Riassunto capitoli 4-5-6-7-8-10 del libro \'The history of English: an introduction\' di Stephan Gramley PDF

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Riassunto dei capitoli 4-5-6-7-8-10.
No cap 9-11-12-13 perché esclusi nella bibliografia da preparare per l'esame. ...

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CAPITOLO 4: Dynastic conflict and the Norman conquest in 1066, after the death of Edward the confessor, there was a hereditary dispute between King Harold (his successor), King Harald III of the Norwegians and William of the Normans. Harold defeated Harald and his English and Scottish allies at Stamford Bridge, but eventually William fought and killed Harold and his brother during the battle of Hastings. William crowned himself king of England at Christmas in 1066. The Norman French presence in England: demographic and linguistic consequences The effect of the Norman conquest had a massive effect on vocabulary (invasion of French words in English language), changed the patterns of word formation, and altered the phonological structure of the language. Literary norms changed as well. All of this seems to be the result of the presence of well-educated and powerful Normans in influential positions, but in contrast to the Vikings, there was no massive migration. In fact, in total only 5% of the population was Norman, who mainly had high places in society, they were feudal overlords and archbishops, so the regular people, the peasants, weren’t influenced by the French language and remained English-speaking. There was French-English bilingualism. After the Norman Conquest, English was spoken at the bottom, while French at the top. French itself was the language of the upper classes for about 200 years, and in general its use marked class more than ethnic or national identity. The Norman presence resulted into the English language evolving more quickly, without it English would probably have changed more slowly. The increased presence of French books and laws led to large-scale borrowing from this language into English. Separation of France and England Conflict between the King of France and the King of England (who was also the Duke of Normandy), because the King of France wanted to be recognized as the Duke of Normandy. In 1204 King John married Isabel of Angouleme against the wishes of King Philip of France, who perceived this as disloyalty. The whole affair ended in John’s loss of Normandy and the nobility had to choose between their holdings in France and in England, but not both. English ambitions in France ended at the end of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). French in the upper classes disappeared in the fifteenth century. In 1215 was the signing of the Great Charter or Magna Carta, by King John, which is one of the centrepieces of Anglo-Saxon democracy. The re-emergence of English, reaction to foreigners, and the growth of national feeling Provisions of Oxford: the first proclamation since the Norman conquest that was issued not only in French and Latin but also in English. The provisions promoted power-sharing between the king and barons (which means that there is recognition of a parliament). King Henry III did not like it and that resulted in the Baron’s War (1258-1265). By the time of the Barons’ Revolt bilingualism had declined in favour of English monolingualism in the nobility. The final mov to English started in 1204 and was completed in 1235. Under Henry III’s successor, Edward I, most office-holders were English and the English language became more accepted and at the end of the 13th century it became the common language in all parts of the population after the Normans gradually merged with the English. English was beginning to be associated with English nationalism, as ‘Cursor Mundi’ shows, and the knowledge of English was coming to be seen as the mark of an Englishmen. The re-emergence of English caused the decline of French, who was now a foreign language. English as a written language and the use of English in the courts and in Parliament was not to become established until the middle of the 14th century. Linguistic features of Middle English in the non-standard period Pronunciation of ME and phonemicization The evolution of new phonemes: the influence of French led to contrasts between initial voiced and voiceless fricatives = /f/ vs /v/ - /s/ vs /z/ -

Open-syllable lengthening: /a/, / / and / / became long / /, / /, / / in open syllables. The consequence is that today phonologically short vowels do not occur in open syllables, except the schwa. Spelling in ME Non-Latin letters fell into disuse:

OE (originally rounded front /y /) had become in the Southeast, but rounding was retained in the Southwest where , a French spelling, but also and occurred. High back rounded /u / was often spelled in French fashion. Grammar in ME Loss of inflectional endings: inflection attrition started in the North in the late OE period and spread south, finding its conclusions in the 14th century, probably the influence of French did accelerated this process. In the North changes were quicker because it was less influenced by the old Wessex standard, whereas the South was influenced by the OE standard in writing. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Nouns lost distinctions in case and gender due to altered pronunciation. Adjectives lost their number marking in addition in most cases. all show up as Changes of the non-stigmatized forms influenced by Scandinavian: - The 3rd person plural personal pronoun hey, here, hem changed to they,their,them - The present tense plural be changed to are - The third person singular present tense verb inflection -th changed to -s

1. There was a shift from synthetic to analytic structure: a structure with few endings, a fixed word order (no more the freedom of movement of OE) and the use of prepositions, (their number grew in the early ME period, the sources were both ON and French). The new word order was SVO (subject-verb-object) in contrast with SOV, which was frequent in dependent clauses in OE. Verb-second order, which is the case in SVO and AdvVSO became increasingly infrequent, yielding to AdvSVO, where V does not come in second position. 5. Strong/irregular verbs, almost one-third of them had become regular by the ME period 6. New grammatical patterns influenced by the presence of French speakers, such as: - The case levelling of subject ye to object you parallel to the model of French vous (both subject and object) = the loss of the ye-you distinction. - The use of Who, an interrogative, on the model of French qui. - French ‘faire’ + infinitive led to the rise of periphrastic do in English. - French ‘etre’ + past participle led to be as the passive auxiliary.

