ENG 4820History of the English Language

Dr. Michael Getty | Spring 2009WEEK 6:

OLD ENGLISH

ENG4820 | Week 5 2

Assignment #1 Due by E-mail by Midnight Saturday March 7th

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No class meeting on Monday, March 9th

• Full lecture available via streaming & downloadable video on our site

• Q&A and discussion on-site

HOUSEKEEPING

ENG4820 | Week 5 3

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

What happened between the 8th and 11th centuries?

• Phonological changes: Reduction of unstressed syllables, already underway since the early Germanic period

Primary Stress

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

ENG4820 | Week 5 4

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN WORD AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

What happened between the 8th and 11th centuries?

• Phonological changes: Reduction of unstressed syllables, already underway since the early Germanic period

– Loss of final consonants– Loss of range of possible vowels

• Since overt case marking in Old English is realized in unstressed syllables, the system collapses, leaving us with the essentially fixed word order system we have today.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

ENG4820 | Week 5 5

• The past 55,000 years have seen dramatic climate changes including two distinct ice ages, when much of the northern hemisphere was covered by glaciers.• The last ice age ended definitively only about 10,000 years ago, eventually leading to:

– Better climate– Booming populations– Invention of agriculture– Development of centrally managed settlement areas

• 1000 years is enough time for a language to change to the extent that it becomes mostly unrecognizable to original speakers. • Multiply that by a factor of 50 or so, add in dramatic population movements, and you get scenario that can easily lead to thousands of wildly different languages,

many of which show no transparent relationship to each other.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

ENG4820 | Week 6 6

• About 7000 years ago (source), a culture emerges in what we now call the Caucasus or possibly northeastern Turkey.

• An educated guess at the geographic origin of Indo-European comes from side-by-side comparison of the vocabularies of the daughter languages. Common, similar-sounding words for ’snow,’ ‘cow,’ and ’salmon,’ along with a lack of common words for things like ‘lion,’ ‘olive,’ and ‘palm tree’ point towards farming cultures in temperate, wooded areas.

• The best educated guesses point towards what is now called the Caucasus region, an area encompassing southeastern  Ukraine, southern Russia, and Georgia.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

Source: Google Maps

ENG4820 | Week 5 7

• Over the next centuries, the descendants of the Indo-Europeans spread across what we now call Europe and Central and Southern Asia. We now call this culture Proto-Indo-European, and we know that the languages that descended from it encompass such far-flung tongues as …

– Europe• The Celtic languages: Gaelic, Welsh, Breton

• The Germanic languages: English, German, Danish/Swedish/Norwegian

• The Romance languages

• All the Slavic languages (Russian, Polish, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, etc.),

• Greek, Albanian

• NOT Hungarian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish

– Western, Central, and South Asia• Farsi/Dari (Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan)

• Pashto (Afghanistan)

• Armenian, Abkhaz (Caucasus)

• Dozens of languages of South Asia: Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujerati, Sinhalese, Sindhi, but

• NOT Arabic, Aramaic, Georgian, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, or Malayalam 

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

ENG4820 | Week 5 8

• After 7000 years, the daughter languages of Proto-Indo-European had become so dissimilar that it took the work of scholars to figure out that they were all related. 

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

Source:AvuncularFeldspar

ENG4820 | Week 5 9

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

• These forms are spelled, not transcribed• Accent and vowel length marks• Sanskrit bh – an aspirated voiced stop. Say ‘rib hut’ and gradually take of the sounds leading up to b.

J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press 2006: 6

ENG4820 | Week 5 10

• bh > Latin f Greek ph > f Germanic b• dh > Latin f Greek θ Germanic d• gh > Latin h Greek x Germanic g

No one knows why Proto-Germanic didn't go in a direction like Latin and Greek. Whatever the reason, the change created a big problem for the speakers of the time.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

ENG4820 | Week 5 11

Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Germanic

Original Meaning Eventually … Compare…

*ghel- *gel- ‘shine, bright’ yellow Greek chloros > chloroplast

*gel- *kel- ‘freeze, cold’ cool, chill via Latin congeal, gelato

*kel- *hel- ‘cover, hide’ hell via Latin conceal

*dher- *der- ‘hold firm, support’

not attested in English

Latin firm, Greek throne, Sanskrit dharma

*der *ter- ‘split, peel’ tear (i.e. rip) via Greek dermatologist, epidermis

*ter *θer ‘rub, turn, twist’ thread, thresh Latin turn, Greek torus

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

k

ENG4820 | Week 5 12

• This explains why English, once it acquired its taste for Latin and Greek loan words, in many cases acquired two copies of the same word. 

foot podiatrist, pedestrian, pedal, etc.father paternity, paternalthree triad, trimester, triple, etc.tooth dental, dentistheart cardio, cardiologist, etc.kin gene, geneology (originally pronounced as /g/)knee genuflect (originally pronounced as /g/)queen gynecology, misogyny (from Greek gyné, ‘woman)night ([nIxt]) nocturnal

WHAT SHOULD HAVE STUCK

k

ENG4820 | Week 5 13

Proto-Indo-European to Germanic• When descendants of the Indo-European tribes who we call

‘Germanic’ settled on the coast of the Baltic Sea from about the 18th to about the 8th century BCE, they encountered tribal groups that had been their for millennia.

