The Origin of the English Language - Part IX

Early Modern English (1500-1800) 

and 

Modern English (1900-present)

 

HISTORICAL EVENTS:

• HENRY VIII (r. 1509-1547), establishment of Church of England; incorporation of Wales
• ELIZABETH I (r. 1558-1603), defeat of the Armada 1588, begins period of colonial expansion
• JAMES I (VI of Scotland) (r. 1603-1625), patron of King James Bible
• CIVIL WAR, 1642, royalists vs. parlamentarians, execution of Charles I (1625-1649)
• OLIVER CROMWELL, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth (1653-1658)
• RESTORATION, Charles II (1660-1685)
• ACT OF SETTLEMENT (1701), provision by Parliament for throne to be transferred to German house of Hanover in the event of absence of heirs from William III or Queen Anne--succession to go to Sophia, electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I, and her protestant heirs
• ACT OF UNION (1707), England and Scotland united to form Great Britain.
• GEORGE I (r. 1714-1727), greatgrandson of James I, could not speak English, begins Hanover (German) dynasty (five kings) which ended with Queen Victoria.
• GEORGE III (r. 1760-1820), independence of American colonies (1783); beginnings of industrial revolution; eventual insanity of king
• WAR WITH FRANCE (1789-1815), English against French Revolution and later against Napoleon I (Emperor of France, 1804-1814); English victories by Nelson at Trafalgar (1806) and finally by Wellington at Waterloo (1815), Napoleon's death (1821).
• IRELAND incorporated to England 1801
• QUEEN VICTORIA (r. 1837-1901), granddaughter of George III

PRINTING:

William Caxton, introduction of printing to England in 1474; fixing of spelling; literacy; translations of classics; loanwords from Latin and Greek.

RENAISSANCE:

interest in classical learning; many loanwords; attempts to improve English according to vocabulary, grammar, and style of classical languages (Greek and Latin).

REFORMATION:

Henry VIII's disputes with the Pope; Reformation; Church of England; Bible, translations into English, Authorized Version 1611 (King James Bible), effect on style.

ECONOMY:

wool production, large sheep pastures, migration to cities, urbanization, rise of middle class, upward mobility dilution of dialectal differences through population blending at urban centers middle class quest for "correct" laguage usage; production of authoritarian grammar handbooks; Industrial Revolution: more intensive urbanization, technical vocabulary based on Latin and Greek roots, decreased literacy due to child labor.

EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION:

defeat of Spanish Armada 1588, control of seas, acquisition of colonies throughout the world (Bermuda, Jamaica, Bahamas, Honduras, Canada, American colonies, India, Gambia, Gold Coast, Australia, New Zealand); many loanwords from languages of the colonies used to designate new and exotic products, plants, animals, etc., spread of English around the world.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION:

separation of English speakers, beginning of multiple national English varieties.

SCHOLARLY WRITING:

17th c. scholarly writing still mostly in Latin, (e.g. Newton, Francis Bacon); middle class embraced English as scholarly language during18th c.

LINGUISTIC ANXIETY:

perceived lexicon inadequacies, borrowing from Latin, deliberate attempts to improve the language; Sir Thomas Elyot, introduction of neologisms (e.g. consultation, fury, majesty)

critics of borrowings and neologisms called them "inkhorn terms" (Thomas Wilson, Roger Ascham, Sir John Cheke); John Cheke tried to translate the New Testament using only English words attempt to preserve "purity" of English, reviving older English words; archaizers like Edmund Spenser (1552-1599); compounding of English words: Arthur Golding (1587): "fleshstrings" (instead of the French borrowing "muscles"), "grosswitted" (instead of the French borrowing "stupid"); others tried to produce English technical vocabulary: threlike (equilateral triangle), likejamme (parallelogram), endsaysaywhat (definition), dry mock (irony). (conclusion),

LOANWORDS:

Greek and Latin technical vocabulary; continued borrowing from French (comrade, duel, ticket, volunteer), also Spanish (armada, bravado, desperado, peccadillo), Italian (cameo, cupola, piazza, portico).

PROPOSED SPELLING REFORMS:

John Cheke (1569): proposal for removal of all silent letters

Sir Thomas Smith (1568): proposal to make letters into "pictures" of speech; elimination of redundant letters like c and q; reintroduction of thorn (þ), use of theta [θ] for [ð]; vowel length marked with diacritical symbols like the macron (a horizontal bar on top of a vowel to indicate a long sound) similar proposals by John Hart (1570): proposals for use of diacritics to indicate sound length; elimination of y, w, c, capital letters William Bullokar (1580): proposed diacritics and new symbols, noted the desirability of having a dictionary and grammar to set standards; public spelling eventually became standardized (by mid 1700's), under influence of printers, scribes of Chancery.

