The development of language study in the West:

Classical Antiquity

Introduction

Classical Antiquity ( Romans and Greeks).

We talk about Romans and Greeks because all the languages come from these people.

Everything began with the GREEKS. All the terminology, concepts… that we use today were created by the Greeks. The ideas are the same ( subject, adjective, verb, mood, aspect…).

This terminology is what we call TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR . Traditional grammar has last since Greeks until nowadays.

In the 20th Century the structuralism begins and it is different from traditional grammar.

We have to distinguish several stages in traditional grammar. There are five:

The very beginning ( up to Aristotle) 4th Century BC

Systematisation of the tradition. It takes an order in the tradition. Alexandrians, Stoics, ( 2nd Century BC) . Dionysius Thrax belongs to this group.

Consolidation : it was stablished itself. Priscian 6th AD. Priscian is the most important figure. He will influence the scholars in England, but in the West.

Medieval Grammarians

Renaissance Grammarians traditional grammar was definitely stablished.

Traditional Grammar is synonymous of Latin and Greek. These periods affected Greek and Latin.

The Ancient Greeks

There are two dichotomies:

Nature and convention

Analogy and anomaly

These dichotomies referred to positions (you can choose nature or convention, and you can choose analogy or anomaly). They are phylosophical concepts.

* Nature/ convention

The Greeks discuss whether the language was natural or conventional.

If language was natural meant that the origin is outside the man himself.

If language was conventional meant that is a custom. Something like an agreement between men. It could change.

This distinction affects mainly to the relationship between the form of a word and the meaning of that word.

Those which defend that language is natural are the naturalists. Those which defend that language is conventional are the conventionalists.

For Naturalists there are a few ways to prove the connection. There are three:

Onomatopoeia: this group of words is the favourite of the naturalists because you can see clearly the connection. These words imitate the sound that you referred to. For example, in English: to hoot( claxon) , to crash, etc.

When they discuss onomatopoeia also began the etymology, that is to find the origin of the words.

b) Sound- symbols

This refers to words that only are imitative in part, not in their whole.

In some words we have one sound or two that is imitative, and when you listen to that sound it reminds you a word.

Liquid flush flow water

R expresses movement. Run

There are many words that don't fit in this two groups. There is the Principles of etymology , they try to justify with this, the rest of the words that cannot be explains with the other groups.

Ex: Metaphor : the neck of a bottle ( natural connection. It remains the body's neck)

Conventionalists say that these things haven't got a natural connection.

This dispute will last for centuries. The product of this dichotomy will be the development of scientist etymology. (CAREW)

* Analogy/ Anomaly

This analogy/ anomaly dichotomy is a consequence of the nature convention of the controversy..

This controversy discuss whether the language is regular or not.

Analogy synonymous with regularity.

Anomaly synonymous with irregularity.

ANALOGY: The ones that defend analogy defend that language is regular.

Regular there are a set of patterns, models which are repeated in language.

Irregular there are many exceptions to those patterns.

Ex: The final -s to make the plural(regular): boy/ boys; girl/ girls; cow/ cows

This is one of the patterns that shows the regularity of the language.

Child/ children anomaly. The language is irregular.

The analogyst's work is to establish the patterns in Greek to English. Those patterns are known as PARADIGMS ( declensions, conjugations..)

(18th Century In English, we will see it in the future.)

They used formulas as in mathematics to set up the patters:

A:B= C:B( a is to b, as c is to d) boy: boys = cow: cows

Boy: boys = cow: x x = cows

They also established semantic equations, not only formal.

Ex: father: child = dog : X x = puppy

For the analogyst the Greek language was full of this patterns.

The language is irregular. They admit that there are regularities ( the anomalysts) . they pointed out that there are a lot of examples of irregularities, such as child = children; ox = oxen.

But their main emphasis is the semantic irregularities. They said the relationship between the form and the meaning of the word is anomalous, irregular. For example Athens is a plural noun referring to a singular entity.

Synonymous: have two or more forms for one meaning. This is anomalous. Ex: row

Homonymy: have one form and more than one meaning. Ex: bar (chocolate, place, law…) This is another irregularity.

For analogysts language is the product of convention. It's such a regular thing. It's conventional.

Anomalysts say that the presence of irregularity demonstrate there is a natural thing ( the language). This is a link between the two parts.

One consequence of this controversy ( polémica ) is that this will help to the systematisation of grammar.

* Greek Grammar: the beginning of the tradition

5th - 4th BC. First steps to the creation of the terminology of the tradition of grammar.

THE SOPHISTS

They were teachers. They were criticised because they taught how to defend a cause. (justa o no)

They teach how to win in debates, moral or not. They contribute in the grammar.

PROTAGORAS distinguished the three genders in Greek : masculine, feminine, and things. He distinguished sentence types, negative, affirmative, interrogative,…. They were the main contribution to the grammar

PLATO

Plato's main contribution was the distinction between verbs and nouns.

Onoma noun

Rhema verb

Onoma and rhema are the constituents of the logos ( sentence).

Onoma can mean subject, nominal name

Rhema can mean verb, predicate. Rhema includes verbs and also adjectives. But Plato did not call it adjective.

According to him the relation between onoma and rhema and their meanings is a product of convention. Plato is a conventionalist, an analogyst.

ARISTOTLE

He'll keep the distinction of nouns and verbs, but he added syndesmoi . This is a 3rd class. They are the conjunctions. They are linking words.

Aristotle includes in syndesmoi all the words that are not nouns neither verbs.

Aristotle realised that there were more than one tense in the verbs: past actions, present actions. There were correspondences between the actions and the tenses. Category of time.

Aristotle is a conventionalist. For him meaning is conventional. The meaning of a word is a convention. Words are symbols created by men.

* Greek Grammar: 1st systematisation of the tradition.

III- II BC

THE STOICS

It's the school of philosophy that paid more attention to the language.

They studied language in their study of logic. Logic includes grammar to the stoics.

The stoics think that good conduct means to live in good harmony with nature.

Knowledge consists of ideas that agree with nature. Language is part of knowledge.

The stoics are naturalists and therefore anomalysts. Language has many irregularities, and stoics defended it.

In the origin of language there was a natural connection between words and things. This connection is not evident today.

What they did was to look for the original forms with natural connection. It's the study of ETYMOLOGY

The beginning of the science of etymology is their main contribution.

But they also add more parts to the parts of the speech(verb, noun, etc ) and they add the ARTICLE.

One more concept is the concept of inflexion which is the declensions and conjugations.

The concept of case is a part of the inflexion. The distinction between the active and passive voice. And also the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs.

But the most important: Etymology.

The Alexandrians:

They were a group of philosophers that lived and worked in Alexandria.

Alexandria and Pergamon were two cities that took the place of Athens in political and cultural aspects.

Alexandria is well known because of its library. Its beginning was Aristotle's personal book collection.

The city became the centre of literary and linguistic research.

In this period, two key works in the world history were produced in Alexandria:

-Euclid Elements

-Grammar of Dionysius Thrax

The study of language: the Alexandrians approached this study through literary texts, especially those of Homer. They studied the manuscripts that included “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”(S.V B.C.).

They find many different versions of the manuscripts that contained those poems, but they were written in different types of Greek. They wanted to find the original version, the one written by Homer. The original Greek was very different from the one they used in their time. They couldn't understand the original texts.

Once they had the original version, they had to make the commentaries, and the grammar explanation of those texts. This gave the chance to the people to read those texts.

They decided to do this because they thought that the original/classic Greek was more correct than their own Greek (they thought that this one was corrupted).

They write grammars with both types of texts (classical and “modern”) to preserve Greek from corruption and also, to explain the original Greek (classical authors).

These two purposes are important because they are the two main purposes of all the grammaticians of today.

This approach brings two consequences:

The interest of linguistics will be the written language, and they will ignore spoken language as a subject of investigation.

This is focused on written language as a more correct version of the language, whereas the spoken language is seen as a corruption of written language. This idea of purity, corruption,…of written language is the most important thing in S.XVIII in England (See in previous lessons, Henry Sweet).

The result of these efforts is: the Greek grammar will be definitely codify or systematize. The study of language will give us the first description of language.

They were analogists. They were obsessed with the regularity. They will give this regularity of Greek in a list in form of declinations and conjugations (paradigm).

Dionysius (S.II B.C., “Technè Grammatikè”= Art of Grammar, S.I B.C.). This is the Greek Grammar, the one that is considered as the real Greek Grammar until our days. It's the first complete and systematic grammar in the West.

Grammar (Dionysius): “is the technical knowledge of the language employed by poets and writers”.

It has 6 parts; discover language etymologies, discover analogies, study critically the compositions of poets, are three of this six parts.

Deal with the language of the previous era is something that Dionysius thought was important. His method had two steps: phonology and morphology (no syntax). In phonology we don't get any phonetic study; it's the study of the name of the Greeks letters and their different phonetic values (this is phonology).

Morphology is the main body of his work, and it deals with syllables and words. Syntax is relevant because the most part of the grammars hadn't deal with it until Chomsky's work.

Dionysius contributed with four more parts of speech to the list of four of the stoics: adverbs, participle, pronoun and preposition). This four plus the other four is the standard now.

These parts will be analysed by using the case, the gender, the voice, the mood, the number,… This has become the standard way of analysing words.

The noun is the part of speech, which has case inflection. The verb is the part without case inflection.

Nouns have five accidents. They are defined because of their accidents. The accidents of the verbs are: number, person, time, mood, voice, tense, conjugation, kind and type.

There are seven types of conjunctions: copulatives, conditionals, causals, finals,…These used to be the names of the sentences.

All these are applied to classical Greek, and he studied his own Greek with the application of the classical Greek.

2.ROMAN ADAPTATION OF GREEK GRAMMAR: the tradition consolidated.

Roman culture was influenced by Greek culture (art, literature,…). The high roman classes send their children to Greece to study. The Greek grammar is an influence to the Latin grammar.

In Rome, grammar is a part of philosophy and literary criticism (as in Greece).

The analogy/anomaly controversy was also present among the Romans (Cesar wrote a tratado).

In these general aspects they were similar, the same as in specific aspects. The Latin grammar repeated the organization that Dionysius said in his grammar.

This was possible because Latin and Greek were similar (from the structural point of view). Therefore, the parts of speech can be transferred to Latin with no problem (verbs, nouns,…).

All the accidents were easy to put into Latin. The problem was that when that was transferred to English grammar, the people thought that these categories were universal.

Within the Romans there was a moment of classicism (probably the most important moment in Grammar - Priscian - S.VI A.D.). Donatus was another important person. Before that, there were other attempts, but we want to deal with one of this because of the originality and similarity: Varro.

Varro is a contemporary of Dionysius. He is the perfect example of taking over Greek grammar into Latin grammar. He wrote a Latin grammar as a consequence of analogy/anomaly controversy. His opinion was that both extremes were wrong (there is regularity and irregularity, but not one of these only). Maybe regularity is more present.

Varro also anticipated the distinction between langue/parole (Saussure), and this is a key moment in the history of Linguistics. He said that there were two types of language: the language in abstract (langue), and the language that it's spoken by an individual (parole).

Priscian is the key moment in classical grammar. He did the most complete description of Latin language of that period (“Institutiones Grammaticae”, c. 500 A.D.).It's almost a repetition of Dionysius work (“Techné grammatiké”).

Priscian and Donatus wanted to describe the language of the best writer, not the language of their own days. They wanted to describe the classical language (Cicero and Virgil, S. II and I B.C. respectively).

This approach has the same consequences as the Alexandrians (the correct language is the written one and the idea this language was more correct than their own contemporary language).

The work itself: it has 18 books; 16 of these deal with morphology, the last 2 deal briefly with syntax. In The Middle Ages, the specialists will focus exclusively on the first 16 books (morphology).

On the whole, these 18 books are an adaptation of Dionysius' work, especially in the field of terminology. Latin had no words yet to describe language matters (noun, verb,…). Priscian translated the Greek terms into Latin. From then on, Latin will have a very suitable terminology.

Examples: onoma>the Greek name for noun / nomen>the Latin word (translation of onoma).

-Syndesmos: coni-unctio( syn-desmos)

-Antonymia: pro-nomen (anto-nymia)

This is the main merit of Priscian's work; the creation of a whole terminology from Greek to Latin.

Priscian also adopted the 8 parts of speech as Dionysius gave us. He made a little change (the article is excluded, he changed it to the interjection).

He described those 8 parts and their accidents (the formal accidents). He was very close to Dionysius in this description. The examples he gave came from Cicero and Virgil (this is the difference from Dionysius' work).

Priscian also said that the order of cases is natural (in noun declinations). The nouns are natural (he said he had chosen the name of that use because is more frequent than the other uses). The nominative is called like this because it came in first place,…

There is a connection between the name and the frequent use (nominative, dative-to friend, accusative-to enemies, vocative-to a second person, secondary). These names are still used today.

This work is a key work in the Middle Ages and it is also the most important work of scholarship in Roman culture.

Linguistic study in the Early Middle Ages in the British Isles

General introduction to the period and the period's approach to language studies

What are the Middle Ages? It's a period in the History of Europe and goes to the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. The fall of the Roman emperor happened in 476 BC.

We call Middle Ages because it refers to the fact that is between two golden periods. Before the Middle Ages we have the Classical Antiquity. After the Middle Ages we have the Renaissance, a period of splendour in general and that is what makes the Middle Ages slightly less relevant culturally than the other 2 periods. It is like an interval.

