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História da Língua Inglesa   

Language in History and the Origins of English

English Language Program, Kingston University (UK)

What is a language?

A first definition of "language" might be "a system of signs for communication." But we need to think about the elements of that.

(1) Not all communication through signs is language. Road signs communicate, but they don't constitute a language. Animals and birds use signs (or, better, signals?) to communicate, but we don't generally attribute "language" to them.

The communication through signs which we think of as "language" has certain distinguishing features (there may be others: think about it):

Human language is not contextually dependent in the way that animal signs are. The blackbird's warning cry only has meaning to blackbirds in a context (cat on the lawn) where a warning is needed. Blackbirds don't sit in their nests exchanging the same sound in order to discuss the nature of danger. Human language can be used to talk about anything anywhere.

Animal signs constitute sets (the set of all sounds made by a blackbird) but not articulated systems. Articulation involves not only systematic distinction between elements but also systematic ways of relating elements. This perhaps constitutes the most important distinguishing feature of human language –

(2) Language is a system of signs, articulated according to given rules. To speak a language or understand it, you need to know not only the "signs" (the individual words) but also the rules of articulation; what we call syntax. One way of distinguishing the set of all road signs or the set of all dog noises from human language would be to say that the former have no syntax.

(3) It is worth adding that language in this sense is not necessarily dependent on speech and hearing. Any medium which can carry an articulated, syntactical system of signs can potentially support a language. Thus sign language is genuinely a language, not an encoding into signals of English or French (it is not like semaphore, which is a code, not a language). There is even a tactile language among the deaf/blind, which uses neither sound nor vision but touch. 

Language in history

What do we know about the history of human language? If homo sapiens (creatures like us) have been around for 150,000 to 250,000 years, and if our oldest linguistic records go back (possibly) to 3000 BC, then we know very little about the history of language as a whole. Beyond the reach of our records, most is speculation or unanswered questions. Was there initially one language from which all others developed? Or did languages appear independently in different places? Did language appear with homo sapiens (was it language that distinguished homo sapiens?) or did language develop at some later point?

Some points can be made. (1) Our oldest records, such as they are, always show human beings in possession of language, as do the remotest geographical human groups. We know of no human group without language. (2) When we look at the oldest linguistic records, we don't find that languages are less complex than now: rather the opposite in some cases. So it does not seem to be the case that language has developed from the simple to the complex, or not in a straight line. Or, perhaps, we have too little evidence (maybe 4% of the time span of human speech) to show broad lines of development.

For a language like English, though, we have pretty full evidence, covering almost all of its 1,500 year history. The written record for English go back further than with any other living Germanic language. And within that period, English has changed very markedly; its history is in some respects more dramatic than that of most of the languages of Europe.

Change in language

The history of a language is the history of linguistic change. Languages can and do change in various ways:

Such changes are happening, more or less fast, in all living languages at all times. But there are factors that inhibit change:

In the end, change wins. Some languages change more slowly than others if the conservative forces are relatively strong, but in the end change always takes place. Nor do languages "deteriorate" or become "corrupted"; they simply find other means of saying what needs to be said if older methods cease to be available.

The origins of English: the Indo-European family of languages

The furthest historical context for English is the Indo-European family of languages and the (postulated) original Indo-European language. This is a language of which we have no direct knowledge, but which can be extrapolated and to some degree reconstructed from known languages in Europe and western Asia.

The generally accepted position is that the common Indo-European language was spoken in southerneastern Europe (north of the Black Sea, between the Carpathian and the Urals) around 5000 BC. The people that spoke it (who may have been ethnically diverse) began to separate and colonise new territories at the latest by 3000 BC. Some went south and east into Iran and India. Some went south into Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Some went west into Europe. As groups separated and became isolated from each other, so their speech changed, and distinct subgroups appeared – Hellenic, Italic, Germanic, Celtic etc.

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