DICTIONARIES: desire to refine, standardize, and fix the language.

• William Caxton, French-English vocabulary for travelers (1480)
• Richard Mulcaster's treatise on education,The Elementarie (1582), 8,000 English words but no definitions.
• Roger Williams's Key into the Languages of America (1643).
• first English dictionary, Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall (1604), 2,500 rare and borrowed words, intended for literate women who knew no Latin or French, and wanted to read the Bible; concern with correctness.
• John Bullokar's An English Expositor (1616), marked archaic words.
• Henry Cockeram's English Dictionarie (1623), including sections on refined and vulgar words and mythology.
• Thomas Blount's Glossographia (1656), 11,000 entries, cited sources and etymologies.
• John Kersey's A New English Dictionary (1702), first to include everyday words.
• Nathaniel Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (1721) and Dictionarium Britannicum (1730), 48,000 entries, first modern lexicographer, ordinary words, etymologies, cognate forms, stress placement.
• Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), 40,000 entries, based on Dictionarium Britannicum; illustrative quotations.
• Oxford English Dictionary (OED), dictionary on historical principles; followed model of Johnson's dictionary; origins in 1857 proposals at Philological Society in London; first installment published 1884; first full version 1928; second edition 1989, 290,500 main entries.

ENGLISH ACADEMY MOVEMENT:

17th-18th c., movement favoring the creation of an organization to act as language sentinel, keep English "pure"; following the model of the Académie Française (1635); proponents: scientist and philosopher Robert Hooke(1660); Daniel Defoe (1697); Joseph Addison (1711); Jonathan Swift (1712); Queen Anne supported the idea but died in 1714 and her successor George I was not interested in English; opposition from liberal Whigs who saw it as a conservative Tory scheme; Samuel Johnson's dictionary substituted for academy; John Adams proposed an American Academy.

GRAMMARS:

Age of Reason, logic, organization, classification; attempts to define and regulate grammar of language notion of language as divine in origin, search for universal grammar, Latin and Greek considered less deteriorated, inflections identified with better grammar 18th century attempts to define proper and improper usage; aspiring middle classes, desire to define and acquire "proper" linguistic behavior to distinguish themselves from lower classes 18th c. grammarians: attempts to provide rules and prevent further "decay" of language, to ascertain, to refine, to fix; usage as moral issue, attempt to exterminate inconvenient facts.

• Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) based on classical models
• Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence (1577), dictionary of rhetorical tropes
• William Bullokar's Bref Grammar (1586)
• Alexander Gil's Logonomia Anglica (1621), very tied to Latin
• Jeremiah Wharton's The English Grammar (1654), accepted lack of inflections
• Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), most prominent of 18th c. grammars; authoritarian, prescriptive, moralistic tone
• Joseph Priestley's The Rudiments of English Grammar (1761), more enlightened and liberal attitude towards language usage, awareness of change and conventionality of language features
• Noah Webster's Plain and Comprehensive Grammar (1784), American grammar, based on common usage but concerned with "misuse" by Irish and Scots immigrants

MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

Fossilization of spelling; spelling fixed in printed words by end of 17th c.

- addition of phonemic velar nasal ([ŋ], as in 'hu/ng/') due to loss of g in final positions;
- evidence from alternative spellings: tacklin/tackling, shilin/shilling;

- addition of phonemic voiced alveopalatal fricative [ž], as in 'mea/s/ure'], the result of a phenomenon known as assibilation (see below);

- general loss of r before consonants or in final position; also regular loss of r in unstressed positions or after back vowels in stressed positions: quarter, brother, March

development of palatal semivowel [y] in medial positions (after the major stress and before unstressed vowel: tenner/tenure, pecular/peculiar; when [y] followed s, z, t, d, the sounds merged to produce a palatal fricative or affricate: pressure, seizure, creature, soldier (this phenomenon is known as assibilation and is the origin of voiced alveopalatal fricative [ž]); dialectal exceptions and reversals: graduate, immediately, Injun/Indian.

Spelling pronunciations:

French loans spelling [t] as "th" led to [θ] pronunciation in English, e.g. anthem, throne, author, Anthony, Thames

French and Latin words with unpronounced initial "h" led to English words with pronounced initial h: habit, hectic, history, horror (exceptions: hour, honor) (compare heir/heritage)

respellings under Latin influence: influence of Latin words led to introduction of "l" into loans from French: Latin fallita, OF faute, EMnE fault; other consonants also introduced in pronunciation in the same manner a/d/venture, perfe/c/t, bapti/s/m (ME aventure, perfit, bapteme); some exceptions featuring resistance to the pronunciation of the unhistorical p or b: receipt, debt, doubt (Latin receptus, debitus, dubitare).

