UNIT 1: HISTORICAL LINGISTICS.

TYPES AND
THEORIES OF LINGUISTIC CHANGE.

a) Types of linguistic change:

Analogy. Process of inventing a new element in conformity with some part of the language
system that is already known. For example, in OE there were many different ways of putting a
noun into the plural: stan 'stone' stanas 'stones'; word 'word' word 'words'; synn 'sin'
synna 'sins'; etc. The form stanas developed quite regularly into our plural stones, and all the
others changed their plural ending by analogy with stone. The few unusual noun-plural forms in
present-day English that have resisted this kind of analogy are mostly very common words, like
men, feet and children, or words which were once very common, like geese and oxen.
Assimilation. A sound changes one or more of its elements to be more similar to a neighbouring
sound. For example, the word scant was once skamt, but the /m/ has been changed to /n/ under
the influence of the following /t/ because both /n/ and /t/ are articulated in the same place.
Back formation. A simpler element results from a more complex one. For example, the verb to
beg was a ME back-formation from the noun beggar.
Blending. Combination of the parts of 2 words. For example: Brunch = breakfast + lunch.
Conversion. A word changes its grammatical category, leading to the formation of ajectives
from nouns (blodig bloody; freondleas friendless; ancful thankful), nouns from adjectives
(fyl impurity from ful dirty'), adverbs from adjectives (faeste firmly; blindlice blindly'), etc.
Compounding. Two or more words are combined to form a single noun. For example,
baccraeft (book-skill) literature; rimcraeft (number-skill) arithmetic; tungolcraeft (star-skill)
astronomy.
Epenthesis. Addition of one or more sounds to a word. For example, in Old English, our word
thunder was unor, with no d. By normal development, unor would have become *thunner.
Elision. A sound is removed from a word.
Apheresis. The sound is removed from the beginning of the word. For example, until the
ME period one could hear the /k/ in words like knight and know.
Syncope. The sound is removed from the middle of the word. For example, until the ME
period one could hear the /t/ in words like castle and Christmas.

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 Apocope. The sound is removed from the end of the word. For example, during the ME
period, word-final /-n/ was lost in unstressed syllables, so that baken 'to bake' changed from
/'ba:kn/ to /'ba:k/, and later to /ba:k/.
False/Folk etymology. New morphemes are created due to mistaken analysis. For example, the
words advance and advantage are remodelled from ME avance and avantage. The modern
forms arose from the belief that the initial a- represented the Latin prefix ad-, but in fact both
words derive from French avant, which comes from Latin ab lante.
Metathesis. Reversion of the order of two phonemes in a word. For example, our words wasp
and burn would have been waps and brin or bren by regular development.
Narrowing. A lexeme with various meanings comes to signify only one. For example, in its
original meaning, OE brun 'brown' could refer to dark colours in general (such as that of the
sea), as well as to the quality of being shiny (helmets, swords, etc).
Widening. A lexeme acquires additional meanings while still retening the old one. For example,
the word pink could only refer to a flower until the 17th, when it was first used as a colour term.

UNIT 2: OVERVIEW OF THE EXTERNAL HISTORY

OF ENGLISH FROM OLD ENGLISH TO EARLY
MODERN ENGLISH.

a) Old English.
Anglo-Saxon invasions:
In the year 450 (after the Romans had withdrawn from England on 410), the Celtic king Vortigern
invited Hengest and Horsa (Anglo-saxon chieftains) to fight against the Picts and Scots. In 455,
Hengest rebelled against Vortigern and started the invasion of Britain. However, the Anglo-Saxon
settlement must not be thought of as the arrival of a unified invading army, but as the arrival of
various uncoordinated bands in different parts of the country. This led to a profusion of small
kingdoms and dialect differentiation, but dialect differences probably came from the start, for
although they were closely related, the incomers came from more than one Germanic tribe.
Eventually, they came to regard themselves as one people: the word Engle 'the Angles' was applied
to all the Germanic settlers in Britain, and Englisc was applied to all these peoples and their
language, not just to the Angles.

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There is evidence that a considerable number of Britons lived among the Anglo-Saxons, but their
language had no prestige compared with that of the Anglo-Saxons.
The main kingdoms during this period were Northumbria (7th c), Mercia (8th c), East Anglia, Essex,
Sussex, Kent and Wessex (9th c).
In the late 9th c, Viking armies (the Danes) came very close to conquering the whole of England, but
King Alfred of Wessex held the south and the west against them, the turning point being his defeat
of Guthrum at Edington in 878. By the Treaty of Wedmore England was divided into the Danelaw
and the Anglo-saxon law, but after the Danish king Cnut died in the 10th c., Alfred's successor king
Edgar reconquered the north and the east and unified England as one single country.

