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1742 results in History of the English language

Page 42 of 88

  • 12 - Perspectives on Geographical Variation

    • By Merja Stenroos, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages at the University of Stavanger, Norway.
  • Edited by Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book:
    English Historical Linguistics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    03 July 2017, pp 303-331

  • Summary

    Studying Variation

    Variation in the Present and Past

    Human language is, and always has been, variable. It is characterized, in the words of the linguist William Kretzschmar, by “extensive (really massive) variation in all features at all times” (2009: 3). This variability has functions that seem to be fundamental to human communication: the messages we convey depend not just on what we say, but how we say it. How we speak reflects who we are and where we belong, or would like to belong. It also reflects each situation, our purposes, roles, and attitudes.

    The most obvious variation, that of which everyone is aware, has to do with geography. People speak differently in different places; and the differences generally grow with distance. Geographical variation – differences between “dialects” – was also the first kind of linguistic variation to be systematically studied, and dialectology remained for a long time the only discipline that studied linguistic variation. More recently, approaches such as sociolinguistics and pragmatics have come to focus on other kinds of variation. Sociolinguists study variation in relation to a wide range of variables, such as age, gender, social class, and ethnic and religious background; both sociolinguists and pragmaticists are concerned with different styles and domains, and pragmaticists are in particular interested in the different functions and uses of linguistic variants, such as politeness or insult (see Chapters 9 and 10).

    Geographical and social variation were for a long time studied separately. Most early sociolinguistic studies focused on communities within large cities (as is reflected in the early term “urban dialectology”) where geographical variation was not particularly relevant. Dialectology, on the other hand, tended to have an “antiquarian” interest: to record traditional dialectal forms before they died out, rather than to study the full scale of actual variation.

    This division has now to a large extent disappeared. Sociolinguistic studies routinely take geography into account, and dialectology has become informed by insights both from sociolinguistics and from human geography. Dialectal variation is no longer seen only as a matter of physical distance: rather, it is a question of distance in terms of contact.

  • 3 - Generative Approaches

  • Edited by Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book:
    English Historical Linguistics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    03 July 2017, pp 42-69

  • Summary

    Introduction

    William Shakespeare and his contemporaries of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century wrote sentences like these:

  • (1) a. for the eye sees not itself / But by reflection (Julius Caesar I.ii.52)

  • b. What means this shouting? I do fear, the people Choose Caesar for their king. (Julius Caesar I.ii.79–80)

    • We can still understand such sentences, but these two examples illustrate three instances of syntax that is no longer normal in Present-day English. To start with, sentence negation is no longer expressed by placing the negator not after a main verb. Today, we can only place a negator after an auxiliary verb, as in the eye cannot see itself, a sentence which Shakespeare could also have written. Similarly, we need an auxiliary to form the question of (1b), turning it into What does this shouting mean? And rather surprisingly, given that he could leave out auxiliaries where modern-day speakers need one, Shakespeare could use an auxiliary where we could not – I do fear could indeed be uttered today, but only in emphatic speech, as in I do not fear that Brutus will betray Caesar, but I DO fear that the people will choose Caesar for their king.

    Although we cannot assume that people in Tudor England produced speeches exactly like Shakespeare's in their everyday language, we can assume that these particular constructions reflected syntactic possibilities in more pedestrian spoken language. The essence of the generative approach to analyzing linguistic change between period A and period B is to make a formal and explicit description of the differences between the internalized grammar of a speaker of stage A and that of a speaker of stage B.

    Generative theory is primarily focused on synchronic analysis, and shifts in the treatment of changes such as those illustrated by the sentences of (1) reflect developments in the synchronic theory. However, diachronic generative linguists assume that the results of their studies can help shape synchronic theory as well as elucidate the history of a given language and add more generally to our understanding of how languages change. As we'll see below, it has been argued that a single change in a hypothesized parameter setting between Shakespeare's period and later led to a cluster of apparently unrelated changes, including the loss of a speaker's ability to produce questions and negatives without an auxiliary.