Great Vowel Shift (GVS): Middle English (ME) long vowels came to be pronounced in higher positions, the highest were diphthongized. GVS examples:

ME leef [lɛf] > Modern English leaf [lif]

ME grete [grɛtə ] > Modern English great [gret]

Early Modern English tea [te] > Modern English tea [ti]

ME bite [bitə] > Modern English bite [bait]

ME hous [hus] > Modern English house [haus]

Extensive use of contractions.
Early Modern English preferred proclitic contractions ('tis), while Modern English prefers enclitic contractions (it's).

- abandonment of yogh in writing;

- common nouns often capitalized;

- comma replaced the virgule (/) as punctuation for a pause;

- apostrophe used in contractions;

- 2nd person singular pronouns (þu and thou) disappeared in 17th c; the plural forms (ye/you) prevailed for both singular and plural.

Pronouns: most heavily inflected word class; development of separate possessive adjectives and pronouns (my/mine, etc).

Verbs:-s and -th were 3rd person singular present indicative endings (e.g.does/doth)

interjections: excuse me, please (if it please you), hollo, hay, what; God's name used in euphemistic distortions: sblood, zounds, egad. Full-fledged perfect tense, be as auxiliary for verbs of motion (he is happily arrived); increasing use of have as auxiliary; periphrastic use of do (I do weep, doth heavier grow); do as auxiliary in questions and negatives (why do you look on me?); phrasal quasi-modals: be going to, have to, be about to; some continued use of impersonal constructions (it likes me not, this fears me, methinks) 

syntax of sentences: influence of Latin, "elegant English," long sentences featuring subordination, parallelism, balanced clauses; bus also native tradition, parataxis, use of coordinators (but, and, for).

Semantics:

narrowing was the most common, ('deer' formerly had meant 'animal')

generalization ('twist' formerly meant twig or branch)

amelioration ('jolly' had meant arrogant)

pejoration ('lust' had meant pleasure, delight)

strengthening ('appalled' had meant only pale or weak)

weakening ('spill' had meant destroy, kill)

shift of stylistic level (stuff, heap, lowered in stylistic level)

shift in denotation ('blush' had meant look or gaze)

Fixing of written language obscured dialectal differences; information about dialects from personal letters, diaries, etc; e.g. New England dialect features observable in spellings like 'Edwad', 'octobe', 'fofeitures', 'par', 'warran', 'lan'.

The Origin of the English Language - Part VIII

The Middle English Period

(1066-1500)

1066-1204 Decline of English

• French (Norman) invasion (1066), William, Duke of Normandy's conquest and unification of England, crowned king of England as William I, the Conqueror (r. 1066-1087); Normans were descendants of Danes living in northern France and spoke a French influenced by Scandinavian; death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles

• French became the dominant language in England, spoken by the upper classes from 1066 until late in the 14th century. English language was relegated to the lower classes and was heavily influenced by French in matters of vocabulary, prosody, and spelling

• Frenchmen in all high offices; kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France; French-speaking court; imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land

• Henry II (House of Plantagenet, Angevine) (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine; Henry II and Eleanor were the parents of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland

• lack of prestige of English; French was the language of the court; Latin was the written language of the Church and secular documents; Scandinavian still spoken in the Danelaw; Celtic languages prevailed in Wales and Scotland

• development of bilingualism among Norman officials, supervisors; some marriages of French and English; some bilingual children

• examples of words of French origin: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity

• very little written English from this period; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued to be written until 1154.

1204-1348 Rise of English

• King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216); loss of Normandy in 1204; beginnings of the political and cultural separation between England and France

• many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect

• Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions

• eventual decline of French cultural dominance in England

• rise in use of English, smoothing out of dialectal differences, beginning of standard English based on London dialect; crusades and pilgrimages contributed to increase in communication and formation of common language. 

1348-1509 Dominance of English

• French remained official language of England until second half of 14th c.; by mid to late 14th c. English was normal medium of instruction; in 1362 English became official language of legal proceedings; everyone in England spoke English by end of 14th c., displacing French, Norse, and Celtic languages

• increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c.

• emergence of London/East Midland dialect as standard spoken and written language; dominance of London as commercial center, seaport, proximity to Westminster court

• Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377); his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453); eventual French victory; England lost all of its continental holdings; English hostility to French language and culture

• Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes

• War of the Roses (1455-1485), House of York (white rose) vs. House of Lancaster (red rose)

• printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy

• Henry VII (House of Lancaster) (r. 1485-1509) marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII, and begins Tudor dynasty

• 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII; end of Middle English Period, beginning of English Renaissance and Early Modern English Period.