However, the Middle Ages have a lot to offer in linguistics. They are not so dark in linguistic matters. This image of darkness was destroyed little by little.

We will focus on the 1st half of the Middle Ages (The DARK AGES first period in the Middle Ages, V-XI Centuries)

It is true that the fall of Rome made a decline in culture, but there were many ups and downs.

EUROPE

ENGLAND

A key element in those ups and downs is the Latin language. The rise or fall depends on the knowledge or lack of knowledge of Latin.

Latin was the official language of the Christian Church. The church will be the sponsor of Latin scholarship, education, elitition through the monasteries and churches. Later, the universities.

The church adopted Latin. The kind of Latin is not classical Latin ( not like Cicero or Virgil), because they are pagan authors so their language is pagan too. The Church taught a more colloquial Latin, less difficult.

It was also an instrument for secular transactions. Latin is now, for those people, a foreign language . The Romans had left England, so Germanic people had to learn Latin. For this reason they need Latin Manuals, text book to learn Latin. Most of those manuals will be based on Priscian and Donatus. This is a link with the classical antiquity.

Latin is taught as a written language. They handle texts and learn it from them. This is similar to what happened with the Alexandrians. These studies of Latin are the only studies of grammar and language in this period. Language studies means Latin Studies. Latin was studied for itself and it was necessary to learn another matters. It is an instrument for the education. The study of Latin is the basis of medieval education. Grammars books were grammars of Latin. It was a didactic (practical) and normative way of teaching Latin.

DIDACTIC doesn't mean speculative (abstract). Speculative grammars will come in the 2nd half of the Middle Ages. The practical use of language is what they studied. A Normative grammar means a grammar with rules, norms and with rules about correct and incorrect uses. These grammars are normative. This is another similarity to the Alexandrians. This teach you how to use Latin correctly. Didactic and normative grammars will be based on Priscian and Donatus' works.

Linguistic study in the Early Middle Ages in England

• The Linguistic situation in the island

Great Britain was a Celtic speaking island. Then colonised by the Romans (43-410 BC) They were 400 years.

The Romans left and the British, the native of the island had fights between themselves. They invited the Germanic tribes to help them. Those tribes arrived and take over the island in the middle of the 5th century. We have 3 dialects.

The Germanic pushed the natives to the borders of the island( Welshmen: they all were called like this). Those Germanic tribes didn't have political unity. In the 7th century we have 7 different kingdoms with 7 different dialects of Old English + Celtic Native Speakers. In time the 7 kingdoms diminished in 3: Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. The dialect spoken in Wessex is the standard, the official form of Old English (west Saxon) It's the accepted form of Old English.

These Germanic Kingdoms were pagans since a Christian point of view, but they become Christians little by little. In 597 Saint Agustine was send by the Pope to convert the Germanic tribes to the Christianity.

The Christianism was very important for linguistics matters. Those Germanic kingdoms were isolated. The Christianity brigs together with it a new language, Latin and conveys a new civilisation, a new literature. Latin was being developed in other places.

It was introduced the Roman Alphabet, a new language, a new culture, and many books mow more available through Latin. A blossoming in learning was produced. Churches and monasteries were the places in where people learnt. English begin to write extensively.

In the 8th century it is produced the Scandinavian Invasion. There is a decline of learning because of the Scandinavian invasion. The places of education disappear( churches an monasteries).

In the 9th century King Alfred complained about this very bad cultural situation. Not so many people can read or write in Latin.

King Alfred translated into English Cura Pastoralis and in the preface he complained about this situation: the lack of knowledge of Latin. If people can't read Latin, let's make those texts available with a translation into English. All the important texts in their own language.

He promotes a massive work of translation. The importance is enormous. It was a moment of revival of knowledge. Religious moment started: THE BENEDICTINE REFORM, that is a cultural and religious reform at the same time. It will help Alfred in different ways, to promote culture in the island. This reform was improved in learning and teaching Latin in the island.

Aelfric began to work under King Alfred's idea of translation. He was a translator.

After this period, in the 11th century we have a decline. Danish were rolling England and they brought their languages. There were a lot of languages (Old English, Scandinavian, Normand…). All that influenced cultural education.

With the Norman invasion started the 2nd period of the Middle Ages. We have to wait until the 14th century to say that there is a National Language in England.

• Language study in the island: The Insular Grammar

This is the study of Latin grammar. We know very little about it. The problem is that there are not a lot of sources(manuscripts). Nowadays we know very few of this period.

The few texts that exist are very difficult even for specialists. Usually this period have been considered a dark period. Those very few available texts have been studied by scholars who were not linguistics (historians of education), they did read those manuscripts. Paleographs studied the way in they wrote.

One more problem is that those manuscripts have characteristics that made them difficult. Most of them are anonymous, they have no name, no date, no place of origin written on them. They were written in Latin. Latin was an international language. It was spoken in all around Europe.

We do not have bibliography, we have not very much. We know all these manuscripts were the product of the policy of the Church. Why is Latin taught? Latin was taught because it was taught in every Christian region. It was the language of the Christian religion. The sacred texts were written in Latin, the religious services in Latin… Latin was imposed.

Another reason. Latin was the language of scholarship. You only learn in Latin, not only the religious matters, also Law, Science, Philosophical matters. It was the language of knowledge. Those subjects were taught in Latin. LATIN WAS AN INSTRUMENT OF EDUCATION.

Also commerce and administration were held in Latin, specially in foreign countries. Latin was basic to live.

How did they teach Latin at school? They began to study grammar in the school. Children learn spelling and pronunciation of Latin words. They learn the inflections, declensions and lists of vocabulary.

In a more advanced level they were taught how to write texts. Then they learn to comment literary texts in Latin. The highest stage was the study of etymology of words /philology/. That is the organisation of the study of Latin in different levels.

What instruments did they have to teach? The teachers had the grammars of the Roman Antiquity(4-5th century).Priscian and Donatus were the most studied. Those grammars were written for and to native speakers of Latin.

We know that English people don't know how to speak Latin as native people. The grammars of Priscian and Donatus were no suitable for them. The result of this is that the English began to write and compiled their own Latin Grammars.

• Grammatical models

They used two types of classical grammars, and they were called:

Schulgrammatik

Regulae

The 1st type of grammar, schulgrammatik is systematic (complete and with an order). It tries to be comprehensive. It treated the 8 parts of speech. The most important schulgrammatik example we know is Priscian.

The Regulae is less systematic. They deal with 1,2,3…parts of speech, but not with all of them. They focus on the nouns, or nouns and verbs. They are characterised by giving many lists of inflections. These are reference works.

We use both of these models to produce their own type of grammar. They were made for a specific audience with specific means. The Latin speaker who use those 2 types of grammar was looking for information on them which was not relevant for the new Latin speakers (English People) .

In this grammars is contained information about literary texts, that they use as grammatical examples (Cicero, Virgil), mythological and historical explanations, … those things were not interested in this information( a los ingleses). They needed to learn English in a practical way.

• Insular Grammars

Many of the grammars the English compiled are similar to the classical models because they assumed the explanations and theories about the parts of speech.

They also offers something new that makes them interesting.

The insular grammars can be divided in 2 types:

The Elementary Grammar

The Exegetical Grammar

These are the two main grammars.

The elementary grammars are specifically English, to England. They don't appear in anywhere else. They appear in England in the 7th century (the children of classical grammars).

_ They are brief

_ They are systematic expositions

_ Morphology is the most important thing. It is based on Priscian and Donatus.

_ Paradigms give all the possible declensions and conjugations

_ They see Latin as a pattern. They're based on the formal aspects.

_ They were successful for some centuries.

The exegetical grammars are less important. They are commentaries on the classical grammars. They try to explain the classical texts(classical grammars) to help teachers and students to understand difficult classical texts.

They are a type of text similar to the Bible commentary. It is usual to find texts explaining the Bible.

These two types of grammars were introduced in the continent by missionaries( from England to the rest of Europe). Boniface is one of them.

They were also successful in the continent. In the 9th century the elementary grammar died because in the 9th-10th century there was a return to the classical grammars, Priscian and Donatus, because the level of Latin was higher to produce a less corrupted versions of the Bible. They wanted to do better versions of the Bible, less corrupted.

They went back to Priscian's. it takes place in the Carolingian Renaissance(9th and so on centuries) and from the Carolingian Empire it goes back to England.

English Grammarians at Works

We know very little about English Grammarians of this period. The reason is the difficulty of the manuscripts. Still we know enough to say they were very important not only in England also in the continent.

In general we know very few of all the authors. But we know many things about Wynfreth Boniface(we know about him and his works. C. 675-745). We know he was the missionary who brought Christianity to Germany from England. Before he was a missionary he wrote a Latin Grammar. In that grammar he includes a preface in the form of a letter where he tell us his methods to write the grammar.

Aelfric is another grammarian ( ð 1010). He's also relevant because he wrote a Latin grammar in English(Old English).

• An Early medieval grammarian talks about grammar: Winfreth- Boniface and the Praefatio ad Sigibertum

He's remembered as the man who Christianised what we call Germany today.

For us he is interesting for other reasons. He is interesting because of his role in the consolidation on medieval grammatical ideas.

He was born in England in 675, in the South. His name is Winfreth but he received the name Boniface from the Pope (8th-c719).

As a child he went to a school monastery and then he went to another one with a higher level and there he became a teacher. All of these in England. While he worked as a teacher he wrote a Latin grammar with his students who were also studying to be monks. Then he became a priest and decided to leave England. As a missionary he first went to Holland and then to Germany. He went to see the Pope several times for religious matters. In 722 he had close meetings with the Pope. There is an anecdote about Latin in Europe. Boniface and the Pope did not understand each other speaking Latin. Roman and English Latin pronunciation were different. Then Boniface wrote down he wanted to say to the Pope. Boniface's Latin was more classical than Latin spoken in Rome. Pope's Latin was more vulgar.

We also know he wrote many letters when he was in Germany. We have those letters and they give us many information about him, his works, about the situation of that time, etc. Books that he had read, that anted to read… Many of those letters that received were written by lady friends of him.

With Boniface began the Benedictine Rule. This Benedictine Rule was consolidated with the Carolingian Empire.

• The Ars Bonifacii

We do not know when he wrote it, but we can guess that date. We know his name is Winfreth. In the grammar there is an acrostic poem (where the first letters of each line form a word, in this case Winfreth). His name now is Winfreth, not Boniface yet.

It was written before 719(but not much earlier). The grammar has a preface which is important. The name is Praefatio ad Sigibertum . It's remarkable. It is a letter. It is an exposition of his methodology of writing the grammar.

The Ars Bonifacii is an elementary grammar ( it deals with the 8 parts of speech, many paradigms, for beginners…). It is typical of this time, but it is also different from other elementary grammars. It's different because he uses sources( grammatical sources) that other contemporary grammarians did not use.

Boniface insist more than his contemporaries in the anomalies, the Latin irregularities. The irregularities of that language.

He follows VERBATIM(al pie de la letra), he follows the words of the sources.

This grammar was very influential. We have 3 manuscripts containing this grammar. In England and outside of England.

In the 9th century this grammar will be not used anymore.

• The Preface

ISSUES OF AUTHORITY

Boniface was a non native Latin speaker writing a grammar of Latin. He did not feel very sure of what he was doing.

What authority did he feel writing a grammar of Latin being an English native speaker?

Why did he feel the need to write a grammar since there were many grammatics available in that time?

What type of people is he writing for? Which audience has Boniface in mind? (age, religion, knowledge…)

How did he treat the classical grammars to do his own? He's respectful. He summarises, criticised or not….

Is it a grammar for beginners or not?

Winfreth- Boniface

There was no need of writing a grammar because there were many of them. He wanted to do something new, he wanted to gather all the existent grammars together. He wanted to select and write those selections to put it in one work. He is going to give us something new.

Why did he want to put them together? He wants to do it for the special difficulty to read characteristics of Medieval manuscripts. They don't have index, no title, no page number, no divisions … to help us to find information quickly.( that's what Boniface wanted to do).

He will give us all the information in the text. He will work with 121 or more sources. He uses all those sources simultaneously jumping one to the other even within the sentence.

Definitions and examples are taken from these sources.

The idea of authority: in general Boniface shows he needs to use other people's works to stick closely. When we read the text he talks about he is not the best person to make a grammar of Latin.

That kind of attitude is common in the medieval authors (humility, modesty…) they use it as an stylistic resource.

Boniface is speaker of Latin, so he has lack of Latin confidence. He really feels not adecuated to do it. Both things come together. The solution is to transfer the authority. Transfer the authority to other people, grammatical authority.

The influences are the classical grammarians (late Roman period 4th -5th Century, Donatus and Priscian).

He mentioned a lot of people, but he didn't use all of them. He used the other people's works but he did not mention. Why does he do it? The ones he omit are more contemporary, closer in time (Isidore of Seville). In the Middle Ages the more contemporary the worst. These works are less important than the older ones.

He mentions people from the classical period that he did not use. He did it because they have wrote authority.

The reason for all these must be found in his personal situation. Another reason is that novelty, originally, in that time, is something dangerous.

How does he treat his sources? Sometimes he find that his sources do not agree in certain topics.

Grammarians do not agree in the number of parts of speech ( 2….8….more…depending on the grammarians).

Boniface in grammar feels embarrassed because of it, he says that grammarians should know how many parts the speech must have. This attitude is because he did not want transferring the embarrassment to the sources. It happens with the number of parts of speech, with the classification of conjunctions, pronouns…. Boniface choose one of these positions.

