Topic 3: Middle English Period

Middle English period

Topic 3 is about Middle English period of English language. What you have here is some summaries about the main aspects of Middle English period and also some exercises that will help you in your final exam.

I hope you can do all activities without problems.

Linguistic developments: Practice

Follow this link and, click on “Ejecutar esta vez” and do the exercise. It is for you to understand better I- mutation. You can either put the words in Modern English and in Old English. You can also find a text in which it is asked for find the “i-mutated” form of the highlighted verb. They are very simple exercises. Best wishes.

I-mutation practise

Linguistic deveopments

Many linguistic developments can be found during the Old English period: changings in the vowel system, in consonants, in nouns, adjectives or verb. Moreover, the most important sound change which happened in this period is called “I mutation”. It is also known as “i-umlaut” (meaning alteration of sounds). With this sound change, most of the vowels and diphthongs were modified if the vowel “i” or the related consonant –the semivowel “j”- stood in the following syllable.
If in a word the 2^nd syllable contains an “i”, the vowel or diphthong before is going to approximate its pronunciation to a position closer to that “i”. The main problem is that neither “i” nor “j” survived to the time of our texts; they were lost before surviving reconrds were written down. And its original presence can be established by an examination of the corresponding words in related language.
This sound change deals with a change from back to front vowels. Back vowels are “a”, “o” and “u”. The rest of vowels are front. 

This phonological change has had profound morphological consequences, and the most relevant one was the mutation of plurals.

Placenames: Practice

You have here an interactive map about the influences of other languages in the formation of UK placenames. Follow this link and make the following exercise: Key map to English placenames 


Questions: 

1. Click in “Greater London”. Find what the main influence on the formation of placenames in this area was, as well as some examples. (If you click on one red point, you will get the placename and also some information about the elements of its formation). Then, put one example of other influences in the formation of the placenames in this area.
2. Do the same, clicking now in Norfolk
3. The last area you have to investigate is Dorset 

A short story about UK placenames

The study of the history of placenames is characterized mainly by careful reconstruction and also a bit of guess. Remember that placenames pre-date written data. This work of reconstructing placenames is a matter of etymology. There are some influences/factors which contribute to the formation of placenames. Let´s see what they are.

1. Folk information: Some placenames derived from the group of people who first settled in a determined area. For example, Sweden literally means “the Swedes”.

2. Nature information: Some placenames give information about the natural features of the area. It can be found references to a range of flora in placenames. Although the natural world of the countries of today would not be recognizable to the Anglo-Saxons, the placenames they left reveals features of their natural world. For instance, “Ousden”, which was originally compounded by the “uf” and “denu” means Owl´s Valley.

3. A variety of languages: as some other cultures and languages were in contact with Old English, there are influences of those languages. We are speaking about Celt, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian influences.

* The Celts.

Celts were one of those many tribes living in Europe in the years before Christ. They settled in England. Celt influence on placenames can be regarded most abundantly in the North and West (especially in Wales and Cornwall). They also give names to many rivers. It is remarkable that fact that the survival of Celtic placenames in some areas must partly reflect the lack of domination of Romans in those areas.

Celtic elements include: 

Element	Definition
Aber	mouth of a river
Coombe	a deep valley
Pen	a hill tor a hill

* The Romans

After 300 years of calling the British Isles their own, the Celts were conquered by the Romans. So, England was the north-west corner of the Roman Empire. And Although the Romans occupied the country for over 3 centuries, they only left behind approximately 300 placenames. This strongly suggests that the Romans tended to use existing Celtic placenames, and even latinization of existing Celtic placenames occurred.

The main Latin elements in placenames are:

Element	Definition
Castra (-chester, -caster)	a Roman town, fort
colonia (-coln)	a settlement
Porta (-port)	a gate
Portus (-port)	a harbor
Strata (strat-, -street)	a Roman road

As with Celtic elements, there are very few names that contains Latin element. A good reason for it is the already mention latinization of Celtic placenames.

*The Anglo-Saxons.

