2 History Of English

Front 1

immutability/mutability

Back 1

Ferdinand de Saussure, two contradictory qualities of any language

Front 2

The linguist David Crystal estimates that half of the world's _____-plus languages, are in danger of _______

Back 2

5000, extinction

Front 3

Linguistic change involves ____, linguistic continuity involves _____

Back 3

continuity, change

Front 4

What is borrowing?

Back 4

A process whereby linguistic items - frequently words - are copied from one language to another.

Front 5

When did the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, the Franks unite under a single name? And what was this name?

Back 5

Englisc, by the 8th century

Hint 5

The birth of English involved continuity and diversity

Front 6

What is comparative philology/philology?

Back 6

It was concerned with examining correspondences and similarities in the vocabularies, grammars, and pronunciation patterns of different languages

Front 7

What was the aim of comparative philology?

Back 7

1) To find important connections between many of the languages of Europe and south-western Asia
2) To testify that a major reason for these similarities was a common, single source for all these languages

Front 8

Describe the Old English period

Back 8

It stretches from the mid-fifth century AD to not long after the Norman Conquest of England (1066 AD)

Front 9

How do you explain that the word mouse appears in so many languages?

Back 9

All the different form had a single, common source, from which the various form have gradually, progressively evolved.

Front 10

What is a cognate?

Back 10

They are words that are 'born' together, like the mouse debacle

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Proto-Indo-European (PIE) / Indo-European

Back 11

It is a hypothetical language, a construct based on the evidence provided by its descendent languages, and its descendent languages are described as members of 'the Indo-European family'

Front 12

There are 17 - 30 ____ ____

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language families

Front 13

Who came up with the family tree model?

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August Schleicher in 1863

Front 14

What is the centum-satem division about?

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In the nineteenth century, a broad division between western and eastern Indo-European languages was made. Centum is the Latin word for 'hundred', satem is the Avestan (an ancient Iranian language) word for 'hundred'. It was found that the Indo-European languages could be split into two broad groups: a western group with k (centum) in its 'hundred' words and an eastern group with an s-type sound. It is thought that the original PIE-form is the k and the s is a later development which occurred in the east.

Front 15

Grimm's Law

Back 15

Named after its formulator Jacob Grimm, 1822.

1) It gave a systematic account of correspondences between certain consonants in the Germanic languages and in other Indo-European languages. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin a word began with p-sound, the Germanic languages have an f-sound. Latin: pater, piscis, English; father and fish.

2) Explained a further regular change to 'hundred'-word in Germanic, whereby k became a h-type sound (centum - hundred)

Grimm's Law described altogether nine sets of such correspondences.

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Verner's Law

Back 16

By Karl Verner. He published an explanation of apparent exceptions to Grimm's Law, at the same time suggesting that sound-laws were exceptionless: the exceptions were merely the result of an incomplete law..

Front 17

Neogrammarians

Back 17

The theory of exceptionless sound-laws is associated especially with a group of German philologists who became known as the neogrammarians.

Front 18

Grimm's Law + Verner's Law = ?

Back 18

the First Germanic Consonant Shift

Front 19

Linguistic palaeontology

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An approach that grew out of comparative philology and which makes explicit statements about the external history of Indo-European languages - by drawing out cultural information from the linguistic materials.

Front 20

Glottochronology also known as _____ is about...

Back 20

Lexicostatistics

...an approach, to dating PIE a kind of 'linguistic version of radiocarbon dating'.

Front 21

What did Johannes Schmidt develop in 1872?

Back 21

The Wave Model, it presents linguistic innovations as ripples or waves radiating outwards from a central region to peripheries

Front 22

Vitaly Shevoroshkin developed the idea of _____ superfamily

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It is claimed that Indo-European and several other language families have evolved out of it.

Front 23

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza came up with the _____ superfamily

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Eurasiatic, dating from 20,000 and 10,000 years ago

Front 24

Phoneme

Back 24

is the term used by linguistics to refer to the chief sound-units in the sound-system of a language

Front 25

the Middle English period

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the Conquest --> until the late 15th century

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Received Pronunciation

Back 26

the standard accent of British English

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Diphthong

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a vowel phoneme consisting of two elements

Front 28

the Great Vowel Shift

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A name given by Otto Jespersen, originally in 1909, to a series of sound changes which thoroughly altered the seven long vowels of Middle English

Front 29

When did the Great Vowel Shift happen?

Back 29

It took place during the 15th-17th centuries, and it is one of the factors that has led linguists to identify an Early Modern English period in the history of the language

Front 30

When was Early Modern English period?

Back 30

1500-1800

Front 31

The completion of the Great Vowel Shift marks the beginning of the ______ ____ ____

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Modern English Period

Front 32

Why did the Great Vowel Shift happen?

Back 32

1) Internal part, each vowel became higher, with two vowels that were already high becoming diphthongs (and at a later point two more became diphthongs)

2) External explanation. The Shift was centred in London English, and the sociolinguistic view is that it began as a case of change from below. The interpretation of the details varies, but on suggestion is that a socially stigmatized merging of the vowels in the meat and meet group characteristic of lower-class London-area accents eventually became socially prestigious set of usages, which then set the train to the structural adjustments in the long vowel system.

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Vowel height

Back 33

Depends on how high is the tongue in the mouth

Front 34

How did the changes happen in vowel height in the Great Vowel Shift?

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1) Changes at the top, which then pulled up the articulations of lower vowels

Or
2) Changes at the bottom, pushed up or diphthongized the higher vowels
or
3) Changes in the middle which had both a push and a pull effect

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Sociolinguistics

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A branch of linguistics in which language is studied in its social context, in connection with factors such as the sex, age, occupation, education and social class of speakers

Front 36

the Northern Cities Shift

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Assessed by William Labov. In the northern United States. White urban communities. Changes in vowels.

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Change from below

Back 37

Linguistic innovation that occurs below the level of social consciousness

Front 38

a chain shift

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a set of phonological movements

Front 39

neologisms

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new words

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word-formation

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to create new words from existing resources of the language

Front 41

compound

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Independent words are joined without losing any of their parts
as in grasshopper

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Blending

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a variant of compounding, involves the loss of parts of the constituents
brunch <--- breakfast and lunch

Front 43

Derivation

Back 43

new words are formed by using prefixes to an existing form

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Abbreviation

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the shortening of a word or words

bus from omnibus

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Back-formation

Back 45

the reverse of derivation, a word is assumed to have derived from an earlier basic form when this has not actually been the case, and a new form is created

Front 46

amelioration

Back 46

a word with a 'negative' sense develops a 'positive' sense

Front 47

deterioration

Back 47

the reverse of amelioration, garble (cleanse)