Scarica Lingua Inglese Pulcini e più Dispense in PDF di Lingua Inglese solo su Docsity! Cap I As all aspect of human life, languages are subject to constant process of change which can take place either suddenly: case of introduction of new words, the change of pronunciation from one generation to the next. There are no static or uniform languages. All languages can be considered as open and dynamic entities which adapt to the history and culture of the speech communities in which they are in use. Though change contributes to making language structure imperfectly balanced, the necessity to communicate efficiently demands a certain level of integrity and regularity. This is evident in the process of native language acquisition, during which children tend to regularize any irregular form: ex the past tense go becomes goed instead of went. Language change happens with the adoption and diffusion or certain language form, or variant, a word or a syntactic construction. As a consequence equivalent variants may coexist within a speech community for either a long or short time. All languages show a surprising level of variability concerning their phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical structures. The study of language varies among its speakers, when they use different variants and what the social and linguistic significance of such variation is. In major modern language we analyze language variability in relation to its standard variety, which is considered the language par excellence in terms of social prestige, language function and domains of use. Non standard varieties have been regarded as “irregularly patterned” and “unsystematic” with respect to standard. According to sociolinguistic, the study of the relation between language and society, all the varieties of a language have the same status: the categories of correctness and appropriateness should not be applied to language. Language varieties suffer from social, ethnic and radical prejudice towards their speakers and their socio-cultural, economic and political status, and speakers develop positive or negative attitudes towards them. Sociolinguistics has contributed to the understanding of how language behavior and language variability are influenced by social factors, or social variables such as social classes, social network, sex/gender, ethnicity and age and by the context in which the interaction take place. A standard example is Labov’s pioneering sociolinguistic work carried out during the 1960, the analysis of the pattering of [r] pronunciation in NYC with reference to the interviewed speakers social class and speak style. [r] in words like fourth and floor acquired prestige in American English after 1945. Results of Labov’s findings: the use of the prestigious r-full pronunciation was less frequently used by speakers from the lower socio-economic class and increased in the pronunciation of middle and upper-class speakers. Variation was also to style of speech: [r] increased in all speakers as the degree of attention and attention increased. This proves that all speakers tended to conform to the more prestigious norm when they monitored their speech more carefully. Also it show that the lower middle-class out-performed speakers from upper middle-class. This cross-over phenomenon is explained by Labov as an example of hypercorrection, middle-class speakers conformed to the prestige norm with higher frequency than the next higher social class. Language behavior is conditioned by factors like language attitude towards a specific language or variety. Languages, in fact, encode a particular social meaning which is determined by their speakers, they are associated with and their functions and domains of use. A positive attitude favors the adoption and diffusion of a variant; some languages are perceived as more prestigious and useful than the others as for example educated British English is. The use of such as prestige variety represent a means which allows both social mobility and access to cultural values which are perceived as prestigious Language change and variation do not emerge exclusive in relation to their social and structural status at a given time, or synchronically, but they take place along a historical continuum. Historical linguistic, or diachronic linguistic, has been the main paradigm of investigation of language change over time. There are two approaches to historical language change: - COMPARATIVE LINGUISTIC: is based on the concept of “proto-language”, usually a reconstructed language, and language family, divided into sub-families. Ex English is a Germanic language which originated from Indo-european. - HISTORY OF LANGUAGE: is the study of the changes undergone by a single language over the centuries. Literature on the history of language has usually distinguished between external and internal causes for change. External causes are extralinguistic or social factors such as technological innovation, the introduction of new concepts and the vocabulary to express them. The internal causes are changes leading to balance in the system. The writing of a history of a language is always selective.traditional histories of the English language (HEL) have mainly focused on the history of the standard variety and its speakers and have