Lectures on Language History PDF

1 LECTURE 1. INTRODUCTORY. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES List of principal questions: 1. The aim of the study of the subject 2. Inner and outer history of the languag...

1 LECTURE 1. INTRODUCTORY. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES List of principal questions: 1. The aim of the study of the subject 2. Inner and outer history of the language 3. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages 3.1. Phonetics 3.2. Grammar 3.3. Alphabet Literature 1. R.V. Reznik, T.C. Sorokina, I.V. Reznik A History of the English language. M., 2003. 2. T.A. Rastorguyeva History of English. M., 1983. 3. А.И. Смирницкий Лекции по истории английского языка. М., 2000. 4. К. Бруннер История английского языка. Т.1 М., 2001. 5. И. Чахоян, Л. Иванова, Т. Беляева. История английского языка. СПб., 1998. 2  3 The aim of the study of the subject It is well known, whether it is English, Russian, Kazakh or any other, is a historical phenomenon. As such it does not stay unchanged for any considerable period of time, or any time at all, but it is constantly changing through out its history. The changes affect all the spheres of the language: grammar and vocabulary, phonetics and spelling. The changes that any language undergoes are gradual and very slow but pronounced enough if you compare the stages of its development within a century or even half of a century. You can imagine that with the passage of time the difference between different stages of the development of the language grows and you will easily deduce that if you speak of such a language as English the history of which embraces over fifteen centuries you will have to analyze and explain a great number of linguistic data characterizing the language at different stages of its history. The aims set before a student of the history of the English language are as follows: 1. To speak of the characteristics of the language at the earlier stages of its development; 2. To trace the language from the Old English period up to modern times; 3. To explain the principal features in the development of modern language historically.  4 To achieve those aims a student will have to known the theoretical basis of the subject and to work with the text to apply the theoretical knowledge to the practical analysis of English texts at different periods of the language development. The main purpose of studying the history of the language is to account for the present-day stage of the language to enable a student of English to read books and speak the language with understanding and due knowledge of the intricate and complicates “mechanism” they use. We said that the history of any language is unbroken chain of changes more or less rapid. But though the linguistic tradition is unbroken it is impossible to study the language of over 15 centuries long without subdividing it into smaller periods. Thus history of the English language is generally subdivided conventionally into Old English (5th – 11th century), Middle English (11th – 15th century) and New English (15th century – till now). 2. Inner and outer history of the language We are going to speak about the inner and outer history of the English language. The outer history of the language is the events in the life (history) of the people speaking this language affecting the language, i.e. the history of the people reflected in their language. The inner  5 history of the language is the description of the changes in the language itself, its grammar, phonetics, vocabulary or spelling. It is well known that the English language belongs to the Germanic subdivision of the Indo-European family of languages. The direct and indirect evidence that we have concerning Old Germanic tribes and dialects is approximately twenty centuries old. We know that at the beginning of AD Germanic tribes occupied vast territories in western, central and northern Europe. The tribes and the dialects they spoke at that time were generally much alike, but the degree of similarity varied. It is common to speak about the East Germanic group of dialects – mainly spoken in central Europe – Gothic, Vandalic, Burgundian; North Germanic group of dialects – Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Swedish, Old Icelandic; and the West Germanic group of dialects – the dialects of Angels, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and others, originally spoken in Western Europe. The first knowledge of these tribes comes from the Greek and Roman authors which together with archeological data, allows obtaining information on the structure of their society, habits, customs and languages. The principal East Germanic language is Gothic. At the beginning of our era the Goths lived on a territory from Vistula to the shores of the Black sea. The knowledge of Gothic we have now is almost wholly due to a translation of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament made by Ulfilas, a missionary who Christianized the Gothic tribes. Except for some runic inscriptions in Scandinavia it is the earliest record of  6 Germanic language we possess. For a time the Goths played a prominent part in European history, making extensive conquests in Italy and Spain. In these districts, however, their language soon gave place to Latin, and even elsewhere it seems not to have maintained a very tenacious existence. Gothic survived longest in the Crimea, where vestiges of it were noted down in the sixteenth century. North Germanic is found in Scandinavia and Denmark. Runic inscriptions from the third century preserve our earliest traces of the language. In its earlier form the common Scandinavian language is conveniently spoken of as Old Norse. From about the eleventh century on, dialectal differences become noticeable. The Scandinavian languages fall into two groups: an eastern group including Swedish and Danish and a western group including Norwegian and Icelandic. Of the early Scandinavian languages Old Icelandic is much the most important. Iceland was colonilized by settlers from Norway about A.D. 874 and preserved a body of early heroic literature unsurpassed among the Germanic peoples. Among the more important monuments are the Elder or Poetic Edda, a collection of poems that probably date from the tenth or eleventh century, the Younger or Prose Edda compiled by Snorri Sturluson (1178 – 1241), and about forty sagas, or prose epics, in which the lives and exploits of various traditional figures are related. West Germanic is of chief interest to us as the group to which English belongs. It is subdivided into two branches, High and Low German, by the operation of a Second (or High German) Sound Shift  7 analogues to that described below as Grimm’s Law. This change, by which West Germanic p, t, k, d, etc. were changed into other sounds, occurred about A.D. 600 in the southern or mountainous part of Germanic area, but did not take place in the lowlands to the north. Accordingly in early times we distinguish as Low German tongues Old Saxon, Old Low Franconian, Old Frisian, and Old English. The last two are closely related and constitute a special or Anglo-Frisian subgroup. Old Saxon has become the essential constituent of modern Low German or Plattdeutsch; Old Low Franconian, with some mixture of Frisian and Saxon elements, is the basis of modern Dutch in Nederland and Flemish in northern Belgium; and Frisian survived in the Dutch province of Friesland, in a small part of Schleswig, in the islands along the coast, etc. High German comprises a number of dialects and is divided chronically into Old High German (before 1100), Middle High German (1100 – 1500), and Modern High German (since 1500). High German, especially as spoken in the midlands and used in the imperial chancery, was popularized by Luther’s translation of the Bible into it (1522 – 1532), and since the sixteenth century has gradually established itself as the literary language of Germany. 3. Chief characteristics of the Germanic languages The barbarian tribes – Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Frisians, Teutons, Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Scandinavians – lived on the fringes  8 of the Roman Empire. All these spoke Germanic languages, which had distinctive characteristics of structure and pronunciation which are reflected in its descendents. 3.1. Phonetics One of the most important common features of all Germanic languages is its strong dynamic stress falling on the first root syllable. The fixed stress emphasized the syllable bearing the most important semantic element and to a certain degree later contributed to the reduction of unstressed syllables, changing the grammatical system of the languages. The most important feature of the system of Germanic vowels is the so-called Ablaut, or gradation, which is spontaneous, positionally independent alteration of vowels inhabited by the Germanic languages from the Common Indo-European period. This ancient phenomenon consisted in alteration of vowels in the root, suffix or ending depending on the grammatical form or meaning of the word. There are two types of Ablaut: quantitative and qualitative. The qualitative Ablaut is the alteration of different vowels, mainly the vowels [e]/ [a] or [e]/ [o]  9 Old Icelandic bera (to give birth) – barn (baby) Old High German stelan (to steal) – stal (stole) Cf.: Russian бреду (I stroll, I wade) – брод (ford, wade) Latin tego (to cover, to close) – toga (clothes) Qualitative Ablaut means the change in length of qualitatively one and the same vowel: normal lengthened and reduced. A classic example of the Indo-European Ablaut is the declension of the Greek word “pater” (father): [e:] [e] [-] patēr patěr patros (nominative case, (vocative case, (genitive case, Lengthed stage) normal stage) reduced stage) Ablaut in Germanic languages is a further development of Indo- European alterations. Here we often find cases with both the quantitative and qualitative ablaut. It should be also mentioned that in the zero stage before sonorants an extra-short vowel [u] was added: Quantitative ablaut Goth qiman (to come) – qums (the arrival) Qualitative ablaut OHG stelan (to steal) – stal (stole) Quantitative + qualitative ablaut  10 OE fīndan (to find) – fand (found, past tense) – fundan (past participle) Ablaut as a kind of an internal flexion functioned in Old Germanic languages both in form- and word-building, but it was the most extensive and systematic in the conjugation of strong verbs. Another phenomenon common for all Germanic languages was the tendency of phonetic assimilation of the root vowel to the vowel of the ending, the so-called Umlaut, or mutation. There were several types of mutation, but the most important one was palatal mutation, or i-Umlaut, when under the influence of the sounds [i] or [j] in the suffix or ending the root vowels became more front and more closed. This process must have taken place in the 5th – 6th centuries and can be illustrated by comparing words from the language of the Gothic Bible (4th century) showing no palatal mutation with corresponding words in other Germanic languages of a later period: Goth harjis OE here (army) Goth dōmjan OE dēman (deem) Goth kuni OE cynn (kin) Traces of this tendency can be seen both in word-building and form- building as a kind of internal flexion: OHG gast (guest) – gesti (guests)  11 man (man) – mennisco (human) Speaking