LECTURE 2.
General Characteristics of the Old English Period.
Old English Phonology
1. Historical background of the Old English period
2. The Germanic Conquest of Britain. The dialects of Old English and
written records
3. The Old English alphabets
4. Old English phonology
4.1. Old English vowel system
4.2. Old English consonant system
1. Historical background of the Old English period
Old English is the term denoting the form of the English language used in
England for approximately seven centuries (AD 450 – 1066). It is a synthetic
language (like Latin) rather than an analytic one (like modern English): it relies on
inflections (or endings) on words to denote their function in the sentence.
We rely for our knowledge of Old English on a relatively small number of
manuscripts that have survived the ravages of time. These manuscripts reflect a
living spoken language that was as familiar to its speakers as modern English is to
us today.
The term Old English, although it identifies a distinctive form of the
English language, covers, in fact, a wide range of linguistic usages. In a period
marked by enormous changes – political, social, and cultural – it is hardly
surprising to find that the language too was far from stable. This lecture will
analyse the Old English language both in terms of its linguistic characteristics and
also in relation to the external factors which influenced it.
A useful framework within which one might examine the development of
the Old English language is provided by four historical watersheds, each of which
had significant linguistic implications.
First, the invasion of Britain (in the mid-fifth century) by the
Germanic peoples who became the Anglo-Saxons can be linked to the ensuing
dialectal diversity which came to be so characteristic of this period of the language.
Second, the coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England in AD
597 made available the Roman alphabet for Old English writing, where previously
only runes had been available.
Third, the reign of King Alfred the Great in the West Saxon kingdom
(AD 871–99) created a culture in which Old English became recognized as a
language of prestige and status in its own right.
Fourth, the Norman Conquest (AD 1066) precipitated developments
in the language which would steer it ultimately towards what we now know as
Middle English.
2. The Germanic Conquest of Britain.
The Dialects of Old English and Written Records
The history of the English language started with the arrival of three
Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the
Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is
Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a
Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by
the invaders – mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, leaving
behind a few Celtic words. Celtic words survived mainly in place and river names
(Devon, Dover, Kent, Trent, Severn, Avon, Thames). These Celtic languages
survive today in the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland and in Welsh.
The Angles came from Englaland and their language was called Englisc -
from which the words England and English are derived.
The invading Germanic tribes spoke similar languages, which in Britain
developed into what we now call Old English. However, Old English was not an
entirely uniform language. The settlement of the various Germanic tribes in
different regions of the country was an important factor in the linguistic diversity
which characterized Old English since dialectal distinctiveness can be linked to
geographical areas. Four major dialects of Old English emerged, Northumbrian in
the north of England, Mercian in the Midlands, West Saxon in the south and west,
and Kentish in the southeast.
Northumbrian and Mercian are found in the region north of the Thames
settled by the Angles. They possess certain features in common and are sometimes
known collectively as Anglian. But Northumbrian, spoken north of the Humber,
and Mercian, between the Humber and the Thames, each possess certain distinctive
features as well. Unfortunately, we know less about them than we should like since
they are preserved mainly in charters (chronicles), runic inscriptions, a few brief
fragments of verse, and some interlinear translations of portions of the Bible.
Poetry is usually attributed to Caedmon’s “Hymn” and Bede’s “Dying Song”,
Cynewulf (“Elene”, “Andreas”, “Juliana”, and others that paraphrase in poetic
form biblical motives). The best-known epic poem “Beowulf”, though came down
to us with a significant tinge of Wessex dialect insertions and is still thought to
have been originally composed in Anglian –Northumbrian.
Part of Beowulf, a poem written in Old English
Kentish is known from still scantier remains and is the dialect of the Jutes in
the southeast. The Kentish dialect is relatively poorly represented by the 8th-
century glosses of Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History of the English people”. This
history was originally written in Latin and translated later into a West Saxon
dialect. Translations of Psalms and some old charters (chronicles) are also
available.
The only dialect in which there is an extensive collection of texts is West
Saxon, which was the dialect of the West Saxon kingdom in the southwest. Nearly
all of Old English literature is preserved in manuscripts transcribed in this region.