conceived the HEL has divided in three periods: Old English (OE) Middle English (ME) Modern English (ModE). This approach as been supported by the ideology or discourse according to which the development of English has happened in a sociolinguistic vacuum, where language change has been considered exclusively as an internal or structural matter, and phenomena such as language contact and mixing have been simply disregarded or overlooked. The analysis of language use in social contexts applied to the history of language is difficult for at least two main reason: firstly, the lack of any spoken evidence for the earlier stages of the language, and secondly, the difficulty of interpreting and dating changes in earlier written texts. Mercian and Northumbrian, spoken at that time in England by Germanic population, who were called Jutes, Angles and Saxon, and who arrived in British Isle, a former partly Romanised Celtic-speaking area, in the 5th century ad. The Celtic were assimilated or forced to move westwards and northwards and the use of their language became geographically, socially and culturally confined to those areas. The major evidence of this unequal process of language contact and mixing is recorded in place-names of Celtic origin: ex english town as London, Leeds, or countries as Kant, Devon. The event that mostly contributed to the shaping of the Old En language was the Christianization of the Island, from the 6th century, the main consequence of this being the introduction of the latin alphabet in the form so-called “Insular Script” and the progressive abandonment by the anglo-saxon of the Runic alphabet or Futhark. The graphemes “a, ,e,i,o,u,y” were used to represent both long and short vowel sounds. There where three digraph “ea,eo,ie” to indicate Old En diphthongs both long and short. The consonant letters were very similar to those used today “b,d,l,m,n,p,t,w”. The letters ‘thorn’ and ‘wynn’ were borrowed from anglo-saxon versions of the Runic alphabet while ‘eth’ was an Irish-based innovation. The correspondence between letters and sounds presents some inconsistencies. An example concerns the Old En graphemes ‘c’ and ‘g’. They were used to represent both: the velar phonemes /k/ and /g, when adjacent to back vowels /a,o,u/, and the palatal phonemes / / and /j/ before front vowels / ,e,i,y/ During the period from the 9th to the 11th centuries several manuscripts were written, copied and translated from Latin into Old En, namely the West-Saxon dialect of Old En. This dialect is associated with King Alfred, who was at the head of the west- saxon reign, at that time the most important political, religious and cultural center in Europe. West-Saxon is commonly considered the first standard written language. Two important historical episodes that changed the history of english during this period: the arrival and occupation of England by Scandinavian populations from 8th century and the Norman conquest by William the Conqueror in 1066. The first Scandinavian settlers were located in the north-eastern part of England and by the year 867 had almost conquered the island. King Alfred pushed them out of his kingdom and re-conquered part of the Scandinavian possession. The Norman conquest contributed to changing Anglo-Saxon England socially, politically and culturally. A new dominant French-speaking nobility substituted the Anglo-Saxon court. The re-organization of political power meant the progressive marginalization of the rich and flourishing Anglo-Saxon cultural and literally tradition. The increased use of Latin, the major language change was represented by the abandonment of the West-Saxon variety of Old En as the standard language of England. West-Saxon was substituted by Anglo-Norman, the variety of French spoken by the conquerors, its use is attested in copies of late Old En manuscripts a century and a half after the conquest. The term Old En refers to a highly inflicted or synthetic language. Synthetic means that language functions, grammatical categories and relations, and verbal conjugations are expressed by the use of a system of case markers, or infliction. PDE is an analytic language in which grammatical and syntactic relations are expressed by word order, and grammatical words such as prepositions and auxiliaries. The most striking aspect is that in inflectional language like Latin and Old En, words are variable, that is they are usually composed of a root and an ending. Both in -i and -a endings signal that: • the nouns are plural • their gender is masculine and neuter • the case is nominative Both Latin and Old En freely arrange the elements within the sentence. In Old En prose it is possible to find the following main word orders - SV, in both main and subordinate clauses - S..V commonly in subordinate clauses - VS, in interrogative, negative and declarative clauses Old En distinguished case, number and gender for nouns, adjectives and pronouns. Old En nouns and adjective show four main cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative, three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter and two numbers: singular and plural. The inflections of nouns are divided into two major categories: strong and weak. While Old En strong nouns mainly refer to the masculine and neuter -a stem