History of English SEAD course

Transcription

THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
An introduction
M. Lemmens
2010 - 2011
2007-2008
Ces cours sont strictement réservés à l’usage privé des utilisateurs du Service d’Enseignement à Distance de Lille. Ils ne sont pas destinés à une
utilisation extérieure. Toute personne qui s’en servirait à d’autres usages ou qui en ferait une reproduction intégrale ou partielle sans le
consentement du S.E.A.D. de Lille s’exposerait aux poursuites judiciaires et aux sanctions pénales prévues par la loi.
INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH ..................................................................................3 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................3 1.1. Historical linguistics..................................................................................................................3 1.2. Linguistic change .......................................................................................................................4 1.3. The Indo-European language family .......................................................................................9 1.4. The Germanic languages ........................................................................................................10 1.5. A short history of English.......................................................................................................14 1.5.1. The Britons (Celts) .......................................................................................................14 1.5.2. The Roman invasions and settlement .......................................................................15 1.5.3. The Germanic invasions .............................................................................................15 1.5.4. The Scandinavian invasions.......................................................................................17 1.5.5. The Norman Conquest and its aftermath (1066-1200)............................................19 1.5.6. The Re-establishment of English (1200-1500) ..........................................................19 1.5.7. Cultural invasions........................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 2. OLD ENGLISH ..................................................................................................................23 2.1. General characteristics ............................................................................................................23 2.2. Spelling and Pronunciation....................................................................................................24 2.3. Important Sound Changes .....................................................................................................26 2.4. The synthetic character of OE ................................................................................................28 2.4.1. OE Nouns......................................................................................................................28 2.4.2. OE adjectives ................................................................................................................28 2.4.3. OE Pronouns..................................................................................................................29 2.4.4. OE Verbs .......................................................................................................................29 CHAPTER 3. MIDDLE ENGLISH ...........................................................................................................31 3.1. Morphology: loss of inflections .............................................................................................31 3.1.1. ME nouns ......................................................................................................................31 3.1.2. ME personal pronouns................................................................................................32 3.1.3. ME demonstrative pronouns & articles....................................................................33 3.1.4. ME interrogative pronouns ........................................................................................33 3.1.5. ME adjectives................................................................................................................33 3.1.6. ME verbs .......................................................................................................................34 3.2. Important Sound Changes .....................................................................................................34 CHAPTER 4. Early Modern English ..................................................................................................37 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................41 APPENDICES ..........................................................................................................................................43 A1.1: Overview of the IE languages..............................................................................................43 A1.2: Spread of the IE-languages ..................................................................................................44 A1.3: Location of the Centum & Satem languages .....................................................................44 Ces cours sont strictement réservés à l’usage privé des utilisateurs du Service d’Enseignement à Distance de Lille. Ils ne sont pas destinés à une
M. Lemmens
Introduction to the history of English
ii
A2: Home of the Angles, Saxons & the Jutes ................................................................................45 A3: The Old English dialects............................................................................................................45 A4: Selective overview of Kings of England .................................................................................46 A5: Overview of OE inflections ......................................................................................................47 Ces cours sont strictement réservés à l’usage privé des utilisateurs du Service d’Enseignement à Distance de Lille. Ils ne sont pas destinés à une
INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Maarten Lemmens
2010- 2011
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
When you look at English in different stages of its history, you will probably be impressed with
the changes that it has gone through. Consider the opening line of the Lord’s Prayer from the
Wessex Gospels (approx. 990 A.D.) and compare it to the Modern English equivalent:
OE
Lit. gloss
ModE
Fæder ure þu þe eart on heofonum, si þin nama gehalgod
Father our thou that art on heaven, be thy name hallowed
Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed be your name
The differences between Old English (OE) and Modern English (ModE) are quite striking and
pertain to all levels of the language: spelling, lexicon, word order, morphology and
pronunciation (even if the latter can only be reconstructed). At the same time, if you look at the
literal gloss of the Old English, you will still be able to understand most of the OE words. In
other words, OE is different, yet if you know some of the things that have happened to it, it
becomes relatively straightforward (even if some aspects may still be difficult for contemporary
speakers).
Before looking into all these aspects in more detail, this chapter will first present some key
notions in historical (or diachronic) linguistics and the mechanisms of linguistic change. In a
second part of the chapter, we situate English in relation to the other Indo-European languages
in general and the other Germanic languages in particular.
1.1. Historical linguistics
A useful distinction that was suggested by the Swiss linguist De Saussure is that between
synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Synchronic linguistics is the study of the language system
at a given point in time, e.g., language of Shakespeare, 19th century American English, etc. (C-D
in Fig. below). Diachronic linguistics, on the other hand, is the study of the evolution of a
language through time, e.g., the transition of ME to ModE (axe A-B in the figure below).
C
A
B
diachronic
D
synchronic
Figure 1 : Diachronic (AB) and synchronic (CD) study of language
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Historical linguistics is faced with a serious methodological hurdle, as for older periods, there
is only written evidence, which furthermore is usually quite fragmentary, both quantitatively
(relatively few texts have survived) and qualitatively (mostly formal register; different dialects,
etc.). Written evidence only contains indirect evidence about the pronunciation (orthographical
corrections, rhyme schemas, occasional comments by writers) even if spelling combined with
phonological regularities allow us to reconstruct the pronunciation. In other words, the available
data may not (and mostly is not) representative of the language at a given moment in time. At
the same time, quite a lot of Old English texts have survived, especially in the West-Saxon
dialect (which became sort of a standard language during King Alfred’s reign), which allows us
to build a fairly good idea of that particular language.
1.2. Linguistic change
Linguistic change is inevitable and affects the language at all levels, from phonology (sound
changes) to syntax. Let us take up the different levels in turn.
Over time, the pronunciation of a language changes; this may even happen within a person’s
life span.1 The divergence of spelling and pronunciation is often (but not always!) a direct result
of that change, where the spelling is the “frozen” pronunciation of the past. Consider the
spelling of Modern English make or time whose main vowels (a and i) do not correspond in
pronunciation to what could be expected in a Latin-based alphabet, predicting a pronunciation
that is closer to French pâte and disque. As it happens, this spelling-pronunciation divergence is a
systematic one in English and is the result of a major change that took place in the transition
from Middle English to Modern English (1450 till 1800), know as the Second Great Vowel Shift
(cf. Chapter 4).
Changes in spelling are a relatively minor issue from a linguistic point of view, but clearly a
major issue from a socio-political point of view. The motivations for spelling changes can be for
linguistic reasons (changing pronunciation; for instance, the spelling oa as in coat is one that was
created to reflect the changed pronunciation of long o into a diphthong), for practical reasons
(e.g., luu → lov(e) ) or for economical reasons (e.g., many -ough endings arose because (German)
printers, who were paid by the letter, added these to make a bigger profit). The most striking
spelling changes that affected English are probably the loss of runic symbols (e.g., ð and Þ) and
the introduction of non-phonemic spelling (see below)
In the domain of the lexicon, new words enter the language almost every day. Some of these
are created by exploiting specific mechanisms of word creation, such as derivation or
compounding, a process that was extremely productive in Old English (cf. Chapter 2). Other
words enter the language via borrowing from other languages, which English has used
extensively in the course of its history. For example, the English words balcony, cellar, skirt, noble,
and landscape are all loanwords.2 At the same time, many words disappear from the language
(e.g., Old English wendan “to turn” or wang “field, place, world”) or shift their meaning (e.g.,
knight or car).
1
2
Drawing on early recordings, the English phonetician John Wells has for instance demonstrated how the Queen’s
pronunciation of certain vowels has changed in the course of her reign.
balcony < Italian, cellar < Latin, skirt < Danish, noble < French, landscape < Dutch.
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In the domain of morphology, a typical change is the loss of inflections and word endings, as
illustrated by the transition from Old English (a highly inflected language) to Modern English
(few inflections). This affected adjectives and nouns (loss of case markings, convergence or
disappearance of the different word classes), verbs (loss of different inflections for number, e.g.,
iċ sang “I sang” vs. we sungon “we sang” or þu lufast “you love” vs. he lufað “he loves”). The loss
of inflectional endings as well as the considerable lexical changes (in particular the replacement
of OE words by French words) makes Old English quite different from Modern English, so
much so that even English speakers have to study it.
Another morphological evolution that occurs in many different languages is the tendency to
regularise irregular forms. What counts as “irregular” is, of course, itself often the outcome of
historical processes; for example, what are often called “irregular verbs” in English, such as taketook-taken or sing-sang-sung were at some point highly regular systems (using vowel change or
“Umlaut” to build (some of) the past tenses).3 However, because of various changes in the
English system, many of these forms became less systematic (i.e., more irregular) and one can
observe a growing tendency for verbs to change from the strong declension (the Umlaut-system)
to the weak system (using the –ed ending). The verbs laugh and climb, for instance, had as past
tense low and clomb respectively, which in Present Day English follow the weak system (laughed,
climbed).
Also in the domain of syntax considerable changes can take place. Certain syntactical
structures disappear and new ones arise. A classical example for English is the rise of the DOsupport for yes/no-questions and for negatives which did away with the earlier patterns that
are now only acceptable with auxiliaries. In Old English, a construction like Com þa se engel
(“Came then the angel?”) was the normal way of asking a yes/no-question and negation was
mostly built with the negative particle ne, e.g., Ne com he (“Not came he”). In Modern English,
we need the auxiliary do for both constructions: Did the angel then come? and He didn’t come.
Another important syntactic change that affected English, is that the word order became
fixed in the transition from OE to Early Modern English. This change is actually related to the
loss of inflectional endings: if you have case markings that indicate the syntacto-semantic roles
of a constituent in a sentence (e.g. whether an NP is the subject or the object of the sentence), the
actual order does not really affect the interpretation, whereas in Modern English it has become
quite essential to understand the sentence correctly. Consider the following OE sentence:
(1)
Se guma sloh þone wyrm
The woman slew the serpent/dragon4
There are two different forms of the definite article, se and þone ; the former is the nominative
case (used for the subject), the latter is the accusative case, used for the object. In other words, if
you change the order of the sentence, e.g., þone wyrm sloh se guman, the subject and object NPs
are still recognised as such. In Modern English, this is not so, as different word orders entail
different role assignments; compare: The man bit the dog with The dog bit the man. Notice further
3
4
The existence of strong verbs is something that is shared by all Indo-European languages (cf. Latin capere-cepi-captum); the rise
of the weak verbs (with a dental suffix, like ed in English or –te/-de in Dutch) is exclusive to the Germanic languages.
OE wyrm, or rather its variant wurm, is the basis for ModEng worm; notice that its Swedish cognate orm still means “snake”.
