Lingua Inglese I 2014-2015Daniela Salusso

LAUREA TRIENNALEI ANNO L-12 , CODE: LIN.0009

9 CREDITS, 54 HOURSSCIENZE DELLA MEDIAZIONE LINGUISTICA

Information about the course

Class starts at 8:15 p.m. and ends at 9:45 p.m.

• EXAM PROGRAMME• a written exam • it will consist in activities and questions, in English,

based on the course contents and on the set book• it can be taken only once per session• students must have passed the first year prova

propedeutica (or lettorato), whose result will be integrated with the mark of the lingua inglese course

EXAM SESSIONS 2013-2014

PROVE PROPEDEUTICHE (lettorato): 3 exams per year 1 in the Summer Session 2014, 1 in the Autum Session

2014, 1 in the Winter Session 2015

LINGUA INGLESE : 8 per year4 in the summer session 2014 (1 in May, 2 in June, 1 in

July)2 in the autumn session 2014 (1 in September, 1 in

November)2 in the winter session 2015 (1 in January, 1 in February)

Course TimetableWeek 1: 9/10/11 February: Introduction – Language change and variation in

EnglishWeek 2: 16/17/18 February :The history of English Week 3: 23/24/25 February: (follows)Week 4: 2/3/4 March: The pronunciation of EnglishWeek 5: 9/10/11 March: (follows) Week 6: 16/17/18 March: English grammarWeek 7: 23/24/25 March: (follows)Week 8: 30/31 March/ 1 April: The English lexicon: from words to phraseologyEaster break: 2-7 April – 8 April: No lessonWeek 9: 13/14/15 Apr (follows) + exercises and exam practice

This timetable is only “tentative” – if lessons are cancelled they will be added after the Easter break

Title of the course

“Introduction to present-day English: historical background, geographical spread and linguistic features”

Set book

V. Pulcini, a cura di, A Handbook of Present-day

English, Carocci, Roma , 2009(Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, pp. 1-237)* Chapter 5 will be covered in the second year

Becoming familiar with the handbook

Becoming familiar with the handbook

DIFFERENCESFour chapters written by four

lecturers in this university (Mazzaferro, Pulcini,Minutella, Prat)(see Table of Contents pp. 7-9)1) The history of English2) The pronunciation of

English3) The grammar of English4) English lexicon

SHARED FEATURESEach chapter …• is composed of the main text,

the chapter overview and a list of study questions and activities

• is structured into titled and numbered sections

• has key-terms and names in bold print (see analytic index)

• has key concepts in the margin• has a selected bibliography of

important references

Some features of an academic handbook

ACADEMIC ENGLISH A handbook is written by experts to experts-to be. • e.g. concepts and terms, which are widely shared by the

scientific community, are explained, or clarified through examples. • e.g. Different approaches and terminologies may be

presented and compared

ACADEMIC CONVENTIONS • e.g. use of graphic devices (e.g italics), abbreviations and

phonetic symbols (pp.11-15), cross-references (see Chapter 3, §4), bibliographic conventions in the text and in the final bibliographies

Aims of the course• To understand where the English language comes from

• To understand who speaks English, where and for what purposes

• To understand how the English language works

• To build good linguistic foundations for further research in any area of the English studies

Competences required

• PRACTICAL COMPETENCE in the use of English, both spoken and written (language teaching and learning/EFL methodology)

• SCIENTIFIC STUDY of English: based on data, making implicit knowledge explicit, using a metalanguage to talk about language (English linguistics)

Developing practical competence: self-study resources

Useful websites• BBC – learning English: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/• British Council – Learn English:

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/• UsingEnglish.com: http://www.usingenglish.com/

Dictionaries• Oxford Paravia concise (EN-IT/IT-EN): http://oxfordparavia.it/• Cambridge Dictionaries Online (monolingual, different language

varieties): http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Why study linguistics?

5 Reasons: David Crystal on “Doing Linguistics”

Language change and variation in English

Language change and variation in English

• Do languages change in time? Types of change: phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic

• How do they change? Synchrony, diachrony, historical linguistics, history of the language, comparative linguistics, language family, Indo-European, Germanic family, Romance or Neolatin family

• Why do they change? “external” (e.g. historical events, inventions, new ideas) versus “internal” (e.g. analogy, hypercorrection, push chain processes)

• What is “the best form” of a language? (standard vs non-standard varieties)

• What is the relationship between language and society? (sociolinguistics)• How and why did English spread in the world and become a global

language? (from English to “Englishes”)

A very important question

Is the study of the history and varieties of English relevant to university students of English?

