HELL LECTURE 2
OLD ENGLISH
(AD 449 - 1050)
THE GERMANIC SPLIT
OLD ENGLISH CHRONOLOGY
• AD 449 – 700 PRE-OLD ENGLISH
• 700 – 900 – EARLY OLD ENGLISH
• 900 – 1100 – LATE OLD ENGLISH
OLD ENGLISH DIALECTS
• NORTHUMBRIAN *– North England
• MERCIAN *– the Midlands
• WEST SAXON – West England
• KENTISH – Kent
---* = ANGLIAN
THE INTERNAL & EXTERNAL
HELL
• The internal development = the evolution of
language structure (i.e., phonology,
grammar, vocabulary, and writing)
• The external development = non-structural
factors & their influence on both
development and course of the lg.
development:
EXTERNAL FACTORS
•
•
•
•
•
POLITICAL
SOCIAL
ECONOMIC
SCIENTIFIC
CULTURAL
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
FOR HELL
• HISTORIES
• GRAMMARS
• WRITTEN RECORDS = Latin-English
bilingual texts
THE GERMANIC INVASION &
CONQUEST OF BRITAIN
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
AD 449 – the beginning of the Germanic invasion
c. 429 – Prosper Tiro
5th c. – Anonymous Gaullish chronicler
c. 548 – Gildas’ Liber querulus de excidio Britanniae
(Welsh)
Nennius’ Historia Britonum (Welsh)
c. 500 – Zosimos/Olypiodonus (Greek/Byzantine)
C. 550 – Procopius of Cesarea
c. 731 – Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
End of the 9th c. – the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (449 473)
OLD – MIDDLE – MODERN ENGLISH
ANGLO-SAXON BRITAIN
(ENGLAND)
ENGLISH
<
Englisc
ENGLAND
<
Englaland
The race of Angles =
Angelcynn
CHRISTIANITY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
AD 597 – St. Augustine on a mission in Britain
601 – the Archbishopric of Canterbury
604 – Kent is christianised
Essex & East Anglia
625 – 627 – York
635 – Wessex
681 – Sussex
633-650 – Northumbria
655 – Mercia
664 – the Synod of Whitby
700 – all Britain is Christian
EARLY LATIN BORROWINGS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Apostol
Pāpa
Munuc
Abbot
Mæsse
Fers
Scōl
Mægester
NATIVE CHRISTIAN LEXIS
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hēahfᴂder
Gōdspell
Hælend
Heofon
Gāst
Hālga
THE VIKING INVASIONS
• AD 787 – 1042 - Scandinavians raid Britain
# 1 – Danish invaders
#2 – Norwegian invaders
1st period – 787 – 850 – Danish invasions
2nd period – 865 – 973 – Danish raids;
- Guthrum’s Danelaw
- King Alfred the Great
(886 - London)
3rd period – 991 – 1042 – Danish and Norwegian
Invasions
ONE NATION
• The assimilation of the Vikings and the
English
• Viking settlements in Northern England:
Cumberland, Westermoreland,
Lancashire, Cheshire
Cultural similarities
Linguistic similarities
Mixed marriages
VIKING LINGUISTIC
INFLUENCES
#1 Viking personal names: Harold, Swegen,
Tostig, Gunhild, Hacun, Ulf
#2 loanwords: bull, egg, fellow, gap, keel, law,
sister, sky, window, call, get, take, want
#3 grammatical modifications = a simplified
grammar
# 4 Placenames in: -by; -thorp(e); -thwaite; toft
# 5 Hybrids: Goldcytel, Leofstegen, Swartric
THE RUNES – 1ST C. AD
OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE
Extremely rich – charters, wills, documents & literature
The early period:
Pagan poetry on heroic adventure, war and its aftermath
Christian poetry on Old and New Testament themes & lives of
saints
• 8-9th c. Boewulf
• Cædmon – 1st English poet
• Cynewulf – Anglian poetry
•
•
•
•
The 9th c. - the beginning of English prose:
• ælfric – prose
• Wulfstan – The Sermon to the English
• Alfred the Great – Latin translations into Old English
WEST SAXON
• Standard Old English (10th – 11th c.)
