Theme 12. Lexical description of Modern English

 

If speakers of English from 1800 were able to speak to those from 2000, they would notice a few differences in grammar and pronunciation, but not very many. The main difficulty for the nineteenth-century speakers would be in understanding a huge number of new words.

Discoveries and inventions in all areas of science in the last two hundred years have led to appearance of new words for machines, materials, plants, animals, stars, diseases and medicines, and new expressions for scientific ideas. The spread of English around the world, and easier and faster communication, have resulted in creation of thousands of other new words. About 100,000 new words have entered the language in the last hundred years - more than ever before.

Here are some examples of these new words, with the date when each word first appeared in writing. Most new words (about two-thirds) have been made by combining two old words: fingerprint (1859), airport (1919), street­wise (1965). The recent development in computers has introduced many of this type: online (1950), user-friendly (1977) and download (1980). Some new words have been made from Latin and Greek; for example, photograph (1839), and video (1958). Others are old words that have been given new meanings. For example, pilot (1907) was first used to refer to a person who directs the path of ships, and cassette (1960) used to mean a small box. About five per cent of new words have come from foreign languages. Forexample, disco (1964) has come from French and pizza (1935) from Italian. And a few words have developed from the names of thingswe buy: for example, coke (1909) from Coca-Cola, and Walkman (1981) from Sony Walkman.

Beginnings or endings have been added to make new words: disinformation (1955) is false information, touchy-feely (1972) describes people who express their feelings by touchingothers. Sometimes both a beginning and an ending have been added: for example, unputdownable (I 947) describes a book which is so interesting that you cannot stop reading it. Some words have been shortened: photo (1860) for photograph; plane (1908) for aeroplane; telly (1940) and TV (1948) for television. Some words first appeared as slang before they joined the main language; for example boss (1923) was an American slang word meaning manager in the seventeenth century. Some words have combined sounds from two other words: for example, smog (1905), used to describe the bad air in cities, is made from smoke and fog. Only a few new words have not been created from other words. Two examples are nylon (1938) to describe a man-made material, and flip-flop (1970), a type of shoe that makes a noise as you walk.

Our changing world and shifting interests have added hundreds of new words and meanings to the English language in the last two decades, e.g.

netizen — Internet user

tree hugger —environmen­talist

karaoke — singing

digerati — people who know about computers

wannabe — one who has aspirations

ecotourism — traveling to natural lands

pathography — biography fo­cusing on the negative elements of a subject, popularized by a U.S. writer Joyce Carol Oates; also, the study of the effects of illness on a historical person's life.

nutraceutical — afood or other substance that has been supple­mented with ingredients believed to have health benefits.

The growth in vocabulary is clear when we look at the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This dictionary includes all English words since 1150 (even those that are no longer used). It shows, with examples, when each word was first used in writing and how the meaning of a word has changed over the centuries.

Finding all this information was a huge job, although no one realized at the beginning exactly how huge. James Murray, a forty-two-year-old Scot, was appointed the director of work on the dictionary in 1879, and the aim was to finish the job in ten years. After five years, the first part of the dictionary was produced, but it only covered the letters A-ANT. Everyone realized that this was going to take a lot longer than ten years to finish. In fact, it took another forty-four. Sadly, Murray did not live to see its completion: he died in 1915, working on the letter U. However, he knew that he had helped to create a dictionary which would provide an accurate history of the development of the English language.

The first OED was completed in 1928 and had 414,800 words. The second OED, produced in 1989, explains the meanings of 615,100 words. It includes more scientific words and words from North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan. However, the OED does not include many spoken words, slang words or words from non-British kinds of English. Some people think that there are probably a million different words and expressions in English today. A third OED is planned for 2010, with the first changes to Murray's work since 1879: earlier and later examples of words will be added, as well as more details on each word's history.

The spread of new words in the twentieth century was made possible by newspapers, radio, television, films, pop music and the Internet. These ways of communication can reach huge numbers of people. Television and radio have also influenced pronunciation.

