Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation.

The system of writing in OE was changed with the introduction of Christianity. Before that, the English used runes that could at the same time denote a sound, a syllable or a whole word. Runes are the 24 letters (later 16 in Scandinavia,-futhark,- and 30 in Anglo-Saxon)of an ancient Germanic alphabet used from the 2^nd to the 16^th centuries. They preserved on stone, metal or bone but not on wood. Each letter had a name: the rune___, for instance, could stand for either the sound ‘f’ or the fehu (cattle). It coul written left-right and right-to-left, as well as alternative directions of lines, i.e. bustrofedon.

Among the first OE runic inscription we generally refer to the two: the inscription on the so-called ‘Frank’s casket’ – a small box made of whalebone containing a poem about it, and the inscription on the ‘Ruthwell cross’ – religious poem engraved on a stone cross found in Scotland.

Rune Anglo-Saxon Name Meaning

f feoh (fehu) cattle, wealth

u ur bison (aurochs)

thorn

o os god/mouth

r rad journey/riding

c cen torch

But the OE starts with the 7^th century in Latin alphabet. Some English sounds had no counterpart in Latin, so three signs developed from runes were added, plus ligature _____, which is now used as a phonetizing symbol.

So, the letters of the OE alphabet were as follows, and they denoted the following sounds:

A l p h a b e t

3.1. Phonetics.

The stress in OE was dynamic, and shifted to the first syllable. However, verbs with prefixes had the stress on the root vowel. Originally in common Indo-European the stress was free. E.g. a’gane (e), ‘зaderian (gather). The vowels had the following characteristic feataures:

1. their quantity and quality depended upon the position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, in an unstressed position – no diphthongs or long monophthongs, only short vowels.

2. the length of the stressed vowels was phonemic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length of the vowel:

metan (to measure) – metan (meet)

pin (pin) - pin (pain)

god (god) - god (good)

3. there was act parallelism of long and short vowels:

Short: a o e u i _ y ea eo

Long: a o e u I _ y ea eo

The sonants were few. Some of the modern sounds did not exist: ( , , , ).

The quality of the consonant depended on its position in the word: half [f](loaf) - hlaford [v] –bread-keeper, lord.

3.2. Spelling

The OE spelling was mainly phonetic, i.e. each letter denoted as a rule one sound in every surrounding. Letters f, s, p, could be voiced in intervocal positions and voiceless otherwise; letter c denoted sound [k], letter y denoted the sound {y} (similar to German [u] or Russian [ю].

The letter could denote three sounds:

[j] – before or after front vowels [ ], [e][i]:

зiefan (give), зear (year) (day)

[Y] – after back vowels [a], [o], [u] and consonants [l] and [r]:

daзas (days), folзian (follow)

[g] – before consonants and before back vowels [a], [o], [u]:

зod (good), зleo (glee)

3.3. Grammar

There are a sufficient number of OE texts to form an opinion what really the English language was in the times of Alfred and his successors. It was much similar to other Indo-European languages, including Ukrainian and Russian. The nominal parts of speech were declined, and had cases, the infinitive of the verb had a distinct suffix. The word order was free as in Slavic languages, and the subject was agreed with the predicate, double negation was not prohibited. The principal grammatical means were suffixation, vowel interchange and supplition:

Suffixation:

Ic cepe (I keep) - pu cepst (you keep) – he cep (he keeps)

Vowel interchge:

Writan (to write) –Ic wrat (I wrote)

Supplition:

Зan (to go) - eode (went)

Beon (to be) - Ic eom (I am)

pu eart (you are)

he is (he is)

2.4. Vocabulary

Almost all words were native, only a few borrowings.

The latter were mainly from Latin:

1. forefathers of English, when on Continent, had contacts with the Roman empire and borrowed words cod mainly with trade:

ciese (cheese), win (wine)

2. Latin words from Romanized Celts:

Straet (street), weall (wall)

3. Latin words due to introduction of Christianity:

Biscop (bishop), deofol (devil), munic (monk)

New words appeared as a result of two processes:

1. word derivation:

fisc+ere = fiscere(fish – fisher)

wulle+en = wyllen (wool – woolen)

2. word composition:

sunne + daз = Sunnandaeз

mona + daз = Monandaeз

Lecture 4.

Indo-European Consonantism. Grimm’s Law. Verner’s Law

We have seen very close similarity that existed among OE, Latin, German and even Russian and Ukrainian words.

Some more examples:

In some others the changes are so significant, that the etymology is blurred. Without knowing the major shifts in sound system and semantics it is rather difficult to trace that

quick and vivus, queen and gynaecology, tooth and dentist, foot and pedal, heart and cardiology, five and pentagon originate from the same Indo-European roots. But knowing how the sound system was developing we’ll find that common origin is fairy transparent.

The firsts fundamental change in the consonant sys of Germanic languages was discovered by German philologist Jacob Ludwig Grimm who systematized them in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819-1937). His conclusions are called Grimm’s Law or the first consonant shift.

The essence of the law is that the quality of some sounds, namely plosives, changed in all Germanic languages while the place their formation remained unchanged. Thus, voiced plosives (stops) lost their aspiration and changed into pure voiced plosives, voiced plosives became voiceless plosives and voiceless plosives turned voiceless fricatives.