He clarifies difficult passages that find in the grammars, and explains it. He changes the obscure words in the passages. If one passage is not well written he do it well.

Some of the changes he did affects the terminology of the sources. His sources use the term declinatio with two meanings: 1st inflexion of the word (rosa, rosae) 2nd type of declination or declension opposed to another.

What kind of readers does he have in mind? His audience is Old English speakers. Most of them don't literate in their own language. They did not have direct contact with Latin speakers. But they have the need to learn Latin. They were Christians and they attended religious services and those were held in Latin . they were listening Latin in churches. They didn't understand most of it was said, but it started to be familiar to them.

This compensate the lack of native speakers of Latin. And this is the audience Boniface is writing for. Basically made of monks and nuns.

However there are some evidences to think his audience is not total beginners. In the preface there are some reasons of this. Being written in Latin is not one of those evidences.

The goal of grammar: it's very clear in the text and is to improve people's understanding of religious texts.

According to him there is a different kind of written Latin in the Bible and the Latin of grammarians. The Bible is the correct.

The final word of grammarians is the religious text. The authority is not of ancient grammarians. The authority is the religious text. Ecclesiastical writers final authority.

In this period it is common to see examples from religious texts.

But Boniface did not take passages from religious texts. He took separated words( dogma, genesis, apocalypse…)

TEXT COMMENTARY WINFRETH BONIFACE

Ideas principales:

1ST Párrafo:

Contexto religioso: my dearest brother Sigibert .

Sigibert puede haber existido o no. Es importante descubrir la verdad. La mayoría de los especialistas han dicho que Sigibert no ha existido. Es tan sólo un recurso. Loq ue se diga de Sigibert es la descripción de la audiencia.

Se refuerza el contexto religioso linked with us in spiritual friendship

UNWORTHY: modestia:* Recurso formal

realidad de que él no es una hablante nativo del latín. Siente cierta incomodidad a la hora de escribir una gramática latina.

Officer of the Universal Church los que escribían gramáticas eran religiosos y las escribían para que otros religiosos pudieran leerlo.

Utiliza ya metáforas en el primer párrafo: dazzlingly with brilliant rays

2nd Parrafo

Dearest son: se dirige a alguien más joven que él. Y si no es más joven por lo menos se dirige a alguien que sabe menos de Latín

Hay una contradicción. Dice que le molesta que le distraigan con esas cosas, pero también dice que está bien haciendo eso, aunque no sea capaz de hacerlo.

The wise: Boniface no pertenece al grupo de los sabios. Tu me pides que yo haga algo. Tu sabes hacerlo y yo no, pero lo voy a hacer.

2ª parte del 2º párrafo: metafóricamente nos está contando por qué es necesario hacer una gramática, y él dice que hay muchas gramáticas y hay que sacar lo mejor de cada una y luego unirlo( ancient wood of the grammarians to collect...) meter lo importante en un mismo saco.Recortar lo bueno de cada gramática y pegarlo.

Sigiberth estudia todos los días. El tipo de lector es “ diligent dauly study”.

Youthfull cleverness apoya la idea de falsa modestia.

3er Párrafo

Falsa modestia The poverty of my knowledge; as far as my capacities permit...

Método que va a emplear para hacer su gramática “Enter to the wood”

Skimmed rápida lectura de los textos buscando lo que le interesara.

Boniface tiene una pose aunque no sea capaz de hacer una gramática. Pero se ha arriesgado a hacerlo.

Leyó rápidamente los textos, pero él sabía lo que quería buscar y encontrar. Las 8 partes del spech. Al decir esto ya sabemos que va a hacer una gramática elemental.

8 parts of speech: sigue a los clásicos.

COMPOSITION = ESCRIBIR

Gramática para no beginners.

4º Párrafo

Hay un cambio de tono. El tema deja de ser la falsa modestia. Baja más al método utilizado. Él no ha hecho la típica gramática. El ha añadido algunas explicaciones suyas. Se ve que tiene ideas propias con relación a la gramática.

La crítica constata el hecho de que han tratado algunos temas con poca profundidad.

Los ancients se refiere a los escritores clásicos como Virgilio, y Cicerón, S II AC, cuyo latín estudiaban los gramáticos del siglo IV. El latín vulgar (Vulgata) no tiene nada que ver con el latín de Cicerón y Virgilio( autores paganos).

To reject it el latín clásico = rechazable. Conflicting ruleslas 8 partes del speech, los tipos de conjunciones del latín.

El uso gramatical que utiliza es el de los textos eclesiásticos.

Se usa el latín de los textos religiosos como autoridad gramatical (siempre va a estar bien) es la autoridad final.

Falsa modestia: superfluos even ridiculous for me, born of ignorant stock …

En todo este párrafo nos está hablando de los desacuerdos de las auridades gramaticales.

5º Párrafo

De esos 12 nombres por lo menos la mitad cuya obra no manejó. Y hay otros contemporáneos que no menciona por el tema de la autoridad, pero que sí utilizó.

Cuanto más difunto más autoridad tiene. Cuanto más contemporáneo menos autoridad. Si mencionara a los contemporáneos le reta autoridad a su trabajo. Por ejemplo no menciona a San Isidoro.

6º Párrafo

Está haciendo una elementary grammar (8 partes del speech).

Habla de lo irregular que es el latín. Palabras con género femenino y significado masculino, etc. No hay correspondencia entre género y forma. Las elementary grammars hablaban de una regularidad del latín, pero Bonifacio dice lo contrario.

Existen muchas irregularidades en los nombres en el latín. Le interesaban las irregularidades y las gramáticas elementales.

FINALIDAD Escribe esta gramática para comprender mejor las sagradas escrituras.

LECTOR Eclesiásticos, religiosos, religiosas, monjas..., alguien a quien le interesa los textos religiosos y alguien que le interesa escribir en latín y que no ha tenido mucho contacto con el latín.

7º y 8º Párrafo

Antiguo testamento. Poesía imperfecta. Hexámetros imperfectos

Nuevo testamento. Poesía perfecta. Hexámetros perfectos. El nuevo testamento, la muerte de Cristo supone la perfección que no existe en el antiguo testamento.

El antiguo Testamento tiene sentido por e l Nuevo Testamento. La similitud es con las gramáticas romanas (antiguo testamento) y el Nuevo Testamento (Bonifacio).

Gracias a lo que yo hago, Bonifacio, las gramáticas anteriores tienen sentido.

Estos párrafos no tienen mucha importancia(excepto la religiosa). Es muy descriptivo, por eso es menos importante.

Metáfora de su método de trabajo.

9º Parrafo

despedida en contexto religioso.

• Adidactic grammar griten in the vernacular language: Aelfric's Excerptiones de Arte Gramática Anglicae and Colloquium (c.990)

The General Context: is one of relevance of the vernacular language (Old English). The position of Old English in linguistics literary matters: England has a very important literature written in Old English. It is one of the 1st countries to have a vernacular literature. Some were translations, other texts are native.

We have many manuscripts containing those literary works ( prose and poetry 10th -11th centuries). However the literature they contain is much older, especially the poetry. We know that because some customs of work are older. Some of the objects are also older. When they write texts is in the 10th century.

Why do they compiled those manuscripts now? The 1st reason the work of King Alfred in the 9th century.

The 2nd reason the Benedictine Reform (10th century).

Alfred the Great was a king in the 9th century. He was deeply worried about the state of Latin scholarship in England. But then the Vikings came, in that moment things were really bad. Those invasions made that Latin were in a very bad situation.

He complains in writing: ` Pastoral Care' that is a translation into Old English from a Latin text `Cura Pastoralis' (religious text). In that text is his famous complaint. (Difficult to find someone capable of translating a letter from Latin into English, or write a letter directly in Latin). He decides to solve this situation (translate the important Latin texts into OE with the intention that people at least could have the knowledge) .

He was an active translator and influenced a lot of people. He translated religious texts, but also History and Philosophy.

He was very pragmatic. This is one of the reasons why we have OE texts from this period.

The second factor: THE BENEDICTINE REFORM . This is a movement that comes from France and has his peak in the 10th century. The intention of the Benedictine Reform :it's a religious and cultural movement ( make better Christians and to improve culture). They created many schools and monasteries where many manuscripts were copied. Manuscripts written such in Old English as in Latin were written in those monasteries and schools. Thanks to the Benedictine Reform we can say that 10th century is a period of recovering.

In England there were 3 names called: Dunstan, Aethelwold, Oswald.

At last the English people recovered the ability to read and write Latin.

Alfred contributed to Old English, the Benedictines contributed to Latin.

People do not pay attention to their language, Old English, in spite it's widely used. We do find some glosses written in OE commenting different aspects of Latin texts. These glosses are are written in Latin or OE. Some of those are translations from Latin but none of them talks about Old English.

They study Latin grammar. Some things have changed; the sources that they will use to teach Latin grammar come from France, (Carolingian Empire, 9th). The influences were enormous. In the 10 th century the Benedictines studied that. They substituted the elementary grammars. They were at a higher level of Latin (France texts).

However some Anglo-Saxon scholars find those French works unsuitables. The level is too high (English is too low). The English begin to compile their own grammars. This is where we find Aelfric.

Aelfric

Aelfric will be the author of the grammar that will prove to be more suitable than any other. The title of his work is `Excerptions de Arte Grammatica Anglicae and Colloquium' (some aspects of grammar in English = meaning). It was written at the end of the 10th century. It is the 1st vernacular grammar of Latin in England (written in the vernacular language, OE).

Aelfric describes Latin as an elementary level, so his grammar is elementary. The only difference with the elementary grammar is that is written in Old English.

Together with the grammar; there is a glossary Latin- English , the linguistic text is `colloquium'.

Aelfric's grammar is so important that he's called `The Grammarian'.

He was born in England in the 2nd half of the 10th century. He was student of Aethelwold (his influence). Then he will study with Dunstan (he made him a priest) and he also studied with Oswald. He was in contact with three reformists of the Benedictine. At the end of the 10th century he was a teacher. In 11th he died.

Aelfric wrote mainly religious works, such as homilies or Saints lives. Both in Old English and Latin, (more in Old English). Grammar, glossary and colloquy are his pedagogical works (last decade of the 10th century).

While he was a teacher of Latin to children he was worried about the proper teaching of Latin. One of the reason was that his own Latin teacher was bad, and he wanted to solve this problem).

One of his main reason is strongly didactic, pedagogical didactic. The 2nd complementary reason is religious. It is the same as Boniface's.

Religious reason plus didactic reason. This double intention is presented in the preface to his grammar.

These 3 Aelfric's works are: the Glossary, the Grammar and the Colloquy, and they are complementary. The Grammar deals with morphology and syntax. The glossary is focussed in vocabulary (meaning of words) and the colloquy brings together the three thing( vocabulary, syntax and morphology).

There is one more thing. In the whole Aelfric is more interested in vocabulary (teaching the form and the meaning of words).

The Grammar

It was written around 993-995. We know at the time he was a teacher of Latin of young students. His interests were providing teachers a new instrument to teach.

Grammar is interesting for 2 reasons:

The clarity in the description of Latin.

Since it was written in Old English and we see how the language was in those days.

It's an elementary grammar with the usual characteristics the 8 parts of speech). It's for beginners. The only difference is the language (it's written in OE).

IT IS NOT AN ORIGINAL WORK.

SOURCES

At the very beginning he makes clear his text is not original. It's a translation of an existing work.

(I, Aelfric, have translated this work) He translated Priscian's Institutiones, but not the original text. He translated an abridged text. This title was :' Excerptiones de Priscian'.

Aelfric's grammar characteristics

Aelfric picks up this French manuscript and translates into Old English, but he does more than translate. He simplifies the content of the text.. He lowers the level once more. It will be a grammar for complete beginners.

Aelfric's grammar is meant for complete beginners. He states in the preface that is for beginners. He specifies that it was for children (young). He wanted to give an introduction to the language. Nothing really complex.

Main characteristics that point to the fact is for complete beginners:

*1st it is written in Old English , in the children vernacular language, he wanted to be understood.

*2nd the level of the language (Latin) described. When we compare Aelfric's grammar with the sources, we see that he omitted complex parts. No complex explanations. He includes more paradigms that we find in the original manuscripts.

He gives many declensions and conjugations as he can.

*3rd Local Vocabulary. Aelfric uses in purpose many words that students are familiar with. To exemplify he uses words that students see every day.

Who wrote these Excerptiones? We don't know who made this simplified version. There are 2 versions:

this text came probably from France. The Benedictines brought it.

This text maybe was the one taught by Aethelwold, a Benedictine teacher. This was the text he used to teach the students. There is a possible allusion to this fact in the preface.

The contents of the French excerptiones it's is a selection of passages from `Institutiones plus some passages by Donatus and other works. (less relevant).

The anonymous author has lowered the level of his sources. It is a lower and easier Latin. We see these lower aspects in: the examples, from Priscian works, but he eliminate long passages..

Greek works that Priscian includes are omitted. The anonymous author includes some Christian examples. He wants to brings closer his text to the reader to make it easier to the student because are familiar with the religious text.

The level is lower, but it is NOT for beginners. The student will have some Latin knowledge to follow the text. It's an intermediate level.

Some examples words:

Roma Tibers urbs flumen

Aelfric's example: Eadgarus Adelwoldus rex episcopus.

Lo que hace Aelfric es poner los mismos ejemplos que en el original pero con nombres y cosas familiares para los niños.

Seneca is substituted by Beda

Illae nenet lanam no está en el original, `ellas hilan lana'

Hig spinnad wulfe he uses this local activity.

