Examination Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: Distinction: 9.5/10, University of Jaén, language: English, abstract: This paper examines the enormous productivity of Latin in the English language throughout time. Influences, however, will be remarked on the lexical and morphological fields. Therefore, due to length restrictions, other aspects such as phonology will be overlooked. Firstly, the general linguistic, historical and social contextualization of Latin will be described. In other words, it will be analyzed how Latin came into contact with English. Afterwards, different periods of influence will be covered, as well as the morphological heritage that the English language took from Latin, ranging from derivation (for example prefixation and suffixation) to inflectional and compound processes. In all cases, the most illustrative examples will be offered. Finally, the etymological explanation will help to establish certain parallelisms between Latin and English. Thereby, it will be essential to state the idea, that English and Latin share numerous similar features, is still present, despite belonging to different language families, as well as their own peculiarities, which is to say, those properties that make both languages different in comparison to other ones.

Seminar paper from the year 2022 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Anglistik), course: History of English, language: English, abstract: The English language changed throughout its periods of existence. This development was, for example, influenced by other languages. The Latin language contains specific lexical and morphological features which the English language inherited. In order to understand which and why the features were taken from Latin and therefore influenced the English lexis and morphology, this paper will give a general overview about the development of the English language and the relationship to and influence of Latin. The morphological and lexical features of affixes will be examined in detail. The English language encountered other languages like Celtic or Scandinavian as well, but the strong relationship between Latin and English is undeniable, which marks the relevance for this paper. A reason English borrowed features of Latin, is the importance of the language in the past. Latin was a Lingua Franca, such as English is a Lingua Franca now. But Latin disappeared as a first language in the past. Nevertheless, several languages which are called “Latin variants” took over the language features of Latin. Such languages are Spanish, French, or Italian, which are Romance languages. These Latin stemmed languages came in contact with English and therefore influenced its development. The most prominent language contact in the Latin stemmed field of languages is French.

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Miscellaneous, grade: Distinction: 9/10, University of Jaén, language: English, abstract: This dissertation aims at explaining the enormous impact of Old Norse on the English language, more prominent in quality than in quantity. Such influence is firstly dealt with by focusing on the historical and sociocultural context, which, split into different periods, becomes of paramount importance in order to grasp the essence of such contact, both linguistic and cultural, between both societies throughout the centuries. Linguistically, general features of the Germanic group of languages are approached from different perspectives, mainly from the phonetical and morphosyntactic ones. Likewise, such analysis is followed by a comparative one between Old Norse and Old English as coexisting languages, thus allowing similarities and differences between both of them to come to the fore. Finally, the Old Norse influence is covered by taking into special account morphosyntactic and lexical elements, that is, those areas where both Germanic languages have come closer to each other. Therefore, this has allowed us to delve into those numerous items stemming either from the same or from dissimilar sources, most of which, whatever the case, are still substantially present in the everyday uses of today’s English.

What is a Romance language? How is one Romance language related to others? How did they all evolve? And what can they tell us about language in general? In this comprehensive survey Rebecca Posner, a distinguished Romance specialist, examines this group of languages from a wide variety of perspectives. Her analysis combines philological expertise with insights drawn from modern theoretical linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic. She relates linguistic features to historical and sociological factors, and teases out those elements which can be attributed to divergence from a common source and those which indicate convergence towards a common aim. Her discussion is extensively illustrated with new and original data, and an up-to-date and comprehensive bibliography is included. This volume will be an invaluable and authoritative guide for students and specialists alike.

This series offers a wide forum for work on contact linguistics, using an integrated approach to both diachronic and synchronic manifestations of contact, ranging from social and individual aspects to structural-typological issues. Topics covered by the series include child and adult bilingualism and multilingualism, contact languages, borrowing and contact-induced typological change, code switching in conversation, societal multilingualism, bilingual language processing, and various other topics related to language contact. The series does not have a fixed theoretical orientation, and includes contributions from a variety of approaches.

The creation of new lexical units and patterns has been studied in different research frameworks, focusing on either system-internal or system-external aspects, from which no comprehensive view has emerged. The volume aims to fill this gap by studying dynamic processes in the lexicon – understood in a wide sense as not being necessarily limited to the word level – by bringing together approaches directed to morphological productivity as well as approaches analyzing general types of lexical innovation and the role of discourse-related factors. The papers deal with ongoing changes as well as with historical processes of change in different languages and reflect on patterns and specific subtypes of lexical innovation as well as on their external conditions and the speakers’ motivations for innovating. Moreover, the diffusion and conventionalization of innovations will be addressed. In this way, the volume contributes to understanding the complex interplay of structural, cognitive and functional factors in the lexicon as a highly dynamic domain.

The volume provides an in-depth account of Old English, organized by linguistic level. Individual chapters investigate the state-of-the art in the linguistics of Old English and explore key areas of debate such as dialectology, language contact, standardization, and literary language. The volume sets the scene with a chapter on pre-Old English and ends with a chapter discussing textual resources available for the study of earlier English.