Revision. Key Moments in the Linguistic History of the English Speaking World

Prüfungsvorbereitung: Universität Bremen


Exam Revision, 2014

6 Pages


Excerpt

Key Moments – Revision

1. Old English

History:

- lasted from450-1100
- 449:Saxons, Jutes and Angles invaded England
- heptarchy:seven kingdoms:
- Northumbria
- Mercia
- East Anglia
- Kent
- Essex
- Sussex
- Wessex
- Celts, Picts and Scots lived in England
- 8th century: Vikings invaded East of England
- Danish king came on throne

Language:

- OE hadcase inflexionsinstead of prepositions; innoun phrases
- inflexion signalscase, gender, number
- OE can have 1 of 3 word orders; 3 grammatical genders & 4 noun declensions
- vocabulary from native Germanic
- affixes, compounds and word-borrowings
- borrowed from Saxon, Latin, Jutes, Old Norse, Celtic
- OE is asynthetic language:dependent on inflection
- analytic language:dependent on word order

2. Middle English

History:

- 1100-1300:Early Middle English
- 1300-1500:Late Middle English (loss of case marking & inflexions)
- 1042:King Edward the Confessor broughtFrenchto England
- January 1066:Edward died without child to follow him
- Harold, Earl of Wessex & Edward’s second cousin William of Normandy battled
- September 1066:battle for throne: Harold was killed, William became king
- 1204:struggle for Normandy à sense of English identity
- 1337-1453:Hundred years war between England and France
- 1348:Black Death1/3 of population died; jobs became available on all levels; lower class people climbed social ladder; thus English climbed social ladder

Language:

- Frenchbecame language ofcourt& theruling class
- Latinbecame language ofchurch&administration
- lots of bilingual children
- word-borrowing from French
- English went from being a synthetic language to an analytic language
- instead of inflexions, the word order now signaled grammar case

3. Early Modern English

1500-1800

Translation of the Bible:

- Bible had huge effect on English language when it was translated
- 1380-82:John Wycliffe’s later banned translation led to increase of literacy
- 1522:German translation of bible by Martin Luther
- 1525:William Tyndale’s later banned translation
- 1611:King James Bible (first authorized translation)
- English became language of religion

Standardisation:

- 1476:William Caxton set upprinting press
- a standard form of English was needed
- 1480:English-French dictionary by Caxton
- 1604:first monolingual dictionary by Richard Cawdrey
- 1755:Samuel Johnson’s dictionary (43 000 words)

The Great Vowel Shift (1400-1650)

- vowel which is higher up in vowel chart was used instead of vowel below
- position of tongue was raised
- push chain:one vowel pushes the other away
- drag chain:other vowels are dragged in leftover spot
- à all vowels needed to be raised
- [i:] and [u:] were the highest and couldn’t move any higher à turned intodiphthongs[ti:d] & [hu:s] à [təid] & [həus] (not finished shift)

4. Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles

The two Diasporas of English:

- 1. Diaspora:migrations to North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa
- 2. Diaspora:colonization of Asia and Africa

The 3-way categorization:

- ENL:English as a native language
- language of those born and raised in a country where English is historically the first language to be spoken
- UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
- approx. 350 million speakers
- ESL:English as a second language
- language spoken in once English territories
- example: India, Nigeria, Singapore
- approx. 350 million speakers
- EFL:English as a foreign language
- language serves no purpose within the country
- approx. 1 billion speakers withreasonable competence
- ELF:English as alingua franca(spoken if no other language in common)
- Difficulties with categorization:
- ENL is not a single variety of English
- Pidgins & Creoles don’t fit into categorization
- large groups of ENL speakers in ESL territories and vice versa
- quality of ENL language not considered

[...]

Excerpt out of 6 pages

Details

Title
Revision. Key Moments in the Linguistic History of the English Speaking World
Subtitle
Prüfungsvorbereitung: Universität Bremen
College
University of Bremen  (FB 10 - English-Speaking Cultures)
Course
Key Moments in the Linguistic History of the English Speaking World
Author
Year
2014
Pages
6
Catalog Number
V279663
ISBN (eBook)
9783656734017
ISBN (Book)
9783656734000
File size
511 KB
Language
English
Keywords
revision, moments, linguistic, history, english, speaking, world, prüfungsvorbereitung, universität, bremen
Quote paper
Sarah Fuhrken (Author), 2014, Revision. Key Moments in the Linguistic History of the English Speaking World, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/279663

Comments

  • No comments yet.
Read the ebook
Title: Revision. Key Moments in the Linguistic History of the English Speaking World



Upload papers

Your term paper / thesis:

- Publication as eBook and book
- High royalties for the sales
- Completely free - with ISBN
- It only takes five minutes
- Every paper finds readers

Publish now - it's free