Baugh, Albert C.

1
Baugh, Albert C. Thomas Cable.
1994. A history of the English language. 4th
edition. London Routledge. Ch 3.
OLD ENGLISH
2
3-29 The languages in England before English

• The first people in England about whose language
  we have definite knowledge are the Celts.
• The Celts arrived in the British Isles c.700 BC
  from Central/East Europe
• Welsh, Irish, and Highland Scots are descendants
  of the Celts.
• English was introduced to the British Isles in
  449 AD.

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An Image of a Celt
4
3-30 The Romans in Britain (43 410)

• Julius Caesar in 55 BC (having completed the
  conquest of Gaul) decided to invade England but
  the expedition was not successful (the resistance
  of the Celts ALBION tribute)
• Britain was not troubled by Roman legions for
  nearly a hundred years.

5
White Cliffs of Dover
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3-31 The Roman Conquest

• In AD 43 the Emperor Claudius invaded Britain
• an army of 40,000 was sent to Britain and within
  3 years had subjugated the peoples of the central
  and southeastern regions under Roman rule.

7
Hadrians wall (1)

• The Romans never penetrated far into the
  mountains of Wales and Scotland
• Hadrians Wall the district south of this line
  was under Roman rule for more than 300 years

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Hadrians wall (2)
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3-32 Romanization of the island

• The military conquest was followed by the
  Romanization of the province
• - The introduction of Roman habits of life four
  great highways spread fanlike from London
• - Heating apparatus, water supply, etc.
• -By the 3rd cent. Christianity had made some
  progress

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3-33 The Latin language in Britain

• Inscriptions in Latin
• Latin did not replace the Celtic languages only
  the upper classes of native Britons used it
• The use of Latin declined after 410, when the
  Roman legions were withdrawn after the collapse
  of the Roman Empire

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3-34 The Germanic conquest

• Britain had been exposed to attacks by the Saxons
  from as early as the 4th cent.
• About the year 449 Germanic tribes began the
  invasion of Britain
• They are the founders of the English nation
• Invasions lasted for more than 100 years.

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3-34 The Germanic conquest

• Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English
  People (731) tells that the Germanic tribes that
  conquered England were the Jutes, Saxons, and
  Angles.
• They came from Denmark, the Low Countries (the
  Netherlands) and the coastal part of Germany.

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Anglo-Saxon Invasions
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3-34 The Germanic conquest

• The Jutes and the Angles had their home in the
  Danish peninsula (the Jutes in the northern half,
  Jutland, and Angles in Schleswig-Holstein).
• On the continent, the Saxons were settled to the
  south and west of the Angles, roughly between the
  Elbe and the Ems.

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3-34 The Germanic conquest

• The Frisians occupied a narrow strip along the
  coast from the Weser to the Rhine.
• Gradually extending the area they occupied until
  it included all but the highlands in the west and
  north (the Celtic fringe)

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3-35 Anglo-Saxon civilization

• The organization of society was by families and
  clans an agricultural people
• The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy by the late 700s,
  England was organized into numerous greater and
  lesser kingdoms, with shifting borders, often at
  war with each other.
• There were seven principal kingdoms Northumbria,
  Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and
  Kent.
• 9th cent Wessex, Alfred the Great (871 889)

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The Heptarchy
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King Alfreds (846/9-899)accomplishments

• Made peace with the Vikings - brought peace to
  England
• Viking kings converted to Christianity
• Fortified England
• First step towards a single king of all England
• Revived scholarship
• Monasteries restored
• Latin books and English translations sent all
  over England from Wessex (Alfreds kingdom)
• Sponsored Anglo-Saxon Chronicle diary-like
  history of England 
•   

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Types of texts generated during and after
Alfreds reign

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
• Poetry Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer
• Riddles
• Wills, charters, legal documents

20
3-36 The names of England and English

• For the Celts, all invaders Saxons
• Englisc Angelcynn, race of the Angles
• Englaland 1000 AD ( land of Angles)
• http//www.danshort.com/ie/Links
• (the two following slides)

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3-37 The origin and position of English

• The English language of today is the language
  that has resulted from the history of the
  dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who
  conquered England in the 5th cent.
• It is impossible to say how much the speech of
  the Angles differed from that of the Saxons or
  Jutes. The differences were certainly slight.
• English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch
  of the Indo-European family.