M. Lemmens
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that in OE the case markings are not restricted to the articles, but also the nouns and adjectives
are marked for case; for example if you want to say in OE that it was the dragon who killed the
woman, you would have the following:
(2)
Se wyrm sloh þone guman
The dragon slew the woman
Notice how the noun guma is marked differently from the earlier example: in (1) is in the
nominative case (guma), whereas in (2) it is in the accusative case (guman). For wyrm, in contrast,
the difference is not marked, as it is a word for which the nominative and the accusative are the
same. The reason for this is that the two nouns belong to different word classes, determined by
their gender: guma is feminine, whereas wyrm is masculine. Other words, such as sċip “ship” are
neuter. More about OE word classes and their inflections below.
In this context, it is worthwhile to mention a specific type of linguistic change that has
become quite popular as a field of study in the last decades, namely grammaticalization. In
simple terms, grammaticalization concerns the development of a linguistic item to something
that is more grammatical. This can be either the evolution of a content word to a grammatical
word or that of a grammatical form to one that is even more grammatical. The first type can be
illustrated by the English modals, such as can or will. In OE, these were full verbs (meaning
respectively “have the physical capacity” and “want”) which could be used autonomously; in
Modern English, they have become more grammatical (i.e., auxiliary verbs) that can only occur
with a main verb, e.g. I can sing or He will write a letter. In other words, these lexical verbs have
grammaticalised to auxiliaries. These changes do not happen over night of course, but evolve
over a certain number of decades. Also, some of the semantics of the original forms may be
preserved (as is clearly the case for can and will), but the degree to which this is still true varies
considerably. Other good examples of the first type of grammaticalization (lexical >
grammatical) are certain prepositions and adverbials such as in front of, notwithstanding
(contraction of not + with “against” + standing), during (original -ing form, cf. French durant,
pendant), etc.
The second type of grammaticalization (grammatical item > more grammatical item) can be
the case where a grammar word becomes a suffix. This is for example what underlies the dental
past tense suffix in the Germanic languages which is derived from a form of the auxiliarised
verb “do”. Similarly, the French endings of the future tense (-ai, -as, -a, etc.) are actually derived
from the different forms of the verb avoir. More correctly, this construction already existed in
late Latin, e.g., cantare habeo (“sing-INF have.1-sg”; i.e. “I have to/will sing). The evolution
essentially was the following:
[[VERB] + habere/avoir] > [VERB + habere/avoir] > [VERB + SUFFIX]
The point here is that the verb habere/avoir first became reinterpreted as an auxiliary forming a
single unit with the verb (phase two) and then, in a next step, grammaticalised further to
become suffixes that merely express future tense and have little link with the original meaning
of avoir (even if it is not too difficult to reconstruct the semantic path). The evolution in fact
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moves from an analytical or periphrastic encoding of the future tense (using grammatical
constructions) to a synthetic one (using verb inflections). In modern French, the “future proche”
(je vais manger) is a periphrastic variant to express the future.
The above discussion has clearly illustrated how language change occurs at all levels of the
language. Apart from simply observing these changes, the interesting question is why languages
actually change.
What causes languages to change? A distinction should be made between language external
and language internal factors. As the term suggests, language external factors are not linked to
the language properties as such, but rather to the world in which it is used. We live in a world
that constantly changes, new things are invented every day, others disappear. Logically, the
language that we speak follows suit. Words that refer to things or events that no longer exist
often simply disappear from the language and we create or borrow new words to refer to new
things and actions. For example, television, AIDS, email or bunji-jumping are words that came into
the language in this way. Alternatively, we recycle (and adapt) existing words to refer to new
things. When cars were invented, automobile was a word that came into being (a combination of
Greek auto “self” and Latin mobile “moving”), yet quickly in English the existing word car
(originally borrowed from Norman French “carre”, 1301)5 came to be used instead (the first
attestation in that usage is from 1896), thereby shifting its meaning from “wheeled vehicle” to
“self-moving motorized 4-wheeled vehicle” which is now the word’s basic meaning.6
Also other major socio-economical events may have an influence on a language. For English,
some major events that helped shape the language are the conquest of a large part of the country
by the Danes (from the 8th till the 11th century) or the Norman conquest (starting in 1066, after
the battle of Hastings). In both cases, there was a massive influx of people speaking a different
language (Danish and Norman French respectively), which obviously left their own mark on the
language. Further details on these events and their influence on English will be given in
subsequent chapters in this course book.
Occasionally, you may even find deliberate attempts at changing the language. While
prescriptive grammar (which imposes a certain norm of “correct” language use) usually does
not conform to how people actually speak, it may sometimes lead to an actual change in this
language use, although this is rather exceptional.
Many of the external language changes described involve lexical changes, i.e. the emergence
or disappearance of word referring to objects or actions. While these are important, they do not
tell the whole story, since language seems to change all by itself, so to speak. Suppose you
discover an isolated group of people speaking a certain language, untainted by contact with
other languages and cultures. If you were to observe these people for a longer period of time,
5
6
The date refers to the year in which this word was first attested in a written document in English; usually this means that the
word had been around for some time prior to that date in the spoken language.
Actually, the references to automobile were first with the compound motor car which gradually became abbreviated to car.
This is not to say that the word auto(mobile) is not used anymore, but it is usually reserved for more formal or technical prose.
Notice that in another Germanic language, Dutch, the cognate kar still refers to non-motorized wheeled vehicles and cannot be
used to refer to an automobile (unless jokingly), for which the standard word is auto or wagen (the latter being related to
English wagon).
M. Lemmens
8
you would see that also this language changes over time.7 In other words, it seems that there is
something inherent in language that triggers change. How else would you explain the rise of the
future tense suffixes in French, derived from a complex VERB+avoir construction? Clearly, no
inventions or invasions by foreign people lie at the basis of this evolution. But is it really true
that a language in and by itself contains the seeds of change? Actually, it is not. It is not the
language per se that causes the change, but rather language use.
When you learn a language, you learn its different linguistic constructions in particular
contexts of use. The more common a given context, the more frequent you are going to
reproduce the linguistic construction (word or phrase) that expresses that context. As for any
other human activity, repetition leads to gradual change. This can simply be automation and
increased efficiency. The rise of the French future tense suffixes is perhaps a good example of
that. But language is much more than just automation of course, since it is a basic tool for
communication and for making meaning. So we are constantly interpreting and re-interpreting
the utterances that we hear, which contains the seeds of change, especially on the semantic level
and reinterpretation of grammatical structures.
But there are some other aspects of language use that cause a language to change. Any speech
community is made up of several individual speakers that each may have a slightly different
variant of the language (idiolects). People are constantly engaged in different interpersonal
exchanges; the idiolectal difference may give rise to subtle changes in the language. Such
differences are of course often reinforced by socio-economical factors, i.e., the need of a certain
group of people to distinguish themselves from others, e.g., upper vs. lower classes,
native/aboriginal vs. non-native/non-aboriginal, men vs. women, children vs. parents.
Even while these changes happen without speakers being aware of them, language internal
changes strangely enough seem to follow some clear regular patterns, across languages. For
instance, morphological changes in a language all seem to evolve towards inflectional simplicity
(loss/collapsing of endings, paradigmatic levelling). Similarly, languages generally change from
the synthetic to the analytic type. Also, grammaticalization tends to be unidirectional, i.e. lexical
→ grammatical or grammatical → more grammatical, but not vice versa; e.g. once a “lexical” verb
(e.g., will) has become a modal auxiliary, it will not evolve towards a new lexical verb (i.e. with
specific lexical content, full paradigmatic potential, etc.). Also in the phonological domain there
are some “universally” recurring patterns, such as the tendency for long vowels to become
diphthongised or the loss of vowel quality (reduction) in the syllable becomes unstressed, to
name but two changes that have been important for English as well.
In sum, language change is simply unavoidable and affects the language at all its levels, from
phonology to grammar and semantics. Even today, English is changing constantly. Talking
about Old English, Middle English or Present Day English is thus a fiction, albeit a very
convenient one.
7
Notice that such communities have been discovered in the course of time. Often people assume that such communities have
preserved the “pure” or “original” state of their language (as it has been unaffected by other languages), but this is of course
plainly false in view of the language inherent tendency to change.
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1.3. The Indo-European language family
When speakers of a single speech community spread out geographically, resulting in clearly
separated groups, language differentiation of what once was a single language is almost
inevitable. These differences can be minor (cf. the different dialects in England) or quite
substantial, possibly leading to different (yet perhaps still related) languages. While in the
former case the relationship between the different varieties may still be relatively
straightforward, this is less so when the varieties have evolved into different languages. In that
case, it is often necessary to check systematic correspondences (lexical, syntactic and/or
phonological) between the different languages. This is especially true if there is no more trace of
the “ancestor language” that they all started from.
That is certainly the case for the Indo-European (hence IE) language family that spans a wide
range of languages, including Sanskrit, Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew, etc.) Slavic
languages (Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, etc.), Romance languages (French, Spanish, Latin, etc.)
and Germanic languages (English, Dutch, German, etc.). A full overview of the IE languages is
given in Appendix 2. On the basis of systematic lexical correspondences (cf. Table 1 below) and
systematic structural correspondences, it has been possible to isolate the IE languages from other
speech families.8
LANGUAGE
English
mother
father
three
new
bear
German
Mutter
Vater
drei
neu
gebaren
Dutch
moeder
vader
drie
nieuw
baar
Gothic
—
faðar
Þreis
nujis
baira
Russian
matj
—
tri
novyj
beru
Lithuanian
mótyna
—
trys
nāujas
—
Latin
mater
pater
trēs
novus
ferō
Sanskrit
mātar
pitar
trayas
navya
bharāmi
Indo-European
*māter
*pαter
*treies
*neṷo/*noṷo
*bhéremi
Table 1 : Some examples of Indo-European lexical similarities9
Indo-European was spoken about 5000 years ago (in the Caucasus region) by people whose
mother tongue belongs to the IE family; there is no presupposition that there is one unitary
origin, only that they share many similarities. There are no written records of this language or
language group; it has been reconstructed by linguistics on the basis of systematic
correspondences; the reconstructed character is by convention indicated by the *). To the nonspecialist, these correspondences may not be immediately obvious; while certainly interesting,
8
9
Notice that not all languages spoken on the European continent are IE languages; for example, Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian
and Basque are non-IE languages. Next to IE, other large language families spoken on the earth are for example, Semitic
language family, Bantu-language family, Ural-Altaic languages (whence Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, etc.), Japanese-Korean
languages, etc.
The macron ( ̄ ) over a vowel is a modern (but pre-IPA) notation to indicate that the vowel is long ; this was not present in the
original manuscripts (if dealing with attested words).
M. Lemmens
10
we will not be very much concerned with these here, but concentrate on some of the major
distinctions that are relevant to the history of English.
The first important distinction is that between two large groups, the satem and centumlanguages; the terms come from the words for the number "one hundred" in representative
languages of each group (Latin centum and Avestan satem). They illustrate the different
development of IE prepalatal /k/ which developed to /k/ in centum-languages, whereas it
developed to /s/ in the satem-languages. English finds its origin in the former group, but it may
not be intuitively obvious how the initial /k/ (as illustrated by Latin centum), developed into the
(Modern) English /h/ as in hundred. (Mind: this is not to say that English hundred has been
derived from Latin; the latter is simply used to illustrate the older IE pattern!).
