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").