Old English
Linguistics (1)
This week’s goals
Discuss
the rise of Old English (historical aspects),
its general linguistic characteristics,
orthographic system,
and the sound system
History of English Timeline
Pre-History before 500 AD (or CE)
Old English CE 500 – 1100 ✔
Middle English 1100 – 1500
Early Modern English 1500 – 1800
Modern English 1800 – present
Selected Dates
The Celts entered the island during the Bronze Age.
55 BC Julius Caesar attempts to invade Britain, trying to conquer the Celts
CE 43-50 Emperor Claudius invades Britain and wins
Romanization occurs: roads, cities, and baths built
CE 410 Rome under attack by the Visigoths, Romans withdraw from Britain
CE 449 Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrive in Britain
597 St. Augustine of Canterbury re-introduces Christianity to the English
731 Bede finishes the Ecclesiastical History of the English people
787 Scandinavian invasion begins (Vikings)
878 King Alfred defeats the Danes at Eddington (Ethandun)
Treaty of Wedmore: allows a truce b/t Scandinavians & the Anglo-Saxons which established a line referred to as Danelaw.
1014 King Æthelred driven out by a new wave of Danish (political) aggression
1016 Danish King Cnut rules England
1042 Accession of Edward the Confessor
(Æthelred's son) to the throne (died w/o an heir in 1066)
1066 Battle of Hastings and Duke of Normandy
Inherited Anglo-Saxon Elements
their society: kings, thanes, ceorls, slaves
their religion/legends/stories (pagan), including dragons, trolls, orcs, giants
days of the week
their outlook on life (loyalty, feuds, transcience,
exile)
Why “English” ?
the Celts called them “ Saxon ”
Pope Gregory (540-604): Angeli or Angli, and gens Anglorum
Bede (673-735) used gens anglorum, although he recogniized Angles, Saxons and Jutes
King Alfred (late 9th C) used Angelcynn (translated from gens anglorum)
Through mutation becomes Engla, hence Engla-lond
by 1016
General OE properties
When Anglo-Saxons move in the land was inhabited by Celts/Scots/Picts
OE synthetic/fusional rather than analytic/isolating
N, V, Adj, Det, ProN were highly inflected meaning word order would not be very ridgid
Strong and weak declensions of nouns and adjectives
Strong and weak conjugations of verbs
Word formation by compounding, prefixing and suffixing rather than borrowing
Gender (like other Indo-European languages) – was a grammatical feature (based on formal linguistic
criteria, not logical or “natural” classes)
Orthography
5
thcentury, the invasion of Germanic tribes in Britain: Runic (futhork)
597, Irish missionaries introduced Latin alphabets into OE
970, 26 letters, most of them are from Latin, some of them are from Runic (the thorn & the wynn)
j, k, q v, z not in use (although Q, V, Z appear
in Latin numerals)
Runic Alphabet
Anglo-Saxon runic inscription on
the Ruthwell Cross
Special OE Letters:
æ
ash (æsc), which represents the vowel in Modern English ‘hat’
þ
thorn, which represents Modern English 'th'
w
wynn, written as in modern editions appears as ‘w’
(too confusing)
ð
eth, which also represents Modern English 'th'. Capital ð is written Ð.
Ȝ
yogh, a special form of the letter ‘g’
Sample
OE Consonants (very similar to PDE )
{voiced fricatives} were allophones – predictable by rules in context of voiceless segments (no contrast as in present day fan & van)
It also included some clusters that no longer exist phonetically: /kn/ /gn/
(knee, gnaw)
bilabial labio- dental
Inter- dental
alveol ar
Alveo- palatal
vela r
-vce stop p t k
+vce stop b d g
-vce affr ʧ
+vce affr ʤ
fricative f {v} θ s ʃ {ʒ] h
nasal m n
lateral l
retroflex r
semi-vowel w j
Some problematic
consonants…
OE vowels
A set of 7 long and short vowels
Two diphthongs (with long and short varieties)
Most of the vowels are similar to PDE vowels, except
/y/, which is a high-front ROUNDED vowel, and
The dipthongs
The Vowels
Some sound processes in OE
:
A major feature of vowels in OE from Germanic is called "front mutation" or "i-umlaut"
If a stressed syllable was followed by an unstressed syllable containing [i] or [j],
the vowel sound of the stressed syllable was fronted or raised (or partly assimilated to the following high front [i] or [j]).
The vowel that caused the mutation would then be dropped out of the changed forms (so it does not occur itself in the new forms)
Example:
The plural for mūs 'mouse' would have been mūsiz. The vowel of /-iz/ raised and fronted the /ū/
Then the /iz/ would be dropped
Thus changed to mȳs 'mice’
Also produced vowel mutation plurals forms such as 'foot' 'feet'
And adjectives strang, strengra, strengest & old, elder, eldest
And some verb forms lie/lay, sit/set