LinguisticsA Study of English

from 1066 to the present

Prepared byBrenda White, Communication Arts Dept.

Joplin High School, Joplin, Mo.July 2006

Language and Communication History of the English Language English: Old, Middle, and Modern American English Ozark Dialect Acquiring Language Sounds and Sound Production Do Animals Have Language? Portfolio

Topics of Study

Language and Communication

What are the characteristics of language? Terms and Definitions Be a Linguist

Seven Characteristics of LanguageUse these to decide whether something is a language.• It can change and adapt as required.• You can speak to and be understood by others who

know that language.• It relates sounds or gestures to meanings.• It can negate, ask questions, and refer to the past or

future.• It is acquired without external instruction.• It is used creatively rather than in response to

internal or external stimuli.• It has symbols that have discrete meanings.

Terms and Definitions

• Linguistics: the science that is concerned with the natures of human languages, their grammars and use

• Alphabet: a series of symbols where each symbol represents a designated sound or gesture

• Arbitrary: in linguistics, it describes the property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced or signed and its meaning. (i.e., If language weren’t arbitrary, every language would have the same words for the same meanings.)

• Grammar: Everything a speaker knows about a language. It includes what the speaker knows about syntax, semantics, and lexicon.

• Orthography: the written form of a language; spelling

Discussion, Inquiry? How are language and communication different?

? Which came first and why do you think that?

? How did people communicate before spoken

language?

? Is pointing language? Are grunts? Are drawings? Why

or why not?

? Is ASL a language? Why do you think that?

? Who makes the rules?

Types of Communication•Interactional Language is used primarily to establish and maintain social relations. You attend a party and begin “small talk” to those around you. You talk about the weather, sports, etc. These subjects are fairly predictable conversational topics, and their primary purpose is to establish and maintain social bridges and relationships.•Transactional Language has a much different purpose than interactional language. It is used to transmit knowledge, skills, or information. It is message-oriented because its purpose is to create a change in the listener’s knowledge.

Write down an example of each type of language that you have experienced recently.

Types of Communication•Direct (intentional) communication deals with meaning -- statements that provide few alternative understandings: “Norm caught a 5-pound black bass.” “Sally lived in Israel for six months.” Direct communication is common and offers few challenges.•Indirect (inferential) communication provides more alternative understandings. A friend is wearing one black and one brown sock. What are some possible meanings you can ascribe to this observation? Your friend is a sloppy dresser? Your friend is colorblind? Your friend dressed in the dark? Your friend has a pile of dirty clothes and had only two unmatched but clean socks in the dresser drawer? Indirect communication often involves metaphors or idioms. “You’re way off base.” “That assignment is a piece of cake.”Write down an example of each type of language that you have experienced recently.

Be a Linguist:Language and Communication

On the following pages you will find quotes about language and communication. Your task is to choose two of the quotes that are similar or opposed so that they can be discussed. Write a long paragraph that discusses those quotations, their meanings, their implications, their applications. Discuss them in terms of communication and/or language.

Print your work. Be sure your name and hour are on the page.

This goes into your Linguistics portfolio, which will be submitted at the end of the course.

A few words about words

1. Never miss a good chance to shut up. - Anonymous

2. Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. - Anonymous

3. Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand. - Anonymous

4. It’s not what you tell them, it’s what they hear. - Red Auerback

5. Heaven, n: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. - Ambrose Bierce

More words about words …6. Language is the biggest barrier to human progress

because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old-fashioned way. - Edward de Bono

7. There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. - Dale Carnegie

8. To have another language is to possess a second soul. - Charlemagne

9. From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put. - Winston Churchill

More words about words …

10. Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment. - Ira Gassen

12. Dance is the hidden language of the soul, of the body. - Martha Graham

13. Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs. - Jack Lynch

14. Be sincere; be brief; be seated. - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The final words about words

15. England and America are two countries divided by a common language. - George Bernard Shaw

16. Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. - Lily Tomlin

17. Numbers constitute the only universal language. - Nathanael West

18. English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education -- sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.

- E. B. White

History of the

English Language

o Language MapoWhere in the world is Indo-European?oTimeline of EnglishoBe a Linguist

One of many languages in the world

• English is descended from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European Languages.• By virtue of the prominence of the countries (chiefly U.S. and Britain) who speak it, English is currently the Lingua Franca.• Lingua Franca refers to the language that is recognized globally and is used for international travel and international commerce.• Many other countries in the world teach English to all their students as a required subject.• Before English, French was the Lingua Franca.

