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OLD ENGLISH - Coggle Diagram
OLD ENGLISH
HISTORICAL
BACKRGOUND
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First Germanic Invasions
499: British warlord Vortigern invites Hengist and Horsa (Saxons) to help with invasions from non-romanised Celtic tribes, but they turn against him and occupy his territory.
450-550: Other tribes (<wealas = strangers) follow!
- Saxons in Southern and Southeastern Britain
- Angles in Mercia, Northumbria and East Anglia
- Jutes in Kent, Isle of Wight, parts of Hampshire
- Frisians in Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, Scottish border
Neighbours with mutually intelligible dialects!
Angles and Saxons as most dominant tribes
= "Anglisc" to Anglo-Saxons
600: 12 kingdoms, 7 of which are Anglo-Saxon: Mercia, East-Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, NorthumbriaMajor dialects:
- Northumbrian: Norse influence
- Mercian: Latin and French loanwords
- Kentish: Latin/French loanwords, towards Middle English
- West-Saxon as the non-official standard (King Alfred)
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LINGUISTIC FEATURES
Phonology
- most pronounced the same way as now!
- consonant lengthening
- all consonants are pronounced
- ts before e or i: ceosan
- j before e or i: gear
- combinations sc- and sg- become sh- and dg-
- 14-16 Disinctive pure vowels (long vs. short)
- 2-6 distinctive diphtongs (long vs. short)
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Orthography
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Roman alphabet from 9th century onwards
with 24 letters (some modern ones represented in other letters, five of those do not exist in Modern English anymore!)
Morphology
Nouns and adjectives
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Three genders: feminine, masculine, neuter
Four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative
Verbs
Weak/regular verbs
majority of verbs in OE
Mark tense, mood, aspect with suffixes
Two major classes
One third class: habban, libban, secgan, hycgan
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Anomalous verbs: beon, wesan/sindan, don, gon, willan
Pronouns
Four cases + instrumental
Three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, plural
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Syntax
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OE as a verb-second language!
Adjectives, prepositions, articles before (head) noun
No do-support, instead:
- multiple negators or pre-verbal negation
- subject-verb inversion
INFLUENCES
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Celtic
Small impact, mainly on lexis
Borrowings: loanwords and place names
e.g. cragg = deep valley
e.g. Thames, Avon, Kent = Border Land
Old Norse
Phonology:
[sk-] sounds: sky, skull, etc.
Morphology:
they, them, their!
sindan replaced by wesan
Third person singular -s
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