- •Subject and Aims of the History of English. Its Ties with Other Disciplines. Germanic Language in the System of Indo-European Family of Languages
- •1. History of English in the systemic conception of English
- •1.1. The aims and the purpose of the study of the subject
- •1.2. Connection of the subject with other disciplines
- •2. Sources of Language History
- •2.1. Writings in early English
- •3. General notes on the language study
- •3.1 The definition of the language
- •3.2 The functions of the language
- •3.3 The structure of the language
- •3.4 The language classification principles
- •3.5 Synchrony and diachrony in the language study
- •4. The comparative-historical method
- •4.1 The stages of the comparative-historical method
- •4.2 The principles of the comparative-historical method
- •4.3 The drawbacks of the comparative-historical method
- •5. The Germanic group of languages
- •The Formation of the English National Language. Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Territorial dialects of the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion
- •2. The dialects of the period of the Norman Conquest
- •3. The development of the dialect of London into a national language
- •Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Henry Sweet and his division of the history of English
- •2. Historical periodization as offered by b. Khaimovich
- •3. T. Rastorguyeva’s periodization of the English language
- •4. The division of the history of English as suggested by V. Arakin
- •5. The periods of the development of English as offered by a. Markman and e. Steinberg
- •6. David Burnley’s periodization of the history of English
- •Common Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages
- •1. Phonetic peculiarities of the Germanic languages
- •1.1. The First Consonant Shift
- •1.2. Vowels
- •1.3. The doubling of consonants
- •1.4. Rhotacism
- •1.5. Germanic fracture (or breaking)
- •1.6. The second consonant shift
- •2. Some common grammatical features of Germanic languages
- •2.1. Form-building Means
- •2.1.1. Ablaut
- •2.1.2. Word-structure
- •2.1.3. Types of Stems
- •2.1.4. Strong and Weak Verbs
- •3. Germanic Vocabulary
- •Phonetic Changes in the Old English Period
- •The Main Features of Old, Middle, and Modern English
- •2. Old English Phonetics
- •2.1. Oe Consonants
- •2.2. Vowels
- •2.2.1. Changes of stressed vowels
- •2.2.2. Changes of unstressed vowels
- •Changes in the Middle English Orthography and Phonology
- •1. Changes in the Orthographic System
- •2. Major Changes in the Sound System
- •2.1. The Consonants
- •2.2. Consonant Changes from Old to Middle English
- •2.3. Vowels in Stressed Syllables
- •2.4. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables
- •2.5. The Formation of Middle English Diphthongs
- •The Old English Morphology
- •1. The Old English Noun.
- •2. The Old English Pronoun
- •3. The Old English Adjective
- •4. The Old English Adverb
- •5. The Numeral in Old English
- •6. The Old English Verb.
- •The Middle English Morphology
- •1. Middle English as a Period of Great Change.
- •2. The Middle English Noun.
- •3. Articles.
- •4. The me Adjective.
- •5. The me Adverb
- •6. The me Pronoun
- •7. The me Verb
- •7.1. Strong and weak verbs
- •The New English Morphology and Changes in the System of English Syntax
- •1. New English Morphology
- •2. Old English Syntax.
- •3. Middle English Syntax
- •4. New English Syntax
Lecture 1
Subject and Aims of the History of English. Its Ties with Other Disciplines. Germanic Language in the System of Indo-European Family of Languages
1. History of English in the systemic conception of English
Learning one’s mother tongue (first language, native language) is a natural process. When a child acquires first knowledge of his or her mother tongue, s/he usually takes all its peculiarities for granted as s/he has no other language to compare with. Things are quite different with mastering a foreign language: when learning it the student compares it to his/her mother tongue and is often astonished to find great differences in the way ideas are expressed in the two languages, and if the learner is an adult person, he or she will often be struck by inconsistencies in the foreign language, illogicalities, and contradictions in its structure. Thus, any student of English is well aware of the difficulties of reading and spelling English. The written form of the English word is conventional rather than phonetic. The values of Latin letters as used in English differ greatly from their respective values in other languages, e.g. French, German or Latin. Cf.:
bit – [bit] full correspondence between Latin
three letters – three sounds letters and English sounds
bite – [bait] no correspondence between the vowels
four letters – three sounds and their graphic representation: the
final e is not pronounced, but
conventionally serves to show that the preceding letter i has its English alphabetic value which is [ai], not [i] as in other languages
knight – [nait] the letters k and gh do not stand for
six letters – three sounds any sounds but gh evidently shows
that i stands for [ai]
This illogicality can be explained by the history of English sounds and spelling. Without going into details, suffice it to say that at the time when Latin characters were first used in Britain (7th c.) writing was phonetic: the letters stood, roughly, for the same sounds as in Latin. Later, especially after the introduction of printing in the 15th c., the written form of the word became fixed, while the sounds continued to change. This resulted in a growing discrepancy between letter and sound and in the modern peculiar use of Latin letters in English. Many modern spellings show how they were pronounced some four or five hundred years ago, e.g. in the 14th c. knight sounded as [knix’t], root as [ro:t], tale as ['ta:lə].
In the sphere of vocabulary, there is considerable likeness between English and German. Thus, for example, the German for summer is Sommer, the German for winter is Winter, the German for foot is Fuß, the German for long is lang, the German for sit is sitzen, etc. On the other hand, in certain cases English has something in common with French, as the following examples will show: English autumn – French automne, English river – French rivière, English modest – French modeste, etc. These similarities are easily observed by anyone having some knowledge of German or French. But we cannot account for them if we remain within the limits of contemporary English; we can only suppose that they are not a matter of chance and that there must be some cause behind them. These causes belong to a more or less remote past and they can only be discovered by going into the history of the English language.
As far as grammar is concerned, it can only be noted that the history of the language will supply explanations both for the general, regular features of the grammatical structure and for its specific peculiarities and exceptions. It will explain why English has so few inflections; how its “analytical structure” arose – with an abundance of compound forms and a fixed word order; why modal verbs, unlike other verbs, take no ending –s in the 3rd p.sg.; why some nouns add –en or change the root-vowel in the plural instead of adding –s (e.g. oxen, feet) and so on and so forth.
All the above-mentioned phenomena are traced back to a distant past and they cannot be accounted for without a study of history.
Thus knowledge of the history of English should be an integral part in the training of a teacher of the language.