Hist Lang Final

How have meanings changed?

* expansion or development
* denotation and connotation
* literal and associative meanings

Language is …

1) woven into human experience

2) human/ non-instinctive to communicate ideas

3) system of vocal signs

4) distinguish humans from animals

What is a language vs. communication?

Language includes:

1) Arbitrariness

2)Productivity

3)Duality

4)Displacement

5)Conventional - learned

How is language arbitrary?

* no relation between language signal and what it represents

How is language productive?

* unlimited number of novel utterance
* linguistic elements (sounds and words) = can be combined
* replace one word with another

What is duality of pattering?

* language is meaningful and meaningless
* produce individual sounds with no meaning
* combine sounds and get words with meaning

What does it mean for a language to have displacement?

* can be seen and understood throughout history
* not just meant for the present time and place
* past vs. present tense

What does it mean for a language to be conventional?

* acquired and learned
* not transmitted through genes
* language belongs to community, not just the individual

Define English.

* people from Great Britain
* particular language
* Germanic in origin
* derived from French and Latin
* few speakers one area, but many geographic areas in world

How did English form (generic)

* partial result of borrowing
* speech of non-civilized tribes on Europe along North Sea
* speech of few small tribes and is now major lang
* begins A.D. 700

What are the three periods of the English language and their dates?

* Old English (A.D. 50-1100) = Anglo Saxon settle England
* Middle English (1100-1500)
* Modern (since 1500)

What does it mean to know English?

* native speakers know 40-60,000 words
* requires grammatical rules and understanding not just the words

What is the best resource for the English language?

Oxford English Dictionary

What do you know when you know a language?

* Phonology
* Morphology
* Syntax
* Semantics
* Pragmatics

Phonology

Rules for putting sounds in a language together

Morphology

Rules for putting words of a language together

Syntax

Rules for putting sentence together

Semantics

Rules for understanding the meaning of a language

Pragmatics

Rules for using the language in contexts

What is speech?

* Primary
* convey meaning that writing cannot always convey
* humans have spoken longer than written

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What is writing?

* derived from speech
* represent speech
* secondary
* not all speech communities have writing, but not vise versa

What are the misconceptions of language?

* language without writing system is inferior
* some lang better than others
* primitive lang only have a few words
* no power because of internal advantages

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How does language have power?

* language important because of the events that shape it
* political/ tech/ military/ art / sci
* language of a nation reflect the opportunities for propagation

Do sounds match their spellings?

No

Are there different spellings for the same sound?

Yes

What changes often and what changes rarely?

Speech changes often, but spelling changes rarely.

Spelling is uniform.

Writing does not accommodate variation across region and class.

What is the International phonetic alphabet?

One-to-one correspondence between speech sounds and symbols

Alphabet helps to describe each sound

Do humans have organs specifically for speech?

No,

Respiratory and digestive tracts used for speech

continuous flow of communication occurs when exhaling air from the lungs

sounds identified based on where in the mouth they are produced and how

What are consonants?

classified based on their place of articulation or manner of articulation and voicing

labial/ bilabial/ labiodental/ dental/ interdental/ alveolar/ alveo-palatal/ palatovelar/ glottal

stops / fricatives/ affricates/ nasals/ liquids/ semivowels

whether or not they have voice (vibration vocal cords)

What are the places of articulation?

labial - lips / air is stopped by both lips

alveolar - air obstructed in the area behind teeth

velar- air stopped at the velum or soft palate

glottis - air stopped at glottis

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Manner of articulation

stops - momentarily cutting off the airstream and then release air

fricatives - produced by incomplete obstruction of air stream and results in hiss

affricates - starts as stop and ends as fricative

nasals - air constricted and some escapes through nasal

lateral and liquid - minimal obstruction

lateral - no conplete stoppage / sides tongue/ voices

retroflex - similar to lateral but backward curve of tonugue and voiced

Describe consonants

p - voiceless bilabial stop

b - voiced bilabial stop

t- voiceless alveolar stop

d - voiced alveolar stop

f- voiceless labiodental fricative

Vowel Sounds

how they are produced

open vocal tract = sonorous = singing

How are vowels described

position and shape of the tongue/ round = shape oflips / tense or lax

height and front

high low back front

frontness = mat mate

back = law low

central = father

Examples of vowel

i = beat is high and front unround and tense

c = caught / thaw is mid back round lax

a = cot is low back unround and lax

e = egg is mid front unround lax

u = boot is high back round tense

Dipthongs

movement of articulators while producing ht evowel

complex vowel sound

fly tie ride

transcribed with two consecutive symbols ai oi ei ao greek for two sounds

my now joy cin

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Stress

relative loudness different parts of a word are pronounced

stress initial syllable of a word

syllable classified as primary/ secondary/ reduced/ unstressed

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Does English have a large vocabulary?

