1. Baugh, Albert C. & Thomas Cable. 1994. A history of the English language. 4th edition. London: Routledge. Ch 3. OLD ENGLISH

2. 3-29 The languages in England before English The first people in England about whose language we have definite knowledge are the Celts. The Celts arrived in the British Isles c.700 BC from Central/East Europe; Welsh, Irish, and Highland Scots are descendants of the Celts. English was introduced to the British Isles in 449 AD.

3. An Image of a Celt

4. 3-30 The Romans in Britain (43 – 410) Julius Caesar in 55 BC (having completed the conquest of Gaul) decided to invade England but the expedition was not successful (the resistance of the Celts; ALBION; tribute) Britain was not troubled by Roman legions for nearly a hundred years.

5. White Cliffs of Dover

6. 3-31 The Roman Conquest In AD 43 the Emperor Claudius invaded Britain; an army of 40,000 was sent to Britain and within 3 years had subjugated the peoples of the central and southeastern regions under Roman rule.

7. Hadrian’s wall (1) The Romans never penetrated far into the mountains of Wales and Scotland; Hadrian’s Wall – the district south of this line was under Roman rule for more than 300 years

8. Hadrian’s wall (2)

9. 3-32 Romanization of the island -The military conquest was followed by the Romanization of the province; - The introduction of Roman habits of life: four great highways spread fanlike from London; - Heating apparatus, water supply, etc. -By the 3rd cent. Christianity had made some progress;

10. 3-33 The Latin language in Britain Inscriptions in Latin Latin did not replace the Celtic languages; only the upper classes of native Britons used it The use of Latin declined after 410, when the Roman legions were withdrawn after the collapse of the Roman Empire

11. 3-34 The Germanic conquest Britain had been exposed to attacks by the Saxons from as early as the 4th cent. About the year 449 Germanic tribes began the invasion of Britain; They are the founders of the English nation; Invasions lasted for more than 100 years.

12. 3-34 The Germanic conquest Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) tells that the Germanic tribes that conquered England were the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. They came from Denmark, the Low Countries (the Netherlands) and the coastal part of Germany.

13. Anglo-Saxon Invasions

14. 3-34 The Germanic conquest The Jutes and the Angles had their home in the Danish peninsula (the Jutes in the northern half, Jutland, and Angles in Schleswig-Holstein). On the continent, the Saxons were settled to the south and west of the Angles, roughly between the Elbe and the Ems.

15. 3-34 The Germanic conquest The Frisians occupied a narrow strip along the coast from the Weser to the Rhine. Gradually extending the area they occupied until it included all but the highlands in the west and north (“the Celtic fringe”)

16. 3-35 Anglo-Saxon civilization The organization of society was by families and clans; an agricultural people; The Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: by the late 700s, England was organized into numerous greater and lesser kingdoms, with shifting borders, often at war with each other. There were seven principal kingdoms: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, and Kent. 9th cent Wessex, Alfred the Great (871 – 889)

17. The Heptarchy

18. King Alfred’s (846/9-899)accomplishment s Made peace with the Vikings - brought peace to England Viking kings converted to Christianity Fortified England First step towards a single king of all England Revived scholarship Monasteries restored Latin books and English translations sent all over England from Wessex (Alfred’s kingdom) Sponsored Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: diary-like history of England

19. Types of texts generated during and after Alfred’s reign The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poetry: Beowulf, The Wanderer, The Seafarer Riddles Wills, charters, legal documents

20. 3-36 The names of “England” and “English” For the Celts, all invaders = Saxons; Englisc; Angelcynn, race of the Angles; Englaland 1000 AD (= land of Angles) http://www.danshort.com/ie/#Links (the two following slides)

21. 3-37 The origin and position of English The English language of today is the language that has resulted from the history of the dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who conquered England in the 5th cent. It is impossible to say how much the speech of the Angles differed from that of the Saxons or Jutes. The differences were certainly slight. English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family.

22. 3-37 The origin and position of English Thus it shares certain characteristics common to all the Germanic languages. The shifting of certain consonants (Grimm’s law) Weak-strong declension of the adjective Weak, or regular verbs A strong stress on the first or the root syllable of most words (responsible for the progressive decay of inflections)

23. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Historically, the English language has not existed in isolation and has always been in close contact with other European languages and cultures. Pre- English period (-c. AD 450) -Local languages in Britain are Celtic. -After the Roman invasion in 55 BC Latin becomes the dominant language of culture and government. -Many communities in Britain are bilingual Celtic- Latin.

24. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Old English (450 – c. 850 – 1150) -Anglo-Saxon invasion AD 499 when Romans leave. -Settlers bring several Germanic dialects from continental Europe. -Old English borrows from Latin via church. -Extensive invasion and settlement from Scandinavia. -In the north of England dialects of English become strongly influenced by Scandinavian languages. -THE PERIOD OF FULL INFLECTIONS.

25. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Middle English (c. 1150 – 1450). -The Norman Conquest and Norman rule. -English vocabulary and spelling is now affected by French which becomes the official language in England. -Educated English people trilingual (F, L, E). -THE PERIOD OF LEVELED INFLECTIONS.

26. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Early Modern English (1450 – 1750). -The Renaissance, the Elizabethan era, Shakespeare. -The role of the church, of Latin and of French declines and English becomes a language of science and government. -Britain grows commercially and acquires overseas colonies. -Attempts to standardize the language. -THE PERIOD OF LOST INFLECTIONS.

27. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Modern English (c. 1750 – 1950). -Britain experiences industrial revolution and consolidates imperial power, introducing English medium education in many parts of the world. -English becomes an international language of advertising and consumerism.

