Hilles Sharon - The earliest English: an introduction to Old English language

The Earliest English

LEARNING ABOUT LANGUAGE

General Editors:

Geoffrey Leech & Mick Short, Lancaster University

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The Earliest English Chris McCully and Sharon Hilles

The Earliest English

An Introduction to Old English Language

Chris McCully and Sharon Hilles

First published 2005 by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

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Copyright 2005, Taylor & Francis.

The rights of Chris McCully and Sharon Hilles to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-40474-8 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCully, C. B.

The earliest English : an introduction to the English language from the beginnings to the twelfth century / Chris McCully and Sharon Hilles.

p. cm. (Learning about language)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-582-40474-6 (pbk.)

1. English languageOld English, ca. 450-1100. 2. English languageOld English, ca. 450-1100Grammar. 3. English languageMiddle English, 1100-1500. I. Hilles, Sharon. II. Title. III. Series.

PE135.M23 2004

429'.82dc22

2004050356

Set by 35 in 10/12.5pt Palatino

Contents

Of making many books there is no end. wrote the poet of Ecclesiastes, and (he added, with all the professional weariness of a scholar) much study is a weariness of the flesh. On the other hand, the making of this book was attended by both luck and good fortune, and they made the weariness of the flesh almost a delight. First, wed like to thank Richard Hogg, of the University of Manchester, who, more years ago than seems decent to mention, unwittingly began this project with three pamphlets hed originally intended for the use of his first-year Old English students. Richards work eventually was developed into his Introduction to Old English (2002). Some of the early units here contain one or two expansions, or re-presentations, of Richards original texts and ideas, and while we hope he forgives our reinterpretations of his work, we hope he will find the current text worthy of his plans, and consistent with them. In the same departmental context, some of the material we introduce in Unit 8 owes its existence to a teaching pamphlet originally prepared by Carole Weinberg and David Denison, though they cant have foreseen the redeployment of their work on the Peterborough Chronicle in quite the present format. We are grateful to them, and again to Richard Hogg, for allowing us to make use of some of the original questions they posed on the language of the 1137 and 1140 entries in the Chronicle. Second, Olga Fischer saw a very early draft version of the text and made many suggestions for improvement in both conception and detail. We thank her, and her students at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, for having worked with the pre-original version, and for having been so generous with their time and comments. We are also grateful to have discussed, with both Olga and with Nikolaus Ritt, of the University of Vienna, some of the ideas that eventually brought some of this text into its current shape. Third, we thank Mary Ellen Ryder, of Boise State University, who reviewed the proposal that underlay this text, for having commented at such length, and so constructively, about it. Fourth, we thank Professor Wilhelm Busse, of the University of Dsseldorf, who allowed us to make use of some tables of Old English inflections that were originally developed for a Workbook he and his colleagues used until recently with their Old English students, and we thank, too, Noel Burton-Roberts for his permission to allow us to adapt the lay-out of some tables that were designed for use many years ago in the School of English at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We also thank those other colleagues with whom weve been privileged to discuss some of the issues contained in the text. Among these faces and voices are Donka Minkova, Roger Lass, Bob Stockwell, Ricardo Bermdez-Otero, Heinz Giegerich and Paula Fikkert. Monika Schmid, of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, functioned simultaneously as critic, proofreader, library contact and source of many constructive ideas for setting the text, particularly the fiddly parts. Osamu Koma, Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Manchester (200203), painstakingly spotted some typos and other errors in Unit 5. Two readers for Pearson Education made very detailed and critical comments on the penultimate draft of the text, and we are greatly obliged to them for requiring us to cut or to simplify some of our analyses and reorder several sections of our draft. In the publishing context, Melanie Carter and Helen MacFadyen handled one very complicated manuscript and one almost equally complicated that is, an exasperating author with enviable, and very much appreciated, professional skill. And finally wed like to thank the students who have made successive proposals for this book, and successive redraftings of it, such a thoughtful pleasure. They have patiently endured our desperate last-minute photocopying, our computer glitches and our mysterious changes of heart, analysis and font size. None of these students and scholars can be blamed, of course, for whatever errors of judgement, interpretation or presentation we may have made here. Much though wed like to blame others for our faults, those errors are ours alone.