Derivation of Language Study Origin

7/31/2019 Derivation of Language Study Origin

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II.2 Derivation of Language and Language studyOrigin of language:

We have no exact knowledge of the origins of language. But we can suggest how suchlanguage might be obtained. There are some theories of the origins of language: 3

- The bow-wow theory: the people started imitating the sounds of the environment,

like animal calls. The main evidence would be the use of onomatopoeic words. 3

- The pooh-pooh theory: the people made instinctive sounds of pain, anger, or other

emotion. The main evidence would be the universal use of sounds as interjections. 3

- The ding-dong theory: the people produced sounds which in some way reflected or

were in harmony with environment. The main evidence would be the universal use

of sounds for words of certain meaning. 3

- The ye-he-ho theory: while people worked together, their physical efforts produced

communal, rhythmical grunts, which developed into chants, and thus language. The

main evidence would be the universal use of prosodic features, especially ofrhythm. 3

- The la-la theory: language arose because of the sounds associated with love,

games and feelings. 3

The paleontological evidence shows that ancient humans started producing shouts andsounds with no meanings. Then they learned how to use these sounds to communicatebetween them. 4

AGES OF LANGUAGE: 4

Paleoglothic and Mesoglothic:

1 000 000 years ago

They used sounds, shouts, gestures, imitation.

Their communication was similar to babys or animals communication.

There was more than one tongue, but less than 100 worldwide.

The paleoglothic is the longest age of language.

They started to paint objects.

Diversity of sounds: tone, duration, volume, repetition, imitation, emotions.

They used their throats, noses, mouths, tongues, lips, teeth and jaw.

Some ancient elements:

Pek - bone Tek- hand

1


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Nek- eye, lightKep- headPet- feet, walkTet- teeth, eatPen- pen, featherNem- name, tongue

Wet- waterWen- want

2


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Neoglothic

The first language.

10 000 years ago

Lots of languages

Simple word+ Simple word = new and complex word

Graphic

Different ways to represent the words on rocks, paper, plants

Writing

Sumer writing

Greeks alphabet

Rome Latin

Some subjects about language are classified as sciences, some are usually not.The linguistic studies the bridge that links the sciences and arts. The studies thatpay more attention to language include physiology, psychology, logic,communication, anthropology, philosophy, and sociology. 5

The objective of the scientific study of language is to figure out how languageswork and how language, in general, works. Studying language scientifically, meansto construct a theory of how language works, and to derive from it methods fordescribing languages. The theory is based on the observations of languageactivity. The statements should be scientific, so they must be: 5

Rigorous

Consistent

And objective

The idea that language can be the object of scientific study is not new. It has onlybecome popular because people found out that it has important applications. Themain application of scientific study of language is teaching. 5

The term linguistics sciences covers two subjects: linguistics and phonetics. Theyare related because they look to the same material. But they are different becausethey study the language from different points of view. The language is an activity offour basic kinds: 5

Production Perception


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Speaking - Listening

Writing - Reading

The processes of speaking and writing can be observed and measured, but not thereading or listening processes. 5

Linguistics is the study and description of languages structure and nature. Thelinguistic science is derived in three principal levels: 5

Substance: the substance is the raw material of auditory (phonic substance)

or visual (graphic substance). It is called the material too.

Form: the form is the internal structure. It is called the structural too.

Context: the context is the relation of the language to other features of the

situations in which language operates. It is called the environment too.

The study of phonic substance is called phonetics. The language is considered asan organized system of sounds and noises, so the phonetics studies the sounds,and the linguistics, the organization. 5

II.3 Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans 6

The languages around the world are grouped in families, so they can be studied.These are some families:

Italic

Celtic

Germanic

Baltic

Slavic

These families have affinities with Aryan languages, which were spoken in farawayIndia. They share a common ancestor: The Indo-European.The linguists are trying to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary. Thisreconstruction is followed by a brief description of some of the main features of theProto-Indo-European language and the people who used to speak it: the Indo-Europeans.

The Indo-European languages have similarities in words between them. Thesesimilarities provide evidence for the phonetic shape of the Proto-Indo-Europeanlanguage. No single language in the family preserves a word intact; they havebeen altered over time. The comparative linguistics and etymology study theregularity of sound correspondences. The comparative method explains thedifferent forms in this variety of languages by the reconstruction of a unitarycommon prototype; a common ancestor.PROTOINDO-EUROPEAN GRAMMAR: SOUNDS AND FORMS


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The success of the comparative method with the Indo-European family is thenumber and precision of the similarities in sound and morphology among thelanguages.SPEECH SOUNDS THEIR ALTERNATIONSThe system of sounds in the Proto-Indo-European was rich in stop consonants and

poor in continuants. The Proto-Indo-European sounds were: Stop consonants

o Unvoiced series:p, t, k, kw

o Voiced series: b, d, g, gw

o Voiced aspirate or murmured series: bh, dh, gh, gwh. Pronounced

like the voiced series but followed by a puff of breath.

Continuant consonants: such as English f, v, th, s and z.

Nasal consonant: m and n

Liquids: rand l.

Glides: wand ycould function as consonants and vowels (u and i).

Vowels: a, e, o, i, u.

Diphthongs: ei, oi, ai, eu, ou, au. The diphthongs got modified with the

sound / /.

The sound is preserved in cuneiform documents from the second millennium B.C.Apophonyorablaut: it was the system of vocalic alternations characteristic of theIndo-European. The vocalic alternations express the present and the past tenses;they changed the /e/ to /o/.GRAMMATICAL FORMS AND SYNTAXThe Proto-Indo-European was an inflected language. The words had a lot ofvariations in their endings. Nouns had different endings for subject, direct object,possessive, singular, plural, etc. The verbs had different endings for each person,numbers, active, passive, tenses, moods, etc. Practically none of these variationsare preserved in modern English, but they are in Germanic, Latin and Greek.

