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University of Madras
Syllabus with effect from 2023-2024
B.A English Literature
[2nd Year, 4th Semester]
LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
Unit 1: Evolution of Standard English
Descent of English Language from the Indo European family
Language Families:
Modern Linguistic research has claimed
that language can be grouped in families and many languages can be traced to a
common ancestor in remote times. A large group of such related languages
constitute what we call a ‘language family’. The process of divergent
development of a language gives rise to further languages, with common features
of the parent language added to new features, resulting in a whole complex
family of languages with various branches, some more closely and some distantly
related to one another. There are about 250- 300 distinctive language families
in the world. The following are the major language families of the world: Indo-
European Sino– Tibetan Niger– Congo Afro– Asiatic Austronesian Dravidian Austro
Asiatic Altaic Uralic Caucasian.
Indo– European Family of Language:
The Indo-European languages are a family
of related languages that today are widely spoken in the Americas, Europe, and
also Western and Southern Asia. Just as languages such as Spanish, French,
Portuguese and Italian are all descended from Latin. Indo-European languages
are believed to derive from a hypothetical language known as
Proto-Indo-European, which is no longer spoken.
It is highly probable that the earliest
speakers of this language originally lived around Ukraine and neighbouring
regions in the Caucasus and Southern Russia, then spread to most of the rest of
Europe and later down into India. The earliest possible end of
Proto-Indo-European linguistic unity is believed to be around 3400 BCE. It is
generally believed that it was spoken by nomadic tribes which wandered in the
regions around the Black Sea. They are said to have gone as far as the steppes
of Siberia.
Since the speakers of the
Proto-Indo-European language did not develop a writing system, we have no
physical evidence of it. The science of linguistics has been trying to
reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language using several methods and,
although an accurate reconstruction of it seems impossible, we have today a
general picture of what Proto-Indo-European speakers had in common, both
linguistically and culturally. In addition to the use of comparative methods,
there are studies based on the comparison of myths, laws, and social
institutions.
The Indo-European Family:
It has been proved by the scholars that
it is the parental languages of almost languages of Europe and some of the
languages of Asia. It was split up into various sections and moved in different
directions across the continent of Euro- Asia. Each section got isolated from
the others. Each developed its parent language along its own lines. Gradually
this resulted in the development of different dialects of the original
language. It is believed that as a result of this two- fold process the
original Indo- European was split up into eight distinct groups of dialects by
2000 B. C. or a little later. They were Eastern (Sanskrit), American, Greek,
Albanian, Italic, Balto– Slavonic, Primitive Germanic and Celtic. Each of these
in course of time sub divided and the process continued. According to G L
Brook, the dispersal of the speakers of Indo European took place somewhere
between 3000 and 2000 B. C. New research published today in the journal Nature,
led by University of Adelaide ancient DNA researchers and the Harvard Medical
School, shows that at least some of the Indo-European languages spoken in
Europe were likely the result of a massive migration from Eastern Russia.
Several attempts have been made to
explain how the differences which characterize the various Indo- European
languages came into existence. August Schleicher put forward his ‘Pedigree
Theory’ in 1866. He said that the Indo- European languages developed as a
result of a series of successive bifurcations. He expressed the relations of
the various Indo-European languages to each other by means of a genealogical
tree, though this theory is no longer accepted. Its influence is still seen in
the terminology used by linguists. They speak of the Indo- European family of
languages and discuss whether one language is descended from another. This
theory is objected to on the ground that there are resemblances, like those
between Germanic and Celtic which cut across any such classification. Johannes
Schmidt propounded his ‘Wave Theory’ in 1872 to explain these. According to him
the original speech spread over a wide area. Gradually dialectical differences
arose. In course of time these differences became so marked that they led to
the creation of distinct languages. The dialect area overlapped. It accounts
for the resemblances which are shared by some Indo- European languages. Though
this theory does not explain all the problems involved, it provides a working
hypothesis which can be modified in the light of additional theories. However,
the theories about the splitting up of language tend to assume the homogeneity
of the parent Indo– European language.