The Wessex dialect is represented best of all – in the number of writings, their
volume, and divergence of styles. King Alfred and his associates contributed by
their personal writings as well as in translations – "Pastoral Care" ("Cura
Patoralis"); Orosius' "World History" ("Historiarium Adversus Paganos") which
also contains an original text composed by King Alfred himself, Boethius'
"Consolation of Philosophy"; Bede's "Ecclesiastical History"; the earlier part of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.
The later period in the history is represented by Aelfric's works (they were
also written in the West-Saxon dialect) – Gospels, Homilies, Lives of Saints, Latin
grammar, Old Testament; Old Saxon Chronicles, and Wulfstan's "Homilies", one
of which "Sermo Lupi ad Anglos" ("The Wulf's Sermon to the English"), written
directly after the Scandinavian conquest and permeated by a genuine concern about
the fate of the ravaged country, is especially famous.
The dialects probably reflect differences already present in the continental
homes of the invaders. There is evidence, however, that some features developed
in England after the settlement. The difference between the dialects was found in
phonology, choice of words, and the use of some grammatical forms. With the
ascendancy of the West Saxon kingdom, the West Saxon dialect attained
something of the position of a literary standard, and both for this reason and
because of the abundance of the materials it is made the basis of the study of Old
English.
3. The Old English Alphabet
The system of writing in Old English was changed with the introduction of
Christianity. Before that, the English used the runes – symbols that were very
vague, that might at the same time denote a sound, a syllable, or a whole word.
Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia and 30 or more in Anglo-
Saxon England) of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2d or 3d to the
16th century. Perhaps derived ultimately from the Etruscan alphabet, the runic
alphabet was used mainly for charms and inscriptions, on stone, wood, metal, or
bone. Each letter had a name, which was itself a meaningful word. The rune f, for
instance, could stand for either the sound "f" or the fehu, "cattle," which was the
name given to the rune.
They were of specific shape, designed to be cut on the wooden sticks, and
only few people knew how to make them and how to interpret them. Runic
inscriptions that came down from the oldest settlers on the isles are few, and the
language (as it is interpreted) is not what might be called Old English – it was
rather an ancient language that might be very close to the languages of other
Germanic tribes. Three signs developed from runes were added to an Old English
alphabet.
Though the development of an Old English alphabet was based on the Latin
alphabet, carried to the Anglo-Saxons and Germans in the 7 th century by the
Roman Catholic church. It was one of the most profound effects of the arrival of
Christianity in Britain on the English language. The oldest surviving texts in the
English language written with Latin letters date back to c.700
So, the letters of the Old English alphabet were as follows, and they
denoted the following sounds
1. a [a] ʒān (go) and (and)
2. æ [æ] ðæt (that)
3. b [b] bān (bone)
4. c [k] caru (care) and [ʧ] before front vowels cild (child)
5. d [d] dēor (deer; in old times animal)
6. e [e] mete (meat; in old times food)
7. f [f] findan (find) and [v] in intervocalic position lufu (love)
8. ʒ was one of the remnants of the runic alphabet called joh (yoke), and
it had several readings
[g] ʒān (go) at the beginning of the word before back vowels
[j] ʒēar (year) before and after front vowels
[γ] daʒas (days) between two back vowels
9. h [h] hām (home), him (him), huntoð (hunting)
10. i [i] hit (it), him (him), lim (limb)
11. 1 [1] lytel (little), līf (life), lufu (love)
12. m [m] man (man), macian (make)
13. n [n] nama (name), nēah (near)
14. o [o] fōn (catch), mōna (moon)
15. p [p] pera (pear), up (up)
16. r [r] riht (right), rinʒan (ring), wyrcan (work)
17. s [s] sittan (sit), sinʒan (sing)
18. t [t] trēo (tree), tellan (tell)
19. ð was developed from the rune thorn [θ] ðæt (that), ðirda (third),
ðin (thing); [ð] in the intervocalic position ōðer (other), brōðor (brother)
20. u [u] wudu (wood)
21. w [w] in original Old English texts it was p wynn from the rune
meaning joy: winnan (win), weorðan (become)
22. x [ks] oxa (ox)
23. y [u] fyllan (fill), lytel (little)
The stress in the Old English was dynamic and shifted to the first syllable.
Originally in common Indo-European, the stress was free; the stress in the Old
English words was always on the first syllable (verbs with prefixes, however, had
the stress on the root vowel). The nouns having the same prefix had the stress on
the first syllable too: and swarian - 'andswaru.
