A Brief Linguistic Description of Old English

A Brief Linguistic Description of Old English

Old English can be described as a highly synthetic language. By this we mean that inflectional endings were used to signal the grammatical function of words, and word order was thus of less importance. Old English nouns, for example, had two numbers, four cases, three grammatical genders and roughly ten different patterns of declensions.

Masculine strong noun Feminine noun Neuter strong noun Adjectives also had inflectional endings that reflected the noun they described as did pronouns and articles.

The verb system too, was highly inflectional. The verb took different endings depending on the grammatical subject. In addition, there were ten different classes of verbs, all with different systems of declension:

Cwen (queen) Singular Plural

Nominative (seo) cwen (þá) cwena

Accusative (þa) cwene (þá) cwena

Genitive (þære) cwene (þára) cwena

Dative (þære) cwene (þæm) cwenum

Old English Vocabulary

Old English was a purely Germanic language. There were, however, some influences from other languages on the vocabulary and these are listed below:

CELTIC:

The influence from Celtic was minimal. This is to be expected from a sociolinguistic point of view: conquerors do not usually borrow words from the subdued. Outside of place names the influence of Celtic on Old English is negligible (compare with of influence of Native American languages on American English).

• Place Names: Thames (the dark river), Kent, London (the town of the wild one), York, Avon (the water), Dover, Cumberland, Wight.

Note that the word Welsh is actually an Old English word meaning “foreigner; slave”.

LATIN:

There were several terms borrowed from Latin. These can be grouped into different semantic fields (fields of meaning):

a) Early loans: From the first to fifth centuries A.D. around fifty words came into Germanic through Germanic contact with Rome before the invasion and settlement of Britain. Semantic fields include:

War: camp meaning battle from Latin campus; pil meaning javelin from Latin pilum. straet (road) from Latin strata; mil (mile) from Latin milia.

Trade: ceap (L. caupo) 'bargain,'; pund (L. pondo) 'pound,'; win (L. vinum) 'wine,'; mynet

(L. moneta)'mint, coin;'

Domestic Life: cuppe (L. cuppa) 'cup' disc (L.discus) 'dish' pyle (L. pulvinus) 'pillow' cycene

(L. coquina) 'kitchen' linen (L. linum) 'linen' gimm (L.gemma) 'gem;'

Foods: ciese (L. caseus) 'cheese; ' butere (L. butyrum)'butter'; pipor (L. piper) 'pepper'; senep

(L. sinapi) 'mustard'; cires (L. cerasus) 'cherry'; pise (L. pisum)'pea'; minte (L. mentha)

'mint.'

b) The Period of the Christianizing of Britain (7th –10th centuries):

Most of these loans are related to the fields of religion and learning:

Religion: abbot, alms, altar, angel, anthem, candle, collect, creed, deacon, demon, disciple, hymn, martyr, mass, nun, offer, organ, palm, pope, priest, prime, prophet, psalm, relic, rule, sabbath, temple, tunic.

Learning: school, master, Latin, verse, meter, circe, history, paper, title, grammatical, accent, brief (vb).

Other: fever, cancer, paralysis, plaster, place, sponge, elephant, scorpion, camel, tiger, giant, talent.

SCANDINAVIAN:

Surprisingly there are a number of Scandinavian loans that entered English towards the end of the Old English period. What these loans were and how they came to be part of English is the subject of the next section.