Chapter 7 ： Historical Linguistics

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:

1. One of the tasks of the historical linguists is to explore methods

to reconstruct linguistic history and establish the relationship between languages.

2. Language change is a gradual and constant process, therefore often indiscernible

to speakers of the same generation.

3. The history of the English language is divided into the periods of Old English,

Middle English and Modern English.

4. Middle English began with the arrival of Anglo-Saxons, who invaded the British

Isles from northern Europe.

5. In Old English, all the nouns are inflected to mark nominative, genitive, dative and

accusative cases.

6. In Old English, the verb of a sentence often precedes the subject rather than

follows it.

7. A direct consequence of the Renaissance Movementwas the revival of French as

a literary language.

8. In general, linguistic change in grammaris more noticeable than that in the sound

system and the vocabulary of a language.

9. The sound changes include changes in vowel sounds, and in the loss, gain and

movement of sounds.

10. The least widely-spread morphological changes in the

historical development of English are the loss and addition of affixes.

11. In Old English, the morphosyntactic rule of adjective agreement stipulated

that the endings of adjective must agree with the head noun in case, number and

gender.

12. The word order of Modern English is more variable than that of Old

English.

13. Derivation refers to the process by which new words are formed by the

addition of affixes to the roots, stems, or words.

14. “Smog” is a word formed by the word -forming process called

acronymy.

15. “fridge ” is a word formed b y abbreviation.

16. Modern linguists are able to provide a consistent account for

the exact causes of all types of language change.

17. Sound assimilation may bring about the loss of one of two

phonetically similar syllables in sequence, as in the case of change of “Engla -

land ” to “England”.

18. Rule elaboration occurs whenthere is a need to reduce ambiguity and

increase communicative clarity or expressiveness.

19. Language change is always a change towards the simplification

of language rules

20. The way children acquire the language is one of the causes for language

change.

II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter

given:

21. H _______ linguistics is the subfield of linguistics that

studies language change.

22. The historical study of language is a d ________________ study of

Ian guage rather tha n a synchronic study. 欢迎下载 2

23. Europea n R ______ Moveme nt separates the period of Middle

English from that of modern English.

24. An importa nt set of exte nsive sound cha nges, which affected 7

long or tense vowels and which led to one of the major discrepa ncies betwee n

phon emic represe ntatio ns of words and morphemes at the end of the Middle En

glish Period, is known as the Great V _________________ Shift.

25. A _______ invo Ives the deleti on of a word-fi nal vowel segme nt.

26. A cha nge that invo Ives the in serti on of a consonant or vowel

sound to the middle of a word is known as e _________ .

27. The three sets of consonant shifts that Grimmdiscovered became

known collectively as Grimm s L ____ .

28. Sound change as a result of sound movement, known as m _________ ,

invo Ives a reversal in positi on of two adjoining sound segme nts.

29. B _______ is a process by which new words are formed by taking

away the supposed suffixes of exit ing words.

30. Sema ntic b _______ refers to the process in which the meaning

of a word becomes more gen eral or in clusive tha n its historically earlier deno tati

on.

31. The original form of a Ianguage family that has ceased to exist

is called the p _______ .

32. Sound a ________ refers to the physiological effect of one sound

on another. In this process, successive sounds are made identical or

similar to one another in terms of place or manner of articulation.

33. In order to reduce the excepti onal or irregular morphemes, speakers of a

particular Ian guage may borrow a rule from one part of

the grammara nd apply it gen erally. This phe nomen onis called i ___________

borrow ing.

34. By ide ntify ing and compari ng similar lin guistic forms with

similar meanings across related Ianguages, historical linguists recon struct the

proto form in the com mon an cestral la nguage. This process is called c rec on

structi on.

35. The m ___ rule of adjective agreeme nt has bee n lost from

En glish.

III. There are four choices follow ing each stateme nt. Mark the choice

that can best complete the stateme nt:

36. Historical li nguistics explores _______________ .

A. the n ature of Ian guage cha nge

B. the causes that lead to Ian guage cha nge

C. the relati on ship betwee n Ian guages

D. all of the above

37. Lan guage cha nge is _____________ .

A. universal, continuous and ,to a large extent, regular and

systematic

B. con ti nu ous, regular, systematic, but not uni versal

C. uni versal, con ti nu ous, but not regular and systematic

D. always regular and systematic, but not universal and continuous

38. Moder n En glish period starts roughly ____________ .

A. from 449 to 1100