In general he uses the name of many tools, animals, farmer's activities that children saw everyday (this could be funny)

*4th Christianization. The level of Christianization is quite high. He makes Christian some pagan examples that we find in the source text.

Ex: pius et fortis fuit Aeneas

Pius et fortis fuit David Rex

In general these pagan names are substituted by Biblical names. Another way: substitute whole examples with Biblical passages. He quoted from the Bible.

Very often he finds his source and the Bible contradictory. The solution is the same as Boniface's the Bible has the correct Latin use.

In the French manuscript the word Sanguis the author says that is always singular. Aelfric find this word in the Bible used in the plural form. So he says the anonymous author is wrong.

The French author says that de intus, de fortis are compound adverbs and are a mistake, and they must not been used. But they appear in the Bible, and Aelfric says that we can use it.

The imperative verb has more meanings than the anonymous author say because he found them in the Bible.

French: imperative for commands. Aelfric says that this is right, but we also use it in our prayers, but we're not giving orders, we are just begging for something.

STRUCTURE

The grammar has 2 prefaces, in Latin, and other in Old English. They are independent. They are 2 different texts. Not translations one of each other.

After the 2 prefaces there are 8 parts dealing with the 8 parts of speech. Each of those follows the same structure as Priscian's grammar (they contain a definition of the parts of speech, the main characteristics, and examples illustrating those characteristics). In this sense is quite close to Priscian.

He also includes explanations directed to an English speaker reader, because he compares both languages so the reader can get Latin characteristics more simply.

There are not many explicit comparisons but there were a few. Those comparisons are the first example that someone talks about the English language, Old English.

One of the examples is:

the possessives in Latin agrees with the thing possessed. Aelfric knows that in Old English the possessive agrees with the possessor and he said so.

This text is the product of the Benedictine Reform. The BR is interested in the teaching of spoken Latin. It was not a normal thing before. We have many other colloquies very similar to Aelfric. It's said Aelfric learnt about colloquies with Aethelwold in his school. The colloquy is interesting from 3 different points of view:

From an HISTORICAL point of view

“””””””” LINGUISTIC “””””””””””

“”””””””” DIDACTIC “”””””””””””

Historical point of view

1st of all because of the picture we get of the ordinary life in the Anglo-Saxon period. The life of everyday people. We do not learn this from other texts (literature…)

Aelfric use these ordinary lives to make sure that his students are comfortable, familiar with these contexts. Real situations for the students.

Linguistic point of view

It's written in Latin. The type of Latin is colloquial. That makes it interesting for Latinists. There is one manuscript containing the colloquy has also an Old English translation, an interliner translation in Old English.

That is what makes the text interesting for us.

The translation is a gloss made by the students. It's almost a complete translation of the Latin text. The author of the text is not Aelfric, but the students name is Aelfric with a surname: Aelfric Bata, Bata is something like gamberro. Aelfric Bata went on to write his own colloquies (many). They are very close to Aelfric and sometimes very funny.

Didactic point of view

Aelfric in this text proves that he's a good teacher. Aelfric knows how to teach. He gives his students with a context they are familiar with. This is something new at that time. The colloquy has been compared with a role play.

He was looking for their fluency. Fluency in speaking.

The methods he uses are also interesting. His main interest is to learn vocabulary, synonymous, … Students must memorize and then recite in class. He makes the words rhymes (to make it easier, the students remember better).

Aelfric's text Esqueme by the teacher

Aelfric's text commentary

Aelfric's Grammar and Colloquy are 2 of his 3 pedagogical works that were his contribution to the 10th century's revival of Latin scholarship in England.

Instance of two genres widely practiced in the island but they stand out among the rest because of their appropriateness to their audience.

Use of the vernacular language, when OE is gaining ground as scholarly language, when England is translating Latin text into OE to revive culture. It should be no surprise that vernacular is used to write a grammatical treatise. Yet, this s what makes it different.

The colloquy's lively presentation of the student daily life to encourage communication on the part of the learner; the very colloquial Latin and didactic methods employed.

Movement for a more spiritual existence(Benedictine Brothers). Revival of learning in decline due to Scandinavian invasions. ________ entrance of continental grammars in England (elementary grammars).

Aelfric = product of Benedictine Reform. Makes this conjunction of religious and scholarly reform his life's work to foster religion through learning; create instruments for religious people(little Latin to understand Christian texts).

Two of those instruments: set of 3 complementary pedagogical works(explico cómo se complementan)

The historical and cultural context is present in both texts.

Aelfric recalls Alfred `s complaint about the decay of Latin. Mentions two leaders of the proces of recovery: Dunstan and Aethelwold. Position of humbleness(like Boniface).

His immediate goal is humble to provide `a beginning to both languages'. His final goal is more ambitious correct instruction of English teachers of Latin and through them of England youth.

Youngsters and teachers are identified as ultimate receivers and agent, respectively, in the process of recovery initiated by his masters.

Teachers as agents:

Emphasis on didactic aspects of his enterprise: integral part of both texts.

Use of Biblical parable to encourage the educated people of England to put their knowledge to the service of others to prevent their ignorance from separating them from God.

Insight into how teachers and students interact in the classroom(memorize lists of vocabulary, questions and answer) in the colloquy.

Tasks of those teachers:

to teach how to interpret meanings of books(grammar)

to teach how to speak the language(colloquy)

English children as receivers

The student who will make use of these texts are beginners in the art of grammar. El hace el texto más cercano para los niños

His choice to make a translation into Old English. The level of language. The type of Latin in the colloquy, the local color he gives in his examples the Christian tinge of all the text. The ordinary scenes described in the colloquy.

It's an elementary grammar for complete beginners. The grammar being written in English:

• Introspection into vernacular language? No, only instances are at the service of Latin.

• Problems with the metalanguage: possible difficulties he mentions to translate…

• Intention to translate literally linked to question of authority and the moral responsibility involved in grammar.

His pedagogical works fit entirely within scholarly tradition in 10th Century England.

Big exception: grammar written in the vernacular language, characteristics that will make it so successful an efficient instrument to bring about the desired combination of learning on theology which he pursued in all his works.

Tema 3: THE GRAMMATICAL TRADITION AND THE RISE OF THE VERNACULARS; REINASSANCE AND 17th CENTURY ENGLAND

General introduction to the period

Desde el último tema hasta ahora nos hemos saltado la Escolástica(mezcla e la teología y la lógica aristotélica aplicada a todos los saberes. Se van a escribir gramáticas muy abstractas. Sobretodo ocurre en las Universidades que se acaban de crear: Paris, Oxford y Cambridge.

The term Renaissance refers to an intellectual movement and historical period.

As an historical term it refers to the period from the 14th to the 16th or even the 17th centuries. This period is known as the Modern Age because many characteristics which are contemporary begin then.

As an intellectual movement the main characteristic is that it's a revival of classical learning. Latin and Greek texts are read in their originals versions, specially Cicero and Virgil. They ignored the Latin of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance man feels closer to the classics. It is they, the Humanistics, who gave the Middle Ages its name because it is that they are in the middle, between the classical Antiquity and the Renaissance. It's also called Dark Ages.

LINGUISTIC INTRODUCTION TO THE PERIOD:

In language matters what happens is that they start to study Latin. In general they spend their linguistic interest, they begin to take interest in other languages not only Latin and Greek. The result is a new approach to linguistic studies: they start to study non European languages such as Hebrew and Arabic; and also the vernacular languages of Europe begin to be studied. They are seen as proper objects of study.

The consequence of this is that now they see different patterns. This made them to open their minds.

The consequence of those two things of this opening up is that grammar is not longer be associated exclusively with Latin and begin to see the first grammars of vernacular languages from the 15th century on.

Exotic Languages: Hebrew had been studied in the MMAA because it was the language of the Old Testament.

Saint Isidore(11th c.) did some studies in Hebrew. But these studies were done in secrecy because it was related to Jews, the enemy of the church.

Hebrew, now, is studied more openly and deeply. In fact, it was linked to Latin and Greek.

The important thing is that Hebrew is a non Indo-European language, it is a Semitic language as well. The reason for studying it was political: Islamic Empire. Also because of religion: those who converted to Islam, had to read the Coran and it can't be translated (forbidden). They must learn to read Arabic.

Vernacular Languages: receive an impulse in Europe. They are considered to deserve a scientific or linguistic study. Many of the 1st grammars of the European languages appear for the first time in the Renaissance.

E.g.: Spanish Nebrija's Grammar (1492)

French 16th century

In England, in the 16th century, we have two grammars of English (only two).

Linguistic studies are now seen a much wider perspective.

The development of vernacular grammatical traditions: the case of England

• Social and cultural circumstances in Europe that favor the study of vernacular languages.

There are seven things that favor the study of vernacular languages:

I). The rise of nationalism in Europe. It must be understood in two senses: the apparitions of Nations(literal sense). The feeling of belonging to a nation (2nd sense) and being different from other groups. Nations and geographical units with a language that identifies that nation. It is not an easy matter especially in places such as Italy and England because of the great variety they have (this affects very clearly the 1st text by Richard Carew).

II). This is the period of the Protestant Reform. This affects England. Protestantism puts an emphasis on the individual readings of the religious text. But those books had to be understood; Latin is no longer the best language, so they favor translations of the Bible and the other religious books into the vernacular languages. Latin is also rejected because it was related to Rome (rupture). As a consequence of this we have a series of translations of the Bible into English.

It is also a political aspect: the rejection of Latin because it's the official language of the Church of Rome. In England we have translations of the Bible into English, the most important is the King James Bible, the authorized version (1611). This is the culmination of the translation: Protestantism. This situation influences the Catholic Church also, and they also translate the Bible. The Franciscans appear now (13th c.) and they use the vernacular to make the sermons and in their religious works.

III). The new social class that appears now is the middle class, the bourgeois. It's a commercial, financial class. They have money and spare time so they want to read. They have to provide books for that class that doesn't know Latin and doesn't want to spend their time learning Latin. These texts were made specifically for them.

IV). The popularity of education in this periods, especially in England. There are two consequences: more is read, and more books are published. Education has spread. But always on the vernacular language.

V). Some technological advances also help, such as the invention is the printing press. Also the communication and transport is important. It will be essential to the development of vernacular language. Caxton established a printer in London in the 15th century . Thank to this we have printed texts: grammars, dictionaries and many other books are printed. This facilities the learning of languages and since this we have people going abroad for commercial relationships, and we have people having to learn languages for those relationships. As consequence, grammars and dictionaries are printed for them.

VI). Appearance of cultural societies dedicated to scientific investigation but also to literary discussions (linguistic). There is a beginning of new cultural societies in Europe.

One of the most important is the French Academy of the Language (1635), which was founded to look after the French language. It's devoted to the preservation and study of the French language.

In England, in imitation to this academy, it was created The Royal Society (1662), devoted to the study of all the sciences including language in those science studies, but never became a real academy of the language. There are many publications of this Royal Society.

VII). Refers to the new approach to the study of Latin in the Renaissance. They go back to classical (and more difficult) Latin( Cicero, Virgil)(1st ~2nd BC) It's harder than medieval Latin. They thought it is not worth to learn it and they prefer studying vernacular languages.

RESULT: The appearance of the first vernacular grammar in Europe (Grammar is not synonym of Latin anymore).

Regulation Of The Vernacular Languages In Europe: This is a very slow process. The term Grammar is synonymous to Latin, to associate this term with vernacular seems impossible. (Grammar=Latin).

• The first grammars of vernacular languages in Europe

The 1st vernacular grammar appears in Italy, in the middle of the 15th century. This grammar is an imitation of the Latin grammatical tradition fully.

It does not work as a real description of Italian, it's like Latin, but in Italian works. It's not very good, but it demonstrates that it could be done a grammar of another language different from Latin. It was difficult to be apart from the Latin grammars.

The 2nd Grammar is the one appears in Spain, Antonio de Nebrija and the title is: Gramática de la lengua castellana (1492). This is the 1st real grammar of a vernacular language in Europe. It even deals with Syntax, something really new in this context. It was quite successful. He also follows the tradition of Latin grammar: concepts, terminology that we know. He follows Priscian, but he's clever enough to separate the tradition. He says there are 10 parts of speech in Spanish and not 8.

The next vernacular grammar in Europe is a grammar of French. The first French grammar was written in English(1528-1530) by Englishmen, published in London.

We have a 2nd grammar of French in 1530 also written by an Englishman, but this time it's written in French. One is very brief and the other is quite complete.

Those 3 grammars are Romance languages. And one of the reasons why is that they are closer to Latin, and that's why they are the first ones. Then we have England and Germany, but in the 17th century, so now is up of German and England.

We don't have an English grammar until 1586, when the 1st English grammar was done by William Bullokar, Brief Grammar for English. As the title says it is brief (20 pages). It's not complete. The important thing is that it's the first written in English(English grammar of English language).

In 1594 a man called Paul Greaves wrote Grammatica Anglicana, that means English Grammar, written in Latin, and it was a too close model of the Latin patterns.

Grammatica Anglicana follows the Latin very close and that is dangerous with English. He applies the Latin terms to English. It is not a very good grammar.

The following grammar was written by John Wallis: Grammatica Llinguae Anglicanae(1653) written in Latin. The meant of this work is that it is a really good description of Latin. He still follows the Latin patterns. It is the first important substantial grammar of English.