The Old English orthographical system (OE writing) seems, in general, to
have been closely linked to phonemic representation: every letter indicated a
separate sound. This principle, however, was not always observed. Some OE
letters indicated two or more sounds, even distinct phonemes, e.g., ʒ stood for
different phonemes: [g], [j], [γ].
The introduction of the Roman alphabet which was brought to England
with the Christian mission had enormous linguistic implications for Old English,
and indeed paved the way for the kind of visionary project to translate Latin works
into the vernacular.
4. Old English Phonology
4.1. Old English Vowel System
The system of vowels in Old English included short and long vowels
(monophthongs) a æ e i o u y å – a æ e i o u y. Sound å is a special short sound
met only before nasals in closed syllables, e.g., monn (a man). Besides there are
four short and four long diphthongs: ea eo ie io – ea eo ie io.
Specific features of the vowel system of that period
1) There was exact parallelism between long vowels and the
corresponding short vowels.
2) The length of the vowel was a phonemic quality. The words having
long and short vowels differed in meaning: ʒod (god) – ʒōd (good), west (west) –
wēst (waste), for (preposition for) – fōr (past tense of the verb fāran – go).
3) Old English vowel phonemes can be traced back to Common
Germanic phonemes. For example, OE monophthongs are, as a rule, further
development of some Common Germanic monophthongs: (OE [æ] dæз
from Common Germanic [a] dags). Some OE monophthongs developed
from Common Germanic diphthongs: OE [a] ras (wrote) from Common
Germanic [ai] rais.
4) Some of the OE vowels had counterparts in other Indo-European
languages. So, for instance, such sounds as i, u can be found in similar
words in other Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages: Old
English niman (Ukr. знімати); Old English sunu (Lat. sunus). But the
majority of sounds deviated from the way they were pronounced in other
languages.
5) Various changes occurred in the Old English phonology. These can
be called spontaneous, independent, and assimilative, influenced by the
surrounding sounds.
Assimilative changes are the changes that occurred in the language in
specific surroundings – the sound might change when it was preceded or followed
by some other sound or sound cluster. There are two types of assimilation –
regressive and progressive assimilation. If a sound influences the preceding
sound, the assimilation is regressive, if it influences the following sound – it is
called progressive assimilation. Both types of assimilation are found in Old
English.
An example of assimilative changes is vowel mutation or umlaut – the
change of one vowel to another caused by the influence of a vowel in the following
syllable. It leads to a complete change of the vowel quality.
Changes in Vowels
1. Mutations and their types:
palatal mutation (i-umlaut). The essence of this change is that a
back sound, a, o or u, changes its quality if there is a front sound i or j in the next
syllable. Especially frequent are the changes in the roots of the verbs influenced by
the i-sound of the suffix of the infinitive –ian. The vowel was fronted and made
narrower to approach the articulation of i.
a > æ; a > e sandian - sendan (to send)
namnian - nemnan (to name)
talian - tælan - tellan (to tell)
ā>ǣ lārian - lǣran (to learn, to teach)
hālian - hǣlan (to heal)
o > oe > e ofstian - efstan (to hurry)
dohter - dehter (dative case of daughter)
ō > oe > ē wōpian - wēpan (to weep)
dōmian - dēman (to deem, to judge)
u>y fullian - fyllan (to fill)
ū>ȳ cūðian - cyðan (to announce)
back, or velar mutation (u-umlaut)
The formula of mutation here reminds very much that of palatal mutation,
but the difference is that the syllable that influenced the preceding vowel
contained a back vowel – a, o, or u. It results in the change of the root vowel
into a diphthong. Not all dialects had this mutation, and the process was not
universal.
i > io hira - hiora (their);
silufr - siolufr (silver)
e > eo hefon - heofon (heaven)
efor - eofor (boar)
a > ea saru - searu (armour)
mutation before h (h-mutation)
It is a change of the root vowel caused by the influence of the sound h.
Sounds a and e that preceded h underwent several changes, mutating to
diphthongs ea, ie and finally were reduced to i/y: - naht - neaht - niht - nieht -
nyht (night).
