Lecture introductory. General characteristics of germanic languages list of principal questions

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.

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 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 7^th 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 10^th 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 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 7^th 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 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 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 11^th c.

2. Inner history
During the period the language was developing very slowly.
3.1. Phonetics

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

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)

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)

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)

LECTURE 3.
MIDDLE ENGLISH. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
List of principal questions:
1. Outer history

0. 
   Scandinavian Invasion
   
1. 
   Effect of the Scandinavian Invasions
   
2. 
   Norman Conquest
   
3. 
   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.
   
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.
   

1. Outer history
1.1. The Scandinavian Invasions in England
By the 8^th c. Norwegian Vikings made their first attacks on England. In the 9^th 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-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.

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 9^th 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 9^th 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 8^th and in the 9^th 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 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 12^th 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 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 10^th 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 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 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.