Old English: Background, Alphabet, and Phonetics
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O
LD
E
NGLISH
Lecture 2
2.1. Old English: General
Background
2.2. The Old English Alphabet
2.3. The Old English Phonetic
System
2.4. The Old English Grammar
2.5. The Old English Vocabulary
and Literature
O
LD
E
NGLISH
: G
ENERAL
B
ACKGROUND
No written records of OE in the period of 5
th
- 6
th
c.
The beginning of writing in OE is referred to the
end of the 7
th
– the beginning of the 8
th
century.
The four dialects of OE: Kentish, Mercian,
Northumbrian, and West Saxon.
The majority of the surviving documents from the
OE period were written in the West Saxon dialect
spoken in Wessex, (Alfred the Great).
Much of the OE literature was written in or
translated into the West Saxon dialect.
Thus, the source of most of the OE texts studied
today is West Saxon.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
A
LPHABET
OE was first written with a version of
the
Runic alphabet
known as Anglo-Saxon runes.
This alphabet contained between 26 and 33
letters. Anglo-Saxon runes were used from the
5
th
to the 10
th
c.
Runes started to be replaced by
the Latin
alphabet
from the 7
th
century, and after the
9
th
century the runes were used mainly in
manuscripts (the introduction of
Christianity
).
After the Norman Conquest (the 11
th
century),
the runes were no longer in use.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
A
LPHABET
OE scribes used Latin letters to represent the sounds
of their language wherever they seemed to fit.
They include:
a, b, c, d, e, f, Ʒ=g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, x, y.
The letters
k
and
z
were only occasionally used;
The letter
q
was not used;
ModE
j
and
v
were variants of OE
i
and
u
;
ME letter
w
developed from OE
uu
;
Some written symbols to indicate OE sounds that
cannot be found in present-day English:
æ
– ash
(æsc),
þ
–
thorn,
ð
– eth (capital
ð
was written
Ð
).
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
A
LPHABET
OE writings were based on a phonetic
principle: each letter indicated a separate
sound; not always observed.
Some letters could indicate three or more
sounds. The same letters stood for both
short and long sounds: long vowels were
often indicated by a macron (a line over
the top).
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
A
LPHABET
In reading, the following rules should be
observed:
The letter
Ʒ=g
stands for [g] before any
consonant or back vowels, after
n
e.g.
g
gōd
(good),
grēn
(green); for [j] when preceding
or following any front vowel, e.g.
giefan
(to
give),
dæg
(day); for [
γ
] while standing
after back vowels or after
r
,
l,
e.g.
dagas
(days),
folgian
(to follow).
f, s, þ (ð)
are voiced when between vowels
and voiced consonants, e.g.
risan
(to rise),
hlafas
(halves),
wīfes
(wives)
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
P
HONETIC
S
YSTEM
The Word Stress
The word stress in OE was fixed no matter what
grammatical form a word had.
OE stress fell on the first syllable of a simple
word. Words with a prefix had their stress either
on the prefix or on the root syllable. The prefix
ge-
was unaccented; prepositional prefixes, e.g.
for-
,
ofer-
, could be either accented (in nouns or
adjectives) or unaccented (in verbs).
Compound words where both words retained
their full meaning had a secondary stress on the
1
st
syllable of the 2
nd
element.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
P
HONETIC
S
YSTEM
The OE sound system underwent global changes,
particularly these changes occurred within the
vowels.
Vowel Changes
Breaking –
short vowels becoming diphthongs
before certain consonant clusters (
r, l, h
+ a
consonant or
h
final), e.g. Goth.
kalds
> OE
ceald
(cold)
Shortening
of unstressed long vowels. As a result
of this, all the long vowels became short, and all the
diphthongs were monophthongized in an
unstressed position:
e.g. Goth.
namō
> OE
nama
(name)
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
P
HONETIC
S
YSTEM
Consonant Changes
Voicing of fricatives
, if a fricative was surrounded
by vowels or voiced consonants, it became voiced, e.g.
OE
wīf
(wife) > OE
wīfes
(wives) [f] > [v]
Palatalization
made the pronunciation closer to
present-day English. Velar consonants were
palatalized before / after a front vowel (
e, i
) and
remained velar before back vowels
a, o, u.,
e.g. OE
cild
[k’] > [tʃ]
Loss of consonants:
n
was often lost before
h
,
f
,
s
,
þ
, as a result, the preceding vowel became
lengthened.
h
was often lost between vowels etc.
e.g. *
finf
> OE
fif
(five)
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: NOUN
The OE noun had
TWO
numbers: singular, plural
THREE
genders – masculine (M), feminine (F), and
neuter (N).
