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History of Early English Summary
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Summary of Johnson's History of Early English chapters: 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 16, 17. For the course Historical Linguistics.
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HISTORY OF EARLY ENGLISHCHAPTER 3: OLD ENGLISH
3.1 FOUR EVENTS
Julius Caesar landed in 55 BC. He was repulsed, and the same happened in the following year when he returned
with a larger force. The successful invasion had to wait almost another hundred years – until AD 43 when
Emperor Claudius arrived. This time they did concur, though not without challenges, particularly from Queen
Boudica. In AD 60 or 61, her forces massacred over 70,000 Romans and Celts sympathetic to the Romans, also
destroying the Roman settlement of Colchester in the process. But the Romans won, and England was
subjugated. The invaders created towns, roads, infrastructures, and a wall to keep out the marauding Scots.
England remained a part of the Roman Empire from about AD 45 till AD 409. The Roman Empire began to
decline at the beginning of the fifth century. Invasions of their continental territory by a succession of Visigoths,
Vandals, and Huns led to a Roman departure from England by 410. They needed the troops elsewhere.
When the Romans left, tribes of Picts from the north of Britain, and Scots from the west, attacked the Celts. In
449, the Angles (under the chieftains Hengest and Horsa), being invited into Britain, at first drove off the
enemy; but not long after turned their weapons against their allies. These so-called ‘Angles’ were the three
most powerful nations of Germania – the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles. The Jutes probably came from Jutland,
partly modern-day Denmark. They settled in Kent. The Saxons were from the German region of Schleswig-
Holstein and they put down roots in the area south of the Thames. The Angles were from the area called
Angeln, today partly German and partly Danish. They established themselves north of the Thames.
Essex had the east Saxons, Wessex the west Saxons, with southern folk in Suffolk and northern folk in Norfolk.
But gradually they became more organized, and by 700 occupied most of England. They set up seven kingdoms,
called the Heptarchy: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Wessex.
A new set of invaders first arrived in 787. At that time, one Breohtric was king (married to King Offa’s daughter
Eadburg). Just three ships arrived in the first instance, and they were met by the king’s representative (known
as a ‘reeve’), whom they slaughtered. The new arrivals were described as Danes, though they came from an
area of Norway called Horthaland.
The Scandinavian nations were at that time on the move. The Swedes went east to Russia. The Danes (with
some Norwegians) came west to Britain. Their language was Old Norse (ON), and perhaps it is the ON word for
‘bay’ or ‘fjord’ which gave their name. The word was Vik, and they were called Vikings. The Vikings followed
various routes. Some went to Shetland and Orkney, then on to Ireland – the city of Dublin started life as a
Viking settlement. Then they traveled to the Isle of Man, and on to north-west England. In 865 came what is
sometimes called the ‘Great Heathen Army’. It was led by Ivar the Boneless and his brother Halfdan, both sons
of Ragnar Lothbrok. In 866 East Anglia was plundered, and in 867 York fell.
What is sometimes called the ‘Second Viking Conquest’ took place in the tenth century, led by, the Norwegian
king, Olaf Tryggvason (‘son of Tryggvi’). The Anglo-Saxons suffered losses, particularly at the battle of Maldon, a
town in Essex. The battle is the topic of one of Anglo-Saxon’s best-known poems, called The Battle of Maldon.
3.3 SUFFIX-RICH, ENGLISH, GERMANIC
Two basic points have emerged:
1. Old English is English. It looks like a foreign language, with its unfamiliar letters and odd-looking words.
The language is a version of English – and is surprisingly similar to PDE.
, 2. Old English is suffix-rich. Unlike in PDE, suffixes abound in OE, and they serve grammatical purposes.
Several other Germanic languages are also suffix-rich. Despite all the foreign influences it has absorbed, English
remains a Germanic language. Its family relations, branch and tree, are unequivocal.
CHAPTER 5: THE OLD ENGLISH WORD-HOARD
5.1 HOW LANGUAGES EXPAND VOCABULARY
Words are right at the center of language, and because they are so important, languages collect words. Their
vocabularies grow.
