history of english英语简史(3).doc

1. Define the termsMetathesis: a transposition of sounds or letters within a word, such as: askaks, animalaminalPidgin: a pidgin is an auxiliary language, one that has no native speakers. It is a speech-system that has been formed to provide a means of communication between people who have no common language.Creole: a pidgn has survived and been passed on to the next generation.Amricanism: a word coined by John Witherspon means typical American English, which is different from that spoken by Englishmen.The trend of modifying English in an American way was called Americanism.Phonology: the study of the sound system of a given language and the analysis and classification of its phonemes2. Why did Noah Webster believe the USA needed its own kind of English?Noah Webster believed so because he thought America was an independent nation and their honor required them to have their own system in language. A national language was a band of national union.The separation of of the American tongue from the English was necessary and unavoidable. Numerous local cause, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas would produce new American English different from its parents.British English were unsatisfactory. Noah Webster intended to introduce a language with uniformity and accuracy of spelling and pronuciation to the new country.3. Five examples of words which Noah Webster should be spelled differently in the USA from how they were spelled in the UK. Write spellings which include at east two different kinds of changes.waggonwagon centrecentercolourcolor fibrefiberdefencedefense theatretheatertyretire metremeterhonourhonor axeax programmeprogram4. *State any four common grammatical characteristics of African American Vernacular English and write a short, simple sentence as an example of each one.them instead of those,Object pronoun instead of demonstrative pronounbein instead of “to be”Drop many auxiliary verbs: where you come from? What you doin ?double negation I aint got no money,man!no “s” ending in third person singular verb: He play good, man!Copula is often dropped You crazy, man Where you at? 5. State any four common phonological (pronunciation) characteristics of African American Vernacular English and give as an example of each one. at the begining of the word is same as in the standard English. at the beginning of the word changed to “d”, (dis, dat, dose, dese)Metathesis: animal-aminal; ask-aksSome stress changed: police, guitar, DetroitSome consonant clusters reduced: firstfirs, tasktas.At the end of the word, with changed to wit or wif; smooth changed to smoov or smood;Ing ending changed to in: bein,drinkin,doin.some droping of “r”:more moSometimes they donnt use frictives: (the, this); (thin)* State any five ethnophaulisms as taught in class and indicate the ethnic group to which each one is applied in American English.Redskins - native Americans;niggers/coons/jungle/bunnies/sambo - African American;Mick/paddy - Irish ；Wops - Italians ；Kikes - Jews ；Nips - JapaneseSpics - Mexicans ; norskies - Norwegians ; chinks - Chinese补充The name of the continent was named after Amerigo Vespucci, who first identifies this continent as a new world.The first British colonial settlement in North America was James Town, Virginia 1607.Yanke & Yankee means the people live in the north of America, people in south called them in this way especially.2. The difference between American and British English2.1 Vocabulary differences (lexical differences)Spelling:colour/color metre/meter centre/center waggon/wagonhonour/honor programme/programPronunciation:Americans usually speak slower and with less variety in tone.lord not aboratory either secretary necessary literature father cat hat Lexicon:British English American Englishlift elevatorautumn falltrousers pantsWaist different word usagecongress meeting or come together; part of the government where they make new lawssenate court the residence of the loyal family; judicia part Assembly a group of people come together for certain purpose; USA congress for one state2.2Grammar differencesBritish English American English got gottenclimbed clumbsneaked snuckCollective nouns:The team are here. (British English)The team is here. (American English) Antiquated meanings kept in USAI reckon (British English)I guess (American English)The expansion of American EnglishPlaces names:New York New Britain New London New Munich Oslo Stockholm New Loan words (changed in pronunciation/meaning)Entre (main course in America English, starter in French)St. Louischow meinShanghai(v.) (kidnap)foods: donut taco pizza bratwurstmusic: jazz rap rock and roll bluegrasssports: basketball baseballtechnology: astronaut telephone computer byte gigabyte Internet airplane refrigerator radio television Apple productsAfrican American Vernacular Englishyou all (yall)yinz(you ones)1. Black english has its own rules of grammar and pronunciation, its own roots and heritage. Though it was recognized, it was misunderstood by the Whites. In the past, it was