Middle English

• French influence

• Scandinavian influence

• loss of inflections

• less free in word order

• loss of grammatical gender

• more phonetic spelling

• final -e pronounced, as well as all consonants

• resurrection of English in 13th and 14th c.

• dialects: Northern, Midland, Southern, Kentish

• dominance of London dialect (East Midland) 

Middle English Subperiods

1066-1204 Decline of English

• Norman invasion (1066), French conquest and unification of England; Norman = North-man, descendants of Danes, spoke French influenced by Germanic dialect

• William in full control of England within ten years

• death of many Anglo-Saxon nobles

• end of internal conflicts and Viking invasions; control of the Welsh

• Frenchmen in all high offices

• Anglo Saxon Chronicle written until 1154

• imposition of feudal system, vassalage, peasants bound to the land

• increase in dialectal differences

• kings of England spoke French, took French wives and lived mostly in France, French-speaking court

• Henry II Plantagenet (r. 1154-1189), married to Eleanor of Aquitaine, father of Richard I, the Lionheart (r. 1189-1199) and John Lackland

• assassination of Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket in 1170

• lack of prestige of English; Latin was written language of the Church and secular documents; Scandinavian still spoken in the Danelaw, Celtic languages prevailed in Wales and Scotland

• development of bilingualism among Norman officials, supervisors, some marriages of French and English, bilingual children

• examples of French words: tax, estate, trouble, duty, pay, table, boil, serve, roast, dine, religion, savior; pray, trinity

• very little written English from this period.

1204-1348 Rise of English

• King John (John Lackland) (r. 1199-1216), loss of Normandy in 1204

• many Norman landholders chose to stay in England, spoke Anglo-French dialect

• barons revolt against John, Magna Carta (1215), origins and development of Parliament

• Henry III (r. 1216-1272), son of John; francophilia of Henry III, many Frenchmen given official positions

• Edward I (r. 1272-1307), son of Henry III, conquered Wales and waged war with Scotland

• decline of French cultural dominance in England

• rise in use of English, smoothing out of dialectal differences, beginning of standard English based on London dialect; crusades, pilgrimages contributed to increase in communication and formation of common language. 

1348-1509 Dominance of English

• French remained official language of England until second half of 14th c.; by mid to late 14th c. English was normal medium of instruction; in 1362 English became official language of legal proceedings, everyone in England spoke English by end of 14th c., displacing of French, Norse, and Celtic languages

• persistence of dialectal differences, increase in English writing, more common in legal documents than French or Latin by 15th c.

• emergence of London/East Midland dialect as standard spoken and written language, compromise dialect, London as commercial center, seaport, proximity to Westminster court

• printers' activity (William Caxton 1474), increased literacy

• Edward III (Windsor) (r. 1327-1377), his claim to French throne led to Hundred Years' War (1337-1453), English victories at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), role of Joan of Arc (1429), eventual French victory, loss of all English continental holdings, French no longer significant to the English

• Black Death 1348-1351, death of one third of English population, social chaos, labor shortages, emancipation of peasants, wage increases, rise in prestige of English as language of working classes

• Richard II (1377-1399) (grandson of Edward III), John of Gaunt (1340-1399) (son of Edward III), Richard II deposed by Henry IV (Bolingbroke)

• War of the Roses (1455-1485), York vs. Lancaster, Richard Duke of York vs. Henry VI

• Henry VI executed 1471

• Edward II's brother Richard III (1483-85) killed by Lancastrian Henry VII (Tudor), Henry marries Elizabeth of York (daughter of Edward IV), fathers Henry VIII;

• 1509 begins reign of Henry VIII, end of Middle English period

Middle English Phonology

Not much English writing during 1100-1200 period; match between sound and spelling worsened; influence of French scribes, confusion in spelling system; new standard English not a direct descendant of West Saxon.

Consonants

• consonant inventory much like that of Present Day English except for sounds in hu/ng/ (velar nasal) and mea/s/ure (alveo-palatal voiced fricative)

• addition of phonemic voiced fricatives: v, , z; effect of French loanwords: vetch/fetch, view/few, vile/file

• voiceless fricative /h/ had velar (ME thurh) and alveo-palatal (ME niht) allophones

• loss of long consonants (OE mann )

• h lost in clusters, OE hlæfdige>ME ladi, OE hnecca>ME necke, OE hræfn>ME raven

• voiced velar fricative allophone of g (normally a voiced velar stop in OE) became w after l and r: OE swelgan>ME swolwen, OE feolaga>ME felawe, OE morgen>ME morwen, OE sorg>ME sorow