about Germanic consonants, we should first of all speak of the correspondence between Indo-European and Germanic languages which was presented as a system of interconnected facts by the German linguists Jacob Grimm in 1822. This phenomenon is called the first Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s law. The table below shows a scheme of Grimm’s law with the examples from Germanic and other Indo-European languages. However, there are some instances where Grimm’s law seems not to apply. These cases were explained by a Dutch linguist Karl Verner, and the seeming exceptions from Grimm’s law have come to be known as Verner’s law. Indo-European Germanic 1 Act voiceless stops p t k voiceless fricatives f þ h Lat. pater O.E. fæder (father) Lat. tres Goth. þreis (three)  12 Greek kardia OHG herza (heart) 2 Act voiced stops b d g voiceless stops p t k Rus. болото O.E. pōl (pool) Lat. duo Goth. twai (two) Greek. egon O.Icl. ek (I) 3 Act voiced aspirated stops voiced non-aspirated stops bh dh gh bdg Snsk. bhratar O.E. brōþor (brother) Lat. frater Snsk. madhu O.E. medu (mead) Snsk. songha O.Icl. syngva (sing) Verner’s law explains the changes in the Germanic voiceless fricatives f þ h resulting from the first consonant shift and the voiceless fricatives depending upon the position of the stress in the original Indo- European word, namely: Indo-European Germanic ptks b ð/d g z/r  13 Gk. hepta Goth. sibun (seven) Gk. pater OSc. Faðir O.E. fæder Gk. dekas Goth. Tigus (ten, a dozen) Snsk. ayas Goth. aiz, OHG ēr (bronze) According to Verner’s Law, the above change occurred if the consonant in question was found after an unstressed vowel. It is especially evident in the forms of Germanic strong verbs, except the Gothic ones, which allows concluding that at some time the stress in the first two verbal stems fell on the root, and in the last two – on the suffix: O.E. tēon tēah tuзon toзen (to tug) OSx. tiohan tōh tugun gitogan Goth. tiuhan tauh tauhum tauhans O.E. cēosan cēas curon coren (to choose) OIcl. kiósa kaus kørom kørenn Coth. kiusan kaus kusum kusan 3.2. Grammar One of the main processes in the development of the Germanic morphological system was the change in the word structure. The  14 common Indo-European notional word consisted of the three elements: the root, expressing the lexical meaning, the inflexion or ending, showing the grammatical form, and the so-called stem-forming suffix, a formal indicator of the stem type. However, in the Germanic languages the stem-forming suffix fuses with the ending and is often no longer visible, thus making the word structure a two-element one. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account when explaining the differences in the categorical forms of words originally having different stem-forming suffixes. It should also be mentioned that Germanic languages belonged to the synthetic type of form-building, which means that they expressed the grammatical meanings by changing the forms of the word itself, not resorting to any auxiliary words. The Germanic nouns had a well-developed case system with four cases (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative); some languages had elements of the instrumental and vocative cases and two number forms (singular and plural). They also had the category of gender (feminine, masculine and neuter) the means of form-building were the endings added to the root/stem of the noun. The Germanic adjectives had two types of declension, conventionally called strong and weak. Most adjectives could be declined both in accordance with the strong and weak type. Agreeing with the noun in gender, case and noun, the adjective by its type of declension expressed the idea of definiteness (weak declension) or  15 indefiniteness (strong declension), the meaning which was later to become expressed by a grammatical class of words unknown in the Common Germanic – the article. The adjective also had degrees of comparison, the forms of which were in most instances formed with the help of suffixes –iz/ōz and –ist/- ōst, but there were also instances of suppletivism, i.e. use of different roots for different forms – a means common for many Indo-European languages: Goth leitils – minniza – minnists (little – less – least) Rus. Хороший – лучше – лучший The Germanic verbs are divided into two principal groups: strong and weak verbs, depending on the way they formed their past tense forms. The past tense (or preterit) of strong verbs was formed with the help of Ablaut, quantitative and qualitative. Depending upon the phonetic root structure, the exact manifestation of Ablaut could be somewhat different, and accordingly strong verbs were further subdivided into classes.  16 Weak verbs expressed pretirite with the help of the dental suffix –d/t. they also had stem-forming suffixes, depending on which they fell into separate classes. There were also a small group of highly frequent suppletive verbs forming their forms from different roots, the same as in other Indo- European languages: Goth am (I/am) Rus. есть was (I / was) был The Germanic verb had a well-developed system of categories, including the category of person (first, second, third), number (singular and plural), tense (past, present, the latter also used for expressing future actions). Mood (indicative, imperative and optative) and voice (only in gothic – active and mediopassive). The categorical forms employed synthetic means of form-building. 3.3. Alphabet Although the people of the Germanic tribes were mostly illiterate, some of the Germanic nations had their own mode of writing, with a distinctive alphabet called runic, each letter of which was called a rune. We know that runes were used to record early stages of Gothic, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, Frisian, Frankish and various tribal tongues of central Germania and they may also have supplied other  17 Germanic languages without leaving any evidence surviving till today. On archeological grounds the earliest runes are dated to the second century AD. The script continued in use in some regions throughout the Middle Ages and into early modern times. The early runes were not written, but incised – runic script was designed for inscribing, at first on wood, which explains many of its characteristics. Since runes were designed for incising in wood, the letter forms, in their earliest stages, eschew curves, which are hard to cut in such a grainy material. Letters were made up of vertical strokes, cut at right angles to the grain, and of slanting strokes which mingle with the grain and be hard to distinguish, were avoided. Even the earliest examples of the script show there were variations in some letter forms, so it is not possible to give a standard pattern for the Germanic runic alphabet. The earliest known runic alphabet had twenty-four letters arranged in a peculiar order, which, from the values of its first letters, is known as the futhark. In early times texts could be written not only from left to right, but from right to left equally well. Some texts could be even being written with alternate lines in opposite directions. Even in left-to-right texts an individual letter could be reversed at whim, and occasionally a letter might be inverted. There was no distinction between capital and lower-case letters.  18 The Roman equivalents for the Germanic runes given above are only approximate, for the sounds of Early Germanic did not coincide with those of Modern English. It is unknown where and when runes were invented. The obvious similarities with the Roman alphabet brought early scholars to the belief that the script first appeared among Germanic peoples living close to the Roman Empire, and that the runes were an adaptation of the more prestigious alphabet. Early finds of rune-inscribed objects in Eastern Europe (Pietroassa in Rumania, Dahrmsdorf in central Germany and Kowel in the Ukraine) suggested that runes may have been invented by Goths on the Danube or beside the Vistula. This is further supported by the similarity of occasional runes to letters of one or other of the Greek alphabets. However, continued discovery of early runic texts in various regions of Europe do not allow considering the matter of the origin of runes conclusively proven. Runes spread over the Germanic world and by 500 AD they are found not only in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, England but also in Poland, Russia and Hungary, recording different Germanic languages and being cut, stamped, inlaid or impressed on metal, bone, wood and stone. Runes were used for many centuries and in many lands, gradually changing in their passage through time and space. In England the script died out, superseded by Roman, somewhere in the eleventh century; in Germany rather soon. In Scandinavia and its colonies, however, runes  19 continued well into the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the later runic inscriptions are of comparatively little interest, for there is plenty of other evidence for the state of the language they record, whereas the early inscriptions are of great importance to the linguist, for they record material for which there is otherwise little or no evidence. ‫٭٭٭‬ Summary Thus we may summarize the above discussion stating that the principal features common to all the languages of the Germanic area were:  Fixation of the main stress on the initial syllable of the word;  The first, or Germanic sound shift affecting the Indo-European voiceless and voiced stops and the spirant [s];  Certain vowel changes;  Reduction in the number of cases as compared to Common Indo-European;  Full development of the weak declension of the adjective with particular categorical meaning;  Development of a dental preterite and appearance of the strong/weak verb distinction;  A peculiar alphabet. 20  21 LECTURE 2. OLD ENGLISH. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS List of principal questions: 1. Outer history 1.1. Pre-Germanic history of Britain. The Celts 1.2. Anglo-Saxon civilization 1.3. Introduction of Christianity 1.4. Principal written records 2.1. Dialectical classification 2.2. The dialects in Old English 2.3 Old English written records 3. Inner history 3.1. Phonetics 3.2. Spelling 3.3. Grammar 3.4. Vocabulary Literature  22 1. R.V. Reznik, T.C. Sorokina, I.V. Reznik A History of the English language. M., 2003. 2. T.A. Rastorguyeva History of English. M., 1983. 3. А.И. Смирницкий Лекции по истории английского языка. М., 2000. 4. К. Бруннер История английского языка. Т.1 М., 2001. 5. И. Чахоян, Л. Иванова, Т. Беляева. История английского языка. СПб., 1998.  