Old English, Anglo-Saxon Period

(450-1100 A.D.)

Historical Background:

• Neolithic period, c. 4000 BC, agriculture, mound tombs

• Bronze Age, Indo-European language, burial with drinking vessels, flint, metal, Stonehenge III, 2300 BC

• farms, circular huts, oblong fields 1200 BC

• Celtic inhabitants arrived around 750 BC, hill forts

• Iron Age, population growth, 650 BC

• Belgian Gaul migrations, coins, potter's wheel, cremation 100 BC

• Julius Caesar invades Britain, 55 BC

• 43/50 AD Claudius, Roman conquest; Romanization/Christianization, Latin

• conquest of Wales completed 78 AD

• Hadrian's Wall, 122-130 AD

• Roman departure 410 AD, Britain besieged by Picts, Scots and Saxons

• British leader Vortigern invites Saxons (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) into alliance against Picts, Scots and Roman Catholic factions

• Saxons rebel against Britons 442

• Large-scale Germanic invasions (Angles, Saxons, Jutes), 449; British resistance, King Arthur, Mt. Badon British victory 500; but Anglo-Saxons in control by sixth century

• Gildas, De Excidio Britanniae, 540, historical account of the fall of Britain

• Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy: Northumberland, East Anglia, Mercia, Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex; seventh century Northumbrian dominance, eighth century Mercian dominance, ninth/tenth century West Saxon dominance

• Pope Gregory sends St. Augustine to Kent 597; Aethelbert I of Kent, converted to Christianity by Augustine, first Christian king of Anglo-Saxon England, also compiled law code (definitions and rules of kinship, wergild, slaves and freemen/ceorl, nobles); Christianization of Anglo-Saxons by Roman and Irish missionaries

• cenotaph of East-Anglian Raedwald at Sutton Hoo, 625

• Caedmon, oldest poetic vernacular work ("Hymn of Creation", c. 670)

• Lindisfarne Gospels, 698, Latin Vulgate text with interlined Old English paraphrase

• Venerable Bede (673-735), Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

• Mercian King Offa (757-796); Alcuin of York (732-804), high level of scholarship

• first Viking attacks 787, sack of Lindisfarne Priory 793

• King Alfred (849-899), revival of learning, Anglo Saxon Chronicle, victories over Vikings at Ashdown 871, Edington 878, Treaty of Wedmore 878, Danish king Guthrum forced to accept Christianity and retreat to Danelaw

• second half of tenth century: Dunstan, Ethelwold, Oswald, monastic reform, copying of manuscripts

• Battle of Maldon 991

• Aethelred II Unraed (978-1016); peak of monastic and literary revival: Aelfric (955-1020), Catholic Homilies, Lives of the Saints; Wulfstan d. 1023, Sermo Lupi ad Anglos

• early eleventh century renewed Norse invasions

• Danish King Cnut r. 1016-1035

• Edward the Confessor r. 1042-1066

• William the Conqueror, Battle of Hastings 1066, end of Anglo-Saxon Period

 

Old English

West Saxon literary dialect

Phonology

Old English consonants (p. 83)

Old English consonant changes from Common Germanic /k/ and /sk/. Examples:

• claene, crypel, corn (before a consonant or back vowel)

• ceap, cild, dic (next to a front vowel) (new sound)

• fisc, wascan, scearp (from Germanic /sk/; in all environments) (new sound)

Old English consonant changes from Common Germanic /g/ and /gg/. Examples

• graes, god, gyltig (before consonants, back vowels, and mutated front vowels)

• sagu, beorg, fylgan (between back vowels or after /l/ or /r/)

• gear, giet, gellan (before or between front vowels and in final position after a front vowel)

• brycg, secg, mycg (from Germanic /gg/; in medial or final position) (new sound)

no phonemic voiced fricatives as in PDE (/v/, /z/, etc)

OE /h/. Examples:

• hraefn, hand (similar to PDE, in initial position before vowels and l, r, n, w)

• sihp (palatal fricative after front vowels)

• eahta, heah, purh (elsewhere, velar fricative)

loss of OE consonant clusters (/hr/, /hl/, /hn/, /hw/, /kn/, /gn/) in PDE (Examples: OE hraefn, PDE raven, OE hlud, PDE loud; sometimes still spelled: what, whale, whistle, knee, gnat)

unstressed final m, n > n

relative stability of English consonant system for past 1200 years

Old English Vowels (p. 88)

Some changes from Common Germanic:

• breaking or fracture (a kind of diphthongization involving the insertion of a glide after front vowels and before velar consonants. Examples: fehtan>feohtan, hærd>heard)

• back mutation (diphthongization of stressed short vowels when followed by back vowel in next syllable, e.g. hefon>heofon)

• palatal diphthongization (e > ie and ae > ea after palatal consonants, e.g. giefan, gieldan, giet, sceaft, gear)

• front mutation (i-umlaut, i/j mutation) (if stressed syllable followed by unstressed syllable containing i or j, the vowel of stressed syllable was fronted or raised, e.g. OE dom/deman, Gothic doms/domjan; OE plural endings with i resulted in foot/feet, other plurals men, teeth, geese, lice; in comparatives/superlatives: old/elder; derived weak verbs, sit/set, lie/lay, fall/fell, whole/heal, doom/deem; 2nd and 3rd person singular present indicatives of strong verbs had i in endings, cuman/cymp, feohtan/fyht, standan/stent

reduction of vowels in unstressed inflectional endings