nouns, that is the words that in IE showed an -o steam, weak nouns include the so-called consonant or -n stem nouns, which belong to the three Old En genders. The main paradigms of Old En song nouns the following: strong masculine stan (PDE stone) strong neuter scip (PDE ship) and strong feminine lar (PDE teaching). Old En weak nouns are declined as follows:weak masculine guma (PDE man) weak feminine tunge (PDE tongue) and weak neuter eage (PDE eye). Adjectives usually agree with the noun they modify and are also divided into strong and weak declensions; their use is determined syntactically, that is the strong declension is used predicatively or when the adjective is not preceded by a demonstrative, while the weak declension is used when the adjective is preceded by a demonstrative or a deictic word. The weak declension follows the weak noun declensional pattern. The most striking differences in relation to PDE concern the forms and functions of the definite article and demonstrative pronouns. In Old En the demonstrative covered the domains of both the PDE definite article and the demonstrative. Like Old En nouns and adjectives, the demonstrative inflected for case: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative; gender masculine, feminine and neuter; number: singular and plural. Language continuity from Old En to Present Day En can be traced with reference to personal pronouns which show four main cases: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative; three person: first, second and third; and gender: masculine, feminine and neuter. In the Old En there are two main types of verbs: strong (irregular) and weak (regular). The former form their past tense by changing their stem vowel, ex findan,fand, fundon, funden. The latter add the dental suffixes: -t,-d,-od or -ed. In Old En there were also weak verbs which showed consonant alternation in their preterite forms: ex secan/sohte (PDE to seek), wyrcan/worhte (PDE to work). Both strong and weak verbs show: two tenses, present and preterite; three moods, indicative, subjunctive and imperative; two infinitive forms ex singan; two participles, present and past. The main paradigms for the two Old En verb categories: singan (PDE sing) and hieran (PDE hear). There are also two main irregular verb sub-categories, the so- called present-preterite (past) verbs, which show an old strong past form as present and a new weak past form, and anomalous verbs which are a set of verbs: don (PDE do), gan (PDE go), willan (PDE will), showing different sets of forms in the present indicative. A feature that contributes to differentiating Old En from Present Day En is vocabulary. The core of Old En vocabulary is inherited Germanic lexis as is testified by complex processes of word formation and by the capacity to expand vocabulary. The influence of foreign languages such as Latin and Scandinavian is also attested during this period. For Latin, two major stages of influence can be distinguished: the first period relates to conquest of part of British Isles by the Romans and includes words such as box- boxum (latin)- box (pde), catte- cattus (latin)- cat (pde). The second stage of influence concerns the period of Christianization of the island from the 6th century, when many religious terms were borrowed with minimal phonetic accommodation: ex offrian- offere (latin)- sacrifice (pde). The Scandinavian influence Old En vocabulary during this period is limited to technical terms for ships, warfare and legal institutions: ex lague- law (pde). MIDDLE ENGLISH The Norman conquest of England in1066 is traditionally considered as the starting point of the so-called Middle English period (1150-1500). We can distinguish three main stage: - traditional stage: (1066-1150) when important sociolinguistic changes occurred. The Norman conquest represented the end of the advanced Anglo-Saxon social and cultural systems. This meant that the role and functions of the vernacular, or West- Saxon, in domains such as administration, the Church, education and culture were reduced. We have enough evidence that the vernacular continued to be used in both spoken and written modes. The main evidence for language maintenance in early Middle En is the continuity of the late Anglo-Saxon literary tradition, in particular the religious prose tradition of AElfic and Wulfstan, which was copied, read and interpreted in monasteries for at least a century and a half after the conquest. The origin of standard English are to be found in the south-eastern Midland variety of English, spoken in the London area in the 15th century. The growth of standard English took place through a long process of selection, acceptance, elaboration of function and codification. While selection and acceptance are linked to positive attitudes towards the standard variety due to its association with the powerful emerging upper-middle classes in England at that time, elaboration and codification are complex phenomena. In the course of these centuries English became the language of those domains where Latin and French were previously used, that is government, law, literature, education and religion. The expansion of vocabulary gave rise to the opposition between the so- called Neologisers and Purists. The former contributed to introducing