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3-37 The origin and position of English

• Thus it shares certain characteristics common to
  all the Germanic languages.
• The shifting of certain consonants (Grimms law)
• Weak-strong declension of the adjective
• Weak, or regular verbs
• A strong stress on the first or the root syllable
  of most words (responsible for the progressive
  decay of inflections)

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Historically, the English language has not
  existed in isolation and has always been in close
  contact with other European languages and
  cultures.
• Pre- English period (-c. AD 450)
• -Local languages in Britain are Celtic.
• -After the Roman invasion in 55 BC Latin becomes
  the dominant language of culture and government.
• -Many communities in Britain are bilingual
  Celtic-Latin.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Old English (450 c. 850 1150)
• Anglo-Saxon invasion AD 499 when Romans leave.
• Settlers bring several Germanic dialects from
  continental Europe.
• Old English borrows from Latin via church.
• Extensive invasion and settlement from
  Scandinavia.
• In the north of England dialects of English
  become strongly influenced by Scandinavian
  languages.
• THE PERIOD OF FULL INFLECTIONS.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Middle English (c. 1150 1450).
• The Norman Conquest and Norman rule.
• English vocabulary and spelling is now affected
  by French which becomes the official language in
  England.
• Educated English people trilingual (F, L, E).
• THE PERIOD OF LEVELED INFLECTIONS.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Early Modern English (1450 1750).
• The Renaissance, the Elizabethan era,
  Shakespeare.
• The role of the church, of Latin and of French
  declines and English becomes a language of
  science and government.
• Britain grows commercially and acquires overseas
  colonies.
• Attempts to standardize the language.
• THE PERIOD OF LOST INFLECTIONS.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Modern English (c. 1750 1950).
• Britain experiences industrial revolution and
  consolidates imperial power, introducing English
  medium education in many parts of the world.
• English becomes an international language of
  advertising and consumerism.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• Late Modern English (c. 1950 - )
• The collapse of the British Empire.
• New standardized varieties of English emerge in
  independent countries.
• English becomes the international language of
  communications technology.
• American English becomes the dominant world
  variety.

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3-38 The periods in the history of English

• For easier reference, please remember this
  periodization
• Old English (450 1150) the period of full
  inflections
• Middle English (1150 1500) the period of
  leveled inflections
• Modern English (1500 ) the period of lost
  inflections
• The progressive decay of inflections is only one
  of the developments that mark the evolution of
  English in its various stages.

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3-39 The dialects of Old English

• Old English was not an entirely uniform language.
• About 700 AD Northumbrian and Mercian (Angles),
  West Saxon, Kentish (Jutes).
• West Saxon is the only dialect in which there is
  an extensive collection of texts.
• Nearly all of Old English literature is preserved
  in manuscripts transcribed in this region.
• It attained something of the position of a
  literary standard.

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3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

• The English language has undergone such change in
  the course of time that one cannot read Old
  English without special study.
• The differences between OE and MnE concern
  spelling and pronunciation, the lexicon, and the
  grammar.

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3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

• The pronunciation of OE words commonly differs
  from that of their modern equivalents.
• The long vowels in particular have undergone
  considerable modification
• (stan stone hu how heafod - head).

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3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

• 2) The rarity of words derived from Latin and the
  absence of French loanwords (the vocabulary of OE
  is almost purely Germanic)
• About 85 of OE words are no longer in use
• However, 100 most common words in English are
  Anglo-Saxon the basic building-blocks of an
  English sentence, like 'the, is, you', etc.

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3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

• The native OE lexicon was of two types,
  Indo-European and Germanic.
• I-E the most essential vocabulary
• like numbers from 1 to 10,
• kinship terms,
• basic words like sun, water, to eat, head, tree,
  to run, etc.
• The Germanic element back, bone, folk, ground,
  sick, etc.