Structure of all = ROOT + 1 or more SUFFIXES (verbal /nominal) +

ENDINGInflected words

The root plus the suffix or suffixes constituted the stem. The stem represented thebasic lexical stock of Proto-Indo-European. The Proto-Indo-European had very fewprefixes. The composition was the combining of two words or notions into a singleword.SEMANTICS


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It is perhaps harder to reconstruct the meaning than to reconstruct the linguisticform. It can only be extrapolated from the meanings of its descendants.LEXICON AND CULTURELanguage is a social fact, so we talk about an existence of a prehistoric society, aspeech community, the society of Indo-Europeans. The language is expression of

culture and a part of it. The reconstruction of vocabulary gives nonmaterial culture.To reconstruct the abstract concepts as religion the archeologists examine thetemples, sanctuaries, idols, etc. By this way we have got the basic vocabulary.GENERAL TERMS

Proto-Indo-European ENGLISH

es- bheu Be

Tere- Go

Ed- p(i)- Eating and drinking

gwei Live

Newo- New

Yeu- Youthful

Ten thinlegwh- Light

Su- Good/well

Dus- Bad

Eg/ me- me

We- We

Yu- You

Th- This, then

Dwo- 2

Trei- 3

kwetwer- 4

penkwe- 5S(w)eks- 6

NATURE AND THE PHYSICAL ENVIROMENTWe also may know about the time, weather, seasons and natural surroundings ofthe Indo-Europeans homeland.


Yer- Year

Wet- Weather

Ghei- Winter

Wes-r- Spring

Sem- Summer

Mens- Month, moon

Sawel- Sun

Ster- Stars

Wes-pero- West

nekw-t- Night

sneighwh- Snow


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All of these words give us a landscape about was the weather and vegetation (insome cases). We know that there used to snow there because they create a wordfor that event.PEOPLE AND SOCIETY

They had, for human beings themselves, a number of terms were employed, withdifferent nuances of meaning. We can imagine how their familiar life and relationwas.


Man- Man

Dent- Tooth

Ous- Ear

Nas- Nose

Leb- Lip

Ped- Foot

Kerd- Hert

P ter- FatherMater- Mother

Awon- Aunt

Dhugh ter- Daughter

Sunu- Son

Bhrater- Brother

Swesor- Sister

ECONOMIC LIFE AND TECHNOLOGYThey lived with the principle of exchange and reciprocal gift-giving. The gift mustbe equivalent. They practiced the agriculture and the cultivation of cereals (gr -no-

grain). They used to have meal (mel-). They had cows (gwou-) and horses(ekwo-). They used to cook (pekw) and sew (syu). The Indo-Europeans knew metaland metallurgy of bronze, iron, gold, silver, etc. They adopted the wheeltransportation and wagon. The archeologists found some vestiges in Europe to thelatter part of the 5th millennium B.C., the latest possible date for the community ofProto-Indo-European proper.IDEOLOGYThere are also words for ideas, abstractions and relations. The Indo-European-protolanguage is particularly rich in such vocabulary. The poetry and tradition ofpoetics are also common patrimony in most of the Indo-Europeans. They used alot of metaphorical expressions. They believed in the immortality.

Proto-Indo-European ENGLISHMen- Mind, remembering, thinking

Med- Measure

Reg- King

Legh- Law

Prek- Pray

Sengwh- Sing

Kailo- Holy


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Sak- Sacred

THE INDO-EUROPEAN ORIGIN OF ENGLISH: 7

We have named Indo-European to the linguistic family that includes most of the

languages of Europe, past and present, as well as those found in a vast area, andhalf of the Indian subcontinent.The comparison of this ancient tongue with the two classical languagesrevolutionized the perception of linguistic relationships. The linguists have one factand one hypothesis. The one fact is that certain languages present similaritiesamong themselves which are so numerous and so precise that they cannot beattributed to chance and which are such that they cannot be explained asborrowings or as universal features. The one hypothesis is that these languagesmust then be the result of descent from a common original. Other similarities mayreflect universal or near-universal features of human language:

Names derived from the noise the thing makes

Baby talk

Casual or chance contact

The Languages require us to assume that they are the continuation of a singleprehistoric language. The languages are Indic, Iranian, Greek, Armenian, Slavic,Baltic, Albanian, Celtic, Hittite, Anatolian, Italic and Germanic. The Indo-Europeanfamily is one of many language families that have been identified around the world,comprising several thousand different languages. The English is the mostprevalent member of that family. It is the second language in the world. Thespeakers of the Indo-European languages amount to approximately half thepopulation of the Earth.English evolution:

Indo-European Prehistoric Common Germanic West Germanic Old

English Modern EnglishLinguistic heritage, while it may well tend to correspond with cultural continuity,does not imply genetic or biological descent the transmission of language might beby conquest, assimilation or migration.The comparative method remains today the most powerful device for elucidatinglinguistic history. The linguists have obtained the reconstruction of the 50% of thebasic roots of the Indo-European. They reconstructed features, sounds, forms,words, sentences structure (grammar and lexicon) of the language spoken beforethe human race had invented the art of writing.

II.4 The early history of Indo-European languages8

The linguistic science has being reaching the protolanguage which all the Indo-European super family languages come from. The half of the worlds populationspeaks an Indo-European language as first language.