• We don’t know who these people were, as their language died out well before the invention of writing, but the Germanic tribes settled among them, intermarried, and borrowed vast numbers of their words, which now form a big part of the core vocabulary of the Germanic languages.

• house, leg, hand, shoulder, bone, sick, all, boat, ship, sail, net, oar, shoe, lamb, sheep, seal, sturgeon, herring 

• They weren’t the Finns, because our words Finn and Finnish bear no resemblance to what the Finns call their country, Suomi, or their language Suomalainen.

• We know these are non-Indo-European words because they have no cognates (i.e. similar-sounding counterparts) in other Indo-European languages. Compare English to Latin:

• house – domus hand – manus• ship – navis bone – ossus• lamb – agnus sick - male

ENG4820 | Week 5 14

Germanic to Old English• Most of the Latin borrowings into English we talk about are from

the Middle Ages, the language of civil society. But there was a wave of Latin loans from way before that, dating to contacts between Romans and Germanic tribal groups on the continent between 500 BCE and 500 CE, a period which overlaps with the Christianization of Roman culture.

• Stop anyone on the street, and they’d tell you that these words are about as English as you can get. In fact, they were borrowed from Latin before Latin was cool, you might say: cheap, cheese, pan, dish, kitchen, cook, cherry, pillow, mile, tile, beer, street

• By the time the Roman presence in Britain began crumbling in the 5th century CE, most of the population had converted to Christianity. In fact, Rome’s first Christian ruler, Constantine I, was declared Emperor in the Roman settlement of Eboracum, what we now call York in the north of England.

• As Christianity became the official religion of the empire, it took on the trappings of the Roman state: centralized authority and Latin as its common language and written culture. This culture persisted even as the empire was overrun by Germanic invaders and disintegrated politically.

source

ENG4820 | Week 5 15

Germanic to Old English• The Germanic invaders of the 5th century were pagans in the

common Indo-European tradition: sacrificial worshippers of multiple, very human-like gods embodying mythical abilities or natural phenomena.

• The Big Four (Source)

• The chief god Woden, thought to carry off the souls of the dead

• Frig, Woden’s wife and goddess of love• The god of thunder, Thunor, better known by his Norse name

Thor• Tiw, god of war and battle, whose name is directly descended

from Proto-Indo-European *deu-, which gave us deus in Latin.• We still say the names of these gods almost every day: Tuesday,

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday• Starting in 597, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, having consolidated

their power in Britain, converted to Christianity without as much fuss as elsewhere.

• As elsewhere in Europe, Christianity was adapted to incorporate local customs. The word ‘Easter’ comes from the name of a Germanic goddess associated with a traditional springtime festival (source).

ENG4820 | Week 5 16

Germanic to Old English• The Germanic tribes had a tradition of epic poetry,

celebrating the deeds of legendary heroes and mythical figures.

• This poetry had a stress-based rhythm and centered on alliteration instead of rhyme, which was a good fit for the strong root-initial stress that characterizes the Germanic languages.

• One of the earliest known poems written in English is Cædmon’s Hymn, written by a lay member of a monastery in what is now Whitby in northeastern England. It is dated to between 657 and 680 CE and was wildly popular at the time.

• As told by Bede, who wrote the first history of the English church in about 730 CE, Cædmon was a shepherd who turned out to be a prodigy at composing traditional Germanic oral poetry in response to Christian religious themes.

• We’re going to delve into Cædmon’s hymn, syllable by syllable.

Source

ENG4820 | Week 5 17

Cædmon’s Hymn

Source

What We’re Looking At …•How to pronounce Old English•Variation in Old English: West Saxon vs. Northumbrian

•Semantic change Culture and History:•Traces of Germanic paganism•The Norse Incursions

ENG4820 | Week 5 18

Cædmon’s HymnNorthumbrianNu scylun hergan hefaenricaes wardMetudes maecti end his modgidancuerc wuldurfadur swe he wundra gihwaeseci dryctin, or anstelidæHe ærist scop ælda barnumheben til hrofe haleg scepenϸa middungeard moncynnæs wardeci dryctin æfter tiadæfirum foldu Frea allmectig

West SaxonNu sculon herigean heofonrices weardMeotodes meahte ond his modgeϸancweorc wuldorfæder swa he wundra gehwæsece drihten or onstealdeHe ærest sceop eorðan bearnumheofen to hrofe halig scyppendϸa middangeard moncynnes weardece drihten æfter teodefirum foldan Frea ælmihtig

Now we shall praise heaven-kingdom's Guardian, the Creator's might, and his mind-thought, the words of the Glory-father; how he, each of his wonders the eternal Lord, established at the beginning. He first shaped for earth's children, heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then a middle-yard, mankind's Guardian, the eternal Lord, established afterwards the earth for the people, the Lord almighty (Lerer pp. 12f.)

