ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
IF IT’S NOT MENTIONED IN CLASS BUT IT IS IN THE BOOK, DON’T LEARN IT
BRING STUDENT ID
50 QUESTIONS
32/50 TO PASS
LES 1
OLD ENGLISH
Old English Anglo Saxon
Continuity Differences
Language > Culture >
Periodisation
Social/ Political Linguistic
Start: 449 Start: 400 – 500
Anglo Saxon invasion Development continental -> insular
End: 1066 End: 1100 – 1150
Norman invasion Developments in phonology &
syntax
Sources
1) “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”
Old English (south) 9th century
8 versions => different dialects
Describes past/ current events (“newspaper”)
2) Bede’s“Ecclesiastical History of the English People/ Nation”
Latin, 8th century
History of Christianity
Celts
First documented ppl living in Britain
Celtic language (Welsh, Cornish,…) ≠ Germanic
Only one that ~ survived
Hadrian’s Wall: built to protect Britain from the Picts
-> lived in now-Scotland
Romans invaded Britain
“The Parker Chronicle” (part of source 1)
About the invasion
Official language = Latin
Left 3 centuries later -> no more army in Britain (they begged them to come back)
1
,Peterborough Chronicle (part of Anglo-Saxon Chr)
443: Britons ask Romans to come back
Asked the Angles for help
Angles called the Britons cowards & said the land was
very fertile
-> Angles send more ppl over (Saxons, Angles & Jutes)
They started demanding more supplies & threatened to
ravage the island
Britons:
Butchered
Enslaved
Fled
Little influence of indigenous language on Old English
Influences:
- Geographical names
- Geographical features
Language of Angles & Saxons = base Old English
King Alfred -> Christian texts accesible (translations)
1. Latin influence
6th century: missionaries
Beginning literary era
Monasteries: translate & copy texts (a lot of texts were recovered from this time
because of that, also use of dialect in those texts)
Influence
Early: contact & trade
Later: conversion to Christianity
Vikings
Truce: Treaty of Wedmore (880)
Vikings have their own area – Danelaw
10th century: 1 King of England, Denmark & Norway
2. Scandinavian influence
Lexical influence
- Basic vocabulary
→ words with ‘sk’ (skirt, sky, whisk)
- Place names
→ -by, -thorp,
2
, - Patronyms
→ - son (Johnson) → -ing (Golding) = really British
Grammatical influence
Personal pronouns
→ they, them, their
- Plural form ‘to be’
→ are
- Verb conjugations
→ 3rd p sing present: -s
Old English Dialects
No standard language
1. Mercian
2. Northumbrian (source 2)
3. Kentish
4. West - Saxon (source 1)
Runic alphabet
↳ “run” = ‘sharing of knowledge”
Population mainly illiterate
Few texts survived
- inscriptions on weapons, rings,…
- carved inscriptions
The Francs Casket
Whale bone box 7-8th century
Pagan & Christian scenes
Old English riddle
Runic symbols
Les 2
Ruthwell Cross
Scotland, 8th century, Northumbrian
Life of Christ
Runic inscriptions: part of a poem “The Dream of the Rood”
Narrator = the cross itself
A lot of Anglo-Saxon artefacts were found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial
-> burry a ship as a
grave
–they don’t have language so not useful
Runic -> Roman alphabet
Institutionalisation of Christianity
3
, - Some sounds not present in Roman alphabet
-> Borrowed from runes
- No punctuation marker
- No capital letters (used differently)
- Abbreviations
and = 7
that =
Pronouncing Old English
You mostly say what you read
Many consonant clusters (kn, gn)
Lexicon
Similarities
- Some words close to present-day English (singan, onslepte)
- Most prepositions and pronouns identical in form (but not always in meaning)
But
- With prefix ge-
(geseah, geleornode, geseted)
- Some semantic differences
( deor meant animal, not deer)
( wilf meant woman, not wife)
Differences
- Many words disappeared (neata – cattle, swefan – dream)
- Compound words (weoruldhade – worldhood = secular life)
- Present participles (gongende = going, sprecende = speaking)
Vocabulary very different from today
- 85% of the words don’t exist anymore
- Loan words: 3%
now: 70%
Kennings
= poetic compound made up of 2 or more nouns standing for another noun
Has to be poetic
hwæl-weg = whale road = sea
ban-hus = bone house = body
Grammar
1. Inflected language: Cases (nom, acc, gen, dat & instrumental)
Nouns, adjectives, personal & demonstrative pronouns, articles
Relatively free word order
The man the messenger saw
You know who the subject/object is by looking at the cases
2. Elaborate verb system
Markers for person, number & tense
3. Grammatical gender (rather than natural)