M
and
N
nouns in general shared their
endings, whilst
F
nouns had their own set of endings.
The plural did not distinguish between genders.
DECLENSION
, i.e. different
endings
were attached to
the
stem
of a word, and indicated what case a word
belonged to and, thus, what grammatical function the
word performed in a sentence.
There were
FOUR
cases: the nominative, the accusative,
the genitive, and the dative. The nominative case
→
the
subject of the sentence, the accusative
→
the direct
object. The genitive case
→
possession. The dative
→
the
indirect object of the sentence.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
:
ADJECTIVE
The OE adjective had the same categories as nouns:
four cases
(nominative, genitive, dative, and
accusative),
three genders
(masculine, feminine,
and neuter), and
two numbers
(singular and
plural).
Adjectives had strong or weak forms. The weak
forms were used in the presence of a determiner,
while the strong ones were used in other situations.
Most of the endings of the strong adjective
declension were identical to those of the strong
declension of nouns, while most of the endings of the
weak adjective declension were the same as those of
the weak nouns.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
The Degrees of Comparison
The comparative and the superlative were
normally formed from the positive with
the help of the suffixes
-
ra
and
–
ost
, e.g.,
wīs (wise) – wīsra – wīsost
Several adjectives
had
suppletive
forms
of the comparative and superlative:
gōd (good)
–
betera
–
betst
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: PRONOUN
There existed the following types of: personal,
demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite. The
grammatical categories of the pronouns were either
similar to those of nouns, or corresponded to those of
adjectives.
Personal Pronouns
had the categories of number,
gender, and case.
The 1
st
and 2
nd
person had three forms of number:
singular, plural and dual (in Early OE) but no gender
distinctions.
The 3
rd
person singular had three genders:
masculine, feminine and neuter.
The 2
nd
person had distinct singular and plural
forms (
Þū - gē
).
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: PRONOUN
The
possessive pronouns
were derived from
the genitive case of the personal pronouns.
Demonstrative Pronouns
could also act as a
noun determiner (the definite article)
indicating its gender, number, and case:
Þes
(this) and
sē
(that).
Interrogative Pronouns
hwā
(
who
) and
hw
æ
t
(
what
)
had a four-case paradigm.
Indefinite pronouns
were numerous, e.g.,
sum
(some),
ǣnig
(any),
gehwilċ
(everything,
anything),
nǣning
(nothing) etc.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: VERB
The OE verb had two tenses (present and past)
and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and
imperative).
The verb agreed with the subject in number and
person, however, the distinction was not always
obvious because there were homonymous forms
in some of the persons.
The forms of the Present Tense were used to
indicate present and future actions, while the
Past tense was used to indicate all past actions
and events.
All the forms of the verb were synthetic, while
the analytic forms started to appear.
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: VERB
OE verbs fell into two main groups:
strong
and
weak
verbs.
Strong Verbs
formed their stems by means of
ablaut
and by adding special suffixes. There were
about 300 strong verbs in OE, all of them were of
Proto-Germanic origin and had parallels in other
Old-Germanic languages. The strong verbs were
divided into 7 classes. All of them had the same
endings but differed in the root vowels which
distinguished the four stems (Infinitive, Past
Singular, Past Plural, and Participle II).
Class 1:
bī
tan
(to bite) –
b
ā
t
–
biton
– b
iten
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: VERB
The Present and Past Indicative
were
formed by means of endings.
Weak Verbs
were more numerous than strong
verbs. All the new verbs which appeared in the
OE period were weak.
The distinctive feature of the weak verbs was
that they formed their Past tense and Participle
II by means of the dental suffix containing -
d
- or
-t
- .
cēpan (to keep) – cēpte – cēpt, cēped
T
HE
O
LD
E
NGLISH
G
RAMMAR
: VERB
The OE Imperative Mood
(2
nd
person, singular
and plural) was formed from the Infinitive:
For example, the imperative forms of the strong
verb
singan
(to sing) (Class 3):
Sing
! (2
nd
person Sg);
Singaþ
! (2
nd
person Pl).
The forms of
the OE Subjunctive Mood
were
synthetic. The Present Subjunctive expressed
unlikeness, the Past Subjunctive – unreality and
impossibility.
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
The OE vocabulary is believed to have 24,000 lexical
items in the Old English corpus.
The OE language is mainly Germanic, while loan words
are an insignificant part of it.