The words with such mutation are not very numerous, still, we cannot
ignore them altogether. It is observed in the past tense of the verb ma an (may)
meahte - miehte - mihte - myhte and several other words.
2. Breaking (fracture). This is the process of formation of a diphthong from
a simple short vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster
a + r+cons, 1+cons. => ea
æ + h+cons. => ea
e + h final => eo
a > ea
hard > heard (hard); arm > earm (arm); half > healf (half); warm > wearm
(warm)
e > eo
hairto, herte > heorte (heart); erl > eorl (earl); fehhtan > feohtan (fight)
3. Diphthongization after palatal consonants. It is a process which turned
a monophthongs into diphthongs after palatal consonants [sk], [k] and [j] in
spelling c, sc, j:
a > ea scal – sceal (shall)
ā > ēa scaʒʒwon – scēawian (to show)
e > ie ʒefan – ʒiefan (give); ʒetan – ʒietan (get)
æ > ea ʒæf – ʒeaf (gave); ʒæt – ʒeat (gate)
ǣ > ēa ʒær – ʒēar (year)
o > eo scort – sceort (short)
4. Contraction of vowels. It happened when the consonant h, placed
between two vowels, was lost. As a result, two vowels met and collided into one
long vowel.
a + h + vowel > ēa slahan – slēan (slay)
e + h + vowel > ēo sehen – sēon (see)
i + h + vowel > ēo tihan – tēon (accuse)
o + h + vowel > ō fohan – fōn (catch)
5. Lengthening of vowels. It happened before the clusters nd, ld, mb
fīndan (find); cīld (child); clīmban (climb). If there was a consonant after this
cluster the vowel was not lengthened: cildru (children)
Further development of the sound system led to the diphthongization of long
vowels, and that explains the exception in the rules of reading the sounds in the
closed syllables in the present-day English (the words like climb, find, bold, told,
comb).
6. Gradation or ablaut – grammatical interchange of vowels in different
forms of the verb and word-formation. This was frequently found in making past
tenses and participles of some verbs, e.g. fīndan – funden (past participle) (find).
4.2. Old English Consonant System
The Old English consonant system consisted of some 14 consonant
phonemes denoted by the letters p, b, m, f, t, d, n, s, r, 1, þ (ð), c, ʒ, h.
The consonant system in Old English manifested the following
peculiarities
1. The relatively small number of consonant phonemes – only 14 phonemes.
2. The absence of affricates and fricative consonants which we now find in
the language such as [t∫] [ʤ], [∫], [ʒ].
3. Dependence of the quality of the phoneme upon its environment in the
word.
If the first two points require no particular explanation, the last point calls for
special comment. Among the 14 consonant phonemes that existed in Old English,
there were at least four that gave us positional variants that stand rather wide apart.
These are phonemes denoted by the letters f, þ (ð), s, ʒ.
The phonemes denoted by the letters f, þ (ð), or s are voiced or voiceless
depending upon their phonetic position. They are generally voiced in the so-called
"intervocalic position" that is between vowels and voiceless otherwise. For
example: hlaf [f] (bread) – hlaford [v] (lord)
The system of consonant phonemes that we observe in Old English involves
certain peculiarities that are typical of the majority of Germanic dialects that set
them (those Germanic dialects and Old English among them) apart from the
majority of the Indo-European languages. Those peculiarities were mainly
accounted for by two linguists – Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner, hence they are
generally referred to as "Grimm's law" (or the First Germanic Consonant Shift) and
"Verner's Jaw".
The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law)
Voiceless fricatives appeared in Germanic languages as a result of the First
Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law).
In 1822 a German philologist, Jacob Grimm, formulated an explanation that
systematically accounted for the correspondences between certain consonants in
the Germanic languages and those found for example in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin.
According to Grimm, the quality of some sounds (namely plosives) changed in all
Germanic languages while the place of their formation remained unchanged. Thus,
voiced aspirated plosives (stops) bh, dh, gh lost their aspiration and changed into
pure voiced plosives b, d, g, voiced plosives became voiceless p, t, k, and voiceless
plosives turned into voiceless fricatives f, θ, h.
bh, dh, gh → b, d, g Sanskrit bhrata → Goth brōðar, Old English brōðor
(brother)
b, d, g → p, t, k Latin granum → Goth kaurn, Old English corn
p, t, k → f, θ, h Latin pater → Goth fadar, Old English fædar (father)
There are some exceptions to Grimm’s Law: p, t, k did not change into f, θ,
h, if they were preceded by s (tres – ðreo, but sto – standan).