23 1. Outer history 1.1. Pre-Germanic history of Britain The Celts Before Germanic invasion, Celtic tribes inhabited British Isles. The first Celtic comers were the Gaels, but the Brythons arrived some two centuries later and pushed the Gaels to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall taking possession of the south and east. Then, after a considerable lapse of time somewhere about the 1 st century B.C. the most powerful tribe, the Belgae, claimed possession of south-east while part of the Brythons was pushed on to Wales though the rest stayed in what is England today, and probably gave there name to the whole country. Thus the whole of Britain was occupied by the Celts who merged with the Picts and Scots, as well as with the Alpine part of the population; the latter predominantly in the West while the rest of the British Isles became distinctly Celtic in language and the structure of the society. The Gaelic form of the Celtic dialects was spoken in Caledonia (modern Scotland) and Ireland, the Bretonic form in England and Wales. The social unit of the Celts, the clans were united into large kinship groups, and those into tribes. The clan was the main economic unit, the main organizational unit for the basic activities. The Celts came to Britain in three waves. Economically and socially the Celts were a tribal society made up of kins, kinship groups, clans and tribes. They practiced a primitive agriculture and carried on trade with  24 Celtic Gaul. The Celts created the great Iron cultures. The Romans invaded the Celts partially, so in Ireland and Scotland, Iron Age culture continued throughout the Roman and Anglo-Saxon conquest. The Celtic tribes started to populate Britain in about 500 B.C. The Main wave of Celtic immigration began in about 300 B.C., from France and Brittany; they brought the so-called sophisticated La Tene culture to Britain. These people settled as miners and traders in southern part of Britain and as horse-breeders and cattle ranchers in the Highlands. In there farming they used a light plough that merely scratched the surface of their fields so they had to plough for the second time to deepen the furrow. The introduction of the iron axe opened up new possibilities; woods could be cleared and more areas put under cultivation. A third wave of Celtic people came into southeast of Britain after 100 B.C. and they were Belgае who moved to Britain before the advancing Romans of Gaul. With arrival of the Belgic tribes to Britain the heavy plough was introduced, drawn by oxen, consequently the slopes of downs were used only as pastures, and fertile valleys were cleared from forests and the south east produced enough grain and food. It was a primitive patriarchal society based on common ownership of land. Afterwards the primitive tillage started to improve and the social differentiation began to develop. All these conditions provided the development of the class distinctions, it helped the tribal chiefs to use the labour of the semi-dependent native population. Alongside with the  25 accumulation of wealth the heads of clans and tribes started to use military forces to rob other tribes. Fortresses were built on the tops of the hills, in fact they were tribal centers, and the first urban settlements began to appear in the wealthier south east. Actually they were the settlements with large groups of wattle-and-clay houses encircled by a sort of fortified fence. Among the first mentioned Celtic urban settlements are such as Verulamium, Camulodunum, Londinium. At that time some continental Celts of Gaul who traded with British Celts came over to Britain and settled in Kent contributing to the civilization of that part of the island, teaching the local population some useful arts. The British craftsmen perfected their skill mostly in bronze work and they tried to express their culture in circular shapes on weapons, vases, domestic utensils, etc. The Celts were good warriors. The most popular of the Celtic armaments were war-chariots, which terrified the Celtic enemies and made them run. The war-chariots were reliably to hold one warrior standing up to drive and two more to do the fighting. The war-chariot itself was a destructive force, the well-trained horses trampling down the enemy and the wheels fixed with sharp knives or swords, rotating with the wheel movement, a grave menace to everything living that chanted to be in the way.  26 The first millennium B.C. was the period of Celtic migration and expansion. Traces of the Celtic civilization are still found all over Europe. Celtic languages were widespread almost all over Europe, later they were absorbed by other Indo-European languages. The Gaelic branch has survived as Irish (or Erse) in Ireland, has expanded to Scotland as Scotch-Gaelic of the Highlands and is still spoken by a few thousand people on the Isle of Man (the Manx language). The Brittonic branch is represented by Kymric or Welsh in Modern Wales and by Breton or Amorican spoken by over a million people in France (in the area called Bretagne or Brittany, where the Celts came as emigrants from Britain in the 5 th century), another Britonic dialect in Britain, Cornish, was spoken in Cornwall until the end of the 8th century. As we have already said, the forefathers of the English nation belonged to the western subdivision of old Germanic tribes, and the dialects they spoke later lay the foundation of English national language. The history of the English language begins in the fifth century AD, when the ruthless and barbaric Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes and Frisians, who up to that time had lived in Western Europe between the Elbe and the Rhine, started their invasion of the British Isles. At the time of invasion Britain was inhabited by the so-called “Romanized Celts”, that is, Celts who lived under the Roman rule for  27 over four centuries and who had acquired Roman culture and ways of life and whose language had undergone certain changes mainly in the form of borrowings from the Latin language. The Celtic tribes, whose languages, the same as Germanic belonged to the Indo-European language family, were at one time among its most numerous representatives. At the beginning of our era the Celts could be found on the territories of the present-day Spain, Great Britain, Western Germany and Northern Italy. Before that they had been known to reach even Greece and Asia Minor. But under the steady attacks of Italic and Germanic tribes the Celts had to retreat, so that in the areas where they were once dominant they have left but the scantiest trace of their presence. The Celts who first came to Britain gradually spread to Ireland, Scotland and Isle of Man. Their languages are represented in modern times by Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. A later wave of Celtic tribes, having occupied for some centuries the central part of England, was driven westwards by Germanic invaders, and their modern language representatives are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. The Romans invaded Britannia as it was then called in 55 – 54 BC when the troops of Julius Caesar and others conquered the isles. No centralized government was formed, instead there existed petty principalities under the control of local landlords. In 407 AD, with the departure of the last Roman emissary Constantine hostilities among the native tribes in Britain began anew. To normalize the situation the local  28 chieftains appealed to influential Germanic tribes who lived on the continent inviting them to come to their assistance, and in 449 the Germanic troops led by Hengest and Horsa landed in Britain. The Roman occupation of Britain left little mark on its future. Most of what the Romans did perished after they left, so it is with the Germanic tribes that the history of England truly begins. The invaders, or Barbarians, as they were generally called, who came to the British Isles were representatives of a by far inferior civilization than the Romans. A bulk of the invaders came from the most backward and primitive of the Germanic tribes. They were an agricultural rather than a pastoral people. Their tribal organization was rapidly disintegrating. The invaders came to Britain in hosts consisting not only of warriors but also including laborers, women and children. They plundered the country, took possession of almost all the fertile land there and partly exterminated, and partly drove away the native population to the less inhabited mountainous parts of the country – Cornwall, Wales, Scotland. The rest of the natives became slaves to the conquerors. In view of the historical facts mentioned above it is quite clear why the language of the invaders underwent so few changes under the influence of the Celtic tongue as almost no normal intercourse between the invaded and invaders was possible, the latter being very few and far below socially.  29 It should be noted that nowadays the remnants of the Celtic group of languages face the threat of complete disappearance unable to survive in the competition with English. Cornish became extinct already in the 18th century, Manx – after the Second World War. Scottish Gaelic is spoken only in the Highlands by about 75 thousand people, Irish – by half a million, the figures showing a steady declining tendency, and their absolute majority of those speaking these languages are bilingual, English being no less familiar to them than their former native tongue. Although in recent years a certain revival of nationalist sentiments helped to somewhat arrest the decline, many linguists fear the inevitable disappearance of the whole branch of the Indo-European language family. We have very little indirect evidence about the beginning of the Old English period – 5th – 7th centuries. The first written records were dated as far back as the beginning of the 8th century that is why the 5th – 7th centuries are generally referred to as “pre-written period”.  30 The Latin Language in Britain Among the other evidences of Romanization must be included the rules of the Latin language. A great number of inscriptions have been found, all of them in Latin. The majority of these proceed no doubt from the military and official class and, being in the nature of public records, were therefore in the official language. They do not in themselves indicate a widespread use of Latin by the native population. Latin did not replace the Celtic language in Britain as it did in Gaul. Its use by native Britons was probably confined to members of the upper classes and the inhabitants of the cities and towns. Occasionally “graffiti” scratched on a tile or a piece of pottery, apparently by the workman who made it, suggest that in some localities Latin was familiar to the artisan classes. Outside the cities there were many fine country houses, some of which were probably occupied by well-to-do natives. The occupants of these also probably spoke Latin. Tacitus tells us that in the time of Agricola the Britons, who had hitherto shown only hostility to the language of their conquerors, now became eager to speak it. At the same time a Greek teacher from Asia Minor was teaching in Britain and by A.D. 96 the poet Martial was able to boast that his works were read even in this far-off island. On the whole, there were certainly many people in Roman Britain who habitually spoke Latin or upon occasion could use it. But its use was not sufficiently widespread to cause it to survive, as the Celtic language survived, the upheaval of the Germanic  31 invasions. Its use probably began to decline after 410, the approximate date at which the last of the Roman troops were officially withdrawn from the island. Britain’s Roman villas Numerous monuments recall the 400 or so years (from A.D. 43 to the beginning of the fifth century) when Britain was part of the Roman Empire. Ancient city walls, including fragments to the ones that once defended London and Colchester, old roads like the Fosse Way and Watling Street. The frontier defenses of Hadrian’s Wall. The bastions at Portchester. An arched gateway at Lincoln. Bath’s great bath. The theatre at Verulamium, near St. Albans. But it is at the villas that one feels closest to the