Native words
of the OE language are subdivided into
the following etymological layers:
- common Indo-European
words, for example:
fæder
(father),
sittan
(sit),
reād
(red), etc.,
- common Germanic
words, for example:
grēne
(green),
hēāfod
(head),
tīma
(time),
sumor
(summer),
-
a few
specifically English
words, which are not
found in any other language, for example,
clipian
(call),
wimman
(wife),
brid
(bird)
etc.
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
Word-Formation
The main word-building patterns were affixation
and composition.
Productive word-building prefixes:
ā-, be-, for-, fore-,
ge-, ofer-, un-
.
Productive word-building suffixes
-end, -ere, -Þ
,
-uÞ
,
-oÞ, -ung / -ing, -ig, -lic.
prefixes
→
forming
verbs (less productive with other
parts of speech); suffixes
→
forming nouns and
adjectives.
Composition
→
an abundance of compound words,
especially, nouns, e.g.
ǣfentīd
(evening time),
mōnandæg
(Monday),
hāligdæg
(holiday),
sunnandæg
(Sunday) etc.
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
Borrowing in Old English
Borrowings constituted only a small part
of the OE vocabulary (
~
6 hundred
words).
Two sources of borrowing in OE were
Latin and Celtic, though, by the end of
the OE period, new words appeared from
the language of the Danes.
Borrowing from
Celtic
can be mainly
found in
place names
:
Kent, York
,
possibly,
London, Thames
,
Avon
,
Dover
,
Usk, Esk
etc.
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
Some words came into the language through
Germanic
contacts with the Romans
before the invasion and
settlement of Britain (the 1
st
– the 5
th
century AD). They
refer to home, agriculture, and building, e.g.
mil
(Lat.
millia passum),
wīn
(Lat. vinum),
etc.
Some Latin loan-words adopted in Britain are
represented by the place names used by the Celts, e.g.,
castra
in the shape
caster, ceaster
found in
Dorchester,
Winchester, Manchester, Lancaster
, and
wic
(Lat.
vicus
‘village’), in
Norwich, Woolwich
etc.
Christianising
of Britain (late 6
th
century AD) and until
the end of Old English. Two major thematic groups:
religious
and
educational
terms, e.g.,
biscop
(bishop),
clerec
(clerk),
mynster
(minster),
munuc
(monk),
scōl
(school),
scōlere
(scholar).
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
The last source of borrowing is
Scandinavian
,
which is directly related to political events that
occurred at the end of Old English.
The words of Scandinavian origin are
place
names
, e.g.,
Eastoft, Langtoft, Whitby, Derby,
etc., words associated with
sea voyages
, e.g.,
bātswegen
(boatman),
barda
(beaked ship),
dreng
(warrior), a number of words relating to
law
or to
administrative system
, and some
everyday terms which make part of the
present-day English word-stock.
T
HE
OE V
OCABULARY
AND
L
ITERATURE
Old English Literature
The most important works of the Old English
literature:
Beowulf
, an epic poem describing adventures
of legendary heroes;
the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
, a record of early
English history;
Caedmon’s Hymn
, a religious poem.
There are also a number of surviving prose
works, biblical translations, legal documents, and
works on grammar, medicine, and geography.
Thank you for your
attention!!!
Delve into the world of Old English with a focus on its general background, unique alphabet, and phonetic system. Explore the evolution of written records, the transition from runes to Latin letters, and the phonetic principles that governed Old English writings. Uncover the rich history and linguistic intricacies of this ancient language.
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Presentation Transcript
OLD ENGLISH Lecture 2
2.1. Old English: General Background 2.2. The Old English Alphabet 2.3. The Old English Phonetic System 2.4. The Old English Grammar 2.5. The Old English Vocabulary and Literature
OLD ENGLISH: GENERAL BACKGROUND No written records of OE in the period of 5th- 6thc. The beginning of writing in OE is referred to the end of the 7th the beginning of the 8thcentury. The four dialects of OE: Kentish, Mercian, Northumbrian, and West Saxon. The majority of the surviving documents from the OE period were written in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex, (Alfred the Great). Much of the OE literature was written in or translated into the West Saxon dialect. Thus, the source of most of the OE texts studied today is West Saxon.
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET OE was first written with a version of the Runic alphabet known as Anglo-Saxon runes. This alphabet contained between 26 and 33 letters. Anglo-Saxon runes were used from the 5thto the 10thc. Runes started to be replaced by the Latin alphabet from the 7thcentury, and after the 9thcentury the runes were used mainly in manuscripts (the introduction of Christianity). After the Norman Conquest (the 11thcentury), the runes were no longer in use.