Vocabulary Early ME had a massive influx of new vocabulary from French and Low Dutch. Later in the ME period there was an increase of Latin borrowings due to the Renaissance. Since much of the new ruling class spoke French while the common people continued to speak English, it was less words for everyday things and activities which entered the language than words the new masters were likely to use. French borrowing mainly took place in the areas of fashion, art and literature, learning, law and administration, military and church. Everyday things are words of Germanic origin. After the Loss of Normandy, in 1204, the upper classes moved to English in more and more domains, but they also carried with them the French words they were accustomed to using. It is chiefly nouns which were adopted. The borrowing happened because French was a language with more prestige than English. Not only French and Latin fed the vocabulary of ME, but also Low Dutch (Flemish, Dutch, Low German) contributed. In this case language contact isn’t related to a particular happening or period, but it’s due to the fact that large

numbers of Flemings went to England over the years, they were mainly mercenaries, traders, and craftsmen (weavers). Among the borrowings we find words from the areas of textiles, shipping, art, and money. English has been particularly receptive to the possibility of absorbing foreign words; instead of making up new words, it borrowed them. French influence on Middle English and the question of English-French creolization The massive influence of French on ME has led some linguists to suggest that the language underwent creolization. A problem in confronting the question of creolization is that there are few vernacular English texts between 900 and 1200 AD, so it is difficult to see what the effect of the French language really was. Arguments for creolization:  A lot of French borrowing in English

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Arguments against creolization: Very little French influence on morphology, syntax and phonology. Only lexical borrowing was a major factor ME grammar is a clear continuation of OE grammar. There was never a large percentage of French speakers There were basically only two languages in England and creolization needs the presence of many languages instead. Bilingualism seems to be much more likely candidate when it comes to explaining linguistic change in ME than does creolization.

English literature: from about 1150 to 150 English-language writing was almost exclusively religious or didactic in nature. Throughout the 13th and 14th centuries French served as the literary language of England. Dialectal diversity in early ME Early Me had a variety of regional dialects. There were three different regions with three different dialects: North, South and Midlands, with different features in pronunciation, vocabulary and inflection. There were differences also within them. For ex: the Midlands dialect was divided into an East and a West Midlands type, due to the strong ON influence in the East, which was part of Danelaw. The North was divided into Northern (England) and Lowland Scots (Scottish), and the South into Southwestern and South-eastern. In total: 6. In the case of North-South pronunciation distinctions, these may be attributed to the influence of Old Norse.

CAPITOLO 5: Political and social turmoil and demographic development The peoples who lived in GB at that time: Welsh, Scots (both spoke their language), Flemings and English (both spoke English, in its Southern, Northern and Midlands varieties). In the 13th century: the population growth up to 6/7 million inhabitants. In the 14th century: political and social problems caused population loss. There was a decline in English population due to the Great Famine and The Plague (or Black Death), which began at mid-century (1348 more or less). The Hundred Year’s War and the Peasant’s Revolt The dynastic conflict between the French and the English crown led to the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), a war parallel to the Black Death. The war was a series of conflicts with sometimes quite long periods of peace in between. The Edwardian War (1337-1360), the Caroline war (1369-1389), the Lancastrian War (1415-1429), and the French Revival (1429-1453) under Joan of Arc, are the four wars fought in the Hundred Year’s War. These wars were mainly conflicts between the French and English crowns. By the end of the War, in part because of the nationalistic sentiments and resentments toward France that the war engendered, French was no longer a realistic option even among the English nobility. In the 15th century French disappeared as a language of everyday communication, but it continued to be used by the educated and in high society. Due to the decline in population, which resulted into labour shortages, the peasants gained a better bargaining position. This led to higher wages and to a weakening of the traditional ties to the manors. The loss of people in higher ranks also made it easier for people of lower classes to rise through the ranks. The rise of commoners to positions of leadership and authority in public services was increasingly possible. The Hundred Years’ War also contributed to mobility. The geographical mobility, also due to the Plague, of more and more people increased, there was necessarily more contact between the various regional forms of the language. Henry VII sought often to fill offices with people from the growing middle class. This signalled a great change in attitude: a hundred years before, the king and the nobility had tried to resist change from below. The Peasant’s Revolt is the clearest example of the resentment engendered by the opposing social and economic forces. It that was caused by a third poll tax introduced by the king in 1380 to finance the war against France, received as unjust and too high. This led to massive opposition to royal authority, they executed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer. This is seen as the beginning of the end of serfdom in England, leading to better wages and more freedom. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485): House of York, supported by commercial classes in London vs House of Lancaster, supported by the Parliament and Edward IV. After that war, the power was centralised under Henry III, a Lancastrian and a Tudor. After him, Henry IV, was a native speaker of ENG. Lollardy The Lollard movement (14th – 15th centuries, which eventually led to the Peasant’s Revolt and gained support from it, produced a considerable amount of religious innovation which was not only an expression of social change, but also contributed to changing attitudes toward language. Lollards wanted to initiate change in the Medieval Church. They challenged the role of Latin, which only very few people could understand. They wanted to rid the Church of corruption and separate State and Church more. A major focal point in the movement was John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible into English, such a translation resisted by the authorities, but indicated the presence of a growing reading public, which surely increased with the availability of an English version of the Bible. He finished his translation in 1382. In the late 13th and early 14th centuries English took over more and more functions once reserved for Latin or French (Latin used for laws, Church, State, statutes vs French for petitions). The turning point seems to have been the reign of Henry V (1413–1422). English was again used officially, especially by the royal bureaucracy, after 1420. It seems to have been in general use by 1450. The decline of Latin: its prominence in religion was being challenged, but it remained the language of record, for example for court documents and it was the language of learned discourse. Yet in this period and the EModE period it lost its primacy in all of these areas.

