VCE English Language Unit 2 Notes

AOS1 Language Across Time Week 2

1500BC Germanic people leave to Europe and develop their own sound
variations, known as Grimms law, [p t k] become [f th k], example pater
father
Celts take Britain 600BC
Romans Hold Britain 55BC-410AD
Angles/Saxons/Jutes take Britain
Viking raids 787-1000AD
Danes spoke old Norse
Normans invade, 1066-1266AD
Time, geography and social separation lead to change
3 biggest influencers of English were the Celts, Scandinavians and Norman
French
Words from the Scandinavians: they, them, seat, gate, egg, husband, shirt,
skirt
Words from the Celts: Crag, Bin, dale, dun, ass, car, dad, London, Thames,
York.
Words from the Romans: Doncaster, Lancaster, Gloucester, Manchester etc.
Camp, Copper, Pound, Street, Tile, Wall, Wine.
Word from the Normans include: Crown, power, court, minister, battle, war,
peace, joy, crime, mercy, pray, beef, ornament, justice, jury, defendant etc.
Old English have a few cases such as the nominative, genitive, dative and
accusative.

200 yrs. of French rule

The language of a few thousand elite

Most people spoke English
Norse still spoken in Northern regions
Latin used in Church
Celtic languages in Wales and Scotland
The elite were bilingual
Theorised that a English-French Pidgin was created
Between 1250-1400AD 10,000 French words were adopted, 75% are still
used

Period
Old English
Middle English

Dates
500-1150AD
1150-1455AD

Abbreviation
OE
ME

Early
English

1450-1755AD

EMnE

1755-Present

MnE

Modern

Modern English

Texts
Beowulf ~900AD
Chaucers
Canterbury
Tales
~1390sAD
Shakespeare
Johnsons
Dictionary
Countless

OLD ENGLISH RUNES/ALPHABET/CONVENTIONS

Sc = sh or sk
Thorn and wynn = thin and then
Ash = ae sound
Eth
[ae] = cat
[ea] = aea diphthong
[eo]= bow
[i]= feet
[ie] = sit
[y] = uber
[cg] = edge

Look for such conventions and runes in texts to date them, the more runes there
are the older the text, generally old English.

The verb to spell literally comes from magical spelling used with runes,
spelling as in writing was the same as the magical thing
Each rune has a name such as ash tree

The effects of the black death on English

Helped reverse the effects of French

Killed many of the rich and urban French speakers
The English government gave up French

WEEK 3
Reduction of sounds
Unstressed are often deleted
Function words are more prone to deletion
Examples of vowel deletion: desperate, several, interesting
The verb to be is increasingly deleted
Words often move to the weaker form
Example: hlaefweard hlafordlavordlord
Addition of sounds

The opposite process to reduction

Less common
Sounds are most commonly added between consonants
Can occur where a sound pattern exists
Eg. nuclearnucular
follows pattern of -cular words, binocular,
particular

Sound Modifications

Assimilation: When neighbouring sounds in a word become more alike

following one of these parameters; voicing, place and manner.
Dissimilation: When sounds become less alike, usually occurs when sounds
are repeated.
Metathesis: The reordering of sounds within a word, usually a childhood
error. Eg. aks instead of ask or spaghetti instead of spaghetti
The Great Vowel Shift

Occurred sometime between 1300-1600AD

The great long vowels shifted up a notch
This meant the tongue moved higher in the mouth
The shifting of one vowel means the shifting of all
Shifts are usually done symmetrically

Collocation: A word or phrase often used with another, they just sound right
Eg. hard frost not strong frost & loud music not noisy music.
Things to look for in dating a text:
1. Look at its register
What is its mode? Spoken or writtern?
What is the manner?
What field is it in?
2. Graphology
Look for runes
Look for spelling conventions
Is spelling regular
Has sc been replaced by sh or sch and cw by qu
Are I and y interchangeable
Are u and v interchangeable
Have marked vowels been replaced
3. Lexis
What word sources are there? German, Norman, Norse, Celtic, Latin
Any word creation
Evidence of assimilation
Any words that have remained unchanged overtime
Any recognisable words
4. Grammar
Noticeable word endings
Amount of Strong verbs
Word order
How are plural nouns marke, -s, -es, -en?
Inconsistencies

WEEK 5

Word Addition
Names: words most commonly added and created are brand names, place
names, personal names, they can enter the language as new words or
eponyms. The process of adding nouns to the language is called
commonisation, eg. calling a pen a biro.
Acronyms: Words coming from acronyms
Compounding: the combination of 2 or more free morphemes to form a
new word
Affixation: binding bound morphemes to form a new word
Conversion: changing the class of the word without effecting its spelling
or using an affix
Backformation: the removal of an affix to create a new word in the belief
that it never originally existed even though it always existed. Eg. to beg
from beggar.
Blends: taking parts of 2 or more words and adding them together
Initialism: Acronyms in which each letter is sounded individually
Code-Switching: new words from another language taken by mistake
Strong-verbs: words which rather than using affixes have internal
change. Eg. sing/sang/sung, drive/drove/driven as opposed to
open/opened/opened and hit/hit/hit

WEEK 6
Semantic Changes
Changes in Sense
Broadening Expansion in context in which the word appears, occurs when proper
nouns are used to describe general phenomena (i.e. capital letter status to
lowercase status.)
Narrowing When a word comes to only mean a part of what it used to
Meaning Shift when the meaning of the word totally shifts or total alteration of
context
Changes in Connotation
Elevation Occurs in 2 ways: 1st poor overtones erode away or lose potency, 2 nd
word obtains a positive overtone
Deterioration when words take on negative overtones

Attitudes towards language change

Note there is a spectrum from either of the below to the other.

Prescriptivism

Tells you how you ought to speak

Negative attitude towards language change
Agrees on a set of rules that need to be followed

Descriptivism

Doesnt accept one clear view of language

No clear set of rules
English shouldnt be regulated

Other Notes
Effects of the printing press/dictionaries:

Caused the creation of dictionaries

Created a need for standard spelling
Stopped spelling from matching the sound of words
Possibly slowed down language change
Increase in literacy
Massive outflow of texts
Language is now a bigger part of everyday lives
Helped English to become a lingua franca

Other Lingua franca and language change factors:

Science
Tech
Other societies/languages
Immigration
Exploration
Trade
Shakespeare
Great vowel shift

Orthography:

i.e. spelling
standardization
English or American or Foreign
Historic or Archaic
Runes or Conventions
Etc.

Text Purposes:

Entertainment

Inform/Instruct
Social rapport
Persuasion
Play
Ceremonial

Sentence Types:

Declarative
Imperative
Interrogative
Exclamative