Lecture 3. Origins of the English language.

0.
The English language originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects, the part of the West Germanic
language group.
The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain in the 5th century belonged to three tribes, the
Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. Closely connected with these tribes were the Frisians and the
Hauks.
The earliest mention of the British Isles is in the 4th century B.C., when the Greek explorer
Pytheas, of Massilia (now Marseilles) landed in Kent.
At this time Britain was inhabited by Celtic tribes (Britons and Gaels), who spoke various Celtic
languages.
Celtic languages are divided into two main groups: the Gallo- Breton (Gallic and British) and the
Gaelic (Irish, Erse, Manx).
1. The Roman Conquest.
In 55 B.C. the Romans under Julius Caesar first landed in Britain. This first appearance of the
Romans had no further consequences.
In the year 54 Caesar landed in Britain for a second time, he routed the Britons and advanced as
far as the Thames.
Permanent conquest of Britain began in 43 A.D., under the emperor Claudius. The Romans
colonized the country.
In this period Britain became a Roman province. The Latin language spread over the country. In
the 4th century, when Christianity was introduced in the Roman empire, it also spread among the
Britons.
The Romans ruled Britain for almost four hundred years, up to the early 5th century. In 410
Roman legions were recalled from Britain to defend Italy from the advancing Goths.
2. The Anglo-Saxon Conquest.
It was about mid-5th century that Britain was conquered by Germanic tribes. The Britons fought
against the conquerors for about a century and a half — till about the year 600. The legendary
figure of the British king Arthur belongs to this time.
The Angles occupied most of the territory north of the Thames; the Saxons, the territory south of
the Thames; the Jutes settled in Kent and in the Isle of Wight.
Since the settlement of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain the ties of their language with the continent
were broken and the history of the English language began.
Its original territory was England except Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde. The Scots language
survived up to our own days. Ireland also remained Celtic.
3. Old English. Formation of Germanic states in Britain.
The Germanic tribes which conquered Britain formed seven separate kingdoms, which for four
centuries struggled with one another for supremacy: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, East
Anglia, and Northumbria.
In 828 the struggle came to an end with the decisive victory of Wessex by the rule of Ecgberht.
Since then, kings of Wessex became kings of England, and Winchester became the capital.
Down to the end of the 6th century Anglo-Saxon Britain was almost entirely isolated from
Europe, and particularly, from Rome. In 597 Pope Gregory I sent a mission to England to spread
Christianity among the Germanic conquerors and to include England into the sphere of his
political influence. In the 7th century Christianity spread all over England. As a result of new ties
with Rome the Latin language was introduced in England as the language of the church.
This development had an important consequence for the English language: it adopted a lot of
Latin words.
4. The runic alphabet.
The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in languages of other
groups.
The runes were used as letters, each symbol to indicate separate sound. This alphabet is called
futhark after the first six letters.
Runic letters are angular; straight lines are preferred, curved lines avoided.
The number of runes in England was from 28 to 33 runes.
The main use of runes was to make short inscriptions on objects.
The two best known runic inscriptions in England are the “Franks Casket” and the “Ruthwell
Cross”.
5. Old English alphabet and pronunciation.
OE scribes used two kinds of letters: the runes and the letters of the Latin alphabet.
The use of Latin letters in English differed in some points from their use in Latin.
There were two runes in the alphabet: “thorn” and “wynn”.
Like any alphabetic writing, OE writing was based on a phonetic principle: every letter indicated
a separate sound. This principle, however, was not always observed.
There are a lot of rules for letters, indicating more than one sound, for example, the letter n
stands for [n] in all positions except when followed by [k] or [g]; in this case it indicates [ŋ].
6. Old English written records.
Our knowledge of the OE language comes mainly from manuscripts written in Latin characters.
The first English words to be written down were personal names and place names; then came
glosses and longer textual insertions.
Among the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of OE poetry, for example, “Bede’s Death
Song” and “Cadmon’s Hymn”.
The greatest poem of that time was “Beowulf”, an epic of the 7th or 8th c. The author is
unknown.
OE poetry is characterized by a specific system of versification and some peculiar stylistic
devices. Practically all of it is written in the OG alliterative verse.
The style of OE poetry is marked by the wide use of metaphorical phrases or compounds
describing the qualities or functions of the thing.
OE prose is a most valuable source of information for the history of the language. The earliest
samples of continuous prose are the first pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
 Lecture 4. Old English Period. Sound System.
1. The historic peculiarities of the period.
The OE period is characterized by the existence of the language in the forms of several dialects
according to the 7 kingdoms that existed on the island.
The vocabulary is comparatively homogeneous.
The connection of words was performed through the system of endings; word order was free;
double negation was possible etc.
There were long years of pre-written functioning of the language.
The first documents – from 700, but the great bulk – 900 – 1050. The Mercian dialect eventually
dominated and evolved into Middle and Modern English.
West Saxon literature is the ancestor of nearly all English literature, but the West-Saxon
language is not.
An event of paramount importance – the introduction of Christianity in 597. England received
the Latin alphabet and educated people.
The implementation of literacy among the free well-to-do people was during the ruling of king
Alfred the Great. He founded the first libraries. After his death all his work was overthrown by
king Canute.
King Edward was killed by his stepmother and her son Ethelred, Ethelred’s friend betrayed him,
his son was killed, and the dane Canute became the king. After his death Ethelred’s son Edward
the Confessor became the king in 1042. He was tightly connected with Normandy and promised
his throne to his nephew William. An earl Harold became the king after his death. William
defeated him and invaded the Isles.
2. The system of vowels. Its changes.
There were 23 letters in the Old English alphabet.
7-8 short and 6-7 long vowels. 4 diphthongs (short and long)
The most common changes that mutilated the Germanic words into Anglo-Saxon variety:
Breaking (fracture) - formation of a short diphthong from a simple short vowel when it is
followed by a specific consonant cluster (r+cons; l+cons; h+cons)
Palatal mutation (i-mutation) - a back sound O or A changes its quality if there is a front sound
in the next syllable. The same is about diphthongs.
Diphthongization of vowels – a=ea, e = ie
Back, or Velar mutation - the syllable that influenced the preceding vowel contained a back
vowel – O or U (sometimes A).
Mutation before H - sounds A and E that precede H underwent several changes, mutating to
diphthongs EA, IE and finally were reduced to I/Y
Contraction - when H was placed between 2 vowels the vowels changes, for example
ah+vowel=e
Lengthening of vowels – only before the clusters – ND, LD, MB.