Verner’s Law
Certain apparent exceptions to Grimm’s Law were subsequently
explained by Karl Verner. It was noted that if an Indo-European voiceless stop
was preceded by an unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricative which developed
from it in accordance with Grimm’s Law became voiced, and later this voiced
fricative became a voiced plosive (stop). That is:
IE PG OE
p v b
t ð d
k γ g
Latin pater has a Germanic correspondence fadar, fædar because the stress
in the word was on the second syllable, and so voiceless plosive was preceded by
an unstressed vowel.
Verner’s Law explains why some verbs in Old English changed their root
consonant in the past tense and in the Participle II – originally, these grammatical
forms had the stress on the second syllable. Hence the basic forms of such verbs as
snīðan (cut) were snīðan – snāð – snidon – sniden.
Changes in Consonants
1. Voicing and devoicing of fricatives – it is caused by the position of a
fricative sound in a word. A careful study of the OE sound system has revealed
that a set of letters f, s, and þ (also known as ð) stood for two sounds each: a
voiced and voiceless consonant. That is f – [f ] [v]; s – [s] [z]; þ (ð) – [θ] [ð].
A fricative is read as voiceless initially and finally, but it becomes voiced
intervocally and also between a vowel and a voiced consonant.
e.g. [f] – fāran (travel); of (of) [s] – seon (see) [θ] – ðæt (that)
[v] – ofer (over) [z] – rīsan (rise) [ð] – ōðer (other)
2. Rhotacism – a transformation of IE sound [z] into G sound [r]
e.g. wesun – weren (now were, but was)
maiza – māra (now more, but most)
This process was in North and West Germanic, but not in Gothic (East
Germanic).
e.g. Goth. softiza – OE softra (softer)
3. Palatization of consonants (or softening) – touched only some
consonants c [ḱ’], sc [sḱ’], cʒ [kǵ’]. They were palatalised or softened before front
vowels e, i, y. Over time towards the end of the OE period the palatal consonants
developed into sibilants and affricates.
c [k’] → [t∫] cild (child) In Early OE it was pronounced [k’ild]. In the late
OE [t∫ild]
sc [sk’] → [ʃ] sceal (shall)
cʒ [kg’] → [ʤ] brycʒ (bridge)
Back [γ] sound before palatal consonants turned into [j] – ʒear (year)
4. Loss of consonants in a certain position. Besides h that was lost in
intervocalic position, the sounds n and m were lost before h, entailing the
lengthening of the preceding vowel:
bronhte – brōhte (brought) onðer – ōðer (other)
fimf – fif (five) munð – mūð (mouth)
The nasals were not lost in German, so the corresponding German words are
fünf, ander, and Mund.
5. Metathesis of r. In several OE words the following change of the position
of consonants takes place:
cons. + r + vowel > cons. + vowel + r
ðridda – ðirda (third)
brunnan – burnan (burn)
brenna – beorn (burn)
Metathesis of sounds is observed also with other sounds:
ascian – axian (ask)
wascan – waxan (wash)
6. West Germanic germination of consonants
In the process of palatal mutation, when j was lost and the preceding vowel
was short, the consonant after it was doubled (geminated):
fullian – fyllan (fill) salian – sellan (sell) talian – tellan (tell).
Questions for self-control
1. What languages were spoken in the British Isles prior to the Germanic invasion?
Which of their descendants have survived today?
2. Describe the linguistic situation in Britain after the Germanic conquest.
3. What are runes? How can you explain their specific shape?
4. How was the system of writing in Old English changed with the introduction of
Christianity?
5. What are the “Grimm’s Law Correspondences”?
6. What are the exceptions to Grimm’s Law?
7. What is the explanation given by K. Verner? What is the essence of Verner’s
Law?
8. How many vowels and consonants were there in Old English?
9. How do you understand that the length of the vowel was a phonemic quality?
10. What is the origin of some Old English vowel phonemes?
11. What are assimilative changes? Give an example of assimilative changes in Old
English words.
12. How does the quality of the consonant depend on the position of the word in
the text?