Indo-European Language Chart

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/hell/families/indoeuropean/

Germanic Stem

World Map of IE Languages

The nations surrounded by the red line are Indo-European-speaking nations. Many of the nations were introduced to English when they were British colonies. Some were introduced to the IE family through France or Spain, however. This is an approximate map. There are, of course, indigenous languages such as Native American, Australian aboriginal languages and others. The red border in central Europe excludes Hungary. Finland and Estonia are not IE-speaking languages, although they are surrounded by other countries who are.

Indo-European Language Tree, Centum

Using the website above, write the answers to the following questions.

1. How many languages from this branch are extinct?2. How is it that Latin is technically an extinct language but is still in use?3. How much of Ireland speaks the Irish Gaelic language?4. The Hittite language was spoken in what modern country?5. True or False. Austrians speak Modern High German.6. Afrikaans is spoken chiefly in what part of Africa?7. Besides Denmark, Danish is spoken in what country?8. True or False. The boot heel of Italy speaks Modern Greek.9. Name three countries who once spoke now-extinct Gothic.10. True or False. Part of Norway speaks Icelandic.11. Cornish was spoken only in what country?12. The origin and spread of Proto-Indo-European languages is either hypothetical or substantiated. Which is it?13. Spanish is spoken in how many identifiable areas of the world?14. Which South American country speaks Portuguese?15. True or False. The three Frisian languages are easily understood by all speakers.16. Swedish is spoken in what other country’s capital?17. Norwegian is spoken on what island?18. Provencal is spoken mostly in the southern region of what country?19. What entire continent besides North America speaks English?20. Name the nine languages descended from Latin that are not extinct.21. Modern Greek descends from what major branch of Proto-Indo-European?22. Afrikaans, English, Modern High German, and Danish all descend from what main branch of Proto-Indo-European?23. What major branches of Proto-Indo-European are extinct?24. Name the path of English beginning with Proto-Indo-European.25. Is English more like Modern High German or Modern Low German?

http://www.danshort.com/ie/iecentum_c.shtml

1066: the Norman Conquest

or Why We Could Be Speaking FrenchBack in 1066, the Norman French successfully invaded England. From that time until the Normans were defeated a few hundred years later, the aristocratic class in England spoke French. The working class, however, stuck with English. Many, many new words were formed at that time, a mix between French and English. Many of our words today came from that mixing and adapting of languages. 1066 is the unofficial end of Old English and the beginning of Middle English.

Timeline of the English Language

The earliest known residents of the British Isles were the Celts who spoke Celtic languages -- a separate branch of the Indo-European language family tree. Over the centuries the British Isles were invaded and conquered by various people, who brought their languages and customs with them as they settled in their new lives. There is now very little Celtic influence left in English. The earliest time when we can say that English was spoken was in the 5th century CE (common era - a politically-correct term used to replace AD).

FYI, “England” from “Enga Land” from “Angle Land” (Land of the Angles, a people of northern Germany). Their name lives on in the district of England named East Anglia and also in the Anglican Church.

DictionariesThere are many different types of dictionaries.

The ones we are most familiar with give us information about particular words. Reading a dictionary entry gives us:

• Etymology• Pronunciation• Definitions• Part(s) of speech• Common usage• Type of word

Oxford English Dictionary entries are somewhat different. Besides all the above information, the OED gives the complete history of the word all the way back to its first recorded use.

Be A LinguistHistory of the English Language

•This class has access to the OED online. •Choose a word. The more interesting the word, the better. Do not choose an everyday word. •Your task is to find that word in the OED, and write a short report (one page or less) including all the following information about the word: original use, meaning; current use, meaning; etymology; use in a sentence with current meaning.•Put this document in your Linguistics portfolio. Be sure to include your name and hour.•Your word should be interesting and appropriate.

Old, Middle, and Modern

Beowulf to the InternetNew Words

Be a Linguist

English

http://www.librarius.com/canttran/mttrfs.htm

Middle English

English in History• Old English - mid-fifth century to mid-twelfth century Old English

• Middle English - approximately 1066 to the mid- to late-15th century Middle English

• Modern English is continually changing. New Words in English

There are no exact times for the end of one era of English and the beginning of another. The language gradually melded from one to the next. People didn’t wake up on New Year’s Day, 1200, and start speaking Middle English. Let’s take William Shakespeare as an example. He lived during the infancy of Modern English, and that is one thing that makes his works sometimes difficult for us understand: he is using mostly Modern English, but there is enough Middle English leftover in his word endings and sentence constructions that it sometimes throws us off. But Shakespeare didn’t sit around and wait for the language to change. He invented thousands of new words which he used in his plays.