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The linguists have that the protolanguage originated more than 6000 years ago inAnatolia (western of Asia). The daughter languages have differentiated in themigrations which began to the east and then to western.For this research the linguists must seek correspondences in grammar, syntax,vocabulary and vocalization in different languages so they can reconstruct the

original tongue. This is kind of easy to identify in living languages, but the deadlanguages are harder to compare, even more if they did not survive in a writtenform. The linguists may use of different tools, like the science of phonology. Thesounds are more stable than the meanings of the words.The Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic families have affinities with Aryanlanguages spoken in faraway India. Those families might share a commonancestor.The linguists relied on Grimms Law, which says that consonants displace oneanother over time en predictable and regular fashion. This rule is used toreconstruct the Indo-European language.Before this researching, the origin of language was placed in Europe, but now it isplaced in the western of Asia (Anatolia). The official language in Anatolian might beone of the first languages to come into writing. The Anatolian protolanguages mightdepart from the Indo-European parent language around the fourth millennium B.C.,even earlier.We must consider all the human migrations and the pathways of linguisticderivations, if we want to know the protolanguage and its homeland. Somederivations of language produce the lacking of some sounds. The canons ofphonology said, for example, that in the labial consonants (which are b, p and v),the most suppressed is b. But recent studies show that if some consonants aremissing, the one that survives is b.

There is a classical theory and of consonant system for language and a newsystem developed by researchers called Indo-European glotallic system:

With this new system, they show that the most likely suppressed consonant is pnot b. These also demonstrate that the protolanguage is closer to the Germanic,Hittite, and the Armenian than to the Sanskrit, which was considered the originalsound system. So the Germanic might be older than the Sanskrit language. This

Stop consonants[Those which aresounded by theinterrupting overflow ofbreath.]

Classical systemVoiced: (b), d, gVoiced aspirates: bh, dh, ghVoiceless: p, t, k

Indo-European glotallic systemGlottalized: (p), t, kVoiced/ aspirates: b/bh, d/dh, g/gh

Voiceless aspirates: p/ph, t/th, k /kh


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system show easier and more probable changes in daughter languages than theclassical one.The migrations of people were pushed by the old technology as chariots, wheelsand domestication of horses. We can note some similarities in the use of thesetechniques among different cultures, for example Mesopotamia, Asian and Indo-

Europeans. The increase of population and technology promote the migration andthe appearing of daughter languages.The migration of the Aryans started in Eurasia, passed around Himalayas,

Afghanistan and settle down in India. New languages started to appear, and somedied. This group is the Greek-Armenian-Indo-Iranian speakers dialect. Two groupsof Indo-Iranian speakers appeared. The first group consisted in the speakers of theKafiri languages. The second group spoke a dialect form which India languagesare descended.The speakers of ancient Europe settled down in the north of the Black Sea. Amongthe third and first millennium B.C. ancient Europeans spread into Europe. Thenative European dialects contributed too in the emergence of the Europeanfamilies.The anthropometry, the genetics, phonology and linguistics will contribute in theresearch of the protoindo-european language and its homeland.

II.5 World Linguistic diversity 9

The advances in archeology, genetics and linguistics opened the way for thediversity of the worlds languages. For more than 200 years, linguists haverecognized that some languages have similarities in vocabulary, grammar andsounds, so they concluded these languages must have a common ancestor. Thisalliance is named language family. The most important family is the Indo-Europeanwhich includes the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Persian.The linguists use the similarities between the languages to reconstruct ahypothetical ancestor tongue called protolanguage.The evolution of a language has also similarities with biological evolution. Theevolution changes occur in a constant rate; as time passes, a language get somedifferences, until a new language arise.The convergence occurs when contemporaneous languages influence oneanother through the borrowing of words, phrases and grammatical forms.There are two opposing schools of thought;

The splitters: they tend to emphasize the differences that make languages

seem unrelated and to split the classification into small, independent units.

They said that no languages can be grouped into families until important

similarities are demonstrated to exist between them.

The lumpers: they allow lumping many languages together into few

families. Some of them reconstruct protolanguages.

The most important families are:

Indo-European


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Afro-Asiatic

Uralic.

In 1963, Greenberg classified the languages using the system of multilateralanalysis which is a method that simultaneously examines a number of words inmany languages rather than comparing words in just a pair of languages. Heclassified the languages of Africa into just four dominant macrofamilies:

The Afro-Asiatic

The Khoisan

The Niger-Kordofanian

The Nilo-Saharan

The languages of America are divided in three macrofamilies:

The Eskimo-Aleut

Na-Dene

Amerind.

The evolution of species shares similarities with the evolution of our culture. Thehominids appeared five million years ago in Africa. They migrated to Asia andEurope. By 40 000 years ago modern people had colonized the Levant, Asia,Europe, Australia and New Guinea. By 16 000 years ago the Asian pioneers hadcrossed the Bering Strait and settled down in the New World. All these people were

speaking a language or languages, but we may have no clear idea what theselanguages were like.Four principal processes exist by which a language can come to be spoken in agiven territory:

Initial colonization of an unoccupied region

Divergence

Convergence

Language replacement

The replacement can take place when a few families have attained their presentextent through the influence of elite dominance. If replacement had never occurred,then divergence would represent the primary cause of change. Large areas areoccupied by single language families. Each language would differ markedly from itsneighbors.The reasons of population dispersals are the introduction of farming and theecological-climate changes. When the population spread, the languages did too.


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Languages were spread by four processes:

Initial migrations: early humans spread forma Africa to the rest of the world

about 100 000 years ago.

Farming Dispersal (Demographic expansions of farmers): the farming

caused the expansion of the population.