a certain number of new words into English, mainly from Latin and French: • French: industry, consume, decision, pioneer, class, role, etc • Latin: dismiss, permit, produce, popular, genius, etc • prefixation: the prefix un- in adjective such as uncomfortable, unfashionable; in nouns such as uncertain, unsuccess; non- in non-ability, non-appearance, non-user; in- like in inanimate, incompetence; dis- like in dissimilar, discontent, disfavor; a- like in asymmetric, asymbolic. • suffixation: -ers in crackers, preggers. William Caxton was the first scholar to officially pose the question of the need for a standard language. During the Mod En period several glossaries and both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries were compiled. We can recall John Florio’s Italian-English dictionary and in particular A dictionary of the English language (1755) by Samuel Johnson , was to present ‘preserve the purity and ascertain the meaning of English idiom..one great end of this undertaking is to fix the English language’. Classic languages represent in this period the main model for the improvement of grammar and the codification of its rules. the most well-known and relevant Mod En grammar was Robert Lowth’s A short introduction to English Grammar: with critical notes (1726) which was inspired by the principles of linguistic correctness and good usage, ex the proscribed use of forms and constructions such as an’t- am/ are/is not (pde ain’t), doble negation and the split infinitive. Another significant aspect of the debate on language codification concerns the idea of a ‘correct’ pronunciation. Though the concept of ‘proper’ pronunciation goes back to Shakespeare’s time, it’s only in the 19th century that the standardization of pronunciation, or Received Pronunciation (RP) is achieved through the new ‘universal’ educational system. RP was mainly a marker of social class, a sort of weapon in the hands of the ‘powerful’ in society representing a symbol of social, cultural and economic prestige. From a linguistic point of view we can say that Mod En is very close to PDE written standard. There are many inconsistencies in both spelling and grammar: ex the interchangeable use of the graphemes ‘u’ and ‘v’ in words such as euery- every(pde) under- under (pde) and the use of to do as an auxiliary verb in negative and interrogative sentences. By the end of the 18th century the use of do-periphrasis in both negative and interrogative sentences is well established, though non-periphrastic usage is still possible for a few verbs. The main changes Mod En concern the inflectional system of nouns, adjectives and verbs. Towards the end of this period distinction between strong and weak declension of nouns and adjectives disappeared. The only noun case that survived was the genitive case, which was indicated by -s and -s’ forms. The only relics of Old En and Middle En inflectional system refer to the comparative and superlative -er and -est endings. Though the distinction between strong and weak verbs continues, the conjugation of Middle En verbs is reduced in Mod En. The most conservative aspect on Mod En grammar are pronouns, which are still marked for cases, number, and gender. The only difference in relation to PDE is the distinction in use between 2nd person singular: thou/thee to indicate lack of formality and ye/you to express politeness. This distinction was lost by the end of this period, when the form you was used for both functions as in PDE. This further reduction of the inflectional system to use the SVO order. The main features of Mod En syntax can be summarized: - inversion of subject in declarative sentences - multiple negation - repetition of the subject - omission of the subject It’s usually assumed that by the end of the 19th century the process of standardization of the language was almost complete. Though the efforts of prescriptivists to codify the English language brought about a certain degree of structural stability, which was reinforced by a diffused sense of shared usage. As previously stated, languages change continuously for both internal and external reasons. Late Mod En is also the period of the so-called fragmentation of the standard in which English language spread and settled in different geographical and socio- cultural contexts worldwide. Several political economic and social factors contributed to this process, in particular British colonialism and imperialism. Three main stage can be distinguished: • the increasing activity of British trading companies and the slave trade, starting form the beginning of the 17th century. From the contact between English and for example West African languages, new varieties emerged namely Pidgin English and Creoles, which functioned as a sort of lingua franca for trade and commerce. • the establishment of stable colonial settlements in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. the contact between English and native but also other European languages, resulted in the formation of the so-called colonial standard varieties of English. • the institutionalism of English within colonies. This means that English started to be used as a second language and became the official language government, bureaucracy, education and religion in the colonies. The unprecedented