• Winchester: the Old Minster scriptorium
(Benedictine monastery: ælfric and Wulfstan
• SOE is used across England
• Declines after AD 1066
OE LEXICON
Lexicon
•
Basic words inherited from IE or Germanic:
•
- 1-10 numerals (an, twegen, þrie, feower, fif, syx, seofon, eahta, nigon, tyn),
•
- kinship terms (modor, faeder);
•
- some Germanic/West Germanic-only languages: baec "back”, ban "bone“) folc "folk“) grund "ground", rotian "to rot”, seoc "sick”, swellan "to swell“) werig "weary", wif wife“) blod
"blood", cniht "young man," "knight“)
•
- miscellaneous vocabulary: cyning ("king"), fierd ("English army"), here ("Viking army"), scop ("poet"), scyppend ("Shaper," "Creator," "God"), Metod ("Measurer," "God"), rice
("kingdom"), wig ("battle"), wiga ("warrior"), feond ("enemy")
•
- a few Celtic borrowings, some place names: Thames, Dover, London, Cornwall, Carlisle, Avon, others: dunn "dun“) binn "bin," "basket, hogg "hog“)
•
- some Scandinavian influence: e.g. ran "rapine“) ha "rowlock”, cnearr "small ship”, orrest "battle“)
•
- Latin influence words for religious, intellectual concepts/activities, plants: e.g. abbod ("abbot"), engel ("angel"), candle ("candle"), martir ("martyr"), scol ("school") peru ("pear"), persic
("peach"), lilie ("lily")
•
- calques or loan translations: Latin unicornis, OE anhorn ("unicorn"); Latin evangelium, Old English godspell ("gospel")
Word-formation:
•
- Compounding: noun+noun, e.g. sunbeam ("sunbeam," "sunshine"),
•
adjective+noun, e.g. yfelweorc ("evil-work," "wrongdoing")),
•
adverb+noun, e.g. innefeoh ("inside-treasure," "household property"),
•
compound adjectives, e.g. isceald ("ice-cold"), wishydig ("wise-thinking"), some compound adverbs, eg. neafre (ne-aefre, "not-ever," "never"), eallmaest (eall-maest, "all-most,"
"almost"),
•
compound verbs, e.g. goldhordian (gold-hordian, "to hoard gold")
•
ge-, a very frequently used prefix; employed to create new words from existing ones (nouns and verbs) and to denote some past participles:
–
–
–
•
broðor (brother), gebroðor (member of a religious community)
nipan (to grow dark), genip (darkness)
sprecan ("to speak"), gesprecen ("spoken")
-nes, -ung, -dom, -scipe to form abstract nouns, etc.; examples: wis ("wise"), wisdom ("wisdom"); freond ("friend"), freondscipe ("friendship"); leornian ("to learn"), leornung ("learning")
hard-ness, wis-dom, friend-ship); heah ("high"), heahnes ("highness")
•
-ere, -end, -a, -bora to derive agent nouns, e.g.: ridan ("to ride"), ridere ("rider"); beran ("to carry," "to bear," "to support"), berend ("carrier"); wig ("battle"), wiga ("warrior"); mund
("trust, "protection"), mundbora ("protector")
•
-ig, -lic, -ful, -leas, -ed, -isc, -sum to form adjectives, etc.; examples: freond ("friend"), freondlic ("friendly"), freondleas ("friendless"); miht ("might," "power," "strength"), mihtig
("mighty," "powerful"); (cf. speedy, manly, bountiful, mindless, bow-legged, childish, handsome)
•
un-, in-, ofer-, æfter-, fore-, mis-, under-, etc. e.g: unræd ("without wisdom," "un-ready"); ingangan ("to go in"); ofermod ("over-mood," "pride"); misdon ("to do evil"); understandan ("to
understand")
•
loss in PDE of large part of OE vocabulary (50-80 %)
Prosody = stress patterns
•
major stress in the root syllable, e.g. mórgen "morning”
•
compounds stressed on the 1st element e.g. hwáelweg ("whale-way" "ocean")
OLD ENGLISH – TEXT SAMPLE
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (867 A.D.):
• Her for se here of East Englum ofer Humbremuþan to
Eoforwicceastre on Norþhymbre, ond þær wæs micel
ungeþuærnes þære þeode betweox him selfum, ond hie
hæfdun hiera cyning aworpenne Osbryht, ond ungecyndne
cyning underfengon Ællan; ond hie late on geare to þam
gecirdon þæt hie wiþ þone here winnende wærun, ond hie
þeah micle fierd gegadrodon, ond þone here sohton æt
Eoforwicceastre, ond on þa ceastre bræcon, ond hie sume
inne wurdon, ond þær was ungemetlic wæl geslægen
Norþanhymbra, sume binnan, sume butan; ond þa cyningas
begen ofslægene, ond sio laf wiþ þone here friþ nam
OLD ENGLISH - TRANSLATION
• Here the Viking army travelled from East Anglia over
the mouth of the Humber River to the castle of York in
Northumbria. And there was much discord of the
people amongst themselves; and they overthrew their
king Osbryht; and accepted instead as king Allan who
was of ignoble descent. And they, late that year, turned
toward the Vikings so that they engaged them in
fighting. And although they gathered a great army and
sought the Vikings at York and broke into the castle and
some of them got inside, there was unmeasurable
slaughter of Northumbrians, some within, some
without. And the kings both were slain and the rest
made peace with the Vikings.
