1 Flashcards
(55 cards)
Language changes going on NOW (7)
- Decline of the inflected form “Whom”
- Fewer -> less
- Regularisation of irregular verb morphology (dreamt -> dreamed)
- Analytical comparatives/superlatives become more important (politer -> more polite)
- Spread of the s-genitive to non-human nouns
- Elimination of “shall” as future marker in 1st person
- Grammaticalisation of auxiliaries (gonna, wanna)
Productive neologising processes (5)
- Increasing polysemy
- Compounding (mad cow disease) and derivation (Thatcherite)
- Conversion (to google) and zero-derivation (to car-pool)
- Acronyms, blends, shortenings
- Combining forms
Pronounciation changes
- Merger poor, pour, paw
- Closer pronunciation of talk
- More open pronunciation of beg and bag
- Smoothing of diphthongs and triphongs fire -> far
- Ju: -> u: super
Germanic languages
- Dutch
- Scandinavian
- Present-day German
Foundation of the English language
- Tribes (Saxons, Anglos, Judes, …) increasing settlement
- conflicts (tribes vs. Tribes, ancestors vs. Tribes)
- Dialect levelling
- Took name “Angles” and generalised meaning for everyone who spoke similar dialects
Old English (5)
- spelling: runes = Decoration, some unusual letters
- Phonology vowels: length contrast, similar pronunciation as German
- Phonology consonants: c= k, g= g, cg= dz, sc= sch
- Vocabulary: compounding (godspel), derivation (ingang), almost no borrowings from Celtic, borrowings from Latin (prestige) and Old Norse (a lot of contact w/ Scandinavian dialects)
- Grammar: adjective as complex as nouns, different case endings, 2nd person singular more complex
What happened in the transition from OE to ME? (4)
- Collapse of the inflectional system
- Fixing of SVO order
- Elimination of impersonal constructions
- Changes in the 3rd person plural pronoun
synthetic grammar
- based on inflection
- tight fit
- Greek, Latin, German
Analytical grammar
- based on word order an free morphemes
- loose fit
- English and French
Consequences of collapse of inflectional system (4)
- Inflection collapses in the article, all forms becoming the
- Full vowels in endings weakened
- Final /n/ faded away
- S-ending adapted to almost all nouns
Plurals other than s
- Only as fossiles exception (children, oxen -> Nama-n)
- Umlaut = mouse, mice
- About signalling tense through vowel change sing -sang - sung
French loan words
- Begin - commence
- Fight - combat
- Bother - annoy
- Lonely - solitary
- Clean - pure
Major language developments in EMod period (5)
- Great Vowel Shift (GVS)
- Analytical grammar
- Latin and Greek loan words (hard words)
- Standardisation of written language = printing
- Colonial expansion
Great Vowel Shift
1) RAISING: all long vowels raised by one step, those that can’t be raised anymore are diphthongised
2) SIMPLIFICATION: phonological contrasts between closed and open abolished
- English spelling standardised during early stages of vowel shift = spelling consistent but phonetics changed (f.e. Row noun and verb, read read read)
Structural and sociolinguistic developments in Late Modern English period (3)
- massive expansion of vocabulary: complexity, acronyms and alphabetises, combining forms
- standardisation of spoken and written language develops
- English as pluricentric world language. First Lingua Franca
Standardisation questions (3)
- realise vs. Realize
- which standard does ChatGPT follow
- What is the target variety for Google translations from German
The „Borrowing scale“ by Thomason/Kaufman
- casual contact: non-basic vocabulary, content words, mostly nouns (Food)
- slightly more intense contact: also adverbial particles, phonemes in foreign word (Latin)
- more intense contact: prepositions, pronouns, derivational morphemes, foreign inflectional endings, restructuring of phonemic system
- strong cultural pressure: massive lexical and structural borrowing
- very strong cultural pressure: borrowing to the point of typological reorientation, in extreme cases resulting in language death
Borrowing
Foreign material taken over into a language which continues to be spoken. Major impact on lexicon.
Shift
Substrate-language feature retained after speakers shift. Major impact on grammar and phonology.
De Swaan: World language system
- hyper-central language: ENglish
- super-central languages: French, Hindi, Mandarin, …
- central languages: Dutch, Romanian, Danish, …
- peripheral languages: 6000+
- structure like income structure
- unipolar: only narrow top (hierarchical)
Kashru: Three Circles of English
- The Expanding Circle (EFL): Egypt, Japan, Israel
- The Outer Circle (ESL): India, Nigeria, Ghana
- THe Inner Circle (Native): USA, UK, Canada
- no place for pidgins/creoles
McArthur: Circle of World English
- misrepresents complex lateral connections
- no idea of what varieties are important
Schneider: Dynamic Model
= model about origin and spread of postcolonial Englishes
1. foundation: early settlers, foundation for linguistic features, local contact languages
2. exonormative stabilisation: norms from outside, mentality of ppl
3. nativisation: borrowings, new variety shaped
4. endonormative stabilisation: psychological catch-up (teaching in new variety)
5. differentiation: new dialects
Buschfeld/Kautzsch: Model of (non-) Postcolonial Englishes
Complicated one
Ppl work on developing Schneider‘s model to apply it to postcolonial E