everyday life of Roman Britain. Some of the villas were small farms. Others were great houses. They were well built, usually of one storey, and handsomely decorated. Often they had large courtyards and spacious outbuildings – barns for storage, stables, shelter for pigs and cattle, and living space for the laborers who worked on the estate. The first villa was built here around A.D. 80 – 90. it was a house of flint and mortar with, beneath ground level, a deep room, used as grain store. The type of owner was a native farmer. Around A.D. 180, however, the villa became the home of a Roman of Mediterranean origin, a man of wealth who greatly extended the house, adding kitchens and baths  32 and turning the deep room into a place of worship, decorated with a fresco painting of water goddesses, part of which survived. The eventual fate of most of the Roman villas of Britain remains uncertain. But it is known that Lullingstone was destroyed by fire early in the fifth century. Afterwards the hill-wash crept in form the downs and covered the ruins, keeping them hidden for hundreds of years until the middle of the 18th century, when excavations for a deer fence revealed part of a mosaic floor. No further investigation took place at the time, and it was not until 1949 that systematic excavation of the site began. In a similarly accidental way clues to the presence of the villas at Rudston, Yorkshire, at Bignor, Sussex, and at Chedworth in Gloucestershire were discovered. The Roman Twilight The destruction of the Roman Empire was due to a unique combination of internal and external causes. For long the Empire persisted rather because of the absence of any outside force powerful enough to attack it than from its own strength. In the fourth century A.D. a serious of westward migratory movements across the steppes of Asia and Europe forced the Germanic tribes nearest to the Roman frontiers into motion. At its heart we can trace the westward migration of the Huns, Mongol tribes from Central Asia. At  33 first these Germanic tribes were allowed and even encouraged to enter the Empire, where they were absorbed and partially Romanized. Gradually the hold of the central government on outlying provinces was relinquished and one by one they were overrun by barbarian tribes who set up independent kingdoms of varying character – some largely Roman in culture and language, others almost wholly barbarian. Britain, as the most remote and among the most exposed of the provinces, was among the earliest to fall away and lost most completely its Roman character. In 407 two events ended the long period of Roman occupation. One was the departure of Constantine, with the bulk of the troops stationed in Britain, in an attempt to secure the Imperial purple. The other was the crossing of the Rhine into Gaul of a host of Germanic tribesmen who cut Britain off from the Roman world and prevented the return or replacement of the departed legions. The people of South and East Britain were left to improvise their own government and defense against their never conquered kinsmen of the more parts of the islands. The Names “England” and “English” The Celts called their Germanic conquerors “Saxons” indiscriminately, probably because they had had their contact with the Teutons through the Saxon raids on the coast. Early Latin writers, following Celtic usage, generally call the Teutons in England “Saxones”  34 and the land “Saxonia”. But soon the terms “Angli” and “Anglia” occur beside “Saxones” and refer not only to the Angles individually but to the Teutons generally. Æthelbert , king of Kent, is styled “rex Anglorum” by Pope Gregory in 601, and a century later Bede called his history the “Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum”. in time “Anglia” became the usual terms in Latin texts. From the beginning, however writers in the vernacular never call their language anything but Englisc (English). The word is derived from the name of the Angles ( O.E.Ængles) but is used without distinction for the language of all the invading tribes. In the like manner the land and its people are early called “Anglekynn” (Angle kin or race of the Angles), and this is the common name until after Danish period. From about the year 1000 “Englaland” (Land of Angles) begins to take its place. The name “English” is thus older than the name “England”. It is not easy to say why England should have taken its name from the Angles. Possibly a desire to avoid confusion with the Saxons who remained on the Continent and the early supremacy of the Anglian kingdoms were the predominant factors in determining usage. 1.2. Anglo-Saxon Civilization The religious beliefs of the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) had reflected the primitive man’s fear of the incomprehensible forces of nature. Their highest heathen deity was Woden, the war god, since wars were so important things in those Dark Times of European  35 history. The elements were commanded by Thor the god of thunder, Freia was the god of love and fertility, Tiu commanded the darkness. The names they gave to the week showed which day was sacred to the Sun, the Moon and the Night, and then it followed the day which devoted to the war god, then came the thunder god and after this the love goddess – appeared on the scene to restore the ravages of darkness and war and thunder, followed by Saturn the god of agriculture and merry-making, and then Sunday came again celebrating the life-giving Sun. The Anglo-Saxons had no big cities, only scattered villages and townships that is the Lord’s house surrounded with the wattle-and-mud huts of the villages. The huts of the Anglo-Saxons were very primitive made of wood and clay, with no chimney over the open hearth but a hole in the roof to let the smoke out and to let the light in. The hearth was usually nothing more complicated than just a large flat stone in the middle of the earthen floor. The lord’s house had a large yard with a lot of household buildings. It was protected by a stout fence supplemented by a sort of circular fortifications, or mound. The interior of the lord’s house was that, a spacious hall where the lord had his meal with his family and did a lot of entertaining, received guests and spent a social life. The light came through the small holes in the walls covered with oiled linen. The walls were hung with bright  36 patterned curtains, it was only a part of the hall where the lord received the honoured guests, but other walls were bare. The hearth was nothing but a broad flat stone and the blackened roofbeams were just as much the feature of the lord’s hall. The food was very simple: salt meat, beef, pork or mutton, eaten off big dishes with no forks, but knives were used to help the fingers. Drinking was not mentioned at the early stage but it started at a much advanced society. The drinking table manners were that the Anglo-Saxons used drinking cups with rounded bottoms, to be held in the drinker’s hands until quite empty. Their drinks were mead, fermented honey, malt brewed ale. The Anglo-Saxons had learned to make wine from Romans but it was sweetening with honey because on the mainland the wine was too sour to have it. The ladies did not stay too long at table but withdrew to their part of the hall or to their room and the men stayed to drink more until there nothing left to drink. The ladies welcomed all sorts of wandering minstrels who would sing, play or tell stories. After feast the guests stayed to sleep in the hall on the floor keeping their weapons close by for emergencies. The family went to their chambers. When the Anglo-Saxons came to the British Isles they brought nothing except runic writing. They had no literature, their writings were a proverb or magic formula carved upon some ornaments or weapon in runes.  37 Long before the introduction of Christianity and even after, the Anglo-Saxons used pagan- sounding charms. The charms were practiced not only by professional witches and spellbinders whom the Anglo- Saxons fully trusted in controlling the natural elements and the Evil Spirit, but by ordinary peasants as well. Here are some examples of the primitive charms: “Garmund, thane of God, find the cattle and lead the cattle, and have the cattle, and hold the cattle, and bring the cattle home…” 1.3. Introduction of Christianity The introduction of Christianity played a great role in the history of English. The first attempt to introduce the Roman Christian religion to Anglo-Saxon Britain was made in the 6th century. In 597 a group of missionaries from Rome dispatched by Pope Gregory the Great “St Augustine’s mission” first landed on the shore of Kent. They made Canterbury their center and from that town the now faith expanded the English kingdoms: Kent, East, Anglia, Essex, Wessex and other places. The new faith was supported from Ireland; they brought the Celtic variety of Christianity to Northumbria. The Celts had converted to Christianity long before the Germanic tribes came to Britain, during the Roman occupation. Less than a century practically all England was Christianized. The Christian faith and church helped the English kingdoms to unite and was  38 the main factor in formation one centralized country. The introduction of Christianity influenced greatly the growth of culture and learning. Monasteries were founded all over the country. The openings of monasteries, influenced the education, many monastic schools were opened. Religious services and teaching were conducted in Latin. A high standard of learning was reached in the best English monasteries, especially in Northumbria in early 8th and 9th centuries. The most famous of all monasteries was the monastery of Lindisfarne, founded by Aidan who had come to Britain with the Irish missionaries, the monastery of Garrow, where the Venerable Bede, the first English historian lived and worked. During the Scandinavian invasion the monastery at Lindisfarne was destroyed and most of Northumbrian culture came in decline at that time. English culture shitted to the southern kingdoms, most of all to Wessex, where a cultural florescence began during the reign of King Alfred (871-901). Since that time up to the end of the Old English period Wessex remained the cultural center of England with its capital at Winchester. 1.4. Principal written records of the Old English period The principal written records that came to us through the centuries date from as far back as the 8th century. They were written with the help  39 of the so-called “Runic Alphabet”. This was an alphabet of some 26 letters, the shape of which is quite peculiar: [fuθark] or [fuθork] We have already said that it is assumed the Runic alphabet was composed by Germanic scribes in the I – III centuries AD and their angular shape is due to the material those inscriptions were made on – wood, stone, bone – and the technique of “writing” – the letters were not written but carved on those hard materials. The word “rune” meant “mystery”, and those letters were originally considered to be magic signs known to very few people, mainly monks and not understood by the vast majority of illiterate population. Among the first Old English runic inscriptions we generally mentioned two: the inscription on the so-called “Franks’ Casket” – small box made of whalebone containing a poem about it, and the inscription on the “Ruthwell Cross” – religious poem engraved on a stone cross found in Scotland. In 7th century the Christian faith was introduced and with it there came many Latin-speaking monks who brought with them their own Latin alphabet. The Latin alphabet was used by the majority of the population who could read and write. It ousted the runic alphabet. Latin alphabet could not denote all the sounds in the English language, for example, the sounds [w], [θ]. For that purpose some runes were preserved – w, þ, or  40 some Latin letters were slightly altered – ð to denote the sounds [θ], [ð] together with the rune þ. This alphabet that is a combination of the Latin alphabet with runes and some other innovations is called “insular writing”, i.e. the alphabet typical of the British Isles. The majority of Old English records are written in this insular alphabet. The spelling in these records is on the whole phonetic and reasonably consistent, so that it is possible to learn much about the early pronunciation. 