28. 3-38 The periods in the history of English Late Modern English (c. 1950 - ) -The collapse of the British Empire. -New standardized varieties of English emerge in independent countries. -English becomes the international language of communications technology. -American English becomes the dominant world variety.

29. 3-38 The periods in the history of English For easier reference, please remember this periodization: Old English (450 – 1150); the period of full inflections Middle English (1150 – 1500); the period of leveled inflections Modern English (1500 – ); the period of lost inflections The progressive decay of inflections is only one of the developments that mark the evolution of English in its various stages.

30. 3-39 The dialects of Old English Old English was not an entirely uniform language. About 700 AD: Northumbrian and Mercian (Angles), West Saxon, Kentish (Jutes). West Saxon is the only dialect in which there is an extensive collection of texts. Nearly all of Old English literature is preserved in manuscripts transcribed in this region. It attained something of the position of a literary standard.

31. 3-40 Some characteristics of Old English The English language has undergone such change in the course of time that one cannot read Old English without special study. The differences between OE and MnE concern spelling and pronunciation, the lexicon, and the grammar.

32. 3-40 Some characteristics of Old English 1)The pronunciation of OE words commonly differs from that of their modern equivalents. – The long vowels in particular have undergone considerable modification – (stān – stone; hū – how; hēafod - head).

33. 3-40 Some characteristics of Old English 2) The rarity of words derived from Latin and the absence of French loanwords (the vocabulary of OE is almost purely Germanic) About 85% of OE words are no longer in use However, 100 most common words in English are Anglo-Saxon: the basic building-blocks of an English sentence, like 'the, is, you', etc.

34. 3-40 Some characteristics of Old English The native OE lexicon was of two types, Indo- European and Germanic. I-E: the most essential vocabulary – like numbers from 1 to 10, – kinship terms, – basic words like sun, water, to eat, head, tree, to run, etc. The Germanic element: back, bone, folk, ground, sick, etc.

35. 3-40 Some characteristics of Old English The fundamental feature that distinguishes OE from MnE is its grammar. Old English was a synthetic language (a language that indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections); Modern English is analytic (languages that make extensive use of prepositions and depend upon word order to show other relationships).

36. 3-42 Grammatical gender Old English nouns had grammatical gender. There are three different sets of noun types; also modifiers (e.g. demonstratives, adjectives) and replacing pronouns have different sets of forms for each of the sets of noun types -- (masculine, feminine, and neuter) – but there is not any absolute relation between these conventional labels for the word categories and the objects, persons, or animals that the nouns refer to.

37. 3-42 Grammatical gender Illogical: for example, þæt wif (the woman), bearn (child, son), cild (child), mægden (girl) are neuter nouns. Stān (stone), mōna (moon) is masculine; sunne (sun) is feminine. (cf. Lithuanian and other inflected languages)

38. 3-43 OE adjective Adjectives are declined weak or strong depending on how they are used in a sentence. When the adjective follows a demonstrative or a possessive (like 'the wicked witch' or 'my wicked witch'), the adjective is weak; when it stands alone (like 'the witch is wicked' or 'wicked witches'), the adjective is strong.

39. 3-44 The definite article sē, sēo, þæt Masc. Neuter Fem. Plural Nom sēþæt sēo þā Genþæs þæs þære þāra Datþæm þæm þære þæm Acc þone þæt þā þā

40. 3-44 The definite article sē, sēo, þæt Like German, Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article (but no indefinite article!; ān = one) sē, sēo, þæt – the meaning is ‘the’, but the word is really a demonstrative pronoun and survives in the Modern English demonstrative that.

41. 3-46 Old English verbs Old English verbs are either strong or weak. The principal difference between strong and weak verbs lies in the formation of the preterite (past) tense.

42. Weak verbs Weak verbs form the preterite by adding a suffix (e.g. -ede, -ode, -de) to the root syllable of the verb. A Modern English example is laugh, which in past tense becomes laughed by adding a dental suffix, -ed.

43. Strong verbs In contrast, strong verbs are characterized by changing the vowel of the root syllable in the preterite. For example, in Modern English, sing becomes sang in the past tense, and its past participle is sung. In Old English, the change in vowels follows a fixed pattern according to the strong verb class.

44. The Lord's Prayer in Old English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoMpcrZgMK8

45. The Lord’s prayer

46. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH (450-1150): Old English is the name for all the dialects spoken by Angles, Saxons and Jutes (ie, it was made up from local varieties, not a uniform language)

47. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH (450-1150): 1.Phonologically, -the consonant system was similar to that of Present-Day English (PDE), but included phonemically long consonants, eg OE BED 'prayer' versus BEDD 'bed'; -it lacked / η / and phonemically voiced fricatives /v, z, ž /; -length was also phonemic for vowels.

48. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH (450-1150): 2. Morphologically, -OE was still a heavily inflected language, -including four cases, -three genders, -two numbers, - two tenses, -three persons, -and three moods.

49. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH (450-1150): 3. Syntactically, -OE word order resembled that of PDE (present day English), -but was freer and more varied.

50. THE MOST IMPORTANT FEATURES OF OLD ENGLISH (450-1150): 4. Lexically, -OE had a rich native vocabulary -and extensive resources for forming new words; -loanwords comprised an insignificant part of the lexicon.

51. BASIC TERMS analytic languages -- languages that make extensive use of prepositions and depend upon word order to show other relationships synthetic language -- a language that indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections phonemic difference -- denoting speech sounds that belong to different phonemes (e.g. ship – sheep; bin – been)