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3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

• The fundamental feature that distinguishes OE
  from MnE is its grammar.
• Old English was a synthetic language (a language
  that indicates the relation of words in a
  sentence largely by means of inflections)
• Modern English is analytic (languages that make
  extensive use of prepositions and depend upon
  word order to show other relationships).

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3-42 Grammatical gender

• Old English nouns had grammatical gender.
• There are three different sets of noun types
  also modifiers (e.g. demonstratives, adjectives)
  and replacing pronouns have different sets of
  forms for each of the sets of noun types
  --(masculine, feminine, and neuter)
• but there is not any absolute relation between
  these conventional labels for the word categories
  and the objects, persons, or animals that the
  nouns refer to.

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3-42 Grammatical gender

• Illogical for example, þæt wif (the woman),
  bearn (child, son), cild (child), mægden (girl)
  are neuter nouns.
• Stan (stone), mona (moon) is masculine
• sunne (sun) is feminine.
• (cf. Lithuanian and other inflected languages)

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3-43 OE adjective

• Adjectives are declined weak or strong depending
  on how they are used in a sentence.
• When the adjective follows a demonstrative or a
  possessive (like 'the wicked witch' or 'my wicked
  witch'), the adjective is weak
• when it stands alone (like 'the witch is wicked'
  or 'wicked witches'), the adjective is strong.

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3-44 The definite article se, seo, þæt

• Masc. Neuter Fem. Plural
• Nom se þæt seo þa
• Gen þæs þæs þære þara
• Dat þæm þæm þære þæm
• Acc þone þæt þa þa

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3-44 The definite article se, seo, þæt

• Like German, Old English possessed a fully
  inflected definite article (but no indefinite
  article! an one)
• se, seo, þæt the meaning is the, but the word
  is really a demonstrative pronoun and survives in
  the Modern English demonstrative that.

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3-46 Old English verbs

• Old English verbs are either strong or weak.
• The principal difference between strong and weak
  verbs lies in the formation of the preterite
  (past) tense.

42
Weak verbs

• Weak verbs form the preterite by adding a suffix
  (e.g. -ede, -ode, -de) to the root syllable of
  the verb.
• A Modern English example is laugh, which in past
  tense becomes laughed by adding a dental suffix,
  -ed.

43
Strong verbs

• In contrast, strong verbs are characterized by
  changing the vowel of the root syllable in the
  preterite.
• For example, in Modern English, sing becomes sang
  in the past tense, and its past participle is
  sung.
• In Old English, the change in vowels follows a
  fixed pattern according to the strong verb class.
  

44
The Lord's Prayer in Old English

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzoMpcrZgMK8

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The Lords prayer
46
THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH
(450-1150)

• Old English is the name
• for all the dialects spoken by Angles, Saxons and
  Jutes
• (ie, it was made up from local varieties, not a
  uniform language)

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THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH
(450-1150)

• Phonologically,
• the consonant system was similar to that of
  Present-Day English (PDE), but included
  phonemically long consonants, eg OE BED 'prayer'
  versus BEDD 'bed'
• it lacked / ? / and phonemically voiced
  fricatives /v, z, ž /
• length was also phonemic for vowels.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH
(450-1150)

• 2. Morphologically,
• OE was still a heavily inflected language,
• including four cases,
• three genders,
• two numbers,
• two tenses,
• three persons,
• and three moods.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH
(450-1150)

• 3. Syntactically,
• OE word order resembled that of PDE (present day
  English),
• but was freer and more varied.

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THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH
(450-1150)

• 4. Lexically,
• OE had a rich native vocabulary
• and extensive resources for forming new words
• loanwords comprised an insignificant part of the
  lexicon.

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BASIC TERMS

• analytic languages -- languages that make
  extensive use of prepositions and depend upon
  word order to show other relationships
• synthetic language -- a language that indicates
  the relation of words in a sentence largely by
  means of inflections
• phonemic difference -- denoting speech sounds
  that belong to different phonemes (e.g. ship
  sheep bin been)