History of English
LANGUAGE FAMILIES
o Language families and Indo-European
o language family - a group of closely related languages
o cognate languages - members of a language family
Origin based classification of words
o native - in a language since its beginnings as a discrete language
o borrowed/loanwords - introduced at some time from another language, either from a related or an unrelated language
Language vs. dialect
o dialects - mutually intelligible versions of one language
o language – no mutual intelligibility
European language families
o Indo-European
o Finno-Ugric
o Altaic
o Basque
o Northern and Southern Caucasian
Indo-European family groups
o lndo-Iranian
o Tocharian
o Armenian
o Anatolian
o Balto-Slavic
o Hellenic
o Albanian
o Celtic
o Italic
o Germanic
Language typology based on morpheme classification
o inflectional - in which inseparable inflections are fused with lexical stems to carry much of the grammatical information
o agglutinative - combine grammatical morphemes with lexical stems, but the grammatical morphemes are discrete, relatively unchanged from word to word, and strung onto the lexical stem one after the other
o isolating - every morpheme forms a separate word, and individual particles (such as prepositions, articles, and conjunctions) are used to convey grammatical information
Indo-European family subdivision
o satem - (from Avestan satem '100') - languages to the east (lndo-Iranian, Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic)
o centum - (from Latin centum '100') - languages to the west (Tocharian, Indo-European easternmost language, is centum)
Germanic
o East Germanic - Gothic, Burgundian, Vandalic, Gepidic, Rugian
o West Germanic - High German, Low German: Plattdeutsch, Dutch, Afrikaans, Luxemburgian, Flemish, Frisian, English
o North Germanic - Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese
OLD ENGLISH
o 450-1100
Written accounts of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain
o Brittanic
o English
o Continental
Brittanic sources
o 548 - Gildas - Liber querulus de excidio Britanniae
o Nennius - Historia Britonum (includes the story of Hengest and Horsa invited by Vortigern)
English sources
o Bede (c. 673 - 735) wrote his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum in 731
o Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
o Poems: Widsith, Beowulf, The Fight at Finnsburg
Continental sources
o Prosper Tiro, account of the visit of the bishop Germanus to Britain in 429 A.D.
o anonymous Gaullish chronicler 441/2 A.D.
o Zosimus, Byzantine historian c. 500 A.D.
o Procopius of Caesarea after 550 A.D.
Settlement of Anglo-Saxons in Britain
o Jutes: Kent, Isle of Wight
o Saxons: west of Kent, south of Thames
o Angles: north of Thames to the northern border of contemporary England
Old English stress assignment
o always stress the first syllable of the root
o stress is assigned on a left‑to‑right basis
o only heavy syllables can be stressed, unless in the initial position
o the leftmost stressed syllable receives primary stress
Stress in prefixed words
o nouns, adjectives, and adverbs receive primary stress on the prefix
o verbs with unseparable prefixes are stressed on the first syllable of the root (e.g., a-, be-, for-, ge-, mis-, of-, on-, to-)
o verbs with separable prefixes are stressed on the first syllable of the prefix (e.g., æfter-, bi-, fore-, in(n)-, up-, ut-)
NOMINAL SYSTEM (OE)
Old English nominal system
o OE nouns: masculine, neuter, and feminine
o OE gender is grammatical - assigned to nouns on the basis of the grammatical structure of the words and not on its actual, natural gender (engel “angel” masculine, wif “woman” neuter, þeod “nation” feminine)
o OE noun declensions: major and minor/productive vs. unproductive (productive paradigm is accepted by all new words entering the language)
o Major: strong/weak (PIE vowel stems - endings added to a stem ending in a vowel or diphthong /n-stems - endings to a stem formed with a vowel plus /n/)
o Minor: consonantal stems, case-endings added to a stem ending in a consonant other than /n/
o OE nouns two numbers, singular and plural, five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental (narzędnik)
OE concord
o Concord is agreement in gender, case, number or person between different words that share a reference
o The subject must agree with its verb in person and number
o The pronoun must agree with its antecedent in gender and number
o Adjectives and demonstrative pronouns must agree in gender, case and number with the nouns they modify
o The subject must agree with the complement in case
o The subject may agree with the participles in periphrastic verb forms in gender, case and number
WEAK VERBS (OE)
o Weak verbs>classes
Class 1 (WV1)
-infinitive: -ian, -an
-preterite 1sg.: -ede, -de, -te
-passive: -ed, -d, -t
Class II (WV2)
-infinitive: -ian
-preterite 1sg.: -ode
-passive: -od
Class III (WV3): secgan, habban, libban, hycgan
OE weak verbs
o Class I/II present paradigm
1.sg. lufie
2.sg. lufast
3.sg. lufaþ
1-3 pl. lufiaþ
o Weak verbs
o Class I/II preterite paradigms
1.sg. lufode
2.sg. lufodest
3.sg. lufode
1-3 pl. lufodon
o Weak verbs: class III
o habban
o secgan
o hycgan
o libban
Verb ‘beon’
o Suppletive paradigm (conjugational forms from different stems: *es- “to be”, *bheu- “to become, to come into existence”; *wes- “to dwell, to inhabit”
o *bheu- future forms, *es- present forms, and *wes- past forms
Present Future Past
1.sg. eom beo wæs
2.sg. eart bist wære
3.sg. is bit wæs
1-3 pl. sindon beot wæron
o Negative forms by adding <n-> to the initial vowel or by replacing the initial <w-> with <n->
WEAK NOUNS (OE)
o Weak –n- declension
masculine neuter feminine
singular
N. gum-a eag-e sunn-e
G. gum-an...
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