In order to understand that evolution (which is more systematic than you might think at
first), you have to realise that English belongs to the family of Germanic languages, which had a
different evolution than other centum-languages, such as the Italic, the Celtic or the Greek
languages.
1.4. The Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are distinguished from the other IE languages by the so-called First
Germanic sound-shift, also known as Grimm’s law (after the German philologist Jacob Grimm),
a set of regular changes explaining how the inherited Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stops they
developed in Proto-Germanic (the common ancestor of the Germanic branch of the IE family) in
the 1st millennium BC. It establishes a set of regular correspondences between early Germanic
stops and fricatives and the stop consonants of certain other IE languages (Grimm used mostly
Latin and Greek for illustration). As it is presently formulated, Grimm's Law consists of three
parts, which must be thought of as three consecutive phases in the sense of a chain shift:
1. Proto-Indo-European voiceless stops change into voiceless fricatives.
2. Proto-Indo-European voiced stops become voiceless.
3. Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirated stops lose their aspiration and change into plain
voiced stops.
Schematically, this can be represented as in the Table 2 below. Here are some further examples
of Grimm’s law in addition to those mentioned in Table 2.
- bh → b: SKR bhrātā GOT brōþar ENG brother
- dh → d (=[ð]) → d: SKR: vidhàva GOT viduwo Eng widow
- g → k: GR gunè (“woman”), ENG queen; LAT gelu, ENG cold
- p→f: LAT pater, OE fæder, ON faðer, GM Vater
- k→X/h: LAT in coelis, OE on heofonum, ON in hifne, GM im himmel
- t→Þ: LAT nomen tuum; OE: Þin nama (cf. ENG thine), ON nafn Þin
M. Lemmens
IE
GERMANIC
Voiced aspirated
Voiced
stops
Glides
Stops
11
EXAMPLES
IE vs. English
labial
bh
→
b
b
IE *bharami / bear
dental
dh
→
d
d
IE *dha / do
velar
gh
→
g
g
IE *ghostis / guest
Voiced stops
Voiceless stops
Latin vs. English
labial
b
→
p
cannabis / hemp
dental
d
→
t
decem / ten
velar
g
→
k
genu / knee
Voiceless aspirated
Voiceless Glides
Latin vs. English
stops
labial
p(h)
→
f
piscis / fish
dental
t(h)
→
T
tres / three
velar
k(h)
→
X
centum / hundred
Table 2 : Grimm’s law
There are exceptions and refinements to this general rule. For example, the IE clusters sp, st and
sk were not affected by this rule, which explains, for example, LAT stare GOT standan ENG stand
or LAT pisces GOT fisks (cf. Modern Swedish fisk ; in Old English fisc this cluster was
pronounced [S] (palatalisation), giving Mod Eng. fish). Another important other correction
concerned the influence of word stress, as formulated in Verner’s law (first formulated by the
linguist Karl Verner in 1875). This regularity explains why the middle /t/ of the Latin pater
(representing the IE consonant) find its equivalent in Proto-Germanci *fađēr (instead of expected
*faþēr). Curiously, the structurally similar family term *bhrehtēr “brother” developed as
predicted by Grimm's Law (Gmc. *brōþēr , cf. GOT broÜþar). Verner’s solution was that the
apparently unexpected voicing of voiceless stops occurred if they were non-word-initial and if
the vowel preceding them carried no stress in IE.
The details of the evolution from IE to Proto-Germanic will not concern us here. What is to be
remembered is that many of the languages spoken on the European continent and Asia share a
common ancestry which can be discovered via systematically comparing the different forms in
these languages. Within the group of IE languages, one branch, Proto-Germanic, which would
later diverge into the different Germanic languages, started to develop into a certain direction
via systematic sound changes described by Grimm’s and Verner’s law, which took place
probably during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe from ca. 500 BC. There are no
written documents of Proto-Germanic so all the forms have been reconstructed on the basis of
the comparative method of old as well as modern forms of the languages. Most of this linguistic
work (generally known as philology) was carried out in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Proto-Germanic developed into different Germanic languages; how exactly these different
branches originated is still fairly much unresolved, but it is clear that this is linked to the big
M. Lemmens
12
tribal movements that went on from 500 BC onwards, but especially between 200 and 700 A.D.
(also known as the Migration period). The Germanic tribes were initially located in what is
nowadays Southern-Scandinavia and Northern Germany and began to spread out southward in
different phases, as indicated in Figure 2 below.
Legend
██ Settlements before 750BC
██ New settlements until 500BC
██ New settlements until 250BC
██ New settlements until AD 1
Fig. 2: Early Germanic settlements (750 BC – 1 AD)10
From the time of their earliest attestation, the Germanic varieties are divided into three groups,
West, East and North Germanic, even if it still remains fairly unclear how this split actually
came about, given that the only evidence we have are scarce runic inscriptions.11 An overview
of the historical development of the different Germanic languages is given in Table 3 below.
The branch of East Germanic includes Gothic, Burgundian, Vandalic and Lombardic
(although the latter straddles the border between East and West Germanic). During the
Migration period (also called Völkerwanderung "migration of nations"), roughly from 300 till 700
A.D., the Germanic tribes spread our over the entire European continent, conquering land of the
decaying Roman Empire. Their extensive settlement can still be seen in some place names: the
name Andalusia, for example, is derived from the name of the Germanic tribe Vandals (that even
went as far as Northern Africa) and Catalonia is derived from Gotalonia (land of the Goths). In
the 5th century, the Visigoths actually ruled over a large part of France and the Iberian
peninsula. The Burgundians gave their name to a region in France (Burgundy); the Lombards
(or Longobardi) ended up in Northern Italy around 750 and established a long-lasting reign
there, giving their name to the region Lombardy (of which Milan is the capital). The Ostrogoths
established a kingdom in Italy around 425 A.D. and in 488 king Theoderic the Great conquered
all of Italy.12 Strikingly, all these languages have died out. The latest attestation of Gothic was in
10
11
12
This figure has been copied from the Wikepedia-entry for “Germanic languages”; in general, great care is to be taken with the
information found in this open source, but this particular entry contains fairly accurate facts about the Germanic languages’
characteristics and genesis.
The earliest full text is a 4th century Gothic Bible translation by a bishop called Ulfila (his name is Gothic for “little wolf”). It is
often used for comparative purposes. At the same time, this text cannot be taken as representative, since Ulfila seemed to
have drawn up his own grammatical rules and alphabet, which makes the language somewhat unnatural.
Note that these migrations, which occurred over several centuries, did not follow a straight line from Germany-Prussia to,
e.g., the Iberian peninsula.
M. Lemmens
13
the 16th century, on the Crimean peninsula (in the Black Sea, now Ukraine). The Crimean Gothic
died out in the 18th century.
500 BC - 200 AD
AD 200–700
700–1150
Old West Norse
NORTH-GERMANIC
1150–1350
1350–1500
Old Icelandic
Late Old Icelandic
Icelandic
Middle Norwegian
Norwegian
Old Norwegian
present
Old Faroese
Faroese
Early Old Danish
Late Old Danish
Danish
Early Old Swedish
Late Old Swedish
Proto-Norse
Old East Norse
1500–1700
Swedish
Gothic
EAST-GERMANIC
Burgundy
---
Vandalic
---
(Lombardic)
Old High
German
WESTGERMANIC
Crimean Gothic --Old High Gm
Old Frankish
Old Low
German
Middle High Gm.
Old Low Franconian
Early New High Gm.
Middle Dutch
Old Low Saxon
Middle Low Saxon
AngloFrisian
Old Frisian
Old English
German
Dutch
Plattdeutsch
Middle Frisian
Middle English
Frisian
Mod. English
Table 3: (Simplified) Historical overview of the Germanic language family
The branch of North Germanic languages split up in the Early Middle Ages (between 700
and 1100 A.D.) between Old West Norse (which developed into Norwegian and into Icelandic)
and Old East Norse (from which Swedish and Danish evolved); Färoese spoken by the people
on the Faroe Islands evolved from Old Norwegian. Even today, the North Germanic languages
are characterised by considerable similarities (much higher than between the other Germanic
languages) and even by some degree of mutual intelligibility. The reason for this is that they
divided up much more recently than the other Germanic languages.
The branch of West Germanic languages is where we will eventually find English. The West
Germanic branch split up between High and Low German, a distinction referring to the higher
mountainous area of Southern Germany where the former was spoken, which would eventually
give rise to Modern German. Old Low German, spoken in the flatlands (hence “low”) of
Northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, comprises Old Saxon, Old Franconian
(which will develop into Modern Dutch) and Anglo-Frisian, which is the common basis
leading eventually till Frisian and English.
Table 3 above also indicates the main periods that are traditionally distinguished for English
(our focus of interest):
 Old English (OE): 450 – 1150 (Anglo-Saxon period);
This is the period of full inflections in the language (synthetic language type) and when
runic symbols are still used.
 Middle English (ME): 1150 – 1500 (Anglo-Norman period);
M. Lemmens
14
This is the period of levelled inflections (morphological simplification, due to vowel
reduction), the levelling of unstressed vowels to /ə/ (e.g., OE stanas → ME stones or OE
nosu → ME nose) and the (massive) influx of French vocabulary. Also spelling is
romanised.
 Modern English (ModE): 1500 – 1800
This is the period of lost inflections, with further simplification of morphology and further
grammaticalization.
 Present-Day English (PDE): 1800 – now
English as we know it now.
Obviously, the dates that distinguish the different periods in the history of English are
somewhat arbitrary dividing lines, often linked to some historical event. Notice that in the table
above the distinction between Modern and Present-Day English is not made. The four-fold
distinction takes into account some recent changes (like the rise of the progressive, the
progressive perfect (have been building), etc.) and is as such a more accurate division. Recall,
however, that even today, English continues to change.
1.5. A short history of English
In the following section, we present a summary account of the history of English, focussing on
the language external events that helped shape the language. The more language-internal
developments are discussed in the subsequent chapters. It is important to note that while we
start our description with the earliest settlements on the British Isles, the birth of English (or
Englisc as it was called) is to be situated in the 5th century.
1.5.1. The Britons (Celts)
The first inhabitants of Britain whose language is known to us are the Celts, they probably came
to England between 2000 B.C. (Stone Age) and 500 B.C. (Iron Age). There were certainly peoples
that inhabited the British Isles before the Celts, but almost nothing is known of their original
culture and language, some remnants may remain in the names of some geographical features,
such as the rivers Clyde, Tamar and Thames. It is still not known what languages were spoken by
the peoples of Ireland and Britain before the arrival of the Celts.