As a result of the Danish rule, OE got mixed with the Scandinavian language. An example is the
verb 'to take', which is from Old Norse taka (OE uses niman). Some grammatical words also came
from Scandinavian, namely the conjunctions though, till and until; or the pronouns they, them and
their, which in OE were hie, him and hiera.

OE dialects:
The most important OE dialects were West Saxon, Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian (the last
two often being group together as Anglian). The most important one was West Saxon, although it is
not the direct ancestor for modern standard English, which is mainly derived from an Anglian
dialect.

Christianity and writing:

The conversion of the English to Christianity began in about the year 600, and took a century to
complete. It was carried out from two directions, the Celtic church penetrating from the north-west
and the Roman church (Augustine sent by Pope Gregory) from the south-east.

Christianity introduced the Anglo-saxons to the Roman alphabet for writing extensive texts. They
already had one form of writing, the runes, but these were used only for short inscriptions. The
English developed a distinctive form of the runic alphabet called the 'futhorc', and when the clerics
introduced writing to England, they used a version of the Latin alphabet, but eked it out with
symbols from the futhorc. For example, they used the symbol to represent the OE /w/ phoneme.

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b) Norsemen and Normans: the rise of MidE.
The Bayeaux Tapestry: The Norman Conquest (1066):
Before he came to the throne, King Edward the Confessor had been living in exile and spoke only
French. When he died, his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson was elected to succeed him, but
Godwinson's brother, Tostig, allied with Harold Hardrada (king of Norway) and they invaded
Yorkshire. Godwinson marched north to battle Hardrada and defeated him at the battle of Stamford
Bridge, but shortly after, William of Normandy invaded England from the south and defeated
Harold Godwinson at the battle of Hastings (October 1066).
Phases of ME:
1. English in decline (1066-1204). English was banished from court usage and declined into a
patois (a peasant language without a writing language). French became the language of the upper
classes because the native aristocracy was largely destroyed and their lands were distributed to
William's Norman followers. Many key ecclesiastical positions were also given to Normans.
Non-Norman working people spoke and wrote in the dialect of their own region. Latin was the
language of the church, of scholarship and of international communication.

2. English in ascent (1204-1348). Although French was for a long time the prestige-language in
England, it was never the mother tongue of the majority of the population. After King John's loss of
Normandy to the French crown, the ties with Normandy were fewer, and the ex-Norman nobility
gradually became English. The English crown went on importing Frenchmen to its court, but the
English nobility resented such royal favouritism, and in the Barons' Wars against Henry III there
was a good deal of anti-foreigner propaganda.

3. English triumphant (1348-1503). The Black Death caused of the population in England to
die. This increased the labour shortage which in turn raised the prestige of English, because it was
the language of the working class. Also the Hundred Years War led to the loss of all continental
colonies, whereas the English no longer had any reasons for learning or using French.
Literature was written more and more in English, and in the 2nd half of the 14thc. there was a great
literary upsurge, with Chaucer as one of its major figures. In 1362 Parliament is addressed in
English for the 1st time, and in the same year an Act was passed making English the official
language of the law courts instead of French, though their records were to be kept in Latin.
When Henry IV seized the throne (1399), England acquired, for the first time since the Norman
Conquest, a king whose mother tongue was English. His successor Henry V became king in 1412
and in order to get money and support from the merchant class of London (the wealthiest in the
country) for the war with France, he started writing all of his correspondence in English through the
Signet Office. The impact of this can be seen in the Brewer's Guild Pronouncement (1422), which
marks the point when the guild records start to be kept in English. Also from this point on we find
many, many more private letters by women, because women could now control their own letters.

Chancery (future Public Record Office): Office connected with the chancel (chapel),
where the chaplains wrote the king's letters. The chancellor (later Prime Minister) was entrusted
with the king's seal. According to Richardson, at the very top of the Chancery there were 12 clerks
who oversaw the production of important documents (like decrees, etc), and underneath these 12
were a large number of people of intermediate status who did nothing but copying and writing.
Because not more than 3% of English population could read, most of the writing until 1500 was
done by dictation, where different scribes transcribed the given message and then read it for the
person who was supposed to receive it. The capability to write became more of a reality as the
vernacular became more accepted in the 15th century., when the shift in the trust of the written word
over the spoken word grew, and both government and individuals started keeping records in
English.

