LITERATURE AT ALBERTS: 1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF ENGLISH ( Madras University Notes)

1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF ENGLISH

ABSTRACT

A. The English Language: An Introduction

English a medium of international communication -Its many-sided role in international affairs - Its suitability to the expression of newer ideas and thoughts.

B. The Characteristics of English: Assets

1. Heterogenousness

The adaptability, receptiveness and assimilative power

- The exceptional range and extent of its vocabulary.

2. Simplicity of inflection

Evolution of English from being a highly inflected language in the Old English period to one of minimum inflections today - Illustrations.

3. Fixed word order a consequence of the simplification
of inflections.

4. Periphrases

Another consequence of inflectional simplicity - Use of prepositions taking the place of the lost inflections

- Periphrases and compounded tenses in the place of
the elaborate tense system of the old.

5. Natural Gender

Adopting the natural gender system in the place of the earlier grammatical gender - A great advantage to the language.

6. Intonation

Varieties of intonation expressing shades of meaning formerly indicated by inflectional endings.

C. The Characteristics of English: Liabilities

1. Lack of correlation between spelling and
pronunciation.

2. Idiomatic expressions.

3. The copiousness of vocabulary and the difficulties in
using it.

4. Synonymous character.

A. The English Language: An Introduction

English today is among the most vibrant and living languages of th» world. That this language, which only four centuries ago had been spoken by a speech community of a few millions and unknown to the rest of the world, has now become an almost indispensable medium of international communication with its speakers spread over all the continents is an amazing phenomenon. The present standing of English is partly attributable to its establishment as a mother tongue outside England. It is the language of the United States spoken by over 270 million people, besides being the major native tongue in Canada, Australia,

New Zealand and South Africa. Where it is not a native language, English is an important medium of communication such as in India and other former British colonies. In these countries, though there has been a pronounced tendency to change over to the vernacular medium, for a long time ahead English will be an important language in the spheres of higher education, trade and commerce, administration and judiciary.

Apart from its use in the former colonies in the past few hundred years, the English speaking peoples have played a large part in sea-faring and international trade so much so that today it is an essential commercial language of the world. Writes C.L. Barber:

If a Norwegian or Dutch business firm wants to write to a firm in Japan or Brazil or Ceylon, it will probably do so in English, and will expect to receive a reply in English. In science, too, the English-speaking peoples have played a large part, and in recent years there has been an increasing tendency for scientists in other countries to publish in English, which in this field has gained at the expense of German. Of course, English is not the only important international language. Arabic, French, German, Malay, and Spanish all play an important part in certain areas. Russian has become of greater international importance than ever before, and will undoubtedly continue to go up; and we can confidently expect that Chinese will soon follow. But at the moment it does seem that English is the most important of the international languages.

Again to quote A.C. Baugh

Today it would seem as though English were in the ascendant. Its pre-eminence in commercial use is undoubted. Its employment for purposes of science and research has increased notably of late, especially in Scandinavian countries and among the smaller nationalities of Europe. Its influence is dominant in the East, cultivated Chinese and Japense have adopted it as a second language. It is nowhere a question of substituting English for the native speech. Nothing is a matter of greater patriotic feeling than the mother tongue. The question simply concerns the use of English, or some other widely known idiom, for international communication. And as John Galsworthy remarked, "any impartial scrutiny made at this moment of time must place English at the head of all languages as the most likely to become, in a natural, unforced way, the single intercommunicating tongue."

(A History of the English Language)

English shares with the other highly developed languages of Europe the ability to express the multiplicity of ideas and refinements of thought in tune with the demands of modern civilization. It has a literature endowed with traits which could justifiably be described as Shakespeare's Enobarbus did:

Age cannot wither her

Nor custom stale her infinite variety.

And the question that naturally arises in our mind is, 'what are the qualities and characteristic features that outstand in making the English language what it is, which give it its individuality and make it of this world-wide significance?"

The following are the principal characteristics of English.

1. Heterogeneousness

The most obvious and the most important characteristic of English is its extraordinary receptive and adaptable heterogeneousness - the varied ease and readiness with which it has assimilated material from almost everywhere in the world. English, which evolved from the dialects of the Jutes, Saxons and Angles during the fifth and the sixth centuries, was almost a pure, homogeneous tongue, depending in a very large measure on its internal, intrinsic resources for word-building and enrichment. Then it had a negligible sprinkling of words borrowed from Greek, Latin and Celtic. Mow English has become the most heterogeneous of languages having received from the seventh century downwards all kinds of foreign elements with ease and assimilated them all to its own character. This unique tendency of the English language has invested it with an amazingly copious vocabulary and an even more amazing variety and heterogeneousness.