2. Dialectal classification of Old English written records 2.1. The dialects in Old English As we have already said, the onset of invasion by the members of the four principal Germanic tribes: Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians – began about the middle of the fourth century and their conquest of Britain was completed within the next century and a half. By about AD 600 they established their separate kingdoms, the principal among them being: - Those formed by the Angles: Northumbria (north of the river Humber), Mercia (in the center of England) and east Anglia – central eastern part of England;  41 - Those formed by the Saxons – mainly to the south of the river Thames: Wessex, Sussex and Essex; - The one formed by the Jutes – Kent. Only the Frisians did not form a separate kingdom, but intermarried with the population belonging to different tribes. The prevailing importance of these seven kingdoms gave to the next two centuries the title Heptarchy. Gradually three of the seven – Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria – began to establish some sort of domination over their smaller neighbors. It was an important step towards the achieving the eventual unity of England. Another vital factor contributing to the unity was the introduction of Christianity in England in 597 AD, and afterwards the spread of Christianity and changes of the supremacy of this or that kingdom follows almost the same course. The Old English dialects are generally named after the names of kingdoms on the territory of which the given dialect was spoken – the Northumbrian dialect, the Mercian dialect, the Wessex dialect, the Sussex dialect, the Kentish dialect. Though the differences between the three types were later to assume considerable importance, they were at first slight, and records of the 8th and 9th centuries reveal that Englisc, as it was collectively called, had by that time emerged as an independent language. The virtually complete geographical separation of England from the Continent was a factor favoring the further development of those characteristic  42 features that already distinguished English from its parent Germanic languages. Among the principal Old English dialects the most important for us is the Wessex dialect, as the majority of Old English written records that we have can be traced back to that dialect. But the prominence of the Wessex dialect is also based on other extra linguistic criteria. As it is known, efforts to unite England failed for a very long period of time, because as soon as one kingdom became great it was in the interest of the rest to pull it down. Some historians say that the reason for that was the lack of the strongest possible motive towards any union, namely, the presence of a foreign foe. Such enemy appeared in the second half of the 8th century, when the Northmen, particularly the Danes, began their devastating raids on the isles. At the beginning of the 9th century, when the Danish invaders destroyed in turn the dynasties of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, Wessex was left as the sole survivor, and its leaders became the leaders of the emerging nation. The most famous of all English kings, Alfred of Wessex, who would later come to be called Alfred the Great, came to the throne in 871 and is reputed to have been one of the best kings ever to rule mankind. He successfully fought with the Danes who by that time conquered most of eastern England and were moving southwards towards Wessex. Alfred managed to stop the Danes, although temporally, and in 878 signed a treaty with the Danish king dividing England between them.  43 But Alfred’s true greatness lay not in his military, but peaceful activity. He set aside a half of the revenue to be spent on educational needs, established schools where the sons of the nobility could be taught to read and write, brought in foreign scholars and craftsmen, restored monasteries and convents, published a collection of laws and enforced them. He also mastered Latin and translated many books into Anglo-Saxon and ordered the compilation of the first history book, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was continued for more than two centuries after his death. All this allows saying that even had Alfred never fought a battle, he would still deserve a place among the greatest rulers of history. However, after the death of Alfred the Great in 901 the supremacy of Wessex gradually began to decline, and for a time, from 1017 till 1042, the throne was occupied by Danish kings. 2.2. Old English written records Runic inscriptions The word rune originally meant “secret”, “mystery” and they are believed to be magic. There is no doubt that the Germanic tribes knew the runic writing long before they came to Britain. The first runes were found in Scandinavia. The runes were used as letters; each symbol indicated a separate sound.  44 The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic one, which cannot be found in other Indo-European languages. The shape of preferred, this is due to the fact that all runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone, wood. The number of runes in different Old Germanic languages greatly varied from 28 to 33 runes in Britain against 16 or 24 on the mainland. Runes were used only for short inscriptions on the objects in order to bestow some special power or magic on them and they were not used in writing. The two best known runic inscriptions in England are “Franks Casket”, and “Ruth well Cross”. Both records are in Northumbrian dialect. The first English manuscripts were written in Latin letters. The center of learning was monasteries and the monks were practically the only literate people. The religious services were conducted in Latin and the first English writings appeared in Latin letters. English scribes modified the Latin script to suit their needs: the shape of some letters was changed and new symbols which indicated the English sounds, for which Latin had no equivalents, were added. The first English words were personal names and place names inserted in Latin texts, and then came glosses and longer textual insertions. The first official documents were written in Latin, but later they were written in local dialects, because not many people knew Latin. Among  45 the earliest insertions in Latin texts are pieces of poetry. Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum written in Latin in the 8 th c. contains an English fragment of five lines known as “Bede’s Death Song” and a religious poem of nine lines, “Cadmon’s Hymn” Old English poetry is mainly restricted to three subjects: heroic, religious and lyrical. Most of poetry is believed to be composed at that time when there was no writing and they existed in oral form and handed down from one generation to another. The greatest poem of the Old English period was Beowulf, an epic of the 7th c. As some linguists and historians Consider this epic was composed in the Mercian or Northumbrian dialect, but came to the present time in West Saxon dialect. Beowulf consists of several songs arranged in three chapters (over 3 000 lines in all). It is based on old legends about the ancient Teutons. It depicts the life and fight of the legendary hero Beowulf, some extracts of the epic describes the real historical events. In the 10th c. when the old heroic versus began to decline, some new poems were composed which were the picture of the real historical events. Among them were the chronicles: the battle of Brunanburh, the Battle of Maldon. They depicted the wars with the Scots, the Picts and the invaders from Scandinavia. Old English poetry is characterized by the so-called system of versification Old Germanic alliterative verse. The structure of this verse is this: the line is divided into two halves with two strongly stressed  46 syllables in each half and is bound together by the use of the same sound at the beginning of two stressed syllables in the line. The lines are not rhymed and the number of the syllables in a line is pee. There is another specification in Old English poetry: the use of metaphorical phrases as hēapu-swāt – “war sweat” (blood). The greatest written monument of the Anglo-Saxon poetry of that time was the poem “Beowulf” that was created early in the 7th century and had 3182 lines full not only of masterful descriptions and dignified speeches but also of fine lyrical feeling which is in keeping with the whole body of early Anglo-Saxon poetry. The plot is simple enough: in the first part of the poem Beowulf, a young hero of the Geats (a tribe that lived in the southern part of Sweden), hears of a sea monster Grendel preying upon Hrothgar the king of the Danes killing his warriors right after their feast in the “middle hall” called Heorot. So he goes with his men to kill this monster and free the Danes from the terror of the monster. He mortally wounds him in the single combat with his bare hands and then kills another, who is more terrible and much stronger than the first. It is Grendel’s mother who wants to take revenge upon Beowulf and the people for her son’s death. Beowulf kills the second monster in her cave with the magic sword that he wrests from the enemy. The poem symbolized a triumph of human courage over the hostile forces of nature. The second part of the poem greatly influenced by Christianity after its introduction into the early Germanic society tells about Beowulf  47 where he is an aged king an ideal king of the tribal society who peacefully and wisely rules the Danes. At that time appears a fire- breathing monster that hoards the gold and a plenty of treasure in a cave and becomes a grave menace for people. Gold is shown here as a force which threatens the tribal society, that brings discord and destruction. Desire of gold is the root of all evil and Beowulf dies protecting his people from the great menace of gold which is implied in the image of this monster. Literary critics highly appreciate the aesthetic quality of “Beowulf” considering it to be the masterpiece of the old Germanic prose. Some of them think that this poem was written by one author, probably acquainted with the traditions of the Latin epic narrative. They concluded it on the bases of comparisons which were made on Virgil’s “Aeneid”. There was another opposite opinion, classifying the poem as a sort of synthesis of the Germanic epics and the topic of the Biblical stories, treating Grendel as a descendant of Cain and making allusions to the struggle of God and Satana in connection with hero’s struggle against evil forces. The earliest sample of prose works are: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles which are of no great importance as a literary work but are of great interest for the linguists because they were written in spoken language and they are much better than sophisticated Translations from Latin. The flourishing of learning and literature began in the times of reign of King Alfred. He was a learned man and realized that culture hat to be  48 developed in mother tongue. He translated from Latin books on geography, history, philosophy. One of his most important contributions is the West Saxon version of Orosius’s World History (Historiarum Adversus paganos Libri Septem “Seven books of history against the heathens”). This is the description where the Germanic languages were spoken, the story of two voyages which were made one by Ohthere, a Norwegian, who sailed along the coast of Scandinavia into the Write Sea and the other Wulfstan, a Dane, who had traveled round the Baltic Sea. Another work is book for instructions for priests Pastoral Care (Cura Pastoralis) by Pope Gregory the Great. Another outstanding writer of the Old English period was Aelfric who created the alliterative prose work “The Lives of the saints”. He was the first to translate from Latin some parts of the Holy Bible. He was known also as educator he wrote a Latin Grammar giving Old English equivalents of Latin forms and constructions. Wulfstan was the prominent late West Saxon author, was an Archbishop of York in the early 11th c. 2. Inner history During the period the language was developing very slowly. 