Language history and change By Mariela Martínez Fuentealba.

English language History English comes from the Proto-Indo-European family. Proto-Indo European means the original form of a language which came from modern languages that were present in the Indian sub-continent and in Europe. Sanskrit is also part of the Proto-Indo-European family. It is an old language from which derived modern languages such as Hindi and Bengali.

It is related with Latin and Greek. In the text, Sanskrit is compared with Latin and Greek to evidence the evolution of the language and find the similarities that exist between them. There are close similarities in pronunciation.

Processes to establish family connection Cognates: It is a process which establish a family connection among different languages. In these, we can find similar words with similar meaning that are called cognates.

Comparative reconstruction: It is a procedure whose purpose is to reconstruct the possible original form in a common ancient language. It works with the great-grandmother of languages. It operates on the basis of two principles: the majority principle and the most development principle.

The majority principle: The majority of sounds maintain the initial sound that they had. Although, they sometimes change a little. The most natural development principle. It is natural that original sounds change a little and others change completely. Some types of sound-change are: final vowels often disappear, voiceless sounds become voiced between vowels, stops become fricatives and consonants become voiceless at the end of words.

The main difference between them is that in the majority principle, the sound could not change. Whereas in the most natural development principle, the sounds can completely change.

Periods of the English language History Old English: It is from seventh century to eleventh century. Angles, Saxons and Jutes tribes spoke Germanic language in British Isles. It was used the word Anglo-Saxon to name them. They spoke Englisc. Romans and Vikings invaded British Isles.

Middle English: Modern English: It was from 1100 to 1500. It began with Normans arrival in 1066 who came from Normandy. The first King of England, William the Conqueror, took place. French became the principal language. It was mainly used by the aristocracy. Modern English: It began in 1500. Great Vowel Shift started to be used. It marked the change between middle English and Modern English pronunciation.

Phonetic changes between Old English and modern English 1. Both Old English words have a long vowel which change to a kind of Diphthong in Modern English. 2. The old English word has an open vowel which changes to a close vowel. 3. 4. In the old English word, there is a close vowel which changes to an open vowel. The old English word has a long vowel whereas in the second one there is a short vowel 5.

Syntactic changes between Old English and Modern English Word order in a sentence and negative form: In old English, we can find the order subject-verb-object. Also, we can find the order verb-subject (fêrde he he traveled). In addition, we can find the order subject-object-verb (hê hine gaseah he saw him). Moreover, the object could use at the beginning of the sentence (him man ne sealde no man gave [any] to him).

In that sentence we can find the negative form which is no longer grammatical. In Old English could be used double-negative, too. Inflectional affixes: Old English used more affixes. Nouns, adjectives, articles and pronouns was characterized by inflectional forms.

Lexical differences between Old English and Modern English Borrowed words in Old English: They came principally form Greek and Latin. But those words have stopped to be used. For example “were” instead of “man”. Broadening: It is the change of a word, with a specific meaning, to a word with a general meaning. Example: “holy day”, a religious feast changed to “holiday”, a general break.

Narrowing: To apply Old English words in Modern English. Sometimes there are some variations in spelling and meaning. For instance, the word “mete” was used for mentioning any kind of food in old English but in modern English, the word “meat” is only used to refer to specific type of food.

Ways to study a language Diachronically: It studies the changes of a language through time with a historical perspective. Synchronically It studies a language in different places and among different groups in a certain period.