1) EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH: The evolution of the English Language continues the way to more modern English. This language consist many vocabularies of other languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, German and so much more. Nowadays we have modern English which has been created due to a huge amount of changes in the language as new words have been added to it. The influence of historical events has also contributed greatly to this evolution. The original root of the English language was from Neolithic people known as Indo- Europeans. There was a time when the Indo-European began to break down to different countries that is Europe and Asia in search of new hunting grounds and so their languages started to developed and diverged. The language had been split into many major large groups families (for example: Hellenic, Italic, Indo-Iranian, Celtic, Germanic, Armenian, Balto-Slavic and Albanian). There were also other groups which had been abolished completely (for example: Anatolian, Tocharian, Phrygian, Thracian, Illyrian, etc) and some did not left any trace about them. The major ones then divided into new languages such as Swedish to Portuguese to Hindi to Latin to Frisian. The existence of cognates can also be seen because of diverse languages such as Gaelic, Greek Farsi and Sinhalese due to common words in different languages. Jacob Grimm, a well-respected early philologist, pointed out that certain consonants in the Germanic family of languages have shifted in some way from the base of Indo-European (for example: foot in English, fod in Danish, fot in Swedish are related to the Latin ped, Lithuanian peda or Sanskrit pada; where there is the shifting of “p” to “f” and the “d” to “t”). This process explains many root differences in English words of Germanic and Latinate origin (for example: father and paternal, three and triple etc). Celtic was the predominant language of England until the Romans came to occupy England then Latin was introduced. Celtic warriors could not resist the strength of the Roman army so they left Britain then the Roman ruled for a very long period of time (AD 43 to 410) and they placed their culture and civilization there. Latin became the official language at that time especially in towns and cities whereas Celtic was still spoken in the rural areas. In AD 410, Latin began to wane because the Roman armies were out of Britain but they contributed to linguistics as some English words are derived from the original Latin (for e.g.: the word “camp” is derived from the word “casta”, some places’ names are from Latin such as Manchester and Lancaster or even the word “portus” which means “gate” gave names such as Port sea and Portsmouth). After the Romans departure, the Celts asked the Germanic warriors who are the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes for help so they started to occupy different parts of England where the Angles settled in the north and central, the Saxons were in the south and finally, the Jutes occupied Kent. The name “England” was finalized after a lot of changes i.e. the Celts called the Anglo- Saxon as “Sassenachs” then at the end of the 6th century, the name “Angles” was used after that the Latin name for the country was “Anglia” which became “Engle” in Old English then “Englisc”. It was during the 10th century, it became “Englaland” or “Aegle-land” which meant the land of the Angles then finally it became England. Old English was a language then used by three Germanic tribes when they came to settle in England. But that language had four main dialects namely, North Umbria, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish which were spoken in different parts of Britain and Scotland. Old English resembled Latin as the English was taken over the Latin one. Christianity was introduced in England in AD597 and Latin was again used there as the dominant church was a Roman Catholic and also it was the universal language of church and education. New words were introduced at the church which expressed new ideas. At that time, people began themselves through literature and one of the first literary works was “Beowulf”. Many words were borrowed from the religion i.e. the Bible at the time Christian evolution which are still used nowadays such as angel, nun, shrine, temple, candle, hymn, martyr, anthem, priest. After the Old English period, the Danes from Denmark which came from the Scandinavian region also called as the Vikings made huge influence on the English language. As the Vikings settled permanently in England, they accepted the Anglo- Saxon religion and language. More than 1400 places in England still have Scandinavian names and words were also borrowed (for e.g.: words which are pronounced with “sk” such as sky, skin and whisk are from Scandinavian and words such as bank, egg, sister, window, happy, low, weak, die, give, take, both, they, same and a few more words were introduced). The Danish when they came to England, they brought new civilization and so the new things came with new vocabularies which entered the English language in everyday interaction. In the 12th century, the Norman Conquest changed the Old English language to a new Middle English. The civilization of the Normans was French and this how the French language came to England and was introduced as the second official language. Middle English was a mixture of both languages that is French and English. In 13th century, about 10,000 French words were included in English and about three quarters of them are still used in the language today including Old English (for e.g.: doom- Old English, judgment- French , hearty- Old English, cordial- French, house- Old English and mansion- French). Many words were borrowed from the church, art, literature, the army, science and the court (for e.g.: prince, battle, soldier, prayer, judge, poem, paint, image, surgeon, theory, physician, electricity, gravity, cardiac, ovary and so on) whereas domestic animals were named by the Englishmen of lower classes and their corresponding dishes were mostly in French: sheep-mutton, pig-pork, hen-poultry, calf-veal