The translation of the Bible: In 1401, under Henry IV, a law prohibited the translation of the Bible into English. The Western (Catholic) Church had itself forbidden vernacular translations at the Synod of Toulouse (1229); however, this ban was widely ignored elsewhere, but not in England where the idea of independent reading was associated with translation and the Lollards. Someone reading the English translation was still given an interpretation, but by the translator rather than the pries. Another problem is that the reader could have been misled by the meaning of everyday English words, or have failed to grasp the exact meaning of the original. In actual fact, Bible translations had been and continued to be made. Examples from the OE period include Bede’s translation of the Gospel of John (735) and the Wessex translation of the gospels of about 990. Wycliffe’s translation (1385) was followed by Tyndale’s. The latter loosed an avalanche of translations: - Matthew Bible (1537) with royal assent - Great Bible (1539), which the nobility could read aloud; which women and merchants could read silently for themselves; and which common people were not allowed to read at all, - Geneva Bible (1557/60) with Calvinist marginal notes, - Bishop’s Bible (1568) authorized by Queen Elizabeth, - Douay-Rheims (1582) Roman Catholic - The King James (or Authorized) Version (1611)

The version of King James in comparison with Wycliffe’s one is freer, it does not respect Latin structure, for ex. Word order, as Wycliffe version does. The Wycliffe text can be understood by a ModE-speaking readership, but there are quite a number of unfamiliar-looking words. They reflect both differing pronunciations and different conventions of spelling, such as: A. While and were used for different vowel sounds in OE, they had become free variants by this time. B. is used within a word where today either or, as here, would occur. The emergence of a new standard At the beginning of the thirteenth century people from all over England were moving to London and bringing their widely divergent dialects with them. In the context of the waning feudal system, the emerging middle class, increasing social mobility, the economic and political opportunity offered by the more and more powerful guilds, and the necessity that people understand the law, moved English into the center of learned attention. London also attracted more and more people from all parts of the country because it was the center of government and administration and of trade and commerce. London English was the result of the concentration of power and people in London The rise of London English There were two central forces driving standardization. The first one was the spoken language of everyday life with a certain degree of levelling or koinéizaton, which ensured that London vernacular speech was no longer Southern, but more Midlands with Northern features. The second one is Chancery English, the written language promoted by the government administration, the Chancery. The latter moved quickly to standard English and this could happen because of the increase of Northerners/ Midlanders in London government due to the population loss of the Plague and the Hundred Years’ War. The former was slower to lose its ME features. Also the presence of Caxton’s printing press in London, though late in this period (1476), greatly contributed to this London-based standardization. With the rise of the lower classes the status of English improved. In the towns and most especially in London, a new English-speaking class grew up, not noble or peasant in nature. Here English was adopted fully in the 14th century: Teaching in English was introduced in the mid-fourteenth century and was the rule by 1385. English was once again used in law courts in London in 1356, and in all courts of the land after 1362 since French was no longer widely used or understood.

London as a demographic and economic centre The East Midlands was geographically and linguistically well suited for the development of a standard. This wasn’t only because the Midlands were located in the middle, but also because their language wasn’t as innovative as in the North or as conservative as in the South. In addition, the East Midlands was also the most populous and prosperous area of the country. The language used in London, but also that of the universities, was especially influential because many people from elsewhere who adopted it carried it back with them when they returned home, thus spreading it  Wave theory = this was to apply to London English and its influence on neighbours and eventually even very distant areas. The language spreads from center outwards, due to people from London returning to families, taking their dialect with them. In any case London English was widely accepted as the written standard almost everywhere, though Northern texts might still be recognized as such. Yet the spoken language must have varied considerably as one moved from region to region. London became the center of learning. People moved to London, bringing their silly dialects, adjustments were necessary. Among the changes attributable to the greater social mobility of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Great Vowel Shift (GVS) is one of the most prominent: A chain shift which began in the ME period, although it is not clear when it exactly began, we find its roots in this period, and was completed in the EModE period. The GVS affected the long vowels of ME leading to raising and/or diphthongization. Ex = ME hus/hu:s  ModE house [The upper classes may have chosen to emphasize those variants of vowels to maintain the distinctions from the lower orders] IN GENERAL = Standard language became symbol of loyalty. By the end of ME period (1500) the most prominent dialect was that of London, a major center of commerce. The most important influence (on the development of StE) seems to have been the language of the Chancery, which was used in official records a...