THEME 8 DIALECTS OF OLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE Lecture

THEME 8 DIALECTS OF OLD ENGLISH LANGUAGE Lecture 1 The Rise of London Dialect

OUTLINE: 1. Scandinavian conquest. Norman conquest. 2. Rise of London dialect 3. Middle English written records

SCANDINAVIAN MORPHOLOGICAL CATEGORIES • Strong and weak declension of nouns • The strong nouns fall into several types, according to stem vowel • Strong and weak declension of adjectives • Seven classes of strong and three classes of weak verbs

SCANDINAVIAN BORROWINGS: • Everyday life (cake, skirt, birth, fellow, rot, window, to die) • Military (fleet) • Legal matters (law, husband) • Pronouns and conjunctions (they, their, them, both, though) • Verbs (to call, to take, to want, to kill, to scare) • Adjectives (happy, ill, weak, wrong)

BORROWINGS: • Government and administration (assembly, authority, council, to govern, office, notion) • Feudal system (baron, duke, feudal, noble) • Military (aid, arms, army, battle, defeat, force) • Law (crime, jury, justice, false) • Church (abbey, chapel) • Art, architecture (chimney, palace, colour, figure)

DIALECTS IN MIDDLE ENGLISH • A group of the Northern dialects • The Midland group • The Southern group of dialects

WRITTEN RECORDS OF MIDDLE ENGLISH • “Peterborough Chronicle” • “Ormulum” • “Brut”, “King Horn and Havelock” • “Handlyng Synne” (Manual of Sins), “Avenbyt of Inwyt” (“Remorse of Conscience”) • “Sir Gawayne and the Green Knights”, “Sir Fyrumbras”, “The Destruction of Troy” • “Miracle Plays” • “Confessio Amantis”