What shapes the change of one language period to another? The speakers do. New words are coined. New inventions spark new vocabulary. New people invade your country and take over. People do new things; new stuff happens. Some changes are subtle, some aren’t.

Why does Language Change?

New Words that have entered the language in the last 50 years

HINT: What happened in history that might have contributed new words?

Do NOT use commercial words (e.g., iPhone)

TERMIntegrated Circuit

Software

HISTORICAL EVENTS

Be A LinguistOld, Middle, and Modern English

Image search “Old English Manuscripts” Print the best example. Label it.• Image search “Middle English Manuscripts” Print the best example. Label it.• Image search “Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” Print the best example of writing and your favorite art work. Label them.• Image search “Modern English Manuscripts” and find a modern translation alongside an older type of manuscript. Print and label it.•Save this document to your Linguistics portfolio.

American English

DialectsPidgin and CreoleBe a Grammarian

Be a Linguist

Dialect VocabularyIDIOLECT – The unique characteristics of an individual speaker

DIALECT – Mutually intelligible variety of a language that differs in systematic ways from other varieties

DIALECT AREA – A geographic area defined by the predominant use of a particular variety of language

DIALECT LEVELING – Movement toward greater uniformity or decrease in variations among dialects; regularization of dialects

COMMUNICATIVE ISOLATION – Describes limited or no contact between speakers of the same language

ACCENT - Characteristic of speech that conveys information about a person’s dialect; characteristic of the speech of someone who is not a native speaker

Idiolect? Dialect?•English speakers can talk and be understood by other English speakers, yet no two speak exactly alike. Each has their own IDIOLECT.

•Differences might be based on age, sex, size, speech rates, emotional state, state of health, or whether English is a first language (L1).

•A dialect is not an inferior or degraded form of a language. In fact, a language is a collection of dialects.

How do dialects develop?•Dialects develop when people who all speak one language are

separated geographically or socially.•Dialects develop when the linguistic changes that occur in one area do not necessarily spread to another.•Dialects occur within a group, linguistic changes occur, and those changes spread and are then learned by the next generation.•When a physical or social barrier exists – mountain, river, ocean, political, racial, or religious – linguistic changes do not spread easily and dialect differences are reinforced.•A change that occurs in one region and fails to spread to another region gives rise to REGIONAL DIALECT. Each regional dialect has its own “character” or “flavor”•Changes in grammar take place gradually and spread slowly. Change takes place over several generations of speakers.•Dialect differences tend to increase proportionately to the degree of COMMUNICATIVE ISOLATION. Today, even far-flung groups are more likely to communicate than earlier in history.

http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html

U.S. Dialect Regions

Dialects: the American Way

By the time of the American Revolution, there were three main dialect areas in the Colonies: Northern dialect, spoken in New England and around the Hudson River; Midland dialect, spoken in Pennsylvania; and Southern dialect, spoken in areas south.

The characteristic dropped r (car – cah; farm – fahm) was carried into these three dialect regions and remains today in Boston, New York, and Savannah. These regions maintained close ties to Southern England, who also had the dropped r in their dialect.

As settlers came from Northern England, where they did not drop their r’s, and as westward expansion began in the United States, the dialects merged and DIALECT LEVELING occurred in the West.

More waves of immigrants brought non-English speaking groups to the United States who settled in various parts of the country. Their native languages affected the dialect in that region.

Dialect? Language?The rule of thumb is that when dialects become mutually unintelligible, that is when the speakers of one dialect group can no longer understand the speakers of another dialect group, these dialects become different languages.

Mutually unintelligible is not easy to characterize.---Danes (Danish), Norwegians (Norwegian) and Swedes (Swedish) can all speak and be understood, although their languages have different grammatical structures and are in different countries.---Hindi (India) and Urdu (Pakistan) are about as different as British English and American English.---On the other hand, China’s two mutually-unintelligible main languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, are often referred to as dialects since they are spoken in the same country and share an alphabet.---How about Cajun?

“A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” – Max Weinreich

Regional dialects may differ in the words people use for the same object, as illustrated by the following.

Do you call it a pail or a bucket? Do you draw water from a faucet or a spigot? Do you pull down the blinds, the shades, or the curtains when it gets dark? Do you wheel the baby, or do you ride it or roll it? Is it a baby carriage, a buggy, a pram, a coach, or a cab?

People take a lift to the first floor in England, but an elevator to the second floor in the United States. They get five gallons of petrol (not gas) in London; in Britain, a public school is “private” (you have to pay), and if a student showed up there wearing pants instead of trousers he would be sent home to get dressed.