ENG4820 | Week 5 19

Cædmon’s HymnHOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

•When a language is first written down in an alphabetic system like the Roman alphabet, it tends to go through a kind of golden period during which the correspondence between written symbols and phonemes is almost one-to-one•This was true for the first few centuries of English writing, until the point at which writing became centralized and conventionalized in the later Middle Ages. At that point, the phoneme-to-written-symbol relationship started becoming much looser.

Source

ENG4820 | Week 5 20

Cædmon’s HymnHOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

Vowels before the Great Vowel Shift (started in the 14th century CE):æ low front vowel, as in cata low central vowel, as in fathere in stressed syllables, a mid front vowel as in hay minus the

final gliding-off sound in unstressed syllables, a very short mid central vowel as in eveni a high front unrounded vowel, like in mini.y a high front rounded vowel, found today in only a few dialects. Say the /i/ sound and round your lipsu a high back rounded vowel, like in soon.o a mid back rounded vowel, like in lone.

Source

ENG4820 | Week 5 21

Cædmon’s HymnHOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

Consonants

Consonants were pronounced more or less as they still are, except:

h At the beginning of a syllable, today’s pronunciation as in hayh Elsewhere, as a voiceless fricative, close to the sound some people

have in huge or in their emphatic pronunciation of words like how.

Another analogue is the ch sound in German/Yiddish Ach!

Source

ENG4820 | Week 5 22

Cædmon’s HymnHOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

ConsonantsConsonants were pronounced more or less as they still are, except:

ϸ ð Voiceless and voiced interdental fricativesc Before or after a front vowel, a voiceless alveopalatal affricate

[č] like chickEverywhere else, a voiceless velar stop, like chick

g Before or after a front vowel, a high front glide (semivowel), [j] like yes

Between non-front vowels or after [l] or [r], a voiced velar fricative [ɣ]

Everywhere else, a voiced velar stop like cigarsc In northern dialects, probably like skill. In southern dialects, probably

a voiceless alveopalatal fricative, [ʃ] as in shellcg A voiced alveopalatal affricate, [ǰ]

ENG4820 | Week 5 23

Cædmon’s HymnHOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

Consonants

These are assimilations: Bringing neighboring sounds closer to each other in their articulations

ENG4820 | Week 5 24

Cædmon’s Hymn

ON TO IT!

HOW TO PRONOUNCE OLD ENGLISH

Consonants

These assimilations dominatedsouthern dialects but were lessprevalent in northern dialects.

The prevalence of assimilated and non-assimilated forms varied across space and time along with variations in the vowels that conditioned them.

Let’s use three handles:

Assimilation #1: skirt/shirt sk -> ʃAssimilation #2: get/yet gi -> jiAssimilation #3: cool/chill ki -> či

ENG4820 | Week 5 25

Additional Facts | More Things to KnowPRONOUNS AND VERBS

One case in which today’s English is vastly more complex than Old English is in what’s known as our tense/aspect system.

Today’s English Old EnglishI sing Ic singeI am singing “ “I will sing Ic sceal singanI will be singing “ “ “I sung Ic sangI have sung “ “I have been singing “ “ I would sing Ic sceolde singanI would be singing “ “ “I would have been singing “ “ “

ENG4820 | Week 5 26

Additional Facts | More Things to KnowPRONOUNS AND VERBS

The pronouns of Old English were, quite frankly, a mess.•Especially with the bleaching out of unstressed syllables, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between masculine and feminine, singular and plural.(Source: Millward p. 100)

•But pronouns are among the most frequently used words in any language, and frequently used words tend to be the most resistant to change, so the Old English system limped along well into the Middle English period.•The system we use today is a blend of the original Old English inventory plus Scandinavian imports she, they, and their, which made their way from the North of England and gradually displaced the southern forms.

ENG4820 | Week 5 27

Additional Facts | More Things to KnowTHE ‘DANISH’ INCURSIONS

•Trade and settlement from Scandinavia, concentrated in the Northumbrian areas, had been a constant since the Germanic invasion.•Starting in the late 8th century, the activity becomes larger-scale and more organized. The ‘Danes,’ as the English called them (using one tribal name from among many) colonize most of the northern and eastern halves of the country. •Different English kings use a combination of treaties, bribes, and military power to contain the Scandinavians behind a mostly imaginary line called the ‘Danelaw,’ an area in which the settlers/invaders could live under their own laws and rulers. •The settlers all became English-speaking within a few generations, but they left their mark in distinctive Scandinavian pronouns and place names ending in –thorp, -by, and –wick(Souce: Crystal p. 25)