Midterm Summary
Philology 3
History of the English Language
Anouk de Waard
BA English Language and Culture
Leiden University
,Index
Index 1
What History of the English Language is all about 4
Languages, dialects, and standards 4
What is a standard language 4
From a small dialect to a world language 4
Chronology 4
History of English 5
OE 5
ME 5
EModE 5
LModE 5
What is English? 6
Language variation and change 7
The fact of language change 7
OE is a synthetic language 7
Sources of language change 7
Transmission and incrementation 7
Minimizing articulatory effort 8
Analogy 8
The lexicon 8
Dialect contact 9
Language contact 9
The Indo-European languages 10
Language divergence 10
One big (P)IE 10
Not just (P)IE family 11
The discovery of PIE 11
Who else got a piece of the PIE puzzle? 11
Grouping families 12
comparative method 12
The grouping of a (P)IE family 12
Satem languages and /k/ 13
P and Q Celtic 13
Some PIE characteristics 13
Where did PIE speakers originate? 13
Origin hypothesis 14
Kurgan Hypothesis (Gambutas) 14
Anatolian Hypothesis (Renfrew) 14
1
, The culture of (P)IE speakers 15
material 15
non-material 15
Poetry 15
The Germanic languages 16
Homeland of PIE: Anatolia 16
Homeland of PIE: Pontic Steppes 16
When did PIE stop being PIE? 16
What the Romans said… 16
Moving away from PIE-land 16
Proto-Germanic urhheimat 17
6 distinguishing features 17
Grimm’s Law 17
Fixed initial stress on the root 19
Two tense system 19
Strong and weak verbs 20
Strong and weak adjective declensions 20
Vocabulary 20
The Emergence of Old English 21
Who were there before Germanic tribes invaded Britain? 21
The Celts 21
The Romans 21
Meanwhile in the North: The Scots 21
Meanwhile in the South: The Roman collapse 21
The arrival of the Germanic tribes 22
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes 22
Recent study 22
What happened to the Celts? 22
Some characteristics of OE 23
OE written down 23
Prehistoric OE sound changes 23
Palatalization:Anglo-Frisian 23
i-mutation 23
inflections 24
PDE morphology 24
OE morphology 24
Pronouns 25
OE morphology 25
Overlap in weak noun endings 25
Overlap in strong noun endings 25
2
, Decline of inflections 26
Fricative voicing: allophonic variation 26
Norsemen and Normans 27
Language contact: Iceland vs England 27
Lexical invasions 27
English vocabulary today 27
The Norsemen 28
Danelaw 28
Result 28
Viking fame 28
Linguistic legacy 29
Recycling words 29
Repurposing words: 29
Scots and Northern English 29
The Normans: 1066 30
Linguistic consequences 30
The Norman Elite 31
The next generations 31
Interlacing of suffixes 31
Extent of linguistic invasion 31
From OE to ME 32
5 Middle English dialects 32
3
Philology 3
History of the English Language
Anouk de Waard
BA English Language and Culture
Leiden University
,Index
Index 1
What History of the English Language is all about 4
Languages, dialects, and standards 4
What is a standard language 4
From a small dialect to a world language 4
Chronology 4
History of English 5
OE 5
ME 5
EModE 5
LModE 5
What is English? 6
Language variation and change 7
The fact of language change 7
OE is a synthetic language 7
Sources of language change 7
Transmission and incrementation 7
Minimizing articulatory effort 8
Analogy 8
The lexicon 8
Dialect contact 9
Language contact 9
The Indo-European languages 10
Language divergence 10
One big (P)IE 10
Not just (P)IE family 11
The discovery of PIE 11
Who else got a piece of the PIE puzzle? 11
Grouping families 12
comparative method 12
The grouping of a (P)IE family 12
Satem languages and /k/ 13
P and Q Celtic 13
Some PIE characteristics 13
Where did PIE speakers originate? 13
Origin hypothesis 14
Kurgan Hypothesis (Gambutas) 14
Anatolian Hypothesis (Renfrew) 14
1
, The culture of (P)IE speakers 15
material 15
non-material 15
Poetry 15
The Germanic languages 16
Homeland of PIE: Anatolia 16
Homeland of PIE: Pontic Steppes 16
When did PIE stop being PIE? 16
What the Romans said… 16
Moving away from PIE-land 16
Proto-Germanic urhheimat 17
6 distinguishing features 17
Grimm’s Law 17
Fixed initial stress on the root 19
Two tense system 19
Strong and weak verbs 20
Strong and weak adjective declensions 20
Vocabulary 20
The Emergence of Old English 21
Who were there before Germanic tribes invaded Britain? 21
The Celts 21
The Romans 21
Meanwhile in the North: The Scots 21
Meanwhile in the South: The Roman collapse 21
The arrival of the Germanic tribes 22
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes 22
Recent study 22
What happened to the Celts? 22
Some characteristics of OE 23
OE written down 23
Prehistoric OE sound changes 23
Palatalization:Anglo-Frisian 23
i-mutation 23
inflections 24
PDE morphology 24
OE morphology 24
Pronouns 25
OE morphology 25
Overlap in weak noun endings 25
Overlap in strong noun endings 25
2
, Decline of inflections 26
Fricative voicing: allophonic variation 26
Norsemen and Normans 27
Language contact: Iceland vs England 27
Lexical invasions 27
English vocabulary today 27
The Norsemen 28
Danelaw 28
Result 28
Viking fame 28
Linguistic legacy 29
Recycling words 29
Repurposing words: 29
Scots and Northern English 29
The Normans: 1066 30
Linguistic consequences 30
The Norman Elite 31
The next generations 31
Interlacing of suffixes 31
Extent of linguistic invasion 31
From OE to ME 32
5 Middle English dialects 32
3