Late climate-related dispersal (late incursions into subarctic): global warming

opened regions north of the 54th parallel. People, who arrived there,

developed their language into families.

Elite dominance (Wide-ranging conquest): complex societies started to

conquest other populations. They also imposed their language.

The language family begins as a single tongue spoken by foragers. They develop afarming culture as sedentary. As the population increases, the predominance of

their language begins. In the north-western Europe the process was less one ofpopulation movement than of acculturation, but the linguistic effects may havebeen ultimately the same.The prehistoric languages didnt leave archeological vestiges. There are no reliablesystems for dating protolanguages.Molecular genetics found out the genetic distance between the human beingsaround the world. Agricultural dispersals of population left genetic traces.Language replacement by elite dominance also involves gene flow but in a verylimited scale.The farming in Europe shows a geographic distribution of gene frequencies, fromsoutheast to northwest. These farmers came from Anatolia. This does not prove

that those farmers spoke the original protolanguage. Other language familysdistribution may be explained by agricultural dispersal. The researchers found asimilar correspondence to genetic evidence. The correlation between genetic andlinguistic data may be observed in some similarities in studies about the genetictree and the family tree of languages.We can note the hypothetical existence of more embracing macrofamilies, such as

Amerind and Indo-Pacific. Their origins lie well beyond 20 000 years ago. Otherlinguists say that the Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Altaic and Uralic canbe classified together within a single macrofamily they called Nostratic, which isitself derived from a Proto-Nostratic language spoken in the Middle East some 15000 years ago. Greenberg defined this macrofamily as Euro-Asiatic. These

macrofamilies also has a correlation with genetic, archeological, and agriculturalevidence. The archeological and genetic evidence harmonize well with someconclusions of the lumpers.The Euro-Asiatic comes from the ultimate protolanguage spoken by our remote

African ancestors in their homeland. Linguists arguments for monogenesis do notcontradict the evidence from archeology, bioanthropology and molecular geneticsfor an out-of-Africa origin for our species.There are two kinds of language areas:


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Spread zones are large areas occupied by just one or two language

families Europe, North Africa.

Residual zones which are smaller, although each one harbors a number

of long-established language families Caucasus and New Guinea. The

residual zones are the relics of earlier initial dispersals.

II.6 The Origins of Indo-European languages 10

The archeology has tried to explain the problem of the relations that link nearly allthe Indo-European languages.The spread of the Indo-European languages holds that an Ur-language is theancestor of all others. This Ur-language was spoken by nomadic horsemen wholived in what is now Russia in the beginning of the Bronze Age. They conqueredthe indigenous population and imposed their own proto-Indo-European language.

According a different point of view, the conquest was not necessary for the spreadof the Indo-European languages. It is more probably that the spread of the Indo-European languages was linked to the spread of the agriculture from Anatolia.The languages of Europe are related. These connections can be seen invocabulary, grammar and phonology. This problem about the origin of the Indo-European is about linguistics, but it is related to archeology too.It is possible to reconstruct some characteristics of the original proto-language. Thebranches of the Indo-European family can be studied as a family tree. Thecommon ancestor of this family is named the proto-Indo-European.This tree was pioneered in the 1860s by August Schleicher. The development oflanguage represented in the family tree is the divergence. The divergence occurs

when languages become isolated from one other, they differ increasingly, anddialects gradually differentiate until they become separate languages. Butdivergence is not the only possible tendency in language evolution.Johannes Schmidt introduced the wave model. The wave model explains that thelinguistic changes spread like waves leading to convergence. Convergence is thegrowing similarity among languages which were initially different.The archeology assumed that the most important cultural changes are the result ofmigrations of entire tribes. The culture is a specific assemblage of artifacts whichcould document a specific tribe of people with their own language.The main problem of the origins of the Indo-European languages is finding theiroriginal homeland and tracing their dispersals, using the record of archeological

cultures. For most of this century German scholars have preferred an Indo-European homeland in northern Europe (a master race of Aryans in Germany). In1926 Gordon Childe argued for a homeland in the steppe areas north of the BlackSea (Russia) between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age by 3000 B.C. He usedboth archeological and linguistic arguments. He established a core vocabulary(which was common to many Indo-European languages) that had survived fromthe proto-Indo-European language spoken in the homeland. Core words forplants and animals can give us an image of the homeland.


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Childe proposed that the Indo-Europeans were groups of nomadic pastoralists,armed and on horseback, who migrated from their homeland (Black Sea) in Bronze

Age. He based his hypothesis in the core words for horse and wheel, which areactually part of a protolexicon prior to generalized dispersal.The traditional arguments tend to equate a given assemblage of artifacts with a

supposedly well-defined group. The equation with supposed tribes is problematic.The equation between a people and particular language is much less than astraightforward proposition. The analysis should focus on processes of culturalchange; the social, economic and demographic processes that are correlated withchanges in language, and how they are reflected in the archeological evidence.MODELS OF HOW LANGUAGE CHANGE OCCURRED

Process of initial colonization: an uninhabited territory becomes populated;

its language naturally becomes that of the colonizers.

Process of divergence: the linguistic arises from separation or isolation. This

could explain the complex pattern of relations seen among the European

languages.

Process of convergence: it is the growing similarity among languages which

were initially different.

Linguistic replacement: In many areas of the world the languages initially

spoken by the indigenous people have come to be replaced, fully or

partially, by languages spoken by people coming from outside. This has a

key role to play in explaining the origins of the Indo-European languages.

There several ways one language might replace another in a specific region:

Demographic and Economic process. There is an existing population is well-

established, but a group of newcomers is to establish itself by peaceful

means. The incoming population expands enough so their language begins

to predominate.

