Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable. 1994. A

history of the English language. 4th edition. London: Routledge.

Ch 3. OLD ENGLISH

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.

An Image of a Celt

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.

White Cliffs of Dover

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.

Hadrian’s wall (1)The Romans never

penetrated far into the mountains of Wales and Scotland;

Hadrian’s Wall – the district south of this line was under Roman rule for more than 300 years

Hadrian’s wall (2)

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;

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the Roman legions were withdrawn after the collapse of the Roman Empire

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.

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.

Anglo-Saxon Invasions

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.

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”)

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)

The Heptarchy

King Alfred’s (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 (Alfred’s kingdom)• Sponsored Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: diary-like

history of England

Types of texts generated during and after Alfred’s reign

• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Poetry: Beowulf, The Wanderer, The

Seafarer• Riddles• Wills, charters, legal documents

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)

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.

3-37 The origin and position of EnglishThus it shares certain characteristics common

to all the Germanic languages.• The shifting of certain consonants (Grimm’s

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

inflectionsThe progressive decay of inflections is only one of the developments that mark the evolution of English in its

various stages.

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.

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.

3-40 Some characteristics of Old English

1) The pronunciation of OE words commonly differs from that of their modern equivalents.

– The long vowels in particular have undergone considerable modification

– (stān – stone; hū – how; hēafod - head).

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.

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.

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).

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.

3-42 Grammatical gender• Illogical: for example, þæt wif (the

woman), bearn (child, son), cild (child), mægden (girl) are neuter nouns. • Stān (stone), mōna (moon) is masculine; • sunne (sun) is feminine.• (cf. Lithuanian and other inflected

languages)

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.

3-44 The definite article sē, sēo, þæt

Masc. Neuter Fem. Plural

Nom sē þæt sēo þā Gen þæs þæs þære þāra Dat þæm þæm þære þæmAcc þone þæt þā þā

3-44 The definite article sē, sēo, þæt

• Like German, Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article (but no indefinite article!; ān = one)• sē, sēo, þæt – the meaning is ‘the’,

but the word is really a demonstrative pronoun and survives in the Modern English demonstrative that.

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.

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.

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.

The Lord's Prayer in Old English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMpcrZgMK8

The Lord’s prayer

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)

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

1. 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 / η / and phonemically voiced fricatives /v, z, ž /;

- length was also phonemic for vowels.

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.

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.

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.

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)