spread and sociolinguistic differentiation of English have made its definition difficult. Beginning of 20th century the term English has been used mainly to indicate the varieties of British English. Since the middle of the 1980 a new paradigm of studies and terminology about its status, functions and structures has emerged. The focus of attention shifted from questions of language norms and standard to matters of linguistic variation taking place beyond the national boundaries of the language, namely the UK. This new framework of language investigation is commonly defined as the Englishes paradigm and can be explained in terms of ‘research interests’, focusing on ‘users’ or ‘uses’ of English or both - geographical location - linguistic and ethnic association - activities such as commerce, education, culture and technology - combination of location and activity - fusion of English with other languages The major parameters of the pluralization of English are its geographical spread and the number and typology of its speakers. The diaspora of English worldwide is characterised by three main stages. The first stage refers to the expansion of English within the British Isles, namely Scotland, Wales and afterwards Ireland. The major sociolinguistic consequence of this process was the gradual linguistic, cultural, political and economic subjugation of the Gaelic speaking population of the British Isles. The process started in the 5th century with the arrival of the first Germanic tribes and continued in the Middle Ages with the establishment of English-speaking colonies in Ireland and the defeat of Welsh military resistance in the 13th century. Scotland, where Scots, an Old En dialect, was spoken. The English colonisation did not result in the loss and death of gaelic and Scots languages. We can define them as minority languages, they are still spoken as a second language by a large number of people. The symbolic value of English as the language of social and economic mobility has not decreased, and its promotion as the language of instruction and education still contributes to the progressive shift from Gaelic and Scots to English. The second stage is associated with the discovery of new territories and the establishment of the British colonies in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Contact between English and other languages during this stage resulted in the development of Pidgin English and Creoles, which were used at that time as linguae francae for communication in trading exchange and between African slaves and their British masters. A further perspective considers global Englishes as the result of complex process of language contact . Global Englishes have developed through five different chronologically ordered stages: - foundation: the spread of english in non-English speaking countries worldwide - exonormative use: the imposition of the varieties of English spoken by local native speakers - nativisation: represents the mixing and hybridisation of both local/native communities and English native speakers - endonormative stabilisation: the birth of an indigenous variety which is accepted by the majority of the members of the speech community - differentiation: acknowledgment and awareness of the sociolinguistic value of the new variety of English Language plurality and differentiation are always the result of processes of language decentralization, which correspond to the re-adjustment that english has undergone in context ‘distant’ from its original one. Ex the nativisation and acculturation of Nigerian English may take place in the fallowing way: • borrowing of words from native Nigerian languages to Nigerian English • nativisation of some standard English word, which are adapted with a new meaning to the local context • change of the original meaning of some standard English words In the process of spreading, english has come into contact with culturally and linguistically unrelated languages belonging, ex to the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages in Asia or Niger-Congo languages in Africa. English has undergone a process of acculturation or manipulation and adaptation to new socio-cultural context through a process of linguistic creativity. The result of language nativisation and acculturation is also reflected in structural variation in global englishes. Our focus will be on the most common morpho- syntactic peculiarities of British and ESL varieties of English, according to Kortmann and Mesthrie and Bhatt, whose research work in based on comparison with standard, namely British English. In global Englishes the indefinite article is usually replaced by one. It has been claimed that this type of variation is mainly due to individual language competence, though the influence of substrate languages, which do not show the use of definite article. Delation of the definite article is also common in global Englishes, in particular with proper nouns or when there is reference to a specified context. The reverse process, or addition, happens where in standard English either the article would be omitted ex in the bed- in bed or an indefinite article would be present ex when they’d the cold- a cold. A common feature of global English is the delation of noun plural marker -s