The assimilative power of English and its general receptive remains almost unparalleled in the history of human languages. It is this trait, more than anything else, that has contributed to its cosmopolitan character making it a suitable and attractive vehicle in several parts of the world. The following remarks of C.L. Wrenn (p.33) capture the extent of the copiousness and variety of English:

All the peoples with whom its speakers have come into contact during more than thirteen centuries of its growth, whether these contacts have been deep and lasting like those of France and ancient

Rome, or casual like those of Spain or Czechoslovakia, have almost without exception left permanent marks on the vocabulary. The Romans with whom the ancient Germanic tribes had dealings, the Romanized Britons, the Latin Fathers of the Church who were once so eagerly studied, the Danish and Norwegian invaders, the Norman French conquerors, the revived ancient Latin and Greek Classics at the Renaissance, the Italian artists and men of letters of the sixteenth century, the great colonizing nations of the same century-all these have made their contribution to the English vocabulary. Arab mathematicians from Spain have enriched our language, as have American redskins and Indian sepoys.

More than half of its vocabulary is derived from Latin, some words being direct borrowings, a great many through French, and some more through the other Romance (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) languages. (We shall be discussing these loan words in detail in a later lesson). English, marked by an unusual capacity for assimilating outside elements, has borrowed words from several other languages outside of Europe. Look at the following loans:

American Indian : moose, raccoon, skunk.

Words brought

from the Arabs : algebra, cipher, saffron, cotton,

amber, arsenal, assassin, magazine.

From India : nirvana, karma, yoga, sahib,

mongoose, bungalow, juggernaut, bangle, chit, shampoo, dinghy.

Persian : azure, jasmine, khaki, shawl,

checkmate.

From China : tea, kowtow.

From Japan	: kimono, hara-kiri
From the Australian bushman	: boomerang
From Malaya	: bamboo, sago
From the Eskimos	: igloo
From Portuguese Africa	: chimpanzee
From Haiti	: canoe, potato
From the South Sea Islands	: tatoo

All these, and many other borrowings of this kind demonstrate the cosmopolitan character of the English language, its outstanding assimilative power, richness, copiousness and variety.

2. Simplicity of inflection

A second outstanding characteristic of English is its inflectional simplicity. In the early centuries of its evolution English had inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb and the pronoun. Thus the Old English noun and the adjective inflected for four cases in the singular and four in the plural, and in addition the adjective had separate forms for each of the three genders. Take the Old English noun sian (stone) and look at its inflectional endings:

Singular

Nominative case stan

Genitive case stanes

	14
Dative case	stane
Accusative case	stan
Plural
Nominative	stanas
Genitive	stana
Dative	stanum
Accusative	stanas

And the adjective tr,eoeo inflects as under:

[Also look at the following example from Tamil which is also an inflected language

And so on.]

But English has gone as far as any in reducing the inflections to the minimum. Inflections in the noun, as exemplified in stan just now, have now been reduced to a sign of the plural and a form for the possessive case:

boys (plural)

The elaborate system of inflections of the adjective has been completely eliminated except for the simple indication of the comparative and the superlative degrees. The verb has been simplified by a loss of practically all the personal endings. This reduction of inflections has conferred on English a great advantage-the ease with which it indicates the relationship of words in a sentence with only the minimum of change in their shapes or variation of endings.

3. Fixed word-order

A third quality of English is its relatively fixed word-order. An inflected language like Tamil or Latin can be fairly

free in the arrangement of words, and the inflections show clearly the proper relationship in the sentence. Look at the following examples :

Nero interfecit Agrippinam

It would mean the same thing if the words are arranged in any other order such as

Agrippinam interfecit Nero

because the inflectional endings (or their absence) such as Agrippina-am, <£)«iM<amT-«n6ii keep the grammatical position and status of the given word unchanged wherever that word occurs.

On the other hand, in Modern English the subject and the object do not have distinct forms, nor do they have, except in the possessive case (e.g., boy's), inflectional endings to indicate the other relations marked by case endings in Tamil and Latin. Instead, we make use of a fixed order of words in English, in which there is a great deal of difference between

Nero killed Agrippina and

Agrippina killed Nero.

The order of words remaining fixed is a direct consequence of the reduction and loss of inflections in English. The fixed word-order in relation to meaning in a sentence has thus taken the place of freedom made possible by the system of inflections.

