjust to this.
 Many new words (in many cases illustrated by the vocabulary
of Shakespeare) are coming into the lexicon.
 agile, critical, demonstrate, emphasis, horrid, impertinency,
modest, prodigious, accommodation, apostrophe,
assassination, dexterously, frugal, obscene, pedant,
premeditated, reliance, vast…
 Other words at this time coming in via the Renaissance:
 Ambuscade, armada, barricade, bastinado, cavalier, mutiny,
palisade, pell-mell, renegade…
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 Latin and Greek (the
Renaissance)
 Again Latin and Greek were seen as scholarly
languages –
 as the crusaders started to learn about the science of the Arabs
who had translated many of the works from Latin and Greek.
Many modern languages were being advocated as a medium of
learning.
 While English eventually became accepted by the academe
many of the Science and Literary authors such as Sir Francis
Bacon, John Milton, and Sir Isaac Newton wrote their major
works in Latin.
 Eventually the use of Latin declined, but the vocabulary was
brought into English to "fill the gaps"
 Some words were borrowed from Greek via Latin or
French: anachronism, climax, pathetic, system, &
antithesis
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 Dictionaries
 A popular time for dictionaries to be printed to
help standardize the large influx of words or to
"help fix" the language.
 Johnson — "The chief intent is to preserve the
purity and ascertain the meaning of our
English idiom…"

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 Present-Day English (pp. 167 – 168)
 1844 First Telegraph line used b/t Washington and Baltimore
1844 First Telegraph line used b/t Washington and Baltimore
 1865 Atlantic cable completed
 1870 Compulsory Education in Britain
 (led to leveling of dialects and slowed down the pace of linguistic change)
 1876 Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
 1877 Edison invents the phonograph
 1899 First magnetic sound recordings
 1903 Orville and Wilber Wright make the first successful flight
 1914–1918 WWI
 1921 British Broadcasting Corporation founded (BBC)
 1925 John Logi Baird transmits a picture of a human face via television
 1927 Charles Lindberg – first “nonstop” transatlantic flight
 1929 First use of teleprinters and teletypewrighters
 First scheduled TV broadcast in NY
 1936 BBC London television service begins
 1939–1945 WWII
 1942 First computer developed in the US
 1947 Transistor invented at Bell Labs
 1951 Color TV introduced into USA
 1968 Intelsat communication satellite launched.
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PDE varies very little from EME.
 Remnants of the previous case system are limited to
the pronouns (I, me, he, him, she, her… the shift
from whom to who is currently underway as in "To
whom did you send the letter?" vs. "To who did you
send the letter")
 Currently uses more comparatives and superlatives
than inflectional ones (for instance shift to more &
most over –er & –est) or even double forms the most
coolest… .

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 New words in PDE
 New words (neologisms) – or uses of old words for a
new idea are formed for all kinds of reasons:
 kingon – an unexplained icon that appears on a computer
screen
 mickey – the unit of measuring a computer mouse distance
– .005 inch
 shareware
 crippleware – demo software that lacks the full features
 netpreneur – internet entrepreneur
 Others?

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 PDE affixation
 using affixes in more productive manner
 un– un-American, un-English, un-freedom
 –ee franchis-ee, contract-ee…

 –ize burglarize

(From the verb to burgle which was a

backformation of the older noun burglar by
analogy with the –er (one who does) suffix)
 regularize, hospitalize

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 PDE Borrowing
 Current changes between EMW and PDE are
mostly in the lexicon. Much of this is due to
developments of scientific–technological
vocabulary and the rapid progress of
computer/communications technology.
 Some borrowing from Japanese (e.g. karaoke,
hibachi, etc.)

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 More focused on Global society:
 In late 1800s and early 1900 in Britain, the Agricultural
Revolution as well as Technological Revolution brought
people off the farms and out of rural life into the cities
(as few as 22% lived in rural areas by 1911).
 The new call was for factory workers and prompted
urbanization.
 While urbanization "promotes diversity" it also brings cultures
and language varieties in to contact leading to "uniformity".
 As people come together they tend to accommodate to one
another, developing compromise forms of behavior (including
language) in order to maximize intelligibility and to achieve
the greatest amount of social acceptance by those to whom
they are speaking.
 Increased communications and social mobility also
have the impact of helping to standardize the language
and development of rules of English grammar and usage.
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On to become a World Language
 Two major forms of English today are
American English, and British English.
However there are also many others. Some 1st
language speakers (e.g. Australia, possibly
India, Singapore) some 2nd (or more) e.g.
Parts of Europe, Countries in the South, East
and West of Africa, China, Korea, Japan, etc.
 (More on that when we get to the Global language
section).

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 for more on History of English
 http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/hel/hel.html

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