In the 1920s the BBC chose a particular accent for its presenters. This was the educated accent of the upper classes of south-east England. It became known as 'Received Pronunciation' ('RP'), or 'the King's English'. The use of RP on radio and television meant that more people heard it and connected it with social importance. It was not acceptable to use strong regional accents on television or radio, or in professions such as teaching or politics. However, in the 1960s social differences began to break down, and regional accents became more acceptable everywhere. And as the number of radio and television programmes grew, more presenters with different accents had to be employed.

Today RP is no longer a particularly important accent and people in Britain are now used to hearing all kinds of accents on radio and television. Different pronunciations, words and expressions can now travel faster and further. Some of these new words and expressions come from American English.

 

 

SELF-ASSESSMENT TEST

Module 6

1. New words in the English language in the last two hundred years have been appearing as a result of:

a) dominance of English in the world

b) establishment of the status of English as an international scientific language

c) discoveries and inventions in all areas of science

 

2. Which means of word formation are used nowadays?

a) compounding b) borrowing c) affixation

d) inversion of sounds in order e) shortening of words

3. Appearance of such words as netizen, tree hugger, wannabe, pathography, nutraceutical is the result of

a) development of science b) intercultural relations c) shift in interests

4. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) includes all English words

a) since 1150 and up to now

b) since 1800 and up to now

c) modern and rare words and phrases

 

5. The work on the first OED started in

a) 1879 b) 1150 c) 1937

 

6. The first OEDwas completed in … and had a total of … words.

a) 1989: 41, 800 b)1900; 4, 180 c) 1928; 414,800

 

7. A third OED planned for 2010 is to include:

a) more examples of words b) more details on each word's history c) slang words

8. 'Received Pronunciation' is

a) the accent of standard English in England

b) the accent of standard English throughout the world

c) the accent approximate at the most to standard English in England

 

9. 'Received Pronunciation' (RP) is also called

a) “approved pronunciation” b) “the King's English” c) “the Noble English”

10. On today’s radio and television RP

a) is still a solely acceptable accent

b) is becoming more and more corrupted

c) is no longer a particularly important accent

 

The second OED, produced in 1989, explains the meanings of 615,100 words. It includes more scientific words and words from North America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Caribbean, India and Pakistan. However, the OED does not include many spoken words, slang words or words from non-British kinds of English.

GLOSSARY

 

v Ablaut:alteration of the root vowel during the declension: mann, fót, tóþ, hnutu, bóc - menn, fét, téþ, hnyte, béc

v Amelioration: the act of improvement of the meaning: dizzy (meant 'foolish' in OE), French borrowing nice ('foolish', 'stupid') acquired new meanings (flamboyant, rare, modest, elegant) in the 15th century

v Assibilation:pronunciation with a hissing sound, making sibilant

v Back (velar):diphthongisation of vowels before back vowel in the next

v Mutation: i turns into io before r, l; p, b, f, m (hira → hiora “of them”)

v Beach-la-Mar: jargon used in trade relations in the Pacific Ocean

v Breaking: diphthongisation of front vowel under the influence of succeeding h, l, r

v Broad Australian English: most recognizable variety of Australian English; identifies Australian characters in non-Australian films and television programs

v Centum languages: (Latin 100) the western languages that descended from IE and have a word for that number closely related to centum (the Germanic languages have the word beginning with h-, which is a later sound change).

v Chancery English:the form of the English language developed in written documents of the fifteenth century in Chancery (the official writing center of royal administration)

v Cockney:local inner east London accent

v Cognate:two or more words from two or more different, but related, languages that share a common root or original

v Comparative Historic Method: reconstruction of earlier forms of a language, or of earlier languages, by comparing surviving forms in recorded languages

v Creole: a type of mixed language that develops when dominant and subordinate groups that speak different languages have prolonged contact, incorporating the basic vocabulary of the dominant language with the grammar and an admixture of words from the subordinate language and becoming the native tongue of the subordinate group

v Cultivated Australian English: variety of Australian English that has many similarities to British RP, and is often mistaken for it. It is now spoken by less than 10% of the population.