They lasted so much because they hold the language was in a chaotic situation, whose consequence is the new type of linguistic study that appears: diachronic linguistics (evolution in time) in opposition to the sindromic one. It appears because they see the relationship between romance languages and latin, they try to see the links, the evolutions. This begins now but exploded in the 19th century.

One more consequence is that they begin to notice the phonetic changes (studied). It is important in England: beginning of Phonetics.

We must wait till the 17th century to find a good grammar of English.

Why English later?

• English as the spoken, literary and scholary language of the English people. The case of England: the Age of linguistic anxiety

REESTABLISHMENT OF ENGLISH AS THE NATIONAL LANGUAGE:

English is the spoken language of Englishmen in the 13th century, after the Norman Invasion. This acceptation as a literary language will be in 14th century with Chaucer. And as the scholar, scientific language in the 17th century.

Shakespeare is dead, Milton has already written his main works and, still English is not accepted fully.

Scientist like Newton still write in Latin:

Principios Generales

Philosophiae

Naturalis

Principia

Matem,atica (1642)

Or Bacon:Nouum Organum (1620)

This demonstrates the scarce importanceof English as a scientific language.

French is the prestige language in the 12th century. In the 13th ~14th centuries, English will be reestablished as a prestige language for political reasons.

Normandy will be no longer part of England. The links between England and France are broken.

French is now identified with the enemy. This is the NATIONALISM. The English wants to be English and they want to differentiate from French.

The fight between England and France go on for ages (the 100 years war ½ 14th cent- ½ 15th

Cent)

During this process we see English picking up English as their language. The effect of this war is that England is more united than never before..

English is the prestige language of all the Court, the spoken language by the people is English and Latin is the language for scholarship and serious texts.

Why don't we use English for serious and scholarly writing? This opens the debates and fights whether English is suitable or not to write serious texts.

(UN)SUITABILITY OF ENGLISH AS A SCHOLARLY LANGUAGE

The question is put. The reasons why these questions are made whether English is used or not are 7 reasons.

• More people wanted to read, want to learn things.

• There is a new attitude to the vernacular language. The vernacular language will be no longer considered a vulgar language. The middle class(new) that didn't want to learn Latin (much offer) and they want to read and learn.

• The result of this new interest is a flat of books in English. Many of them and translations of Latin and Greek texts of History, philosophy, poetry, …, serious works.

Slowly English takes the place of Latin and in the 18th century, English will be the main scholarship language.

The Age of Linguistic Anxiety. This is referred to whether English is suitable or not to the written language of serious texts. There are 2 positions: one in favor and one against.

Each of them has its own arguments to defend the position.

Both agree that English has some weakness. One group will put more emphasis in this.

Those who are in favor say that English is equal to Latin (as good as). The ones that are against are not as god as Latin.

• The usual critics say that English is not eloquent, it is immature, it's unstable, vulgar, it keeps changing all the time.

Latin does not change because it is a dead language. English leaks the fixity of Latin or Greek that doesn't change. That's something important for them (don't change). This caused English not to be understandable outside England.

Latin is an international language( everybody understand Latin), but not all the people understand English.

• In the other group, those who defend English say the opposite. They say English is eloquent, mature, etc. They admit that English is changing… but it has the capacity of expressing the same topics as Latin. We should use and improve it. Just the opposite to the other ones. They realize that English has not the same vocabulary than Latin. There are weaknesses in that way.

There is a small group, the extremists. People who defend English and don't see defects at all, no weaknesses. Richard Carew is one of those extremists. He defends English, and says that it's much more better than Latin and any other European language.

He is a representative of this group. Like Carew there are more people like Sir Philip Sidney. Everything is positive in this language(English).

• Three Main points

Language change

Lexical growth

Regional variation: corruption or blessing?

English changes are growing. English is growing. We have many varieties. They ask what English is.

1.LANGUAGE CHANGE

The standard English we know is not the west Saxon English.

The modern standard begins in the 15th century in the London area. The reason for this movement is the political importance that London acquired after the Norman invasion.

Another reason which helped was the print Caxton set up in 1476. the books printed in London English, and those books were distributed everywhere in the country.

The Press also helped. Lots of books about language were printed, books that discuss about the own language.

Bible translations will reach everywhere in England. This is a great way of standarizate. But things were not so simple. Caxton had many problems.

Caxton asks himself which variety he has to use or `how should he spell the words…how can I satisfy everyone'.

In his own texts he uses several spellings and several grammar points. But he succeeds in making the variey.

He had to decide in: grammar, spelling and pronunciation. Those 3 will be standardize by Caxton.

GRAMMAR: He tries to simplify, he goes to the simplest. In Chaucer we find `slepan' (3rd person plural of present to sleep), he simplifies by taking letters out: slep(e(n))

SPELLING: It's a problem: lack of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. He tries to reproduce the pronunciation in writing he simplifies the spelling: debt

(ME) dette (FR) debte (Latin) debitum

Caxton takes out the `t' because it is not pronounced.

PRONUNCIATION: It was very unstable in this period, extremely unstable. The pronunciation in Chaucer's time is completely different to Shakespeare's time. The great vowel shift takes place in the 15th century: huge change in the pronunciation of English vowels. It began in the London area for social economic reasons. The gentlemen of London wanted to distinguish themselves from those second grade people. They close the vowels, speak more delicately, the mouth is narrower.

2.LEXICAL GROWTH

There is a lexical growth because of the borrowings.

English in the Renaissance, didn't have a very developed lexicon. English wasn't used for scholar purposes, because Latin was the chosen. one So it was not developed its lexicon to express scientific ideas. English had lack of vocabulary. English was used for colloquial use.

Now they want to use English and, very slowly, English is taking over the role of Latin.

Scholars realize the problem of the lack of vocabulary that English had when they tried to write.

They translate, as a first step, Latin and Greek works into English (this was a part of the process of making English scholarly, like Aelfric but in a larger scale), and they see that there are same terms that do not have equivalence in English.

As a solution they borrow these terms from Latin and Greek. Thousand of words coming from Latin and Greek are borrowed: especially in medicine & theology.

Then they borrow from other languages, from European countries and from America and Asia. This borrowings are because of the cultural contact. The geographical and scientific discoveries are a source of vocabulary. Commercial ships,… bring English into contact with other languages, such as European languages like Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. But also exotic languages (Asia).

English borrows from 50 languages. From Spanish alligator, banana, chocolate, potato, tomato,…

From Italian sonnet, stanza, cupula, fresco (art vocabulary).

1530-1660: English had the fastest lexical growth in its history.

English had borrowed before, but there was a difference from Latin or Scandinavian or French.

Now the process is different from some reasons:

1. The great majority of borrowings now is from Latin.

2. The number of borrowings is enormous compared with previous occasions.

3. 15th century: English borrows on purpose. It is a conscious process, in order to improve the language. Before it was a matter of two languages coexisting.

Some borrowers are responsible, sensible, and they borrow only when there is no English equivalent for the concept they are trying to define.

There is however a group that borrows all the time to show off their knowledge, so that their texts looked more scientific. This is the situation that creates the conflict. The debate begins when they borrow uncertainly there is so much vocabulary taking part of English that this makes the people doubt whether it's good or bad.

4.15th century: most borrowings were learned ???.

Against borrowings:

1.In ??? they accept borrowings but they objected to the excesses: the entrance of latin vocabulary when there is an equivalent in English. They call these unnecessary terms INK-HORN TERMS (=learned, bootish pedante). They criticized those who use ink-horn terms.

2. The purity of English will be damaged with that mixture of vocabulary.

English is in a state of confusion, a composition of most of all the languages of Europe. English is pure and is corrupted by borrowings.

He is not exclusively talking about the Renaissance borrowings, he's also talking about the conquest, invasion, or the transmigration of the government (Change of government, Frenchmen).

3. A group that want to increase the vocabulary, but not with borrowings, they wanted to do it with the revive of old vocabulary (with words that aren't use anymore). They want to coin words, or to use dialectal words into the standard vocabulary. English has enough resources in itself. This is the way to increase vocabulary (for them).

Edmund Spencer: his texts are full of archaic and dialectal language. Ej: eek also, gar make.

He was not successful with this works, with the recovering of language. But some of the words he uses are standard today. Ej: belt, glance normal today, but in their days were not used. Gloomy, wary, gandy, too were included by them.

John Chek wrote an English version of the New Testament using only English words. He excluded words from Latin, Greek,…Ej: crucified (Latin origin). He made a new word to cross (with meaning of crucified, “to cross” is an English name). It doesn't mean crucified, but “to be angry”.

The rejection of vocabulary affects some languages more than others. French borrowings had been part of English more time than Italian or Spanish borrowings. French borrowings will be more accepted than Italian or Spanish. They find it easier to recognize, to pronounce, to understand. However Italian and Spanish words are new. One of the reasons is ¹the lack of knowledge, ²political and ³the endings of Italian and Sapnish languages are difficult for an English (even today).

Carew criticized this (in his text).

Today this still happens. The Spanish words are more foreign (desperado) than French (ticket).

In favor of borrowings we have a group of people who say that borrowings is an universal thing. That ism not only English borrows, each and every languages borrows from other languages, and this don't make a language less pure. Even Latin and Greek have borrowings within them. They simply ask for patience. With time borrowings will become familiar, less difficult.

The ones that are in favor of borrowings know that they're difficult to understand.

in spite of all this debates, the borrowings still happens in English. It's calculated than 10000 words enter in the English language in this period. Some of the words have better luck than others (some are still and other disappear). Ej: expect: one of the borrowings of the time that was criticized.

Industrial, exaggerate, scheme. This words are not questioned today, but they were ink-horn words.The most important consequence will be the creation of the First English Dictionary (point nº 4).

3.REGIONAL VARIATION:

There were many regional, geographical varieties and dialects in England. They were very different and a lot of confusion was caused about what dialect should be the standard English. Caxton, the printer, suffered a lot because he wasn't sure about which variety to use for the printings.

(Carew position about borrowings and variation?)

Caxton succeeded in making one variety available for the printings. Everyone became familiar with the same variety, the one from the area of London: East Midland.

RICHARD CAREW

His text reflects clearly the situation pictured before. It is a typical product of the time.

Carew (1555-1620) He was an English poet (not very famous) and antiquary. He is famous for writing a history of Cornwell, where he was born. He went to Oxford with 11, he studied law and traveled abroad. He starts a political career in Cornwall , and doing translations from Italian poetry at the same time. He knew 5 languages (evident in the text). He translated a poem from Torquato Taso: “GERUSALEMME LIBERATO”.

Carew was very interested in language. His passion was English (he is a strong defender of English). He praises Sidney (his friend, as Mulcaster) and Shakespeare. He thinks it's not only a good language, he also thinks it's perfect (extremist). They thought that English was perfect (the top of perfection), and it can only get worst. This defense of English is for nationalistic reasons (more than Linguistics reasons).

Text: It is a letter to sir Robert Cotton. He wrote it after reading “Remaines Concerning Britaine” (1605) from William Candem. He had liked the bock so much that he wrote his work to praise Candem. Candem was very happy and decided to publish it in the second edition of the work giving a little to the text. It is a praise of the English language. This was done also by a lot of Elizabethan authors in very similar terms.

Authors (general context): most of them praise English for its copiousness and its variety.

-Sidney : “the best quality of English is easiness in compounding words” (=Carew), also the sweetness and its relaxed grammar (freedom).

-Mulcaster : “English has reached the perfection and from now, it can only decline”.

-Other authors: English is the best language for intellectual and artistic purposes for its flexibility (exaggeration: nationalistic reasons).

THE NEED FOR A SPELLING REFORM

This debate begins a bit later than the ink-horn controversy. It went on during the 16th century.

English spelling has been inconsistent from the beginning (OE). Problems in OE worsened by the coming of French. Then Caxton tried to do something about it but now, 16th century, more than a generation after him, the spelling goes an being inconsistent.

The spelling of English is less than perfect, it have to be regulated (give rules). Some authors manage to be consistent but it is not the usual thing (exceptions), they spell things different in the same text (example: Carew “language”).

Ex: fellow, felow, felowe, fallow, fallowe,…

It became worst with Middle English because of the influence of France.

In the Renaissance we have Caxton trying to make it consistent, but his texts were full of inconsistence.

This provokes scholars to make essays criticizing spelling. In particular they blame a group of people, the printers. Reasons:

-most of them were foreigners, not English, especially Flemish.

-they made choices of spelling in order to have nice pages (omitted or included letters).

That situation makes people want to reform the spelling and give possible solutions.

After the 16th century, the dictionaries come (17th c.) and this need for spelling reforms is accentuated.

Middle 17th centurywe find the modern system of spelling. It is not regular but it is stable.

Spelling Reforms

Some were very extreme: they wanted to simplify and to make it consistent, regular (every sound is always spell in the same way). Within this group of radicals we can find: Thomas Smith, John Hart. They even propose new symbols for the English letters, similar to drawings (like Chinese). Ex: ae o.

Other proposals were the weakest reform: they only wanted to remove the irregularities and fix to spelling of all English words: fix, not regular.

Proposals

-James Howel: “Familiar Letters”, 1630 (text). He said that one word can be spelled like ae, another one eu,… and all of them can be pronounced as o, but these words have to be spelled always in the same way.

Difficulty of English for strangers (=Carew). They do not want to learn it because we do not pronounce as we write because there are superfluous letters (not necessary).

Proposal to get rid of superfluous letters ( fix language). This proposal is soft.

-John Cheke: to remove all silent letters (soft).

-Sir Thomas Smith: the form of the letter should be the picture of the speech sound (extreme, radical).

