MODULE 5: LANGUAGE AND HISTORY
HISTORY OF LANGUAGE (20TH CENTURY)
-Language constantly evolves with time and its development follows a TIMELINE.
-Language passes through certain stages. From ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS to MODERN
LINGUISTS.
HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF NOTEWORTHY LINGUISTS
-Linguists started to make after Panini composed his SANKRIT GRAMMAR in India in 400B.C
followed by the remarkable linguists in Greece in 5th century onwards namely, Socrates, Plato, and
Aristotle
1.) ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C) – born in Macedonia particularly in Stagira.
-His father served as the physician of the Macedonian king, Amyntas.
Contribution to Linguistics
- Demythologized (reinterpreted) language. (He gave certain interpretation in a way it is a bit
simplified and to complicated for us to understand.)
- In Ogden & Richards (1923:11), he explained that the “Semiotic Triangle” refers to:
a. language is a human’s means of expression.
b. thoughts that are purposely connected to
c. elements present in this world.
- Properties of thoughts and sentences (truth & falsity)
- Identified primary part of a sentence (noun and verb)
2.) ROBERT LOWTH (1710-1787) - born in Winchester on November 27, 1710.
- Educated in Winchester School and New College Oxford.
- He also worked as a Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford
Contribution to Linguistics
- In, 1762, he published his book titled “Short Introduction to English Grammar” which became standard
book
- He earned a reputation as a prescriptivist, and that period gave rise to prescriptivism.
- Prescriptivism refers to beliefs and practices where one’s language is thought to be superior and correct
and should be promoted.
3.) FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (1857-1913) – born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1857.
- he was interested in languages even at his very early age.
- at the age of 15, he learned French, Greek, English & Latin. He also wrote essays on languages at that age.
Contribution to Linguistics
- Co-founder of Semiotics and Structuralism.
- Structuralism theorizes that things could not be understood without analyzing the context
where they appear.
- Structuralism advocated three (3) similar concepts:
a.) Saussure maintain the difference between langue (a set of conventions and rules) and
parole (languages used in daily life)
b.) there was no intrinsic and particular reason why a sign was utilized to express a signifier.
c.) the meaning of the signs can be based on their relationships and differences from other signs (Negi, 2020).
Charles Peirce
ICON ( representamen) – has a physical resemblance to the
signified, the thing being represented.
INDEX – it shows evidence of what is being represented. What
is
the Reason behind that sign.
SYMBOL – has no resemblance between the signifier and the
signified.
- The connection between them must be culturally
learned. - E.g.: Numbers and Alphabets
SEMIOTICS – it is the study of the signs we use to communicate messages with each other.
-The Swiss Linguists – Ferdinand de Saussure, argued these signs should be part of a code, or
language system if they were interpreted correctly with the audience.
- The meaning of words only become fully apparent when they appear together in a sentence.
SYNTAGM – it is highly connected with semiotics, it presented the relationship of words to be
combined with other words to really form full meaning conveyed in a sentence.
e.g.: 1.) I left my media studies homework on the bus
2.) I turned left at the traffic lights.
Although the signifier has not changed, what it signifies has shifted because of its relationships with other
words in the sentence.
4.) NOAM CHOMSKY – Avram Noam Chomsky he was born in Pennsylvania in 1918.
- Father of the modern Linguistic
- he pursued his in linguistic under Zellig Harris, the professor helps him earn his doctorate at
the University of Pennsylvania.
Contribution to Linguistics
-He introduces the concept of universal grammar and suggested that human has an ability to
learn grammar because the brain has a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that automatically
workds in language acquisition.
- He popularized this theory since the 1980’s.
- E.g.: House- ‘English and Bahay in ‘Filipino and Balay in ‘Bisaya’ (same category-Noun)
- Language share the same universal components of grammar.
MODULE 5: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
THE DARWINIAN PERSPECTIVE
▪ In the late 1830’s, Darwin started searching at the beginning of language.
▪ He observed the proximity and sameness between sounds of animals and the different natural
utterances and gestures that human beings produce when venting out strong feelings.
▪ He focused on the observable interrelatedness between words and sounds.
▪ Darwin admitted that language sets man apart from lower animals.
▪ Darwin started searching at the beginning of language.
LESSON 3: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FAMILY TREE
▪ The earliest known Indo-European language is the common ancestor of modern English and
Western languages (Grey, 2019).
▪ Based on the many texts that language experts and researchers delved on they deduced that
the east of Turkey was once occupied. The group split, with one group voyaging to Asia and the
other sub-group towards the west of Europe.
▪ The two main sub-groups scattered into smaller groups and settled in the different sections in
Asia and Europe where their languages developed separately.