v Dual number: designating or pertaining to a number category that indicates two persons or things, as in Old English for the 1^st and 2^nd persons wit “we two”, git “we two”

v Estuary English: a new accent combining RP and Cockney

v Gemination:doubling of consonants (except for -r-) followed by -j after a short consonant: tælian → tellan, swæfian → swebban (later ff → bb)

v General Australian English: the variety that the majority of Australians use; it predominates among modern Australian films and television programs

v Great Vowel Shift: a massive sound change affecting English long vowels during the 15^th to 18^th centuries: long vowels shifted upwards

v Grimm’s Law: a set of relationships among the consonants of the Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages, first codified and published by Jakob Grimm in 1822

v Hardening:turning of voiced fricativesintovoiced plosives [ð, v, γ → d, b, g]: Gt broþar →Grm Bruder

v i - mutation:fronting and raising of all vowels, except i and e, caused by i (or j) in the next syllable: (framian → fremman)

v Inkhorn terms:words from Latin or Romance languages, often polysyllabic and of arcane, scientific, or aesthetic resonance, coined and introduced into English in the 16th and 17th centuries.

v Kennings: unique poetic vocabulary of OE literature, especially in metaphorical constructions: hronrad (whale road, or sea)

v Kettering accent: a mixture of East Midlands, East Anglian, Scottish, Cockney

v Kroo-English: jargon used by the Negroes in Liberia and on the coastline of Guinea and Western Africa, a language bases of English mixed with Portuguese vocabulary

v Kurgans:the speakers of Proto - Indo - European (southern Russia, 5000 BC)

v Macron:a diacriticalmark placed above a vowel to indicate a long sound or phonetic value in pronunciation (ā)

v Metathesis:inversion of sounds in order. We hear this when we identify certain regional dialects by the pronunciation “ aks ” for “ ask. ” ME brid → bird; axian → ask; thurgh → through; beorht → bright.

v Minim: a short vertical stroke of a penwhich in adjacent position is difficult to read

v Received Pronunciation (RP):"the British accent" - the variant of English used by radio and television

v Rhotacism: modification of –s into –r: Gt raisjan→ OE r æ: ran (to rear)

v Palatalization: diphthongisation of a front vowel under the influence of preceding palatal k’(c), sk’ (sc), j (g, or Z) (gefan → gi efan)

v Pejoration: the process or conditioning of worsening or generating (OE ceorl ('peasant') → ME cherl, "churl")

v Picts: non-Indo-European peoples settling the territory of the British Isles before the 7^th century

v Pidgin: a simplified form of speech, usually a mixture of two or more languages that has a rudimentary grammar and vocabulary and is used for communication between groups speaking different languages. Grammatical features are: absence of morphological changes of words, the plural does not differ from the singular, the verbs are deprived of tense - forms, e.g.

v Satem languages:(Old Persian 100) eastern languages

v Umlaut: a change in a vowel sound caused by partial assimilation to a vowel or semivowel occurring in the following syllable

v K. Verner’s law: the sound law of conditioning environment: a phonological change in one phoneme could depend on the neighbouring phonemes and the position of the z:\wikiStress_(linguistics) accent within the same word

 

 

TOPICS FOR REPORTS

 