OE GRAPHICS
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Graphics
the beginning of Christian era - the alphabet employed by the Germanics was the Futhorc/Runic
alphabet;
the 6th-century Christianization of England - adoption of Latin/Roman alphabet;
handwriting in EOE manuscripts - Irish scribes’ influence ( = Insular hand)
•
•
Special characters in OE writing:
thorn: þ (th) - derived from the runic alphabet, e.g.: þæt = "that"
eth: ð (voiced th), e.g.: ðeoden = "prince”
ash: æ - the name "ash“ comes from the name of a runic symbol but the runic character is
different, e.g.: ælf ="elf"
wen/wynn: (w) - example; æpen = "weapon"
the OE grapheme for “g” was
•
•
•
Punctuation:
- raised point, semicolon, and inverted semicolon = pause;
- no capitals/lowercase distinctions
OE MORPHOLOGY I - TENDENCIES
• Loss of inflections:
- reduction of vowels in unstressed
inflectional endings,
- need for syntactical support (word order)
and prepositions
OE MORPHOLOGY - NOUNS
OE nouns had:
•
grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter),
•
singular and plural number,
•
"strong" or "weak" classification according to the distinctness of their inflectional endings
•
specific inflectional endings in each of the cases used in Old English:
nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative + (instrumental)
E.g., bāt ("boat") (SM):
•
Singular
•
Nominative: bāt
Accusative: bāt
Genitive: bātes
Dative: bāte
•
Plural
•
Nominative: bātas
Accusative: bātas
Genitive: bāta
Dative: bātum
•
•
•
•
•
Sample sentence:
se bāt seglode fīf dagas = "the boat sailed for five days„
Bātes segl is lytel = "the boat's sail is small [little]”
fīf bātas seglodon ofer brim = "five boats sailed over the sea”
seglas bāta sind lytele = "the sails of the boats are small”
OE ADJECTIVES
•
•
inflected in 2 ways:
•
1) weak (when accompanied by a demonstrative, numeral, or possessive
pronoun),
2) strong (when it was accompanied by no supporting words).
•
An adjective had to agree with its noun in gender, number, and case.
•
E.g.:
wiga stag readne bāt = "the warrior boarded the red boat”
•
Weak forms: sēo blinde mūs ="the blind mouse”, þrēo blindan mýs = "three
blind mice“
•
Strong forms: blind mus ="blind mouse”, blinda mýs = "blind mice"
OE PRONOUNS
•
•
•
•
•
•
Personal Pronouns
- 1st, 2nd and 3rd person forms;
- singular, dual, and plural numbers;
- declined according to the standard cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative
In the OE nominative case, they are:
ic = ”I“, þū = "you”-sing., hē = "he", hēo = "she”, hit = "it”,
wē = "we", gē = "you”plur., hīe = "they"
•
E.g.: ic lufie þē = "I love you“
•
•
•
•
Demonstrative pronouns/adjectives
- se = "that," "the”
- þes = " this“
- inflected for gender, number, and case + some instrumental forms.
- agreed with their referents and with any nouns or other adjectives when used adjectivally.
•
The basic nominative forms are:
•
•
"that": se (masc. sing.), þaet (neuter sing.), seo (fem. Sing.), þa (plural)
"this": þes (masc. Sing.) , þis (neuter sing.), þeos (fem. sing.), þas (plural)
•
E.g: þeos wīf is fæegere = "this woman is beautiful [fair]”
•
Interrogative pronouns
- hwā = "who”
- hwæt ="what” - both inflected according to gender and case.
E.g. : hwā eart þū = "who are you?"
•
•
•
•
Other pronouns
- þe (= a relative pronoun) = "the one that")
- indefinite pronouns: ælc ("each"), hwilc ("which"), aenig ("any", eall ("all"), nan ("none"), swilc ("such"), sum ("some"), man ("one")
OE VERBS – STRONG : WEAK
•
•
•
•
Verbs
- the infinitive: -an e.g, faran = "to travel”
- inflected for tense, person, number, and mood
- two tenses: present and preterite
- strong and weak classification according to how they formed their past tenses:
•
STRONG VERBS:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
- 7 classes
- ablaut system = vowel-root change
- strong verbs : 4 principal parts:
Inf.: singan = "to sing”
past sing.: sang = "[she] sang”
past plur.: sungon = "[they] sang”
past part.: (ge)sungen = "sung”
E.g.: þaet leoð wæs gesungen = "the song was sung”
OE VERBS – WEAK & IRREGULAR
Weak verbs:
• - a Germanic innovation = "dental preterite" verbs
• - their past tense was formed with a dental suffix [d] > ModE.