YES!!! For cultural reasons

To understand more about present-day English - the gap between spelling and pronunciation - the mixed nature of its lexis e.g. “liberty” vs

“freedom” - the existence of regular and irregular verbs - the linguistic situation of present-day UK

To reinforce practical competence - to improve pronunciation and grammatical correctness - to expand lexical competence - to be prepared to understand different varieties of

English

Linguistic variability and change

Languages are living entities:1) They change over time2) They reflect the culture of the speech community

in which they are employed

1) Language change along a historical continuum the perspective is diachronic

2) Language variability according to socio-cultural factors the perspective is synchronic

The synchronic approach

The synchronic approach …• ... describes language as it is at a particular moment in time• ... The object of its description is a variety referred to as ‘standard’

Standard variety: the language par excellence in terms of social prestige, language functions and domains of use.

• Who speaks the standard variety of a language? Educated people

• In which contexts is the standard variety of a language used?

Official circumstances (e.g. certain TV programmes – BBC news; political discourse; school; university)

• Is it more likely to be based on spoken or written language?

Written

Standard and non-standard varieties

• Development of a standard form of English through long processes of selection (London English) and codification through grammars and dictionaries

• Development of a standard accent : The Received Pronunciation (RP)

• There is no intrinsic value in the features that characterize the standard variety of a language:– Favor (AmE) vs. favour (BrE)/ center (AmE) vs. centre (BrE)– Cockney (working class, East End of London)

• glottal stop /ʔ/in the pronunciation of /t/: Saturday; quite well• Th-fronting: the fricative sounds /θ/ or /ð/ /f/ or /v/: brother

[‘br∧ðə(r)] [‘br∧və(r)]; three [θri:] [fri:] – Double negative (many non-standard varieties) I didn’t say nothing!

Standard and non-standard varieties

Prescriptive views A prescriptive view of

language formulates rules for how language should be used

Non-standard varieties are considered as ‘irregular’, ‘unsystematic’. They do not have the same status as standard varieties.

Language teaching tends to focus on standard varieties (e.g. pedagogical grammars)

Descriptive views A descriptive view is concerned

with the language that people actually use to understand how languages work

All the varieties of a language have equal status

Language varieties are studied to understand the relationship between a certain language form, i.e. a variant (e.g. a new word, a specific syntactic construction, a vowel sound), and social variables (e.g. social class, gender, age)

Sociolinguistics

The study of the relationship between language and society The aim is to understand how language variability is related to

social factors such as: • class: e.g. working-class, middle-class, upper-class• social networks: e.g. professional networks (colleagues, customers),

family and friends• sex/gender identities: women vs. men (sex as a biological fact)/ gender

identity as a social phenomenon• age: childhood, adolescence, adulthood• ethnicity: factors that create a sense of belonging to macro-groups it

replaces the concepts of race, national origin and culturePositive/negative attitudes (a variety may be perceived as

less or more prestigious and useful than others)

Labov (1966): Linguistic variation and social class positive attitudes

Labov studied the patterning of [r] pronunciation (r-full) in New York City before a consonant (fourth) and at the end of words (floor) as a sign of social prestige.

Speakers’ social class: (0-5) lower classes; (6-8) middle class; (9) upper-class. Speech style: casual speech, careful speech, reading style, word lists, minimal pairs (god and guard, dock and dark)

Labov (1966): Linguistic variation and social class positive attitudes

Hypercorrection: middle-class speakers conform to the prestige norm with higher frequency than the highest social class

Milroy (1992): Linguistic variation and social networks negative attitudes

• In Belfast urban vernacular, words such as pull, bull, wool are pronounced with the vowel sound [ʌ] instead of the standard sound [ʊ]

• Milroy discovered that this non-standard variant was used considerably less by speakers with weak network ties with the local community

• Strong networks support the maintenance of varieties even if they are stigmatized.

Milroy, J. (1992). Linguistic Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell

The diachronic approach

The diachronic approach …

• … focuses on language change over time• … defines the relationships among languages

so as to understand how they ame to be as they are comparative linguistics

• … reconstructs the historical development of a specific language history of language

Comparative linguistics

• Which family does the English language belong to? Germanic languages

• Which languages belong to the Germanic family? German, Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Yiddish

• What is the proto-language from which Germanic languages and other language families have descended? Indo-European

Indo-European Languages

Similarities among Indo-European languages

English: father mother threeSanskrit: pitar matar trayasGreek: pater mater treisLatin: pater mater tres

Why and how do languages change in time?