Se wifman = the woman = grammatically masculine
4
IF IT’S NOT MENTIONED IN CLASS BUT IT IS IN THE BOOK, DON’T LEARN IT
BRING STUDENT ID
50 QUESTIONS
32/50 TO PASS
LES 1
OLD ENGLISH
Old English Anglo Saxon
Continuity Differences
Language > Culture >
Periodisation
Social/ Political Linguistic
Start: 449 Start: 400 – 500
Anglo Saxon invasion Development continental -> insular
End: 1066 End: 1100 – 1150
Norman invasion Developments in phonology &
syntax
Sources
1) “The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle”
Old English (south) 9th century
8 versions => different dialects
Describes past/ current events (“newspaper”)
2) Bede’s“Ecclesiastical History of the English People/ Nation”
Latin, 8th century
History of Christianity
Celts
First documented ppl living in Britain
Celtic language (Welsh, Cornish,…) ≠ Germanic
Only one that ~ survived
Hadrian’s Wall: built to protect Britain from the Picts
-> lived in now-Scotland
Romans invaded Britain
“The Parker Chronicle” (part of source 1)
About the invasion
Official language = Latin
Left 3 centuries later -> no more army in Britain (they begged them to come back)
1
,Peterborough Chronicle (part of Anglo-Saxon Chr)
443: Britons ask Romans to come back
Asked the Angles for help
Angles called the Britons cowards & said the land was
very fertile
-> Angles send more ppl over (Saxons, Angles & Jutes)
They started demanding more supplies & threatened to
ravage the island
Britons:
Butchered
Enslaved
Fled
Little influence of indigenous language on Old English
Influences:
- Geographical names
- Geographical features
Language of Angles & Saxons = base Old English
King Alfred -> Christian texts accesible (translations)
1. Latin influence
6th century: missionaries
Beginning literary era
Monasteries: translate & copy texts (a lot of texts were recovered from this time
because of that, also use of dialect in those texts)
Influence
Early: contact & trade
Later: conversion to Christianity
Vikings
Truce: Treaty of Wedmore (880)
Vikings have their own area – Danelaw
10th century: 1 King of England, Denmark & Norway
2. Scandinavian influence
Lexical influence
- Basic vocabulary
→ words with ‘sk’ (skirt, sky, whisk)
- Place names
→ -by, -thorp,
2
, - Patronyms
→ - son (Johnson) → -ing (Golding) = really British
Grammatical influence
Personal pronouns
→ they, them, their
- Plural form ‘to be’
→ are
- Verb conjugations
→ 3rd p sing present: -s
Old English Dialects
No standard language
1. Mercian
2. Northumbrian (source 2)
3. Kentish
4. West - Saxon (source 1)
Runic alphabet
↳ “run” = ‘sharing of knowledge”
Population mainly illiterate
Few texts survived
- inscriptions on weapons, rings,…
- carved inscriptions
The Francs Casket
Whale bone box 7-8th century
Pagan & Christian scenes
Old English riddle
Runic symbols
Les 2
Ruthwell Cross
Scotland, 8th century, Northumbrian
Life of Christ
Runic inscriptions: part of a poem “The Dream of the Rood”
Narrator = the cross itself
A lot of Anglo-Saxon artefacts were found in the Sutton Hoo ship burial
-> burry a ship as a
grave
–they don’t have language so not useful
Runic -> Roman alphabet
Institutionalisation of Christianity
3
, - Some sounds not present in Roman alphabet
-> Borrowed from runes
- No punctuation marker
- No capital letters (used differently)
- Abbreviations
and = 7
that =
Pronouncing Old English
You mostly say what you read
Many consonant clusters (kn, gn)
Lexicon
Similarities
- Some words close to present-day English (singan, onslepte)
- Most prepositions and pronouns identical in form (but not always in meaning)
But
- With prefix ge-
(geseah, geleornode, geseted)
- Some semantic differences
( deor meant animal, not deer)
( wilf meant woman, not wife)
Differences
- Many words disappeared (neata – cattle, swefan – dream)
- Compound words (weoruldhade – worldhood = secular life)
- Present participles (gongende = going, sprecende = speaking)
Vocabulary very different from today
- 85% of the words don’t exist anymore
- Loan words: 3%
now: 70%
Kennings
= poetic compound made up of 2 or more nouns standing for another noun
Has to be poetic
hwæl-weg = whale road = sea
ban-hus = bone house = body
Grammar
1. Inflected language: Cases (nom, acc, gen, dat & instrumental)
Nouns, adjectives, personal & demonstrative pronouns, articles
Relatively free word order
The man the messenger saw
You know who the subject/object is by looking at the cases
2. Elaborate verb system
Markers for person, number & tense
3. Grammatical gender (rather than natural)
Se wifman = the woman = grammatically masculine
4