or ox-beef. The Normans did not only bring changes to the vocabulary of Old English but also spelling changes. The Great Vowel Shift and the advent of the printing press were the two major factors which separated Middle and Modern English by influencing the language. The Great Vowel Shift was a change in pronunciation in 1400 as people in the London region and other dialects affected the pronunciation pattern. For example, Chaucer’s pronunciation would have been very difficult for Modern English speaker to understand while Shakespeare’s pronunciation would have been accented but understandable. Words were also derived from the Middle English literature, for example, Chaucer’s word “lyf” became the word life nowadays and Shakespeare’s “wif” became the word wife. On the other hand, the printing press became common in form of literacy and so this led to a more Standard English where grammar and spelling became fixed and also the first English dictionary was published in 1604. Renaissance was a time of learning and discovery so new words were added to the language for new concepts which needed a name. Due to a debate which was conducted by Latin and Greek promoters, a large number of Latin and Greek had to be borrowed into English. The expansion of the British Empire affected the vocabulary of English as languages of other countries were adopted by the people of England and they borrowed words which denoted objects and phenomena which they did not know ( for e.g.: taboo, bungalow, yoga, ketchup, boomerang, tea etc). Other counties’ names of food such as pizza, pretzels, pasta and so on were added to the English language including new places such as casino and restaurant. Some words were created due to advanced technology such as emails which created words like inbox, outbox or spam where on the other hand, computer created new terms such as download, toolbar and so on. Due to socialization on the internet, new words which are known as slang such as “omg”, “lol” and “btw” in which long words or a sentence are converted into short ones have been added into dictionaries and acceptable by the English language. English language keeps adding words continuously as long as new concepts and technologies are created (for e.g.: Smartphone, tablet, e-book and so on). However, English remains the single most important and influential language in today’s world and it has continually proved itself as the most flexible of all languages due to its ability to adopt and absorb vocabulary from other sources. 2) COMPOUNDING: Compounding is the process of combining two or more words (free morphemes) to create a new word which can be a noun, a verb or an adjective (for example: white+board=whiteboard). Normally, compounds are written as one word (for e.g.: sunglasses), two hyphenated words (for e.g.: life-threatening) or two separate words (for e.g.: dining room). In syntax, there is no problem concerning compounds words as they behave like simple and normal words (for e.g.: My friend bought a doormat yesterday; where doormat is a compound word). Identification of compound words is easy if we know the meaning of the summed parts (for e.g.: sunglasses which means that they are glasses specially for the sun) but sometimes it can be very tricky as some compounds words may meant something else beside the summed parts (for e.g.: when we consider the word “hotdog”, it is not a food made from dog but simply a bread with sausage and mustard sauce) and this is known as exocentric compound. We have also other types of compounds words such as endocentric which contains the basic meaning of the word ( for e.g.: doghouse), exocentric in which meaning cannot be guessed easily (for e.g.: white-collar), copulative which have two semantic heads and can be easily recognized when adding “and” between the two heads (for e.g.: sleepwalk) and lastly we have appositional in which we have two contrary attributes (for e.g.: player-coach; where we can understand that the person is both a player and a coach). In compounding, we can combined two or more nouns to form only one noun (for e.g.: sister-in-law, grapefruit juice, iced tea, etc) but sometimes a compounded noun’s meaning cannot be identified or even place names (for e.g.: bonfire, North+village= Norwich, Marshall, etc) and this type of noun compound is known as amalgamated compound. Distinguish a compound can be done by recognizing the rightmost morpheme (for e.g.: blackbird is a noun as the rightmost morpheme is bird, spoon-feed is a verb as the rightmost morpheme is feed and worldwide is an adjective as the rightmost morpheme is wide). English language has been influenced by compounding at a huge extend as it is easy for English learners to describe things easily that is it can be used indicate what is the profession of someone ( for e.g.: football player), what is something made for (for e.g.: dish washer), what is the qualities of something (for e.g.: whiteboard), how something works (for e.g.: touch screen), where something is meant to be (for e.g.: bed sheet, doormat) and of what something is made up of ( for e.g.: cotton buds). Compounding is a one more evidence to prove the flexibility of the English language. CLIPPING: Nowadays, clipping is commonly used and acceptable by the English language. The term “clipping” describes itself that is longer words are clipped i.e. reduced to shorter ones (For example: aero plane-plane, influenza- flu, telephone- phone, bicycle-bike, etc) but it does not change meaning of words compared to back formation. According to Marchand (1969), clippings are not coined as words belonging to the standard vocabulary of a language and he stated that they originated from school slang (for example: examination- exam, mathematics- math and so on.). Clipping is caused in some way by laziness in speech. There are four types of clipping and these are back clipping, fore clipping, middle clipping and complex clipping. Back clipping words is formed by removing the end of a word (for example: examination- exam). Fore clipping is when removing the beginning of a word (for example: raccoon- coon). Middle clipping is keeping only the middle of a word (for example: influenza-flu) and lastly is complex clipping where multiple parts of various words are removed (for example: situation comedy- sitcom). Clipping has greatly influenced the English language as learners have placed it in their daily life and they do not consider the unclipped words at all. English learners are habituated to it in both writing and speaking. Sometimes students tend to forget to write the original words for the examinations and they put clipped words instead so they may be penalized for that. Even professionals at work do that when typing mails or when speaking in a meeting. Clipping has become a trend nowadays due to the addiction of sending messages or chatting with friends. Many clipped words have been also become part of the English vocabulary and have also been included in dictionaries (for example: fax- facsimile). Theodore Bernstein (1971) stated that : “As time-savers and breath-savers, clipped words defy the pedants and win their way to respectability. This has been true for a long time- witness piano from pianoforte and cello from violoncello” 3) PHONOLOGY: Phonology is concerned with the abstract, grammatical characterization of systems of sounds or signs. It analyzes the pattern forms of phonemes. The term phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of sounds of human speech. It approaches the different accents and variation of the pattern. According to phonology, a vowel letter can represent different vowel sounds (for example: HAT [hæt] – HATE [heit]). Phonemes are symbols that are used to differentiate sounds and these are divided into vowels, consonants and diphthongs. There are some sounds that are unstressed syllables which are found in all vowels (for example: æ, Ə, θ and ð) but the theory is not only about individual sounds so the English speakers made stressed syllables by making words louder, longer and higher (for example: PHOtograph [/’fәΩtәgra:f/] and phoTOgrapher[/fә’t grәfәr/] ). In rhythm, we have both syllable stress and word stress that is a sentence, the content words i.e. main verbs, nouns, adjectives and so on bring the meaning and must be stressed and the function words i.e. articles, prepositions, pronouns and so on are weaker and almost disappear when speaking. Intonation is essential in English so that to be able to express the correct meaning of what we want to say. Many people have problems in pronunciation due to wrong teaching of phonology which can lead to wrong meaning of words (for example: the word ‘piece’ may be heard like ‘peace’ or ‘piss’ or the word ‘sheet’ may be heard as ‘shit’). To have a good pronunciation, we must practice by doing drilling, tongue twisters, sounds comparison or noticing. Learning phonology helps a person greatly by making him to pronounce words correctly using his different organs such as tongue, lips, teeth, nasal cavity, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, trachea, lungs and diaphragm. English sounds are made by using the air which comes out from the lungs which are helped by the diaphragm. Phonology also helps us to identify different types of sounds made by different parts of our body such as bilabials which helps us to pronounce by placing the lips together. Other types of sounds are labiodentals in which the lower lip is raised towards the teeth, dentals in which the upper front teeth touches the tip of the tongue, alveolar in which the tip of tongue is raised towards the alveolar ridge, palatals in which the tongue is raised towards the palate, velars in which the back of the tongue touches the velum and glottal in which air is passed through the glottis. If we learn phonology very well then it is very easy to notice pronunciation mistakes when people speak. MORPHOLOGY: Morphology is concerned with the study of word structure and word formation in where we combine words to form a sentence. Words are impossible to be defined but they can be broken down as units so to be able to combine them to form sentences. In the other way, sentences can be broken down into smaller units to be more meaningful and these meaningful parts are called morphemes. A morpheme may be represented as a single sound (for example: “a”-“live”; where a is a single sound ) and as one or more syllables (for example: “child”- “ish” or “wa”-“ter” or “cro”-“co”-“dile”). In morphemes theory, we also have homonyms where words are pronounced the same but have different meanings (for example: to-too-two) and homograph where words are written the same but different meanings or pronunciation (for example: bow of a tie and Japanese bow). There are two types of morphemes, one is free morpheme and the other is bound morpheme. A free morpheme is the one which can be uttered alone with meaning (for example: book, chair, etc) and bound morpheme cannot be uttered alone and with no meaning but they can be added to other morphemes to form a word (for example: apple-“s”, kind-“ly”, “re”-play, etc.). Bound morphemes are referred as affixes that is they precede free morphemes which are called prefixes and those which follow free morphemes are suffixes ( for example: adding “dis”, “un”, “pre”, “trans” or “bi” before a free morpheme are prefixes and adding “ly”, “ness”, “ish”, “ity” or “er” at the end of a free morpheme are suffixes). Bound morphemes come also in two varieties, derivational and inflectional, where derivational creates new words or changes the word classes ( for example: if we add “ness” to the word “happy”, it becomes “happiness” and the word changes from being adjective to noun) and inflectional allows English learners to decode grammatical information ( for example: if we add “s” to a morpheme, we can see that the word is plural or if “ed” is added, we can see that the verb is a past tense etc.). The linguists, Fromkin and Rodman (1998) pointed out that morphology is an important aspect of grammar as it presents articles that contribute to further articulation of morphological theory and linguistic theory in general which provide also new and unexplored data. When learning morphology, we can see the flexibility of the English language due to affixes and suffixes. When we have morphological knowledge, we can easily transform words into various possibilities to be able to express message more accurately. In addition, we can easily distinguish nouns, adverbs, plurals, verbs and adjectives and also understand words we have heard before. Morphology also leads us to a perfect writing skills and speaking skills. Learning this subject, it helps us to see the relationship of English and other languages that is there are many words that have been borrowed from other languages such as Latin, German and French ( for example: croissant, sofa and so on.) and also to recognize words that is which one is from the English language and which one is not. In all, morphology helps an English learner to form words and accepts or discards new words he can come across in the disguise of right and wrong ones. PRAGMATICS: Pragmatics is the study of language by interpreting our own point of views and it is concerned on the use of language in particular situations i.e. it focuses on the elements that influence as the meaning of people’s communication. According to Fasold (2006) “Pragmatics concerns both the relationship between context of use and sentence meaning, and the relationship among sentence meaning, context of use and speaker’s meaning”. Pragmatics is a very competent theory as it has the ability to comprehend, construct and give out meanings which is both accurate and appropriate in any circumstances where there is communication. Hymes (1974) proposed a model using a mnemonic device S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G to show pragmatics elements where S represents “setting” and “scene”, the situation where communication occurs. P stands for “participants”, the people involved in the communication including their relationships. E describes “ends”, the outcome of the communication. A represents “act sequence”, the order of pieces of the communication. K stands for “key”, the tone or manner of the exchange of communication between participants. N represents “norms”, social expectation and whether the communication is acceptable or not. And finally G stands for “genre”, kind of communication involved. For example, a student is not taking his studies seriously; the teacher scolds him because she wants him to be on the right track. The student, in turn, decides to listen and accept the teacher’s advice because he respects her a lot and acknowledges that she wills the best future for him. In this example, the SPEAKING model is used which helped to analyze and identify the appropriate language for this situation but not the explicit behaviors that comprise communication. Pragmatics is an essential key to have an effective communication but there are many people who do not consider the pragmatic competence. It also provides the skill for non-native English speakers to become a successful communicator in English. When a learner is pragmatically incompetent, his utterance could be wrong (for e.g.: someone is asking for a book, he may says ‘Give me your book, please!’ which not good as he did not use the request strategy which is ‘Could I have your book, please?’) so his request may be rejected because he did not ask properly and politely according to the lender even if his communication was effective. In pragmatics, more vocabulary is needed as grammatical competence starts to develop. Learning English pragmatically is essential to be able to immerse into an English speaking country or society and culture so that our communication are understood correctly. When learners have pragmatic skills such as eye contact, asking for clarification, using humor and so on; communicating their personal thoughts, feelings and ideas become very easy. Learners with poor pragmatic skills often misinterpret other’s communication intention and so they have great difficulty to respond correctly either verbally or non- verbally (facial expression, body language, intonation and body distance). SYNTAX: Syntax is concerned with the structure of phrases and sentences in which words are combined systematically so that to be able to make sense in a sentence. For syntax, a sentence must contains a verb phrase and a noun phrase for it to make sense ( for e.g.: A car bought Mary; the sentence has no sense so it has to be constructed in way where it makes sense that is we have to put the verb and noun phrase at their correct order; Mary bought a car). Other phrases can also be added such as adverb, adjectives, prepositional and co-ordinate phrases to form a perfect sentence. Syntax is essential for learners so that they can recognize word order and sentence structure and it must be done at a beginner level as if their syntax is not good at an early stage, they will get difficulty to correct syntax problems when they will be at an advanced level. For example, many students who have syntax problems cannot translate their native language into English properly that is they have problems with the word order and so they simply translate the words of their language into English (for e.g.: Spanish speakers always make the mistake of placing noun before an adjective). Syntax is learned before speech and grammar so that they master the structure of phases or sentences and word order so when the students progress with their learning of English, they can start creating their own sentences. Due to syntax, learners can distinguish the difference between their native language and English language in the field of word order and grammar. When studying syntax, we can see how a multilingual speaker can construct sentences despite the different structure of the other languages (for e.g.: a Chinese or a Russian speaker) and also shows us how languages work. In language, we have parameters i.e. there are a set of rules and constraint in any particular language, which help us to know what we can and cannot do in the language and that’s lead us to an effective communication. According to Chomsky (1960), when we consider other languages’ parameters, we learn the correct way to form sentences in English.
