Chapter 1: Lost for Words; a brief meditation on the peculiar challenges posed by thinking and talking about language, both in terms of grammatical analysis and wider comparative or historical linguistic studies.
Chapter 2: Caught in the Web of Words: The Company We Keep; a concise overview of the odd place of English in the family of Indo-European languages that will consider;
- the concept of 'Indo-European' and how it revolutionised the study of languages since the eighteenth century.
- where English sits in the family tree of European languages and its anomalous status as a fundamentally Germanic language substantially hybridised by its many contacts with other language groups over the centuries
Chapter 3: Your Roots are Showing; a brief account of the Germanic tribes later known as the Anglo-Saxon and their colonisation of the Roman province of Britannia that will consider
- small number of loan-words of Celtic origin in MnE, suggesting little cultural mingling between the Britons and the invaders
- evidence of surviving Germanic vocabulary in MnE: importance and significance of core vocabulary
- a very brief account of some of the distinctive features of OE phonology, vocabulary and grammar
Chapter 4: Angels and Angels: The Conversation of the Anglo-Saxons and the Latin Factor. Abrief account of Gregory the Great's dispatch of a mission under St Augustine of Canterbury in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons, its success, and its major consequences, including
- the introduction of monastic culture and the scriptorium
- the impact of the new technology of written text (w/ informing parallels to the present-day (IT revolution)
- beginnings of English prose-composition in chronicle and homily, but also the composition of vernacular religious poetry following native tradition and style
- selective borrowing of Latin loan-words in distinctive contexts
Chapter 5. No Horned Helmets, Please: We're Real Vikings. A brief account of the Scandinavian adventurers who began to conduct incursions into Anglo-Saxon England from the late 700's and their language, closely related to Old English, which will consider
- the relatively equal social status enjoyed by both languages (very different from the large differences of power, authority, and prestige that distinguished Old English from Latin and, later, Norman French)
- the impact of Old Norse on Old English in place-names and certain pronouns
- other vocabulary (e.g. doublets such as skirt/shirt and skip/ship)
Chapter 6. All Change, Please: Enter the Normans. After a concise account of the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxon England, this text will offer a brief account of its immediate social and political repercussions, with special emphasis on what impact these had on the abruptly demoted English language. Topics include;
- the changed social landscape, with an imported Norman aristocracy wielding most power
- acceleration of changes already taking place
- How MnE vocabulary can reflect the tense relations between the mucky Saxon peasant and the haughty Norman baron - the impact of social register on semantics.
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