Critique of the Chancery English Theory (Benskin):

A great deal of what is now preserved in the P.R.O came into Chancery from outside, and
had almost no influence on the language of provincial writers.
Westminster English was sent into the provinces not only as government letters: there were
people who took it with them after their education in London.
It is true that documents originated in the Signet Office were copied by Chancery scribes
and disseminated by them, but Chancery scribes seem to only have been close copysts, and
it has to be demonstrated that Chancery had a standard of its own.
Benskin has identified a dozen Chancery clerks as the writers of English bills. Their
language is consistent, but does not reflect that of the Home Counties.

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French Loanwords in Middle English:
While the Vikings had mixed in with the English on more or less equal terms, the Normans formed
a separate caste that imposed much of their culture. Many of the French loanwords reflect this
dominance: things connected with ordinary objects tend to retain their English names, whereas
upper-class objects often have French names. Thus we have English house but French palace,
English child, daughter and son, but French heir and nurse.
The early French loanwords were so well assimilated into English that they were soon felt as not in
any way foreign, which made it easier for the language to accept later Romance and Latin loans.
Once they have been taken into English, such loanwords can be combined with native elements to
form further words. French stems with English prefixes or suffixes are beautiful, faithless, etc.

Latin influence on English:

Loanwords. When English invaded a field of discourse, the first stage usually took the form of
translations of Latin works; in the second stage, there were original English works deeply
indebted to Latin originals; and in the third stage there were entirely independent English works.
In the process, writers tended to adapt Latin original technical terms and give them an English
form. For example, the Latin ending -atus is often replaced by -ate, as in desperate.
Dialect levelling. The more regionally specific features of local dialects are replaced by more
widespread ones due to the prestige of the incoming feature. Until the 19th century, it was
perfectly acceptable to pronounce huntin', shootin' and fishin', but the middle classes
increasingly viewed this as incorrect, and this came to mark the speech of both the lower and the
upper classes.
Inkhorn terms. The use of pompous and unnecessary Latin loanwords was regarded as
ridiculous by some, but as a sign of education by others.
Latin also caused existing words to be reshaped in accordance with their real or supposed
Latin etymology. We owe the b in our modern spellings of debt and doubt (ME dette and doute)
to the influence of Latin debitum and dubitare.

d) Early Modern English.

The prestige of English raised as a consequence of:
The Reformation. People engaged in controversy wanted to be read by as large a public as
possible, and as many Protestants lacked a classical education, controversial books and
pamphlets tended to be written in English.

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 The translation of the Bible into English and the changeover from Latin to English in church
services.
Nationalism. Led to conscious efforts to create a vernacular literature like that of Greece and
Rome. Both Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590) and Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) were attempts
to do for English what Homer and Virgil had done for Greek and Latin.
Rise of social and occupational groups that knew no Latin, but were eager to read and learn,
and wanted books in English.

UNIT 3: MORPHOSYNTACTIC CHANGES.

a) Structure of Old English.
1. Phonology.
Vowels.

[a] bat [a:] bath

[] hat [:] bad

[e] Bett (German) [e:] zehn (German)

[i] sie (German) [i:] tree

[o] wo (German) [o:] dog

[u] two [u:] room

[y] Htte (German) [y:] fhren (German)

Consonants.
c: [k] (cyning king; caeg key)

[t] (ceap goods; Aelfric; cinn chin)

[] (ecg edge; brycg bridge; secgan to say)

and : [] (treow good faith; moe moth)

[] (baian to bathe; faem embrace)

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f: [f] (faeder father; haeft handle)

[v] (hraefn raven; lifde he lived)

g OR : [g] (god good; ges geese)

[j] (gif if; geong young)

[w] (boga bow)

h: [h] (haett hat)

[] (niht night)

[x] (dohtor daughter)

s: [s] (sae sea; hus house'; cyssan to kiss

[z] (nosu nose; bosm bosom)

[] (scir shire; scip ship)

: [w]

Double consonants like bucca he-goat and cuppe cup indicate that the consonant was pronounced
double or long, rather as in modern Italian.

2. Morphology.
a) Personal Pronouns.

SINGULAR
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. ic u he heo hit
ACC. me/mec e/ec hine hie hit
GEN. min in his hire his
DAT. me e him hire him

PLURAL
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. we ge hie
ACC. us eow hie
GEN. ure eower hira
DAT. us eow him
b) Dual Pronouns.

FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON

Nominative wit we two git you two
Accusative unc us two inc you two
Genitive uncer of us two incer of you two
Dative unc to us two inc you two

c) Demonstratives: there are only two demonstratives: se the, that and es this.

d) Strong Nouns.