The first group of Celts that settled were the Gaelic Celts, they themselves were later driven
to Ireland and Isle of Man by later Celtic invaders, the Brythonic Celts. The linguistic remnants
of the Gaelic Celts are Erse (Irish), Gaelic (Scottish) and Manx. Later, also the Brythonic Celts
were driven westward to Wales and Cornwall, and some even crossed to Brittany by the
Germanic invaders. The linguistic remnants of the Britannic Celts are Welsh, Cornish, and
Breton.
Linguistic influences:
Relatively few linguistic traces of Celtic have survived in present-day English, which is quite
understandable given the low influence of the Celts on later Anglo-Saxon society. Some traces
M. Lemmens
15
have been preserved in OE, mostly in place names (e.g., Dundee, London, York, Exe (cf. also
Exeter), Avon, Dover, Salisbury, Kent, Thames).
1.5.2. The Roman invasions and settlement
Before the Germanic invasions, the Romans invaded the country. This happened in two phases,
with different impact. The first invasion was by Julius Caesar in 55-54 B.C.; it had little success
and very little impact on the country and its language. The second phase was more important to
the further evolution of the country. In 43 A.D. Claudius managed to conquer a large part of the
country and there was a true Roman settlement, even if it wasn’t without some uprisings, e.g.,
Boadicea’s uprising in 61 A.D. when allegedly 70,000 Romans and Romanized Celts were killed.
The effect of the Roman settlement was a gradual Romanization of the Celtic culture, which
lead to the building of roads (from London to other areas), houses, temples, bath houses,
theatres, etc. Not all of Britain was under the Roman domination, the North (Scotland)
remained untouched; Hadrian’s wall was built in 122 A.D. to protect the region from the
“barbaric” Picts in the North.
Due to the Roman occupation, eventually quite a number of (Celtic) people spoke Latin;
however, few of those words made it into the English language via Celtic transmission, e.g., port
(Lat. portus) or mount (Lat. montus); this once again follows logically from the low influence of
Celtic on the later Anglo-Saxon society. Some of the words of Latin origin came into English via
earlier contacts of the Germanic tribes (still on the continent, cf. next section).
The largest influx of Latin words came later in three waves: the first two, both affecting Old
English, came via Christianity; the last one, occurred in the Renaissance (affecting Early Modern
English) characterised by a high interest in the ancient Roman and Greek cultures. This gave
rise to an incessant influx of learned words from Latin and Greek (often in their French form).
1.5.3. The Germanic invasions
The first invasions of Germanic tribes the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, who had their home
on the region of Denmark and the Low Countries (cf. map in Appendix), occur around 449; they
basically started on the invitation of the (Romanised) Celts who, after the Romans had left, were
left defenceless against the Picts and the Scots, invading the country from the north. The first
(forcible) settlements occur in Southeast (Kent) by the Jutes; later by Saxons (Wessex, Sussex,
Essex, Middlesex); then by the Angles (East Anglia). All in all, the Germanic invasions and
settlements lasted approximately one century! The nature of these settlements was quite
different from the Roman settlement, too: instead of ruling the population as the Romans did,
the Germanic invasions lead to the dispossession of the (Romanized) Celts; a form of “ethnic
cleansing”: they burnt towns and other elements of Roman civilization. Old English will arise
from the fusion of the Germanic languages spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
The Germanic invaders had essentially a society organised in tribal or family structures and
their kingdoms were not particularly stable. Of these, 7 kingdoms are generally recognized as
important: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex. In the 7th cy.
M. Lemmens
16
the kingdom of Northumbria (north of the river Humber) had some political leadership and
dominance; in the 8th cy. it was the kingdom of Mercia (between the Humber and the Thames)
that was dominant; in the 9th cy. Wessex was the dominant kingdom. The West-Saxon kings
gained supremacy and became “the kings of all the English”, with its peak under King Ælfred’s
reign (871-889) who managed to stop the Danish invaders (cf. below).
King Ælfred’s reign marks the period of (relative) stability and prosperity for Wessex,
especially at the end of his reign, and the Anglo-Saxon culture thrives. Many documents that
were produced in those times have survived until this day. One of the most important texts was
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals in Old English narrating the history of the
Anglo-Saxons; it started in the late 9th century, at the end of the reign of King Ælfred the Great,
and at some places was continued till the 11th century. (The most well-known copy of the
manuscript is the Peterborough Manuscript). Under King Ælfred’s instigation, many important
Latin texts were translated, such as Consolatio Philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy) a
philosophical work by Boethius and Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, telling the
history of the Church of the English People. It is considered to be one of the most important
original references on Anglo-Saxon history. These Anglo-Saxon texts are on of the major sources
for the study of OE.
As mentioned above, many Latin loan words came into Old English during this period, via
the christianization process or (not unrelated) via schools, especially during King Alfred’s reign.
Many loan words thus have to do with church life or scientific domains. Let us look at these two
waves in some more detail.
(i) Most Latin words that were borrowed in the OE period occurred after the reintroduction of
Christianity in Britain in 597, in a systematic attempt to Christianize the country by Pope
Gregory the Great who sent St. Augustine as missionary to England, accompanied by a
group of 40 monks. Within a hundred years after the landing of St. Augustine in Kent, all of
England had been Christianised. The Church had a profound impact on English life and
society, and obviously also on the vocabulary. Some examples:
 words concerning the church and its workings: abbot, altar; angel, candle, canon, hymn;
disciple, epistle, cleric; mass, minister, nun, pope, priest, martyr, temple, noon, offer, organ,
psalm, rule, etc.
 words concerning domestic life, pertaining to clothing: cap, sock, silk, purple, mat; food:
pear, radish, oyster, lobster, mussel, cook (n); trees and plants: plant, pine, lily, myrrh, fennel
 words pertaining to education and learning: school, master, grammatical, verse, gloss
 other words: fever, elephant, circle, giant;
 some verbs: temprian (temper, Lat. temperāre), tyrnan (turn, Lat. tornare)
(ii) A second group of Latin words entered into Old English during the revival of learning
initiated by King Ælfred. They differ from the earlier borrowings in that they were of a less
popular kind and that they often express ideas of scientific or learned character, e.g.
 words relating to religion e.g., apostle, cell, cloister, demon, idol, prophet, sabbath, etc.;
M. Lemmens
17
 words related to literature, e.g., accent, decline, history, paper;
 names of plants and trees, e.g. cucumber, ginger, fig, laurel;
 medical terms like cancer, paralysis;
 names of animals, e.g. camel, scorpion, tiger.
As a result of the Christianisation of Britain, some 450 Latin words entered into English writings
before the end of the OE period, some 350 of which were firmly entrenchment in the language,
so much so that most of them are still in use today. The Christian-Latin influence is thus not
only important from a quantitative point of view, but it marks the beginning of an attitude
which has been typical of English ever since, viz. its readiness to accept and assimilate foreign
words into its vocabulary.
1.5.4. The Scandinavian invasions
Form the 8th till the 11th century there were three big waves of invasions of England by
Scandinavians, the Vikings (Danes).
The first wave, occurring between 787 - ±850, were simple raids by isolated bands of Vikings
and, apart from looting and plundering, had little permanent effect.
In 9th century the invasion were by larger armies, which finally lead to real conquests and
settlement (large part of Eastern England). The Danes start to attack Wessex; King Ælfred (871899) manages to free Wessex of the Danes, first by paying the Vikings off (Danegeld), later by
defeating the Danes in a long series of battles (870-878). The Danes, however, still control a large
part of England (basically all of the northeast), known as the Danelaw (in OE: Dena lagu), in
other words, the part were the Danish law applied; it was part of the larger Danish empire.
A third wave of invasions occurs around 991, which marks the climax of the Viking raids.
The English kingdom fell easily. In 1014, the English king Æthelræd the Unready13 is forced into
exile to Normandy where his brother-in-law lived. The Danish king Swegen Forkbeard ceases
the English throne; however, Swegen dies unexpectedly shortly after that. The English nobility
disputed the Danish claim to the throne and voted King Æthelred back on the throne. Æthelræd
and later his son Edmund Ironside are defeated by the Danes, and in 1016 Swegen’s sun Cnut
(or Canute) obtains the throne of England and becomes king of England and Denmark (much
larger then than it is now).
The Scandinavian invasions had a considerable influence on Old English, since the Danes
spoke a language akin to English; the two Germanic languages were probably still sufficiently
similar to be mutually intelligible. Obviously, most of the Scandinavian influence occurred not
during the first raid-like invasions, but when the Danes began to settle extensively in England.
Note that the different Scandinavian languages as we know them now (esp. Danish, Norwegian
and Swedish) had not yet evolved from the Old Norse; at that time, the North Germanic branch
13
Notice that “Unready” does not mean that he was considered unprepared (for whatever); in fact, it probably is the AnglosSaxon word unræd which means “ill-advised” and is probably a pun on his name Æthelræd, a compound of æthel “noble”
(cf. Dutch adel and edel, “noble”) and ræd “advice” (cf. Dutch raad or Swedish råd, “counsel, advice”).
M. Lemmens
18
was beginning to split up into Old West Norse and Old East Norse, but were probably still
quite alike.
Because the language of the Danes and that of the Anglo-Saxons resemble each other to a high
degree, it is not always easy to decide which words are of Scandinavian origin. Generally, the
following rules hold:
i) a word is of AS origin if it occurs in AS writings before the Scandinavian invasions (even if
the same form may have occurred in Danish)
ii) the two languages had slightly different sound developments, which allows us to identify
the origin of some words:
 AS sc was palatalized to /ʃ/ whereas it remained /sk/ in Scandinavian: ship, shall, fish are
of AS origin, sky, skin, skill are of Scandinavian origin. Cf. also shirt vs. skirt (both from Old
Gmc. scyrte)
 ā vs. ei (both from Old Gmc /ai/, e.g. OE stān (ModEng. stone), but from Scand. origin are
words as aye, nay (but English no), reindeer.
- There are a high number of place names (more than 1,400) which testify of the Scandinavian
influence and settlement, e.g.,
 place names ending in -by as in Derby, by meaning “farm, town”, cf. Mod.Sw. by “village”;
 place names ending in Thorpe, as in Linthorpe, thorp meaning “village”
 place names ending in thwaite (isolated piece of land), as in Applethwaite
- The majority of the Scandinavian words that were borrowed pertain to daily life, e.g. birth,
bull, crook, dirt, egg (OE ey), fellow, guess, leg, race, sister (OE sweoster), tidings, steak, stack,
window, flat, ill, low, meek, odd, rotten, tight, weak; verbs: to call, cast, crave, crawl, die (OE
steorfan, now starve) get, give , glitter, scare, take (OE. niman), trust, thrive, thrust, lift want,
- Sometimes both OE and Scandinavian word survived but with a difference in meaning, e.g.
drop-drip, no-nay, from-fro, rear-raise, hide-skin, sick-ill, skirt-shirt, blossom-bloom.
