English SAC 1 Old English Flashcards
What are the modern languages derived from proto-Germanic
German, Dutch, English, Afrikaans. EGDA
Latin and Germanic languages come from which earlier language
Proto-Indo-European
Words with the same origin, often very similar in spelling, pronunciation, and meaning
Cognates
Tracing back a word in time is called
Etymology
Names of the invading German tribes into English in the 5th century
Angles, Saxons, Jutes
Before the Germanic languages, what language family was spoken in England
Celtic
What was the impact of the 1066 Norman Invasion on language
Norman French vocabulary (Latinate), simplifying of case system (How the syntax needed to be used to structure sentences to make sense), sound changes, syntax becomes more important.
What is a semantic domain
A group or range of words that have related meanings, could be grouped into categorise like winter-snow-blizzard
What semantic domains did Norman French words dominated in
Law, court, royal life, food, architecture
Were words from Norman French considered more or less formal? Why?
More formal, language of the ruling class, language of administration and bureaucracy, foods only the wealthy were eating, etc.
What language does Norman French belong to
Latin/Romance
What important invention was introduced in Britain in 1476
William Caxtons Printing press
Why was the printing press important for the English language
Standardisation, spreading the London dialect as the standard form of the language, thereby making other dialects of Middle English disappear over time.
What are case endings also called
Inflectional morphemes
Inflectional morphemes do what
Change a word for number, gender, or case (grammatical function - in Germanic, subject, direct or indirect object, possession)
The cases in Old English were
Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, Instrumental
What do case endings indicate
Grammatical role of subject / object / indirect object / possession, particularly for nouns, adjectives, pronouns.
Why did case endings disappear
Language contact, including Norse, Norman, French, weak sounds tend to disappear over time, prepositions made them redundant
How did syntax change to respond to the change in cases
Word order became more fixed as it was necessary to indicate subject-object relationships. SVO (subject verb object) became more typical.
What did the sound “gh” make in Middle English
Voiceless velar fricative, the “ch” in Loch, scratchy throat sound, like a more aggressive h.
How would knyght have been pronounced
Hard k, voiceless velar fricative, the “ch” in Loch, scratchy throat sound, like a more aggressive h, y is the short vowel “i” as in bit
What was the function of y-prefix in Middle English
It formed a past participle, as -n forms the past participle suffix in “driven” in “had driven”
What are some types of semantic change
Narrowing - meaning becomes more specific, shift - a word comes to mean something else.
What does it mean when a word (lexeme) is archaic
An archaic lexeme has become old-fashioned when it only remains in use for historical or stylistic purpose.