Masculine Neuter Feminine

Nominative giefu gift
stan stone scip ship
Accusative
Genitive stanes scipes giefe
Dative stane scipe

Nominative
stanas scipu
Accusative giefa
Genitive stana scipa
Dative stanum scipum giefum

e) Weak Nouns.

Masculine Neuter Feminine

Nominative nama name tunge tongue
eage eye
Accusative
Genitive naman tungan
eagan
Dative

Nominative
naman eagan tungan
Accusative
Genitive namena eagena tungena
Dative namum eagum tungum

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 f) Verbs.
Weak Strong
Infinitives: fremman do Helpan help
1 fremme helpe
2 sing. fremmest hilpst
Present indicative
3 freme hilp
pl. fremma helpa
1 fremede healp
2 sing. fremedest hulpe
Past indicative
3 fremede healp
pl. fremedon hulpon
sing. fremme helpe
Present subjunctive
pl. fremmen helpen
sing. fremede hulpe
Past subjunctive
pl. fremeden hulpen

g) The Verb To Be.

singular sie beo

PRESENT SUBJ.
plural sien beon
singular wre
PAST SUBJ.
plural wron

INFINITIVES beon, wesan

1 eom beo
2 singular eart bist
PRESENT IND.
3 is bi
plural sind, sindom beo

1 ws
2 singular wre
PAST IND.
3 ws
plural wron

3. Syntax.
OE favoured 3 types of word order: S-V-O, V-S-O, S-O-V.
V-S-O : common when the clause begins with an adverbial expression (especially a then
and r there) AND in questions (hwy didest u t? why did you do that?; hst u
nigne geferan? have you any companion?).

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Periphrastic constructions: OE only had verbal inflectional forms to distinguist 2 tenses (past and
non-past) and 3 moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative). To express what other languages
express by verbal inflections OE used periphrastic constructions:

The periphrastic future. In OE future time was expressed by means of the simple present
(non past), sometimes accompanied by an adverbial designating future time. OE depended
largely on the context for disambiguation of the functional value of the simple present tense
form.
Ga ge on mine wingeard and ic selle eow t riht bi
Already in OE willan and sculan were used as potential future markers.

The progressive construction. 'beon'/'wesan' + present part. -ende.

Noun Phrase Structure: quite similar to that of Modern English (det-adj-noun). Exceptions:
The forms eall all, begen both, and adjectives ending in -weard precede the determiner.
(eal es middangeard this entire earth; begen a gebroru both the brothers; on
sueweardum aem lande in the southern part of the land).
It is possible for adjectives to follow the noun, or for one to precede it and another to follow
it.
Titles of rank usually follow the name they qualify: Aelfred cyning King Alfred.

Negation: achieved by use of the particle ne (fram ic ne wille away I do not wish (to go)).

Nis (ne + is) is not; nolde (ne + wolde) did not want.

Multiple negation was common and made the negation more emphatic.

b) ME Morphological Simplification.

The loss and weakening of unstressed syllables provoked:

OE -a, -u and -e ME -e (later disappeared)
OE -an, -on, -un and -um ME -en (later reduced to -e)
OE -as and -es ME -es
OE -a and -e ME -e

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Nouns:
Strong Noun simplification:

OLD ENGLISH MIDDLE ENGLISH

Nominative
stan stone stan stone
Accusative
Genitive stanes stones
Dative stane stane

Nominative
stanas stones
Accusative
Genitive stana stana
Dative stanum stanum

Weak Noun Simplification:

OLD ENGLISH MIDDLE ENGLISH

Nominative nama name nama name
Accusative
Genitive naman namen
Dative

Nominative
naman namen
Accusative
Genitive namena namena
Dative namum namum

In the course of the ME period the -es plural spread and displaced -en, and by the 15th century it was
almost universal. In Shakespeare's time we still find a few plurals in -en which have since
disappeared, like eyen, and housen. Today we have oxen, children and brethren.

Adjectives: the trend was towards the use of only the base-form (fair), and a form with the
ending -e (faire), which was used both for the plural and as the weak form.
Singular adjectives that ended in a consonant in OE have no ending in eME. These end in -e if
the word immediately follows an article, demonstrative, or possessive (the alde mann).
Singular adjectives which ended in a vowel in OE end in -e in eME.
Plural adjectives end in -e.
When the final -e was lost, these two forms became the same and the adjective became indeclinable.
Pronouns:
SINGULAR
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. ich, I ou he she hit
ACC. me e him hir hit
GEN. my, myn y, yn his hir his
DAT. me e him hie him

PLURAL
FIRST PERSON SECOND PERSON THIRD PERSON
NOM. we ye ei
ACC. us yow hem
GEN. ure youre hir
DAT. us yow hem

Thou vs. ye: Although the plural of the first person had been used in OE for the authorial we
based on a Latin model, it did not come to be used for the plural of majesty until ME. This use is
a product of feudal thinking (king seen as the representation of the whole community). Also new in
ME is the use of you (plural) for the singular: extension from the majestic we; if the king speaks
in the plural, his subjects will address him in the plural too.
Thou: between equals and to inferiors.
Ye: representations of polite speech and to address a superior.