- Even “form words” were borrowed such as pronouns (they, them, their), the conjunction
though, and the forms (we/they) are of the verb be (OE syndon)
- There has undoubtedly be some Scandinavian influence on morphology and syntax, as the
languages often had the same roots but different inflections, which might have sped up the
loss of endings. Also the loss of verb inflections and the –(e)s of the 3rd pers. sing of the
present tense is most likely due to Scandinavian influence. Finally, according to O. Jespersen
(An English Grammar on Historical Principles, 1927), the omission of the relative pronoun,
which was rare in OE, may be due to Scandinavian influence.
Note : The influence of Scandinavian is larger than Standard English will show, as many
dialects (especially in the North) will have an even larger sample of words and forms of
Scandinavian origin.
M. Lemmens
19
1.5.5. The Norman Conquest and its aftermath (1066-1200)
King Æthelræd the Unready was for some time expelled from England by the Danes and had
fled to Normandy to his brother-in-law; his son Edward (from his second marriage) grows up
in Normandy. When in 1042 the Danish line dies out, Edward, later known as the Confessor,
ascends the English throne. However, he dies childless in 1066. Edward’s primary adviser
Harold is appointed king by the English nobility, but this is challenged by William, Duke of
Normandy, second cousin to the late king Edward. William invades England, and defeats the
English, and is crowned king of England on Christmas Day 1066.
This brings about drastic changes in the English society structure, as William systematic
appointed Normans to the higher positions in society, also in ecclesiastical realm (bishops,
abbots, etc.). Until 1204, the English kings were also Dukes of Normandy, and many noblemen
had large estates both in England and in France. Henry II (1154-1189), through his marriage
with Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, ruled over two-thirds of France, all the western part of the
country from the Channel to the Pyrenees.
French was the dominant language or the upper class for a century and a half, and they were
largely indifferent to English (the language of the masses), although they probably understood
it. There was also an important body of French literature begin produced at the English court,
especially under Henry II & Eleanor d’Aquitaine, such as the influential Roman de Brut by
Robert Wace (?1155), presenting the story of the (legendary) King Arthur and tracing the history
of Britain back to the (mythical) Brutus of Troy, descendant of Aeneas of Troy and presented in
Medieval legends as the first king of Britain. Wace’s history (written in verse) laid the basis for
the later Arthurian novels:
The twelfth-century Norman poet Wace occupies an important place in medieval historiography
and had an incalculable influence on medieval romance. By translating Geoffrey of Monmouth's
“history” of Britain, the Historia Regum Britanniae, into his French verse Roman de Brut, he
instantly allowed the layman as well as the clerk access to the “information” that Britain, settled
by Brutus the grandson of Aeneas, had a long and proud history whose climax was the reign of
king Arthur. Wace's work led in turn to the thirteenth-century English translation by Laʒamon
and to numerous other Anglo-Norman and English “Bruts”; it also provided the starting-point
and inspiration for the flowering of Arthurian romance. (The Literary Encyclopedia)
1.5.6. The Re-establishment of English (1200-1500)
In 1200, King John (son of Henry II & Eleanor) marries Isabelle d’Angoulême, and thus gets
into a conflict with the powerful Hugh of Lusignan, who was formally betrothed to Isabelle;
indirectly, he thus gets into a conflict with king Philip of France. (Note that the region called
France then was obviously much smaller than France today). The marriage also leads to a new
influx of French people (from the Poitou region) who are, once again, put into powerful
positions. As a result of the conflict with the king of France, King John loses Normandy to the
King of France in 1204, and in the coming decades most Anglo-Norman noblemen have to
choose in securing either their English or their French estates (“one cannot serve two kings”),
leading to a gradual separation of the two countries.
In 1236, Henry III marries Eleanor of Provence, which leads to a (yet another) massive influx
of French people who, once again, occupy important positions in society. “In short, in the
M. Lemmens
20
course of Henry’s long reign (1216-1272), the country was eaten up by strangers” (Baugh &
Cable 1984:131). The result of all this is a strong hostility towards French and a ‘patriotic’
movement to restore “England to the English”
There were also other factors that contributed to the demise of French. The first is a shift in
status that French had undergone: it was no longer the language of daily life, but it had become
the language of civilization, which had to be learnt (as testified by the handbooks for French,
written in English). Secondly, the French spoken in England was predominantly Norman,
which furthermore had acquired its own colour under influence of English linguistic features
and it thus departed strongly from the French of the Ile-de-France that under Capetian power
had become the new standard. The French people from the Continent considered the English
variant inferior. Chaucer’s mild irony in his description of the Prioresse is a nice illustration of
that mockery:
And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetishly,
After the scole of Stratford ate Bowe,
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.
The Prioresse is described as a highly educated woman, but the comment that she speaks the
French of England and not that of Paris is a nice way of mocking her (apart from other elements
in the description).
The antagonism between the English and the French culminated in the Hundred Years War
(1337-1453); French being the language of the enemy is probably one of the main causes of the
disuse of French in England. Moreover, the rise of the English speaking middle class
(merchants, craftsmen) gave English a more prominent place in society. By the 14th century,
English is the mother tongue of all England and people who could speak French (mostly at the
higher courts) were certainly bilingual (as opposed to the two preceding centuries when the
court was basically monolingual French). The reign of Henry IV (1413-1422) marks the turning
point for English which is now used in writing and in official documents. The 14th & 15th
century is also period of great individual writers, such as Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales,
Troilus & Criseyde), William Langland (Piers Plowman), John Wycliffe (Bible translator), Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight (anonymous). These writers are clearly proof of the firm position
English had acquired in the 14th century and in turn contributed to give the language its
prestige.
The Norman invasions are probably the events that most drastically influenced English. For
quite some time, there was a linguistic division in the country coinciding with a social one: the
highest classes in society spoke (Norman) French, the middle and lower classes spoke English.
The fact that the latter may have lacked conservatism usually imposed by the learned elite and
(in particular) writing, may have contributed to speeding up some of the “regular” changes of
the language. However, the (Norman) French spoken by the upper classes did have a massive
influence on English, leading to a enormous intake of French words, changes in the morphology
(loss of endings), spelling (e.g., ch and th are French spellings of OE c and ð / þ respectively),
M. Lemmens
21
and syntax (the rise of the do-support might have been due to French influence). Importantly,
the influence of French started not immediately after 1066, but some 250 years later when the
lower nobility and the rising middle class became more familiar with French and, strikingly, the
higher courts were turning to English again.14 This lead to a period of some form of bilingualism
for many people, which is the factor triggering the influence. More details on these changes will
be discussed in the chapter on Middle English.
1.5.7. Cultural invasions
After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, there have been no more military invasions in England,
yet there have been important cultural “invasions”, particularly in the Renaissance,
characterised by a high interest in the ancient Roman and Greek cultures. This gave rise to an
incessant influx of learned words from Latin and Greek (often in their French form). These often
concern the domains of the sciences (physics, medicine, biology, etc.) but also law and
academia.
Even today, English continues to borrow words from other languages very easily, which has
lead to an enormously large lexicon compared to some other languages, which may have less
(different!) words.
14
For example, a study by O. Jesperson (1928) revealed that the highest number of lexical boorowings from French occurred
between 1251 and 1450), with about 200 new loans attested between 1351-1400, as opposed to only 11 between 1050-1200.
M. Lemmens
23
CHAPTER 2. OLD ENGLISH
!
Free OE dictionary on the net:
http://home.comcast.net/~modean52/oeme_dictionaries.htm
2.1. General characteristics
Recall that Old English is the fusion of the languages spoken by the Angles, the Saxons and the
Jutes, which originally came from the region of Denmark and the Low Countries. The
languages of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were probably not so different from one another; most
likely mutually quite comprehensible. Via the merger of the different Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
(cf. above) into larger ones, 4 main dialects of Old English arise (cf. map in Appendix):
- Northumbrian: north of river Humber
- Mercian: between Humber and Thames
Anglian
- Kentish: dialect of the Jutes, small area in south-east of England & Isle of Wight.
- West-Saxon: south-west (Wessex); developed into a kind of early Standard English under
king Alfred (871-899) and abbot Aelfric (995-1020); largest collection of texts, basis for
study of OE.
As such, Old English belongs to the Low West Germanic branch (cf. the Germanic family tree
above) and thus shares many characteristics with other Germanic languages of that time:
(i) It had undergone the Germanic consonant shift (Grimm’s law), cf. above.
(ii) It is a synthetic type of language, relying heavily on inflections to express grammatical
relations and much less on structural elements, such as prepositions
(iii) Systematicisation of the strong declension of the verb. The strong declension goes back to
an IE paradigm with systematic vowel changes, which, however, became much more
systematic in the Germanic languages than in the other IE-languages
(iv) The development of the weak declension of the verb (using a “dental” suffix which
developed into the Modern English –ED morpheme). The origin of the weak declension
(OE –ede, –ode¸ –de for preterite and –ed, –od and –d for the past participle; in ModE. –ed) is
unsure, but it is generally assumed to be derived from the preterit form of the verb *dheh“do, make” in Proto-Germanic. Its origin thus lies in constructions like *warme-dedai “I
made warm”
(iii) Strong stress on first or root syllable (this has become somewhat obscured in ModE
because of the high number of Latin and French loans). It was this stress pattern that was
chiefly responsible for the disappearance of inflectional endings (this is true for all
Germanic languages, but with some variation)
(iv) Compounding was the major word formation device.
Here is one example, taken from Cable & Baugh, §49:
M. Lemmens
24
Base form
mōd (≅ ModE mood): “heart, mind, spirit; boldness, courage; pride, haughtiness”, cf. its cognate
in other Gemanic languages Du. moed, Sw. mod, Gm. Mut (all meaning “courage”)
Basic derivations
mōdig (ADJ) “spirited, bold, high-minded, arrogant”, etc.)
mōdiglic (ADJ)“magnanimous”
mōdiglīce (ADV) “boldly, proudly”
mōdignes (N) “magnanimity, pride”
mōdigian (V) “to bear oneself proudly or exultantly”
gemōdod: “disposed, minded”
mōdfull “haughty”
mōdless “spiritless, without courage”
mōdgeÞanc (lit. mōd+thought(N)) “mind, understanding”.
mōdcræft “intelligence, mōdcræftig “intelligent”
Different types of mental states (mostly N+N combinations):
glædmōdnes “kindness”
mōdlufu “affection” (lufu=love)
unmōd “despondency”
mōdcaru “sorrow” (caru=care)
mōdlēast “want of courage”
madmōd “folly”
ofermōd “pride”, ofermōdig “proud” (ofer-=over)
hēahmōd “pride” (hēah=high)
mōdhete “hate” (hete=hate)
Different types of adjectives
micelmōd “magnanimous” (micel=”great, intense, much”)
swīÞmōd: “great of soul” (swīÞ=strong)
stīÞmōd “resolute, obstinate” (stÜÜÞ=stiff)
gūÞmōd “warlike” (gūÞ= ”war, battle”)
torhtmōd “glorious” (torht=bright, clear)
mōdlēof “beloved” (lēof = dear)
Compounding and derivation were much more productive in OE than in ModE which has
come to rely more on borrowing and assimilating elements from other languages. The foreign
influences on OE much were more limited (cf. below).
