The History and Evolution of the English Language

Flashcards covering the history of the English language, models of linguistic change, and systematic sound shifts from Old English to Modern English.

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes

The Germanic tribes that settled in England in the 5th century after the Romans left, helping to shape the English language.

West Saxon

The main written variety of Old English because the kingdom of Wessex was powerful.

Christianization of England (7th century)

An event that introduced many Latin words into Old English, especially for religious purposes.

Old Norse

A language very similar to Old English brought by Viking invaders between the 8th and 11th centuries.

Norman Conquest (1066)

The event that ended the Old English period and established French as the language of the ruling class.

æ, þ, ð, and ƿ

Letters used in Old English that no longer exist in Modern English.

The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453)

A war that increased anti-French feelings in England, helping English regain importance over French.

The Black Death (1349)

A plague that caused a severe population decline, leading to labor shortages that improved the social position of English-speaking workers.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The famous Middle English writer who authored The Canterbury Tales.

East Midlands dialect

The variety of Middle English spoken in London that became the basis for a more standard form of English.

The Reformation

A movement that encouraged the use of English instead of Latin in religious texts during the Early Modern period.

The Great Vowel Shift

A major pronunciation change during the Early Modern period where the pronunciation of long vowels changed while spelling remained mostly the same.

Thou

An old singular pronoun that gradually disappeared during the Early Modern English period.

Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

The influential dictionary published by Samuel Johnson during the Late Modern English period.

Prescriptivism

The 18th-century idea that some forms of language are more 'correct' than others.

Tree Model

A linguistic model that explains relationships between languages as if they were members of a family, using terms like 'mother,' 'daughter,' and 'sister' languages.

Wave Model

A model that explains language change as spreading like ripples in water from a central point, emphasizing contact between speakers.

Isogloss

A geographical boundary line showing the limit of where a specific language feature is used.

Gravity Model

A model describing how language change often spreads from large cities to smaller ones, skipping rural areas, based on population size and distance.

Social Networks

Relationships between people (family, friends, work) that sociolinguists use to explain how language change spreads.

S-curve

A pattern of language change spread characterized by a slow initial phase, rapid expansion, and a slow final phase where the old form disappears.

The Actuation Problem

The difficulty in identifying how and why a specific language change first begins.

Meme

In evolutionary approaches to linguistics, a mental linguistic pattern that acts as the basic unit of language change and competes for survival.

Comparative Method

A scientific method used by 19th-century linguists to compare related languages to reconstruct a common proto-language.

Cognates

Words in different languages that share a common historical origin.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE)

The reconstructed ancestor language of Sanskrit, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Germanic languages.

Grimm’s Law

A set of sound laws describing the systematic shift of consonants from Proto-Indo-European to Germanic languages.

Verner’s Law

A law discovered by Karl Verner explaining exceptions to Grimm's Law based on the position of stress in Proto-Indo-European.

Neogrammarians

A group of 19th-century linguists who argued that sound change is completely regular and exceptionless.

Lenition

A type of sound change where sounds become 'weaker,' such as stops becoming fricatives or voiceless sounds becoming voiced.

Fortition

A sound change where sounds become 'stronger,' such as fricatives becoming stops or sounds becoming devoiced.

Articulatory Undershoot

A failure to reach an articulatory target due to imperfect timing of speech gestures, often leading to lenition.

Chain Shift

A sequence of connected sound changes where the movement of one sound triggers the movement of others to maintain phonemic distinctions.

Push Chain

A type of chain shift where one sound moves toward another and 'pushes' it out of its phonological space.

Pull Chain

A type of chain shift where a sound moves into an empty phonological space and 'pulls' another sound after it.

Palatalisation

An Old English feature where consonants like $/k/$ and $/g/$ changed their pronunciation before front vowels (e.g., $/k/ \rightarrow [tʃ]$).

Homorganic Lengthening (10th c.)

A sound change where short vowels became long when followed by certain consonant clusters like 'ld,' 'nd,' 'rd,' or 'mb.'

Open Syllable Lengthening (13th c.)

The lengthening of short vowels when they occur in syllables ending in a vowel.

Foot–Strut Split (17th–18th c.)

A Modern English change where the short $/u/$ split into two distinct vowels: $/ʊ/$ (as in foot) and $/ʌ/$ (as in strut).

Loss of Rhoticity (Early 19th c.)

The loss of post-vocalic $/r/$ in certain varieties of English, such as Standard Southern British English.

Metathesis

A type of language change where two sounds swap positions within a word.

Analogy

A type of language change driven by the pressure of existing patterns in the language rather than phonetic rules.