Unit 5 History and evolution of the English language

 Introduction

 Old English

 Middle English

 Early Modern English

 Present-day English
Introduction

Languages are in a continuous state of variation.

 Lexical level: new words appear, some disappear
 Semantic level: meaning changes
 Syntactic level: word order, grammar
 Phonological level: different pronunciation in different areas or social groups
 Before English

Celts (Britons)
 Original inhabitants
 British Celtic
 Names of places and related to natural phenomena

Germanic invasions
Romans
 AD 43 – fifth century
Germanic tribes
 Latin official language
 AD 449: Anglo-Saxon invasion
 Words from the military and administrative fields
 Spoken dialects
 Origin of English language: Old English
 Old English

 Fifth century-1066
 Collection of different dialects with some common
features
 Heavily inflected:
 Three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter
 Four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive,
dative
 Strong verbs (irregular) and weak verbs (regular)
- Number, tense, mood, person
Anglo-Saxon England
 Old English

 Two tenses: present and past

 No auxiliary verbs
 Double negative constructions
 Modal verbs as full lexical verbs
 Flexible word order
Some basic terms: mann (“man”), wīf (“woman”), cild (“child”), hūs (“house”)
 Old English

Christianisation (AD 597)

 No previous written records
 Latin alphabet: dissonance sounds-letters
 Monasteries as cultural centres
 No standard version: each scribe contributed their own adaptation

The Vikings (late eighth century)

 Denmark, Norway and Sweden
 Alfred the Great: the Danelaw
 Old Norse: new words, pronunciation and syntax
Vikings territory
 Old English
Middle English

Before English Christianisation The Norman

Celts AD 597 Conquest
Romans (AD 43) Latin alphabet 1066

Anglo-Saxon invasion The Vikings

Fifth century Eighth century
Different dialects Old Norse
 Middle English

Norman Conquest (year 1066)

 Norman French becomes the language of the court, nobility and literature
 English stays as the language of low classes
 Over 10,000 new words (-age, -ence/-ance, -ment, etc.)
 French-based synonyms: freedom vs. liberty

Loss of Normandy to France (year 1199)

 English as a mark of cultural identity: bilingualism
 Norman French replaced by Central French: spelling and pronunciation variations
 Middle English

Fourteenth century
 Fench + Latin + English
 Distinct regional uses and dialects
 Old English inflections disappearing: syntactic order becomes more relevant

The Hundred Year War (1337-1453)

 French becomes the language of the enemy

The Statute of Pleading (1362)

 English as the official language of court and Parliament, later in schools
 French+Latin+English
Regional uses and
Middle English dialects
Early Modern English
Norman Conquest The Hundred Year War
1066 1337-1453 Renaissance
French vs. English French language of the enemy Sixteenth century

Loss of Normandy The Statute of Pleading

1199 1362
Bilingualism English official language

Inflections disappear
Syntactic order more
relevant
 Early Modern English
Renaissance (sixteenth-early seventeenth centuries)
 Elizabethan Era
 Enthusiasm for classical languages: new vocabulary (science and literature)
 Latin used to make texts more academic: inkhorn
 Further changes in pronunciation, grammar and spelling
Queen Elizabeth I

Standardisation
 Dialectal division: Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands, Southern and Kentish
 1476 Printing press brought to England by William Caxton
 fixed spelling and grammar: London (East Midlands) dialect becomes the Standard English
 First dictionaries: A Table Alphabeticall (Robert Cawdrey, 1604) and Dictionary of the English
Language (Samuel Johnson, 1755)
 English Grammars (eighteenth century): sense of correctness
 Early Modern English
Present-day English
Samuel Johnson’s
Printing press Dictionary of the English
1476 language Industrial and
Standard English 1755 scientific revolutions

Renaissance First grammars

Sixteenth-seventeenth centuries Eighteenth century
Classical languages influence Sense of correctness
 Present-day English

 Expansion of British Empire

 Question of standards: American English

 Industrial and scientific revolutions: massive

increase in vocabulary

 Globalisation

Imperial Federation, map of the world showing the extent of the

British Empire in 1886
 History of the English language

Anglo-saxon invasion Renaissance Globalisation

Britons Sixteenth century Twentieth century
Fifth century
British Celtic Early Modern English Present-day English
Old English

Romans Norman Conquest Industrial Revolution

AD 43 1066 Eighteenth century
Latin Middle English Present-day English