2.2. Spelling and Pronunciation
Before literacy, the OE inscriptions were written in the runic alphabet; also called the futhorc
(based on the first 6 letters, cf. our modern expression “the ABC”), given in Figure 3 below. Full
runic spelling was essentially limited to (short) poems, riddles (poems where inanimate objects
were personified) and (shorter) inscriptions on stones, swords, and other artefacts. When
M. Lemmens
25
(written!) literacy arrived (with the reintroduction of Christianity), an adaptation of the Latin
script (brought to England by Irish monks) was used (so-called insular script) with, however,
special graphemes for <f, g, r, s> and 2 runic symbols, the “thorn” and the “wynn”. The symbol
æ (“ash”) is a grapheme of Latin origin.
Fig. 3: Anglo-Saxon runic symbols (futhorc)
(Source: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/runic.htm)
The OE script was largely phonemic, so there are no difficulties in figuring out the approximate
pronunciation. Some important observations:
Vo OE script does not differentiate between short and long vowels (and diphthongs); to
facilitate reading, modern edition place a macron ( ̄) over long vowels and
diphthongs, e.g. gōd ‘good’ as opposed to god ‘god’
<Þ> (“thorn”) and <ð or d̄ > (“eth”) are used indiscriminately for both /θ/ and /ð/; the
latter was gradually replaced by thorn, and eventually by <th> (French influence).
<x> = /ks/
<cg> = voiced affricate /dʒ/, e.g. ecg “edge”
<sc> = voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /ʃ/
<c> had two allophones: velar plosive /k/ as in cumin ‘come’ or cū ‘cow’ and the affricate
/tʃ/ as in cīld /tʃiːld/. In modern editions, a dot is often placed over the letter: ċ. The
cluster <cg> pronounced /dʒ/ as in eċġ “edge” often has a dot above it too in modern
editions.
In ME, the spelling is adjusted to <ch> under French influence (just like <sh> for OE
<sc>, <dg> for OE <cg> and <qu> for OE <cw>)
<g> is quite ambiguous. It could be a voiced velar plosive /g/ (as in modern English), as
in god, a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, as in boga ‘bow’, a semi-vowel /j/ as in ġēār and
/dʒ/ as in menġan ‘mix’. In the two latter cases, there is often a dot above the letter in
modern editions.
M. Lemmens
26
2.3. Important Sound Changes
We will not present a detailed description of all the elements related to the OE sound system,
but highlight (i) some features that differentiate English from other Germanic languages, (ii)
some elements in which OE differs strongly from ModE and (iii) some elements which help
explain the present-day sound system (or spelling).
2.3.1. Vowels
 OE had a systematic opposition between long and short vowels, where a long vowel is
prolonged in time; in Modern English this opposition is more accurately described as “tense”
versus “lax”. In Modern transcripts, a macron is often placed above a vowel to indicate
length, even if it is fairly predictable, e.g., open syllables have long vowels, some consonants
clusters had lengthening/shortening effects, etc.
 OE had the following vowels:
spelling
sound
a
a
ā
æ
ǣ
e
ē
i
ī
o
ō
u
ū
y
ȳ
ea
ēa
eo
ēo
aː
æ
æː
e
eː
ɪ
iː
ɒ
oː
ʊ
uː
y
yː
æə
æːə
eɒ
eːɒ
example
camp (“battle”)
hlāf (“loaf”)
æt (“at”)
læÜst (“least”)
wel (“well”)
cwēn (“queen”)
hit (“it”)
wīs (“wise”)
folc (“people”)
sōð (“truth”)
hund (“dog”)
nū (“now”)
wyrm (“serpent”)
hȳd (“hide”)
heall (“hall”)
dēad (“dead”)
deorc (“dark”)
frēond (“friend”)
Notice that for some of these words the originally long vowels have been shortened in their
transition to Modern English (e.g., dead, friend)
 The OE vowel system is not so problematic; the only vowel that may pose a problem is y/ȳ,
essentially a rounded front vowel (much like i/iː but rounded). It was lost in ME (converged
with i/ī); Modern Swedish still has these rounded front vowels for example.
 Compared to the Germanic origin, many of the OE vowels have been raised or fronted, e.g.
OE: cyning ’king’ vs. Gmc *kuningaz (cf. Sw. konung; Du. koning)
M. Lemmens
27
OE: sēċan ‘seek’ vs. Gothic sōkjan (cf. Du. zoeken, Gm. suchen)
OE: fyllan ’fill’ vs. Gothic fulljan (cf. ModE full)
OE: sendan ‘send’ vs. Gothic sandjan
Explanation: vowel is affected by (i.e. goes in the same direction of) the i/j sound in the
following syllable; hence the name i-umlaut for this phenomenon. Is not exclusive to OE, but
occurs in most Germanic languages (but not always, as shown above).
 Also in other contexts, OE tends to raise low vowels,
/a/ → /æ/ cf. dæg (vs. Du. dag), æpple (vs. appel, Gm. Apfel)
/ā/ → /ē/ cf. strǣt ‘street’ (vs. Du. straat, Gm. Straße)
 In many contexts, i.e. before r, l, χ (spelled <h>), OE has “breaking” of the short vowels /i, e,
æ/ to diphthongs, some relics of which can be found in spelling, e.g. eorÞe ‘earth’ (from Gmc.
*erÞe, cf. Gm. Erde), heorte ‘heart’ from Gmc. *herte (cf. Gm. Herz, Du. hart).
2.3.2. Consonants
 <h> is pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative [χ] everywhere, except in initially where [h]
occurs, e.g.:
χ brōhte ‘he brought’, hēah ‘high’, Þurh ‘through’ (cf. Gm. durch; metathesis:r switches in
context of dentals, cfr. also three-third)¸ rūh ‘rough’
h hūs ‘house’, hand, horn
 /r/: its pronunciation is quite unsure, but generally assumed to have 2 allophones: (1) a thrill
initially before a vowel and in intervocalic position (as in present-day Scottish and Swedish)
and (2) a fricative retroflex (much like the present-day American variant), which explains the
affect it has had on the preceding vowel. In any case, and unlike in British English
nowadays, it was always pronounced, even before consonants.
 In the transition from Gmc to (P)OE, there has been a palatalisation process affecting the
consonants g and k (in the neighbourhood of front vowels) as well as the cluster sk,
- Gmc. /g/ → /j/ e.g.
ġēār ‘year’
dæġ ‘day’, cf. Gm. Tag [g]; Du. dag [χ], Sw. dag [daː(g)]
weġ ‘way’, cf. Gm. Weg [g]; Du. weg [χ], Sw. väg [veː(g)]
hāliġ ‘holy’, cf. Gm. heilig [g]; Du. heilig [χ]; Sw. helig [heːli(g)]
- Gmc. /k/ → /tʃ/ e.g. in ċīld ‘child’ (cf. Gm. Kind), miċel ‘much’ (cf. Sw. mycket [k])
reconstruction: /k’/ (light palatalisation) → /kj/ → /tj/ → /tʃ/
- Gmc. /sk/ → /ʃ/ e.g. fisċ ‘fish’ (cf. Sw. fisk), sċōh ‘shoe’ (cf. Sw. sko), sċip ‘ship’, sċearp
‘sharp’ (cf. Sw. skarp)
In ME, the spelling is adjusted to <ch> and <sh> under French influence.
The palatisation allows us to identify certain words as Scandinavian loanwords where such
palatalisation of sk had not occurred (it will occur, but much later, cf. present-day
M. Lemmens
28
Scandinavian languages). E.g. shirt (from OE scyrte) vs. skirt (from ON skyrta); other
Scandinavian loans: sky, skin, skill, scrape, whisk
 Remember that the consonant clusters /gn, kn, hw, hl, hn, hr, wl, wr/ were pronounced as
such! It is only later that these consonant cluster get simplified in pronunciation (but not
always in spelling, e.g. gnat, knight, what, etc.)
2.4. The synthetic character of OE
- OE is a synthetic language, which means that it uses cases and other inflections to indicate
grammatical relations, where Modern English mostly would use grammatical markers such
as prepositions, auxiliaries, etc.
- The case system concerns the nominal grammar, comprising nouns, adjectives, and the
personal, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns). There are four basic cases:
 Nominative: the “unmarked” form of the word, used for the subject of the verb
 Accusative: used to mark the object of the verb
 Dative: used to mark the indirect object of the verb
 Genitive: used to mark a possessive relation
The oblique cases (accusative, dative) occur after certain prepositions as well, e.g. ofer+ACC.;
to+DAT; on+DAT.
- You find an overview of the OE inflectional system in Appendix 6; a colour version can be
downloaded from http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/courses/handouts/magic.pdf.
As you study the pronouns, nouns and adjectives, you will find that forms repeat themselves
in the same pattern, e.g. masculine and neuter singular forms are often the same.
You do not have to study these forms (you can use the sheet on the exams or will be given a
copy of it), but you have to be able to identify the correct forms for text analyses.
In the following paragraphs, we will add some comments to the overview, presented per
word category.
2.4.1. OE Nouns
- OE nouns have a strong and a weak declension, which go back to different IE noun classes;
the a-thematic nouns were basically irregular nouns.
2.4.2. OE adjectives
- Like the nouns, OE adjectives also have a strong and a weak declension, which are used in
different syntactic context (much like in present-day German). The weak declension was
used after demonstrative and possessive pronouns; the strong declension in other contexts.
M. Lemmens
29
2.4.3. OE Pronouns
- In Old English the genitive form of the personal pronouns were used as “possessives”, i.e.,
mīn, Þīn, his/hire, ūre, ēower, hira); In those contexts, they were inflected as strong adjectives,
e.g.,
mīnum scipe “my ship” (dat. pl.); þīnne wæġn “your wagon” (acc. sg. masc.); ēowru hors
“your horses” (nom. pl.)
Since these forms follow the strong adjective declension, they are not taken up as a separate
category in the schematic overview.
- The dual form means “we two” or “you two”; they were already on their way out in the
(late) OE period.
- Notice that for the interrogative pronouns (the wh-words in Mod.Eng.) the h preceded the w
and it was pronounced /hw/ (which you may still here in affected speech today).
- The second person singular was not used as an “informal” variant, it simply meant the
singular. How and when the plural pronoun you came to used for the second person singular
will be discussed in the next chapter.
- The form she arose in the ME period; the personal pronouns for the 3rd pers. plural in Modern
English (they, them, their) are of Scandinavian origin and entered English in the Middle
English period as well (cf. Chapter 3).
2.4.4. OE Verbs
- The verbal paradigm was characterized by an important split (true for all Germanic
languages) between weak forms (forming the preterit and past participle by adding a
“dental” suffix -ade, -ode –ed and -ad, -od, -ed) and the strong verbs, which change their stem
vowel in the preterit. Strangely enough, the vowels for the past tense were not the same
across person: the 1st & 3rd sg. had one vowel and the 2nd sg and the plural forms had another.