* yes contact with other languages
* advancement of technology

How do sounds change?

* assimilation
* dissimilation
* metathesis
* elision
* intrusion

What is assimilation?

* a sound becomes similar to the neighboring sounds
* hand bag - hambag

What is dissimilation?

* opposite assimilation
* neighboring similar sounds become less like each other
* governor - govner

What is metathesis?

* transposition of sounds or syllables within a word / words in a sentence
* swap sounds when speaking quickly

What is Elision?

* omission or deletion of of a final apocope or initial aphesis sound in pronunciation
* loss in the middle of word syncope

What is intrusion?

* opposite of elision
* innapropriate or unwelcome addition
* football = futurboro

What is etymology and word meanings?

* study of word origins
* change meaning frequently
* etymology doesn’t help with today’s definition
* meanings are always changing

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What are the semantic changes?

expand = generalization

contract = specialization

worse = pejoration

better = amelioration

understand = weakening

overstated = strengthening

shift = transfer meaning

Generalization

* widening and extending of scope
* holiday = holy days = any holdiay

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Specialization

* narrowing
* acorn = wild fruit = nut tree

Pejoration

* words association to lower or less
* poison = drink = drink that harms

Amelioration

* semantic change in a word
* nice = ignorant = silly stupid

Weakening

* using a weaker word than is required
* euphamism = vague expression
* person of interest = police suspect

Strengthening

* stronger word
* meal was fabulous

Semantic Shift

* metaphor = figure of speech not literal
* metonomy
* synecdocy
* synethesia

Metonymy

* named by an obejct as associated
* bar = legal profession

synecdoce

* figure of speech
* part used for whole or whole for the part

Synethesia

* sense impression for words describe another
* swee girl

What are the non-Indo European Language families?

Hamito-Semantic / Afroasiatic = Asyrian & Babylon / Hebrew / Aramaic/ Phoenician/ Moabitic/ Ethiopic

Sub-Saharan Languages = Nilo-Saharan / Niger-Kordofanian/ Kiswahili

Dravidian = South Asia / Tamil / Telegu

Sino-Tibetan = Cantonese / Mandarin

Austronesian = Maylo-Polynesian

Uto Aztecan

What does Indo European mean?

* hypothesized language or group of dialects
* West & East European / Indian / Iranian

What are the origins of the Indo European languages?

* Not truly existed
* hypothetical / Ural mtns/ 5000 and 3500 B.C.
* Europe and India East
* Sanskrit/ Greek and Latin / Persian and Germanic

What are the divisions of IE language?

* proto = technical term
* mother tongue

What caused IE to change into Modern English?

Satem-Centum split = sound change in the Eastern IE palatal and velar

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What are the 11 language families?

Centum =

Celtic / Italic/ Germanic/ Hellenic / Anatonaian/ Tocharian (no descendents)

Satem=

Baltic Slavic/ Albanian/ Armenian/ Indo-Iranian (Aryan)/ Iranian

What do Centum and Satem come from?

* Come from words for 100
* Initial consonant two examples = palatovelar

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What are cognates?

* co gnatus - born together (latin)
* cognates preserved in all IE languages
* Wheeled Vehicles/ Farmers/ Polytheistic
* Words in all language different but mean the same thing

Isolating Languages

* Each syllable is a single isolated morpheme
* isolated lang lacks inflection and suffixes

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Agglutinating

indiv word and their elements combined into single word that constitutes a sentence (a-b = we walked)

How many cases did the IE language have?

8 including evocative/ locative / and instrumental

What were the major changes of IE to Germanic?

* Common vocab not IE
* Two tense verbal system
* Developed a dental suffix
* strong verses weak adj declensions
* strong fixed stress accent based on loudness
* vowels modified in Germanic
* stops were changed in Grims law

What is Grims Law?