Elite dominance: the incoming group is well organized and possesses

superior military technology, so they dominate by force and impose their

own language. It has yet to be shown that either the incoming invaders or

inhabitants of Europe were sufficiently highly organized before the Bronze

Age.

System collapse. When a highly centralized society collapses, people

formerly kept under control beyond the frontier can take advantage of the

power vacuum and move in.

Lingua Franca. When long-distance trade builds up in an egalitarian society,

a trading language (lingua franca) often develops. A pidgin language (a


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simplified version of a language originally spoken outside the territory in

question) begins to be spoken as a mother tongue is an example.

THE COMING OF FARMINGThe coming of farming is an event wide-ranging and radical enough in its effect to

be a candidate for explaining the language changes. The coming of farming isintimately linked to the formation and distribution of present-day languages. In the7000 B.C. a novel agricultural economy began to spread across Europe. It comesfrom the central Anatolia (Turkey). It is explained with the wave of advance model:

The agriculture would have spread across Europe as a wave processing at anaverage velocity of 1km/year. Itd have taken about 1500 years for the farmingeconomy to reach northern Europe from Anatolia. But no single model couldadequately describe a social process as complex as the coming of farming to

Europe. Perhaps some tribes might adopt the farming from their neighbors, butthey didnt have to adopt their language too. The reality was a mixture of these twoprocesses. But there is archeological evidence that shows that Anatolia wasnt theonly region where early agriculture took place. There are other zones of origination:

Anatolian lobe (atal Hyk) Indo-European

Second lobe (Jericho) Egypt and North of Africa languages

Third lobe (Ali Kosh) languages of India and Pakistan

The details of the entry of agriculture into specific regions provide a coherentalternative of how the Indo-European languages came to Europe. Its immigrantscome from Anatolia rather than from the steppes in 6500B.C. or so. The first Indo-European speakers were peasant farmers whose societies were basicallyegalitarian and who in the course of an entire lifetime moved perhaps only a fewkilometers.The whole early history Europe appears as a series of transformations andevolutionary adaptations on a common proto-Indo-European base augmented by afew non-Indo-European survivals. The hypothesis that the spread of language islinked to the spread of farming has a lot of implications outride this continent.The expanded wave of advance model has effect of situating the ancestrallanguages of the Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic, and Dravidian groups closertogether in the Near East about 10 000 years ago. This is supported on linguistics

and genetics. They are related in a superfamily called the Nostratic.Modern humans were probably spreading out of Africa and populating largeregions the globe. This biological evolution and dispersal provides the frameworkwithin which human language and linguistic diversity must be explained. Thespread of farming from Anatolia into Europe will prove to be a significant part of thehistory.II.7 Development of the English language

The agriculturaleconomy was carriedby local movements of

The farmingcould haveincreased the

Each farmer moves18 km in a randomdirection, and


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Even that Linguistic sciences has not be able the certain origins of language, it hasmade possibly the reconstruction of some protolanguages. The linguists have usedthe comparative study of existing languages, earlier forms of those languages, andrecords of languages no longer spoken. 11

The Indo-European language is the ancestor of the English and the most of the

languages of the western civilized world. The Indo-European is supposed to bespoken in the Neolithic period. The end of the Indo-European culture means thebeginning of the differentiation of the Indo-European language into a number ofdialects. It is often placed around 2500 B.C. 11

Proto-Indo-European GermanicWest Teutonic Anglo-Frisian English 1

When the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes invaded the island of Britain in the 5 th

century, they imposed their languages and their customs. Their language becamethe standard speech of England. The first knowledge of English goes back justabout thousand years. 11

OLD ENGLISH (449-1100)Old English is different from Modern English in its sounds, grammar, and

vocabulary. The spelling is the most consistent of any other period.

11

When English separated from the Germanic family, it is recognized as a differentlanguage. Before that time it is known as pre-Old English. 1

The English migrated from the Continent to Britain in the fifth century. By that time,the island was already inhabited: the Celtic people had been there before 55 B.C.(when Julius Caesar invaded Britain). The Emperor Claudius wanted to makeBritain a part of the Roman Empire. But the British Celts continued to speak theirown language. Many of them learned to speak and write the language of theRomans too. 1

The Celts were invaded by the Scots and Romans. The Roman army includedmany non-Italians who were helped to keep the order in the empire. In the fourthcentury, some Roman forces already included some Angles and Saxons. 1

The Old English period begins with date of the first landing: 449. With it we may ina sense begin thinking of Britain as England: the land of the Angles. Some tribesand their descendants are the Jutes, Saxons and Frisians. 1

There were 4 principal dialects were spoken in Anglo-Saxon England: 1

Kentish

West Saxon

Mercian: Modern English is in large part a descendant of Mercian speech.

Northumbrian

The development of English is called West Saxon or classical Old English. The OldEnglish period spans somewhat more than six centuries. In a period of more than600 years many changes are bound to occur in sounds, in grammar, andvocabulary. 1

The vowels in Old English were: a, , e, i, o, u, y.


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The consonants in Old English were b, c, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, p, ,

w, x, z.

The vocabulary of Old English is characterized by two important aspects: 1

There were relatively few loanwords; most of the word stock has a native

Germanic origin.

The gender of nouns was more or less arbitrary rather than determined by

the sex or sexlessness of the thing named.

One of the principal grammatical differences between Old English and ModernEnglish is the amount of the inflection in the noun, the adjective, and thedemonstrative and interrogative pronouns. 1

Old English Syntax:Old English syntax has an easily recognizable kinship with that of Modern English.There are some important differences: 1

Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns had fuller inflection for case than theirmodern developments do.