Here are some examples:
drīfan
drāf/drifon
(ge)drifen
(drive)
drinkan
drank/drunkon
(ge)drunken
(drink)
teran
tær/tǣron
(ge)toren
(tear)
bindan
band/bundon
(ge)bunden
(bind)
As shown in the table below, the strong verbs were distributed over 7 different verb classes,
each having their own “vowel-series” (you don’t need to study these, they are given here to
clarify the system). While some of the systematicity has been preserved in Modern English
(e.g., i-a-u as in sing-sang-sung), it has become less transparent as the result of certain sound
changes as well as paradigmatic (or analogical) levelling. Firstly, the opposition in the
preterit forms disappeared; nowadays, there is only one past form. The vowel that is used in
Modern English sometimes goes back to the vowel of the singular (e.g., drink-drank-drunk), of
the plural (e.g. bind-bound-bound not band), or of the past participle (e.g., tear-tore-torn OE
pret. sg./pl.= tær/tǣron).
M. Lemmens
Class
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
Usual Form
Infinitive
i + one cons.
(scinan)
eo + one cons.
(creopan)
u + one
cons.(brucan)
e + two cons.
(bregdan)
e + one cons.
(beran)
e + one cons.
(tredan)
a + one cons.
(faran)
same stem in
inf./past ptc.
same stem in 1/2
pret.
i
(scinan)
eo
(creopan)
u
(brucan)
e
(bregdan)
e
(beran)
e
(tredan)
a
(faran)
(healdan)
(hatan)
30
1st
Preterite
a
(scan)
ea
(creap, breac)
2nd
Preterite
i
(scinon)
u
(crupon,
brucon)
Past Participle
æ
(brægd)
æ
(bær)
æ
(træd)
o
(for)
(heold)
u
(brugdon)
æ
(bæron)
æ
(trædon)
o
(foron)
(heoldon)
o
(brogden)
o
(boren)
e
(treden)
a
(faren)
(healden)
(het)
(heton)
(haten)
i
(scinen)
o
(cropen, brocen)
Table 4: The OE strong verb classes
- Note that the verb ending for the 3rd pers. sg. in the present tense was -(e)ð (-eth); the -(e)s
used nowadays in Modern English came later: it started in the North and spread Southward.
In Shakespeare’s time both were still used fairly interchangeably. Now -eth only occurs in
poetic and religious use.
M. Lemmens
31
CHAPTER 3. MIDDLE ENGLISH
The ME period is one of monumental change, more extensive than ever before or ever since
(except perhaps for the second great vowel shift in Early Modern English that lead to a
systematic discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation). Some of these are due to the
Norman Conquest and the situation that followed from this. Others are the logical continuation
of the normal evolution of the language, yet indirectly the Norman Conquest had a serious
influence on these as well. It made this evolution progress more rapidly because of the absence
of conservatism usually imposed by the learned elite and writing. However, this elite and their
writings were all in French. The changes affected vocabulary (large intake of French and Latin
words) as well as morphology (gradual loss of inflections) and syntax (rise of analytic system,
auxiliaries, etc.)
3.1. Morphology: loss of inflections
- OE inflections were gradually lost; by late ME the state of present day English was virtually
reached. Language internal factors that influenced the loss (in addition to external factors of
Scandinavian & Norman influences):
 change of final m to n, e.g., mūðum > mūðun; godum > godun
 levelling of all vowels in unaccented syllables to /E/ then to /«/, e.g.
Gen. sg. stānes / Nom. & Acc. pl. stānas > stānɛs > stānəs > stōnəs (“stones”)
Dat. sg. stāne / Gen.plural stāna > stānɛs > stānə > stōnə
(“stone”)
 progressive loss of final /n/, e.g. oxen > oxe
 gradual loss of final /ə/ (in pronunciation, not always in spelling), e.g.
worde > word ; stōne > stone /stoːn/
3.1.1. ME nouns
Type I
Type II
Type III
(former weak decl.)
sing.
plur.
Nom./Acc.
-
-e
-e
Gen.
-es
-es
-e(n)
Dat.
-e
-e
-e(n)
all cases
-es
-es
-en
Gen. -en(e)
sing.
plur.
Nom./Acc.
stōn
wȳf
ēnde
soule
nāme
Gen.
stōnes
wȳves
ēndes
soules
nāme(n)
Dat.
stōne
wȳve
ēnde
soule
nāme(n)
all cases
stōnes
wȳves
ēndes
soules
nāme n
Gen. nāmen(e)
Table 5 : The ME noun paradigm
M. Lemmens
32
The arrows indicate the direction of the analogical levelling under influence of the frequent
poles of attraction that takes place in the course of the ME period:
 the weak declension (Type III) merges entirely with Type II: N./A./D. sg. nāme; G.sg.
nāmes; pl. nāmes
 loss of final –e: Type II coalesces entirely with Type I; notice that –e was often added in
spelling as a form of hypercorrection
- Loss of inflections more advanced in the Northern dialects (only Type I); Midlands (Standard
ME) show I & II; only Southern dialects have all three types.
!
Intake of numerous French words confirmed this evolution, as in the 12th & 13th century
French had only preserved a singular/plural contrast (with ending –s), which fitted ME
paradigm perfectly, e.g. heure/heures > ME hōure/hōures or joie/joies > ME joie/joies.
3.1.2. ME personal pronouns
1st pers. sg.
OE
ME
ModE
iċ
ich, ik, I /iː/
I
Acc./Dat.
mē
mē /eù/
me
Gen.
mīn
mīn (+V), mī (+V) /iː/
my, mine
Nom.
wē
wē /eː/
we
Acc./Dat.
ūs
ūs /uː/, us /u/ (unstr.)
us /Ã/
Gen.
ūre
oure / oures /uː/
our / ours
2nd pers. sg.
OE
ME
ModE
Nom.
Þū
thou /juː/
you (thou)
Acc./Dat.
Þē
thee /eː/
you (thee)
Gen.
Þīn
thīn (+V), thī (+C) /iː/
your / yours (thy, thine)
ġē
yē /jeː/
ēōw
you /juː/
you
ēōwer
your / youres
your / yours
OE
ME
ModE
Nom.
hē / hēō, hīō, hī / hit
hē / hē, hō, shē, shō / (h)it
he / she / it
Acc.
hine / hīē, hī / hit
Dat.
him / hiere, hire / him
him / here, hire / (h)it
him / her / it
Gen.
his / here, hire / his
his / here, hire / his, it
his / her(s) / its
Nom.
hēō, hīē, hī
hī / thei, thai
they
Acc.
hēō, hīē, hī
Dat.
him, heom
hem / theim, thaim
them
Gen.
heora, hiera, hira
here, hire / theire, thaire
their / theirs
Nom.
st
1 pers. pl.
2
nd
pers. pl.
Nom.
Acc./Dat.
Gen.
3rd pers. sg.
14 - 17th cy.
you
rd
3 pers. pl.
Table 6 : The paradigm of personal pronouns in OE, ME, and Mod E
M. Lemmens
33
- OE hēō (sometimes hīē) developed into ME hiō/hiē where the i probably developed into a /j/
which led to a palatalisation of the /h/:
hiō > hjō > çō > ʃō
hiē > hjē > çē > ʃē
(Northern dialects, now lost)
→ Mod.Eng she (East Midlands)
- The personal pronouns for the 3rd pers. plural in Modern English (they, them, their) are of
Scandinavian origin and were adopted throughout the Northern dialects in the Middle
English period, whereas the Southern dialects continued to use the older forms hī N., hem
A./D., here G. The reason for these forms entering the language lie in the paradigm itself,
where the singular and the plural forms had become insufficiently distinguishable.
Note: 1) The use of you instead of yē started in the 13th cy. and was completed by the end of the
17th cy.
2) Extension of you to the singular started in the 13th cy, when yē/you came to be used as
a plural of respect to address superiors and adults, and the old singular forms were
used in addressing inferiors. In the 17th cy., the singular forms had completely
disappeared from regular speech.
3.1.3. ME demonstrative pronouns & articles
- OE had two set of demonstratives: set B being more emphatic than set A; they evolved
toward the definite article and the demonstrative pronouns (mostly those of set B becoming
the Mod.Eng. demonstratives):
OE sē/sēō (set A) > the, with substitution of th- for sOE Þæt (set A) > ME that
OE Þis (set B) > this
OE Þēs / Þēōs (set B) > ME thēs > these
OE Þās (set B) > ME thōse > those)
thēs and thōse were reinterpreted as the plural of this and that respectively.
3.1.4. ME interrogative pronouns
- OE hwā > ME hwō , whō > who
OE hwæt > ME hwat > what
OE hwæs > ME hwōs, whōs > whose
OE hwȳ (Instr.) > ME hwȳ > why
OE hwām/hwæÜm > ME hwōm, whōm > whom
OE hwū (Instr.) > ME hū > how
OE hwæÞer (“which of two”) and hwylċ (“which of many”) > ME whether, which
Remember that in Mod. Eng, all of the wh-words, as they are commonly called, do not have
an [h] in their pronunciation anymore, except for who/whom/whose and how. The reason for
this is that these forms had a (rounded) back vowel for which the combination with the hwsound did not work very well which caused that the labio-velar fricative (spelled hw)
evolved to a glottal fricative.
3.1.5. ME adjectives
- the adjective declension was completely lost and they become an uninflected category.
M. Lemmens
34
3.1.6. ME verbs
- inflectional endings of verbs were weakened following the general tendency, e.g. OE drivan >
ME driven > ModE drive
- Many OE strong verbs were lost in the ME period (about 1/3); in ModE only 1/2 of the OE
strong verbs survived.
- Many strong verbs “regularized” towards the weak paradigm, e.g. climb (clomb), help (halp),
step (stope), yield (yold), laugh (low), shave (shove), creep (crope)
This is a normal evolution in the Germanic languages (just like regularization of irregular
forms is a natural phenomenon, e.g. Medieval Latin irregular verbs changing to verbs in –are,
aboriri → abortare, whence English abort), but it was probably occurring more extensively
because of the fact that in ME, English was the language of common people and thus not
restrained by education and writing.
- For the strong verbs, there were many cases of paradigmatic or analogical levelling (cf.
above); this process will continue to ModE, and especially the different past forms will
merge into a single form for all persons. For example, cling, sting, spin should have had a past
tense clang, stang and span (like sing), but they have been changed under influence of other
forms in the verb paradigm (notably the past plural and the past participle) and are now
clung, stung, spun.
- Recall that the verb ending for the 3rd pers. sg. in the present tense was -(e)ð (-eth); the -(e)s
used nowadays in Modern English came later: it started in the North and spread Southward.
In Shakespeare’s time both were still used fairly interchangeably. Now -eth only occurs in
poetic and religious use.
3.2. Important Sound Changes
Only the most important changes will be mentioned here.