Centum and Satem Groups:
The eight branches of the Indo European
(IE) family have generally been divided into two groups, the Centum Languages
(The Western Group) and the Satem Languages (The Eastern Group). This
classification is based on the development of certain sound changes in some of
the languages of the family, but not in all. In the Eastern branches certain
consonants had differences in their development from those in the Western
Group. The Indo– European velar plosive consonants /k/ and /g/ developed into
alveolar fricative /sh/ or /s/ in the Eastern group. At the same time, in the
Western group /k/ and /g/ were retained as velar plosives. For example, Kumtom
the IE form for the word hundred developed into satem in Sanskrit, /k/ becoming
/s/ and into centum in Latin, retaining the /k/.
Based on this development, the Eastern
group viz, Indo- Iranian, Albanian, Armenian and Balto- Slavic are called Satem
languages and the Western group consisting of Hellenic, Italic, Celtic and
Germanic are called Centum languages.
Indo-Iranian:
This branch includes two sub-branches: Indic and Iranian. Today these languages are predominant in India, Pakistan, Iran, and its vicinity and also in areas from the Black Sea to Wstern China.
Sanskrit, which belongs to the Indic sub-branch, is the best known among the early languages of this branch; its oldest variety, Vedic Sanskrit, is preserved in the Vedas, a collection of hymns and other religious texts of ancient India. Indic speakers entered the Indian subcontinent, coming from central Asia around 1500 BCE: In the Rig-Veda, the hymn 1.131 speaks about a legendary journey that may be considered a distant memory of this migration.
Avestan is a language that forms part of the Iranian group. Old Avestan (sometimes called Gathic Avestan) is the oldest preserved language of the Iranian sub-branch, the “sister” of Sanskrit, which is the language used in the early Zoroastrian religious texts. Another important language of the Iranian sub-branch is Old Persian, which is the language found in the royal inscriptions of the Achaemenid dynasty, starting in the late 6th century BCE. The earliest datable evidence of this branch dates to about 1300 BCE.
Today, many Indic languages are spoken in India and Pakistan, such as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, and Bengali. Iranian languages such as Farsi (modern Persian), Pashto, and Kurdish are spoken in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.
Albanian:
Albanian is the last branch of
Indo-European languages to appear in written form. There are two hypotheses on
the origin of Albanian. The first one says that Albanian is a modern descendant
of Illyrian, a language which was widely spoken in the region during classical
times. Since we know very little about Illyrian, this assertion can be neither
denied nor confirmed from a linguistic standpoint. From a historical and
geographical perspective, however, this assertion makes sense. Another
hypothesis says that Albanian is a descendant of Thracian, another lost
language that was spoken farther east than Illyrian.
Today Albanian is spoken in Albania as
the official language, in several other areas in of the former Yugoslavia and
in small enclaves in southern Italy, Greece and the Republic of Macedonia.
Armenian:
The origins of the Armenian-speaking people are a topic still unresolved. It is probable that the Armenians and the Phrygians belonged to the same migratory wave that entered Anatolia, coming from the Balkans around the late 2nd millennium BCE. The Armenians settled in an area around Lake Van, currently Turkey; this region belonged to the state of Urartu during the early 1st millennium BCE.
In the 8th century BCE, Urartu came under Assyrian control and in the 7th century BCE, the Armenians took over the region. The Medes absorbed the region soon after and Armenia became a vassal state. During the time of the Achaemenid Empire, the region turned into a Persian satrap. The Persian domination had a strong linguistic impact on Armenian, which mislead many scholars in the past to believe that Armenian belonged to the Iranian group.
Balto-Slavic:
This branch contains two sub-branches:
Baltic and Slavic.
During the late Bronze Age, the Balts'
territory may have stretched from around western Poland all the way across to
the Ural Mountains. Afterwards, the Balts occupied a small region along the
Baltic Sea. Those in the northern part of the territory occupied by the Balts
were in close contact with Finnic tribes, whose language was not part of the
Indo-European language family: Finnic speakers borrowed a considerable amount
of Baltic words, which suggests that the Balts had an important cultural
prestige in that area. Under the pressure of Gothic and Slavic migrations, the
territory of the Balts was reduced towards the 5th century CE.
Archaeological evidence shows that from
1500 BCE, either the Slavs or their ancestors occupied an area stretching from
near the western Polish borders towards the Dnieper River in Belarus. During
the 6th century CE, the Slav-speaking tribes expanded their territory,
migrating into Greece and the Balkans: this is when they are mentioned for the
first time, in Byzantine records referring to this large migration. Either some
or all the Slavs were once located further to the east, in or around Iranian
territory, since many Iranian words were borrowed into pre-Slavic at an early
stage. Later, as they moved westward, they encountered German tribes and again
borrowed several additional terms.
