ENG 4820 History of the English Language

ENG 4820History of the English Language

Dr. Michael Getty | Spring 2009WEEK 7:

MIDDLE ENGLISH

ENG4820 | Week 7 2

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ENG4820 | Week 7 3

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK• Most of the Latin borrowings into English we talk about are from

the Middle Ages, the language of civil society. But there was a wave of Latin loans from way before that, dating to contacts between Romans and Germanic tribal groups on the continent between 500 BCE and 500 CE, a period which overlaps with the Christianization of Roman culture.

• Stop anyone on the street, and they’d tell you that these words are about as English as you can get. In fact, they were borrowed from Latin before Latin was cool, you might say: cheap, cheese, pan, dish, kitchen, cook, cherry, pillow, mile, tile, beer, street

• By the time the Roman presence in Britain began crumbling in the 5th century CE, most of the population had converted to Christianity. In fact, Rome’s first Christian ruler, Constantine I, was declared Emperor in the Roman settlement of Eboracum, what we now call York in the north of England.

• As Christianity became the official religion of the empire, it took on the trappings of the Roman state: centralized authority and Latin as its common language and written culture. This culture persisted even as the empire was overrun by Germanic invaders and disintegrated politically.source

ENG4820 | Week 7 4

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK• The Germanic invaders of the 5th century were pagans in the

common Indo-European tradition: sacrificial worshippers of multiple, very human-like gods embodying mythical abilities or natural phenomena.

• The Big Four (Source)

• The chief god Woden, thought to carry off the souls of the dead

• Frig, Woden’s wife and goddess of love• The god of thunder, Thunor, better known by his Norse name

Thor• Tiw, god of war and battle, whose name is directly descended

from Proto-Indo-European *deu-, which gave us deus in Latin.• We still say the names of these gods almost every day: Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday• Starting in 597, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, having consolidated

their power in Britain, converted to Christianity without as much fuss as elsewhere.

• As elsewhere in Europe, Christianity was adapted to incorporate local customs. The word ‘Easter’ comes from the name of a Germanic goddess associated with a traditional springtime festival (source).

ENG4820 | Week 5 5

Additional Facts | More Things to KnowTHE ‘DANISH’ INCURSIONS

•Trade and settlement from Scandinavia, concentrated in the Northumbrian areas, had been a constant since the Germanic invasion.•Starting in the late 8th century, the activity becomes larger-scale and more organized. The ‘Danes,’ as the English called them (using one tribal name from among many) colonize most of the northern and eastern halves of the country. •Different English kings use a combination of treaties, bribes, and military power to contain the Scandinavians behind a mostly imaginary line called the ‘Danelaw,’ an area in which the settlers/invaders could live under their own laws and rulers. •The settlers all became English-speaking within a few generations, but they left their mark in distinctive Scandinavian pronouns and place names ending in –thorp, -by, and –wick(Souce: Crystal p. 25)

ENG4820 | Week 7 6

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK: CÆDMON’S HYMN

• The Germanic tribes had a tradition of epic poetry, celebrating the deeds of legendary heroes and mythical figures.

• This poetry had a stress-based rhythm and centered on alliteration instead of rhyme, which was a good fit for the strong root-initial stress that characterizes the Germanic languages.

• One of the earliest known poems written in English is Cædmon’s Hymn, written by a lay member of a monastery in what is now Whitby in northeastern England. It is dated to between 657 and 680 CE and was wildly popular at the time.

• As told by Bede, who wrote the first history of the English church in about 730 CE, Cædmon was a shepherd who turned out to be a prodigy at composing traditional Germanic oral poetry in response to Christian religious themes.

• We’re going to delve into Cædmon’s hymn, syllable by syllable.