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET OE scribes used Latin letters to represent the sounds of their language wherever they seemed to fit. They include: a, b, c, d, e, f, =g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, x, y. The letters k and z were only occasionally used; The letter q was not used; ModE j and v were variants of OE i and u; ME letter w developed from OE uu; Some written symbols to indicate OE sounds that cannot be found in present-day English: ash ( sc), thorn, eth (capital was written ).
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET OE writings were based on a phonetic principle: each letter indicated a separate sound; not always observed. Some letters could indicate three or more sounds. The same letters stood for both short and long sounds: long vowels were often indicated by a macron (a line over the top).
THE OLD ENGLISH ALPHABET In reading, the following rules should be observed: The letter =g stands for [g] before any consonant or back vowels, after n e.g. g g d (good), gr n (green); for [j] when preceding or following any front vowel, e.g. giefan (to give), d g (day); for [ ] while standing after back vowels or after r, l, e.g. dagas (days), folgian (to follow). f, s, ( ) are voiced when between vowels and voiced consonants, e.g. risan (to rise), hlafas (halves), w fes (wives)
THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM The Word Stress The word stress in OE was fixed no matter what grammatical form a word had. OE stress fell on the first syllable of a simple word. Words with a prefix had their stress either on the prefix or on the root syllable. The prefix ge- was unaccented; prepositional prefixes, e.g. for-, ofer-, could be either accented (in nouns or adjectives) or unaccented (in verbs). Compound words where both words retained their full meaning had a secondary stress on the 1stsyllable of the 2ndelement.
THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM The OE sound system underwent global changes, particularly these changes occurred within the vowels. Vowel Changes Breaking short vowels becoming diphthongs before certain consonant clusters (r, l, h + a consonant or h final), e.g. Goth. kalds > OE ceald (cold) Shortening of unstressed long vowels. As a result of this, all the long vowels became short, and all the diphthongs were monophthongized in an unstressed position: e.g. Goth. nam > OE nama (name)
THE OLD ENGLISH PHONETIC SYSTEM Consonant Changes Voicing of fricatives, if a fricative was surrounded by vowels or voiced consonants, it became voiced, e.g. OE w f (wife) > OE w fes (wives) [f] > [v] Palatalization made the pronunciation closer to present-day English. Velar consonants were palatalized before / after a front vowel (e, i) and remained velar before back vowels a, o, u., e.g. OE cild [k ] > [t ] Loss of consonants: n was often lost before h, f, s, , as a result, the preceding vowel became lengthened. h was often lost between vowels etc. e.g. *finf > OE fif (five)
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: NOUN The OE noun had TWO numbers: singular, plural THREE genders masculine (M), feminine (F), and neuter (N). M and N nouns in general shared their endings, whilst F nouns had their own set of endings. The plural did not distinguish between genders. DECLENSION, i.e. different endings were attached to the stem of a word, and indicated what case a word belonged to and, thus, what grammatical function the word performed in a sentence. There were FOUR cases: the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, and the dative. The nominative case the subject of the sentence, the accusative the direct object. The genitive case possession. The dative the indirect object of the sentence.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: ADJECTIVE The OE adjective had the same categories as nouns: four cases (nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and two numbers (singular and plural). Adjectives had strong or weak forms. The weak forms were used in the presence of a determiner, while the strong ones were used in other situations. Most of the endings of the strong adjective declension were identical to those of the strong declension of nouns, while most of the endings of the weak adjective declension were the same as those of the weak nouns.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR The Degrees of Comparison The comparative and the superlative were normally formed from the positive with the help of the suffixes -ra and ost, e.g., w s (wise) w sra w sost Several adjectives had suppletive forms of the comparative and superlative: g d (good) betera betst
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PRONOUN There existed the following types of: personal, demonstrative, interrogative, and indefinite. The grammatical categories of the pronouns were either similar to those of nouns, or corresponded to those of adjectives. Personal Pronouns had the categories of number, gender, and case. The 1stand 2ndperson had three forms of number: singular, plural and dual (in Early OE) but no gender distinctions. The 3rdperson singular had three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. The 2ndperson had distinct singular and plural forms ( - g ).