Only two Baltic languages survive today:
Latvian and Lithuanian. Many Slavic languages survive today, such as Bulgarian,
Czech, Croatian, Polish, Serbian, Slovak, Russian, and many others.
Greek:
Rather than a branch of languages, Greek
is a group of dialects: During more than 3000 years of written history, Greek
dialects never evolved into mutually incomprehensible languages. Greek was
predominant in the southern end of the Balkans, the Peloponnese peninsula, and
the Aegean Sea and its vicinity. The earliest surviving written evidence of a
Greek language is Mycenaean, the dialect of the Mycenaean civilization, mainly
found on clay tablets and ceramic vessels on the isle of Crete. Mycenaean did
not have an alphabetic written system, rather it had a syllabic script known as
the Linear B script.
The first alphabetic inscriptions have
been dated back to the early 8th century BCE, which is probably the time when
the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, reached their present form. There
were many Greek dialects in ancient times, but because of Athens cultural
supremacy in the 5th century BCE, it was the Athens dialect, called Attic, the
one that became the standard literary language during the Classical period
(480-323 BCE). Therefore, the most famous Greek poetry and prose written in
Classical times were written in Attic: Aristophanes, Aristotle, Euripides, and
Plato are just a few examples of authors who wrote in Attic.
Italic:
This branch was predominant in the
Italian peninsula. The Italic people were not natives of Italy; they entered
Italy crossing the Alps around 1000 BCE and gradually moved southward. Latin,
the most famous language in this group, was originally a relatively small local
language spoken by pastoral tribes living in small agricultural settlements in
the centre of the Italian peninsula. The first inscriptions in Latin appeared
in the 7th century BCE and by the 6th century BCE it had spread significantly.
Rome was responsible for the growth of
Latin in ancient times. Classical Latin is the form of Latin used by the most
famous works of Roman authors like Ovid, Cicero, Seneca, Pliny, and Marcus
Aurelius. Other languages of this branch are Faliscan, Sabellic, Umbrian, South
Picene, and Oscan, all of them extinct.
Today Romance languages are the only
surviving descendants of the Italic branch.
Celtic:
This branch contains two sub-branches:
Continental Celtic and Insular Celtic. By about 600 BCE, Celtic-speaking tribes
had spread from what today are southern Germany, Austria, and Western Czech
Republic in almost all directions, to France, Belgium, Spain, and the British
Isles, then by 400 BCE, they also moved southward into northern Italy and
southeast into the Balkans and even beyond. During the early 1st century BCE,
Celtic-speaking tribes dominated a very significant portion of Europe. On 50
BCE, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul (ancient France) and Britain was also
conquered about a century later by the emperor Claudius. As a result, this
large Celtic-speaking area was absorbed by Rome, Latin became the dominant
language, and the Continental Celtic languages eventually died out. The chief
Continental language was Gaulish.
Insular Celtic developed in the British
Isles after Celtic-speaking tribes entered around the 6th century BCE. In
Ireland, Insular Celtic flourished, aided by the geographical isolation which
kept Ireland relatively safe from the Roman and Anglo-Saxon invasion.
The only Celtic languages still spoken
today (Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and Breton) all come from Insular
Celtic.
Germanic:
The Germanic branch is divided in three
sub-branches: East Germanic, currently extinct; North Germanic, containing Old
Norse, the ancestor of all modern Scandinavian languages; and West Germanic,
containing Old English, Old Saxon, and Old High German.
The earliest evidence of
Germanic-speaking people dates back to first half of the 1st millennium BCE,
and they lived in an area stretching from southern Scandinavia to the coast of
the North Baltic Sea. During prehistoric times, the Germanic speaking tribes
came into contact with Finnic speakers in the north and also with Balto-Slavic
tribes in the east. As a result of this interaction, the Germanic language
borrowed several terms from Finnish and Balto-Slavic.
Several varieties of Old Norse were
spoken by most Vikings. Native Nordic pre-Christian Germanic mythology and
folklore has been also preserved in Old Norse, in a dialect named Old
Icelandic.
Dutch, English, Frisian, and Yiddish are
some examples of modern survivors of the West Germanic sub-branch, while
Danish, Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish are survivors of the North
Germanic branch.
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