If you ask for a tonic in Boston you will get a drink called soda or soda-pop in Los Angeles. A freeway in Los Angeles is a thruway in New York, a parkway in New Jersey, a motorway in England, and an expressway or turnpike in other dialect areas.

Language, like an alphabet, is ARBITRARY.

Which word is “correct”?

Banned Languages: You can’t say that!

Because of the belief that some languages are better or more desirable than others, from time to time languages have been banned.

Cajun English and French were banned in Louisiana by practice until the 1980’s. People report being punished in school for using these languages.

For many years, American Indian languages were banned in federal and state schools on reservations.

A ban on speaking Korean in Korea was imposed by the Japanese during their occupation of Korea between 1910 and 1945.

As recently as 2001, the New York Times reported that Singapore wanted its citizens to speak English, not Singlish, a form of English with elements of Malay, Tamil, Mandarin Chinese and other Chinese dialects.

A number of years ago in France, where an academy of scholars determined what constitutes the “official French language”, they enacted a law forbidding the use of Franglais (combination of French and English).

Revived Languages: Oh, yes I can!

Some languages have come back from the dead or near-dead.

Quebec speaks almost entirely French although the rest of Canada speaks English.

Gaelic, or Irish, is making a comeback in hundreds of schools in Ireland and Northern Ireland after being nearly gone from regular use.

The Academy of the Hebrew Language in Israel undertook the most massive revival of a language ever in history. They sought to resuscitate an ancient written language to serve the daily everyday needs of the people. Twenty-three lexicologists worked with the Bible and the Talmud to add new words to the language.

Pidgin & CreoleWhen people from different-speaking countries want to trade and need to communicate, they use elements of both languages and create a PIDGIN language, sometimes called a trade language.

Usually, a pidgin language takes on the grammatical rules of one or the other of the two languages.

Although pidgin languages are used to communicate, they are generally not good at expressing fine distinctions of meaning:

“I include pidgin English … even though I am referred to in that splendid language as ‘Fella belong Mrs. Queen’.” – Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II

When a pidgin language is adopted by a community, forms its own lexicon, grammatical structures and rules, and children learn it as their first language, it is called a CREOLE language.

Be A Grammarian

Follow the link below where you will find a website that has several articles about

dialects and language.1. Choose one article. Print it if you need

to.2. Identify the main purpose of the article.3. Identify all the main points of the

article.4. Comment on the contents of the

article.5. Compile your analysis in a logical, easy-

to-read format.

http://www.pbs.org/speak/words/

Be A LinguistListen to the NPR report.

DARE online.A portion of the Dictionary of Regional American

English (DARE) is online. The majority of the dictionary is only available in print, to which we do

not have access.You will be given a word/term that can be researched

online. Your task is to discover and report on the word’s meaning and its origin. Tell the first known

origin and the current usage, including dialect region(s) involved. Include pertinent information or

interesting stories about the word. Present your material in a logical, understandable manner. This

report should be logical and informative. Include it in your Linguistics portfolio.

Ozark Dialec

tShakespeare’s

English:Appalachia to

The Ozark HillsBe a Linguist

Ozark Dialect Origins•Who was Vance Randolph, and why did he care?•Communicative Isolation is the key to understanding the development of Ozark dialect.•Good luck, bad luck omens•Superstitions•“Hidden in the Hills”

Be A LinguistOzark Dialect

•In pairs, you will compile a list of Ozark words that you can identify. •Use family members, friends, others who might know about how it “used to sound around here.” •Note the common modern word that is now used in its place, and tell whether it has changed in meaning. •Present in an informative, understandable format. Each person needs his or her own copy.

Acquiring

Language

•Stages of Language Acquisition•Theories of Language Acquisition•Be a Linguist

Stages of Language Acquisition

•COOING: Appears about 6 months or so. All infants coo using all the sounds from every language. Even congenitally deaf children coo.•BABBLING: Appears around 9-10 months. Infants are starting to selectively use the sounds from their native language•HOLOPHRASES: One-word utterances. At around 12 months, children start using words.•TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH: Children start making multi-word utterances that lack function words at about 2 years of age.•NORMAL SPEECH: By about 5 or 6 years of age, children have almost normal speech.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Nature v. Nurture: Critical Period Hypothesis; Second Language Acquisition, Universal Grammar

Hypothesis Theory; Imitation and Modeling Theory

Hypothesis Theory:• As children are exposed to language, they form hypotheses. Then, they modify language appropriately.

