The History of the English Language
Syntactic and Semantic Change
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6. Syntactic and Semantic ChangeToday, English is a strictly SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language. Whenever it is possible, English strives to hold the subject, verb and the object as close to each other as it can. This is necessary because, as we have already noted, English has lost much of its case-endings. So only the position of a word signifies whether it is a subject or an object in the sentence. So it is not the same if we say The dog has bitten the postman or The postman has bitten the dog. Before inflectional endings disappeared (somewhere in the late ME period), no strict word order was necessary, for different endings informed the listener or the reader whether a particular word was an object or a subject. The earliest recorded Germanic sentence can be found on one of the Golden Horns of Gallehus, discovered in Denmark, that date back to the early 5th century. On one of the horns, one can see this runic inscription: ᛖᚲᚺᛚᛖᚹᚨᚷᚨᛊᛏᛁᛉ᛬ᚺᛟᛚᛏᛁᛃᚨᛉ᛬ᚺᛟᚱᚾᚨ᛬ᛏᚨᚹᛁᛞᛟ᛬ which reads as: Ek Hlawagastiz Holtijaz horna tawidō, that is, I Hlawagastiz Holtijaz horn made, which an SOV pattern. This word order was more used in OE when there was a pronoun used as a direct object: Hēo hīne lærde. “she” “him” “taught” S O V
“when” “he” “the king” “sought” “he” “inquired” S O V
Þa ᵹesēah hē Þōne mann. “then” “saw” “he” “the man” V S O
Not only did he read the novel, but also wrote an essay on it; No sooner had he arrived than there was a knock on the door. Of course, the regular SVO pattern can also be seen in OE: Hē ᵹesēah Þōne mann. “he” “saw” “that” “man” S V O
“What think you on’t?” (Hamlet, Sc. I.) = ‘What do you think about it?’ Today, the very strict word order and the relative lack of inflectional endings make the use of auxiliary verbs necessary to signify object or subject positions, or questions and negations. Compare these two sentences and their German equivalents: Who knows you? – Wer kennt dich? Who(m) do you know? – Wen kennst du? Semantic ChangeNaturally, not only the pronunciation, the spelling, the form of words and their position in sentences can change but also their meaning. This is called semantic change. We can talk about six kinds of semantic change:
1. Broadening. Some words tend to acquire a broader meaning over time than their original meaning. For example, the word meaning “the father’s sister” was borrowed from French in the 14th century as aunte, which is, of course, present-day aunt. Over time, it gained the meaning “either the father’s or the mother’s sister.” Present-day Swedish, however, retained the binarity, and the father’s sister is called in Swedish faster and the mother’s sister is moster. 2. Narrowing. Some words show a tendency to narrow their meaning. For instance, Proto-Gmc. *foglaz evolved into OE fugel that meant “bird” (any kind of bird). (The word “fly” also comes from this root.) From the 1570s on, the word underwent narrowing, and now only “domestic hen or rooster” are called fowl. Bird is of OE origin, and originally it meant “young bird, nestling.” A similar example: OE mete, Mod. E. meat, which originally meant any type of solid food.
For example, OE cwene originally meant an ordinary woman, wife. Now it is queen, which is the woman of the highest rank. (Interestingly, another word from the same root, quean, came to mean ‘hussy’, ‘female serf’, ‘prostitute’ or a ‘male homosexual’ over times, so this word underwent pejoration.) Another example for amelioration is the OE word prættig, whose meaning was ‘cunning’, ‘skilful’, ‘sly’, ‘tricky’. Then this meaning shifted to ‘skilfully made’, ‘attractive’, and then from about 1400, ‘manly’, ‘gallant’. Today we use it in the meaning ‘beautiful’, ‘attractive’, although it also has the meaning ‘moderately’, see ‘pretty big confusion.’ 4. Pejoration. The opposite of amelioration is pejoration, that is, when a word gains a more negative meaning compared to its original one. For instance, the OE word gesælig originally meant ‘happy’ (cf. German selig, meaning ‘happy’, ‘blissful’). (It is cognate with Latin solari, meaning ‘to soothe’, ‘to comfort’, see solace, Greek hilaros, from whence hilarious.) Then the meaning underwent changes through ‘blessed’, ‘pious’, ‘innocent’, ‘pitiable’, ‘weak’, ‘lacking in reason’, ‘foolish’, and the present day word is silly. 5. Weakening. Meaning may also weaken, that is, a word gains a meaning that expresses something less than the original one. For instance the Proto-Gmc. word *kwaljanan was the original form of OE cwellan, which meant ‘to kill, murder’. This meaning got weaker to signify ‘suppress, extinguish, ‘pacify’, hence present-day to quell. (You can quell a riot, disturbances, pain, fears, grief, etc.) The word is cognate with OE cwealm, ‘death, disaster, plague’, from whence present-day qualm, ‘a sudden feeling of sickness’, or ‘sudden disturbing feeling’. (Interestingly, the word “kill”, which only appeared around 1200, originally had the meaning ‘to strike’, ‘to beat’, ‘to hit’, ‘to knock’, a fairly mild meaning, thus this word underwent strengthening.) 6. Semantic shift. Sometimes words no not change their meaning in any positive or negative direction, but as a result of connection with other concepts and practices of life, they take on a new meaning. For instance, it is easy to see where the modern meaning of mouse (the computer device) comes from. Or the word horn means both the horn of an animal and a musical instrument, it is not difficult to see why. Sometimes concrete terms gained abstract meanings. The original meaning of OE butan or buton was ‘without’, ‘outside’ (the OE word for present-day “but” was āc), but by now it has become a discourse marker. A similar example is “while” (OE hwīle), originally meaning a “period of time” (as it is seen in present-day expressions for a while and worthwhile), now meaning “during.” The most interesting lexical item in this sense is hearse (a cart for carrying coffins). Coming from Old French herce, meaning ‘long rake, harrow’, it gained the meaning around 1300 ‘a framework for candles, hung over a coffin’, because of the similar shape. Then ‘any framework on which a curtain was hung over coffins’ , then ‘a vehicle for carrying a body’ from around the 1640s. Or consider the evolution of the word toilet. It appeared in the 1530s, earliest in English in an obsolete sense "cover or bag for clothes," from Middle French toilette "a cloth; a bag for clothes," diminutive of toile "cloth, net" (see toiles in French means cloth, coming from Latin tela, related to textile.) Toilet acquired an association with upper class dressing by 18c., through the specific sense "a fine cloth cover on the dressing table for the articles spread upon it;" thence "the articles, collectively, used in dressing" (mirror, bottles, brushes, combs, etc.). Subsequent sense evolution in English (mostly following French uses) is to "act or process of dressing," especially the dressing and powdering of the hair (1680s); then "a dressing room" (1819), especially one with a lavatory attached; then "lavatory or porcelain plumbing fixture" (1895), an American euphemistic use. Now try to match the present-day words with their original meaning.
(Homework: what about these words? Nice, soon, closet, awful, guy, gay, jaw, knave, villain, peasant, to feel, fair, bachelor, boy, fear, faint, left, moss, prestige, to read, sergeant, to solve, stomach, truth, womb, worm.) Directory: angol -> sites -> www.nyf.hu.angol -> files files -> The poetry of the 18 th century: Neo-classicism and Sentimentalism Neo-Classicism The main representatives angol -> Country of Origin Information Report angol -> Government of angola united nations development programme Download 0.56 Mb. Share with your friends:
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