История английского языка и введению в спецфилологию.

  ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ Иркутский государственный лингвистический университет Кафедра теоретической лингвистики КОНТРОЛЬНАЯ РАБОТА по Истории английского языка и введению в спецфилологию

Выполнил (а): Светлакова Л. С. студент (ка) 4 гр. факультета заочного обучения Проверила: Иркутск 2009 Task 1. Protolanguage. A proto-language is a language which was the common ancestor of related languages that form a language family. In historical linguistics, a synonymous term proposed language is a language for which no direct evidence exists, most commonly the proto-language of a language family. Assumptions about proposed languages are based on the comparative method.

The German term Ursprache (derived from the prefix Ur- "primordial" and Sprache "language") is occasionally used as well. In all cases, the ancestral protolanguage is not known directly and it may be reconstructed by comparing different members of the language family via a technique called the comparative method, by internal reconstruction or other methods. Through this process only a part of the proto-language's structure

and vocabulary can be reconstructed; the reconstruction remains the more fragmentary the more ancient the proto-language in question relative to the number of its descendants. Examples of unattested but (partially) reconstructed proto-languages include Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Uralic, Proto-Bantu and Proto-Paman. The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the most elaborated example of a proposed language.

Although there is no direct evidence that this language ever existed, there is copious evidence for its existence in the many similarities of the Indo-European languages. A great amount of work has been put into the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, but there are no means of determining its success. Language Families. A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor,

called the proto-language of that family. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics. An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit; that is, all its members derive from a common ancestor, and all attested descendants of that ancestor are included in the family. Most of the world's languages are known to belong to language families. For the others, family relationships are not known or only tentatively proposed.

The concept of language families is based on the assumption that over time languages gradually diverge into dialects and then into new languages. However, linguistic ancestry is less clear-cut than biological ancestry, because there are extreme cases of languages mixing due to language contact in conquest or trade, whereas biological species normally don't interbreed. In the formation of creole languages and other types of mixed languages, there may be no one ancestor

of a given language. In addition, a number of sign languages have developed in isolation and may have no relatives at all. However, these cases are relatively rare and most languages can be unambiguously classified. The common ancestor of a language family is seldom known directly, since most languages have a relatively short recorded history. However, it is possible to recover many features of a proto-language by applying the comparative method—a reconstructive procedure worked out by 19th century linguist

August Schleicher. This can demonstrate the validity of many of the proposed families in the list of language families. For example, the reconstructible common ancestor of the Indo-European language family is called Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is not attested by written records, since it was spoken before the invention of writing. Sometimes, though, a proto-language can be identified with a historically known language.

For instance, dialects of Old Norse are the proto-language of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic. Likewise, the Appendix Probi depicts Proto-Romance, a language almost unattested due to the prestige of Classical Latin, a highly stylised literary dialect not representative of the speech of ordinary people. Language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to

as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. However, the term family is not restricted to any one level of this "tree". The Germanic family, for example, is a branch of the Indo-European family. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a certain level, but there is little consensus in how to do so. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, and groups

into complexes. The terms superfamily, phylum,[citation needed] and stock are applied to proposed groupings of language families whose status as phylogenetic units is generally considered to be unsubstantiated by accepted historical linguistic methods. Languages that cannot be reliably classified into any family are known as isolates. A language isolated in its own branch within a family, such as Greek within Indo-European, is often also called an isolate; but the meaning of isolate in such cases

is usually clarified. For instance, Greek might be referred to as an Indo-European isolate. The isolation of modern Greek, however, is not typical of its relationship to other languages at other times in its history. Several Greek dialects evolved out of the larger Indo-European language group; and later, Greek words influenced many other languages. By contrast, the

Basque language is a living modern language and a near perfect isolate. The history of its lexical, phonetic, and syntactic structures is not known, and is not easily associated to other languages, though it has been influenced by Romance languages in the region, like Castilian Spanish, Occitan, French and Portuguese. Connections within and between language families are often used by

geneticists and archaeologists, in combination with DNA evidence and archaeological evidence, to help reconstruct prehistoric migrations and other prehistoric developments, such as the spread of the Neolithic complex of farming, herding, pottery, and polished stone utensils. For the scientists concerned, this is treacherous but necessary ground: the linguistic evidence is often vital to resolving the problems concerned, but must be handled with caution, for two

reasons: first, it is often a delicate matter to relate languages to archaeological cultures, on the one hand, and to genetic lineages, on the other; second, many proposed language relationships are controversial, which often requires non-linguists to take a stand on linguistic issues, a professionally uncomfortable but often inevitable situation. The Linguist List is now working on a National Science Foundation funded project entitled

Multitree, to build a database of all hypothesized language relationships, with a full searchable bibliography for each. Indo-European Language Family. The Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects,[1] including most of the major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau (Southwest Asia), much of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent (South Asia).