3.1. Phonetics  49 The phonetics of the Old English period was characterized by a system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the first root syllable. agāne (gone); зesēon (see); зaderian (gather) The vowels had the following characteristic features: a) the quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in unstressed position there were no diphthongs or long monophthongs, but only short vowels [a], [e], [i], [o], [u]. b) The length of the stressed vowels (monophthongs and diphthongs) was phonemic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length of the vowel: metan (to meet, to measure) – mētan (to meet) pin (pin) – pīn (pain) God (god) – gōd (good) ful (full) – fūl (foul) c) There was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels: Short: a o e u i æ y ea eo Long: ā ō ē ū ī ǽ ý ēo ēa  50 The consonants were few. Some of the modern sounds were non- existent ([∫], [з], [t∫], [dз]). The quality of the consonant very much depended on its position in the word, especially the resonance (voiced and voiceless sounds: hlāf [f] (loaf) – hālord [v] (lord, “bread-keeper”) and articulation (palatal and velar sounds: climban [k] (to climb) – cild [k’] (child)), etc. 3.2. Spelling The Old English spelling was mainly phonetic, i.e. each letter as a rule denoted one sound in every environment. Note should be taken that the letters f, s, þ, ð could denote voiced consonants in intervocalic positions or voicless otherwise; the letter c was used to denote the sound [k] (palatal or velar); the letter y denoted the sound [ÿ] (similar to German [ü in the word Gemüt or in Russian [ю] in the word “бюро”). The letter з could denote three different sounds: [j] – before or after front vowels [æ], [e], [i]: Зiefan (give), Зēar (year), dæз (year) [γ] – after back vowels [a], [o], [u] and consonants [l] and [r]: Dæзas (days), folзian (follow) [g] – before consonants and before back vowels [a], [o], [u]: Зōd (good), зlēo (glee)  51 3.3. Grammar Old English was a synthetic language (the lexical and grammatical notions of the word were contained in one unit). It was highly inflected, with many various affixes. The principal grammatical means were suffixation, vowel interchange and supplition. Suffixation: Ic cēpe (I keep) – þu cēpst (you keep) – he cēpð (he keeps) Vowel interchange: wrītan (to write) – Ic wrāt (I wrote) Supplition: зān (to go) – ēode (went) bēon (to be) – Ic eom (I am) þu eart (you are) he is (he is)  52 There was no fixed word-order in old English, the order of the words in the sentence being relatively free. 3.4. Vocabulary Almost all of it was composed of native words, there were very borrowings. Borrowings were mainly from Latin: a) The forefathers of English, when on the Continent, had contacts with the Roman Empire and borrowed words connected mainly with trade: cīese (cheese), wīn (wine), æpple (apple) b) They borrowed Latin words from the Romanized Celts: stræt (street), weall (wall), myln (mill) c) Some borrowings were due to the introduction of Christianity: biscop (bishop), deoful (devil), munic (monk) New words appeared as a result of two processes: a) word derivation: fisc+ere = fiscere (fish – fisher) wulle+en = wyllen (wool – woolen) clæne+s+ian = clæsian (clean – to cleanse) b) word composition: sunne+dæз = Sunnandæз (sun + day = Sunday) Mōna+dæз = Mōnandæз (moon + day = Monday) 53  54 LECTURE 3. MIDDLE ENGLISH. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS List of principal questions: 1. Outer history Scandinavian Invasion Effect of the Scandinavian Invasions Norman Conquest Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation 1.3. Formation of the English national language 2. Inner history 2.1. Phonetics 2.2. Grammar 2.3. Word-stock Literature 1. R.V. Reznik, T.C. Sorokina, I.V. Reznik A History of the English language. M., 2003. 2. T.A. Rastorguyeva History of English. M., 1983.  55 3. А.И. Смирницкий Лекции по истории английского языка. М., 2000. 4. К. Бруннер История английского языка. Т.1 М., 2001. 5. И. Чахоян, Л. Иванова, Т. Беляева. История английского языка. СПб., 1998.  56 1. Outer history 1.1. The Scandinavian Invasions in England By the 8th c. Norwegian Vikings made their first attacks on England. In the 9th century Wessex succeeded in consolidating all the kingdoms into a unified country, which broke up the tribal structure and advanced the feudalism society. But it was not possible yet to call England to be the centralized state. The big landowners were as strong as ever and separate regions retained their political independence. The invaders who in 793 started their predatory expeditions with the ruthless destruction of the Lindisfarne abbey and wholesale slaughter of the people who lived there. It was two Scandinavian tribes Danes and Norwegians. Danes became the invaders of England and the Norwegians invaded Scotland and Ireland. The Vikings were very skilful warriors and seamen; they were brave, courageous and ferocious fighters. The green meadows, mild climate, rich soil attracted the Vikings. They found the English kingdoms weak and easy to invade. The Scandinavians could afford to equip a huge host, transfer their activities to England launching annual expeditions that inaugurated a whole epoch of slaughter and suffering that lasted practically about three centuries. The Danes surpassed the Anglo-  57 Saxons in military skill and in military equipment. They had improved weapons, long, high-speed ships, iron axes, swords, iron helmets and firm shields and chain armour while the Anglo-Saxons had knives and spears and far from being protected with iron mesh could only boast leather covering. The traditional date of the Germanic invasion on the British Isles is 449-450 A.D. The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic one, which cannot be found in other Indo-European languages. The Vikings’ tactics was very unusual, they knew tricks of lightning –speed attack, getting where they wanted in their long ships with the high stern and pointed bow, landing quickly, getting all the horses available and attacking on horseback, building stockades and retreating behind them if necessary to rally for new attacks. The traditional date of the Germanic invasion on the British Isles is 449-450 A.D. The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic one, which cannot be found in other Indo-European languages. The Vikings’ tactics was very unusual, they knew tricks of lightning –speed attack, getting where they wanted in their long ships with the high stern and pointed bow, landing quickly, getting all the horses available and attacking on horseback, building stockades and retreating behind them if necessary to rally for new attacks.  58 The Vikings’ armed forces attacked London and burned it up in 842 and in the year 850 they stayed to winter in England instead of withdrawing. And in the sixties of the 9th century they founded their first permanent settlements. Having founded the military settlements and camps they started to invade the country, moving to the depth of the island. In 871 they founded a fortified camp in Reading that served them as a base for their further push. The struggle of the English against the Scandinavians lasted over 300 years; during this period the invaders occupied more than half of England. At first there were small raids but by the 9th century. The raids increased and the Danes subdued Northumbria and East Anglia, ravaged the eastern part of Mercia, and advanced on Wessex. The Scandinavians came to England in large numbers to settle in the new areas. They began to mix up with the English people because they were of the came Germanic group. The communication between the newcomers and the local population was easy one because their languages were of the same group too. The Viking incursions had destroyed many of monasteries in the north and east of England, and it was in these monasteries in particular that learning had flourished in the 8th and in the 9th centuries. That learning was based on knowledge of Latin. It is therefore, understandable that Bede should be a famous author who wrote in Latin, not in English. Other learned men of the pre-Viking age – such as Aldhelm, Alcuin and Boniface – all used Latin as their principal medium  59 of written communication. England was one place where the torch of learning was kept alight – but that learning was Latinate. However, not all learning in England was in Latin in that time. “Cadmon’s Hymn” and the runic inscriptions with parts of The Dream of the Rood found on the Ruthwell cross show that poetry in English was composed on religious themes in Northumbria. In Mercia the poet Cynewulf wrote a number of poems which are still extant in English, and translations such as the Life of St Chad are extant. Although text written by English scholars in Latin could be read all over Europe and therefore stood a better chance of survival, texts written in any variety of English where probably for local consumption and so easily have been lost when the monasteries were destroyed. The effect of the Scandinavian invasion on the English language became manifest at a later date in the 12th c. when the Scandinavian elements began to penetrate into the central dialects of the Old English language. The kingdom of Wessex resisted stubbornly. The King of Wessex, Alfred (871-899) was at the head of that resistance. The year 871 was called “Alfred’s great years of battles”. The Danes encountered staunch resistance and finally they had to make a truce with young king. After that period Scandinavians changed their tactics they found new forms of invasion – such as settling down to found kingdoms. That was done in Northumbria and East Anglia. In 872 the Scandinavian attacks