1. The comparative historical method.
2. The Proto-Germanic language: linguistic peculiarities.
3. The Gothic language – the only written trace of the early Germanic tribes.
4. The Great Consonant Shift. Interpretation of the Great Consonant Shift.
5. The Vikings: their global colonization and linguistic influence (in Britain, Normandy, Russia, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Iceland, Greenland, etc).
6. The prefixes and suffixes in Old English: their origin and meaning.
7. The Celtic language: its original variant and development.
8. The Old English dialects.
9. The written records of the Old English language. The runic alphabet.
10. Origin and development of Old English vowels (Comparison of Gothic and Old English).
11. Historical background of the Middle English period.
12. The Middle English dialects. The London dialect.
13. Linguistic situation on the British Isles after the Norman Conquest.
14. Chaucer as a founder of the literary dialect. Major features of Chaucer’s English.
15. Peculiarities of the Scottish language.
16. Differences in the Middle English dialects.
17. Development of continuous and perfect aspects.
18. Development of the gerund and participle
19. Development of the article.
20. History of Prefixation.
21. History of Suffixation.
22. W. Shakespeare’s language.
23. The first English dictionaries.
24. The phenomenon and interpretation of the Great Vowel Shift.
25. Modification of Early New English vowels.
26. Development of the forms of the future tense.
27. Development of auxiliary functions of the verb to do.
28. Development of the non-finite forms of the verb.
29. Local inner east London accent-Cockney.
30. English in India (Nigeria, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, etc) (one country for choice).
31. American slang.
32. English words that survived in the United States.
33. Specificity of the English Language in Internet (Airspeak, Seaspeak, science) (one for choice).
34. Phonetic peculiarities of the Canadian English.
35. The first Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
36. English in Scotland, Wales, Ireland.
37. Historical development of syntactical relations in word combinations.
38. The history of the structure of the English simple sentence.
39. The history of the structure of the English complex and compound sentence.
40. The history of the English vowels.
41. The history of the English consonants.
42. The history of the English noun.
43. The history of the English verb.
44. The history of the English adjective.
45. The history of the English article.
46. The history of the English numeral.
47. The history of the English modal verbs.
48. The history of the English spelling.
49. Development of the English passive voice.
50. Development of the English mood.

RECOMMENDED LITERATURE

 

1.Арсеньева М.Г. Балашова С.П., Берков В.П., Соловьева Л.Н. Введение в германскую филологию. - М., 1980.

2.Бруннер К. История английского языка. – Том 1. – М., Изд-во иностранной литературы, 1955. – 322 с.

3.Верба Л.Г. Історія англійської мови. Посібник для студентів та викладачів вищих навчальних закладів. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2004. – 304 с.

4.Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л. П. История английского языка. – М., 1978, 1998.

5.Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. – М., 1968.

6.Жлуктенко Ю.О., Яворська Г.А. Вступ до германського мовознавства. – К., “Вища школа”, 1986.

7.Майе А. Основные особенности германской группы языков. – М., 1952.

8.Михайлова Л.А., Ольмезова Н.В. The History of the English Language. – Одесса, ЮУГПУ им. К.Д.Ушинского, 2006. – 115 с.

9.Прокош Э. Сравнительна грамматика германских языков \ Э. Прокош. - М., 1954.

10. Расторгуева Т.А. История английского языка: Учебник. – М.,”Изд-во Астрель”, “Изд-во АСТ”, 2003. – 348с.

11. Сравнительна грамматика германских языков: в 5 т. – М., 1962-1966. Стеблин – Каменский М.И. История скандинавских языков. – М. - Л., 1953.

12. Ходина Н.Т. Фонетические и морфологические особенности германских языков. Учебно-методическое пособие по спец. 022600 ОПД.Ф. 02.1.1. - Воронеж, Воронежский государственный университет, 2003.

 

13. Crystal D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. – BCA, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

14. Lerer S. The History of the English Language: Lectures. Part 1. - Stanford, The Teaching Company Limited Partnership, 1998.

15. Viney B. The History of the English Language. – Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. – 62 p.

CONTENTS

 

Introduction 3

Module 1. The Subject Matter of the History of the English Language. The Comparative Historical Method. Analysis of Development of Languages 6

Module 2. Germanic languages 15

Module 3. Old English 23

Module 4. Middle English 42

Module 5. New English: the Earlier Period 64

Module 6. Modern English 78

Glossary 83

Topics for report 87

Recommended literature 89

 

 

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