ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



2924 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 



H. C. K. WYLD, M.A., Oxford Univ.; and H. J. C. GRIEBSON, LL.D.. Edinburgh Univ. ' 



This article is divided into two sections. The language may be studied further under Alphabet ; Phonetics-' 

 while for the literature there are articles on the great figures of English literature: Milton; Shakespeare f 

 Dickens ; Fielding, and others. See also the general article Literature, and those on various verse and { 



prose forms, e.g. Ballad ; Essay ; Novel ; Ode 



The earliest form of English 

 from the beginning to about one 

 hundred years after the Norman 

 Conquest is sometimes called 

 Anglo-Saxon, but nowadays more 

 generally simply Old English. The 

 people who lived in the oldest 

 period called themselves Angel 

 cynn, and their language Englisc in 

 the vernacular, or, in Latin, gener- 

 ally Angli, sometimes Angli sive 

 Saxones, and Sermo Anglicus or 

 Lingua Saxonica. These terms are 

 applied to all the tribes and to all 

 the dialects. 



Old English is shown by its voca- 

 bulary and its system of inflexions 

 to be a W. Germanic language, 

 closely akin to Old Frisian and Old 

 Saxon, and still closely, though 

 more remotely, to the High Ger- 

 man dialects. The resemblances 

 between Old English and Old Fri- 

 sian are indeed so great and 

 numerous that some regard these 

 two groups of dialects as forming 

 a special branch of W. Germanic 

 speech subsequently differentiated 

 into English and Frisian which 

 they call the Anglo-Frisian branch. 

 From the earliest records four main 

 dialect types in Old English, 

 corresponding to tribal divisions, 

 may be distinguished : the Anglican 

 dialects, i.e. Northumbrian and 

 Mercian ; the Saxon dialect ; and 

 the Kentish, spoken by the Jutes. 

 The differences between these are 

 comparatively slight, so far as they 

 can be traced in the records, but the 

 subsequent history of the several 

 types is very different. The Angles 

 settled in the N. and Midlands, the 

 Saxons in the S. and S.W., and the 

 Jutes in Kent, the Isle of Wight, 

 and parts of Hampshire. 



The Old English Alphabet 



The English, in common with 

 other Germanic tribes, possessed 

 an angular-shaped alphabet suit- 

 able for cutting or scratching upon 

 metal, bone, and other hard sub- 

 stances. This is known as the 

 Runic Alphabet, and the letters are 

 called runes. A few inscriptions in 

 this form survive on stones and 

 whalebone, but probably none are 

 much older than the oldest written 

 documents of the ordinary kind. 

 After the introduction of Chris- 

 tianity, the English learnt the art 

 of writing from Irish monks, and 

 the ordinary Old English alphabet 

 is almost identical with that in 

 which Old Irish was written. It was 

 soon found convenient, however, to 



borrow from the Runic alphabet 

 two symbols to express charac- 

 teristically English sounds-b called 

 "thorn" for th, and p called "wen" 

 for w. In modern editions of Old 

 English works it is now unusual to 

 reproduce the shapes of the MS. 

 letters, which are printed in 

 ordinary type except b and 8 

 which also stands for th ; the vowel 

 symbol SR, for the vowel sound in 

 Modern fiat ; and occasionally 5 

 the Old English form of g. The 

 spelling of Old English, allowing 

 for certain inconsistencies, is on 

 the whole phonetic. 



Sound Changes and Dialect 



Perhaps the most important 

 aspect of the evolution of language 

 is the change in pronunciation 

 which continuously proceeds. 

 Sound changes have a far-reaching 

 effect upon the history of every 

 language and bring much else in 

 their train. Not only does sound 

 change alter the whole external 

 aspect and character of a language, 

 so that by this means chiefly, or 

 alone, dialect is often differentiated 

 from dialect, and language from 

 language, but sound change in- 

 volves the alteration, or it may be 

 the destruction, of inflexional suf- 

 fixes, whereby the main features of 

 accidence are modified or swept 

 away, and these losses of signifi- 

 cant endings may, and often do, 

 bring about a revolution in the 

 syntax of the language. 



It is now recognized that sound 

 changes are regular in their effects, 

 and that they take place, within a 

 given period and in a given lan- 

 guage, according to definite prin- 

 ciples and conditions. Within the 

 above-mentioned limitations of 

 time and language and phonetic 

 conditions the same sound will al- 

 ways change in the same way or 

 direction. By the side of regular 

 sound change, the principle of lin- 

 guistic analogy, or the close associ- 

 ation of form with form, whereby 

 one is modified by the other, with- 

 out normal phonetic development, 

 is recognized as of hardly inferior 

 importance to the action of pho- 

 netic laws. It must be remembered 

 that language cannot exist apart 

 from living human beings who 

 speak it, and that change in lan- 

 guage implies a change in the phy- 

 sical and mental habits of the 

 speakers. 



THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH. The 

 history of English may be said to 



have begun from the moment when 

 the group of dialects known as Old 

 English had become differentiated 

 from the parent W. Germanic stock. 

 At the moment of its earliest ap- 

 pearance in a written record, Old 

 English had ahead}' undergone a 

 number of characteristic changes 

 which separate it from the nearest 

 cognate languages. Under the con- 

 ditions of complete geographical 

 separation from the speakers of the 

 other W. Germanic languages of the 

 Continent, English underwent still 

 further independent changes. 



While alterations in the conso- 

 nant changes were comparatively 

 slight, those involving the vowels 

 were considerable. There are two 

 main classes of sound changes : 

 Isolative, which arise in^the sound 

 of a language in the course of its 

 history, without any discoverable 

 reason, and without any influence 

 exerted by the neighbouring sound 

 in the word or sentence ; and Com- 

 binative, which result from the in- 

 fluence of one or more sounds in 

 the word, or sentence, upon an- 

 other sound, or from the effect of 

 the position of the accent or stress 

 in native words, upon the root 

 syllable, not upon the prefix or suf- 

 fix. In English, unstressed sylla- 

 bles have always been very liable 

 to weakening, and are often elimi- 

 nated altogether. 



The Old English vocabulary is of 

 a characteristic W. Germanic na- 

 ture, and the great bulk of words 

 are of this origin. There is, how- 

 ever, a considerable element of 

 Latin loan-words : (a) those bor- 

 rowed during the Continental 

 period, e.g. siraet " street," Lat. 

 strata via, paved way ; (b) those 

 borrowed from Latin -speaking 

 Britons in this country, such as 

 center, town, Lat. castra, camp ; 

 (c) those borrowed from Roman ec- 

 clesiastical sources, e.g. papa, pone. 

 Effect of Spoken Latin 



Latin must have been freely 

 spoken among the upper classes of 

 the Britons, and in the larger towns 

 of Britain. Several Latin words 

 which expressed ideas for which no 

 equivalent existed in Old English 

 were literally translated, such as 

 welwillend for benevolens. It has 

 been suggested that, if the English 

 invasion had not taken place, the 

 chief language of the country 

 would not be a form of Welsh, but 

 more probably a neo -Latin, or 

 Romance language. Celtic exerted 



