LINGUIST 1Z03 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Anglo-Saxons, Early Modern English, Great Vowel Shift
9 Dec 2017
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1z03 chapter 9: a brief history of english. Old english spoken between 700 and 1100 ad. English is a germanic language belonging to indo-european languages. Originated somewhere between the black sea and the caspian sea. Reconstructed vocabulary can indicate style of life in the past. Cognates - words of common origin in different languages that resemble each other. Differences that exist between languages tend to be systematic. By studying cognates you can guess about what words may have looked like, and reveal systematic sound changes across languages. Grimm"s law systematic changes of plosive consonants p -> f (pisc/fish,pater/father) t -> e (tres/three,tu/thouk k -> h (centum/hundred,cord/heart) d -> t (dent/tooth, duo/two) g -> k (genu/knee, genus/kin) Such changes are a result of influence of other old european languages when travelling. Substratum effects - where one language is influenced by languages of nearby groups. English belongs to the germanic branch of the indo-european languages.