Source

ENG4820 | Week 7 7

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK:Cædmon’s Hymn

NorthumbrianNu scylun hergan hefaenricaes wardMetudes maecti end his modgidancuerc wuldurfadur swe he wundra gihwaeseci dryctin, or anstelidæHe ærist scop ælda barnumheben til hrofe haleg scepenϸa middungeard moncynnæs wardeci dryctin æfter tiadæfirum foldu Frea allmectig

West SaxonNu sculon herigean heofonrices weardMeotodes meahte ond his modgeϸancweorc wuldorfæder swa he wundra gehwæsece drihten or onstealdeHe ærest sceop eorðan bearnumheofen to hrofe halig scyppendϸa middangeard moncynnes weardece drihten æfter teodefirum foldan Frea ælmihtig

Now we shall praise heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Creator's might, and his mind-thought, the words of the Glory-father; how he, each of his wonders the eternal Lord, established at the beginning. He first shaped for earth's children, heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then a middle-yard, mankind's Guardian, the eternal Lord, established afterwards the earth for the people, the Lord almighty (Lerer pp. 12f.)

ENG4820 | Week 7 8

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK:Cædmon’s Hymn

What Cædmon Teaches Us:•Dialect variation alive and well at the very beginning.•Traces of pagan culture: Happy Easter!•Germanic poetic tradition: stress and alliteration, very different from later, Latin-inspired rhyming poetry•So much has changed, so much hasn’t…

ENG4820 | Week 7 9

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCKPRONOUNS AND VERBS

One case in which today’s English is vastly more complex than Old English is in what’s known as our tense/aspect system.

Today’s English Old EnglishI sing Ic singeI am singing “ “I will sing Ic sceal singanI will be singing “ “ “I sung Ic sangI have sung “ “I have been singing “ “ I would sing Ic sceolde singanI would be singing “ “ “I would have been singing “ “ “

ENG4820 | Week 7 10

KEEPING PERSPECTIVEWE’RE IN CONSTANT DANGER OF LOSING SIGHT OF THE FOREST FOR THE TREES!

What should you remember five years from now?

•Variation and change in the English language are constants. Always have been, always will be!•Like most languages, English has become – by and large – grammatically simpler over time, especially in cases of prolonged contact with other languages.•Our words and speech patterns are shaped by many different influences – some internal, some external – playing off each other over centuries. •Most of the words we use in English were imported from some other language. •English is related, via an unbroken chain going back at least 7000 years, to most of the languages of Europe as well as Western, Central, and South Asia.•The closest living relatives of English are in continental Europe: Dutch, German, Yiddish, Danish/Norwegian/Swedish.

ENG4820 | Week 7 11

SOME MORE BACKGROUNDLEXICAL CHANGE

•We use the word lexicon (a derivative of the Greek word for ‘word,’ along with the adjective lexical) to refer to the mental dictionary in the head of each native speaker of a language. •This is not the same as a published dictionary, which is a deeply artificial thing. A native speaker’s mental lexicon – the total inventory of words and affixes that describe their knowledge of their own language – is ever-shifting both in its inventory and in the characteristics of any given word at any given time. •We’re now getting into stages of the language in which we recognize more and more of the words, so it’s worth pausing to get a handle on all the things that can happen to them.•Millward pp. 122 to 132 is a good resource here

ENG4820 | Week 7 12


•Change happens at the periphery of language use (Millward p. 125): •Of the 100 most frequently used words in Old English poetry, for instance, 80 are still around. Of the 100 most frequent words in present-day English, 96 were present in Old English. The four that weren’t were imported during the Norse invasions from the 8th century onwards: are, they, them, their.•Sound change can contribute to the loss of some words (Millward p. 125) and the creation of new ones.

ENG4820 | Week 7 13


•Sound change can contribute to the loss of some words (Millward p. 125) and the creation of new ones.•Our words lord and lady started out as ancient compounds, rooted in the ancient art of breadmaking. Picture semi-nomadic tribes carrying their yeast cultures around with them.