Imitation and Modeling Theory:• Children will sound like the adults around them. They will share the same accents and idioms. Adults use child-directed speech to make themselves understood to children. Motherese is child-directed speech.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Hypothesis Theory; Imitation and Modeling Theory;Critical Period Hypothesis; Second Language Acquisition

Nature v. Nurture: NATURE• Humans perceive speech sounds better than other sounds.•Congenitally deaf children learn sign language at about the same rate that other children learn spoken language, and they go through roughly the same stages.•Parts of the brain seem to be specialized for language processing. (Brain Scanning Techniques and Basics of Brain Imaging)

•Our larynx seems to have no other purpose except to facilitate speech.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Hypothesis Theory; Imitation and Modeling Theory; Second Language Acquisition; Universal Grammar

Nature v. Nurture: NURTURECritical Period HypothesisThe Critical Period Hypothesis explains the Nurture argument.

• Case studies have indicated that if children are not exposed to language by their early teens, they will never be able to fully learn it.• Much of this information refers to children who were born deaf to hearing parents who were not aware the child was deaf.• Children exposed to ASL before age 6 did much better with complex signs than those not exposed until after age 12.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Hypothesis Theory; Imitation and Modeling Theory; Nature v. Nurture, Critical Period Hypothesis; Universal Grammar

Second Language Acquisition•Children exposed to a new language before the age of 3 will be able to learn that language and speak without an accent. However, if a person learns the new language later, he or she can learn to speak it, but with an accent.•There’s something about puberty, researchers think, that changes the way a person acquires a new language.

Theories of Language Acquisition

2

Noam Chomsky, LAD, and Universal Grammar•Born in 1928, Noam Chomsky is a 30-year linguistics professor at MIT and a widely-respected linguistic scholar and author. He is still alive.•He says that humans are hard-wired for language. He also says that humans have in their brains a built-in system called a Language Acquisition Device to facilitate their learning of language. Within this LAD is all the information that is common to all languages in the world, and when children learn a language they only learn how to speak the specific words; they already innately know the constructions.

NOTE: PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans confirm the presence of an area in the brain that appears to govern language.

Theories of Language Acquisition

Noam Chomsky, LAD, and Universal Grammar• To support his hard-wired theory, Chomsky says that it is impossible for humans to acquire language through imitation or through any other known method other than an innate ability. Chomsky developed this theory that includes Universal Grammar. • Universal Grammar states that every language has common properties, e.g., nouns, verbs, a way to modify, a way to ask a question or negate. Those qualities, he says, are innate to all humans and play a key role in language acquisition.

Be A LinguistAcquiring Language

OPTION 1: Test a baby or child 2 months to 3 years to see how many

words that child recognizes. 1. Your task is to first make a list of at least 30 words you

want to test for; make them age appropriate.2. Next, make a device and/or a design a procedure to test

for word recognition. Design a chart to record results.3. Chart your results using at least one, or two, children.4. In a report, describe the stage of language acquisition

and its characteristics that were observed.OPTION 2:

Write an essay that compares, contrasts, and discusses the at least two theories of language acquisition.

Sounds and Sound

Production• Physical structures• International Phonetic

Alphabet• Be a Linguist

Saying and Seeing Sounds

•The shape of your mouth, whether or not you have all your teeth (especially front ones) or whether you have nasal congestion all affect the way you speak. Every structure in your mouth as well as some in your throat govern your speech.•All those various sounds that you make have been isolated, and an alphabet based on those sounds has been developed called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

All sounds are produced in your

head -- specifically your mouth, throat,

and nasal cavity.

IPA

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a set of symbols that represent sounds produced in the English language. Other sounds are produced in other languages which are not represented here.

Chart 1 Chart 2

Be A LinguistUsing the IPA, write your name, the name

of your favorite song or band, and a sentence about yourself. Remember, use

only IPA symbols in your work.

Do Animals

Have Language

?Language Review

Animal CommunicationAnimal Research

Be a Linguist

ReviewSeven Characteristics of

LanguageUse these to decide whether something is a language.

It can change and adapt as required. You can speak to and be understood by others who know

that language. It relates sounds or gestures to meanings. It can negate, ask questions, and refer to the past or

future. It is acquired without external instruction. It is used creatively rather than in response to internal or

external stimuli. It has symbols that have discrete meanings.

Be A LinguistRead what linguists and researchers had to say about language in animals using the link below. Then visit the website below and see what researchers are

doing today in this interesting field. You decide: do animals have the capacity for

language? Why or why not? Write a paper that explains your considered opinion, and give support for your

conclusions.Linguists say …

New research says …Topics

Linguistics Portfolio

Gather all your projects, quizzes, assignments and notes. Put them in order. Design a linguistically-themed cover page. Bind them together and turn your portfolio

in to me.

Topics