- many of the OE diphtongs (especially those that were the result of breaking) were
monophthongized in the transition from (L)OE to ME, e.g. heorte>herte (heart), dēōp>dēp
(deep); as said before, the spelling has sometimes frozen the earlier diphthongized
pronunciation.
- new diphthongs emerged as a result of the vocalisation of OE /j/ <ġ> leading to diphthongs,
e.g. OE dæġ, weġ> ME day /daɪ/ , wei, wey. For the same reason, the ending <iġ> as in hāliġ,
bysiġ became ī (holy, busy) and the prefix ġe (past participle) became < ġi> and eventually
<y> /ī/. This prefix disappeared in the evolution to ModEng.
- OE voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ (spelled <g>) disappeared and vocalised (<w> or <u> in
spelling, e.g. ME lawe¸ bowe; the vocalisation eventually led to diphthongs or back tense
vowels in Mod. Eng. Hence often the spelling with w and u where other Germanic languages
have a g (cmp. Eng. law with Sw. lag, Eng. bow vs. Du. boog)
- combinations of ME vowel with /w/ led to diphthongization as well (shift of syllable
boundary), e.g.
OE clawu > ME clawe /aU/ > ModEng claw;
OE cnāwan > ME cnowe(n) /oU/ > ModEng know;
M. Lemmens
35
OE fēōwe > ME fewe /EU/ > ModEng few
- recall that final <n> was dropped in inflectional endings: drīve(n), sitte(n), shāke(n)
- the oppositions between /s,z/, /f,v/ and /θ,ð/ slowly became phonemic and were no
longer in complementary distribution. There was also a gradual voicing of initial /θ/ in
function words, leading to phonemic oppositions as thy-thigh. The same voicing process
happened to final /s/ in some function words, e.g. was, is, his (but not in (stressed) this, us)
- in final <mb>, the /b/ was gradually dropped: comb, lamb, climb; in thumb (<OE þūma) and
limb (<OE lim) the b was added as a form of hypercorrection.
- The (adverbial) OE suffix <-liċ> /lItS/, whose spelling changes in ME to <-lich> under
French influence, develops into LME <-li> /liù/, and later to –ly /li/
M. Lemmens
37
CHAPTER 4. Early Modern English
The Renaissance, marking the beginning of the Modern English period, is characterized by
some general conditions that will affect the further evolution of the language in a different way
than in the Middle English period. The most important of these factors are the printing press
(the role of William Caxton who introduced printing to England around 1476 cannot be
underestimate here), the spread of popular education, increased means of communication (in
the rapidly expanding British Empire), the growth of specialized knowledge and the emergence
of self-consciousness about language (aligned with an increasing interest into the origin of
language, which became a major field of study in the late 17th and early 18th century).15 English
is now beginning to compete with Latin for scientific discourse and there is a great need for it to
become sufficiently refined to fulfil that role, which explains, among other things, the growing
influx of “learned” words (mostly of Latin and Greek origin) into the language, mainly via
scientific writings. But there is also a growing need for standardisation, not in the least visible in
the uniformisation of orthography. By 1550, most of the features of English orthography as we
know it today begin to become established.
With some simplification, we could say that by Shakespeare’s time, English looks fairly
much like it does today. However, not all present-day English patterns had established
themselves yet. For example, the do-support that is obligatory in questions and negative
statements in Present Day English, was not yet established: Shakespeare could easily formulate
a yes/no question using inversion (Goes the king hence?) Also, the be+ing form as the obligatory
marker for the “ongoing” present only established itself firmly after 1700. On the other hand,
while Shakespeare still occasionally uses the plural ending in -en (eyen, kneen), it is definitely on
the way out and only a few of the old form remain in Present Day English (children, brethren,
oxen). Also, the case system has been completely lost apart from the genitive, which gets a
uniform pattern as well. Another important change that affected the grammatical repertoire of
the language is the disappearance of the second pronoun forms thou, thy, thee, and thine which
are replaced by the plural form you (cf. Chapter 3, Table 6)
Without exaggeration, it can be said that the major change that affected English in the
transition from the (Late) Middle English to Modern English concerns its pronunciation. It is
striking that throughout its history, from OE onwards, the short vowels remain relatively
unaffected. The major phonological difference concerns the development of ME long vowels,
which in the transition from ME to EModEng all underwent major systematic changes, which
Jespersen called the Great Vowel Shift. In a nutshell, this shift involved the raising of all long
vowels, with the exception of the two high vowels /iù/ and /uù/ which were diphthongized.
Here are some examples:
15
Notice that these factors are similar to most societies in Western Europe, and while their effects on the language are similar
(e.g. increasing standardization of the language), they are obviously still different for each language.
M. Lemmens
38
/iː/ → /aɪ/ : tīme, chīld, fīnd, rīde
/uː/ → /aʊ/ : ūt, mūth, fūl, hūs
/eː/ → /iː/ : fēld , swēte, chēse, dēp
/oː/ → /uː/ :mōn, sōn, fōd
/ɛː/ → /eː/ → /iː/ : tē`che, sē`, clē`ne, fē`ste
/ɔː/ → /oʊ/: stō`ne, gō`, hō`mo
/aː/ → /eɪ/ : nāme , tāke, sāf
Drawing on the traditional vowel diagram representation, the changes can be represented as
in Figure 4.
gradual
diphtongisation
gradual
diphtongisation
/əɪ/
/iː/
via
/æɪ/ or /ʌɪ/
/eː/
/
/ɛː/
/aː/
/uː
/əʊ
/aɪ/
/
/oː
/
/ɔː/
Fig. 4: Chart of the system of the Great vowel shift
Obviously, these changes did not happen all at once; the successive steps of the Great Vowel
Shift can be represented as in Figure 5 below. Notice that at the end of the 16th century there is
actually a second shift (completely by the middle of the 18th cy.) affecting the further evolution
of ME /ɛː/ (tē`che, mē`te) which came from OE /æː/ (e.g. sǣ > ModE. sea) and /aː/ (name). The
/eː/ was raised a second time to /iː/ where earlier /eː/ (fēt, mēte) had already ended up, which
thus explains the Present Day homophone pronunciation of ee and ea, nicely illustrated by
meet/meat or sea/see going back to different OE pronunications. The gap left by the second raising
of the /ɛː/ was filled up by the further rising of the /ɛː/ that had come from ME /aː/. So, by
the end of the 18th cy. words such as name or take were pronounced /neːm/ and /teːk/
respectively, which then further diphthongized to /eɪ/ in Late Modern English.
When it comes to the evolution of the back vowels, notice that the /oː/ evolved to /ɛʊ/ in
British English, whereas in other variants of English, e.g., American English, the first element of
the diphthong did not evolve to a close vowel but maintained a more open /oʊ/.
It be noted that the Modern English spelling did not follow these sound changes however,
which explains why there is such a systematic discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation
for these vowels.
M. Lemmens
ME
E Mod E
1450 / 1500
/iː/
rīde(n)
/iː/
/iː/
fēt
mēte
/eː/
/eː/
/əɪ/
39
L Mod E
1750 /1800
/ʌɪ/ or /æɪ/
/eː/
Pres E
/aɪ/
/aɪ/ ride
/iː/
/iː/
/eː/
/eɪ/
/eɪ/
feet/meet
teach/meat
name
/ɛ/ (shortening, e.g. bread, dead, head)
tē`che
/ɛː/
/ɛː/
/ɛː/
mē`te
nāme
/aː/
/ʊu/
/əʊ/
/ʌʊ/
/aʊ/
/aʊ/ house
hūs
/uː/
/uː/
/uː/
/uː/ food
fōde
/oː/
/oː/
/oʊ/
/əʊ/ stone
stōn
/ɔː/
Fig. 5: The successive steps of the Great Vowel Shift
M. Lemmens
41
Bibliography
Baugh, A.C. & Cable, T. 2002. A History of the English Language (5th ed.), London: Taylor
& Francis Books, Ltd (Routlegde).
Baker, P.S. 2003. Introduction to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell.
Barber, Charles. 2000. The English language: a historical introduction. Cambridge
University Press.
Cable, T. 2002. A companion to Baugh and Cable’s History of the English Language, London:
Routledge
Denison, D. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Construction. London: Longman.
Hogg, R. 2002. An Introduction to Old English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Hopper, P. & E. Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalisation. Cambridge : CUP [Cambridge
textbooks in Linguistics].
Horobin, S. & J. Smith. 2002. An Introduction to Middle English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Nevalainen, T. 2006. An Introduction to Early Middle English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
M. Lemmens
43
APPENDICES
A1.1: Overview of the IE languages
Source: http://www.intersolinc.com/newsletters/images/Language%2520Tree.gif
Centum language families:
 Tocharian
 Hittite
 Hellenic
 Italic
 Celtic
 Germanic
M. Lemmens
44
A1.2: Spread of the IE-languages
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OIT_map.jpg
A1.3: Location of the Centum & Satem languages
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
M. Lemmens
45
A2: Home of the Angles, Saxons & the Jutes
Source: Baugh & Cable 2003 A History of the English Language, p. 48.
A3: The Old English dialects
Source: Baugh & Cable 2003 A History of the English Language, p. 54.
M. Lemmens
46
A4: Selective overview of Kings of England
ANGLO-SAXON KINGS
(starting with Ælfred the Great)
871-899
Ælfred the Great
899-924
Edward the Elder
Son of Ælfred
924-939
Athelstan
Son of Edward the Elder
939-946
Edmund I
Son of Edward the Elder (halfbrother of Athelstan)
946-955
Edred
Son of Edward the Elder
955-959
Edwy
Son of Edmund
959-975
Edgar the Peaceful
975-978
Edgar II
978-1014
Æthelræd the Unready
Son of Edgar I
ANGLO-DANISH KINGS
1016-1035
Canute
By conquest and election
1035-1040
Harold I
Son of Canute
1040-1042
Hardicanute
Another son of Canute
ANGLO-SAXON KINGS
1042-1066
Edward the Confessor
Son of Ethelred II
1066
Harold II
Brother-in-law of Edward
NORMAN KINGS
1066-1087
William I
Second cousin to Edward the Confessor; by conquest
1087-1100
William II
Third son of William I
1100-1135
Henry I
Youngest son of William I
1135-1154
Stephen
Third son of Stephen, Count of Blois
THE PLANTAGENETS
1154-1189
Henry II (x Eleanor d’Aquitaine)
Son of Geoffrey Plantagenet & Matilda, daughter of H. I
1189-1199
Richard I, the Lionhearted
Eldest surviving son of Henry II
1199-1216
John (x Isabelle d’Angoulême)
Youngest son of Henry II
1216-1272
Henry III (x Eleanor of Provence) Eldest son of John
1272-1307
Edward I
Eldest son of Henry III
1307-1327
Edward II
Eldest surviving son of Edward I
1327-1377
Edward III
Eldest son of Edward II
M. Lemmens
47
A5: Overview of OE inflections
(Source: http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/courses/handouts/magic.pdf)

History of English SEAD course

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