Old English : a historical linguistic companion / Roger Lass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lass, Roger.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Old English, ca. 450-1100--Grammar, Historical.

English language.

English language--Old English--Grammar, Historical.

English language--Old English.

Physical Description:

xx, 300 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge [England] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Summary:

Old English is a companion to Old English studies and to historical studies of early English in general. It is also an introduction to Indo-European studies in the particular sense in which they underpin the history of English. Professor Roger Lass makes accessible in a linguistically up-to-date and readable form the Indo-European and Germanic background to Old English, as well as what can be reconstructed about the resulting state of Old English itself. His book is a bridge between the more elementary Old English grammars and the major philological grammars and recent interpretations of the Old English data.Old English assumes a basic knowledge of phonetics and phonology, the elements of syntactic and morphological theory, and an introduction to historical linguistics. An extensive glossary gives definitions of the major technical terms used.

Contents:

Introduction and caveats: the notion 'Old English' 1

A note on handbooks 5

Part I Historical prelude

1 Background and origins 9

1.1 History in linguistic description 9

1.2 Indo-European and Germanic 10

1.3 The attestation of Germanic 12

1.4 Classification of the Germanic languages 13

2 Indo-European to Proto-Germanic to West Germanic 17

2.1 Germanic: an innovation cluster 17

2.2 Formation of the PGmc vowel system 18

2.3 The IE consonants: Grimm's Law 19

2.4 The Accent Shift and Verner's Law 21

2.5 Recapitulation: PGmc phonological systems 24

2.6 Some further remarks on PGmc phonology 24

2.7 Features of Northwest Germanic 25

2.8 West Germanic 27

Part II Old English Phonology

3 Evolution of Old English phonology: the major early sound changes 33

3.1 Sound change and linguistic structure 33

3.2 West Germanic Gemination 34

3.3 Pre-nasal vowels in Ingvaeonic and Anglo-Frisian 38

3.4 West Germanic */[alpha]:/ and */[alpha]i/ in Ingvaeonic 39

3.5 Anglo-Frisian Brightening, Restoration of [alpha] and the /ae/:/[alpha]/ opposition 41

3.6 Diphthongs old and new: Breaking and related processes 45

3.6.1 'Long' and 'short' diphthongs 45

3.6.2 Breaking, retraction and Diphthong Height Harmony 48

3.6.3 Back umlaut 51

3.6.4 Morphophonemic effects of diphthongization 52

3.7 Palatalization 53

3.8 I-umlaut 59

3.8.1 From allophonic rule to phonemic contrast 59

3.8.2 I-umlaut in detail 64

3.8.3 I-umlaut and Old English morphology 70

3.9 The fricatives: voicing, devoicing, hardening and deletion 71

3.9.1 OE /f, [theta], s/ 71

3.9.2 The velars 74

3.9.3 Fricative hardening and its consequences 76

3.9.4 Appendix: 'Palatal Diphthongization' 78

4 Suprasegmentals 83

4.1 Suprasegmentals 83

4.2 Germanic stress and Old English stress 84

4.2.1 Stress rules and 'degrees of stress' 84

4.2.2 The Germanic Stress Rule 87

4.2.3 Old English stress 91

4.3 Major developments in weak syllables 95

4.3.1 Final reduction and loss 95

4.3.2 High Vowel Deletion and medial syncope 98

Part III Morphophonemic intermezzo

5 Ablaut, the laryngeals and the IE root 105

5.1 The basic alternations 105

5.2 The conditioning of ablaut 107

5.3 The laryngeals: 'Irregular' ablaut regularized and a new look for IE root-structure 109

5.4 Roots and extensions 114

5.5 Zero-grade revisited 116

5.6 Appendix: consonantal alternations 118

Part IV Morphology, lexis and syntax

6 Inflectional morphology, I: nouns, pronous, determiners and adjectives 123

6.1 The noun 123

6.1.1 Root vs. stem, thematic vs. athematic 123

6.1.2 IE noun-inflection: gender, number, case 126

6.1.3 The major noun classes 129

6.1.4 A note in retrospect 138

6.2 Pronouns and determiners 139

6.2.1 Personal pronouns 139

6.2.2 'Definite article'/demonstrative 142

6.2.3 Interrogative pronouns 145

6.3 The adjective 146

6.3.1 The basic inflections 146

6.3.2 Comparison 149

7 Inflectional morphology, II: The verb 151

7.1 Historical preliminaries 151

7.2 The strong verb 153

7.2.1 Ablaut in the strong verb, classes I-V 153

7.2.2 The strong verb, classes VI-VII 158

7.2.3 The strong past participle 161

7.2.4 Infinitive and present participle (strong and weak) 162

7.3 The weak verb 164

7.3.1 The weak preterite suffix and past participle 164

7.3.2 The weak verb classes 166

7.4 Preterite presents and minor verb types 169

7.4.1 Preterite presents 169

7.4.2 Athematic root verbs and 'to be' 170

7.5 Person/number/mood inflection 172

7.5.1 The strong verb 172

7.5.2 The weak verb: present system 174

7.5.3 The weak verb: preterite 176

8 Vocabulary and word-formation 178

8.1 The PGmc lexicon 178

8.2 Loans in Old English 183

8.2.1 Latin 183

8.2.2 Scandinavian 186

8.2.3 Celtic and French 189

8.3 Word-formation 190

8.3.1 Typology and productivity 190

8.3.2 Compounding 194

8.3.3 Derivation 198

8.4 Names, adverbs and numerals 205

8.4.1 Proper names 205

8.4.2 Adverbs 207

8.4.3 Numerals 208

9 Topics in OE historical syntax: word-order and case 216

9.1 Reconstructed syntax? 216

9.2 Basic constituent order 217

9.3 The clausal brace and verb-second order 224

9.4 The syntax of the OE cases in historical perspective 228

9.4.1 Overview: form, function and syncretism 228

9.4.2 Historical persistence or natural semantics? IE remains in OE case syntax 234

Part V Historical postlude

10 The dissolution of Old English 243

10.1 Stasis, flux, transition 243

10.2 Monophthongization and merger 246

10.3 The new diphthongs 247

10.4 Quantity adjustment 249

10.5 Weak vowel collapse and the new morphology 250.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 272-279) and indexes.

ISBN:

0521430879

052145848X

OCLC:

27431165