The origins of English

The origins of language

• emerged ca. 145,000 years ago
• capacity for language is uniquely human and given by the brain structure
• form and structure of the first language is unknown
• based on what we know about language change today, it is plausible that the multitude of contemporary languages have indeed developed from one origin
• based on what we know about language change today, it is plausible that the multitude of contemporary languages have indeed developed from one origin it is possible that the development of language was dictated by the modern human behaviour

Changes in the pronunciation of Germanic before the invasion of Britain

• The First Germanic Sound Shift = subgroup of the speakers of Proto-Indo-European language adopted some changes in pronunciation
• two parts - Grimm's Law and Verner's Law
• Grimm's Law describes the shift in pronunciation of certain consonants
  • /b, d, g/ lost their voicing -> /p, t, k/
    • Latin - ad x English - at, Latin - jugum x English - yoke
  • /p, t, k/ changed into fricatives /f, θ, h/
    • Latin - piscus x English - fish, Latin - cordis x English - heart
  • however - /p, t, k/ after /s/ and before voiceless stops remained
    • Latin - stella x English - star; Latin - noctis x English - night
• Verner's Law explains the effect of word stress on pronunciation
  • voiceless fricatives /f, s, θ, ʃ/ became voiced if the preceeding syllable was originally unstressed
  • Latin - pater x English - father - the stress was originally on the second syllable

The world of Germanic people

• warlike and trade orientated
  • during the Bronze age (La Tene culture) stood in trade with the Greeks and also exercised an influence on the Germanic peoples to the north and east
  • During the Iron Age (second half of the first millennium BCE) major changes in trade and social organisation took place, and Roman invasion started on a course of expansion which would go well beyond its Italian basis
  • The Germanic peoples lived principally from animal husbandry, hunting and agriculture
  • Germanic-Roman contact has been often of a military nature, whether facing them as enemies or joining them as members of the Roman army
  • Gold coins introduced in 125 BCE

The Influence of the Roman World and of Latin

1. Raising expectations about lifestyles and new ways of organising society.
2. Latin influence in the military area led to the adoption of the words such as camp, mile, street, road
3. The trade brought words like pound, wine
4. The Christianisation of Goths brought words like bishop, Saturday

Germanic Migrations Why?

1. Overpopulation
2. Pressure from the outside inwards like Huns
3. Looked for better pastures

A family model in the context of language change

• a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language of that family
• in the course of language change, ancient families of languages emerged which further diverged to make up the languages we can observe at present
• the term 'family' reflects the tree model of language origination
• proto-language (gained as a result of reconstruction) is labelled metaphorically as the mother of a language family (for English Proto-Germanic) and the sublanguages as its daughters/granddaughters (West Germanic, Low German, English)
• plus, the Germanic language family itself belongs to a larger grouping known as the Indo-European language family (include nine families: Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indian, Iranian, Italic)
• membership of languages in a language family is established by comparative linguistics
• leads from language varieties to dialectal differences and later to completely different languages
• problem: assumes only divergence and therefore doesn’t take into account borrowing and other processes by which languages grow more similar