Proto-Germanic (ca. 500 BCE): hlaiba-wardaz ‘loaf guardian’ hlaiba-diga ‘loaf kneader’ **Pre-Old English (ca. 500 CE): hlaf-ward hlaf-digaOld English (ca. 800 CE): hlafordhlafdigMiddle English (ca. 1200 CE): laferd lafdyEarly Modern English (ca. 1450): lawerd

lady (Original [a] vowel)Today lord lady

** The root hlaib- was borrowed from one of the non-Indo-European languages the early Germanic tribes came into contact with. It gave us both loaf, leaven, and lift. The root diga gave us dough.

ENG4820 | Week 7 14


In raw numbers, the most powerful forces behind lexical change are (a) cultural change and (b) differentiation.

CULTURAL CHANGE•MORE SO THAN PHONOLOGY OR MORPHOLOGY, WORD CHOICE IS A CONSCIOUSLY ACCESSIBLE PART OF A LANGUAGE SPEAKER’S BEHAVIOR.•Word choice and usage are very supple and efficient tools for defining, declaring, and discerning membership in culturally defined groups and participation in culturally defined trends, movements, fads, you name it. Present-day examples: dog•During the Old and Middle English periods, Germanic tribal law was gradually displaced by Roman-inspired common law based on state power and persistent, independent courts of justice. This led to the death of some core Old English vocabulary: wer-gild ‘compensation for a man’s life,’ mæg-cwalm ‘murder of a relation,’ both concepts that had no reliable equivalent in Roman legal philosophy.•Eventually, hundreds of Old English words were displaced by French loans: ϸeod > people (cf. deutsch, Dutch), wuldor > glory; æðele > noble (re-imported via Yiddish – i.e. German-derived – family names Edelmann, Edelstein); feorh > spirit.

15


The most powerful forces behind lexical change are (a) cultural change and (b) semantic differentiation.

SEMANTIC (i.e. MEANING) DIFFERENTIATION•Languages have very few instances of true synonymy – two distinct words with wholly overlapping usage. Think dinner vs. supper. •Words are characterized by what are known as ‘semantic fields,’ basically an inventory of different contexts in which a word may – or may not – be used. Think present-day play:

… to engage in some unspecified amusing activity: Can I go out and play?… to engage in some known, specific amusing activity: Let’s play Monopoly?… to repeat a recorded sequence of images or sounds: Play it again, Sam… to manipulate a muscial instrument: I play the violin.… as a noun, the act of playing itself: Play is a necessary part of childhood. … as a noun, a work of drama on a stage: I went to see a play last night.… metaphorically, to engage in some group activity: Pay-to-play politics… metaphorically, to use something as if it were a toy: Play on words… metaphorically, to manipulate a person or a process: They’re playing you like a violin.

ENG4820 | Week 7 16


The semantic field of any given word changes constantly over time, often within a single generation. Over time, these changes can add up in dramatic ways.

THE STORY OF NICE(Source)

Ca. 500CE Latin nescius ‘foolish, stupid’ (from ne ‘not’ and scire ‘know’ i.e. science)Ca. 1250 Norman French nice ‘foolish, stupid’(pronounced [nis], not [najs])Ca. 1350 English ‘fussy, fastidious’(narrowing)Ca. 1450 ‘dainty, delicate’(amelioration ‘making better’)

At this point, different contextual meanings start piling on…

Ca. 1550 ‘precise, careful’ (narrowing ‘A nice distinction’)Ca. 1750 ‘agreeable, delightful’(amelioration?)Ca. 1850 ‘kind, thoughtful’ (narrowing)Ca. 1950 ‘agreeable, but not extraordinary’(pejoration ‘making worse’)

ENG4820 | Week 7 17

AND NOW, SOME HISTORYBy now, we’ve already had lots of occasions to talk about the invasion of England by French-speaking armies and their nobility starting in the 11th century.

The historical details are easily forgotten, but the larger story is so fraught with consequential accidents that it’s worth dwelling on (a) how comical some of them were, and (b) how the story, and with it our language, could eaily have turned out very, very differently.

