Old English 2.1

Unit 2.1.
Main characteristics of Old English
Inner history
What is it? What are we studying

- Since the majority of the texts we have in OE are written in a dialect called West
Saxon (remember King Alfred) it is this particular variety the one we are going to
use to illustrate how OE was.
- This can be misleading because other varieties were certainly different and because
PE does not descend from WS but from other dialect.
A brief description of the language

- The alphabet: the Futhorc and the Latin alphabet
- Some remarks on spelling
- Morphology
- Syntax
The Futhorc
Gmc speakers developed a common alphabet shortly after the beginning of the Christian
era. This was called futhorc (the name of its six letters) or runic alphabet.
- All versions of the futhorc have angled forms which suggests that they were designed
to be carved rather than written. Perishable materials were used, and many
inscriptions have been lost.
- The original futhorc had 24 symbols, but as Gmc split in different dialects, each
dialect modified it. In England, we find futhorcs ranging from 28 to 33 symbols.
- Each character of the runic alphabet has a meaningful name, and all these names
begin with the sound represented by the character.
- Actual runic writing was sometimes from right to left and with no separations
between words.
Sources
- Most surviving inscriptions have been found in Scandinavia. However, there are two
very important ones in England: the Franks Casket (8 th C. whalebone box); and the
1
Ruthwell Cross (in Scotland, containing a portion of the poem “The Dream of the
Rood).
The Latin Alphabet

- The Christianization of England in the late 6th C. implied the adoption of the Latin
alphabet for writing English.
- We know that besides the Roman mission there was an Irish one in the North
(Dalriada, St. Columbia).
- However, the futhorc was not completely abandoned. Christian scribes themselves
used the runic alphabet from the time to time in place of the full words runes
represented.
- The way in which the Latin alphabet was written in England was known as the
Insular Script.
- In it, the Latin characters were completed with certain runic symbols that represented
sounds that did not exist in Latin such as eth (ð), thorn (þ) and wynn.
- The Latin characters <q, x, z> were rarely used in England.
- Certain letters had more than one value depending on the surrounding context.
Important digraphs were <sc> and <cg>.
Spelling and punctuation
- Though there was a certain standardized spelling in OE, it was not consistent in all
manuscripts.
- In general, we can say that, the later the manuscripts, the less consistent the spelling
due to changes in language itself. For instance:
- EOE distinguished the sounds represented by <y> and <ie> but IOE did not so
that both spellings are interchangeable.
- In some dialects /y/ unrounded to /i/ so that <y> and <i> were also
interchangeable.
- In IOE the unstressed vowels of endings were all pronounced / ∂/ so that
scribes did not know how to spell it (very often <e>, but also <o> or <u>).
- IOE final /m/ and final /n/ are confused and often spelled <n> and later lost.
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- As for punctuation, the most important mark in OE was the raised point (a
dot) that represented a pause, though it does not represent either PE comma
nor period.
- An inverted semicolon called punctus elevatus was also used to represent
pauses in IOE.
- The distinction between capitals and lowercase letters did not exist. Larger
versions of letters were sometimes used at the beginning of a new section, and
they were often illuminated.
Old English Morphology
It is quite complex…
- We have seen that IE and Gmc were inflected languages and OE was so. However,
we may make a major division between inflected and uninflected words.
Inflections
- Inflections may appear in 3 positions in any inflected language:
- Initial (prefixes), medial (infixes), and final (suffixes).
- Old English seemed to prefer this last device.
- As a general rule we can say that English has been a general decrease of its
inflectional affixes.
- In PE we only have inflections for the personal pronouns, two noun
inflections (plural and possessive), and four verb inflections (3rd person
singular present indicative, past tense, past participle and present
participle). We may include also the comparative and superlative endings.
- OE inflectional system is more complex than the one we have nowadays , but it shows
certain weaknesses that account for the progressive loss of endings:
- almost no paradigm contained the maximum amount of endings it could have.
In other words, there were many repeated endings:
- heavy stress on root syllables implied the reduction of final unstressed
vowels, and the merger of <m> and <n> as /n/ that later dropped
leaving no trace.
3
- by late OE the language developed a relatively fixed word order that
indicated the function of words inside the clause.
- the necessity to adapt thousands of loanwords from ON into English .
Roots were very similar and only endings seemed to prevent
communication, so speakers finally dropped them.
Nouns
- We have alread

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Unit 2.1.

Main characteristics of Old English

What is it? What are we studying

A brief description of the language

The Latin Alphabet

Spelling and punctuation

Old English Morphology

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