3. The system of consonants. Its changes.

The OE consonant system consisted of labial, dental and velar sounds.
Changes:
Voicing of fricatives in intervocal position.
Palatalisation of the sounds K, SK, KG (in letters – c, sc, cg) developed in assibilation, that is
formation of a sibilant in places before front vowels.
Assimilation before T – the sound T preceded by a number of consonants changed the quality of
a preceding sound.
Loss of consonants in certain positions – the sounds N and m were lost before H, entailing the
lengthening of the preceding vowel.
Metathesis of R – the consonants changed their place next to R.
West Germanic germination of consonants – in the process of palatal mutation when J was lost
and the preceding vowel was short, the consonant after it was doubled (germinated)
4. Stress.
It is known that in ancient IE the stress was free and movable, so it could fall on any syllable of
the word.
In Early PG word stress was still movable but in Late PG its position in the word was stabilized.
The stress was now fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and
sometimes the prefix.
In linguistics, stress is the emphasis given to some syllables.
Some languages have fixed stress (French where the last syllable is always stressed).
There are also languages like English or Spanish, where stress is unpredictable and must be
learned with the word.
There are languages that do not have a stress rule, instead possessing accentual systems based on
pitch or tone. In Indo-European the stress used to be dynamic but in Germanic it became fixed
on the root syllable and turned into the dynamic.