increased in strength and number, so that in 878 Alfred with his armed  60 forces were driven into the Somerset marshes where they took refuge in the island of Athelney. This place was the center of the guerillas and the place of the beginning of the struggle for the national independence. At first they fought against the outnumbered Scandinavian army, but then the people began to join him in his marshy citadel and gradually Alfred gathered a great force. After thorough preparations and training the army Alfred started to learn the strategy and tactics of the Danes to imitate them. The Saxons put to rout the Danes at Ethandune. In 878, the English concluded the peace treaty with the Scandinavians. England was divided into two halves: the northeastern half under Danish controls Dane lag and the southeastern under the leadership of Wessex. Alfred the Great made vigorous efforts to restore the country’s economy and build up its military potential so as to secure it against invasions. Every nobleman got a certain number of hides (hide estate sufficient to support one family, measure of land about 100-120 acres) of land to serve in the army. He built a lot of fortifications in key points along frontier with permanent detachments of professional soldiers to defend the country in case of the Scandinavian attacks. Later on these fortified camps developed into towns. The reconquest of the areas under the Danish control began in the early 10th century but the Danish raids were renewed again and in the early 11 th century the Scandinavians at the head of Sweyn and Canute achieved the success. The English kingdoms had to pay regularly large sums of money (Danegeld “Danish money”). Canute was declared as  61 king, and England became part of a great northern empire, comprising Denmark and Norway. The rein of Canute was marked by a growing unwillingness on the part of the thanes and knights to continue as professional warriors and the king had to create a permanent army of well-trained soldiers who were paid for their service. Thus taxes for hired soldiers from the Anglo-Saxons peasants increased. Henceforth the English tax payers were in fact supporting the permanent army. It was during Canute’s rein that the Godwin family came to power in England, that was, south- west of the line marking the “Danelaw” territory. After Canute’s death (1035) and then the death of his son (the last one, childless, died in 1042] his kingdom broke up and England regained political independence. The Godwin family [Godwin held three of the six earldoms of the country] succeeded in restoring the Old Saxon dynasty to the throne of England. Thus, Edward, son of Aethelred was brought back from Normandy. Weak-willed and undistinguished, he prepared the ground for the Norman conquest of England. With the founding of Scandinavian settlements the first place names of Danish and Norwegian origins appeared. These names are still found in different parts of England, Scotland Ireland and the Isle of Man. There are 1,400 places, which bear the Scandinavian names. Most of these are naturally in the north and the east of England, the districts that were under Danelag (Danish Law) for it was here the majority of invaders settled. The most common Scandinavian elements in place  62 names are: by “farm, village”. - Coningsby “king’s village”, Denby “Danes ’ village”, Derby “animal farm”, Ingleby “village of the English”, Sowerby, Surby “swampy farm” – “homestead” – This element is chiefly Danish Bratoft “broad homestead”, Wigtoft “homestead on the creek. There are groups of names which include a compound names of Norse – Gaelic background, or mixed Scandinavian – English” for example: Kirkcolm “Columba’s church”, Kirkpatrick B. Patrick’s church”, Kirkbride “St Bride’s church”. The Scandinavian invaders were no further from the Anglo-Saxons. They belonged to the Northern branch of the Germanic people while the Anglo-Saxons were the western one, and the Goths being the eastern one. They were gradually assimilated. The Scandinavian words enriched the Anglo-Saxons vocabulary.  63 1.2. Effect of the Scandinavian Invasions Though the Scandinavian invasions of England are dated in the OE period, their effect on the language is particularly apparent in ME. We may recall that since the 8th century the British Isles were ravaged by sea rovers from Scandinavia, first by Danes, later by Norwegians. By the end of the 9th century the Danes had succeeded in obtaining a permanent footing in England, more than half of England was yielded to the invaders and recognized as Danish territory – “Danelaw”. While some of Scandinavians came to England, merely to plunder and return their homeland, others made their permanent home in North East England. In the early years of the occupation the Danish settlements were little more than armed camps. But gradually the conditions stabilized and the Danes began to bring their families. The new settlers and the English intermarried and intermixed, they lived close together and did not differ either in social rank or in the level of culture and customs. They intermingled the more easily as there was no linguistic barrier between them. OE and O Scand belonged to the Germanic group of languages and at that time were much closer than their descendants are today. The colonization and the intermixture of the newcomers with their former foes continued from the 9th century during 200 years, which  64 witnessed diverse political events, the reconquest of Danelaw under Alfred’s successors, the renewal of Scandinavian onslaughts in the late 10th century under Sweyne, and the political annexation of England by Denmark under Canute. 1.3. The Norman Conquest For a short time England was part of an Anglo-Scandinavian Empire under Canute but after 1042 Norman influence increased under Edward the Confessor who promised the succession to William of Normandy. When Edward died early in 1066, the Saxon “Assembly of Wise Men” [“the Witeagemot” it means “Council of the Wisest”, the members were big landowners, thanes, bishops, the king was supposed to ask their advice on important decisions of the state.] declared Harold king. William, the duke of Normandy, cousin to Edward the confessor, declared himself heir to the throne of England. Having got the support and the agreement to the right of the throne from the Pope of Rome he started preparations for the English campaign in order to sweep the Saxon dynasty forever. The Normans were the same Northmen who had invaded Britain three centuries earlier. They had assimilated the local people, who were Romanized Gaul Celts by origin, borrowed their language and culture, their advanced civilization, so that the Duke of Normandy headed an  65 already complex society, which was situated in the north of France. Being fully under the influence of Rome, Normans exercised its cultural influence to the benefit of Norman civilization. Church architecture had reached an advanced stage in Normandy. The Norman army was much better equipped than the English one. The tactics of the Anglo-Saxons did not change since Alfred the Great’s time. They used the great axes and horses to cover great distances. The core of the Saxons army consisted the housecarls, the ordinary people consisted the other part of the army, which was less equipped and worse trained, wished they had been at home to harvest their crops. The Normans had a very effective cavalry and a great number of bowmen, shooting from the safe distance, to let the arrows down hitting the less protected portions of their opponents’ bodies. It was in this manner that Harold, the king of England shot in the eye. Harold’s acceptance of the Witenagemot’s offer of the crown, was taken by William as sacrilege (he had made Harold’s swear he would support his claim to the throne) and he appealed to all European knights to get on the march against oath breaker. He promised them land and opportunities of plunder. On September 28, 1066, William of Normandy landed near Hastings. The last Anglo-Saxon king Harold, who a few days earlier had defeated a Norwegian army at Stamford Bridge, in Yorkshire hurried south. On October 14 William marched out of his camp and attached. In six hours fighting the Anglo-Saxon host was crushed and Harold slain. It  66 was the last successful invasion of England. The strong centralized government imposed by thousand Continental adventurers, distributed Anglo-Saxon estates among Norman barons and their French followers. The Great Council replaced the Anglo-Saxon Witan (Cora Regis). The majority of English nobles were killed and exiled. William took their lands and redistributed them among his Norman nobles on terms of feudal military service. The Norman Conquest tied England dynastically, commercially and culturally to the Continent. Many of the ties were beneficial, but England was also committed to an ultimately futile struggle for control of France, which delayed attempts to unity the British Isles. William the Conqueror installed his followers in castles strategically placed against invasion and revolt. Northumbria was laid waste as a penalty for rebellion. Four fifths of All England’s land changed ownership. As a result of the conquest the English church was more closely linked with Rome and increased its powers Norman bishops were appointed and special over the church and limited interference from Rome. French became the language of the upper classes and Latin the language of the people. The English village economy was not greatly affected by the Conquest. The Domesday Book, an inquiry into the nature and value of all land herd of the king, was a remarkable and ambitions survey of England conducted by William in 1086 to assess the land, livestock, and population of the country. It is far from complete. It does not cover most  67 of the northern counties, or large town such as London, Bristol and Winchester. The arrival of the Normans added surprisingly little to the existing place names of the British Isles. There is little significance in the distribution of the few Norman-French names that survive, for they were symbols of class rather than of geographical language units. Whatever the actual number of Normans settled in England it is clear that the members of the new ruling class were sufficiently predominant to continue to use their own language. This was natural at First, since they knew no English, but they continued to do so for a long time to come. 1.4. Effect of the Norman Conquest on the linguistic situation The Norman Conquest was not only a great event in British political history but also the greatest single event in the history of the English language. Its earliest effect was a drastic change in the linguistic situation. The Norman conquerors of England had originally come from Scandinavia (North, Norman). About one hundred and fifty years before they had seized the valley of the Seine and settled in that area which was henceforth known as Normandy? They were swiftly assimilated by the French and in the 11th century came to Britain as French speakers  68 and bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect of French, which differed in some points from central, Parisian French. Their tongue in Britain is often referred to as “Anglo-French” or “Anglo-Norman”, but may just as well be called French, since we are less concerned here with the distinction of French dialects than with the continuous French influence upon English, both in the Norman period of history and a long while after the Anglo-Norman language had ceased to exist. In the early 13th century, as a result of lengthy and inefficient wars with France John Lackland lost the French provinces, including the dukedom of Normandy. Among other consequences the loss of lands in France cut off the Normans in Britain from France, which increased the decline of the Anglo-French language. The most immediate consequence of the Norman domination in Britain is to be seen in the wide use of the French language in many spheres of life. For almost three hundred years French was the official language of administration: it was the language of the king’s court, the law courts, the church, the army and the castle. 