History of English

This fun little youtube video helps to show how the English language has developed over a long period of time and how standardisation has come into play.

410 AD - Goodbye Romans and hello Anglos and Saxons = Anglosaxon
Not much Latin is left but Anglosaxon simple everyday words like "house", "women" and "loaf". Plus 4 days of the week are named after their Gods.

591 AD - Christian missionaries
Big influence that kept the use Latin words alive e.g "martyr", "bishop" and "font"

C. 800 - Vikings
e.g "drag", "ransack", "die", "give" and "take" = overall 2000 words

1066 - Norman conquest
Brought french language = language of official business like "clerk", "judge", "evidence" and "justice".
Latin was still used in churches
Normal people used English such as "cow", "sheep" and "swine" where as the for the French it would be "beef", "mutton" and "pork".
Overall, 10,000 new words.
The 100 years war against France, lead to language of power like "military" and "navy".

Shakespear 1564 - 1616
2,000 new wrods like "bible", "puppy dog", "anchovy", "dauntless", "alligator" and "hob-nob". Plus lost of good catchphrases that we still use today.
They may have been said by other people first by Shakespeare wrote them down. It showed that the English Language as a vibrant language that is full of expression and emotional power.

The King James Bible - 1611
The new translation meant the bible was finally able to be read by normal people, which has a whole new glossary of metaphor and morality that still shapes how how is spoken today.

17th century = Science
First used Latin but then changed it to English, which made it easier to understand.
They discovered things faster than they could name them like "acid", "gravity", "electricity", "pendulum", "tonsil", "ovary" ans "sternum".

The Great British Empire 1853 - 1914
Showed the world it had a language of science, the bible and Shakespeare.
But words started coming from other places:
Caribbean - "barbecue". "canoe" and "cannibal"
India - "yoga", "stairs" and "bungalow"
Africa - "vodo"
Australia - "nugget" and "boomerang"
New varieties of English begin to develop all over the world.

Dictionary's and Lexicographers
e.g Dr Johnson's Dictionary - 1746 - 55 = 42,773 words
Meant people could research what words meant for the first time and know the standard spelling but new words kept being invented.
1857 - 1928 - Oxford English Dictionary and gets edited allot.

American English - 1607
When the British first arrived in America , they needed new words for names of plants and animals, which they borrowed from the Native Americans like "raccoon", "squash" and "moose".
1709 - Dutsch arrived with words like "coleslaw" and "cookies"
Germans - "pretzels" and "delicatessens"
Italians - "pizza" and "pasta"
It spread a new language of capitalism such as "break even" and "bottom line".
1865 - commenter language needed to be developed such as "free ways" and "subways".
Words from America did start to come back to Britain such as "cool" and "groovy jazz" but some stayed in America as the old English word like "fall" and "Autumn"

Internet English
1991 - Internet arrives =  free global space to share information and words like "download", "toolbar" and "firewall" start appearing as new words or words with different meanings.
1972 - first email ever sent! = conversations are shortening, which introduce the use of abbreviations like "BTW" meaning "by the way" and words like "blog" and "poke" start appearing.
It starts to converge into spoken language too like "FYI" and "FAQ".

Global English
Since the Romans, English has absorbed, evolved, invaded and stolen words. It started with foreigners, then language all of it's own and then travelling via seas and Internet.
350 language = global institution of 1.5 billion English speakers but how much is actually English now?

CLA Revision

Here are a few extra notes when talking about CLA. It's good to just remins yourself of these points when writing an exam answer: 

Over-extension - Children over-extend word meanings. This means that they will extend the meaning of one category of item more broadly than it should be. An example of this might be calling all round fruits ‘apples' when they are perhaps oranges, kiwis or cherries.

Under-extension - Children under-extend word meanings. This means that they will not accept that there are more examples of a category of item than the particular one that is familiar to them. So, for example, ‘dog' is used for the family pet but does not apply to any other dog, thus narrowing the word's meaning.

Noun Plurals - It is generally accepted that children acquire language through an in-built ability to recognise the patterns that exist. However, these patterns are not always straightforward and there are exceptions, so children inevitably make mistakes.

Verb Tenses - Young children's speech will reflect some application of regular patterns, for example, adding ‘ed' to form past tenses. However, as yet, irregularities will not form part of their understanding, so birds ‘singed' and children ‘runned' are completely understandable, if not completely accurate sentences.

Think about which stages or theories (AO2) you could link them to!

Stages:

• Crying: a child's only form of communication in the early weeks of life.
• Cooing: through which a child gains control of their vocal cords.
• Babbling: where reduplicated monosyllables (mama dada) often sound like a child is calling a parent.
• One-word stage: first words usually reflect a child's environment and they are often holophrastic in meaning.
• Two-word stage: demonstrates a child's first sentences and contains a primitive grammar.
• Telegraphic stage: sees utterances made up of words that tell us the main message but leave small unimportant bits out.

Source of information: http://xtlearn.net/S/2857

AO2 of language change

Standardisation and codification of language:

What? It is a gradual change of languge overtime so a mass audience can get the shared understanding 

Who? William Caxtons printing press on 1476 = printed texts meant easier for them to be read by a mass audience so a shared understanding of language needed to be created.

Samuel Johnsons Dictionary of 1975 = helped to show words which should be used in everyday life, increasing a chance of shared understanding.

Robert Lowth's "Introduction to Grammar" in 1762 = shows standardisation is a gradual process and it's helping to make the English language Easy to read via a mass audience.

Prescriptive vs Descriptive attitudes 

What? These two different attitudes to language are defined in other post but are important because it is about whether change is good for in the English language.  

Who? Samuel Johnson and John Humpreys are on the prescriptive side whether as Stephen Fry and David Crystal support to descriptive side.

Two other theorist come up such as Jean Aitchisons Language Web and Dennis Freeborn, who looks into the incorrectness view, ugliness view and imprecisness view.

Other things:

Phonogy: Great Vowel Shift, convergence and divergence and Labov's "Martha's Vineyard study" for informalisation.

And worldwide Englishs such as bidialectalism