17 4. Periphrases

The simplification of inflections has yet another consequence : The growth of the use of periphrases or the roundabout ways of saying things, and of the use of prepositions to take the place of the lost inflections.

Look at the sentences below: Periphrases

1. What we need is your words of encouragement.

(It could well be 'we need your words of encouragement').

2. It is unwise to entrust him with so much of
responsibility.

(To entrust him with so much of responsibility is unwise).

Prepositional use

1. The branches of the tree,
(for tree's branches).

2. The friend of Sita's niece.
{Sita's niece's friend).

Again, the elaborate systehn of tenses that once existed in English has now been simplified with the use of periphrases and compounded tenses made with auxiliary verbs.

18 5. Natural Gender

English now enjoys an exceptional advantage over all other major European languages in having adoptee natural in the place of grammatical gender. In the Romance language, there are two genders; masculine and feminine,! with distinctive endings for each. In the other Germanic languages, there are three genders arbitrarily distributed. In German

sun	is	feminine
moon	is	masculine
child
maiden I	are	neuter
wife

The gender in these languages determines the form of inflection and the agreement of adjectives, and also affects the reference of pronouns. In the English language all this was stripped away during the Middle English period, and today gender in English is determined by meaning. All nouns naming living creatures are masculine or feminine according to the sex of the individual, and all other nouns are neuter. Obviously, this trait is one of the chief assets of the English language.

6. Intonation

Yet another characteristic of English is the development of new varieties of intonation* to express

Pitch patterns determined by the frequency of vibrations of the vocal cords.

shades of meaning which were formerly indicated by varying the shapes of words. By varying the intonation-the pitch and intensity, the tone of the voice-it is possible to put into the use of the given word a wonderful variety of meanings. Look at the following:

It's 'no xgood (falling intonation - statement) It's 'no 'good (rising intonation - question) 'Leave it on the 'table (falling intonation - command) 'Leave it on the 'table (rising intonation - request)

C. The Characteristics of English: Liabilities

The features just described have no doubt conferred on English great advantages, and they have contributed to the general success of this language. But it is equally important to recognize the difficulties which the foreign student encounters in learning this tongue. They are:

1. Lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation

A serious criticism of English is the chaotic character of its spelling and the lack of correlation between its spelling and pronunciation. That is, the same sound is not regularly represented by the same character, and a given character does not always represent the same sound. For instance

(i) The vowel sound i: in believe, receive, leave, machine, be, see is in each case represented by a different spelling.

(ii) On the other hand, the symbol a has different phonetic values as in father, hale, hat, etc.

(iii) The sound of sh has 14 spellings :

shoe, sugar, issue, mansion, mission, nation, suspicion, ocean, nauseous, conscious, chaperon, schist, fuchsia, pshaw.

Obviously, one cannot tell how to spell an English word by its pronunciation, or how to pronounce it by its spelling.

2. Idiomatic expressions

This is largely due to the simplification of inflections. A language which has reduced its word endings to the minimum has to naturally depend on idioms, the stereotyped expressions peculiar to the given language. An idiom is by definition a construction standing apart from the rest of the language on account of its irregularity. One class of idioms in English is illogical.

Examples

The use of the word fast in go fastis not the same as stand fast.

We describe a person as being 'as fit as a fiddle' or 'as bold as brass'. But in what sense can a fiddle be called fit, or brass bold?

Another class of idioms involves breach of grammar or syntax.

There is the idiomatic expression 'It is me' while grammatically the correct form is 'It is I'.

Grammarians insist that a preposition should never be placed at the end of a clause or a sentence; the word pre-position itself suggests that its right place is before the noun or pronoun that it governs. But there are the accepted usages like:

This is the house he lives in.

I want some string to tie this parcel up with.

3. The 'copious vagueness'

The very copiousness and heterogeneousness of English is liable to lead to vagueness or lack of clarity. The more abundant and varied the vocabulary the more difficult it must be to use it with exactness and clarity. For example, a largely Latinized vocabulary may be a source of great enrichment to the language of a man who is familiar with Latin; but to one who has never come into contact with Latin at all, this very richness becomes a source of looseness and vagueness of expression. The full and effective use of the English vocabulary is now the prerogative of the really well-educated.

4. The synonyms

English is particularly rich in synonyms. There are so many words and phrases which seem to mean very nearly the same thing. But on closer examination, when one knows the full connotation and gets the full feeling of a word, it will be found that there are no such things as synonyms in the language, and that there is always some slight shade of difference in meaning or feeling or suggestiveness between one word or phrase and another of like significance. In this regard, again, only the well-educated-can use these approximate synonyms to full advantage.

