LECTURE 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Historical linguistics is the study of language change • to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages • to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families • to develop general theories about how and why language changes • to describe the history of speech communities • to study the history of words, i. e. etymology
• WHERE DOES THE HISTORY OF MANKIND START? • WHERE DO WE (PEOPLE) COME FROM? historical facts are largely based on artifacts and writing… !!!!BUT History started long before any of those What distinguishes a human being from other species is LANGUAGE The history starts where the language appears
Where does the language come from ? ? ? Theories of origin 1. language was given by God(s) 2. language was developed by social agreement 3. words reflect the nature of things 4. emerged out of collective rhythmic labour 5. Onomatopoea NO ANSWER YET!
Folklore Culture Literature Language Archeology History
Pieter_Bruegel: Turmbau zu Babel 1. Which legend was taken as theme for this painting? 2. How many languages are spoken today in the world? 3. Is it always difficult to understand the speakers of other languages? 4. Why not?
мама папа брат сестра Mutter Vater Bruder Schwester father шість babbo brother вісім fratello я ты один два три ich du mother чотири п'ять mamma I Ein io you Zwei Drei tu Vier one two three four сонце Sonne uno due sun sole Fünf Sechs ніч Sieben Acht Nacht день Neun Tag Zehn five six night seven day nine ten місяць tre Mond quattro cinque moon luna сім sister дев'ять десять sorella eight notte sei sette giorno otto nove dieci
• 1. Monogenesis • 2. Poligenesis all languages (existing and claims that language extinct) descent to one appeared in different places parent language acquired common features as a result of “Sprachbund” (see Trubetskoy) GENEALOGICAL is a group of languages that have become similar in some CLASSIFICATION way because of geographical proximity and language contact
Nostratic Macrofamily The term Nostratic languages was first introduced by Holger Pederson in 1903. “Nostratic” from Latin means ‘our’. This macrofamily was studied by Soviet scholars: V. Illych-Svitych, V. Dybo, S. Starostin, A. Dolgopolskii. WEST EAST 4, 000 5, 000 BC Indo-European 6, 000 BC Altaic 12, 000 10, 000 BC Afro-Asiatic 4, 000 BC Dravidian 3, 000 BC Kartvelian 5, 000 3, 000 BC Uralic
After the genealogical classification of languages by professor A. Reformatsky, there are 23 families of languages all in all
Indo-European language family & its branches • A language family is a group of languages related because they are descended from a common ancestor, called the Protolanguage of that family. Thus, Indo-European languages (IE) are descended from Proto-Indo. European (PIE). • Every branch has its Protolanguage. For example, Latin is the proto-language of the Romance language family, which includes such modern languages as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. Likewise, all Germanic languages have a common ancestor language called Proto-Germanic (PG) or Common Germanic (CG).
Centum-Satem Isogloss • Isogloss is the geographical boundary of a certain linguistic feature, such as the pronunciation of a vowel, the meaning of a word, or use of some syntactic feature. • The centum-satem division is an isogloss of the Indo-European language family. • The terms Centum Group and Satem Group come from the words for the number "one hundred" in a traditional representative language of each group: Latin centum and Avestan satəm.
The satem languages (which have the sibilant where the centum equivalents have the velar) include Indo-Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian. The centum group includes all remaining dialects, i. e. Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Tocharian, Anatolian.
Classification of Modern Germanic Languages Old Modern territories North Old North (ON) Old Icelandic (OIcel) Danish Swedish Norwegian Icelandic Faroese Denmark Sweden Norway Iceland Faroe Islands, Denmark West OE OFris OHG OS OLG English Flemish Frisian German Afrikaans Yiddish UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand Belgium, France, Netherlands, Germany (Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein) Germany, Austria, Switzerland South African Republic 1, 762, 320 people around the world East Gothic Burgundian Vandalic extinct
Thus, English belongs to: • Nostratic Macrofamily (West Branch) • Indo-European family of languages (Centum group) • West Germanic branch
Celts, Romans and Britain Celts originally lived in what is now modern Switzerland, France (Gauls) and Britain (Scots and Pickts)
CELTS
However, they were superseded by the Roman Empire and in the 1 st century AD Julius Caesar’s troops first reached The British Isles Romans built there first cities, wells, roads, baths And enriched cultural life of the Celts
Germanic Migrations
Germanic tribes originally came from the shores of the North Sea and Scandinavia, gradually they have taken over most of Europe and invaded Britain. The Teutonic tribes It was also due to the rising power of Germanic people Romans had to leave Britain and finally that they led to the collapse of the Roman Empire. Settlements before 750 BC New settlements after 750 BC until 1 AD New settlements until 100 AD New settlements after 100 AD
The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic tribes who migrated to Britain from Jutland Northern Germany beginning in the early 5 th century.
The Sources of Our Knowledge of Ancient Germanic Tribes Our knowledge of the ancient Teutons is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman writers.
Tacitus describes the Germans as a tribal society living in the scattered settlements in the woody and marshly country of North-West Europe in the wooden buildings, in pits dug in the ground; they keep flocks and grow grain crops, they change plough lands yearly. They have kings chosen for birth, and chiefs chosen for their valour. Germans are warriors. All kind of housework and the field is left to women, weaklings and slaves. They are hospitable but have love for drinking. Physical type: blue eyes, reddish hair, huge bodies.
What can easily be named a sourse of knowledge about the people is the language itself, there a lot of linguistic units reflecting social structure, traditions and mode of life of ancient Germans.
Germanic Alphabets Teutons used 3 different alphabets: • Runic alphabet ‘Futharc’ Features: • 24 letters, originally engraved or cut into stone, wood, bone • Ulfila's Gothic alphabet (4 • 27 letters, the alphabet of cent A. D. ) translation of the Bible, writing made on parchments • Latin alphabet • Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread of Christianity and of Latin language Christian religious texts
Fuƀark • The name rune Gt rūna, OIcel rūnar, OE rūn, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite.
The legend tells that it was the god Odin who was the first to obtain the knowledge of the runes, which he passed to his wife Freya and who, eventually told the secret to Heimdall, the god who guarded the Rainbow Bridge connecting the world of Aesir with the world of people It was Heimdall, who like his Greek counterpart Prometheus, taught the runes to mankind
Fuƀark
FIRST GERMANIC WRITINGS • Silver Codex 6 th-century manuscript, originally containing bishop Ulfila's 4 th century translation of the Bible into Gothic
• Runic inscriptions (the Ruthwel Cross, The Frank's Casket, etc) – VIII century
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; King Alfred's translation of Orosin's World History with insertions – IX century
• Beowulf, an epic of the VII or the VIII century, composed in the Northumbrian or Mercian dialect – X century
• The Elder Edda, a collection of heroic songs – XII century
• The Younger Edda; Snorri Sturluson's prose text-book for poets – XIII century