Bh dh gh b d g Sanskrit bhrata -- Goth brooar, OE brooor (brother)

Sanskrit madhu --- OE mead (mead)

Lat. (g)hostis – Goth gast -- OE ziest

B d g p t k Lith. bala, Ukr.болото-- OE pol

Lat. edere – Goth itan, OE etan

Lat. granum - Goth kaurn, OE corn

P t k f O h Lat. pater --- Goth fadar, OE Fader

Lat. tu --- Goth ou, OE ou

Lat. octo --- Goth ahtau, OE eahta

Aspirated plosives are now lost almost in all European languages, and we take words from Sanskrit for comparison. Present-day Hindi has it in the names of well-known places - Bhilai, Bhopal, Bhaunagar, name of old books – Bhagavat-Gita, Mahabharata, etc.

There me exceptions to Grimm’s law: p t k did not change into f O h, if they were pred by s (tres – oreo, but sto – standan). Another exception was formulated by a Danish linguist Karl Adolph Verner (1846-1896):

If an Indo-European voiceless stoppreceded by an unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricative which developed from it in accordance with ‘s law became voiced, and later this voiced fricative became a voiced plosive (stop). That is p – t – k -- b - d – g. Greek pater has a Germanic correspondence fadar, faedar 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 OE changed their root consonant in the past tense and in Participle II.

So, in today’s English we may find the words and morphemes of common Indo-European origin that differ in sound from their counterparts in other languages, Grimm’s law will show their similarity to the words of other Indo-European languages. For example:

far but periphery, perimeter, periscope

five but pentagon, pentagram, pentathlon

ten but decimal, decade, decagon

sit but sedative, sent

eat but edible

three but triangle

We may find words having the same morphemes with the sounds modified in English but preserved in the borrowings in English (they are called etymological doublets).Comparing the words below, a non-linguist will not find the relations between the words, yet for a linguist it is quite transparent:

democracy - hard

night - noctural

mother - maternal

tooth - dental

foot - pedal

heart - cordial

Some words, however, seem not to comply with this law. They are like day, beard, door, because they have counterparts in other Indo-European languages with similar sounds. But it is due to the fact that the sounds in the common I-E were voiced aspirated plosives, that gave voiced plosives in Germanic languages. Later the aspiration was lost in other languages and so the sounds are the same in Germanic and non-Germanic languages now.

And, naturally, the shifts did not end here. They continued and the words in these two Germanic languages acquired different sound form:

E eat - G essen other - andere

day - Tag apple - Apfel

two - zwei pepper - Pfeffer

tongue - Zunge pool - Pfuhl

to - zu make - machen

ten - zen sleep - slafen

three - drei dream - Traum

OE Phonology

Apart from the differences in consonants we may see that vowels in similar words are different too. Especially prominent are the instances of numerous diphthongs in OE replacing simple vowels as in eahta, zeoc, meolc, heard (eight, yoke, milk, hard), or when vowels change their quality in certain positions as in waeter, stan, fyllan (water, stone, fill). Some sounds merge, some get doubled – all these are to be studied among OE

sound changes. The system of vowels in OE included six long and seven short vowels (monophthongs)

a ae e i o y a - a ae e i o u y

and four short and four long diphthongs

ea eo ie io - ea eo ie io

The words having long and short vowel differed in meaning: zod (god) – zod (good), west (west) – west (waste), for (preposition) – for (past tense of the verb faran – go).

Changes due to assimilation:

1. Breaking (fracture) – is a process of formation of a short diphthong from a simple short vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster.

a > ea e>eo

hard > heard (hard) erl > eorl (earl) ae > ea

arm > earm (arm) hairda > heord (herd)

half > healf (half) fehtan > feohtan (fight)

ahta > eahta (eight) melcan > meolcan (to milk)

nah > neah (near)

talde > tealde (told)

kald > ceald (cold)

warm > wearm (warm)

2. Palatal mutation (i-umlaut). The back sound a or o changes if there is a front sound in the next syllable.

a > ae; a > e

wakjan - waeccan (to be awake)

sandian - sendan (to send)

namnian - nemnan (to name)

talian - taelan - tellan (to tell)

a > ae

larian - laeran (to learn, to teach)

halian - haelan (to heal)

o > oe > e

ofstian - efstan (to hurry)

dohter - dehter (dative: to daughter)

o > oe > e

wopian - wepan (to weep)

domain - deman (to deem, to judge)

u > y

fullian - fyllan (to fill)

kuniz - cyniz (king)

u > y

mus - mys (mice)

We find the reflexes in Present-day E of OE palatal mutation in such pairs as sale – sell; tell –tale; doom – deem; full – fill.

3. Diphthonginization after palatal consonants may have resulted from another process in OE – diphthong formation after palatal consonants sk’, k’ and j (in spelling c, sc, z):

a > ea skal - sceal (shall) scacan - sceacan (shake) scamu – sceamu (shame)

a > easkaggwon - sceawian (to show)

e > ie zefan - zefan (give) zetan - zietan (get)

ae > ea zaef -zeaf (gave) zat - zeat (gate)

ae > ea jar - zear (year)

o > eo scort - sceort (short) yong - zeonz (young)

3. Back or Velar Mutation – the syllable that influenced the preceding vowel contained a back vowel – o or u :

i > io hira - hiora (their) silufr - siolufr (silver) sifon - siofon (seven)