Theme: Peculiarities of Old English period

Theme: Peculiarities of Old English period

OUTLINE

• • Historical background
• • The beginning of Old English
• • The end of Old English
• • Old English dialects
• • Old English verbs

‘Anglo-Saxon’ was one of a number of alternative names formerly used for this period in the language’s history. On the history of the terms see Old English n. and adj., Anglo-Saxon n. and adj., English adj. (and adv.) and n., and also Middle English n. and adj.

Historical background

• -Before the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, population of Britain spoke Celtic
• -In Roman Britain, Latin had been in extensive use as the language of government and the military
• -The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, was an event of huge cultural importance
• -writing extensive texts in the Roman alphabet on parchment

The beginning of Old English …

• -‘Old English’: these are Latin-English glossaries from around the year 700.
• -Old English was already very distinct from its Germanic sister languages
• Some Latin-English glosses from one of our earliest sources (the Épinal Glossary):
• • anser goos (i.e. ‘goose’)
• • lepus, leporis hara (i.e. ‘hare’)
• • nimbus storm (i.e. ‘storm’)
• • olor suan (i.e. ‘swan’)

The end of Old English

• -The conventional dividing date of approximately 1150 between Old English and Middle English reflects the period when these changes in grammar and vocabulary begin to become noticeable in most of the surviving texts
• -‘transitional English’
• -borrowings from French and (especially in northern and eastern texts) from early Scandinavian become more frequent

Old English dialects

• The surviving Old English documents are traditionally attributed:

• in the north

• in the midland territories of Mercia

• in the south-west

• in the south-east

Kentish
West Saxon
Northumbrian
Mercian

Old English verbs

• The strong verbs realize differences of tense by variation in the stem vowel. They are assigned to seven main classes, according to the vowel variation shown. Thus RIDE v., a Class I strong verb, shows the following vowel gradation in its “principal parts”, from which all of its other inflections can be inferred:
• • infinitive: rīdan
• • past tense singular: rād
• • past tense plural: ridon
• • past participle: (ge)riden
• Similarly, the Class III strong verb BIND v. shows the following principal parts:
• • infinitive: bindan
• • past tense singular: band (or bond)
• • past tense plural: bundon
• • past participle: (ge)bunden

REFERENCES

• • Richard Hogg, An Introduction to Old English (2002)
• • Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English (7th edn., 2006)
• • Roger Lass, Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion (1994)
• • Richard Hogg ed., The Cambridge History of the English Language vol. i: The Beginnings to 1066 (1992)
• • Philip Durkin, The Oxford Guide to Etymology (2009)
• - http://public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-time/old-english-an-overview/

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