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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

Exercise 1. Read the following ME text from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, think about the way some words were pronounced and try to explain why. Translate the text into ModE:

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

14Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre;

15But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,

16On books and his lernynge he it spente,

17And bisily gan for the soules preye

18Of hem that yaf hym wherewith to scoleye.

19Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede,

20Noght o word spak he moore than was neede,

21And that was seyd in forme and reverence,

22And short and quyk, and ful of hy sentence.

23Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,

24And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

Notes:

al be that – NE ‘albeit’; benefice – ecclesiastic living;

clerk – university student, scholar; courtepy – short coat, jacket;

gan … preye – ‘prayed’; holwe – emaciated;

hym was levere – ‘he would rather’, ‘it was more pleasant for him’; office – secular employment, function;

psaltry – a harp-like instrument; quyk – alive, lively, vivid; reverence – dignity, respect;

scoleye – study, attend the schools of the university;

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

sentence – meaning, saying; decision,command; sobrely – seriously, gravely;

undertake – affirm, declare;

unto logyk hadde longe ygo – ‘had long since proceeded to the study of logic’; yaf – v. past, ‘gave’.

Exercise 2. Analyze the text. Pay attention to the spelling differences.

Exercise 3. Point out instances of the use of the indefinite article in the text.

Exercise 4. Explain the use of the word combination “at his beddes heed”.

Exercise 5. Give examples of the borrowings from French and Scandinavian.

Exercise 6. Find the infinitives and explain their structure and function.

Exercise 7. Explain the further development of the following OE words (their ME. spelling is given in the text):

OE. hlēne________________________________________________

OE. lēornian_____________________________________________

OE. lōcian_______________________________________________

OE. raca________________________________________________

OE. riht_________________________________________________

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

PRACTICAL TASK 6

NEW ENGLISH VOCABULARY AND TEXT

You might find it interesting to know that…

It is often said that only after 1300 does English reemerge as a language used for literature, the court, and the church.

Starter activity:

Listen to the recording, look through the text and see whether you can understand the gist of it.

W. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Spoken by Marc Antony, Act 3 Scene 2

1.Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;

2.I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

3.The evil that men do lives after them;

4.The good is oft interred with their bones;

5.So let it be with Caesar! The noble Brutus

6.Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:

7.If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

8.And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.

9.Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest –

10.For Brutus is an honourable man;

11.So are they all, all honourable men –

12.Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.

13.He was my friend, faithful and just to me:

14.But Brutus says he was ambitious;

15.And Brutus is an honourable man.

16.He hath brought many captives home to Rome,

17.Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:

18.Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

19.When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

20.Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:

21.Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

22.And Brutus is an honourable man.

23.You all did see, that on the Lupercal

24.I thrice presented him a kingly crown,

25.Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?

26.Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;

27.And, sure, he is an honourable man.

28.I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,

29.But here I am to speak what I do know.

30.You all did love him once, not without cause:

31.What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

32.O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts

33.And men have lost their reason! – Bear with me;

34.My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,

35.And I must pause till it come back to me.

ambition for the Elizabethans the word had the special meaning of unscrupulous pursuit of power.

Exercise 1. Examine the spelling of the words in the text and discuss any instances that seem unusual to you.

List the principal linguistic features of Shakespeare’s English which mark its difference from ModE.

Exercise 3. Pick out all the forms of the verb. Comment on them.

Exercise 4. Pay attention to the use of negation and the verb ‘do’. Explain their usage in the text.

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

Exercise 5. Can you find any words in the text that seem obsolete or old-

fashioned?

Exercise 6. Below you can find an extract from W. Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The ENE transcription will help you to understand the way the text sounded at that period. Analyze the differences in ENE and ModE pronunciation.

Notes: The rules of pronunciation in that time were the following:

1)/r/ was pronounced post-vocalically (car, card)

2)wh was pronounced [hw] (which, witch)

3)/s/ was not lowered (but, pull)

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

4)/a/ before /f, s, θ/ was still short (staff, pass, bath)

5)/a/ after /w/ was not retracted (swan, war)

6)mid-vowels were not diphthongised (play, boat)

7)diphthongs /ai, au/ still centralised (time [tèɪm], house [hèss])

8)/c:, e:/ had not yet been raised to /i:/ (eat rhymes with great)

9)fewer instances of short /u:/ (book, cook, room)

Exercise 7. Listen, read and analyse the sonnet by W. Shakespeare. Can you

understand the gist of it?

Sonnet LXVI

1.Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,

2.As, to behold desert a beggar born,

3.And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,

4.And purest faith unhappily forsworn,

5.And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,

6.And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,

7.And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,

8.And strength by limping sway disabeled,

9.And art made tongue-tied by authority,

10.And folly doctor-like controlling skill,

11.And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,

12.And captive good attending captain ill:

13.Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,

14.Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

PRACTICAL TASK 7

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Food for thought and further discussion:

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.

John French Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets.

Eddy Peters

You might find it interesting to know that…

OE vocabulary (recorded and preserved in written documents) ranges from 30,000 to 50,000 words;

Native words are the most frequent ones, the shorter, more general words;

English language is a partial result of the borrowings and it can be defined as the collection of words that were selected to appear in a dictionary (Elly van Gelderen);

In addition to few Celtic borrowings in ancient times, there are some more recent borrowings that are still in use: clan (1425), plaid (1513), leprechaun (1604), shamrock (1971), whisky (1715);

Out of 10,000 words borrowed from French, about 7,500 are still in use;

English words with initial z and v are loans.

Exercise 1. Explore the origin of the following place names in Britain and find out what the place names mean.

Applethwaite, Althorpe, Eastoft, Portsmouth, Nottingham, Buckingham, Glenmore, Ashwellthorp, Lancaster, Hamstead, Kilmore, Chatham, Flaxby, Sussex, Reading, Derby, Fishtoft, Moorby, Honeythwaite, Stratford, Askrigg.

Exercise 2. The following text appears to be nonsense. This is because the underlined words have been used with their original or earlier meaning. Look up the original meanings of the words and rewrite the text into modern English:

The girl wore his best frock to the dinner-party. He was a healthy young man with a healthy appetite, and he was in danger of eating so much he would starve. There was plenty of meat to suit his vegetarian tastes. After the meal, his disease was so bad he had to go and lie down.

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M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

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Exercise 3. All of the following English words (A–Y) at one time had meanings that are quite different from their current ones. (In case of borrowed words, the semantic change may have occurred before the word came into English). Identify each of these semantic changes as an instance of narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejorative meaning, weakening, or semantic shift.

M. Babenko. Lecture Notes and Practical Tasks in the History of English Language and its Varieties

Exercise 4. The words below are fairly well known in most world variants of English. But in which variety of English did each of the words originate? Where possible, also try to identify which language supplied the word to English.

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