ENG 4820

History of the English Language

Dr. Michael Getty | Spring 2009
WEEK 3: THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
WHAT STUCK FROM LAST WEEK?

ENG4820 | Week 3 2
WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
LANGUAGE VS. DIALECT
• Within communities of people who all speak the same
'language,' there can be huge differences in grammar,
pronunciation, and word-stock.
• We often use the word ‘dialect’ to refer to divergent segments
of a larger speech community: American vs. British, Southern
vs. Midwestern, Rural vs. Urban
• Except for clear-cut cases, where you draw the line between
language and dialect is a political and cultural question, not a
scientific one.
• Example: Walk blindfolded from Germany to the Netherlands.
German and Dutch are related but separate ‘languages,’ each
with its own traditions and institutions.
• But with only your ears, you wouldn’t be be able to tell when
you cross the border, because the linguistic variation is
continuous across the neat political divide between them.

ENG4820 | Week 3 3
WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
WHAT LINGUISTS DO AND DO NOT STUDY
• Study what people say, not what other people
think they should say.
• What people consciously know about their
language is about one one thousandth (a
guess) of what they know subconsciously.
• A single language is complex enough for a
lifetime of study without even touching the
things people consciously think about.
• We do not teach people how to make artistic
or moralistic judgments. Most people don’t
need the help!
ENG4820 | Week 3 4
WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK
DOING THINGS
WITH THE MEAT
IN YOUR HEAD

•Consonants
– Place of articulation
– Manner of articulation
– Voicing
•Vowels
– High ~ Mid ~ Low
– Front ~ Central ~ Back
– Tense ~ Lax
– Rounded ~ Unrounded

ENG4820 | Week 3 5
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
FEELING THE POINTS OF
ARTICULATION

• Labial vs. labiodental:     pot     fought

• Labial vs. alveolar:      pot     tot
• Alveolar vs. interdental:     tot      thought
• Alveolar vs. interdental:     sought     thought
• Alveolar vs. alveopalatal:   sought     shot
• Alveolar vs. velar:      tot     cot
• Alveopalatal vs. velar:     shot     caught
• Front to back:
• pot    thought    fought    tot    shot    caught

ENG4820 | Week 3 6
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
FEELING THE MANNERS OF
ARTICULATION

Voiced vs. Voiceless

Put your fingers on your throat.
You should feel vibration from
your vocal chords at the beginning
of the second word, not at the
beginning of the first:

pay     bay
few     view
bath     bathe
toe     doe
char jar
coal goal Source: Millward p. 28

ENG4820 | Week 3 7
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
FEELING THE MANNERS OF
ARTICULATION

Stop vs. nasal

• Put a finger right under your
nose.
• You should feel warm air on
your finger at the end of the
second word, but not at the
end of the first.

mob mom
mad man
hag hang

Source: Millward p. 28

ENG4820 | Week 3 8
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
FEELING THE MANNERS OF
ARTICULATION

Nasal vs. lateral

pan pal

Nasal vs. retroflex

nap rap

Nasal vs. lateral vs. retroflex

nap rap lap

Semivowels:
well yell

Source: Millward p. 28

ENG4820 | Week 3 9
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
VOWELS

• The chart goes according to

where the highest point of your
tongue is as you pronounce
each sound, facing west
• High-Mid-Low Front:
yeah
• Low Central to High Front:
eye
• High Front to High Back ~
Unrounded to Rounded:
you
• High Back to Mid Back to
Low Central ~ Rounded to
Unrounded: wuah!
Source: Millward p. 28

ENG4820 | Week 3 10
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
PHONES AND PHONEMES

Kal-El, Son of Jor-El, an Alien from the Planet Krypton

“Superman” “Clark Kent”

ENG4820 | Week 3 11
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
PHONES AND PHONEMES
• Pronounce the following words, paying close
attention to what goes on inside your mouth as you
hit the sound cued by the letter t:
take ~ steak ~ truck ~ twin ~ water ~ witness

ENG4820 | Week 3 12
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS

• You can always predict which ‘t’ sound is going to occur based on the sounds
around it.
• Assimilation: making neighboring sounds more like each other, minimizing
the work it takes to get your mouth and throat from one configuration to the
next.
• Dissimilation: making meaning-bearing differences easier to hear.
– The difference between voiceless /t/ and voiced /d/ is meaning-bearing in
other words, phonemic) in English. Think of ‘toe’ vs. ‘doe.’
– In front of a voiced vowel, the difference between /t/ and /d/ would be
more difficult to hear without the aspiration on /t/
ENG4820 | Week 3 13
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS

• Whether you say [t] or [th] in English depends on whether you are
pronouncing it at the beginning of a word or after another sound.
• Each sound is a manifestation of some common, underlying, more
abstract unit. We call this unit a phoneme, and we call its
manifestations allophones.
• Think of Superman and Clark Kent as allophones of a common
phoneme, the alien named Kal-El. You never seem them both in the
same environment, and Superman in particular only comes out
under very specific conditions.
ENG4820 | Week 3 14
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS

Kal-El from Krypton /t/ (The phoneme, an alveolar stop)

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“Superman” “Clark Kent” Allophones -- Physical manifestations of the phoneme /t/,

each adapted to a particular setting
Real-World Manifestations of Kal-El,
each adapted to a particular setting
ENG4820 | Week 3 15
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE THINGS YOU MAY HAVE HAD NO IDEA YOU WERE DOING

• Feel where the tip of your tongue is when you say [n] in tent
vs. tenth
• Feel the difference in where your tongue touches the top of
your mouth with the [k] sound in keep vs. coffee
• Feel what your lips are doing when you say the [k] sound in
coo vs. clue
• Feel your vocal chords as you say potato. Is your voice
buzzing during the first syllable?
• Put a finger right under your nose and say the words bad vs.
ban. Feel a difference in warmth when you hit the vowel
sound?
• Do you notice anything different about the vowel in bid vs.
the vowel in bit?

ENG4820 | Week 3 16
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
• Speakers of other languages are
consciously aware of some differences
we know only subconsciously --
precisely because in their languages,
the differences are meaning-bearing.
• Take Hindi, for example

ENG4820 | Week 3 17
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
• In Hindi, whether you have the aspirated or
unaspirated sound depends on whether
you're talking about a tune or a piece of
cloth. The difference between them is
meaning-bearing
• Each sound is a distinct building block, as
different to Hindi speakers as /t/ and /d/
are to us.

ENG4820 | Week 3 18
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
• On the flip side, English has meaning-bearing differences in
sound -- phonemes -- that other languages do not.
• I once had a roommate, Evis (short for Evripides), who was a
native speaker of Greek.
• One day, he came to my room and said what sounded like
“Michael, come here. I want you to see my new shits.”
• I had already taken linguistics, so I had an idea of what was
going on, but it was nonetheless with some apprehension
that I went into his room.
• There on his bed were some new sheets.
• “Oh,” I said, “You mean new sheets."
• “That’s what I said,” he replied. “Shits.”
• For English speakers, sheets and shits are very different things,
and the distinction between the two words rests on a single
difference in sound: tense vs lax, /i/ vs /І/.

ENG4820 | Week 3 19
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
LOOKING AHEAD
• The inventory of phonemes that characterizes English has shifted
constantly over time.
• In my lifetime, Americans have begun to lose the distinction between
the vowels in don and dawn, a change that is happening almost
nowhere else outside of North America.
• Historically, the vowel inventory of English was completely reorganized
in a series of overlapping changes that started in the 13th century and
went to different degrees of completion in different parts of the world.
• The Great Vowel Shift. We will make time for it!
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ENG4820 | Week 3 20
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.
• A morph is the smallest indivisible unit of meaning in a language. A
morph can be ...
– a free-standing word:
dog, Brazil, red, go, you.
– a prefix, something smaller than a word that goes before
something else:
unwed, prefix, procreate, ex-wife
– a suffix, something smaller than a word that goes after something
else:
bothersome, rental, noonish, cats
– an infix, rare in English but common in other languages, that goes
inside a word:
abso-f_ckin-lutely
– a more abstract piece such as the quality of a particular vowel, or
perhaps the placement of emphasis:
swim, swam, swum import ~ import, record ~ record, convict ~
convict, rebound ~ rebound
ENG4820 | Week 3 21
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.
• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like we did
with Superman and Clark Kent.
• We know that each of the words in column
(a) (b)
(b) means the thing in column (a) along
riot riots with something that means 'plural,' or
kid kids 'more than one.'
day days • With riot, day, and rose, we have a set of
regular affixes for words that end in
rose roses
voiceless consonants, vowels, and the
ox oxen phonemes /s,z/. We can make up words
child children and automatically know what their plural
form will be.
sheep sheep
• With ox, child, and sheep, we see irregular
affixes that apply only to those words and
few others (brethren, deer, fish).
ENG4820 | Week 3 22
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.

• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like

we did with Superman and Clark Kent.

(a) (b) • We know that each of the words in column (b)

means the thing in column (a) along with
relevant irrelevant something that means ‘not.’
logical illogical • The consonant sound in the prefix takes on…
possible impossible – the point and manner of articulation of any
consistent inconsistent following lateral or retroflex
temperate intemperate – the point of articulation of any following
stop
articulate inarticulate
– alveolar articulation everywhere else

ENG4820 | Week 3 23
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
MORE STRUCTURE. THIS TIME WORDS.

• We can associate different morphs with abstract units, just like

we did with Superman and Clark Kent.

/ PLURAL / / NOT / (The morpheme)

(The allomorphs)

/-s/ /-z/ /-Iz/ /-In/ /-Ø/ … /Il-/ /Ir-/ /Im-/ /In-/ …

This is important. Sheep is just as plural as roses, but

the morph is ‘covert,’ also called ‘null.’
It has no realization in speech, but it’s still there.
ENG4820 | Week 3 24
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS

• Who's initiating this kiss?

• If the princess is the active kisser:

The princess is kissing the frog.

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TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor • If the frog is the active kisser:
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The frog is kissing the princess.

• So Modern English speakers

use word order to indicate the
active kisser.

ENG4820 | Week 3 25
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS
• Things are different in languages like Old English and modern German.
• Here's German. Pay attention to the underlined equivalents of the below, which is
what we call a ‘definite article.’
• In German and Old English, definite articles also reflect gender. The princess
below is feminine while the frog is masculine.
• The masculine gender of the frog is totally arbitrary. In fact, languages like
German and Old English give every noun a gender.

– Active kisser = the princess: 

Die prinzessin küsst den frosch

– Active kisser = the frog

Der frosch küsst die prinzessin. 

• So you see the shape of 'the' in German depends on who the active kisser is.
ENG4820 | Week 3 26
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS

• That means you can change the word order without

changing the active kisser:
Sentence Active Kisser
a) Die prinzessin küsst den frosch PRINCESS
b) Den frosch küsst die prinzessin
c) Der frosch küsst die prinzessin FROG
d) Die prinzessin küsst der frosch

All the change in word order does in German is shift the emphasis. So
(b) reads as ‘It’s the frog who the princess is kissing.’
ENG4820 | Week 3 27
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS

• We call this 'overt case marking' 

• 'Case' refers to the relationship between: 
– the grammatical features of a phrase (i.e. a noun and any articles or
adjectives that appear next to it) and
– the role of whatever the phrase represents in whatever is going on in
the sentence. 
• 'Overt' means that you can see case in the actual form of
words in a phrase.
• The phrase der frosch - where the frog is the active kisser -
looks different from den frosch - where the frog is the one
being kissed.

ENG4820 | Week 3 28
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS

• English has a few pieces of overt case marking left, all in the
pronouns:
(* = ungrammatical, i.e. inconsistent with what native speakers of the language say and accept as well-formed)

– He loves her
– *He loves she
– *Him loves her
– Whom/Who did you see at the party last night?
– *Whom went to the party last night?
• English had a rich overt case marking system from its pre-
historic beginnings to the 11th century CE.

ENG4820 | Week 3 29
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE KING, THE BISHOP, AND THE DOG

• Consider these made-up examples based on three participants

• cyning = ‘king’ biscop = ‘bishop’ hund = ‘dog’
• geaf = ‘gave’ se / tham / thone = ‘the’
Giver Givee Gift
King Bishop Dog

King Dog Bishop

Bishop King Dog

Dog King Bishop

Bishop Dog King

Dog Bishop King

ENG4820 | Week 3 30
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
THE PRINCESS, THE FROG, AND COVERT MORPHS

What happened between the 8th and 11th centuries?

• Phonological changes: Reduction of unstressed syllables, already
underway since the early Germanic period
• Changes on the ground: Invasion by non-English-speaking hordes
Giver Givee Gift
King Bishop Dog

King Dog Bishop

Bishop King Dog

Dog King Bishop

Bishop Dog King

Dog Bishop King

ENG4820 | Week 3 31
 THE ABSOLUTE BASICS
NEXT WEEK:
LANGUAGE CHANGE
INSIDE AND OUT

NOT TO BE MISSED!
We will simulate, in class, formation of dialects,
invasions, and the interaction between social
class and speech

ENG4820 | Week 3 32