The Indo-European (Indo refers to the Indian subcontinent, since geographically the language group extends from Europe in the west to India in the east) group has the largest numbers of speakers of the recognised families of languages in the world today, with its languages spoken by approximately three billion native speakers.[2] Germanic Languages. subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by about 470 million people in many parts of the world, but

chiefly in Europe and the Western Hemisphere. All the modern Germanic languages are closely related; moreover, they become progressively closer grammatically and lexically when traced back to the earliest records. This suggests that they all derive from a still earlier common ancestor, which is traditionally referred to as Proto-Germanic and which is believed to have broken from the other

Indo-European languages before 500 B.C. Although no writing in Proto-Germanic has survived, the language has been substantially reconstructed by using the oldest records that exist of the Germanic tongue. Task 2. The Periods in the History of English. The historical development of a language is a continuous uninterrupted process without sudden breaks or rapid transformations. The commonly accepted, traditional

Periodisation divides English history into three periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and New English (NE). the following Periodisation of English history is based on the conventional three periods; it subdivides the history of the English language into seven periods differing in linguistic situation and the nature of linguistic changes. The first period, which may be termed Early

Old English, lasts from the West Germanic invasion of Britain till the beginning of writing, that is from the 5th to the close of the 7th c. It is the stage of the tribal dialects of the West Germanic invaders, which were gradually losing contacts with the related continental tongues. The tribal dialects were used for oral communication, there being no written form of

English. The second historical period extends from the 8th c. till the end of the 11th. The English language of that time is referred to as Old English. The tribal dialects gradually changed into local or regional dialects. Towards the end of the period the differences between the dialects grew and their relative position altered. They were probably equal as a medium of oral communication, while in the sphere of writing

one of the dialects, West Saxon, had gained supremacy over the other dialects. The language of this period is usually described synchronically and is treated as a more or less stable system. The third period, known as Early Middle English, starts after 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, and covers the 12th, 13th and half of the 14th c. It was the stage of the greatest dialectal divergence caused by the feudal system and by foreign influences

– Scandinavian and French. The dialectal division of present-day English owes its origin to this period of history. Under Norman rule the official language in England was French, or rather its variety called Anglo-French or Anglo-Norman; it was also the dominant language of literature.

The fourth period – from the later 14th c. till the end of the 15th – embraces the age of Chaucer, the greatest English medieval writer and forerunner of the English Renaissance. We may call it Late or Classical Middle English. It was the time of the restoration of English to the position of the state and literary language and the time of literary flourishing.

The main dialect used in writing and literature was the mixed dialect of London. The literary authority of other dialects was gradually overshadowed by the prestige of the London written language. The fifth period is called Early New English, lasted from the introduction of printing to the age of Shakespeare. The first printed book in English was published by

William Caxton in 1475. It was a time of great historical consequence: under the growing capitalist system the country became economically and politically unified. Caxton’s English of the printed books was a sort of bridge between the London literary English of the ME period and the language of the Literary Renaissance. This period was also a time of sweeping changes at all levels, in the first place

lexical and phonetic. The growth of the vocabulary was a natural reflection of the progress of culture in the new, bourgeois society.   The sixth period extends from the mid-17th c. to the close of the 18th c. In the history of the language it is often called “the age of normalization and correctness”, in the history of literature – the “neoclassical” age. It is essential that during the 18th c. literary English differentiated into distinct styles, which

is a property of a mature literary language. The 18th c. has been called the period of “fixing the pronunciation”. The great sound shifts were over and pronunciation was being stabilized. Word usage and grammatical construction were subjected to restriction and normalization. The English language of the 19th and 20th c. represents the seventh period in the history of English. It is called Late New English or Modern English.

The classical language of literature was strictly distinguished from the local dialects and the dialects of lower social rank. The dialects were used in oral communication and, as a rule, had no literary tradition. The 20th c. witnessed considerable intermixture of dialects. The local dialects were retreated and displaced by Standard English. The English vocabulary has grown on an unprecedented scale reflecting the rapid progress

of technology, science and culture and other multiple changes in all spheres of man’s activity. Task 3. The runic inscriptions. The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark (or fuюark, derived from their first six letters

of the alphabet: F, U, Ю, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant as futhorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the same six letters). The earliest runic inscriptions date from around 150 AD, and the alphabet was generally replaced by the Latin alphabet with Christianization by around 700 AD in central Europe and by around 1100 AD in Scandinavia; however, the use of runes persisted for specialized

purposes in Scandinavia, longest in rural Sweden until the early twentieth century (used mainly for decoration as runes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars). The three best-known runic alphabets are the Elder Futhark (around 150 to 800 AD), the Old English Futhorc (400 to 1100 AD), and the Younger Futhark (800–1100). The Younger

