Power Point Presentation

ARMSPU Introduction of foreign languages

OLD ENGLISH

Grimm's law

Verner's law

OLD ENGLISH

• Old English  or  Anglo-Saxon  is an early form of the English Language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons. 

Old English

• West Germanic Language Developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century.
• West Germanic Language
• Developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century.
• Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century.

Old English

Closely related to Old Frisian and Old Saxon.

Had a grammar similar in many ways to Classical Latin.

It was much closer to modern German and Icelandic than to modern English.

Old English

Inflected with five grammatical cases

nominative

accusative

genitive

dative

instrumental

Old English

three grammatical numbers

• singular plural dual
• singular
• plural
• dual

Old English

three grammatical genders 

• masculine feminine neuter
• masculine
• feminine
• neuter

Influence of other languages:

Latin

Celtic

Norse: Old West Norse dialect, Old East Norse dialect, Old East Norse dialect

Dialects

Phonology

The inventory of classical Old English (i.e. Late West Saxon) surface phones, as usually reconstructed, is as follows.

Syntax 1 (similar in many ways to that of modern English)

• The default  word order was  verb-second and more like modern  German than modern English.

• There was no  do -support  in questions and negatives.

• Multiple negatives could stack up in a sentence, and intensified each other ( negative concord )

Syntax 2

• The wh-type conjunctions were used only as  interrogative pronouns  and  indefinite pronouns . (e.g. "When I got home, I ate dinner")

• Similarly, wh- forms were not used as  relative pronouns  (as in "the man who saw me" or "the car that I bought

Orthography

• Old English was first written in  runes  ( futhorc ) but shifted to a (minuscule)  half-uncial script of the  Latin alphabet  introduced by Irish Christian missionaries from around the 9th century.

• The letter  ðæt  ⟨ð⟩ (called  eth  or  edh  in modern English) was an alteration of Latin ⟨d⟩, and the runic letters  thorn  ⟨þ⟩ and  wynn  ⟨ƿ⟩ are borrowings from futhorc.

Orthography 2

Then it was replaced by  insular script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental  Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular.

Old English Literature

Grimm's law(  First Germanic Sound Shift  or the  Rask's-Grimm's rule ),

Grimm's law consists of three parts

The chain shift can be abstractly represented as:

Notice!

VERNER's LAW

The following table illustrates the sound changes according to Verner

Recently the thesis that Verner's Law might have been valid before Grimm's Law – maybe long before it – has been finding more and more acceptance.

Verner’s Law Grimm’s Law

Accordingly this order now would have to be assumed:

Here is a table with an alternative view of Verner's Law, occurring before the shift of Grimm's Law.

Thank You

Ic þē þancie