The Great Vowel Shift
Continued
• The reasons behind this shift are something
of a mystery, and linguists have been unable
to account for why it took place. It was first
identified and studied by Otto Jesperson,
a linguistfrom Denmark, during the late
19th and early 20th centuries.
• Most linguists agree that the Great Vowel
Shift did not occur all at once, which
accounts for the creative spellings of many
English words. Some printers might still
have employed an earlier vowel
pronunciation when spelling, making
English one of the most challenging
languages to spell, because so many
exceptions to spelling rules exist.
• Some linguists account for the change by
suggesting that England’s rule by the French led to
disenchantment with French pronunciation of
vowels, which is a similar pronunciation to that of
Middle English. To distance themselves from
prior French occupation and rule, the English
ruling class may have deliberately changed the
ways vowels were pronounced to reflect that theirs
was a different language
• Another theory is that England may have
had several influential people with speech
impediments, and such mispronunciations
might be copied in deference to someone of
high enough rank.
Historical linguistics
• Historical linguistics (also called
diachronic linguistics) is the study of
language change.
• Diachronic: The study of linguistic change
through history contrasted to Synchronic
linguistics: The study of the phonological,
morphological, and syntactic features of a
language at a stated time.
• Historica linguistics has five main concerns:
• 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 (comparative
linguistics)
• to develop general theories about how and
why language changes
• to describe the history of speech
communities.
Historical linguistics
Languag
e Change
Etymolo
gy
Historic
al
linguisti
cs
Speech
Commun
ity
Reconstr
uction/co
mparativ
e method
Language Change
• Any treatment of linguistics must address
the question of language change. The way
languages change offers insights into the
nature of language itself and the possible
answers to why languages change tell us
about the way language is used in society,
about how it is acquired by individuals and
may reveal to us something about its
internal organisation.
Comparative Method
• Comparative Method: Refers to the
practice of comparing forms in two or more
languages with a view to discovering
regularities of correspondence. A simple
instance from English and German concerns
/t/ and /s/..
• With a series of native words, i.e. not loans,
one can see that where English has /t/
German has /s/: water
: Wasser, beter: besser, foot:Fuss It is
obvious here that English /t/ corresponds to
German /s/ in non-initial position. The
question which remains is whether the /t/ or
the /s/ is original.
Speech Community
• A speech community is a group of people
who share a set of norms and expectations
regarding the use of language.
• to study the history of words, i.e. etymology
• Etymology: is the study of the history of
words, their origins, and how their form and
meaning have changed over time
• Modern historical linguistics dates from the
late 18th century. It grew out of the earlier
discipline of philology: the study of ancient
texts and documents i.e. literary texts and of
written records, the establishment of their
authenticity and their original form, and the
determination of their meaning dating back
to antiquity.
Antiquity
• The ancient past, especially the period of
classical and other human civilizations
before the Middle Ages.
Dialectology
• The scientific study of linguistic dialect,
the varieties of a language that are
characteristic of particular groups, based
primarily on geographic distribution and
their associated features.
• Dialectologists are concerned with
grammatical features that correspond to
regional areas.
Phonology
• Sound change
• A sub-field of linguistics which studies the
sound system of a specific language or set
of languages. Whereas phonetics is about
the physical production and perception of
the sounds of speech, phonology describes
the way sounds function within a given
language or across languages
Morphology
• Morphology is the branch of linguistics that
studies patterns of word-formation within
and across languages, and attempts to
formulate rules that model the knowledge of
the speakers of those languages, in the
context of historical linguistics, how the
means of expression change over time
Syntax
• The study of the principles and rules for
constructing sentences in natural languages.
The term syntax is used to refer directly to
the rules and principles that govern the
sentence structure of any individual
language
Lexicon
• The vocabulary of a person, language, or
branch of knowledge.
• In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is
its vocabulary, including its words and
expressions. More formally, it is a
language's inventory of lexemes.
Study Questions
• What are the main concerns of Historical
Linguistics?
• Mention four main influences of the
Normans on the English society and
language.
• What are the main theories that explain the
Great Vowel Shift?
• What are the Motifs of Beowulf?