regular verbs
• E.g.: seglan = "to sail” > seglode = "sailed”
Other verbs:
• Irregular: beon/wesan = "be", dōn = "do”, willan ="will", gān ="go"
• ”preterite-present verbs” - their present tense forms = past tenses
in earlier stages of the language)
• E.g: sculan, cunnan, magan, agan, dearr, durfan > ModE. modal
auxiliaries: shall, can, may, ought, dare, must
– magan ="be able", mæg = "may”, meahte = "might”
– sculan = "be obliged", sceal = "shall", sceolde ="should”
OE UNINFLECTED WORD
1. prepositions (governing the case):
to ("to"), for ("for"), be ("by"), in ("in"), under ("under"), ofer ("over"),
mid ("with"), wiþ ("against" or "with"), fram ("from"), geond ("throughout"),
þurh ("through"), ymbe ("around"), of ("of")
E.g.: heo seglode ofer brim = "she sailed over the sea”
("brim“ = Acc. recquired by "ofer“)
2. conjunctions:
• - and ("and"), ac ("but"), gif ("if") , þeah ("although"), forþæm ("because")
3. adverbs:
• - often formed with –e / -lice + an adjective, e.g.:
riht = ”right” > rihte / rihtlice = "rightly”
4. interjections:
la = "lo!", eala = "alas!”, hwæt = "what!”, "ah!" "behold!"
OE SYNTAX
•
•
•
•
•
modifiers close to modified word
prepositions precede objects
interrogative formed by inverting the subject and the verb
Subject-Verb-Object order in main declarative clauses,
Verb-Subject-Object in interrogative and imperative clauses
•
•
•
parataxis: phrases often strung together with simple conjunctions, e.g.:
and ("and"), ac("but"), þa ("then");
(hypotaxis) subordination: þa, gif, forþan
•
•
examples:
seamannan waeron meðe and scipu ne seglodon = "the sailors were tired and the ships did not
sail")
forþan seamannan meðe waeron, scipu ne seglodon = "because the sailors were tired, the ship did
not sail"
•
•
idioms: genitive + numerals: (twentig geara, "twenty of years")
OE PHONOLOGY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Old English consonants:
[p]: pat, [b]: bat,
[t]: time, [d]: dime,
[k]: came, [g]: game,
[ ʧ]: chump, [ʤ]: jump,
[f]: fat, [θ]: thigh
[s]: sap, [ʃ] : glacier/mesher,
[h]: ham, [m]: man, [n]: nun, [l]: lamp, [r]: ramp, [w]: world, [j]: yore/you
•
The sounds [ʧ ], [ʃ ], [ʤ ] were Old English innovations derived from CG [sk], [k], [gg]. Germanic [g] > [j], e.g.:
–
–
–
–
–
–
clǽne ("clean"), crypel ("cripple"), corn ("corn"), cyning ("king") ( original Germanic [k], before a consonant / back vowel)
ceap ("cheap"), cild ("child"), dic ("ditch")
( new sound [ʧ], next to a front vowel; < Germanic [k])
fisc ("fish"), wascan ("wash"), scearp("sharp")
(new sound [ʃ] in all environments; < Germanic [sk])
græs ("grass"), god ("god"), gyltig ("guilty")
(original Germanic [g] before consonants and back vowels)
brycg ("bridge"), secg ("sedge"), mycg ("midge")
(new sound [ʤ ] < Germanic [gg]; in medial / final position)
gear ("year"), giet ("yet"), gellan ("yell")
(semi-vowel [j] before / between front vowels)
•
•
no phonemic voiced fricatives in Old English ([v], [ð], [z], [ ])
OE [h] always distinctly pronounced, e.g.: hræfn = "raven", hand = "hand”, sihþ = "vision," "sight”, eahta = "eight”, heah = "high", þurh = "through”
•
•
Distinctly pronounced consonant clusters (/hr/, /hl/, /hn/, /hw/, /kn/, /gn/)
E.g.: hlaford = "lord”; hlæfdige = "lady”; hræfn = "raven”; hlūd = "loud”; sometimes still spelled, but not pronounced in modern English: what, whale, whistle, knee, gnat
•
Old English Vowels
•
a, e, i, o, u had sounds = modern Spanish, Italian, German
•
Vowel length = phonemic, e.g. OE god = "god“ : gōd ="good“
•
•
Some phonological changes from Common Germanic to Old English:
Front mutation ( = i-umlaut / i-mutation): if stressed syllable + unstressed syllable with [i] or [j], the stressed vowel was fronted /raised:
–
–
•
e.g. Gothic: doms ="judgment," "doom”, domjan ="to judge”, OE: dōm, dēman > ModEng: doom, deem
Germanic plural endings with i > OE fōt, fēt, ModEng foot, feet; others: man/men, tooth/teeth, goose/geese, louse/lice; in comparatives/superlatives: old/elder; derived verbs, sit/set, lie/lay, fall/fell
!Reduction of vowels in unstressed inflectional endings!