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: PRONOUN The possessive pronouns were derived from the genitive case of the personal pronouns. Demonstrative Pronouns could also act as a noun determiner (the definite article) indicating its gender, number, and case: es (this) and s (that). Interrogative Pronouns hw (who) and hw t (what) had a four-case paradigm. Indefinite pronouns were numerous, e.g., sum (some), nig (any), gehwil (everything, anything), n ning (nothing) etc.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB The OE verb had two tenses (present and past) and three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative). The verb agreed with the subject in number and person, however, the distinction was not always obvious because there were homonymous forms in some of the persons. The forms of the Present Tense were used to indicate present and future actions, while the Past tense was used to indicate all past actions and events. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, while the analytic forms started to appear.
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB OE verbs fell into two main groups: strong and weak verbs. Strong Verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding special suffixes. There were about 300 strong verbs in OE, all of them were of Proto-Germanic origin and had parallels in other Old-Germanic languages. The strong verbs were divided into 7 classes. All of them had the same endings but differed in the root vowels which distinguished the four stems (Infinitive, Past Singular, Past Plural, and Participle II). Class 1: b tan (to bite) b t biton biten
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB The Present and Past Indicative were formed by means of endings. Weak Verbs were more numerous than strong verbs. All the new verbs which appeared in the OE period were weak. The distinctive feature of the weak verbs was that they formed their Past tense and Participle II by means of the dental suffix containing -d- or -t- . c pan (to keep) c pte c pt, c ped
THE OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR: VERB The OE Imperative Mood (2nd person, singular and plural) was formed from the Infinitive: For example, the imperative forms of the strong verb singan (to sing) (Class 3): Sing! (2ndperson Sg); Singa ! (2ndperson Pl). The forms of the OE Subjunctive Mood were synthetic. The Present Subjunctive expressed unlikeness, the Past Subjunctive unreality and impossibility.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE The OE vocabulary is believed to have 24,000 lexical items in the Old English corpus. The OE language is mainly Germanic, while loan words are an insignificant part of it. Native words of the OE language are subdivided into the following etymological layers: - common Indo-European words, for example: f der (father), sittan (sit), re d (red), etc., - common Germanic words, for example: gr ne (green), h fod (head), t ma (time), sumor (summer), - a few specifically English words, which are not found in any other language, for example, clipian (call), wimman (wife), brid (bird) etc.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE Word-Formation The main word-building patterns were affixation and composition. Productive word-building prefixes: -, be-, for-, fore-, ge-, ofer-, un-. Productive word-building suffixes -end, -ere, - , -u , -o , -ung / -ing, -ig, -lic. prefixes forming verbs (less productive with other parts of speech); suffixes forming nouns and adjectives. Composition an abundance of compound words, especially, nouns, e.g. fent d (evening time), m nand g (Monday), h ligd g (holiday), sunnand g (Sunday) etc.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE Borrowing in Old English Borrowings constituted only a small part of the OE vocabulary (~ 6 hundred words). Two sources of borrowing in OE were Latin and Celtic, though, by the end of the OE period, new words appeared from the language of the Danes. Borrowing from Celtic can be mainly found in place names: Kent, York, possibly, London, Thames, Avon, Dover, Usk, Esk etc.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE Some words came into the language through Germanic contacts with the Romans before the invasion and settlement of Britain (the 1st the 5thcentury AD). They refer to home, agriculture, and building, e.g. mil (Lat. millia passum), w n (Lat. vinum), etc. Some Latin loan-words adopted in Britain are represented by the place names used by the Celts, e.g., castra in the shape caster, ceaster found in Dorchester, Winchester, Manchester, Lancaster, and wic (Lat. vicus village ), in Norwich, Woolwich etc. Christianising of Britain (late 6thcentury AD) and until the end of Old English. Two major thematic groups: religious and educational terms, e.g., biscop (bishop), clerec (clerk), mynster (minster), munuc (monk), sc l (school), sc lere (scholar).
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE The last source of borrowing is Scandinavian, which is directly related to political events that occurred at the end of Old English. The words of Scandinavian origin are place names, e.g., Eastoft, Langtoft, Whitby, Derby, etc., words associated with sea voyages, e.g., b tswegen (boatman), barda (beaked ship), dreng (warrior), a number of words relating to law or to administrative system, and some everyday terms which make part of the present-day English word-stock.
THE OE VOCABULARY AND LITERATURE Old English Literature The most important works of the Old English literature: Beowulf, an epic poem describing adventures of legendary heroes; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of early English history; Caedmon s Hymn, a religious poem. There are also a number of surviving prose works, biblical translations, legal documents, and works on grammar, medicine, and geography.
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