Innovation in plural marking is not limited to absence of the plural form -s but it includes these phenomena: - regularisation of standard English zero plural nouns ex firewoods, staffs, etc - use of post-nominal forms dem and them as plural markers Gender: It is accepted that in standard English the concept of gender is mainly a question of reference. In order to distinguish the three gender types: masculine, feminine and neuter we use the pronominal form he,she, it. Personal Pronouns: English is not a pro-drop language like the Italian language; that is personal pronouns cannot be deleted. Deletion of personal pronouns is testified in several global Englishes. In some other cases number contrast is not signaled as in the use od singular personal pronouns for plural. Variation as regards personal pronouns is also reflected in the formation of 2nd person plural pronouns y’all and you people. Another aspect of pronominal variation is represented by the substitution of singular me with plural us. Demostrative pronouns: show great variation in the case of use of singular this/that for plural form these/those. Tense: we distinguish between two main tenses, present and past. Global English vary with respect to the way they mark past tense. Past tense zero marking. Past tense reference is also signaled by the use of particular adverbs.Whit regard to the past tense, great emphasis in research has been placed on the process of regularization of irregular verbs ex comed-drinked-falled-goed. Aspect: commonly use the simple present to denote that something is habitual or recurrent. A feature of Global Englishes, typically sound in literary varieties, is the use of -s inflection to mark habituality. The progressive form, expressed in standard English by the use of be+ing participle, is only possible with dynamic verbs or transition, sensation and momentary verbs to denote activities and processes taking place at a particular time. The distinction between dynamic and statives verbs is overridden, in particular with verbs of perception ex see, hear, smell, etc. As regards modal verbs particularly of Scots and southern American varieties, is the possibility to combine two modal verbs within the same sentence. Another tendency can be the use of would instead of will to express a definite future. Forms of to be: unlike in standard English, the absence of copular be in the present tense is commonly found in global Englishes. For habitual actions and process the invariant form of to be is also used. Words order: Global English show little variation as regards word order, thus SOV order is the norm. One of the main characteristic is inverted word order: - OV order in declarative sentence - resumptive pronouns in relative clauses - indirect questions Tag question: a general feature of global Englishes is the use of invariant tag isn’t it? Another crucial aspect of PDE is language power, or the power of English. Though a language in itself cannot exercise or express any kind of power, the power of English is mainly related to its functionally in context such as the global economy, communication technologies, business snd education. It’s well known and documented that foreign language literacy English has become a sort of imperative worldwide. The knowledge of English allows and favors, at the individual level, social mobility and work opportunities, while at the macro level it signals the integration of a speech community within the so-called global market. English has become a sort of cultural capital or commodity through which it is possible to access material and immaterial goods. The aspect that reflect the global nature of English are its so called range and depth. The former indicates the main functions and domains of use of PDE , while the latter refers to the pluricentric nature of English and its capacity to penetrate new socio- cultural environments. The complexity of the therms analyzed so far poses the question of the future of English structural and socio-cultural perspectives. What will the result of dialectal differentiation be in the long term? Will English continue to be the language of global economy, finance and culture? It’s not simple to answer, what we can foresee is that an increasing divergence from the standard language, namely British and American varieties. The context in which neo-romance language established themselves are different. the development of these languages was closely linked to the development of modern European nation-states in which they represented the main element of socio-cultural, political unity and cohesion. As far as PDE is concerned, a univocal relationship between national language, culture and society is not possible, despite the development of identitary language policies. It’s impossible to associate English with a particular geo-politicalcentre and thus define who the native speakers of English are or what the standard, national varieties symbolises. The uncertainty about the future of English is also related to its status as the language of global economy under the control of the USA. Who can predict how long the America hegemony and the dominance of English will last? A change in the present day economic and political organisation might change the destiny of English as a global language.