INDO EUROPIAN
• Linguists have often used trees and branches as metaphors to explain and map the
connections between language groups.
• Despite being close geographically, the tree highlights the distinct linguistic origins of Finnish
from other languages in Scandinavia. Finnish belongs to the Uralic language family and shares
roots with some indigenous tongues in Scandinavia such as Sami.
-the bigger the leaves are, the wider and there’s a lot
people using this kind of language
• The European arm of the tree splits off into Slavic, Romance, and Germanic branches. Here you
can see the relationship between different Slavic languages. You can also spot some of Britain’s
oldest languages clustered together.
SLAVIC- includes the •Russian, •Ukrainian, •Belarusian, •Lithuanian, •Slovak/Slovakian,
•Polish, •Czech, •Bosnian, •Serbian, and •Bulgarian.
ROMANCE- includes the •Romanian, Catalan, •Corsican Sardinian, •Latin.
GERMANIC – includes the •Albanian, •Gaelic, •Welsh, ang the •Cornish.
•The size of the leaves on the trees is intended to indicate – roughly – how many people speak each
language. It shows the relative size of English as well as its Germanic roots.
• The left side of the tree maps out the Indo-Iranian languages. It shows the connections between
Hindi and Urdu as well as some regional Indian languages such as Rajasthani and Gujarati.
LESSON 4: OLD, MIDDLE, AND MODERN ENGLISH
OLD ENGLISH
• This period started around 450 A.D. During this time, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes who composed
the West Germanic settlers arrives in Southern Britain. They carried with them some dialects like the
language varieties that produced the Dutch, Frisian, and German.
• This Germanic influence is prevalent in the vocabulary we use every day such as come ( cuman in
Old English) old (eald in Old English), and heart (heorte in Old English).
• Irregular verbs were also formed such as drink-drank-drunk. In the same manner, several Old
English pronunciations are kept in today’s spellings e.g., knight (Old English cniht, German Knecht).
• Old English, a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon, was not fully influenced by the language of the Celts which was
widely spoken by the occupants of the British Isles.
• Latin was brought to Britain by the Romans and strengthened by the conversation of the Anglo-
Saxons to Christianity, it created a remarkable event for it served as the basis of the writing system
and provided a wide range of new words (e.g., school and mass).
• The Old English text is prevalent during the start of the Anglo-Saxon’s epic, Beowulf (Lohr, 2019).
MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1500)
• During this period, development in terms of the pronunciation of unstressed syllables found at the
ends of the words caused the merging of most inflections.
• The influence of Norman and French people went a long way. French prestige dominated the
vocabulary in court, church, education, and law. The words for farmed animals (mutton, beef, pork)
translated in modern French into (mouton, beouf, porc) were from native words like sheep, swine,
and cow
•The loan or borrowed words referred to the meat of animals consumed by wealthy French
speakers, while the native or Old English words referred to living animals.
• Norman also changed the way words were spelled and written using the French conventions.
OLD ENGLISH WORD FRENCH WORD
• is, cwcn • ice, queen
MODERN ENGLISH
• This period marked the introduction of printing.
• Caxton’s preference of the East Midlands/London’s English variety for the earliest printed books
towards the end of the 15th century influenced the formation of the standardized English language
variety with acceptable grammatical forms and vocabulary, fixed spelling, and punctuation
conventions.
• The perception of the correctness of this standardized variety was supported by the codification
attempts of Johnson’s dictionary and many other prescriptive grammarians during the 18th century
• In this period, among the borrowed words from Greek and Latin were critic, education,
consciousness, and metamorphosis.
•English is currently used worldwide as native tongue, second or foreign tongue due to imperial and
colonial activity, educational and cultural prestige, the interracial slave trade and international
business for economic reasons.
• 20TH CENTURY It is the period when the history of language relied so much on the hands of
great linguists.
• PANINI Who composed a Sanskrit grammar in India in 400B.C.
• ARISTOTLE the successor of Plato, who left Athens after his death and established his school
of philosophy
• ROBERT LOWTH a noteworthy linguist who published a book titled “Short Introduction to
English Grammar”
• FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE was known as the co-founder of semiotics and structuralism and
was considered one of the pillars of linguistics in the 20th century
• NOAM Chomsky introduced the concept of universal grammar and suggested that human has
the ability to learn grammar because the brain has a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that
automatically works in language acquisition
• ICON This is a category of sign that has a physical resemblance to the signified, which is the
thing being represented.
• SYMBOL This is a category of sign that has no resemblance between the signifier and the
signified.
• SemiotiCS It is the study of signs we use to communicate messages with each other.
• SYNTAGM It is a single word or element of design that, when altered, can change the overall
meaning.