It may then fairly be said that "English is among the easiest languages to speak badly, but the most difficult to use well". (Also see Lesson 7)

Questions

I. Answer the following in about 500 words:
Describe the characteristic features of English.

Answer: A summary of both assets and liabilities, with particular focus on the assets.

II. Answer the following in about 200 words:

Discuss the general character of English, (or)

What are the unique characteristics of the English language?

Answer : Section B

Heterogeneousness, inflectional simplicity, fixed word order, periphrases, grammatical gender and intonation.

III. Write short notes on the following in about 30 words
each:

1. Heterogeneousness of English

2. Word order in English

3. Simplicity of inflections

4. Periphrases

5. Gender system in English

6. Intonation

7. Spelling and pronunciation in English.

Self-Check Questions

And now, we have here a list of 'slot-filling' and 'true/ false' type questions. Do answer them immediately after reading the lesson. These questions are meant to help you see how far and how well you have understood the lesson. In case you are not able to answer more than 10 per cent of the questions, go back to the lesson again and give another reading of the whole lesson.

I. Fill in the blanks:

1. English has now become a medium of communication.

2. The present position of English is partly due to its
establishment as a_______ outside England.

3. English is a________ in Mew Zealand.

4. That English is a language of international trade and
commerce can be partly attributable to its peoples
having been engaged in_______

5. The other languages of international importance
include__________________ and______

o. Nothing is a matter of greater_____ feeling

than the mother tongue. '

7. English was almost a ______ tongue during

the fifth and sixth centuries.

8- The —------------------------- of English and its

---- ■-------- remains almost unparalleled in the

history of human languages.

9. The contributors to the copiousness and variety of English, according to C.L. Wrenn, include

_________ _________ , and _________

10. ________ Contributed the word pataioto English.

11. The Old English verb is now marked by the loss of
practically all the_________________

12. The quality of fixed word order of Modern English is a
direct consequence of the _______

13. The elaborate system of tenses of the old has now
been simplified with the use of _______ ■

14. Today gender in English is determined by I

15.

Pitch patterns determined by the frequency of vibration
of the vocal cords are called by the name

16.

The lack of correlation between _________

_________ is a source of serious criticism of

English.

17. An idiom is a construction standing apart from the
rest of the language on account of its__ .

18. The more abundant and varied the vocabulary, the
more difficult it must be to use it with____

II. Say whether the following sentences are true or false:

1. Intonation is a source of vagueness of meaning.

2. English is among the easiest languages to speak badly.

3. Today Russian has become of greater international
importance than English.

4. The origin of English dates to the pre-Christian era.

5. The Anglo-Saxon tongue had only a small number of
loan words.

6. Nearly half of the vocabulary of English came directly
from Latin.

7. The word tatoo is of Indian origin.

8. Modern English has a fully-inflected case system.

9. In word-order English resembles Latin.

10. German has a natural gender system.

Answers

1. 1. international

2. mother tongue

3. major/principal native tongue

4. sea-faring

5- Arabic, French, German, Malay, Spanish and Russian

6. patriotic

7. pure, homogeneous

8. assimilative power, receptiveness.

9. the Romans, the Romanized Britons, the Latin Fathers
of the Church, the Danish and Norwegian invaders,
the Norman French conquerors, the Italian artists and
men of letters of the sixteenth century.

10.	Haiti
11.	reduction and loss of inflections
13.	periphrases and compounded tenses
14.	meaning
15.	intonation
16.	spelling and pronunciation
17.	irregularity
18.	exactness and clarity
II. 1.	False
2.	True
3.	False
4.	False
5.	True
6.	False
7.	False
8.	False
9.	False
10.	False

2. THE INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES

ABSTRACT

A. The Proto Indo-European

The home of the Indo-European - Divergence of the Indo-European languages into eight branches. Their dividsion into Eastern (Satem) and Western (Centum).

Satem: Indo-lranian, Armenian, Albanian, Balto-Slavic.

Centum: Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Primitive Germanic. Distinctic features of the Indo-European.

B. The Distinguishing Traits of the Germanic Family
of Languages

1. The Great Consonant Shift-Grimm's Law and its
inadequacy. Verner's Law.

2. The verbal system of the Indo-European and that of
the Germanic languages distinguished. The two tense
system of the Germanic - Vowel Gradation or Ablaut
- Strong and Weak Verbs.

3. The Teutonic Accent, and its consequences.

LITERATURE AT ALBERTS

Saturday, August 10, 2013

1. GENERAL CHARACTER OF ENGLISH ( Madras University Notes)

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