CHAPTER 5 I LESSON 2: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Directions: Match the descriptions with the language theories. Write your answer on the blank before
each number.
C
____1. Postulates that human speech arose by imitating
a. He la-la theory
sounds from the surrounding, specifically from animals in
an onomatopoeic form.
D
____2. Based on the evidence that speech arose through b. Yo-he-ho theory
humans creating sounds using their instincts.
E c. bow-bow theory
____3. Postulates that speech arose because humans
responded to the surrounding around them, sound
symbolism. d. The pooh-pooh theory
B
____4. Grounded on the belief that human speech arose
because of physical environmental desires that e. The ding-dong theory
resulted in the creation of common rhythmic sounds
that formed into chants.
f. The ping-pong theory
A
____5. Explains that if there is something responsible in
the imitation of human speech, it should be the romantic
aspect of man’s life.
CHAPTER 5 I LESSON 2:
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
In the late 1830’s, Darwin started searching at the beginning of
language. His focus of inquiry lies on the communicative abilities of
DEVELOPMENT animals and their capacity to acquire new sounds and associate them
OF ENGLISH with human words.
LANGUAGE:
THE DARWINIAN
PERSPECTIVE
He focused on the observable
interrelatedness between words
and sounds, shown in “crack”,
“scrape” and “roar” that appeared
to be an imitation of the things
signified.
Darwin admitted that language
sets man apart from lower He observed the proximity and sameness between sounds of animals
animals. However, he also and the different natural utterances and gestures that human beings
emphasized the resemblance of produce when venting out strong feelings.
animal and human speech.
LESSON 3: THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FAMILY TREE
▪ The earliest known Indo-European language is the common ancestor of modern English and
Western languages (Grey, 2019). No written traces of the Indo-European language could be
found for it was not written down.
▪ Based on the many texts that language experts and researchers delved on they deduced that
the east of Turkey was once occupied. The group split, with one group voyaging to Asia and
the other sub-group towards the west of Europe.
▪ The two main sub-groups scattered into smaller groups and settled in the different sections in
Asia and Europe where their languages developed separately.
Indo-European Family: Balto Slavic (Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and Polish
Indo-European Family: Roman languages, the Indo-Iranian languages (Hindi,
Persian, and Sanskrit)
Indo-European Family: Italic languages (Roman languages)
Indo-European Family: Celtic languages (Gaelic, Welsh, Breton)
Indo-European Family: Hellenic language (Greek)
• Linguists have often
used trees and branches
as metaphors to explain
and map the connections
between language groups.
• Despite being close
geographically, the tree highlights
the distinct linguistic origins of
Finnish from other languages in
Scandinavia. Finnish belongs to
the Uralic language family and
shares roots with some
indigenous tongues in
Scandinavia such as Sami.
• The European arm of the tree splits off
into Slavic, Romance and Germanic
branches. Here you can see the
relationship between different Slavic
languages. You can also spot some of
Britain’s oldest languages clustered
together.
• The size of the leaves on
the trees is intended to
indicate – roughly – how
many people speak each
language. It shows the
relative size of English as
well as its Germanic roots.
• The left side of the tree maps
out the Indo-Iranian languages. It
shows the connections between
Hindi and Urdu as well as some
regional Indian languages such
as Rajasthani and Gujarati.
LESSON 4:
OLD, MIDDLE
AND
MODERN
ENGLISH
This period started around 450 A.D. During this time, the Angles, Saxons
OLD ENGLISH and Jutes who composed the West Germanic settlers arrives in Southern
Britain. They carried with them some dialects like the language varieties
that produced the Dutch, Frisian and German.
This Germanic influence is prevalent in the vocabulary we use every day such as come
(cuman in Old English) old (eald in Old English), and heart (heorte in Old English).
Irregular verbs were also formed such as drink-drank-drunk. In the same manner, several Old
English pronunciations are kept in today’s spellings e.g. knight (Old English cniht, German
Knecht).
Old English, a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon, was not fully influenced by the language of the Celts which
was widely spoken by the occupants of the British Isles. Only a few words associated with
geography and wildlife were borrowed.
Latin was brought to Britain by the Romans and strengthened by the conversation of the
Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, it created a remarkable event for it served as the basis of the
writing system and provided a wide range of new words (e.g. school and mass).
The Old English text is prevalent during the start of the Anglo-Saxon’s epic, Beowulf (Lohr,
2019).
MIDDLE ENGLISH (1100-1500)
During this period, development in terms of the pronunciation of unstressed syllables
found at the ends of the words caused the merging of most inflections.
The influence of Norman and French people went a long way. French prestige
dominated the vocabulary in court, church, education and law. The words for farmed
animals (mutton, beef, pork) translated in modern French into (mouton, beouf, porc)
were from native words like sheep, swine, and cow.
The loan or borrowed words referred to the meat of animals consumed by wealthy
French speakers, while the native or Old English words referred to living animals.
Norman also changed the way words were spelled and written using the French
conventions.
Old English Word French Word
is, cwcn ice, queen
MODERN ENGLISH
This period marked the introduction of printing.
Caxton’s preference of the East Midlands/London’s English variety for the earliest
printed books towards the end of the 15th century influenced the formation of the
standardized English language variety with acceptable grammatical forms and
vocabulary, fixed spelling, and punctuation conventions.
The perception of the correctness of this standardized variety was supported by
the codification attempts of Johnson’s dictionary and many other prescriptive
grammarians during the 18th century.
In this period, among the borrowed words from Greek and Latin were critic,
education, consciousness, and metamorphosis.
English is currently used worldwide as native tongue, second or foreign tongue
due to imperial and colonial activity, educational and cultural prestige, the
interracial slave trade and international business for economic reasons.