Adjectives agreed in case, number, and gender with the nouns they

modified.

Old English had no articles.

They used the infinitives in the passive voice.

Old English had a number of impersonal verbs used without a subject. The

subject could be omitted.

The negative adverb ne (not) comes before the verbs.

MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1100-1500)By 1100, many changes had occurred to justify the creation of a new period tostudy the transition from the English of the early Middle Ages (Old English) to thatof the ancient printed books. This English had some certain superficial differences,but is essentially the same as the Modern English. 1

Changes that occurred during this period: 1

Sounds

Meanings

The nature of its word stock: Old English words New French words

Pronunciation: unaccented inflectional endings

Grammar


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Almost at the end of the Old English period, the great catastrophe of the NormanConquest was the last invasion of England. After this event, French was thelanguage of the governing classes in England. 1

There was a dialectal diversity in the Middle English period. The majority of thesedialects did not leave written proves: 1

The Northern dialect corresponds to Old English Northumbrian.

The Midland dialects, subdivided into East Midland and West Midland,

correspond roughly to Old English Mercian.

The southern dialect, spoken of the Thames, similarly corresponds roughly

to West Saxon, with Kentish a subdivision.

Middle English showed influence of the Norman and French idiom in the wordstock. Many French words became part of the English vocabulary. Some wordsreplaced the English words. 1

A structural change of great importance occurred in the Middle English. Thenumber of distinct inflectional endings in English was reduced, so Middle Englishbecame a language with few inflectional distinctions. 1

The Middle English lost its grammatical gender. Nouns acquired the same pluralending. The neuter article thesupplanted the masculine and feminine forms. 1

The prose of the Middle English period has the same word order as ModernEnglish. 1

MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD (1500-1800)


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The fifteenth century marks the beginning of a new period in English history. In thisperiod the language had the most important phonological changes in its history.The old spelling was maintained stereotyped. The majority of the vowels changed,but not in the written form. 1

The written Standard English language that we know today was established in this

period. The standardization of the language was the first need of the centralgovernment. 1

Modern English develops some important changes in syntax and word inflection.They continued the trend established during the Middle English times that changedour grammar from a synthetic. 1

The es extended to the majority of the nouns as a genitive singular and caselessplural suffix. Most nouns had only two forms: singular and plural. The use of theapostrophe was adopted until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 1

Adjectives used erandest for comparatives and superlatives. Adverbs did notused ly suffix in early Modern English times. The pronouns had no importantchanges. 1

The contracted verbs forms nt in writing occurred in the eighteenth century. Itseems that the contractions were used before they were written down. They werevery nature in colloquial but they were considered unsuitable for writing. Somepeople still consider them inappropriate. The verb to be, as in passive voice andprogressive times, appeared in the eighteenth century. 1

The first dictionaries appeared in this period. The publication of JohnsonsDictionary was the most important linguistic event of the eighteenth century. Itestablished a standard for the use of words and fixed English spelling and. 1

These are the conjugation of the verb to findduring the three periods. 1

II.8 The English Language in America


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The English language was brought to America by the colonists from England whosettled along the Atlantic seaboard in the seventeenth century. The first expeditionfrom England to the New World was in 1584. It was a failure. The explorers conflictwith the native people and had to return to England. 12

The first permanent English settlement dates form 1604, and they arrived in

Chesapeake Bay. Settlements quickly followed along the coast, and also onthe nearby islands, such as Bermuda. 12

There were two settlements: one in Virginia and the other in New England. Theyhad different linguistic roots.

The southern colonists came from Englands West Country. They brought

their characteristics accent: the Zummerzet voicing of s sounds, and the r

strongly pronounced after vowels. These Tidewater accents have changed

a little for 300 years. They said that it is the closest language to the sound of

Shakespeares English. 12

The Plymouth colonists came from countries in the East of England. Their

accents were different. They lacking an r after vowels. They were the

dominant influence in the area. The tendency not to pronounce the r is still

a feature of the speech of people from New England. 12

The later population movements across America largely preserved the dialectdistinctions. The New England people moved to the Great Lakes, the southernmoved along the Gulf Coast and into Texas; and the midlanders moved toMississippi and ultimately into California. 12

There are many mixed dialect areas, but the main divisions are:

North

Midland

South

They are still found in America today. 12

During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, new immigrants brought variety oflinguistic into the country: the Quakers and the Scots-Irish. Their accent wasdescribed as broad. 12

The Sunbelt accent emerged in the nineteenth century. It was from Virginia and

California. It is the accent most commonly associated with present-day Americanspeech.12

It was not only England which influenced the American English language. TheSpanish, French, Dutch, and black people also changed some words. The Englishlanguage maintained the unity in the country during the cultural diversification.Some minority groups preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage; even they arein a society which is monolingual. 12

II.9 The importance of English in our world


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The English is a global language. You can hear it on television. You may seeEnglish signs and advertisements all over the world. 12

A language became global when it is recognized in every country. The languagemust have a special role in the entire world. The notion of special role has manyfacts:

Countries must have large numbers of the people speak the language as amother tongue. In the case of English, these countries are USA, Canada,

Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and several Caribbean

countries. 12

The language has to be in a special place in other countries around the

world. Sometimes they use it as a second language. 12

This language must have priority in a countrys foreign- language teaching.

English is the language most widely taught as a foreign language. 12

There is a great variation in the reasons for choosing a particular language as aforeign language: 12

Historical traditions

Political expediency

Commercial contact

Cultural contact

Technological contact.