NORMANDY

WESSEX

DENMARK

NORWAY

SCOTLAND

ENGLAND

ENG4820 | Week 7 18

AND NOW, SOME HISTORYLATE 9TH CENTURY – EARLY 10TH:

Consolidation of power within the line of Ælfred, King of Wessex. Continuation of Norse (i.e. Scandinavian, the‘Vikings’) incursions in England and France, now by large, organized forces led by powerful chieftains.

912:The King of France recognizes the Norse occupation of northwestern France. The invaders call themselves Northmen, which leads to the name of their territory, Normandie. Within a few generations at most, they abandon their Norse language and adopt a regional variety of French.

1002: Ælfred’s great-great grandson, Æthelred (‘noble counsel’), marries Emma, the daughter of the duke of Normandy.

ENG4820 | Week 7 19

AND NOW, SOME HISTORY1013-14:

Æthelred is forced into exile by Swein, King of Denmark. Swein dies the next year and is succeeded by his son Knut. Æthelred returns from Normandy and drives Knut’s forces out of England.

1016:Knut re-invades England and fights Ælfred’s son Edmund to a draw. Edmund remains earl of Wessex and Knut becomes the nominal King of England.

1018:Knut is officially crowned the King of England and marries Edmund’s mother and Æthelred’s widow, Emma.

1035: Knut dies. Harold (called ‘the Harefoot’ for his speed and skill in the hunt), Knut’s son by another English wife, takes the throne.

ENG4820 | Week 7 20

AND NOW, SOME HISTORY1040-1066:

1040: Harold Harefoot dies1042: After much confusion, Edward, son of Æthelred and Emma, assumes the English throne. 1045: Edward (known as ‘The Confessor’ and later canonized as a saint for his missionary activities) marries Edith, daughter

of Godwin, the Earl of Sussex. 1053: Godwin’s son Harold (Harold Godwinson) becomes Earl of Wessex and is a close adviser to Edward.

ENG4820 | Week 7 21

AND NOW, SOME HISTORYJanuary 1066

King Edward dies with three competing claims to his throne:

1. Harold Godwinson, claiming a deathbed promise from Edward 2. Duke William of Normandy, Edward’s second cousin, claiming a promise made to him by Edward in 10523. Harald Hardraði , King of Norway, just because he thought he could

Harold Godwinson has the support of the English nobility and ecclesiastical authorities (a counsel called the witena gemot, or wise-men meeting) and is crowned King.

William of Normandy and Harald Hardraði start assembling their armies…

ENG4820 | Week 7 22

AND NOW, SOME HISTORYAutust-September 1066

William’s army is assembled in France and poised to invade England. Harold Godwinson is ready for him, but because of bad winds, William decides to wait a few weeks.

September 1066

Harald Hardraði invades from the north and, after an easy first victory, assumes that England is ripe for the plucking. Harold Godwinson marches his forces hundreds of miles and meets him with a superior force at Stamford Bridge in York. Harald Hardraði is killed in battle and his invasion force turns back.William’s army crosses the English channel and camps outside Hastings.

ENG4820 | Week 7 23

AND NOW, SOME HISTORYOctober 14, 1066

Harold Godwinson and William of Normandy engage in an all-day battle. Their forces are more or less equally matched, but William has more horses and advanced archery on his side.

By the end of the day, Harold Godwinson was dead.

Link: The Bayeux Tapestry

October to December, 1066

William sacks large parts of southeastern England in ongoing campaigns through December and is crowned in London on Christmas Day.

ENG4820 | Week 7 24

AND NOW, SOME HISTORY1066 to 1086

William thwarts numerous revolts (especially from the north, with Scandinavian and Scottish aid), in part by pressing the technological advantages of Norman castle building and armaments. The majority of English noble lines are eliminated in battle or dispossessed; their lands are given to William’s allies and subjects from Normandy, who move their entire households to England.

