External Influences on English: From its Beginnings to the Renaissance (Oxford Linguistics)

## Abstract From its Germanic roots on the Continent, English has had many influences from other languages. This work documents the main influences on the lexicon and the structure. The earliest contacts were with the Romans, when many words were borrowed by the Germanic tribes from Vulgar Latin. In the British Isles, Roman influence continued but the primary influence, though largely substratal, was from Brythonic Celtic. In the later period the Latin influence became largely literary. Meanwhile, Danes settled northeast England, and the contact situation there was complicated but the major result was a high degree of koineization, reflected in major structural innovations shared with East Norse, primarily Old Jutland Danish. Subsequently, the French dominated southeast England and created a superstrate that resulted in Anglo-French on the one hand and the transfer of thousands of words to English on the other. As these words assimilated to the English lexicon, their affixes became an important part of English word formation, productivity beginning as early as the thirteenth century. The result of all this contact was that English preserved little of its Germanic heritage. Later influences were largely restricted to the lexicon and consisted mainly of learned Greek and latinate roots, many of which became standard English, though frequently of a higher register than native roots of similar import, and facilitated scientific word formation. Cover 1 Contents 6 Preface 11 Acknowledgments 12 Dating and other conventions 14 Abbreviations 16 Bibliographical abbreviations 26 1 Introduction 34 1.1 The place of English within Indo-European 34 1.2 Germanic 37 1.3 Gothic 37 1.4 North Germanic 38 1.5 West Germanic 39 1.6 Continental borrowings into English 40 1.7 Celtic 41 1.8 Subdivisions of the Celtic family 42 1.9 Goidelic (Gaelic) 44 1.10 Brittonic (Brythonic/British) 45 1.11 Conclusion and conspectus 46 2 Celtic, Roman, and Germanic background 48 2.1 Pre-Celts and Celts in Britain 48 2.2 British Celtic toponyms 49 2.3 Early Celtic loanwords in English 52 2.4 Roman period in Britain [c1–5] 53 2.5 Roman influence on the early Germanic tribes 55 2.6 Early continental borrowings from Latin 55 2.7 Latin borrowings west of the Rhine 56 2.8 The end of Roman rule in Britain 57 2.9 Residues of romanization and the fate of Latin 58 2.10 Arrival of the pre-English tribes [c5] 61 2.11 The question of Frisian participation 62 2.12 Linguistic evidence 62 2.13 Problems for Vortigern 63 2.14 New Germanic settlements and Celtic displacements 64 2.15 Period of the legendary King Arthur 66 2.16 Celtic influence on the structure of English 68 2.17 Conclusion 72 3 English: The early period 74 3.1 The establishment of English [c6] 74 3.2 Contacts, missions, and christianization [c6/7] 76 3.3 Borrowings from casual contact 77 3.4 More technical Christian vocabulary 78 3.5 The multiple sources of cross 79 3.6 Northumbrian renaissance [c8] 80 3.7 West Saxon period [c9] 81 3.8 King Alfred the educator 82 3.9 The Winchester school and standardization [c10–11] 83 3.10 Wulfstan and other standards 84 3.11 Conclusion 85 4 Early loanwords from Latin and Greek 86 Part I: The dating of loanwords 86 4.1 Periods of loanwords and criteria for dating 86 4.2 Chronology of phonological changes: Latin to Romance 88 4.3 Germanic chronology 89 4.4 Insular period: Proto-English changes 92 Part II: Loanwords into Germanic 95 4.5 Probable early (continental?) borrowings 95 4.6 Probable later borrowings [c.450–600] 107 4.7 Borrowings with christianization [600+] (cf. §3.3ff.) 113 4.8 Learned borrowings [c9/10] 118 4.9 Conclusion 121 Appendix: Overview of early changes 123 5 The Scandinavian heritage of English 124 5.1 Introduction 124 Part I: The Viking era 125 5.2 Diffusion of the Vikings 125 5.3 Systematic attacks and settlements 126 5.4 Commerce and urban development 128 5.5 More conquests and Scandinavian rule 129 5.6 Similar languages in contact: bilingualism and convergence 130 5.7 Epigraphic language mixture 132 5.8 The death of Scandinavian in England 134 5.9 A Norn parallel? 