  • 11 - Perspectives on Standardization: From Codification to Prescriptivism

  • Edited by Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book:
    English Historical Linguistics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    03 July 2017, pp 276-302

  • Summary

    Introduction

    In 2014, a new edition came out of Sir Ernest Gowers’ Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of English, originally published in 1948. Gowers (1880–1966) was a civil servant, and the new edition was produced by his great-granddaughter, the novelist Rebecca Gowers. Plain Words is a usage guide, a manual on how to use language correctly. Originally written for civil servants like Gowers himself, Plain Words became hugely popular. But the work is neither the first of its kind nor unique in history: English usage guides originated during the second half of the eighteenth century, and their popularity has increased enormously, particularly during the end of the twentieth century and the beginning the twenty-first, despite the fact that there are already very many of them. There is clearly a market for usage guides.

    Such a market was already growing in England during the second half of the eighteenth century, though at first this new demand led to the publication of grammars, more than ever before. In some countries, grammars and usage guides, but also dictionaries, are published by an academy, an authoritative institution that is officially responsible for the regulation of the language. The best-known example is the Académie française, founded in 1635, but Spain has a language academy too, and so does the Netherlands, but it regulates Dutch spelling only. For English there has never been an academy, though at the beginning of the eighteenth century England came very close to having one. Instead of officially sanctioned publications, English grammars, dictionaries and usage guides came to be produced by individuals, writers from different backgrounds but all of them interested in language, often encouraged by publishers with an eye for the market.

    Usage guides are neither grammars nor dictionaries because they deal with all aspects of language: pronunciation, spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and style. They originate from“normative grammars” like the one by the clergyman Robert Lowth (1710–1787), which presents a norm of correctness for those wishing to speak and write correctly. One of the reasons Lowth's Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762) was so popular was that it had a chapter on syntaxwith numerous footnotes criticizing the grammatical mistakes of famous English writers.

  • 4 - Psycholinguistic Perspectives

  • Edited by Laurel J. Brinton, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
  • Book:
    English Historical Linguistics
    Published online:
    06 August 2018
    Print publication:
    03 July 2017, pp 70-95

  • Summary

    Introduction

    To most of you, it will not be immediately obvious why a textbook on English historical linguistics should contain a chapter on psycholinguistics. What do the two have to do with one another? Historical linguistics is the study of how languages change in the long term, over many generations of speakers, while psycholinguistics is concerned with the cognitive processes that take place when an individual speaker produces or processes language. It could thus be argued that historical linguists look at language at the level of entire linguistic communities, while psycholinguists try to understand how language works in the mind of a single human being. Against this dichotomy, this chapter will make the case that historical linguistics and psycholinguistics are much more deeply connected than it might initially appear. The centerpiece of that argument is the observation that language gradually changes in the long term simply because individual speakers in the here-and-now process it when they communicate. This idea was formulated in the nineteenth century by the historical linguist Hermann Paul:

    The changes in language fulfil themselves in the individual, partly through his spontaneous activity, by means of speaking and thinking in the forms of language, and partly through the influence which each individual receives from others. A change in linguistic usage can hardly be brought about without the co-operation of both. (1891: 15)

    Comments like these make Hermann Paul an intellectual grandfather of what is nowadays called usage-based linguistics (Bybee and Hopper 2001; Bybee 2010). As the name suggests, this framework assigns a fundamental role to language use, which is seen as the basis of speakers’ knowledge of language. As you experience language in use, you retain detailed memories of that experience and build up linguistic knowledge. This knowledge is flexible, and it is continually reshaped as you encounter new uses of language. This means that over time, your knowledge of language changes. With it changes your language production, which in turn influences the linguistic knowledge of the speakers around you. Through repeated cycles of small changes in usage, languages can change rather dramatically in the long term.

    When language change is viewed in this way, it becomes apparent that it is closely intertwined with the psychological processes that shape language use in the here-and-now.

Page 42 of 88