often thought to be lazy, or ungrammatical, or even to suggest an inferior intelligence. Now it is gradually being recognized as another variety of english. Yet if remains controversial even within the Black community. For some,it is an authentic means of self-expression for Black english speakers throughout America and the world. For others, who prefer the norms of Standard English, Black english represents the disadvantaged past, an obstacle to advancement, something better unlearned, denied or forgotten.2. The english language was enriched with everyday words and the familiar phrases. The culture of Black English is permeated by its African past.3. Black english itself was the product of one of the most infamous episodes in the history of our civilization, the slave trade. Today, Black engish speakers are members of a scattered family. Their ancestors heard the first english from the sailers of the slave ships, which became the basis of Black english. West African pidgin english was partly developed on board ship. Maritime expansion from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries would have taken the same ships and sailors as far afield as the China Seas, Hawaii, and Melanesia. It was this maritime trade that developed different kinds of partly related pidgin across the globe.4. The Atlantic TriangleFor 150 years, Bristol was the apex of a trading triangle that was one of the most ruthless in the history of capitalism. British ships laden with cheap cotton goods, trinkets, and Bibles sailed from Bristol and Liverpool for the west coast of Africa. They exchanged their cargo for a shipload of Black slaves, who were then transported on the notorious Middle Passage, the second leg of the journey, to sugar-bowl of the Caribbean, where they were sold to plantation owners and set to work as house servants or in the fields. Meanwhile, the same ships, laden with sugar, rum and molasses, returned to their home port, registering substantial profit for their merchant-owners. Before the British parliament finally abolished the slave trade in 1807, every leg of the journey contributed to the making of a completely new kind of english.By the time the Blacks left the slave ship, they would have become familiar with quite a range of pidgin english. They would have been every incentive to form a new speech community, the first step in the painful rebuilding of a shattered world. So pidgin english, borrowed form the sailors, became the slave lingua franca.5. The making of Black english probably began even before the slave ships arrived on the west of Africa. The kind of english spoken on the ships at that time would have been highly idiocyncratic. Even if the captain was english, many of his crew would have been foreign. The sailers, who, it is fair to assume, would have worked on many ships for many masters, would almost certainly have been familiar with the Mediterranean sea-going lingua franca, Sabir, a language which evolved in the Mediterranean basin to cope with multi-ethnic crews. Sabir had strong Iberian roots so West African pidgin english contains words that have a Mediterranean origin. This Portuguese had already been trading in West Africa for two hundred years.6. The word pidgin itself comes from the Chinese pronunication of the english word business.technically, a pidgin is an auxiliary language, one that has no native speakers. It is a speech-system taht has been formed to provide a means of communication between people who have no common language. When a pidgin becomes the principal language of a speech community, it evolves into a creole. A pidgin will always have its own way of constructing a sentence. What is different about a pidgin is that usually it dispenses with the diffivult or unusual parts of language backgrounds would find strange or hard to learn. The Black english has two simplifying characteristics: 1. The omission of verbs like is, as in: you out the game. 2. The dropping of present-tense inflections, as in: he fast in everything he do. Black english also has useful refinements that Standard english lacks-for instance, the use of be to signify a stable condition in a sentence like: some of them be big. In Black english, he working means that he is busy right now.7. Miskito english is a language used by the Miskito Indians who live on the Miskito coast. It has evolved from a unique collision of languages: the speech of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century British settlers, their African slaves, the Indian themselves, and later the Spanish-speakers who seized the area at the end of the nineteenth century. Miskito english has been isolated from the mainstream of the language for nearly two centuries but although it has evolved ita own linguistic system, is vocabulary is clearly english-based. Many of the words it has borrowed are nautical, regional, or now obsolete in Standard english.8. Sometimes called little England, Barbados was settled in the 1620s. This island owes its prosperity to the development of the sugar industry in the