• OE prefix ge- lost initial consonant and was reduced to y or i: OE genog>ME inough, OE genumen>ME inomen

• unstressed final consonants tended to be lost after a vowel: OE ic>ME i, OE -lic>ME ly

• final -n in many verbal forms (infinitive, plural subjunctive, plural preterite) was lost (remains in some past participles of strong verbs: seen, gone, taken); final -n also lost in possessive adjectives my and thy and indefinite article 'an' before words beginning with consonant (-n remained in the possessive pronouns)

• w dropped after s or t: OE sweostor> sister, OE swilc>such (sometimes retained in spelling: sword, two; sometimes still pronounced: swallow, twin, swim)

• l was lost in the vicinity of palatal c in adjectival pronouns OE ælc, swilc, hwilc, micel> each, such, which, much (sometimes remained: filch, milch)

• fricative v tended to drop out before consonant+consonant or vowel+consonant: OE hlaford, hlæfdige, heafod, hæfde>ME lord, ladi, hed, hadde (sometimes retained: OE heofon, hræfn, dreflian>heaven, raven, drivel)

• final b lost after m but retained in spelling: lamb, comb, climb (remained in medial position: timber, amble); intrusive b after m and before consonant: OE bremel, næmel, æmerge>ME bremble, nimble, ember (also OE puma>ME thombe)

• intrusive d after n in final position or before resonant: OE dwinan, punor > ME dwindle, thunder

• intrusive t after s in final position or before resonant: OE hlysnan, behæs > ME listnen, beheste

• initial stops in clusters gn- and kn- still pronounced: ME gnat, gnawen, knowen, knave

• h often lost in unstressed positions: OE hit>ME it

Vowels

Loss of OE y and æ: y unrounded to i; æ raised toward e or lowered toward a

all OE diphthongs became pure vowels

addition of schwa; schwa in unstressed syllables, reduction of all unstressed vowels to schwa or i as in K/i/d, reason for ultimate loss of most inflections; a source of schwa was epenthetic or parasitic vowel between two consonants, generally spelled e (OE setl, æfre, swefn> ME setel, ever, sweven)

French loanwords added several new diphthongs (e.g. OF point, bouillir, noyse > ME point, boille, noise) and contributed to vowel lengthening; diphthongs resulted from vocalization of w, y, and v between vowels;

Lenghtening and shortening:

• phonemic vowel length in ME (lost in Modern English)

• already in OE short vowels tended to lengthen before certain consonant clusters OE climban, feld> ME climbe, feld

• lengthening of short vowels in open syllables (OE gatu, hopa > ME gate, hope)

• shortening of long vowels in stressed closed syllables, OE softe, godsibb, sceaphirde> ME softe, godsib, scepherde, exceptions (before -st): OE last, gast, crist>ME last, gost, Christ; if two or more unstressed syllables followed the stressed one, the vowel of the stressed syllable was shortened (Christ/Christmas [ME Christesmesse], break/breakfast [ME brekefast]); some remnants of distinctions caused by lengthening or shortening in open and closed syllables: five/fifteen, wise/wisdom; in weak verbs, the dental ending closed syllables: hide/hid, keep/kept, sleep/slept, hear/heard

loss of unstressed vowels: unstressed final -e was gradually dropped, though it was probably often pronounced; -e of inflectional endings also being lost, even when followed by consonant (as in -es, eth, ed) (e.g. breath/breathed), exceptions: wishes, judges, wanted, raided; loss of -e in adverbs made them identical to adjective, hence ambiguity of plain adverbs e.g. hard, fast; final -e in French loanwords not lost because of French final stress, hence cite>city, purete>purity

Middle English Prosody

 Stress on root syllables, less stress on subsequent syllables; loss of endings led to reduction in number of unstressed syllables, increased use of unstressed particles such as definite and indefinite articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, analytic possessive (of), marked infinitive (to), compound verb phrases; OE trochaic rhythm shift to iambic rhythm of unstressed syllables followed by stressed ones (caused by increase in use of unstressed particles and by French loans)

Middle English Graphics

- 26 letters, ash and eth dropped, thorn and yogh retained; French loans j and v treated as allographs of i and u; v reserved for initial position; interchangeable y and i;

- Yogh: velar fricative /x/ (po/h/t), semivowel /j/ (/y/ung), alveopalatal voiced affricate /j/ (brid/g/e), also used as z (daiz)

q and z more widely used under French influence, qu for /kw/ OE cwic, cwen> ME quicke, quene.

