Normalisation of the English Language

Normalisationis the fixing of the norms and standards of a language to protect it from corruption and change.

The normalisation of the English language started in the 17^th – 18^th c. In 1710 Jonathan Swiftpublished in his journal “The Tatler” an article titled “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue”. J. Swift was a purist (struggled for the purity of the language) and suggested that a body of scholars should gather to fix the rules of the language usage.

The Normalisation of the English language consisted in publishing:

1. Grammar’s of English:

· John Wallis, “Grammatica Lingæ Anglicanæ” (prescriptive/normative grammar);

· Robert Lowth, “A Short Introduction to English Grammar” (Lowth distinguished 9 parts of speech; made consistent description of letters, syllables, words and sentences; rules of no-double negation (I don’t want no dinner – incorrect!) and no-double comparison (more better – incorrect!) appeared, etc.).

2. Dictionaries(18^th c.):

· E. Coles, “Dictionary of Hard Words” (gave explanations of hard words and phrases);

· Samuel Johnson– one of the best-known English lexicographers. As well as J. Swift, he was a purist and believed that the English language should be purified and corrected. He was the first to compile a dictionary that resembles the present-day dictionaries. His “Dictionary of the English Language” is the finest example of his hard and productive work. The dictionary is organised as follows:

- entry;

- pronunciation;

- definition;

- illustrations (not self-invented examples but quotations from recognised authors that contain the word in question);

- notes on usage of the word;

- etymology of the word;

- stylistic comments.

The dictionary also contained a grammatical section describing the grammatical structure of the language.

Lecture 10

Phonetic Features of Old English

OE sound system developed from PG sound system.

OE Word Stress/Accent:

1. fixed (can’t move either in form- or word-building and is usually placed on root or prefix);

2. dynamic(force, breath stress);

3.in Noun and Adjectivestress was mainly on the prefixif there was one:

E.g. ‘misdæd (misdeed), ‘uðζenζ (escape), ‘oreald (very old)

in Verbstress was mainly on the root even if there was a prefix:

E.g. a’risan (arise), mis’faran (go astray)

4.stress served to distinguish Noun from Verb (and still does):

E.g. ‘andswaru (N answer) – and’swarian (V answer)

‘onζin (N beginning) – on’ζinnan (V begin)

E.g. (modern English) – ‘present – pre’sent; ‘ally – al’ly.

OE Vowels

Unstressed vowelswere weakened and dropped.

Stressed vowelsunderwent some changes:

· splitting – 1 phoneme split into several allophones which later become separate phonemes

e.g. à a

a à ã

à æ

· merging– separate phonemes become allophones of one phoneme and then disappear and are not distinguished any more as separate phonemes

e.g. a à

ã à a

æ à

Rise of Diphthongs

In PG there were no diphthongs. There was just a sequence of two separate vowels. Diphthongs appeared in OE: some (usually long diphthongs) – as a result of merging of two vowels:

others (usually short diphthongs) – as a result of the influence of the succeeding and preceding consonants (breaking of [æ, e]):

Palatal Mutation/i-Umlaut

Mutation –a change of one vowel to another one under the influence of a vowel in the following syllable.

Palatal mutation(or i-Umlaut) happened in the 6^th -7^th c.and was shared by all Old Germanic Languages, except Gothic (that’s why later it will be used for comparison).

Palatal mutation – fronting and raising of vowels under the influence of [i] and [j] in the following syllable (to approach the articulation of these two sounds). As a result of palatal mutation:

· [i] and [j] disappeared in the following syllable sometimes leading to the doubling of a consonant in this syllable;

· new vowels appeared in OE ([ie, y]) as a result of merging and splitting:

Traces of i-Umlaut in Modern English:

1. irregular Plural of nouns (man – men; tooth – teeth);

2. irregular verbs and adjectives (told ←tell; sold ←sell; old – elder);

3. word-formation with sound interchange (long – length; blood – bleed).

OE Vowel System(symmetrical, i.e each short vowel had its long variant)

The length of vowels was phonologically relevant (i.e. served to distinguish words):

e.g. (OE) is (is) – īs (ice); col (coal) –cōl (cool); god (god) – gōd (good), etc.

OE Consonants

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1. Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

2. Voicing(the process when a voiceless consonant becomes voiced in certain positions) – intervocally and between a vowel and a voiced consonant or sonorant

[f, q, h, s] à [v, ð, g, z] e.g. wulfos (Gothic) – wulf[v]as (OE) (wolves)

3. Rhotacism(a process when [z] turns into [r])

e.g. maiza (Gothic) – māra (OE) (more)

4. Gemination(a process of doubling a consonant) – after a short vowel, usually happened as a result of palatal mutation (e.g. fullan (OE) (fill), settan (OE) (set), etc.).

5. Palatalisation of Consonants(a process when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel

[g, γ, k, h] à [g’, γ’, k’, h’]e.g. c[k’]ild (OE) (child); ecζ[gg’] (OE) (edge), etc.

OE Consonant System

See table 9 on p. 90 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева (copies).

Lecture 11

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