Those reforms (extreme, or not) had different types of success, but none of them were taken. In between we have other proposals.

WIILIAM BULLOKAR:

16th century. He worked as a teacher. In university he found himself in quarrels about this lack of correspondence of spelling and sound. He thought he could give a solution. He decided to reform the spelling system: “true orthography” and wrote his works in that system (his system). He decided to write this spelling book, to put some remedy to the chaotic situation (“Booke At Large”). He published it in 1580.

He wrote translation and other works following this new orthography that he himself invented.

Reform is for him more than simply a change in Orthography and he plans to compile a dictionary to preserve that Orthography and also he says he is going to write a grammar to make English stable.

The interesting thing is that he has a wider idea in mind (write a ¹grammar, a ²spelling book and a ³dictionary in English). This idea is more or less equal to Aelfric (3 parts).

His is the very first grammar of English (1586). “Bref Grammar for English” . The reasons why he wrote it were: ¹is necessary as a first step to learn English and then other languages including Latin; ²to help in the education of the English children; ³to make easier the translation of works into English. Those 3 things motivated him to do the grammar.

The grammar however is really a Latin grammar applied to English.

The orthography is the spelling book written before the grammar. In the preface he said that before write a grammar he finds it necessary to write the spelling. The interesting thing is the overall (global) approach to reforming English. Orthography is the first step, and then grammar and the dictionary complement the process in making English more important (reputable) for them and other people.

Another motivations is to improve the reputation of English. He is worried about how foreigners see English. And his last motivation is educational,… the same as the grammar.

Bullokar knows that there are other proposals and he talks about them in the Preface of his work (Smith and Hart). At least, Bullokar is not radical, because he said that if those ideas were successful, English would become another language. On the whole, his proposal is very moderate, modest. He criticized others for making too radical proposals. In apposition to them, Bullokar said that he's going to preserve English alphabet.

His proposal: the alphabet only has 6 perfect letters (letters that have 1 to 1 correspondence with a sound). These letters are a, b, d, f, k, x. The rest have problems :1 letter to express more than 1 sound; many letters to express the same sound; letters with no sounds; sounds with no letter.

Those problems have to be solved by using diacritical marks (´,`,^,…). They are not new letters but new sounds. He also invented symbols to express the sounds “ph”, “sh”. The result looks weird. So his proposal is not so soft (it's a little bit contradictory).

THE NEED FOR AN ENGLISH DICTIONARY

The first English dictionary appears in the 17th century (this is surprising), by English we mean monolingual (eng.-eng.). there were not dictionaries before because there wasn't a need for them.

type of information wanted in a dictionary: spelling or meaning. Spelling was free, everyone spelled things as they liked. The meaning of words were well-known by everybody, before the Renaissance.

(Reasons) These changes,¹ the words introduced, makes people uncertain about the meaning of words (borrowings from Latin: difficult for the people).

There is now the feeling that ²English must be standardized, refined, fixed, ruled, organizeddictionary.

Also, because ³people write and read in English much more.

Before this (the Renaissance), there were some dictionaries (antecedents).

OE it was very common to find glossaries attached to Latin texts. They were simply lists of Latin terms that an author found difficult, accompanied with a simpler Latin term to understand it.

After this, we have bilingual glossaries: Latin-OE (Aelfric's glossary) and this was very common in the Middle English. Words arranged by topics, not alphabetically. They were Latin terms with an OE equivalent.

Next, we have, at last, in the 15th century, the 1st dictionary that gives the English term and the Latin equivalent. It's not still an English dictionary.

Renaissance: glossaries of difficult English words without definition, simply the list. These difficult words are the borrowings.

In the end, there were bilingual dictionaries, also in the Renaissance: English-French, Spanish-English or Italian-English prepared for travelers.

1604 1st English - English dictionary arranged alphabetically, the author is Robert Cawdrey: A TABLE ALPHABETICAL. It contains 2500 words (difficult words and borrowings) with a definition in English. It's a real novelty, but has common things with the previous ones: it was also a list of difficult words.

Borrowings now the controversy has finished mostly with the victory of borrowers (those in favor). They are accepted as something inevitable (17th century).

Now, they are not called any more ink-horn terms, but hard-words. They are accepted but not understood unless by experts. They are seen as part of English. Those hard-words are the ones that Cawdrey included in his dictionary.

Dictionaries want to make the meaning of hard words available to non-experts. Audience: people who want to read.

Cawdrey's dictionary: Latinized term + synonym in English (simpler)

Ex: magnitudegreatness

Ruminate to chew over again, to study earnestly.

Cawdrey's dictionary is very pragmatic, practical, because it makes words understood. The definitions are not complex nor long. There's no historical approach or quotations from authors.

Definitions are very brief and to the point.

The title gives us a lot of information: new audience (created by the Renaissance women who read and write but didn't know Latin or French:literate women).

There is an allusion to the Protestant Reform in England: those women would be reading the Bible at home.

Interest in correctness: vocabulary: true writing (=wrong writing). To make things clear, easy.

His is a very representative dictionary of the period's dictionaries. All the others follow Cawdrey.

After him there were many eng-eng dictionaries appear in England. Each one borrowed from the previous dictionaries. They took as the base the dictionaries printed before.

John Bullokar:1616: “The English Expositour” written for those who want to improve their learning: hard words (made of borrowings): audiences and reasons for which dictionaries are needed.

It was very popular with many publications.

Henry Cockeram : 1623: “The English Dictionarie” more popular. It is an interpreter of hard English words (borrowings).

It is the first to be called “English Dictionary”: list of difficult words.

Audience is the same(women, foreigners and students) ,purpose is the same.

Method: he divides the dictionary in three parts:

1st book list of hard words and the definition besides in plain English (=Cawdrey).

2nd book vulgar words with a more refined equivalent beside.

3rd book: it is like an encyclopedia. Not only meanings but also discussions. More than definitions (=Saint Isidore).

It begins a series of dictionaries containing similar things. Some contains also essays on classical literature or mythology or biography.

Big change: dictionaries, begin to include ordinary and learnt vocabulary (almost in the 18th century later).

They have different treatments: ordinary words are not always defined: same philosophy: only hard words.

Example: New English Dictionary (1702): J.K.???

Thomas Blant: “Glossographia” (1656)

It is considered to be the highest point, the climax of this tradition of dictionary makers, of the 17th century.

New: etymologies + quotations (from other authors which used them). It anticipates: Samuel Johnson (best dictionary 19th century).

All these dictionaries had a great effect on the English language:

-facilitation of the entrance of new vocabulary into the general language.

-they help in the standardization of spelling.

-they did not contribute to the fixing of pronunciation because they do not contain phonetic transcriptions.

ROBERT CAWDREY: A TABLE ALPHABETICALL (1604)

Introduction of the text: 1st English dictionary (E to E)

-other dictionaries: features in common glossaries (hard English words, Latin)

Aelfric's glossary lists of difficult words

-not in common: English words+ alphabetically

-fully Renaissance text (all other characteristics are proper to Renaissance)

Why now and not before? What provokes its existence?

-Before: no need for an Eng dictionary most people didn't write variable spellings. Knew the meaning of al words (English words).

-Now: literacy (people read and write)

Standardize the language: fix the spelling. Massive entrance of vocabulary (not know the meaning).

Characteristics (Renaissance) reflected in the text:

1.Increasing concern with correctness “true”, “aptly”, “best”,… “apt and meete” (apto y adecuado), “properly”,…(=Bullokar, the spelling reformertrue).

“King's English” (correct language) standard variety identified

=Carew: types of EnglishCawdrey criticizes this, there are no varieties, only King's English.

Carew think this variety makes English the best language.

Still problems: main problemsuse of ink-horn terms:

new learning : - to show off knowledge (x)

-travelling (v)

Why does he criticize borrowings? He's not against them but against the wrong use of them (perverse the King's English). You know you are not being understood. (not nationalistic explicit, but: French, Italianated English).

(=Carew: France, Italy)

Coucl: they are still not understood (need for dictionary)

Why does he write the dictionary? Prevent people from not understanding borrowings (bad use).

2.Method: original: arranged in alphabetical order (1st). Pragmatic: practical, only definition (abba, father).

3.Audience: women, gentlewomen, who are literate and who do not know classical languages or French.

“Other unskillful person”: anyone not familiar with that vocabulary

-religious texts (protestant reform): individual reading at home of the Bible and other religious books.

Conclusion: it belongs to its time, and answer to one of the main problems: concern about borrowings (typical + original).

RICHARD CAREW: Text commentary.

The text is representative of its time, of the context of Europe and of England: 16th century.

It is one of the many texts that reflect the situation, in England (age of Linguistic anxiety). It is easy to see in it characteristics that point to the debates of that time about the language.

Position. He is in favor of the language: “partisan” (not impartial), (extreme: English as the best language).

Context: Europe and England.

Wider Context:

-interest in vernacular (common to every new country).

-1st grammars of vernaculars (15th century)

-grammar=Latin

-England ! late (1st grammar:17th century)

but not in discussions and debates about the language.

-sociocultural, economic circumstances:

1.nationalism (especially: England: 100 year war) ! language = nation

possessive/others…

fight, rivalry between languages:

French, Italian, Spanish.

2.religious (Protestantism)

3.new middle class (new interest)

4.approach in a different way to the classical languages

Religious problem: break with Rome.

New Middle Class: books in English for them: learning languages.

Think and write about English

Classical languages: new approach. Total immersion: Plato

-quotation Latin

Latin (ancient): correct

-naturalist typical renaissance man

But: critic to classical languages to favor English.

“faulty”= Latin, Greek: English is better (brief)

“complex”

English context

It is not the result of the debates, but it doesn't exclude them.

Carew is inside the group which defend the superiority of English against those who are not in favor of English.(a pesar de los problemas: falta de estabilidad).

Problems:

standard English (ya consolidado: London area)

borrowings (no menciona los ink-horn terms. Historical evolution: natural entrance. Están anglificados).

Varieties: virtud del inglés.

T.4. THE RISE OF PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

General introduction to the period

Restoration and 18th Century England

The first half of the 18th century is a prolongation of the Elizabethan period with a big change. Something new is happening: the English goes overseas( North of America and India). Then we have two civil wars. We have Cromwell and in 1660 we have the Restoration of Monarchy. The Restoration had political and cultural consequences.

Political consequences England will be divided into Whigs and Tories. This will affect language. From a cultural point of view this is one of the greatest period in England. The apparition of many literature public and private. The century begins with Queen Anne. It's a period of prosperity, order in general, this is a classical age. They are happy with what they have. They think they live in the best places in an imperfect world. They feel close to the classics. Romans and Greeks are the direct ancestors. The Roman senate compared with the English Parliament.

The Restoration and the English language Ida of correctness and corruption of the standard.

When Charles II is back from France, he knows very little English. People in England forget their hatred towards the French. They begin to lose that antipathy. They take more words, borrowings from French. They want to imitate the French Academic of Language also(1635).

Anti-French group against that strong English influence( Academic of Language). England is a country of free ____________( without even a written constitution) based on customs. One language is also free. Therefore no academy. Both groups view England standard special, polite. Cawdrey calls it the Kings English. London area, court language. Restricted to a social class: gentlemen.

Calls for an Academy of the English Language

John Dryden, Daniel Defoe

Politically worried. Dryden is the first man to call free an academy(1664). Four years after the King come. It is much more explicit. Essay upon several projects. The year is 1702, is the first explicit call for an academy. First he tells us the reasons why an academy is needed and the people more qualified to this to… polish, refine….purge it from all the irregular additions. Eliminate improper. Persons eminent for learning, scholars, some English for from polite( clergymen, physicians), gentlemen.

Jonathan Swift, A proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712)

Swift's proposal was written in 1712. it's the climax of this movement. It was written initially as a letter to the Earl of Oxford, who was a politician in this letter, Swift complains about the state of the language, which he says has declined since it had the most perfect state which was the Elizabethan.

He proposes a double solution: clean the language and fix it. Some things that were fashionable in his time and were novelties, had nothing to do with borrowings. It was fashionable to shorten words( ex. Rep[ertoire], penult[imate]) . He is offended for this fashion. He also criticised the tendency to shorten or change the endings of verbs: ex. Disturb'd. He didn't like trendy vocabulary, ex, sham( farse), banter(bromas). The people who used these things are university students, some poets but generally he criticises the group of Whigs, the political group. His criticism is more political than literary(he was a Tory). He uses the language for political purposes. He identifies the Whigs' corruption of the language with their lack of morals, bad behaviour.

The solution is very simple: to imitate the French and create an Academy of Language(2nd paragraph).

The Proposal failed. The reason was also political. The Queen Anne was happy with this proposal and had chosen a group to do it, she had given money but she died and men in the court frustrated this project for political reasons.

The proposal was transferred to America. They were very young. They imitate everything happened in London. They decided to do an Academy of the American Language. They met several times but it failed. The motivation was to make it clear that they had a different English. It was a nationalistic reason.

Opposition to the idea of the English Language

There were many people against the idea of an academy. Their rejection had two sides. The first one is more political, the second one is more linguistic.

The political. This group is the anti- French one. They opposed two ideas because they don't like to imitate French. They defend the English as a free Nation. They have no written constitution so the language has also to be free.

We have Joseph Priestley. He opposes the idea of an academy on this political terms by saying:” we are a free nation…”.

Another person opposing the academy on political terms is Samuel Johnson, in the preface of his dictionary.