- Tendency for use of digraph th instead of thorn, thorn retained in function words, that, thou, then; confusion of y and thorn, hence ye olde coffee shoppe

poor match of sound and symbol caused by OE > ME sound changes, French influence, new spelling conventions, dialectal differences:

o for u (come, love, son, won, tongue, some), way to avoid confusion caused by use of minims (vertical strokes)

c for s, influence of French loans like cellar, place affected spelling of native words like lice, mice

c for /k/, before i/e, n (OE cene, cyssan, cneow> keen, kiss, knee), cf. cat, cool, cut, clean.

- Increased use of digraphs: th for thorn/eth sounds, ou/ow for long u (hour, round); doubling of vowels to indicate length (beet, boot); sh for alveopalatal fricative s (OE scamu> shame); ch for alveopalatal affricate c (OE ceap, cinn> ME cheap, chin); dg for alveopalatal affricate j (OE bricg>ME bridge), (but j in initial position according to French convention, ME just); gh for velar fricative (OE poht, riht> ME thought, right; wh for w (voiceless aspirated bilabial fricative), OE hwæt, hwil, order of letters reversed in ME, what, while; gu for g, in French loans, guard, guile, guide, OE gylt>guilt.

- Punctuation: point, virgule indicated syntactic break; punctus elevatus, somewhat like comma; question mark; hyphen for word division at end of line; paragraph markers

handwriting: insular hand replaced by Carolingian minuscule in cursive and gothic styles.

The Origin of the English Language - Part VII

Old English

Language Samples (Old, Middle, and Modern English):

 

Old English 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.

(Here the Viking army traveled 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).

Phonology

Old English consonants: [p]: pat, [b]: bat, [t]: time, [d]: dime, [k]: came, [g]: game, [tʃ]: chump, [dʒ]: jump, [f]: fat, [θ]: thigh [s]: sap, [š]: glacier, [ʃ]: mesher, [h]: ham, [m]: man, [n]: nun, [l]: lamp, [r]: ramp, [w]: world, [y]: yore/you.

The sounds [š], [tʃ], [dʒ] were Old English innovations (derived from Common Germanic [sk], [k], [gg]. Also [y] began to be used in contexts where [g] had appeared in Germanic. Examples:

• claene ("clean"), crypel ("cripple"), corn ("corn"), cyning ("king") ([k], before a consonant or back vowel) (original Germanic sound)
• ceap ("cheap"), cild ("child"), dic ("ditch") ([c], next to a front vowel) (new sound derived from Germanic [k])
• fisc ("fish"), wascan ("wash"), scearp("sharp") ([s] in all environments) (new sound derived from Germanic [sk])
• graes ("grass"), god ("god"), gyltig ("guilty") ( [g] before consonants and back vowels) (original Germanic sound)
• brycg ("bridge"), secg ("sedge"), mycg ("midge") ( [j] from Germanic [gg]; in medial or final position) (new sound)
• gear ("year"), giet ("yet"), gellan ("yell") (semivowel [y] before or between front vowels)

no phonemic voiced fricatives in Old English ([v], [ð], [z], [ž])

OE [h] always distinctly pronounced Examples:

·  hraefn ("raven"), hand ("hand"), sihþ ("vision," "sight"), eahta ("eight"), heah ("high"), þurh ("through")

OE had distinctly pronounced consonant clusters (/hr/, /hl/, /hn/, /hw/, /kn/, /gn/) (lost in modern English pronounciation). Examples: hlaford ("lord"); hlaefdige ("lady"); hraefn, ("raven"); hlud ("loud"); sometimes still spelled in modern English (not pronounced): what, whale, whistle, knee, gnat)

Old English Vowels 

a, e, i, o, u had sounds equivalent to those of the vowels in modern Spanish, Italian, German (essentially [a], [ɛ], [i], [ə­­], [u], also [æ]. The [ə] likely existed as an allophone of other vowel sounds but was not phonemic in Old English. Vowel length was phonemic, e.g. Old English god (with a short "o") meant "god" whereas god (with a long "o") meant "good" (notice how the double "o" in modern spelling is a graphic trace of the long sound in Old and Middle English)

Some phonological changes from Common Germanic to Old English:

• Front mutation (also called i-umlaut,or i-mutation): if stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllable containing [i] or [y], the vowel in the stressed syllable was fronted or raised:
• e.g. Gothic (a Germanic language): doms ("judgment," "doom") domjan ("to judge"), Old English: dom, deman, Modern English: doom, deem
• Germanic plural endings with i resulted in Old English fot, fet, Modern English foot, feet; other examples: 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

Prosody

root syllable took major stress e.g. mórgen ("morning"; compounds stressed on first element e.g. hwáelweg ("whale-way" "ocean")

Graphics

At the beginning of Christian era, the alphabet employed by the Germanic peoples was the Futhorc or Runic alphabet; the sixth-century Christianization of England led to adoption of Latin/Roman alphabet; handwriting in early Old English manuscripts was influenced by Irish scribes and is known as Insular hand.