Futhark is further divided into the long-branch runes (also called Danish, although they were also used in Norway and Sweden), short-twig or Rцk runes (also called Swedish-Norwegian, although they were also used in Denmark), and the Hдlsinge runes (staveless runes). The Younger Futhark developed further into the

Marcomannic runes, the Medieval runes (1100 AD to 1500 AD), and the Dalecarlian runes (around 1500 to 1800 AD). The origins of the runic alphabet are uncertain. Many characters of the Elder Futhark bear a close resemblance to characters from the Latin alphabet. Other candidates are the 5th to 1st century

BC Northern Italic alphabets: Lepontic, Rhaetic and Venetic, all of which are closely related to each other and descend from the Old Italic alphabet. The Common Germanic Value Systems Encapsulated in the Runes. Task 4. Historical backgrounds of the English Language. Pre-Germanic Britain The history of the

English language begins with the invasion of the British Isles by Germanic tribes in the 5th c. of our era. Prior to the Germanic invasion the British Isles must have been inhabited for at least fifty thousand years. The earliest inhabitants were the Celts. Economically and socially they were a tribal society made up of kinship groups, tribes and clans; they were engaged in agriculture and carried on trade with

Celtic Gaul. In the first century B.C. Gaul was conquered by the Romans. Having occupied Gaul Julius Caesar made two raids on Britain, in 55 and 54 B.C. The British Isles had long been known to the Romans as a source of valuable tin ore; Caesar attacked Britain for economic reasons – to obtain tin, pearls and corn and also for strategic reasons, since

rebels and refugees from Gaul found support among their British kinsmen. The Roman occupation of Britain lasted nearly 400 years; it came to an end in the early 5th c. In A.D. 410, the Roman troops were officially withdrawn to Rome by Constantine. This temporary withdrawal turned out to be final, for the Empire was breaking up due to internal and external causes.

Germanic Settlement of Britain. Beginning of English Reliable evidence of that period is extremely scarce. The story of the invasion is told by Bede (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England, HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA GENTIS ANGLORUM. According to Bede the invaders came to Britain in

A.D. 449 under the leadership of two Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa. The invaders came in multitude, in families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories. The first wave of invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, occupied the extreme south-east: Kent and the Isle of Wight. The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of the

Saxons, who had been expanding westwards across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is known as Normandy. The Saxons consolidated into a number of petty kingdoms, the largest and the most powerful of them was Wessex. Last came the Angles from the lower valley of the Elbe and southern Denmark. They made their landing on the east coast and moved up the rivers to the central part of the

island. Angles founded large kingdoms which had absorbed their weaker neighbors: East Anglia, Mercia, and Northumbria. The invaders certainly prevailed over the natives so far as language was concerned. After the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain with the exception of a few distant regions where Celts were in the majority: Scotland, Wales and Cornwall.

Events of external history between 5th and 11th c. The period from the 5th till the 11th c. (which is called Old English in the history of the language) was a transitional period from the tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism. The basic economic unit was the feudal manor, which grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. Tribal and clan division was gradually superseded by townships

and shires, which were local entities having no connection with kinship. These conditions were reflected in the development of the West Germanic tongues brought to Britain. Four of the kingdoms at various times secured superiority in the country: Kent, Northumbria and Mercia – during the Early OE, pre-written period, and Wessex – all through the period of

Written OE. In the 8th c. raiders from Scandinavia (the “Danes”) made their first plundering attacks on England. The Struggle of the English against the Scandinavians lasted over 300 years, in the course of which period more than half of England was occupied by the invaders and reconquered again. The Scandinavians subdued Northumbria and East Anglia, ravaged the eastern part of

Mercia, and advanced on Wessex. The ultimate effect of the Scandinavian invasions on the English language became manifest at a later date, in the 12th and 13th c when the Scandinavian element was incorporated in the central English dialects. Wessex stood at the head of the resistance. Under King Alfred of Wessex, one of the greatest figures in

English history, by the peace treaty of 878 England was divided into two halves: the north-eastern half under Danish control called Danelaw and the south-western half united under the leadership of Wessex. The reconquest of Danish territories was carried on successfully by Alfred’s successors, but then the Danish raids were renewed again headed by Sweyn and Canute. The attacks were followed by demands for regular payments of large sums of money.

In 1017 Canute was acknowledged as king, and England became part of a great northern empire, comprising Denmark and Norway. On Canute’s death (1035) his kingdom broke up and England regained political independence; by that time it was a single state divided into six earldoms. A most important role in the history of the English language was played by the introduction of Christianity. It gave a strong impulse to the growth of culture and learning.