The second argument is more linguistic. The academy is useless because the language is not static. A language has to change necessarily. They say the French Academy has not prevented French from changing.

The group was successful. The Academy won't be created. We have NO ACADEMY OF English.

Today there is an English Academy in South Africa, but it's not representative.

Individual efforts to impose order on the pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar of English

Single men doing the work at home and not in groups. The problem with the language remains. The majority still thinks English has to be creative. Since collective projects have failed now they begin with individual works. They begin to write dictionaries, grammars…., this happens in the 2nd half of the 18th century.

They concentrate basically in dictionaries and grammars, but also in other areas. There are 3 main areas representative of those efforts: pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

Pronunciation

The most representative is the work by John Walker: Pronouncing Dictionary of English(1774). It's relevant because of the PRESCRIPTIVE. It tells what is the correct pronunciation of English. In the preface he explains his point of view: it provides rules to be observed by the natives of Scotland, Ireland and London for avoiding their prescriptive peculiarities.

Vocabulary

We focus on Samuel Jonson. He wrote a dictionary of English. This text is the first authoritative dictionary of English. It is part of this prescriptive context.

Jonson began his work in 1747. he published a plan for this dictionary. In that, he explains what he wants to do with the dictionary. It is completely prescriptive.

In 1755, when the dictionary gets published he rejects this idea of fixing the language. He says that a dictionary has to describe, register the language(descriptive).

The dictionary is a great work. He was working on it for 7 years with the help of other people and the rest is 40.000 words and we have several brief definitions of the different meanings taken for important writers(118.000 quotations). Those writers are basically Elizabethan authors. This practice of quoting from writers begins with Jonson and it is still used today in the Oxford Dictionary

However, the dictionary has some defects seeing from our point of view. He gives etymologies of the words that are incorrect, they are not scientific, they are folkloric. Many of the definitions he gives show his personal prejudices.

Examples: odds(cebada) in England it is general given to horses, in Scotland to people.

Tory: one who appears to the ancient constitution…

Whig: the name of a faction( group dissident).

The dictionary was very successful, published many times. One of the most interesting thing of the dictionary is this habit of quoting for literary writers to illustrate the definitions.

The idea of making a dictionary of English is transferred to North America, the person who did that is Noah Webster.

His intention is similar because he wants to help, create a standard English. However, it is different because the context is different. He wants to prove that American English is different from British. He wanted to unite the 13 colonies in a Nation through language.

Grammar

There are already grammars of English. There were 2 grammars of English written in the 16th century. In the 17th century there were 30. In the first half of the 18th century there were 30 more new grammars. In the second half of the 18th we find more than 200. Grammar was seem as something important.

On the whole these grammars follow very closely the Latin pattern. They use the traditional terminology. In that sense they are not innovative, but they describe English. It is the only terminology that grammarians are familiar with. A second reason is more important for us: they think that all languages have a common base of foundation. The grammatical structure will be common to all languages at bottom.

They think there is a universal grammar, that is, common to everyone.

Although they have this same characteristic they were not the same. There are three general types, variety of approaches. The 3 types are:

*Prescriptive school: they are more prescriptive than the others

*The School of Rhetoricians

*Universal Grammar

Prescriptive School

The main representative of this group is Robert Lowth, with his grammar Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762). They think that grammar teaches you to speak and write correctly by giving rules of the language. It has didactic intentions and teachers realises this and began to use these grammars at school. They began to be called “School Grammars”.

School of Rhetoricians

The main figure is Joseph Priestley with his work The Rudiments of English Grammar(1761). This group is interested in rhetoric more than in grammar itself, but they also write grammars. They think a grammar has to describe what is a correct use of the language and they describe this use, they give characteristics this correct must have. They describe means that then say that/how something is. They also have a correct standard. They study the real use of the language not the idea of regulating.

Universal Grammars

The main representative is James Harris, with his grammar Hermes(1751). It is the most important universal grammar in England. Universal grammar is especially important in France. They think that all languages have a common foundation and universal grammar has to describe this common foundation. The importance of those universal grammars today are study as the antecedents of Chomsky.

They share everything but they are different.

1st Group: Prescriptive school of Grammar

There are 3 intentions that prescriptives have:

• To codify the language, that is, to give the rules of the language in a systematic way and explain how the language works through the interaction of those rules.

• To decide which uses are correct and which are incorrect. This assumes that there are incorrect uses. Only one use will be valid, they don't not admit double possibilities.

How do they decide which uses are correct? To justify their decisions they apply 3 different criteria: logic, analogy(similarity). If u have two possibilities the correct one is the one that is similar to the structure get accepted, and classical languages( the correct one is the one that is similar to Latin or Greek).

• To point out common mistakes to correct the language. This refers to their habit of making lists with the writer's mistakes. To say what is incorrect is one of their main purposes. They want to perceive what is correct and proscribe what's incorrect.

Ex: to lie/lay: they were used interchangeably. Grammarians say that they can't be used in the same context because one is transitive and the other is intransitive.

Had rather/ had better: those 2 expressions are forbidden for Lowth and other grammarians, because they express present idea with a past form. They propose `I would rather'.

The possessive Whose: this form can not be used(they said) with things. It can only be used for animate objects.

Different from/than/to : they were not to accept the 3 forms and chose `different from'. It's the accepted form.

Between you and I :they say it is incorrect. They propose `between you and I'

It's me: they reject it, instead they propose `It's I'. The normal form used is `it's me'

I don't like him/ his doing that: the 2 are correct, but they are a bit different.

Robert Lowth, Short Inrtoduction to English Grammar(1762)

He is the bishop of London, politician and professor of poetry at Oxford, and Scholar of Latin, Greek, Hebrew and modern languages. His grammar was published anonymously in 1762 it was very successful, republished many times in England and also in Ireland and America. In the editions published abroad we find his name.

The reason why he wrote his grammar is because he thinks that the English Language needs a grammatical regulation that has not being done until now. This is something he shares with many other men of his time who thought English lack a grammar.

Basically there are 3 intentions:

• To help educated people to express themselves with property and accuracy.

• To help those writers to do it properly by knowing the grammatical principles of English

• To help people to learn Latin and other modern languages by knowing, first of all. English Grammar.

The method he uses can be called prescriptive. From an external point of view, the grammar is very traditional. It follows very closely, the traditional grammar of Latin. In approach it is prescriptive, he gives us examples taken from the works of important/ well considered good authors, and also from the Bible. He found mistakes in the Bible and he pointed them out.

Ex: For Christ his sake he prefers for Christ's Sake

Authors he mentions are Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Swift, …

This method was imitated by other many authors until our days.

In those examples he uses three criteria we have mentioned above. But sometimes we realize his decisions are absolutely arbitrary. They are personal or subjective choice. His decisions go against what everybody says.

Ex. He rejects the possibility of putting a preposition at the end of the sentence, but he makes the mistake. He is criticising.

A man called Lindley Murrey wrote a grammar of English that was a copy of he one by Lowth. Murrey corrected these little mistakes that Lowth made.

The influence of this grammar was huge. It was imitated by many other authors(his method). Those imitations constitute a new type of grammar that are known as School Grammars.

Joseph Priestley, The Rudiments of English Grammar(1761)

The school of rhetoricians. This is the 2nd school in importance in this period. The main thing is that they are against giving rules as the prescriptive grammarians do. Instead rules, they say grammarians have to focus in usage, or, as they say, general practice, custom of speaking. Grammarians will have to describe how the language is used.

Joseph Priestley is the main figure with his book The Rudiments of English Grammar(1761). He is now known as the man who discovered oxygen. He was a scientific he wrote books about science, religion, philosophy, education and language. He knew many languages( classical and modern) and also he was a teacher his approach to all there topics was very liberal. He was the liberal type of man. This liberal attitude is reflected in his approach to language. That grammar reflects this liberal approach. In his grammar he says he is against giving rules. He is against the most important __________ of the time. Been so different it is possible to see similarities.

The use he describes is not only type. He describes the use of famous important writers. The type of English both(Lowth & Priestley) had in mind was the same, it's polite English.

One more similarity between them: Priestley, sometimes realises there are many ways of saying the same thing. We might think that he will accept all those ways, but it is not, he will also choose the usage he likes better. He is doing exactly the same as Lowth, but he is most gentler than him. He says one is better than the other and that is a question of time. Time will say which will remain.

Priestley as Lowth, is worried about correctness and corruption. This tells us that at bottom he is prescriptive.

T.5 THE BEGINNING OF `SCIENTIFIC LINGUISTICS' IN THE 19th CENTURY AND EARLY 20th CENTURY

General introduction to the period.

The 19th century marks the beginning of Linguistics. In the 19th century it is in France and especially in Germany where everything happens.

The English reminds generally speaking outside this movement.. however it all begins with an Englishman. The man is called Sir William Jones.

This man was an Englishman that lived and worked in India. He discovered SANSKRIT. Sanskrit is a language from India, with only the written form. It is a language related to the sacred works. The importance of this, is the relationship between languages( Indian languages and European languages).

In the 20th century we see again a new beginning. This is descriptive linguistic which is different from the 19th century.

Saussure is the father of descriptive linguistics in Europe. Two different developments: 19th century prescriptive, /// 20th century descriptive.

In descriptive it was an English man who anticipated the principles of descriptive linguistics: Henry Sweet.

We have a historical linguistic in the 19th century with Sir William Jones and a descriptive linguistic in the 20th century with Henry Sweet.

Both movements were beginning by Englishmen.

The New Philology (19th century)

New Philology is the name of the new science of linguistics in the 19th century. It began with Sir William Jones.

Sir William Jones, pioneer of the New Philology.

Sir William Jones was an English man who lived in India at the end of the 18th century. He was an orientalist (interested in the study of oriental things arts, science, writing of the Asia area).

This interest takes him to discover Sanskrit and he will study Sanskrit. He was not interested in language as such. He thinks language is an instrument, as a tool to be able to read.

Jones began to publish his discoveries in a journal called “Asiatic Researchers”. This journal was known and read in Europe.

In 1786, Jones wrote in this journal an article which is the text that marks the beginning of linguistics. In this article he says things that were read in Europe and lead students in Europe to research in language.

Sanskrit is the language that is very similar to Latin and Greek, and, so similar that it must come from the same source as Latin and Greek. These words appears in every text about linguistics. “The Sanskrit language is more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more refined than either, yet bearing to both of them stronger affinity than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed that they must have sprung from some common source”.

In Europe they knew already there were similarities between Latin and Greek. It was familiar with Europeans but they also knew that Romans and Greeks have relationship. However the similarities with Sanskrit were surprising and they began to look for the explanations.

Those studies are the beginnings of linguistics..

Reception of Jones' hypothesis in Europe

Jones himself does not work on those similarities. In Europe they will do that.

Jones in England was ignored until the end of the 19th century. The English were interested in the same things as in the 18th century ( grammars, works with the classics.). they were also interested in mathematics. Same grammars of English. There were not novelties.

Some English scholars begin to travel to the continent (France, Germany, …) and they came back to England with the new knowledge.

This new knowledge was not accepted because it says that languages came from other languages, and that was seen Anti-Christian. Languages, they thought, came from God.

On the rest of Europe the opposite happens. Jones' hypothesis bean thousand ot investigations on the histories and relationships between languages throughout the 19th century. This new knowledge will be given many names

The New Philology is also called: Comparative Grammar, Comparative Philology, Comparative Linguistics and Historical Linguistics.

That comparative philology refers to

The investigation of the History of the language, they reconstruct the history of a language through the change in the form of the words.

The discovery of the relationships between languages, languages are related, because there are formal and semantic correspondences which are not simply by chance. They reach the conclusion that probably those languages with those correspondences developed from the same languages. They belonged to the same family of languages. Ex: The Indo- European family of languages is one of many families discovered then. Semitic languages is another, within Indo- European we have German…

Reconstruction of the last proto-languages. Reconstruct the language that are the beginning of all the languages ( reconstruct the original languages).

The New Philology on the continent Rask, Grimm, Bopp, Humboldt and the Neogrammarians

The New Philology takes up in Germany and Denmark. One of the reasons why is the Romanticism that was developing in German then. This was a reaction versus the Rationalism and Classicism of the previous century. It consisted mainly in putting the emphasis in indigenous things.

Ramus C. Rask (Dane). Formulated Grimm's law be Grimm. For Rask you have to compare languages on the basis of the sound correspondences in the roots of the vocabulary in the language(1818)

Grimm (1822). Published Grimm's Law. These laws are laws of sound correspondence between Germanic languages and the rest of Indo- European languages. He never gave them the name of `law'. He also talks about letters, not sounds.

Bopp. For him, languages are " and similar because they originated in the same original language. (just one language). For him, Sanskrit is not the original language, but the one that resembles it more closely.

The Neogrammarians. This group of grammarians tries to make linguistics fit with the rest of the natural sciences. They want to make linguistics a science, with exact methods, like maths or Biology. So language has to be like natural objects. So language as plants or animals are always changing the evolution of languages takes place through phonetic changes which are mechanical.

The Effects of these approaches.

Those discoveries mostly affect the evolution of sounds, so written language begins to loose the predominant place it had.

However, in England this is not really the case. They still see literally works as much more important than any spoken discourse.

One consequence of this is that literary language begins to be seen as artificial, with little relationship with real language.

All languages are seen as being equal. Latin and Greek are no longer THE languages. This is not easy to accept for the English.

The work of the missionaries is very helpful because they have to save this strange people they try to colonise and to convert these people to Christianity they have to translate the Bible into their language.

