OE written records: runic inscriptions, religious works, Anglo-Saxon chronicles.

The earliest written records of English are inscriptions on hard material made in a special alphabet known as runes. This word originally ment ‘secret’, later it was applied to the characters used in writing these inscriptions. the runes were used as letters, each symbol indicated a separate sound; each rune has its name. In some inscriptions the runes were found arranged in a fixed order making a sort of alphabet. The runic alphabet is specifically Germanic.

The number of runes in different OG languages varied from 28 to 33 in Britain against 16 or 24 on the continent.

The 2 best known runic inscriptions in England are the earliest extant OE written records: the ‘Franks Casket’ and the ‘Ruthwell Cross’ (both in the Northumbrian dialect).

Religious works. The most widely known secular author of Old English was King Alfred the Great (849–899), who translated several books, many of them religious, from Latin into Old English. Alfred produced the following translations: Gregory the Great'sThe Pastoral Care, a manual for priests on how to conduct their duties; The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius; and The Soliloquies of Saint Augustine.

Other important Old English translations include: Historiaeadversumpaganos by OrosiusandBede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

OE prose is the most valuable source of information for the history of the language. The earliest samples of continuous prose are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, brief annals of the year’s happenings made at various monasteries. In the 9th c they were unified at Winchester, the capital of Wessex. Though sometimes dropped or started again, they developed into a fairly complete prose history of England. Several versions of the ASC have survived.

47. Speak about the historical events which affected the development of English l.

Old English: the vocabulary is mostly West Germanic(Germanic settlement) / there are some borrowings from other languages, including Latin (through the christianization of England) and Norse (through the Viking invasions and settlements) as well as some faint traces of Celtic (from the previous rulers of the British Isles).

Middle English: the vocabulary is very heavily influenced by French, which was brought to English as the new prestige language by the Normans (the Norman conquest 1066);(the War of Roses.)1475 introduction of printing..

Middle Early Modern English: the vocabulary is very heavily influenced by Greek and Roman (think of the Renaissance, the wide spread use of the printing press to print English translations of Classical literature and by languages from around the world (think of Columbus, etc., and the discovery of plants new to English speakers that lead to the introduction of new words into English, including "coffee" and "chocolate," "muskrat" and "skunk)

50. What do we mean by the statement that 2 languages are related?

Many groups of languages are partly mutually intelligible, i.e. most speakers of one language find it relatively easy to achieve some degree of understanding in the related language(s). Often the languages are genetically related, and they are likely to be similar to each other in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, or other features.

Linguists generally use mutual intelligibility as one of the primary factors in deciding between the two cases.

Asymmetric intelligibility is a term used by linguists to describe two languages that are considered mutually intelligible, but where one group of speakers has more difficulty understanding the other language than vice versa. There can be various reasons for this. If, for example, one language is related to another but has simplified its grammar, the speakers of the original language may understand the simplified language, but not vice versa. For example, Dutch speakers tend to find it much easier to understand Afrikaans than vice versa as a result of Afrikaans's simplified grammar.

In other cases, two languages have very similar written forms, but are pronounced very differently. If the spoken form of one of the languages is more similar to the common written form, speakers of the other language may understand this language more than vice versa. This may account for the common claim that Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish more easily than the other way around.

In some cases it is hard to distinguish between mutual intelligibility and a basic knowledge of other language. Many Belarusian and Ukrainian speakers have extensive knowledge of Russian and use it as a second language or lingua franca, or even as a first language in public or at work. Thus they can easily understand Russian, whereas speakers of Russian often can understand Ukrainian and Belarusian only partially.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 4667