* occurred after segregation of Germanic tribes
* contact with non-Germanic ppls
* Germanic consonant shift
* voiceless stops = voiceless fricatives
* voiced stops = voiceless stops
* voiced aspirated stops = voiced stops

What is Verners law?

* 1875
* voiceless fricative became voiced fricative
* word initial position
* being next to voiceless sound
* stress in the immediately preceding syllable

Second or High Germanic Shift

* don’t know the cause of the shift
* fixing of word stress on the first syllable affected the pronunciation of all other sounds
* Shift split the Germanic area into two distinct dialect regions
* high and low are geographic regions

The Periods of English Language

Old 450-1150

Middle 1150-1500

Modern 1500-Present

Key Events Old English

1500 BC - 500 BC = Bronze Age (Celt first indo Europe Speakers )

55 BC = Julius Caesar attack Britain

43 AD = Emperor Claudius invades Britain

61 AD = Celtic Bodicae widow Celtic chief

75-85 AD = Conquest completed under Roman gov Agricola

410 AD = Approx date Roman withdrawl

499 AD = Invade Germanic tribes Old Engl begin

597 = Saint Aug pope Greg 1 Christianity

Ethelbert conversation easy = Christian princes convert

601 = Augustine first archbishop Canterbury = Church engl begins

664 = Synod Whitby chosen Roman Christianity over Celtic Christianity

787 = Scandinavian inv begins

878 = King Alfred defreats Danes and Danelaw treaty

1000 = Beowulf is written

10442 = end danish dynasty edward confessor king

Making English

Push celts west

Germanic war unbeatable = Angl sax overwhelmed native Britons ill in vocab

Welsh = Wealas Germanic tribes dispossessed Britons

Anglii = Celts = Germanic tribes

Dialect Old English

Northumbrian

Mercian

West Saxon

Kentish

North and Mercian = region north Thames

Characteristics Old English

Change: morphology / grammar / syntax/ vocab/ meaning/ orthography/ pronounciation

Article

fully inflected definite article

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strong and weak verbs

ablaut or vowel gradation = change root vowel if word

change tense & aspect

number and class strong verbs

weak verb = past tense -d -ed

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Personal Pronoun

Indo - European dual number verbs

dual & plural disappearing

Morphology

inflected language

four cases ( nom/ gen/ dat/ acc)

three gend (masc/fem/ neut)

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Vocabulary

compounds

new word = coined by existing word

prefix and suffix

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Syntax

OE word order

Free word order

Omission subj pronoun/ prepositions/ articles

Limited aux

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Vocabulary

Germanic

formation = compounding/ prefix/ suffix

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The Wynn

borrowed from runic alphabet

used for /w/

w alt convenience

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Old English Phonology Consonant

similar present English

long double consonants

lack voiced fricatives

consonant clusters

Latin Letters

q/x/z

k used but also represented by c

OE represented /y/ but interchange with i

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Cg Sc

/j/ spelled cg

ecg = edge // wecg = wedge

/s/ spelled sc

fisc= fish / scufan = shove

/c/

represent /k/

before back vowel and consonant

front vowels

lice /like/

Voiced Fricatives

No phonemic voiced fricatives /v,z,o/ allophones of voiceless fricatives /f,s,o/

voiced between voiced sounds

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/n/

allophone or variant of /n/ appearing before /k/ and /g/

drincan ‘to drink’ /drinkan/

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/h/

wider distribution in OE than MnE

allophones / variants

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Phonemically long ‘doubled’ consonants

double letter

bed / prayer

bedd / bed

Long and Short Vowels

rid/ raid

long vowel held for longer

OE vowels

a = aha

i = tin

i’ = seen

o = cough

u = pull

y - i

Umlat / i- mutation

important changes

early Germanic period before coming british isles

assimilation one vowel sound like other vowel that follows

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I - mutation

back vowel/ front vowel/

/o/ became /e/ pronounced as /i/

/i/ lost if the preceding syllable ended with a consonant or contained a long vowel

monetarium = money made = o altered and gives us mint today

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The English language that was brought to America was the language spoken by Shakespeare and Milton and Bunyan

True

The English spoken in America shows a high degree of uniformity

True

Who is quoted “being much more unsettled and moving frequently form place to place, the are not so liable to local peculiarities either in accent or phraseology”

John Witherspoon

Traditional dialectology, sociolinguistics, and studies in the sociology of language // illuminated continuing variation and change in American English

True