Phonetics and Dialectology appear as a consequence of this approach. They became independent.

Phonetics. In the Renaissance there were some phonetics works in England. Bullokar and spelling reformers did work on phonetics, but it was foccused on that spelling reform. The situation was the same ( 16th, 17th, 18th centuries).

Now in the 19th century the sounds will be studied for themselves. Some of the reasons that make phonetics independent are:

• There's still an interest in the spelling reform.

• They think that the History of each language will be studied better if you know the sounds of the language in the present stage.

• Phonetics is seen as very important in the teaching of modern languages. (German, Spanish. Italian, …) English pronunciation is very different from English spelling.

The word `Phonetics' appears in the 19th century.

Dialectology.

The dialects begin to be studied scientifically. This is reflected in the many atlases. Which are done in this period. Atlases that show the different dialects.

Before 19th century some work was done by amateurs. Richard Carew was one of them. Carew worked on the dialect of the region he was born (Southwest)

The main product of the new philology in England: The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, later, The Oxford English Dictionary (1884- 1928)

In England there is a society called “ The Philological Society” founded in the middle of the 19th century. They are interested in philology historical linguistics.

The members of this society feels very unhappy with the available dictionaries of English.(Johnson's and Webster's). they are not complete, and they plan to make a supplement to those dictionaries. They plan to make a complete new dictionary. It will be called The New English Dictionary on Historical principles).

The work will include every single word found in English texts since the beginning of the language. This dictionary will give the history of each word, the many forms, spelling, uses and meaning it had.

They will illustrate this history with quotations from different authors where they found that word.

They asked for volunteers( readers throughout the world, to read texts and find words).

This last emphasis on wrong ways is very English: we are still placing emphasis on correction and corruption. When we look at the initial dictionary, they realised they were selective: they omitted rude words, they didn't record all the vocabulary.

The dictionary is distinguishing between Standard English and Non Standard English.

The corpus is written vocabulary, written words. How did they compile the dictionary? The selection of words was done through a complex system of readers: thousands of readers and texts, all of them volunteers from England and other places of the world: they read texts and send the passages where those words were included. The result is a dictionary with almost 2 million quotations of written words, illustrating the history of English Words from the beginning till those days.

The Oxford English Dictionary is a product of this heal period. It is the greatest dictionary of any language of the world in any period of time.

Early 20th- century linguistics: Beginning of Descriptive Linguistics.

This period is both a continuation and a break with the past. The more important point in this break: the development of Descriptive linguistics as the opposite of Historical Linguistics.

The “Missionary” linguistics

In the 19th century they did not produce grammars and dictionaries. There was, however, one group of people who did compile grammar and dictionaries in the 19th century: this group was made up of non professional linguistics. They are missionaries in Asia, Africa, … in the many colonies that England had at that time. Together with the missionaries: we have colonial officers.

The missionaries' tasks was to convert pagans to Christianity. To do this they had to be able to understand the pagans and made themselves understood. They had to learn the exotic languages, so they had to write grammars of those exotic languages.

They started to describe these exotic languages. They soon realised those languages didn't fit any grammatical pattern which they knew, so the missionaries described each language pattern.

This is the very beginning of the descriptive linguistics. This grammars began to appeal in Europe and they begin to have influence on European linguistics. All this is taking place in the 2nd half on 19th century. However we needed a descriptive theory that could explain all that: this will be the word of FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE and later on by Henry Sweet in England.

Ferdinand de Saussure, Cours de linguistique générale(1916).

This man is the key figure in this change of attitude. Interestingly, he was at the beginning a historical linguistic. He did many studies of the Indo-European languages like Rask, Bopp and the rest.

His work (Cours de Linguistique générale) was compiled by his students: these are the notes his students took in class. It has been the most __________ text in the 20th century linguistics. In this text we have the theoretical bases.

There are 4 important things to remember about Saussure:

• Synchrony/ Diachrony

Saussure says there are 2 dimensions in linguistic studies. The synchrony dimension and the diachrony dimension.

The synchrony dimension considers languages at a given moment of time; the diachrony dimension studies historically the changes that time has brought to the languages.

Synchrony is synonymous with description.

Diachrony is synonymous with history.

For Saussure both studies are relevant , but they are not equal studies.

• Langue/ Parole

The langue is the speaker's linguistics competence.

The parole are the linguistic acts, the utterances the linguistics is easily observed and analysed, however, Saussure says the object of study of linguistics is the langue. The langue is made up of the lexicon, grammars and phonology, which make up the language which is imposed on you by your community.

• Sintagmatic/ Paradigmatic dimension

This distinction affects the synchronic study of the langue. He says the elements of an utterance are related among themselves.

Horizontally or sintagmatically one after the other, and paradigmatically with other possible elements.

Those relationships ( sintagmatic and paradigmatic) are established between the lexicon; grammatical and phonologic elements of the language.

He focuses on the formal aspects. For him, language is form, not substance or meaning.

• Sound/ Letter

Saussure distinguishes clearly between sound and letter. Until now people spoke of letters when they refer to sounds.

In English they have 5 letters and more than 5 sounds ( vocalic sounds). The English are wrong when they say they have 5 vowels.

Those 4 distinctions are the basis of all modern linguistics.

Henry Sweet: The Origins of a structural understanding of the language.

Henry Sweet was one of the more relevant scholars in England at the end of the 19th century, especially in phonetics( Old English, Middle English, and Modern English).

He was born in London in 1845 and died in 1912. he went to the University in Oxford, but hen he went to Germany where he got in touch with historical linguistics or the new philology. Specially he liked Rask. He came back to Oxford University and he wanted to be a lecturer, but he was rejected because he came with all this German knowledge which was not useful in England. He then became interested in Phonetics and as a result of those interest ( historical linguistics and phonetics) We have 2 important works that we use nowadays: The Anglo-Saxon Reader and The Handbook of Phonetics published in 1876 and 1877 respectively.

Today he has been known as the father of phonetics and it is this interest that eventually gave him a place in Oxford ( a readership). He was given the 1st readership at Oxford University. Still he wanted to become a reader in comparative philology, but he was rejected once more.

He was recognised abroad, in Germany, as a good comparativist ( in comparative linguistics). However, today, Henry Sweet is known because of his criticism of the German studies.

The practical Study of Languages (1876; 1899)

It was published twice; the 2nd is more complete.

He says in the preface that `he wants to upset some conventional dogmas of philology and grammar', and in fact he does.

He destroys this dogmas by distinguishing between 2 ways of studying languages: Practical and theoretical.

Practical/ Theoretical study of languages.

The Practical learning to understand, read, speak, write. It's different from the theoretical study, which consists on the study of history and ethimology.

He criticises the historical study: theoretical studies are criticised. He says they have focused on the form f the language only to try to understand the evolution of old forms, and this is not everything. Studying the form of the language has many other uses than this usage of trying to understand the old forms…

Between the practical and theoretical state of the language he prefers the practical.

Distinction between living and antiquarian philology. For Sweet, every language has an individuality as its own and every period of language has its own individuality.

Languages have their own individuality and they are interesting as individual entities, not only for their relationships with other languages.

Every moment in the history of a language is important in itself, not only as a step in the evolution of that language.

To study those individual periods we need a living philology, and not an antiquarian philology. He rejects this antiquarian philology ( historical …)

Phonetics is the basis of living philology. This is why we have the Handbook of Phonetics(1877). It is for him indispensable for all linguistics study, both practical and theoretical. Phonetics is the science that teaches us to observe, analize and describe the sounds of a language. The sounds of a language are for him the form of a language. However, for him, form and meaning go together. He doesn't reject meaning.

Some sounds, the form of the language can distinguish meanings. Other sounds don't distinguish meaning.

Example:

1 mAn mEn

hay una diferencia de sonido que no es muy grande, pero sin embargo el significado sí que cambia.

2 by / / out / /

the difference in the pronunciation de ese diptongo puede se enorme entre un hablante y otro, pero lo pronuncie como lo pronuncie el significado no va a cambiar.

This is what he calls significant sound distinctions and superfluous sound distinctions.

The significant sound distinction is what we call PHONEMES.

The distinction between significant and non significant (superfluous) is very important in the history of the 20th century linguistics. He is talking about phonemes although he still does not use this name.

Significant Sound Distinction = Phoneme

The term phoneme will be used later by other linguistics. The 1st time is in a work of a Polish. It is a Russian word. The person who made this word universal was Saussure. After him, the term became known. Bloomfield made it absolutely scientific and more universal.

All of them are describing the same thing than Sweet. Sweet is the absolute pioneer in the definition of phoneme.

His next worry is to be able to write those distinctions. He wants to create a system of phonetic transcription. He recommends in his Handbook of Phonetics two systems of transcription:

Broad Transcription. It's the transcription that indicates sound distinctions that correspond to distinctions of meaning. It is the transcription of phonemes.

Narrow Romic. It is a transcription of sounds which is very accurate, with many details, even of those details that don't affect the meaning ( for instance details of aspiration, etc…)

Again he is a pioneer in this and it is also followed by many others. After him, a group prepared the International Phonetic Alphabet. This IPA is used to transcribe the sounds of all languages.

The projection into the future of Sweet's phonetics.

When he died, phonetics was abandoned in Oxford( his university). However, University College London continued his work. They created the department of Phonetics. Daniel Jones continued the work that Sweet initiated in Oxford.

He is the one who expanded the pronunciation we call RP( received pronunciation).

Texto de Sweet.

Surge en el s. XIX para romper con todo lo anterior. Anticipa lo que va a pasar en el futuro. Practical and theoretical study: va a definir el tipo de estudio que va a hacer( definición de los 2 tipos). Se decanta por el práctico, pero no rechaza el teórico. (el estudio práctico no era aceptado hasta entonces)

`Livin philology': base de todo estudio de la lengua, ya sea práctica o teórica. Esta es la filología que él defiende y además tiene una doble base: psicológica y fonética. Es lo contrario a los que se venía haciendo (la filología anterior es teórica). Sweet rechaza esa filología.

Chapter 2. convierte la fonética en el fundamento de esa filología que el propone. Define la fonética como la ciencia de los sonidos y apoya lo anterior.

The Practical Study of Language.

Este tipo de estudio no es propio de la época en que se escribe este libro. Este acercamiento de la lengua tiene un título científico `living philology' que es lo opuesto a filología de anticuario. Tb abarca el estudio histórico de la lengua.

Dice que la fonética es la base de su acercamiento al estudio del lenguage.

Chapter 3. Phonetic Notation

Hace alusión a la transcripción fonética: `sound notation' que él define' spelling by sounds' esta definición es muy gráfica. Dice que la transcripción es ventajosa porque permite pronunciar cualquier idioma.

Sweet está continuando por la tradición iniciada por las del s. XIX por ese énfasis en la transcripción ... está ejemplificando la 3ª consecuencia positiva del acercamiento a la transcripción del s.XIX.

Da más ventajas del sistema de transcripción: se evita los problemas que provoca la ortografía escrita. (la falta de correspondencia entre escritura y sonidos puede ser un problema). Estando familiarizado con el sistema de transcripción será más fácil identificar las palabras cuando se oyen.

Énfasis en la enseñanza de idiomas( como Bullokar). Se está siguiendo la tradición de intentar solucionar la falta de correspondencia entre sound y spelling. Ahora no se ofrece una nueva ortografía del inglés, sino una forma de transcribir.

Significant sound descriptions= fonemas.

Este es uno de los puntos claces del texto. No emplea la palabra fonema, pero lo está definiendo.

La definición de fonema de Bloomfield ha sido la que más ha trascendido.

La palabra `significant' no debe confundirse. Alude a que influye al significado.

La idea principal: hay 2 tipos de rasgos sonoros (sound distinction) las que establecen diferencias de sonidos y los que no( esto recuerda a la definición de fonema ...)

Superfluous sound- distinctions no significativas.

Lo que es evidente no tiene que ser transcrito esto puede ocurrir con la acentuación. Es decir, no necesitan una transcripción fonética propia.

Nos va anticipando el concepto de fonema.

Begin with the spoken language( en conexión con el cap.2)

Todo estudio de la lengua, ya práctico o teórico, debe estar basada en el Lenguaje Hablado,( 1ª consecuencia del acercamiento a la lengua en el siglo XIX). Esto es una revolución, y como lo del fonema es muy importante.

The spoken the source of the written language.

Siempre se había creído que la lengua literaria es la buena, pero no es así, porque la literatura proviene de la lengua hablada. Esta idea es contraria a lo que se ha estado defendiendo hasta ahora. Es resultado del interés en los sonidos, en la fonética... (Saussure tb defiende la lengua hablada; Sweet le está anticipando a él, tba Bloomfield y a Sapir)

General Principles of Method.

The Historical Method.

Habla de la lingüística histórica que para él es filología de anticuario. La está criticando. (subrayar las 3 primeras líneas de 3r párrafo.

Está explicando que en ese momento histórico se hacía ese tipo de estudio. Sweet había estudiado lingüística histórica y comparada en Alemania. No se decanta ni a favor ni en contra, simplemente lo expone.

Sweet antepone el estudio práctico al teórico. Critica clarísimamente al estudio totalmente histórico de la lengua. El `antiquarianism' en sí mismo no es malo, pero solo, por sí mismo sí es malo hay que hacer un estudio diferente de la lengua.

Cada fase en una lengua tiene una individualidad propia y debe ser estudiada. Esto está precediendo a los estudios lingüísticos del s XX.

63

Modelos descriptivos de la lengua inglesa I