History of English
Name one part of speech that declines in OE but not in PDE.
Gender in nouns was grammatical, as opposed to the natural gender that prevails in ME.
Define or describe three of these types of semantic change:
Generalization: When a words meaning becomes more general as time passes. Specialization: When a words meaning becomes more specific as time passes. Metonymy: The substitution of the name of an attribute or adjunct for that of the thing meant, for example suit for business executive, or the track for horse racing.
Who was William the Conqueror? Where did he come from?
He became King of England, he conquers Herald of Norway, and he is from Normandy.
Which one of the following is a reflexive verb?
He sat him down. REFLEXIVE
List two of the branches of Indo-European to which English DOES NOT belong.
Hellenic and Armenian
What is the group genitive?
When the genitive ending can modify an entire group of words.
Describe one linguistic feature specific to the Germanic languages.
The first syllable gets the stress.
Describe one force that encourages dialect difference in the U.S and one that discourages dialect difference.
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Describe one reason for the expansion in the number of speakers of English during PDE.
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Describe one reason for the geographic expansion of English during PDE.
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Describe two ways in which dialects may differ from eachother.
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Explain, in terms of historical grammar, why the PDE nouns dogs and oxen have different plural endings.
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How did the Norman Invasion affect the vocabulary of English?
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Give the beginning and ending dates, and the events that determine them, for the ME period.
1100AD, began with the norman invasion. Ended in 1500 with the invention of the printing press.
What are the beginning and ending dates of EME? What two developments mark the beginning of EME?
1500AD-1800AD, William Kaxtons importation of the printing press in 1472, and the rejection of Latin by the protestants in favor of vernacular languages like English.
Give the beginning and ending dates, and the events that determine them, for the OE period.
450-1066AD starting with the Viking invasions, and ending with the Norman invasions.
What was the Danelaw? How did it affect the history of English?
A historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway. Because of Danelaw we have a lot of Old Norse in the English Language.
List two areas of culture in which French contributed many loanwords to ME.
Art and Food.
Why did Old Norse contribute more loanwords to OE than Celtic did?
Because of Danelaw Anglo Saxons and Norse were living side by side.
When did the GVS occur? What vowels were affected?
Between 1500 and 1800. I turned into J and U turned into V.
What is the difference between cognate words and loanwords?
Cognates share a common origin loan words are more literally from one language to another.
Which stage borrowed words from a greater variety of languages and why?
EME, because of Enrichment (Italian, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish)
To what branch of Indo-European does English belong? List two other languages from that branch.
English, Dutch, and Flemish
Name the three languages in use in England in the thirteenth century and describe who used each language.
French used by aristocrats, English spoken by non-aristocrats, Latin which was the written language for church and government.
What language contributed the greatest number of loanwords to ME?
French.
Describe one way in which increased literacy affects the rate of language change.
Increased literacy caused people to have a more prescriptive attitude towards English because of the invention of printing, people could start to standardize school books.
What grammatical deficiency do modern forms like youse and yall attempt to remedy? Explain how that deficiency of English came about.
It attempts to reintroduce number in a declension of the second person personal pronoun.
Describe one feature of the OED that makes it superior to other dictionaries of English.
It gives a full history of the words context, most noteworthy for its quotations and completeness.
What language has been contributing loanwords to English for the longest period of time?
Latin
Name two languages from which EME borrowed a significant number of words.
Latin and French.
Why is Christianity important to our study of the history of English?
Latin was the language of the Church, since this was the dominant religion of Europe most people learned to at least read Latin, not all understood it.
What language was used for writing about philosophy and theology before the 17th century? Give one reason for the switch to English.
Latin was used for philosophy and theology. The switch ocured because a large portion of Europe already spoke English.
Why is ME word order less flexible than OE word order?
Less words inflect.
Describe one effect of the Viking invasions on the history of English.
Loanwords from other languages started coming into English.
Why is word order somewhat freer in OE than in PDE?
Old English had more inflections.
At what stage of English did spelling most consistently represent the sounds of speech? Give one reason why that situation changed.
Old English, because every letter was pronounced, and things were more phonetic.
From which language did English borrow the forms "they, their, them"?
Old Norse.
Describe one factor contributing to the rise of English as the prestige language during the ME period.
Poets and Artists started writing in English.
What is the difference between a prescriptive grammar and a descriptive grammar?
Prescriptive- More strict.
Why did the London dialect become the standard dialect in England?
Printing came to London in 1476 resulting in standardization.
Describe and illustrate the difference between a STRONG VERB and a WEAK VERB.
Strong verbs are in the past tense with a vowel gradation, weak verbs are in the past tense and use a dental suffix. Strong Verb: Run, ran Weak Verb: Walk, walked
Name one dictionary or type of dictionary that provides detailed information about the history of an English word.
The Old English Dictionary.
What cultural institution was responsible for the influence of Latin on OE.
The Vatican
Briefly describe the social process of how Proto-Germanic became differentiated from PIE.
The evolution of Proto-Germanic began with the SEPERATION OF A COMMON WAY SPEECH among some geographically proximate speakers of a prior language and ended with the dispersion of the proto-language speakers into distinct populations practicing thier own speech habits.
Describe one societal or technological change that contributed to language standardization during the EM period.
The printing press was invented, allowing for the average citizen to learn to read. English then started to be utilized in the classroom.
What is PIE?
The unrecorded language from which all Indo-European languages are hypothesized to be derived.
Compose an example of a his-genitive construction.
The woman her jewelry was beautiful.
Why are there fewer strong verbs in PDE than in OE?
There are less inflections in PDE.
Why did ME take so long to move towards a standard written dialect?
There were many different invasions, and people kept adding words to the language from other languages.
When did the Anglo-Saxons invade Britain? Who were the inhabitants of Britan and that time?
They invaded around 450AD, the Britons inhabited the area.