Definite Article: OE se, seo and ae disappeared, and the became used for all of them. This also
meant that grammatical gender disappeared, and was replaced by 'natural gender': we now tend to
refer to female creatures as she, males as he, and inanimate objects as it.

c) Changes in Syntax.
S-V-O became the dominant pattern, and separate words were used to perform the functions
formerly carried out by word-endings.

The system of inflections becomes much reduced, but a complicated system of tenses is built up
by means of the primary auxiliaries (be, have and later do) and the modal auxiliaries (shall,
should, will, etc). The future tense with shall and will is established in ME.
In the perfect, have spread at the expense of be, but be was common with verbs of motion and verbs
of change of state.
Verb endings were esentially the same as in OE, except that unstressed vowels were reduced to //.

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 f) The Great Vowel Shift.

Late ME eModE Examples

High i: diphthong ei mile, ripe, side
High u: diphthong ou house, mouth, out
High-mid e: high i: meet, piece, see
High-mid o: high u: do, loose, moon
Low-mid : High-mid e: meat, please, sea
Low-mid : High-mid o: boat, home, rose
Low a: Low-mid : case, late, make

Jespersen: drag chain. It started with the diphtongization of /i:/ and /u:/ to /i/ and /u/
respectively. At the next stage, /e:/ and /o:/ were dragged upwards to fill the notional vowel
space vacated by the diphtongization. Finally, the remaining three long vowels /:/, /:/ and /a:/
were raised.
Luick: push chain. The trigger of the change was the raising of the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/. On
their ways upward they evicted /i:/ and /u:/ from their slots. This was then followed by a drag of
lower vowels upwards.
Stenbrenden. The raising of the close-mid vowels and the close vowels were simultaneous,
which is why the close vowels did not have to diphthongise in order to avoid merger.

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 UNIT 4: CHANGES IN SPELLING AND
PHONOLOGY.
a) Major changes in Old and Middle English.
Changes in Old English.
Front Mutation (i-mutation). A back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following
syllable contains [i], [i:] or [j]. Consequently, the [i], [i:] or [j] disappeared or changed to e. This
was a kind of assimilation, the affected vowels being moved to a place of articulation nearer to
that of the following vowel or j.
Dal dole [no front mutation]
*dali he divides front mutation of the a (then to e) dlan deal
a front mutation (dole vs. deal)
u front mutation y (mouse vs. mice)
o front mutation e (food vs. feed).

Changes in Middle English: Phonological change did not take place because of the Norman
Conquest, it was already underway in late OE and continued in ME. However, it became easier to
detect through spelling.
Changes of vowel quality.

OE ME
// (t) > /a/ (that)
/:/ (s) > /:/ (se)
/y/ (synn) > /i/ (sin)
/y:/ (hydan) > /i:/ (hiden)
// (hearm) > /a/ (harm)
/:/ (stream) > /e:/ (streme)
/e/ (heofon) > // (heven)
/e:/ (beon) > /e:/ (ben)
/a:/ (ban) > /:/ (bon)

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 Changes of vowel quantity (length).
Lengthening before the consonant clusters ld, mb, nd. The lengthening didn't take place if
the consonant group was immediately followed by a third consonant.
OE cild /tild/ > ME child /ti:ld/
[as opposed to children]

Lenghthening of a, e, and o in open syllables (end in a vowel) in disyllabic words. When

there are two consonants between the syllables, the first consonant normally belongs to the
first syllable, which is therefore a closed one.
OE nama /nama/ > ME name /na:m/
[as opposed to ME thanken, from OE ancian]

Shortening.
Before double consonants and consonant clusters, except those that caused lengthening.
OE cepte /ke:pt/ > ME kepte /kpt/
In the first syllable of trisyllabic words.
OE Halid /ha:lijdj/ > ME halidai /ha:lidi/

Consonant changes. By the 14th c. most of the consonants were pronounced as in MnE.
Consonants that were pronounced in ME but have since become silent in certain positions are:
k before n knyght /knixt/
/x/ (gh) knyght /knixt/
g before n gnawe /gnauw/
l before f, v, k calf /kalf/ ; halve /halv/ ; folk /folk/
w before r write /wri:t/

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