• External causes for change: they are extralinguistic or social factors– Technological innovation: e.g. online, freeware, netiquette; URL, HTML, PDF– New concepts and relevant vocabulary: e.g. sustainability, stakeholder,

greenwashing– Military conquest: e.g. The Norman Conquest (XI century) liberty,

guardian, soldier, beauty, music, poet, dangerous, flower, pork, very […]– Immigration: Hispanic varieties of English in the USA “Chicano English” of

descendants of Mexican immigrants: distinct vowel sounds and intonation patterns

• Internal causes for change: changes leading to balance and regularity in the language system – E.g. The Great Vowel Shift

How do new means of communication and technology change language?

1. Printing (1400 – 15th century) enabled new styles, new spelling and new punctuation systems to develop

2. The telephone (19th century) let new patters of dialogue emerge

3. With broadcasting (1920s) new styles came into being (sports commentaries, news reading, weather forecasting, chat shows)

How does the Internet affect the English language?

There have been no major changes in grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation. Some changes are attested in punctuation, such as the use of emoticons. However, the English language has become expressively richer thanks to the development of new styles (e.g. the style used in chat rooms, virtual world games, the world wide web, e-mails, etc.) (Crystal, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2XVdDSJHqY)

Is it possible to integrate sociolinguistics and the history of language?

• The analysis of language use in social contexts applied to the history of language is difficult mainly for methodological reasons:

Lack of any spoken evidence for the earlier stages of the language

The difficulty of interpreting and dating changes in earlier written texts

Phonological change

• It refers to any mutation within the sound system of a language

• The Great Vowel Shift. Starting point: 15th century – Middle English period – end: 17th century - Modern English period

The Great Vowel Shift

• A chain of changes affecting long vowels named push chain process – /i:/ [ɛi] [bi:t] > [bɛit] > [bəit] > [bʌit] (bite)– /e:/ /i:/ [me:t] > [mi:t] (meat)– /ɛ:/ /i:/ [mɛ:tə] > [mi:t] (meet)

In PDE meat and meet are homophones– /a:/ /ɛ:/ [nɑ:mə] > [nɛ:m] > [ne:m] > [neɪm] (name)– /u:/ [ɔu:] [u:] >[ɔu:]>[əu]>[ʌu]>[ɑu:] (house)– /o:/ /u:/ [bo:tə] > [bu:t] (boot)– /ɔ:/ /o:/ [bɔ:nə] > [bo:n] > (18th cent) [oʊ]/[əʊ]

(bone, boat) These changes partly explain the inconsistencies between spelling and

pronunciation in PDE!!!

The Great Vowel Shift

Morpho-syntactic changes Analogy: the extension of existing forms to create new forms, e.g.

through suffixes and prefixesE.g. complete/completion –> incomplete/incompletion

Hypercorrection: the speakers’ awareness of the social value of a given variant and the overuse of the more prestigious form

E.g. In some AmE varieties: fellow *fella and yellow *yellaumbrella * umbrellow

Backformation: is the process of creating new forms, often by removing affixes:

E.g. editor to edit; lazy to laze

Semantic change

• It indicates any mutation in the meaning of lexical items

• It is commonly triggered by external causes, e.g. socio-cultural change, scientific and technological innovation and foreign language influence

• Two main types of semantic change: change of meaning and change of connotation

Change of meaning

• Widening: the meaning of a lexical item is extended: – Dog (PDE) “any breed” “a particular powerful breed of

dog”– Cupboard (PDE) “a piece of furniture usually with

shelves where to store food and crockery” “a table upon which cups and other vessels were placed”

– To grow (PDE) “to grow in any way” “to get bigger”

• Narrowing: the meaning of a lexical item is narrowed down to a specific meaning: – Meat (PDE) “edible flesh of animals” “food”– To starve (PDE) “to die of hunger” “to die”

Change of connotation

• Pejoration: the meaning of a lexical item acquires negative connotations– Knave (PDE) “rogue, dishonest man” cnafa (OE)

“youth, child”– Silly (PDE) “foolish, lacking seriousness” sely (ME)

“happy, innocent”

• Amelioration: the meaning of a lexical item acquires positive connotations– Queen (PDE) “a woman sovereign, the wife of the king”

cwēn (OE) “woman, wife”– Knight (PDE) “a warrior serving a king” cniht (OE)

“boy, servant”

Historical Periods and Linguistic Phases

1. The Anglo-Saxon period

2. The Norman period

3. Modern period

4. 20th Century

1. Old English, OE (700-1150)

2. Middle English , ME (1150-1500)

3. Modern English, ModEngl. (1500-1900)

4. Present-day English (PDE) (to the present)

The History of English in ten minutes

Old English

• English is a Germanic language• The reconstructed proto-language from where

Germanic derives is Indo-European• It is difficult to locate and date the origin of