Monasteries were founded all over the country with monastic schools attached. Religious services and teaching were conducted in Latin. Thus due to the introduction of Christianity the English language acquired much influence from Latin. Old English Dialects.   The language spoken by the

Anglo-Saxons at the time of their migration to Britain was probably more or less uniform. Over time, however, Old English developed into four major dialects: Northumbrian, spoken north of the river Humber; Mercian, spoken in the midlands; Kentish, spoken in Kent (the southeastern part); and West Saxon, spoken in the southwest. All these dialects have direct descendants in modern

England, and American regional dialects also have their roots in the dialects of Old English. Modern English spelling owes most to the Mercian dialect, since that was the dialect of London. Most OE literature is not in the Mercian dialect, however, but in the West Saxon, for from the time of King Alfred until the

Conquest, Wessex dominated the rest of Anglo-Saxon England politically and culturally. Nearly all Old English poetry is in West Saxon, though it often contains spellings and vocabulary more typical of Mercian and Northumbrian – a fact that has led some scholars to speculate that much of the poetry was first composed in Mercian or Northumbrian and only later “translated” into

West Saxon. Whatever the truth of the matter, West Saxon was the dominant language during the period in which most of our surviving literature was recorded.  Middle English dialects. The London dialect The dialect division which evolved in Early ME was on the whole preserved in later periods. In the 14th and 15th c. we find the same grouping of local dialects: the

Southern group, including Kentish and the South-Western dialects (the South-Western group was a continuation of the OE Saxon dialects), the Midland or Central (corresponding to the OE Mercian dialect – is divided into West Midland and East Midland as two main areas) and the Northern group (had developed from OE Northumbrian).

And yet the relations between them were changing. The most important event in the changing linguistic situation was the rise of the London dialect as the prevalent written form of language. The history of the London dialect reveals the sources of the literary language in Late ME and also the main source and basis of the Literary

Standard, both in its written and spoken forms. The Early ME written records made in London – beginning with the PROCLAMATION of 1258 – show that the dialect of London was fundamentally East Saxon. Later records indicate that the speech of London was becoming more fixed, with East Midland features gradually prevailing over the

Southern features. Task 5. Development of the English Vocabulary. The Germanic, Scandinavian, French and Latin substrata. Assimilation of borrowed words. The English vocabulary has changed considerably over the centuries.[45] Like many languages deriving from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), many of the most common words in

English can trace back their origin (through the Germanic branch) to PIE. Such words include the basic pronouns I, from Old English ic, (cf. Latin ego, Greek ego, Sanskrit aham), me (cf. Latin me, Greek eme, Sanskrit mam), numbers (e.g. one, two, three, cf. Latin unus, duo, tres, Greek oinos "ace (on dice)", duo, treis), common family relationships

such as mother, father, brother, sister etc (cf. Greek "meter", Latin "mater", Sanskrit "matṛ"; mother), names of many animals (cf. Sankrit mus, Greek mys, Latin mus; mouse), and many common verbs (cf. Greek gignōmi, Latin gnoscere, Hittite kanes; to know). Germanic words (generally words of Old English or to a lesser extent

Norse origin) tend to be shorter than the Latinate words of English and more common in ordinary speech. This includes nearly all the basic pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, modal verbs etc. that form the basis of English syntax and grammar. The longer Latinate words are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is considered at times to be either pretentious or an

attempt to obfuscate an issue. George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language", considered an important scrutinization of the English language, is critical of this, as well as other perceived misuse of the language. An English speaker is in many cases able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: come or arrive; sight or vision; freedom or liberty.

In some cases, there is a choice between a Germanic derived word (oversee), a Latin derived word (supervise), and a French word derived from the same Latin word (survey). Such synonyms harbor a variety of different meanings and nuances, enabling the speaker to express fine variations or shades of thought. Familiarity with the etymology of groups of synonyms can give

English speakers greater control over their linguistic register. See: List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents in English. An exception to this and a peculiarity perhaps unique to English is that the nouns for meats are commonly different from, and unrelated to, those for the animals from which they are produced, the animal commonly having a

Germanic name and the meat having a French-derived one. Examples include: deer and venison; cow and beef; swine/pig and pork, or sheep and mutton. This is assumed to be a result of the aftermath of the Norman invasion, where a French-speaking elite were the consumers of the meat, produced by Anglo-Saxon lower classes.[citation needed] Since the majority of words used in informal settings will

normally be Germanic, such words are often the preferred choices when a speaker wishes to make a point in an argument in a very direct way. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as a courtroom or an encyclopedia article.[citation needed] However, there are other Latinate words that are used normally in everyday speech and do not sound formal;

these are mainly words for concepts that no longer have Germanic words, and are generally assimilated better and in many cases do not appear Latinate. For instance, the words mountain, valley, river, aunt, uncle, move, use, push and stay are all Latinate. English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and often imports new words and phrases. Examples of this phenomenon include: cookie,

Internet and URL (technical terms), as well as genre, ьber, lingua franca and amigo (imported words/phrases from French, German, modern Latin, and Spanish, respectively). In addition, slang often provides new meanings for old words and phrases. In fact, this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage.