Article published In:
DiachronicaVol. 19:2 (2002) ► pp.217–272
What happened to English?
Summary
It has become widely accepted that English has undergone no interruption in transmission, its paucity of inflection treated as a
random loss paralleled in Scandinavian. This paper argues that English has in fact lost more of the Proto-Germanic inheritance
than any other Germanic language including Afrikaans. These losses extend far beyond inflection: where other Germanic languages
overtly mark a given feature, in a great weight of cases English leaves the distinction to context. While there are no grounds for
treating English as a “creole”, the evidence strongly suggests that extensive second-language acquisition by
Scandinavians from the eighth century onwards simplified English grammar to a considerable extent.
Résumé
On accepte que l’anglais est une langue qui s’est transmise sans heurts, et que la disparition quasi-totale de sa flexion
n’est qu’un changement aléatoire, que l’on retrouve également dans les langues scandinaves.
Dans cet article, on soutient qu’en fait, l’anglais est la langue qui a éliminé le plus de traits du
germanique commun, surpassant même l’Afrikaans. Parmi ces traits éliminés, on ne compte pas que
la flexion: là où d’autres langues germaniques marquent de façon obligatoire divers traits, dans un
nombre déterminant de cas l’anglais laisse ces distinctions au contexte. Bien qu’il n’existe aucune
raison de qualifier l’anglais de “créole”, tout porte à croire que l’apprentissage à
grande échelle de l’anglais par des scandinaves à partir du huitième siècle a considérablement
simplifié la grammaire de l’anglais.
Zusammenfassung
Es ist mittlerweile allgemein anerkannt, dass die englische Sprache sich ohne Bruch entwickelte, wobei man davon ausgeht,
dass der Verlust der Flexionsendungen wie auch im Skandinavischen rein willkürlich vonstatten ging. Dieser Aufsatz zeigt,
dass die englische Sprache tatsächlich aber mehr von ihrem protogermanischen Erbe verloren hat, als jede andere
germanische Sprache, eingeschlossen Afrikaans. Diese Verluste beziehen sich auf weit mehr als die Flexion. Wo andere
germanische Sprachen ein bestimmtes Merkmal ausdrücklich kennzeichnen, überlässt die englische Sprache
in vielen Fällen dem Kontext die Unterscheidung. Obwohl es keinerlei Anhaltspunkt gibt, Englisch als Kreolsprache zu
betrachten, gibt es Beweise, die eindeutig darauf hinweisen, dass die englische Grammatik im Zuge des Zweitsprachenerwerbs
der Skandinavier, die seit dem 8. Jahrhundert nach Großbritannien strömten, erheblich vereinfacht wurde.
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[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
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[no author supplied]
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