It is inevitable that a global language will be used by more people than any otherlanguage, like English is. Nearly a quarter of the worlds population is already fluentor competent in English, and this figure is steadily growing. 12

The present world status of English is the result of two factors:

The British colonial expansion

The emergence of the USA as the leading economic power. 12

When a new technology arises, new linguistic opportunities are brought. English isthe main language used in industries as the press, advertising, broadcasting,

motion pictures, sound recording, transport and communications.12

It is difficult to foresee any developments which could seriously reduce the statureif English. 12

II.10 Areas of usageFor an English teacher is important to know the language diversity. The variationincludes regional and social accents and dialects. It also includes what is oftencalled stylistic variation; that is different styles or varieties which are appropriateto different purposes, topics, social contexts, and so on. 13


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The American English has great impact on other world Englishes. It varies fromone region to another and is difficult to generalize. Words travel easily around theworld and become popular rapidly. New Americanisms which are spread include Hiortruck, and adolescent slang and fashion terms like man and cool. 14

The word level is often used to define the kinds of English used in different

situations. But it sometimes suggests a higher or lower social position. The termshigherand lowermean 'better' or 'worse', 'more desirable' or 'less desirable,' andsimilar comparative degrees of excellence or inferiority in language. But we knowthat every kind of language is useful in different situations, so there is not onebetter than other and the classification do not depend on the cultural status of theusers. 15

According to these cultural levelsare included:

Lower levels:

- Illiterate speech

- Narrowly local dialect

- Ungrammatical speech and writing

- Excessive and unskillful slang

- Slovenly and careless vocabulary and construction

Higher level:

- Cultivated and clear language

- Grammatical writing

- Pronunciation used by the cultivated people.

The different cultural levels may be changed to two general classes instead;substandardand standard. 15

Murrays diagram of different varieties of English, included in the preface to theOxford English Dictionary, shows the varieties of English. 16


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A standard language is the chosen one by the speakers to use it in majority ofplaces and purposes. The Standard English is one variety of the English language.It is also known as edited English. It has some important characteristics: 1

- It enjoys high prestige.

- This style is known as good language.

- It is the one used in dictionaries, books and periodicals.

- It is the language taught in schools.

- It is not intrinsically better than other varieties (clearer, more logical or

prettier)

Formal English is the one which is: 15

- Used in written forms

- Used in formal situations as business, government and office documents

- Used in literary texts

- Taught in the schools as a formal science

- It has a grammar highly organized

Informal English is described as the typical language of an educated persongoing about his everyday affairs. 15

Colloquial is in general any variety which is used in informal situations. This isnot written down. It is not properly designated to a substandard cultural level ofEnglish. It is a functional variety of Standard English which is used chiefly in


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conversation. Literary English, Formal Colloquial, and General Colloquial arenot cultural levels, they are only functional varieties of Standard English. The lasttwo, Popular English and Vulgar English, belong in a different classification,cultural levels, without regard to function. 14, 16

Technical language is different from general academic language. The tone, voice,

and mood of your text are all elements that differentiate science writing.

15

II.11 Applied LinguisticsLinguistics is the study and description of languages structure and nature. 5

The theory helps us to state absolute restrictions of what may or may not occur.The description of language is the formulation of such prediction. 5

The objective of having a theory is to use it. A theory is not only a set of rules for alanguage. The theory increases our understanding of language. 5

The application of the linguistic theory does not count as an application oflinguistic. Applied linguistic starts when a description is specifically made, or anexisting description used for a further purpose which lies outside the linguisticsciences. 5

Application of linguistics: 5

The principal application of linguistic is the translation.

Teaching of the native language

Teaching of the foreign language

Linguistic is helpful to teachers and students of foreign languages, for such insightsprovide an understanding of the enormity of the task they are attempting toaccomplish. 17

Linguistics its not a classroom presentation of a formal grammar. KNOWINGABOUT THE LANGUAGE STRUCTURE IS NOT THE SAME THAN KNOWINGTHE LANGUAGE ITSELF. 17

II.12 The teaching and learning of foreign languageForeign languages are taught and learned tow main ways: 5

The teaching of a language by teaching in that language: the language is

used as a medium of instruction. Some lessons about geography, history or

arithmetic are taught in the language you want the children to learn. It is

effective in teaching a new language. The students acquired newgrammatical patterns and new vocabulary items.

The teaching of a language by teaching about that language: it is easier to

carry out. You can make use of different grammar books.

Teaching a language involves conjoining 2 essential features: 5


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1. The learner must experience the language using it in the spoken or writing

form. 5

2. The learner must himself have the opportunity of performing, of trying out his

skills, of making mistakes and being corrected. 5

*Teaching about a language does not contribute directly to either of them. 5

The student must be able to understand the basic language skills: 5

- Understanding speech (listening)

- Speaking

- Reading

- Writing

One way of acquiring these skills is by experiencing, using, and associating them

in a real situation in the foreign language. To learn a foreign language, we alsohave to learn about that the literature in that language. 5

The grammar-translation method of language teaching seems to be a formaldescription of the language. It consists in the translation into and out of the mothertongue. The method would be more effective if the grammar used werelinguistically more valid. Much of the grammar taught in this method is pedantic orarchaic, or even erroneous. In the conventional pattern of foreign languageteaching, translation alternates with formal grammar as the main activity in classand homework. 5

II.13 The physiology of learningYour childs brain18Everytime you play with a baby, you are stimulating his neural connections. Whena baby is born, his neurons are waiting to be wired. The first functions which arealready wired since the fertilized egg, are:

- Commanding breathing

- Controlling heartbeat

- Regulating body temperature

- Producing reflexes

Near to trillions of neurons are potential to form connections with other neuronsand become integrated in the bran circuits. If they are not used, they die.The early experiences of a child are powerful and have a strong influence in hisgrown up behavior.


