Lecture 6

Historical Linguistics
• Historical linguistics was developed in the 19th C. by Neogrammarians.
• Neogrammarians are a group of scholars who were largely responsible for
formulating the principles and methods of historical linguistics.

• Many of the modern languages of Europe were descended from more

ancient languages.

• For example, English had developed out of Anglo-Saxon. French,

Spanish and Italian had developed out of Latin.

• Historical linguistics established that language change is universal,

continuous and regular.
 Latin Language

• The status of Latin is particularly important

because :

1. It had been used for centuries in Western Europe.

2. It is the language of scholarship, administration and
international diplomacy.
3. Since the Renaissance, it had gradually yielded ground
to the emergent Romance languages (e.g., French,
Italian, Spanish, etc.) as well as to others that were not
derived from Latin (e.g. English, German, Dutch,
Swedish, etc.)
Latin Language

• By the 19th century, Latin was close to being a dead language,

but it still enjoyed a prestige that set it apart from most other
languages.

• Latin has existed as a living language for some 2000 years and
has been preserved from corruption, throughout this period, by
the usage of the educated and by the rules of the grammarians.
 Literary & non-literary languages
• Literary languages were more highly regarded than non-literary
languages and dialects.
• Any differences that were noted by grammarians between the literary
and the colloquial, or between the standard language and non-standard
dialects, tended to be attributed to slovenliness (carelessness) and a
lack of education.
• It was only after a great deal of detailed work had been done during the
19th century, in what we may think of as the classical period of
historical linguistics, that scholars came to a better understanding of
• the relation between written and spoken languages, on the one
hand,
• and between standard and non-standard languages, on the other.
Literary & non-literary languages
• So, on the basis of this detailed work and research and by
applying the comparative method, it was demonstrated that :

1- all the great literary languages of Europe had originated as

spoken dialects,

2- and their origin and development could only be explained in

terms of principles which determine the acquisition and use of
the associated spoken language.
• The terminology of historical linguistics is consistently metaphorical.

• We group languages into families by virtue of their common descent from

an earlier parent-language; and we say that languages that can be traced
back to a common ancestral language are genetically related (e.g. , as the
Romance languages can all be traced back to Latin).
Transformation
• The transformation of one language into another is not sudden, but gradual.

• It is largely a matter of convention and arbitrary (random) decision that

leads us to divide the history of English into three periods, and to consider
these alternatively as three different languages or as three stages of the same
language
 History of English Language
• In the 11th , when Norman conquered Britain, French was the language of
literature and administration.

• At the beginning of the 13th century, Britain came to power, English became
the formal Language with all changes in vocabulary and grammar.

• In the late of 15th, the period of Middle English is separated from Modern
English by the Renaissance period of Elizabeth. The period of Shakespeare
and Milton.

• By the 19th century, English became popular and Britain colonized areas all
over the world and English became the language of the colonies, Canada,
U.S.A , Australia and New Zealand.
History of English Language

• English has become a world language; in much the same way

and reasons that Latin become a world Language. But both Latin
and English were in origin nothing other than the local dialects of
small tribes.

• This brief and oversimplified account of the expansion of English

illustrated the general point that the process of language-change
itself is continuous.
Standard English
• What is now Standard English is, in its essential features of its
phonology and grammar and in much of its vocabulary, a
descendant of the London dialect.

• London dialect contains features from three of the four major

Anglo-Saxon dialects: Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish.
• It also contains a few more isolated features which derived from the
fourth major dialect, Northumbrian (e.g., the forms they, their, them
and most of the words written with initial sk- as ‘skill’, ‘sky’, etc.)
• There are several factors for the discontinuity between Anglo-Saxon
and Middle English or Middle English and Modern English such as:

1- gaps in the historical record between identified periods,

2- the relative stability of literary language over quite long stretches of
time.
• Although we have very little in the way of non-literary written records for the
various dialects of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, we can be sure of two
things:
1. from the earliest time the dialects of spoken English were less homogeneous
one from another.
2. if we had a full historical record of any spoken dialect, we should be unable to
identify any definite time at which this dialect suddenly started changing.

• Languages change more rapidly in certain periods than they do in others. Even
literary languages change in the course of time; and spoken languages change far
more obviously than literary languages do.

• Furthermore, no living language is completely uniform.

Trace the history of English through
its three periods. Task