1177:

“Now that the English and Normans have been dwelling together, marrying and giving in marriage, the two nations have become so mixed that it is scarcely possible today, speaking of free men, to tell who is English and who is of Norman race” (Baugh, Albert, and Thomas Cable. A History of the English Language. 4th

ed. 1993: 117)

ENG4820 | Week 7 25

AND NOW, SOME HISTORY1204:

King John (also, like his forfathers, Duke of Normandy) falls in love with and marries Isabel of Angoulême, who was already betrothed to a powerful French nobleman. This gets him into trouble with the King Phillip of France, who seizes Normandy. Phillip presses Anglo-Norman nobles to decide their loyalty and begins seizing the continental lands of those who decide to stay in England.

1233:

Henry III, John’s son, sponsors a wave of patronage and immigration from Poitou and Provence, provoking the anger of settled English nobility and the middle class

ENG4820 | Week 7 26


The seizure of Anglo-Norman lands on the continent is more or less complete

1258:Henry III issues the first official proclamation in English

1258-1265:Barons’ War – a conflict between Henry III and a group of barons over concentration of political power and Henry’s indulgence of French immigrants.

1337-1453Years of distrust and rivalry culminate in the Hundred Years’ War, sparked by England’s invasion France over French interference in an invasion of Scotland

ENG4820 | Week 7 27


Parliament first addressed in English; records still kept in French

1423:Parliament’s records are almost exclusively in English

POINTS AT WHICH THE STORY COULD HAVE ENDED VERY DIFFERENTLY

1002: Æthelred could have picked a different wife – someone not French, for instance.1066: •Halley’s comet appeared that year, very large and very ominous, and helped convince William to make his move.•William could have had better winds and invaded sooner, facing Harald Godwinson’s forces while they were much stronger.•Harald Hardraði could have had his act a little more together, leading to a Scandinavian-Norman struggle for England.1204: John could have picked a different wife – one not already engaged to someone else, for instance, or an Englishwoman.

ENG4820 | Week 7 28

NOTHING WAS EVER THE SAME

For two centuries, French was the language of the upper classes of England, though the clergy remained more heavily English.The Normans were also much more advanced than the Saxons in critical areas, as evidenced by the French loan words that now describe them:

•Warfare (battle, siege, combat, army, defense, treason)•Building (construction, masonry, castles, buttress, pilar)•Law (justice, justice, jury, legality, courts, testimony, attorney)•Government (mayor, officer, judge, council, rule, prince, baron)•Fashion (embroider, satin, velvet, fur, jewel, adorn)•Art (paint, color, music, letter, poetry, prose, tragedy, comedy)•Learning (treatise, logic, music, grammar, substance, manner)

ENG4820 | Week 7 29


Norman French loan words often totally displaced their Anglo-Saxon counterparts, but perhaps just as often, they fell into complementary sets. We now have many dozens of word consisting of a polite, refined French loan and a simple, direct, even rude Anglo-Saxon native:

French Loan Anglo-Saxon Native French LoanAnglo-Saxon Native

amusing funny just rightbattle, combat fight labor workcourageous bold-hearted nourish feeddeceive lie odor smellfaith belief power mightfinish end respondanswergenerous giving spirit ghostinquire ask spouse

husband/wifeintelligent smart strange

weird

ENG4820 | Week 7 30


When Norman French words came into English, they came with the stress patterns characteristic of most of the Romance languages.

Where English tends to put stress towards the beginning of words, Romance languages tend to put stress near the ends. Consider these words, which still have exact counterparts (called ‘cognates’) in present-day French:

English Frenchnature naturedominant dominantcertain certaintreasure trésorodor odeurspirit espirit

The mass importation of loan words coincides with historical reports of English-French bilingualism among the upper and middle classes, starting around 1150 and hit its peak around 1250 (Millward p. 177).

ENG4820 | Week 7 31


EnglishFrenchnaturenaturedominant dominantcertaincertaintreasuretrésorodor odeurspirit espirit

Today, these words have the same stress profile as any native English word.