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The brain has more than 100 trillion connections. There are like 100 billion ofneurons connected to other thousands of neurons. Some of these connections arealready established by the genes, but the environment determines the other ones.

According to the neurobiologist Carla Shatz, there are two broad stages of wiring:- Early period: the circuits connect the retina to the neural cortex. In the early

childhood, the sensory areas have matured.

- Puberty: the emotional limbic system is wired. At the age of 16 the seat of

understanding (frontal lobes) is developed.

They researchers say that with the right stimulus any skill might be developed:

Language:

The newborn first learn simple phonemes (as baas, daas, ees, lls, ssss).These sounds form neuronal connections in his auditory cortex. Theseconnections make the perceptual map. Different neurons respond to

different sounds. The perceptual maps are different for each language.Children are kind of deaf to sounds they have never heard.This map is complete at the first year old. It is important to expose thechildren to a lot of words and other languages, so they can record differentsounds in their map, not only those of their mother tongue. The neurons losetheir ability to connect with others after this age, so a kid who learn a secondlanguage in his later childhood, will never speak like a native speaker.The connections made by new sounds, also work with words. Thevocabulary is acquired after repeated exposure to new words.

Music:

The music rewires the neural connections in the somatosensory cortex. Ifsome children learn to play an instrument in the early childhood, their cortexwill be more developed, than other kids.

Math and Logic:

The music improves the learning of math and logic too. This is importantbecause the children will not be interested in complex equations, but insongs and music. They also develop their spatial ability (drawing, puzzles,geometric shapes, patterns of color). The neurons of the cortex also workwith mathematical processes.

Emotions:

The parents can play back a childs inner feelings. This process is calledattunement. The trunk lines for the circuits controlling emotion are laid downbefore birth.The brain uses the same electrical connections and chemical signs togenerate and respond to an emotion. These connections are reinforcedwhen the emotion is reciprocated. Some babies, whose mothers never paidattention to their emotional signs, became passive children. If the parents


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reciprocate the neuronal activity for calming down, the baby will calm herselfdown.Neurons in the rational prefrontal cortex are forming connections in theemotional region. Some circuits stress and threats are centered in theamygdale. The impulses from the eye and ear reach first the amygdale than

the rational neocortex. So the emotional reaction comes before the brainknows what is going on. Then the cortex has little problems developingcomplex information (p.e. language).

Movement:

The baby starts moving before the birth. The neurons start to wire up, butthey do not form functional circuits in the cerebellum at the age of two. If yourestrict any activity in the babys routine, you will restrict the neuronalconnection too. The more he moves, the stronger the circuit will be.

The human brain adds an astonishing 250 000neurons per minute during thegestation. The neurons have a fiber called axon. The axon carries the electricalsignal until it reaches other neuron. The axons form the brains circuits. Themajority of these ways are established by the genes. Some neurons follow thesame ways, but others establish new paths. Active neurons respond better totrophic factors than those which are inactive.The childrens IQ gains fade after three years. If the children are well stimulatedduring the earlier years, they will develop their language, social and motor abilities.This occurs even if they are stimulated with simple activities.We continue learning throughout the life, but the windows of the mindare closed

before the secondary school. We can learn in the adulthood but in a deeper levelthan children who are stimulated before the kindergarten. If they are wellstimulated they can develop all their abilities successfully.The language-based learning disabilities (LLD) occur when the children are unableto distinguish short, staccato sounds, as d and b. This might be de result of earinfections during the childhood. If the children do not hear sounds, they will not beable to associate the sound to the letter. Finally the children develop problem inreading too.WE ARE BORN WITH A WORLD POTENTIAL AND IT WILL BE REALIZED IF ITIS TAPPED

BRAIN Logical Language Musical

Skill Math and logic Language Music

Learning window 0-4 years 0-10 years 3-10 years

We know that -The circuits are inthe cortex-Music lessons help

to develop it

-The circuits are inthe auditory cortex

-More wordsgreat vocabulary

-Hearing problemsdecrease thematching ofsound-letter

-Circuits in thesensory cortex.- It is harder to learn

how to play musicin the adulthood


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We can -Play Mozarts CDs-Play games with a

toddler-Learn one-to-one

relationships

-Talk to children- Introduce a 2nd

language-Treat ear

infections

-Sing with children-Play music-Let them learn

how to play an

instrument.

Why do schools flunk biology?19

The main problem in the schools is that they still have the 19 th century ideas. Theadvances in brain sciences can make a change in the system:

- The schedules would change.

- The foreign language and geometry would be taught to younger children.

- Music and Gym would be imparted daily.

- Reading, writing and memorization activities would be replaced by manual

works.

- The teachers would be more interested in the childrens emotional

connection to the subject.

The music develops higher forms of thinking in the brain, as spatial intelligencewhich will evolve into complex math and engineering skills. But most of schoolshave only one teacher per 500 students.The exercise is good for the heartbeat and brain nutrition. The glucose feeds thebrain and it improves neuronal connections. The children learn in an easier way.Being more physically active in the classroom connects the knowledge to thechildren in an emotional and physical way. The brain remember the activeexperiences more than the theoretical ones.Some researchers also propose to start the school later, at 9 oclock. The teenssleep at the same hour, no matter how early they will wake up, so if they went toschool later, they would be awake.The schools do not exploit all the children capacities. The younger brains are readyto get new information. It is easier to them to learn a foreign language. But thedecisions are usually taken by noneducators who are in charge of the educationalsystem.

Derivation of Language Study Origin

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