Historical Context Flashcards
Where does Proto-Germanic descend from?
Proto-Indo-European
What are the two branches descending from Proto-Germanic?
North and West
What arises from the North branch?
Old Norse
What arises from the West Branch?
One branch descending from this branch is the Ingvaeonic Branch where English is found.
Linguistic Changes differentiating Germanic Languages from PIE?
Stress moves onto initial syllables, restructuring of tense/aspect to tense only system, nominal stems change to strong nouns and adjectives.
What is the First Germanic Sound Shift?
A collection of sound changes which affected the Germanic languages. The first is Grimm’s law which makes PIE voiceless stops into fricatives (p>f, t>th, k>x) and PIE voiced stops into voiceless stops (d>t, g>k). Also PIE voiced aspirated stops become voiced stops (bh>b, dh>d, gh>g). Verner’s law dictates that when a consonant is followed by the stresed syllable, voiceless stops instead become VOICED fricatives.
When were the Celts in Britain?
From 300BCE, Celts were in Britain, whose native language was Brythonic (Celtic).
Influence of Celtic on OE?
David Crystal (1988) there are a small number of Celtic loanwords such as crag, combe, bin and cross.
When were the first Roman Invasions?
Caesar’s invasions were in 55BCE and Britain was under Roman Rule until approx 400. Gorlach 1974 says that the period of ‘Old English’ is after this, from 450/700 - 1100.
What happens after the first Romans leave?
between 400-500, West Germanic speaking tribes (Angles, Jutes and Saxons) invaded and settled.
Where do the Angles, Saxons and Jutes settle and what are the resulting dialects.
Angles settle in the Midlands and North giving rise to the Mercian and Northumbrian dialects.
Jutes settle in the East giving rise to Kentish, and Saxons settle in the South West giving rise to West Saxon.
In which dialect are most Old English texts written?
Most Old English texts are written in West Saxon as King Aelfric’s kingdom was in Wessex. (After 800, Gorlach 1974) It is important to remember that PDE does not directly descend from this dialect but the Mercian dialect spoken near London (Crystal, 1988).
Second Wave of Latin Speakers
In 597 Christian Missionaries arrive from the Roman Empire and religious manuscripts (in both languages) were produced. 450 new words (mostly religious) entered the language( abbot, altar, ancor), and some words such as Easter, God, gospel, sin were repurposed.
Why were there some latin words already in West Germanic?
Presumed to be borrowed whilst on the continent, e.g weall for wall and straet for street.
When were the Viking Attacks?
Attacks from Scandinavia began in 787 and subsequent settlement led to the North and East of England being incorporated into Danelaw. The Scandinavians spoke Old Norse, which was likely mutually intelligible with Old English but they gradually shifted to OE having lots of influence on it. Crystal (1988) - 1800 lexical loans.