1.4. Early Middle English dialects The regional ME dialects had developed from respective OE dialects. The following dialects can be distinguished in Early ME. The Southern group included the Kentish and the Southwestern dialects. Kentish dialect was a direct descendant of the OE dialect known by the same name, though it had somewhat extended its area.  69 The South Western group was a continuation of the OE Saxon dialects, not only West Saxon, but also East Saxon. The East Saxon dialect was not prominent in OE but became more important in Early ME, since it made the basis of the dialects of London in the 12th and 13th centuries. Among the dialect of this group we may mention the Gloucester dialect and the London dialect, which must have been an influential form of speech at all times. The group of Midland (“Central”) dialects – corresponding to the OE Mercian dialect – is divided into West Midland and East Midland as two main areas, with further subdivisions within: South – East Midland and North – East Midland and North – West Midland. In ME the Midland area became more diversified linguistically than the OE Mercian kingdom occupying approximately the same territory: from the Thames in the South to the Welsh speaking area in the West and up north to the river Humber. The Northern dialects had developed from OE Northumbrian. In early ME the Northern dialects included several provincial dialects, e.g. Yorkshire and the Lancashire dialects and also what later became known as Scottish. The earliest sign of the official recognition of English by the Norman kings was the famous Proclamation issued by Henry III in 1258 to the Councilors in Parliament. It was written in three languages: French, Latin and English affected English more than any other foreign influence before or after. The early French borrowings reflected accurately the  70 spheres of Norman influence upon English life; later borrowings can be attributed to the continued cultural, economic and political contacts between the countries. The French influence added new features to the regional and social differentiation of the language. New words, coming from French could not be adopted simultaneously by all the speakers of English, they were first used in some varieties of the language, namely in the regional dialects of Southern England and in the speech of the upper classes, but were unknown in the other varieties. This led to growing dialectal differences, regional and social. Later the new features adopted from French and extended to other varieties of the language. It was also the everyday language of many nobles, of the higher clergy and of many towns’ people in the South. The intellectual life, literature and education were in the hands of French speaking people, French, alongside Latin, was French and boys at school were taught to translate their Latin into French instead of English. For all that, England never stopped being an English – Speaking country. The bulk of the population held fast to their own (language) tongue: the lower classes in towns, and especially in the country-side, those who lived in the Midlands and up the north, continued to speak English and looked upon French as foreign and hostile. Since most of the people were illiterate, the English language was almost exclusively used for spoken communication.  71 At first the two languages existed side by without mingling. Then, slowly and quietly, they began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French town-dwellers had to pick up English words to make them understood, while the English began to use French words in current speech. A good knowledge of French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social prestige. Probably many people became bilingual and had a fair command of both languages. These peculiar linguistic conditions could not remain static. The struggle between French and English was bound to end in the complete victory of English, for English was the living language of the entire people, while French was restricted to certain social spheres and writing. Yet the final victory was still a long way off. 5. Formation of the National language There were several causes contributing to the use of the dialect of East Midland and particularly the dialect of London as Standard English. In the first place, as а Midland dialect the English of this region occupied в middle position between the extreme divergences of the north and south. In sounds and inflections it represents а kind of compromise, sharing some of the characteristics of both its neighbors. In the second р1асе, the East Midland district was the largest and most populous of the major dialect districts. А third factor was the presence of the universities, Oxford and Cambridge, in this region. These two  72 universities had developed into important intellectual cent- res. By far the most influential factor in the rise of Standard English was the importance of London as the capital of England. It was the seat of the court, the center of social and cultural activities of the country. We should say that the history of Standard English is almost a history of London English. In the latter part of the 15th с. the London standard had been accepted, at least in writing, in most parts of the country. Caxton, the first English printer, in his numerous translations used the current speech of London, and the books gave а currency to London English that assured its rapid adoption as well. In confirming the establishment of London English as а specific literary standard for the rest of the country, Chaucer’s writings exercised а certain influence. In the Modern English period, the beginning of which is usually placed at 1500, some new conditions came into р1ау. The new factors were the printing press, the rapid spread of popular education, the increased communication and means of communication, and the growth of what may be called social consciousness. The printing press was а powerful force for promoting а standard form of language and spreading that language throughout the country. The education was making rapid progress among the people and literacy was becoming much more common. Literacy meant contact with written texts in English (the standard, speech of London). In other words, as а result of popular education the printing press was able to  73 exert its influence upon the establishment of the standard national form of English. The changes in the class structure of England affected the 1inguistic situation precisely at the time when the standard form of the national language was being definitely established. The beginnings of the modern period saw the growth of social consciousness. It is every one’s natural tendency to identify himself with а certain social group with the efforts to adopt the standards of grammar and pronunciation peculiar to this group. In the Middle Ages the development of English took place under conditions which, because of the Norman Conquest, were largely peculiar to England. But by the close of the Middle English period the language faced three great problems like the other important European languages: (1) recognition in the fields where Latin had for centuries been supreme, (2) the establishment of а more uniform orthography, and (3) the enrichment of the vocabulary. Although Latin had the advantage of universal currency, so that the educated all over Europe could freely communicate with each other, both in speech and writing, the recognition of English in this field was assured as the real force, behind the use of English was а popular demand of all sorts of men in practical life to use the national language in all social and cultural spheres. The spelling of the modern languages in the Middle Ages had attempted with fair success to represent the pronunciation of words,  74 and this is true of English in spite of the fact that Norman scribes introduced considerable confusion when they tried to write a language which they imperfectly knew. The confusion was increased when certain spellings became conventional while the pronunciation slowly changed. To many people it seemed that English spelling was chaotic. For instance, in one of Greene's Coney catching pamphlets (1591), we find 'соnеу' spelled 'cony', 'connу', 'соnуе', 'соniе' 'соnniе', 'соni', 'cuny' 'conny,' 'cunnie'. But in spite of all variety of spelling, by 1550 many of the features of English spelling were clearly becoming established. In order to appreciate the importance of the Renaissance in enriching the English vocabulary it is worth while to count new words added at this time. А calculation based, upon the data available in the Oxford Dictionary gives а figure somewhat above 12,000. About half of the total number has become а permanent part of the language. Most of the new words entered English by way of the written language they are а striking evidence of the new force exerted by the printing press and the rapid spread of popular education. The mobility of English workers in the 16th с. was the chief social factor, besides the expansion of education, which affected the language. We know that the enclosure of farm lands, the depopulation of villages, the closing down of monasteries and the dissolution of feudal households cast adrift а large number of people who were not only made homeless and workless; they were also subject to severe punishment by the state for being so. Some of them, those who became citizens of London under- world -  75 developed а jargon of their own. By the way, the same phenomenon can be observed in the history of all major European languages. Other social changes had а more limited influence on the language. Thus, the increased trade and cultural exchange with other countries enriched the language with new words and new turns of expression. In the 17th and 18th centuries the rise of experimental science and the rationalist trend in philosophy, both of them of course socially conditioned. contributed a strong additional influence reinforcing the tendency to regularity in language. One of the achievements of early 17th -century scholarships was the translation of the Bible into English (1611) by а commission of scholars. The outcome of their labours was not merely а more accurate version but it was also а document of Early Modern English that entered every family in England to be read and listened to every day or so. The intellectual tendencies are seen quite clearly in the 18th century efforts to standardize, refine, and fix the English language. Today the linguistic situation in England is such that there is a divergence between the English officially used and taught in the schools,