Germanic languages exactly lack of relevant documentation

Old English period (700-1150)

• this term refers to Germanic dialects spoken by Jutes, Angles and Saxons: Kentish, West-Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian

• the West-Saxon reign was the most important religious, military and cultural centre in Europe

• West-Saxon was considered the first standard written language, associated with political, military and cultural power in society

Major historical events leading to the OE period

Stonehenge, about 3,000-2500 BC100 BC the first Celts appeared in Britain55-54 BC Julius Caesar invaded Britain

( …and the Romans left it in the 5th century)

5th century: some Germanic tribes (Anglo-Saxons and Jutes) arrived in England and forced the Celts to move west and north

Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain

The Celts

• Indo-European people who lived in Europe from 2000 BC to 100 AD

• they inhabited the British Isles before the Roman and Anglo-Saxon invasions

• names of Celtic origin: London, Leeds, Avon, Thames, Kent, Cornwall

• very few Celtic words in Old English• Celtic languages spoken today: Welsh, Irish

Gaelic, Scots Gaelic (Breton)

Stonehenge (2500 BC)

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument, one of the most famous sites in

the world.

The Roman period (55 BC – 400 AD)

• The name Britain comes from the Greek word Pretani (PDE Britons) (Πρετανι), probably of Celtic origins. It was mispronounced by the Romans, and was used to name the Romance province of Britannia

• In 55-54 BC Julius Caesar invaded Britain, but the army occupied the island only a century later in 43 AD

• Political and economic reasons for the Roman invasions:– The Celts of Britain were protecting and hiding the Gauls against whom

the Romans were fighting– Britain was an important food producer because of its mild climate

The Roman baths of Bath

The Roman Baths complex is a site of historical interest in the English city of Bath.

It is a well-preserved Roman site for public

bathing. Clean spa water can be

drunk by visitors.

Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian's Wall was a defensive fortification in

Roman Britain. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of

emperor Hadrian, it was the first of two fortifications

built across Great Britain.

Angles, Saxons and Jutes (c.400 AD – c.1150 AD) • In the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrived in

England. • The Romans had left the island in 409 AD following the

progressive weakening of the empire due to Germanic attacks in European mainland.

• The Celts had to defend themselves alone. They were gradually forced to move north and west.

• Language: Old English period: 700 – c1150 AD• “Old English” refers to four Germanic dialects: Kentish, West-

Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian• What happened between the 5th and the 8th century

which led to the shaping of Old English?

Christianisation of Britain

• 6th century• introduction of the Latin

alphabet• abandonment of the Runic

alphabet by the Anglo-Saxons• from the 9th to the 11th

centuries manuscripts were translated from Latin into Old English

• Latin and Greek gave Old English a wide range of Gospel words related to religion and spirituality

Runic Alphabet (Futhark)

The Scandinavian invasion (8th century)

• The first settlers were located in the north-east of England.

• They expanded all through the island until King Alfred the Great, the head of the West Saxon region, defeated them in the 9th century (887 AD).

• English toponyms in -by are Danish in origin: Rugby, Derby, Whitby (the Danish word by meant ‘farm’ or ‘town’).

• Simple-life words borrowed into English from Danish: law, band, odd, rotten, rugged, die

Linguistic features of OE

• Latin alphabet, with some differences from PDE (e.g. the consonant thorn, or þorn, <þ>)

• nouns, adjectives and pronouns were inflected for case, number and gender (synthetic versus analytic language)

• two types of verbs (strong and weak) = regular and irregular verbs in PDE

• word order was free • lexis was mainly Germanic but included words of

Celtic (names of places, e.g. London) , Latin (e.g. schol from schola) and Scandinavian origin (e.g. landes mann = native in PDE)

Ælfric’s Colloquy (c.998)

OE: We cildra biddaþ þe, eala lareow, þæt þu tæce us [...]

Latin: Nos pueri rogamus te, magister, ut doceas nos [...]

PDE: Master, we young men would like you to teach us [...]

Food for thought

http://ideas.ted.com/20-words-that-once-meant-something-very-different

/, on youtube: “The Story of English” Episode 2 The Mother

Tongue“The Story of English” Episode 1 An English-speaking World

Pronunciation of Old English, http://wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/genintro.html,

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/eieol/engol-0-X.html,

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?

groupid=971&HistoryID=aa99&gtrack=pthc