The History of the English Language

and Why it Matters!

Fall 2010OLLI Brownbag Presentation

UMB’s HEL Club President Danielle Williams,Dr. Stephanie Kamath, Dr. Alex Mueller

What is H.E.L.?The History of the English Language now covers more than 1,000 years!

Old English (before 1100)Middle English (12th-15th centuries)Early Modern English (16th-18th centuries)Modern English (18th century-today)

Scholars of HEL spend time exploring semantics (the association of words and meaning), phonology (how sounds are produced and assigned meanings), morphology (how words are formed and change), orthography (spelling), and syntax (rules governing the combinations of words). Scholarship on HEL also extends to the origin of the language, its similarities to or differences from other languages, the impact of cultural and historical events on the language, the formation and alteration of ideas of linguistic correctness, the nature of special dialects or jargons, the current global spread of English… you name it.

Why H.E.L. ?

“woman” and “garlic”(or lexicalization)

What do the words

"woman" and "garlic"

have in common? 

“woman” and “garlic”(or lexicalization)

Both are considered single words today, but originally were derived from a combination of words.

garlic < gar + lēc (‘sharp leek’)

woman < wīf + mann (‘female’ + ‘man’)

Another classic example of lexicalization is “asleep”, from the Old English phrase ‘on slæpe’, or ‘on’ + ‘sleep’

from the OED entry for ‘man’

“In all the Germanic languages the word had the two senses ‘human being’ and ‘adult male human being’...

In Old English the words distinctive of sex were wer and wif, or wapmann and wifmann; both the masculine terms became obsolete by the end of the 13th century, leaving English with no means of distinguishing the two major senses.

The genderless uses of man to mean ‘human being’ or ‘person’ are now often objected to on the grounds that they depreciate women, and are frequently replaced by human, human being, or person.”

werewolf = ‘wer’ (male human) + ‘wulf’?

“woman” and “garlic”(or lexicalization)

Both are considered single words today, but originally were derived from a combination of words.

garlic < gar + lēc (‘sharp leek’)

woman < wīf + mann (‘female’ + ‘man’)

Another classic example of lexicalization is “asleep”, from the Old English phrase ‘on slæpe’, or ‘on’ + ‘sleep’

Please, keep your “eyen” on the “childs”?

(or analogical leveling)

Why do we speak of 

“children” and “oxen”

and “eyes” and “foxes”…

 

…instead of “childs” and “oxes”

or “eyen” and “foxen”? 

Please, keep your “eyen” on the “childs”?

(or analogical leveling)Originally, English had a number of different ways to indicate plural

forms, including the ‘nasal’ form seen in ‘ox’ / ‘oxen’… but eventually so many words formed plurals with ‘s’ that even words that had different plural forms originally changed by force of analogy. Only rare forms attest to the original variety.

Geoffrey Chaucer wouldn’t believe his ‘eyen’!The word ‘children’ actually represents an older development of this kind,

an example of an r-plural found in Old English with a nasal plural grafted onto it... child + er + en = children.

Will our children grow up to have ‘childrens’?

Another way analogy works is called ‘proportional analogy’teach : taught = catch : caught (orig. catched)Caution: You need enough users to make the change for the alteration to

be recognized as something other than an error…

Do you “wanna” speak English?Or do you want to speak English?

  

considering

motivated vs. unmotivated

language change

Do you “wanna” speak English?

(We’ve been wondering for more than a century)

  

1896“I didn' wanna give 'im no stuff.”

the curious case of‘disinterested’ and ‘uninterested’

(does anyone care ?)From the Merriam-Webster Collegiate entry for “disinterested”:

“Disinterested and uninterested have a tangled history. Uninterested originally meant impartial, but this sense fell into disuse during the 18th c. About the same time the original sense of disinterested also disappeared, with uninterested developing a new sense--the present meaning--to take its place. The original sense of uninterested is still out of use, but the original sense of disinterested revived in the early 20th c. The revival has since been under frequent attack as an illiteracy and a blurring or loss of a useful distinction.”

Who cares? Samuel Johnson did!

Johnson’s Plan of an English Dictionary (1747)

This, my Lord, is my idea of an English dictionary; a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened. And though, perhaps, to correct the language of nations by books of grammar, and amend their manners by discourses of morality, may be tasks equally difficult, yet, as it is unavoidable to wish, it is natural likewise to hope, that your Lordship's patronage may not be wholly lost; that it may contribute to the preservation of ancient, and the improvement of modern writers . . .

Eight years later . . .

Johnson’s preface to his Dictionary (1755)

[W]ith equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation. . .

• Prescriptivism:o Prescribes how people

“should” use languageo Makes value judgments:

good vs. bad, correct vs. incorrect

o Arbitrary: based on opinion

• Descriptivism:o Describes how people use

languageo Scientific: based on facts

Which one is grammatically incorrect?

a.___You drive too slow!b.___ He slowly negotiated the curves.c.___ Please speak more slowly!

[and yes, this is a trick question!]

Which one is grammatically incorrect?

a.___You drive too slow!b.___ He slowly negotiated the curves.c.___ Please speak more slowly!The prescriptive rule states that only an adverb (slowly), not an adjective (slow), can modify a verb (drive).

But wait!

The descriptive rule states that there is a certain overlap between the adjective and adverb classes (e.g. the adjective form slow may be used as either an adjective or an adverb).

James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

“This is work in which anyone can join. Even the most indolent novel-

reader will find it little trouble to put a pencil-mark against any word or

phrase that strikes him, and he can afterwards copy out the context at his leisure. In this way many words and

references can be registered that may prove of the highest value.”

“Appeal to the English-Speaking and English-Reading Public to Read Books and Make Extracts for the Philological

Society’s New Dictionary,” The Academy (May 10, 1879).

Criticism of Wikipedia

“Wikipedians are concerned with verifiability rather than truth, and the Internet is a handy way of cross-checking information and sources.”

Mathieu O’Neil, Cyberchiefs: Autonomy and Authority in Online Tribes (New York: Pluto Press, 2009), 150.

How often do students use Wikipedia during the course–related research

process?

Always: 30%Occasionally: 23%Frequently: 22%Rarely: 13%Never: 9%Don’t Know: 3%Alison J. Head and Michael B. Eisenberg, "How Today's College Students Use Wikipedia for Course-Related Research," First Monday 15.3 (1 March 2010): 1-13, http:/www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2830/2476 (accessed April 27, 2010).