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