This kind of change is called nativization; in the case of these words, the shift actually played out over a few hundred of years.

How do we know this? We’re going to look at two Middle English poets who used both word-final (Romance) and word-initial (nativized) stress patterns.

Geoffrey Chaucer: 1343-1400John Gower: 1330-1408

ENG4820 | Week 7 32


The Norman invasion also brought continential literary culture to England, partially but not completely displacing the native Germanic tradition of alliterative stress-based poetry.

The chief import was end-rhyming, syllable-timed poetry, familiar to us as iambic pentameter:

5 pairs of syllables, first weak (W), then strong (S). Like in these two lines from Romeo:

(W S) ( W S) ( W S) (W S) (W S)But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?(W S)(W S) ( W S)(W S)(W S) It is the east, and Juliet is the sun…

This form of poetry is well suited to the stress-final Romance languages within which it evolved, but it’s always somewhat at odds with the native English stress pattern…

ENG4820 | Week 7 33


So when Chaucer and Gower compose iambic pentameter, they fit in words like nature and treasor (our treasure) in two ways: nativized, stress initial vs. original, stress-final

(1) Canterbury Tales: The Knights Tale

w s w s w s w s ws Nature hath now no dominacioun. w s w s w s w s w s And certeinly, ther nature wol nat wirche

When we look at how Chaucer and Gower handled these words, we find the following…

This is our domination, but for Chaucer, ithad five syllables and an [s] sound

Read nat as not. The word wirche is a variant of our work;the final <e> may or may not have beensilent

ENG4820 | Week 7 34


Figures from the Middle English Compendium (http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec/):

So Chaucer likes English-style nature just as much as Romance-style nature, while Gower clearly prefers the Romance form.

Tresor is much further along the path of nativization for both writers, since both prefer to align it strong-weak tresor instead of weak-strong tresor.

NativizedSW

RomanceWS

nature nature

Chaucer 50% 50%

Gower 36% 64%

tresor tresor

Chaucer 78% 22%

Gower 71% 29%

ENG4820 | Week 7 35


Norman French words are also folded into native English morphology and vice-versa.

•French verbs show up with regular English tense and agreement affixes: praise ~ praiseϸ ~ praised, serve ~ serveϸ ~ served•French nouns show up with English affixes like -ful, -less, -some, -dom, -ing: powerful, odorless, quarrelsome, preaching•Less frequently, English nouns show up with borrowed French affixes like -age, -able, -ment: mileage, likable, endearment

ENG4820 | Week 7 36

THE NEXT CHAPTER IN OUR STORY

Also Englysch men, ϸey hy hadde fram ϸe bygynnyng ϸre maner speche, Souϸeron, Norϸeron, and Myddel speche in ϸe myddel of ϸe lond, as hy come of ϸre maner people of Germania; noϸeles, by commyxstion and mellyng, furst wiϸ Danes and afterward wiϸ Normans, in menye ϸe contray longage ys apeyred, and som vseϸ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbittyng. ϸis apeyryng of ϸe burfltonge ys bycause of twey ϸinges. On ys for chyldern in scole, aʒenes fle vsage and manere of al oϸer nacions, buϸ compelled for to leue here oune longage, and for to construe here lessons and here ϸinges a Freynsch, and habbeϸ suϸϸe ϸe Normans come furst into Engelond. Also gentil men children buϸ ytauʒt for to speke Freynsch fram tyme ϸat a buϸ yrokked in here cradel.

From Ranulph Higden’s preface to his Polychronicon (1327)(http://www.hf.ntnu.no/engelsk/staff/johannesson/!oe/texts/imed/05imed/05_2w.htm)

We’ll be getting into the meaty parts of the Middle English period, talking about the demise of French in England, the flowering of literary language, and the early years of the printing press. As a preview, see how much you can pick out of this text from 1327…

ENG 4820 History of the English Language

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