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to invade British Isles in 449 AD, coming from Denmark and the coast of Germany and Holland. The Anglo-Saxons named their new country Engaland (the land of the Angles) and their language was called Englisc. And thousands of English placenames were created by Anglo-Saxons in England.

Main Anglo-Saxon elements in placenames are: 

Element	Definition
burna (-borne)	a brook, stream
dun	a hill
eg (-ey)	an island
ingas (-ing)	the people of ...
leah (-ley)	a clearing
well	a well, spring
worth	an enclosure, homestead

Most of the processes for creating placenames were joining words to form other words; that is, there is a compounding process. And a dominant trend in Anglo-Saxon placenames was that they took on the name of the tribal leader. For instance, in Chippenham, we can find that the first element is a male name: Cippa.


* The Scandinavians
From 789AD onwards, the Vikings arrived at the British Isles. But from the 9^th to the 11^th centuries they came to settle alongside the Anglo-Saxons. They were established in the Danelaw. The Scandinavian languages –Old Norse and Old Danish- had the same Germanic roots as Old English and so, over years, existing placenames were adjusted. One of the main consequences of the Scandinavian influence was that it provoked the increasing of linguistic differences between the north and the south of England.
Scandinavian placenames elements includes

Element	Definition
-bekkr (beck)	a farmstead or settlement, then a village.
-by	a farmstead or settlement, then a village.
-darl	a dale, valley.
- ey	an island
-gathr (garth)	a yard, open space
-thorp	an outlying farmstead of hamlet
- toft	a site of a house and outbuildings

-Map of the Danelaw

For further information about the elements which intervenes in the formation of placenames, follow this link: Etymology of British place-names

TIMELINE: The Old English Period (500-1100)

The conquest of the Celtic population in Britain by speakers of West Germanic dialects (primarily Angles, Saxons, and Jutes) eventually determined many of the essential characteristics of the English language. (The Celtic influence on English survives for the most part only in place names--London, Dover, Avon, York.) Over time the dialects of the various invaders merged, giving rise to what we now call "Old English."

OLD ENGLISH TIMELINE

Later 6th century	Ethelbert, the King of Kent, is baptized. He is the first English king to convert to Christianity.
7th century	Rise of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex; the Saxon kingdom of Essex and Middlesex; the Angle kingdoms of Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria. St. Augustine and Irish missionaries converted Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, introducing new religious words borrowed from Latin and Greek. Latin speakers began referring to the country as Anglia and later as Englaland.
673	Birth of the Venerable Bede, the monk who composed (in Latin) The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c.731), a key source of information about Anglo-Saxon settlement.
700	Approximate date of the earliest manuscript records of Old English.
Late 8th century	Scandinavians began to settle in Britain and Ireland; Danes settled in parts of Ireland.
Early 9th century	Egbert of Wessex incorporates Cornwall into his kingdom and is recognized as overlord of the seven kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons (the Heltarchy): England began to emerge.
Mid 9th century	Danes raid England, occupy Northumbria, and establish a kingdom at York. Danish began to influence English.
Late 9th century	King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) leaded the Anglo-Saxons to victory over the Vikings, translated Latin works into English and established the writing of prose in English. He used the English language to foster a sense of national identity. English was divided into a kingdom ruled by the Anglo-Saxons (under Alfred) and another ruled by the Scandinavians. Danelaw.
10th century	English and Danes mixed fairly peacefully, and many Scandinavians (or Old Norse) loanwords entered the language, including such common words as sister, wish, skin and die.
1000	Approximate date of the only surviving manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, composed by an anonymous poet between 8th and early 11th centuries.
Early 11th century	Danes attacked England, and the English king escaped to Normandy. The battle of Maldon became the subject of one of the few surviving poems in Old English. The Danish king ruled over England and encouraged the growth of Anglo-Saxon culture and literature.
1066	The Norman invasion: King Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings, and William of Normandy was crowned King of England. Over succeeding decades, Norman French became the language of the court and the upper classes; English remained the language of the majority, but it was no longer a written language. Latin was used in churches and schools.