Special characters in Old English writing:

·  thorn: þ (th), derived from the runic alphabet, example: þæt ("that")

·  eth: ð (voiced th), example: ðeoden ("prince")

·  ash: æ (a+e, pronounced like the "a" in "mat"), the name "ash" is derived from the name of a letter in the runic alphabet but the runic character is different; example: ælf ("elf")

·  wen/wynn: p (w), example; p æpen ("weapon")

·  ɜ was the Old English graphic sign for "g"

Punctuation: raised point to indicate pause; semicolon and inverted semicolon (punctus elevatus) also indicated pause; no capitals/lowercase distinctions.

Morphology

Loss of inflections: reduction of vowels in unstressed inflectional endings, need for syntactical support (word order) and prepositions.

Nouns

Old English nouns had grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), singular and plural number, and were also classified as "strong" or "weak" according to the distinctness of their inflectional endings (some other classifications involve the stems that the nouns carried in Germanic and whether the noun was affected by front mutation). All of these classifications called for specific inflectional endings in each of the cases used in Old English: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative

Example, bat ("boat") (a masculine, strong a-stem noun):

Singular

Nominative: bat
Accusative: bat
Genitive: bates
Dative: bate

Plural

Nominative: batas
Accusative: batas
Genitive: bata
Dative: batum

Sample sentence:

se bat seglode fif dagas ("the boat sailed for five days")

bates segl is lytel ("the boat's sail is small [little]")

fif batas seglodon ofer brim ("five boats sailed over the sea")

seglas bata sind lytele ("the sails of the boats are small")

Adjectives

A given adjective could be inflected in either of two ways: 1) weak (when accompanied by a demonstrative, numeral, or possessive pronoun), or 2) strong (when it was accompanied by no supporting words). An adjective had to agree with its noun in gender, number, and case. Some adjectives had instrumental case forms (in addition to nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative). Examples:

wiga stag readne bat ("the warrior boarded the red boat") (notice the accusative case, masculine gender, and strong form of "readne" which agree with the same features of "bat")

Weak forms: seo blinde mus ("the blind mouse"), þreo blindan mys ("three blind mice") (note: the word "mus" is feminine)

Strong forms: blind mus ("blind mouse"), blinda mys ("blind mice")

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns had first, second and third person forms; singular, dual, and plural numbers; and were declined according to the standard cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative). In the nominative case, the Old English forms are:

ic ("I"), þu ("you" singular), he ("he"), heo ("she"), hit ("it"), we ("we"), ge ("you" plural), hie ("they")

example: ic lufie þe ("I love you") (notice the accusative case of "þe").

Demonstrative pronouns/adjectives
Demonstrative pronouns are forms like se ("that," "the") and þes (" this"). They were inflected according to gender, number, and case and had some instrumental forms.Demonstratives had to agree with their referents and with any nouns or other adjectives when used adjectivally. The basic nominative forms are:

"that": se (masculine singular), þaet (neuter singular), seo (feminine singular), þa (plural)

"this": þes (masculine singular) , þis (neuter singular), þeos (feminine singular), þas (plural)

example: þeos wif is faegere ("this woman is beautiful [fair]")

Interrogative pronouns
Forms like hwa ("who") and hwaet ("what") were inflected according to gender and case.

example: hwa eart þu ("who are you?")

Other pronouns
Forms like þe (used as a relative pronoun, "the one that"), indefinite pronouns: aelc ("each"), hwilc ("which"), aenig ("any", eall ("all"), nan ("none"), swilc ("such"), sum ("some"), man ("one")

Verbs

The infinitive forms of verbs often end in the suffix -an (example, faran "to travel"); verbs are inflected for tense, person, number, and mood; two tenses: present and preterite; classified into strong and weak according to how they formed their past tenses:

strong verbs: divided into seven classes; characterized by ablaut system; strong verbs are generally identified by their four principal parts (notice the verb in the example below, singan ("to sing") is a strong verb of class 3 characterized by the vowel changes i-a-u-u in the four principal parts):

infinitive: singan ("to sing")

past singular: sang ("[she] sang")

past plural: sungon ("[they] sang")

past participle: gesungen ("sung")

sentence example: þaet leoð waes gesungen ("the song was sung")

weak verbs: a Germanic innovation, also called "dental preterite" verbs, formed their past tense by means of a dental suffix [d], led to regular verbs in Modern English, example: seglan ("to sail"), seglode ("sailed")

Other verbs:

• irregular, beon/wesan ("be"), don ("do"), willan ("will"), gan ("go")
• So called preterite-present verbs (because their present tense forms used to be past tenses in earlier stages of the language) (examples: sculan, cunnan, magan, agan, dearr, durfan), ancestors of Present Day English modal auxiliaries (shall, can, may, ought, dare, must)
• magan ("be able"), mæg ("may"), meahte ("might")
• sculan ("be obliged"), sceal ("shall"), sceolde ("should")

Uninflected words

Prepositions (the preposition itself is not inflected by the words it governs must be inflected according to the case required by each specific preposition): 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")

example: heo seglode ofer brim ("she sailed over the sea") ("brim" in this case is in the accusative because the preposition "ofer" requires it)

Conjunctions: and ("and"), ac ("but"), gif ("if") , þeah ("although"), forþæm ("because")

adverbs: adverbs often formed by adding -e or -lice to an adjective, e.g. adjective riht (right"), derived adverbs: rihte, rihtlice ("rightly")

interjections: la ("lo!", eala ("alas!"), hwæt ("what!" "ah!" "behold!")

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 by means of simple conjunctions like and ("and"), ac("but"), þa ("then"); also some subordination (hypotaxis) using 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 with numerals (twentig geara, "twenty of years")

Lexicon

Basic words inherited from Indo-European or Germanic, such as 1-10 numerals (an, twegen, þrie, feower, fif, syx, seofon, eahta, nigon, tyn), kinship terms (modor, faeder); some words found only in Germanic/West Germanic languages (not present in other Indo-European 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")

Major 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")

Formation of new words:

• 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")
• abstract nouns constructed with suffixes like -nes, -ung, -dom, -scipe, 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")
• agent nouns constructed with with suffixes like -ere, -end, -a, -bora; examples: ridan ("to ride"), ridere ("rider"); beran ("to carry," "to bear," "to support"), berend ("carrier"); wig ("battle"), wiga ("warrior"); mund ("trust, "protection"), mundbora ("protector")
• adjective suffixes: -ig, -lic, -ful, -leas, -ed, -isc, -sum, etc.; examples: freond ("friend"), freondlic ("friendly"), freondleas ("friendless"); miht ("might," "power," "strength"), mihtig ("mighty," "powerful"); (cf. speedy, manly, bountiful, mindless, bow-legged, childish, handsome)
• other prefixes often used: un-, in-, ofer-, æfter-, fore-, mis-, under-, etc. examples: unraed ("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

Semantics

Many terms for kinship; ego and nuclear family oriented culture; little distinction beyond immediate family circle; no separate terms for marriage relationship; distinction between paternal and maternal relatives; special emphasis given to the relationship between maternal uncle and nephew uncommon reference to color (e.g. readnes "redness") but frenquent reference to light (leoht), brightness (beorhtnes), darkness (heolstor, genip, sceadu), shine (scinan)

samples of semantic change:

• generalization: OE gesund (healthy), Modern English "sound"
• narrowing: OE wæd (garment), Modern English "weed" (mourning clothes)
• amelioration (improvement of meaning): OE prættig (tricky, sly), Modern English "pretty"
• pejoration (worsening of meaning): OE sælig (happy), Modern English "silly"
• shift in denotation: OE dwellan (to deceive), Modern English "dwell"

Dialects

Old English had several dialects spoken in the various regions of the land: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon, Kentish; northern dialects lost inflectional endings earlier than those of the south; heavier use of diphthongs and extensive palatalization of velar consonants in West Saxon areas.

Literature

Literacy among the clergy; use of vellum/parchment for manuscripts; hand copying; command of Latin, English and Irish/Gaelic by the literate; anonymity of texts; religious and didactic literature, translations from Latin works and the Bible, sermons, lives of saints; compilation of historical annals know as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle beginning in the days of Alfred the Great (late 9th century); heroic poetry, e.g. Beowulf (likely early 11th century); elegies (mournful poems lamenting the passing away of life, wealth, and glory): The Wanderer, The Seafarer (late 10th century) earliest literary works: Widsith (a short narrative poem telling of the travels of a poet named Widsith) and "Caedmon's Hymn" (a short religious lyric telling of the creation of the world) (both of the 7th century).

Some distinguished authors and thinkers: the Venerable Bede (8th century), Cynewulf (9th century), Aelfric and Wulfstan (late 10th-early 11th century).

Old English verse characterized by four-stress alliterative line with mid-line pause (caesura); formulaic style; interlacing of motifs; recurring images (eagle, wolf, ice, snow); use of apposition (parallel variations on a phrase or motif); use of kennings or poetic compounds, e.g. hwaelweg ("whale-way" " ocean").