The document provides an overview of the history and development of historical linguistics and compares traditional and modern approaches. It discusses how early studies of language origin and relationships were limited but led to realizations of connections between languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. Modern historical linguistics dates to the late 18th century and uses comparative methods to reconstruct proto-languages and establish language families. The history of the English language is explored as reflecting cultural influences over 1500 years through events like the Roman invasion and Norman Conquest, with English evolving differently in various global contexts today.

1. History of the English
Language
2nd Semester 1432-1433 AH
Dr. Abdel-Fattah Adel
Part 2

2. • History and Development of Historical linguistics
• Comparison of Traditional and Modern Historical
Linguistics
• The History of the English Language as a Cultural
Subject.

4. • People have thought about the origin of languages for
a long, long time.
• Like other early looks into nature and the universe, the
early ideas about language where at best obvious
(realizing that two very similar languages were related)
or lucky guesses, at worst dead wrong, and almost
always ethno-centric (only paying attention to nearby
languages.
• This, of course, wasn't always their fault, since
communication was so slow.

5. • The Greeks simply considered most languages in Europe
to be "Barbarian", even though there were certainly
several distinct "Barbarian" languages).

6. • One of the earliest observations about language was by
the Romans. They noticed that Latin and Greek were
similar. However, they incorrectly assumed
that Latin came from Greek. The reality is that both came
from Indo-European.

7. • There were lots of people looking at languages in the
middle ages. However, most of them were trying to
show Hebrew giving rise to all of the world's languages,
specifically European languages. This never really
worked, since Hebrew is not directly related to Indo-
European languages.

8. • When Europeans started travelling to India about 300
years ago, they noticed that Sanskrit, the ancient literary
language of India, was similar to Greek, Latin, and other
languages of Europe.

9. • In the late 18th century, it was first correctly theorized that
Sanskrit and the languages of Europe had all come from
the same language, but that that language was no longer
living.

10. • This was the beginning of Indo-European. Since then,
many languages from all over the world have been
studied, and we are starting to get a good idea of how all
the world's languages may be related.

11. • Modern historical linguistics dates from the late 18th
century. It grew out of the earlier discipline of philology,
the study of ancient texts and documents dating back
to antiquity.

12. • At first, historical linguistics was comparative linguistics.
Scholars were concerned chiefly with establishing
language families and reconstructing prehistoric proto-
languages, using the comparative method and internal
reconstruction.
• The focus was initially on the well-known Indo-European
languages, many of which had long written histories.

13. • Since then, there has been significant comparative
linguistic work expanding outside of European languages
as well.
• Most research is being carried out on the subsequent
development of these languages, in particular, the
development of the modern standard varieties.

15. Areas of Comparison
1) Focus of Effort
1) Internal vs. External Factors
1) Centrality of Language Use
1) Primary Subjects of Interest
1) Methods
1) Subject Matter

16. Focus of Effort
Traditional Modern
The focus of traditional Modern historical linguistics,
historical linguistics lies in however, focuses on the
keeping records of language progress of language change,
change in past times of a trying to analyze the cause or
language or language family. motivation, the spread and the
modality of language change.

17. Internal vs. External Factors
Traditional Modern
Traditional historical linguistics Modern historical linguistics
concentrates on language and puts its focal point on external
its changes regarding internal factors, e.g., the social
factors. surroundings.

18. Centrality of Language Use
Traditional Modern
For traditional historical In modern historical linguistics,
linguistics the language the language use and the user
structure and the language are centered, claiming that
system are very important. grammar is shaped by
discourse, and language is
changed by the speakers.

19. Primary Subjects of Interest
Traditional Modern
Traditional historical linguistics In modern historical linguistics,
is mainly interested in syntax, semantics, and
phonology and morphology and pragmatics are also taken into
not so much in syntax and account.
semantics.

20. Methods
Traditional Modern
Traditional historical linguistics Modern historical linguistics is
is based on qualitative both qualitative and
assessments. quantitative.

21. Subject Matter
Traditional Modern
Traditional historical linguistics Modern historical linguistics is
deals only with written also concerned with spoken
language. language.

23. • The diversity of cultures that find expression in the
English language is a reminder that the history of English
is a story of cultures in contact during the past 1,500
years.

24. • It understates matters to say that political, economic, and
social forces influence a language. These forces shape
the language in every aspect, most obviously in the
number and spread of its speakers, and in what is called
“the sociology of language,” but also in the meanings of
words, in the accents of the spoken language, and even
in the structures of the grammar.

25. • The history of a language is intimately bound up with the
history of the peoples who speak it.

26. • The English language of today reflects many centuries of
development. The political and social events that have in
the course of English history so profoundly affected the
English people in their national life have generally had a
recognizable effect on their language.
• The Roman Christianizing of Britain in 597
• The Scandinavian invasions
• The Norman Conquest
• The Hundred Years’ War

27. • References in scholarly and popular works to “Indian
English,” “Caribbean English,” “West African English,”
and other regional varieties point to the fact that the
political and cultural history of the English language is not
simply the history of the British Isles and of North
America but a truly international history of quite divergent
societies, which have caused the language to change
and become enriched as it responds to their own special
needs.

28. • Moreover, English, like all other languages, is subject to
that constant growth and decay that characterize all
forms of life. It is a convenient figure of speech to speak
of languages as living and as dead.

29. • Although we rarely think of language as something that
possesses life apart from the people who speak it, as we
can think of plants or of animals, we can observe in
speech something like the process of change that
characterizes the life of living things.

30. • When a language ceases to change, we call it a dead
language.
• Classical Latin is a dead language because it has not
changed for nearly 2,000 years.

31. • The change that is constantly going on in a living
language can be most easily seen in the vocabulary. Old
words die out, new words are added, and existing words
change their meaning. Much of the vocabulary of Old
English has been lost, and the development of new
words to meet new conditions is one of the most familiar
phenomena of our language.
• Nice in Shakespeare’s day meant foolish;
rheumatism signified a cold in the head.

32. • Less familiar but no less real is the change of
pronunciation. A slow but steady alteration, especially in
the vowel sounds, has characterized English throughout
its history. Old English stān has become our stone;
cū has become cow. Most of these changes are so
regular as to be capable of classification under what are
called “sound laws.”

33. • Changes likewise occur in the grammatical forms of a
language. These may be the result of gradual phonetic
modification, or they may result from the desire for
uniformity commonly felt where similarity of function or
use is involved. The person who says I knowed is only
trying to form the past tense of this verb after the pattern
of the past tense of so many verbs in English. This
process is known as the operation of analogy, and it may
affect the sound and meaning as well as the form of
words.

34. • Thus it will be part of our task to trace the influences that
are constantly at work, tending to alter a language from
age to age as spoken and written, and that have brought
about such an extensive alteration in English as to make
the English language of 1000 quite unintelligible to
English speakers of 2000.