There are two major pathways to vocabulary expansion, which often intersect and combine. One is to create
new words using what we can call ‘native resources’ – the means available in the language to invent new
words. One very productive way of doing this is by affixation. Affixes are elements that can be put at the
beginning or end of a word to create a new one. When the affix comes at the beginning of a word, it is called a
prefix. A second very productive method is by compounding, joining words together to form new ones. There is
one particularly interesting type of compounding that creates what is known as portmanteau words. Here, just
parts of words are joined together. So web + log becomes blog, and iPod + broadcast turns into a podcast.
Another method of word formation uses functional shift or conversion, where a word extends its usage into
other parts of speech. An example is the word Google. It started off its life as a noun. Now people use it as a
verb – you can ‘google’ something
The other major pathway is by borrowing words from other languages. Wikipedia is an example of this. Wiki is
a word in the Hawaiian language meaning ‘quick’.
These two pathways – utilizing native resources and borrowing – provide us with a framework for looking at
vocabulary expansion throughout the history of English. There is one important difference between the two
methods. If they are to catch on, new words need to be readily understood, and the use of native resources
generally makes this happen, because the word-formation rules are well-tried.
5.2 USING NATIVE RESOURCES
5.2.1 Compounds
Compounding is natural to Germanic languages, and though we do it a lot in PDE, it is even more common in
modern German.
OE compounds can result in various parts of speech – nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs – and they can be made
up of various parts of speech.
A generalization is that in the case of compound nouns, the final part determines the compound’s grammatical
gender.
Compounding was common in OE. But some of the linguistic influences that affected English after the Norman
Conquest of 1066 were less fond of this method, and for this reason, after that time – as Strang
(1970: 333) puts it – ‘the role of compounding in the language changed for good’.
5.2.2 Affixation
Another very productive way of forming new words in OE was by affixation.
, Prefixes, like suffixes, change the meaning of a word. But unlike suffixes, they do not change the part of speech.
Add a prefix to a noun or an adjective and it remains a noun or an adjective. Prefixes are much used in OE.
Sometimes the meaning of prefixes is clear, the prefix under- in underestimate for example. But sometimes the
meaning is less clear, the under- in understand for example.
Another interesting prefix is for-. It often acts as an intensifier, meaning something like ‘completely’.
5.3 BORROWING
5.3.1 Celtic Borrowings
there were place names that came from Celtic into English, including the names of rivers. This is not surprising,
given that the land the Anglo-Saxons were inhabiting had been Celtic. But when it comes to ordinary words, the
number of loanwords is extraordinarily small. They can almost be counted on the fingers of two hands.
Why so few Celtic borrowings? The country which the Anglo-Saxons took over was occupied by Celts. The two
ethnic groups must have come into a lot of contact over a long period, with intermarriages and shared
interests. All in all, a situation in which you would expect copious linguistic borrowings. It is a mystery why this
did not happen, but the most likely reason is that despite all the contact, the Anglo-Saxons saw the Celtic as
inferior.
5.3.2 Latin Loanwords
Latin was the language of an important empire, a civilization, and a religion. Estimates of the total number of
Latin loanwords coming into OE vary between 400 and 600. But what do these numbers mean? They are very
much higher than the twelve or so words that came from Celtic, and you could regard Latin borrowings in this
period as the first great influx of foreign vocabulary into English. On the other hand, the loans were only a very
small proportion of the total OE word hoard.
Words came from Latin into English by various routes. Before the Anglo-Saxons inhabited Britain, there were
contacts between their Germanic homelands and the Roman Empire. Latin words came into their language,
and they brought some of these with them to Britain. Second, Britain was itself part of the Roman Empire for a
time, and conquerors always bring loanwords with them. Then there was the arrival of Christianity, and the
religion’s language was Latin.
Given that Augustine and his colleagues were missionaries with a religious intent, it is not surprising that many
of the words coming into OE from Latin at that time were related to religion. Latin also had its influence on
education and academia, with monks often teaching other subjects as well as religion. This gave words like
verse, school, (school)master.
There is more than one way of borrowing a word. one interesting method is called loan translation, to form
what is known as calques – literal translations. We have many of these in PDE. The phrase devil’s advocate is a
direct translation of the Latin advocatus diaboli.
Calques were popular in OE, perhaps because they involved stretching native resources rather than introducing
foreign-sounding words into the language. Many of the calques came from Latin.
Like many borrowings, calques often help to express new ideas that have recently come to people’s attention.
This is what happened in OE with the introduction of Christianity when many new concepts needed to find
words.
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