134 Part II: Distribution of Nordic influence on English: evidence of toponyms 135 5.10 Place names in -by 135 5.11 Other place names of Scandinavian origin 137 Part III: Scandinavian influence on the English lexicon 139 5.12 Introduction 139 5.13 Specialized and technical Scandinavian words in Old English 142 5.14 Non-technical Nordic loans in Old English 144 5.15 Scandinavian borrowings 1016–1150 146 5.16 Scandinavian loans in Middle Engish: the Ormulum 147 5.17 The Katherine group 148 5.18 Scandinavian loans in other Middle English texts 149 5.19 Middle English dialectology: the focal area 151 5.20 Changes specific to the focal area? 152 Part IV: Phonological properties of Norse borrowings 153 5.21 Introduction 153 5.22 The [k] ~ [č] alternation (SLME 139–47; Gevenich 1918) 153 5.23 The [g] ~ [y] alternation (SLME 148–58) 156 5.24 The [k] ~ [č] and [g] ~ [j] alternation 157 5.25 The [sk] ~ [š] alternation (SLME 119–39; West 1936; Pons-Sanz 2012: §2.2.2.2) 158 Part V: The morphological legacy of Scandinavian-English contact 160 5.26 Real and false cases 160 5.27 The 3rd person plural pronoun they 161 5.28 Northern participle -and(e) 163 5.29 Nominals and participles in -ing 164 5.30 Noun plural -(e)s and genitive singular -(e)s 165 Part VI: The syntactic legacy of Scandinavian-English contact 167 5.31 Possible shared innovations: introduction 167 5.32 The phrasal genitive 167 5.33 Reflexive (-)self 169 5.34 Omission of the conjunction that 171 5.35 Contact relatives (relative ellipsis) 172 5.36 P-stranding and relative clauses 172 5.37 P-stranded passives 175 5.38 Changes in word order 177 5.39 Conclusion 178 6 The French input 181 6.1 The Norman conquest of England 181 6.2 The early years of Norman dominance 182 6.3 The ascent of Anglo-French 184 6.4 The problem of Norman vs Central French 185 6.5 Early borrowings of words with historical velar stop 186 6.6 Anglo-French forms in Early Middle English 187 6.7 Doublets in c- and ch- 189 6.8 Forms and dates of French loans in English 190 6.9 The problem of /w/ and /g(w)/ 191 6.10 The status of cross-Channel borrowings 193 6.11 Proliferation of the Latin-Romance element in English 194 6.12 The medium of adoption of French 195 6.13 The status of French words in Early English 196 6.14 Cultural spheres of French loans 197 6.15 Lexical bifurcation and register 200 6.16 The resurgence of English 201 6.17 Competing languages, morphological transfer, and language death 204 6.18 Symptoms of the decline of Anglo-French 205 6.19 The death of Anglo-French in the London Grocers’ Company records 206 6.20 Assessment of the London Grocers’ Company data 207 6.21 The morphological legacy of French 209 6.22 -ness and -ity in confrontation 210 6.23 Deverbal -(a)tion 212 6.24 The suffix -ment (Marchand 1969: 321f.; Ciszek 2008: 120–5) 213 6.25 Deverbal -able 214 6.26 Deverbal -ee 215 6.27 Morphological legacy: conclusions 216 6.28 French influence on English syntax? 218 6.29 Conclusion 220 Appendix: Major changes from Latin to French 222 6.30 Intervocalic voicing and spirantization/deletion 222 6.31 Western Romance vowel prothesis (ELG i. 338–41) 224 6.32 Apheresis (ELG ii. 45–57) 224 7 Continuity and revival of classical learning 225 7.1 Education in the postclassical period 226 7.2 The Church Fathers 227 7.3 Ecclesiastical Latin as a genre 229 7.4 Theodoric and the Ostrogoths 230 7.5 Boethius 230 7.6 The continuation of Latin in southern Europe 231 7.7 Latin in the British Isles 233 7.8 Latin under the Franks 234 7.9 Alcuin’s Latin curriculum 235 7.10 Medieval Latin: definition and uses 237 7.11 General properties of Medieval Latin 238 7.12 The Renaissance: Humanistic and Neolatin 239 7.13 The Renaissance and its aftermath in England 242 7.14 Elevated style and pseudotechnical vocabulary 245 7.15 Technical and scientific terminology 247 7.16 The legacy of Greek and Latin beyond the lexicon 249 7.17 The revival of Hellenism and the influence of Greek: an overview 256 7.18 The legacy of the revival of classical studies 258 8 External linguistic input to English 261 8.1 Type of contact and transfer of linguistic elements 261 8.2 Stages of classical borrowing 263 8.3 Greek influence on English 264 8.4 The Latin–French legacy 265 8.5 The legacy of Celtic and Scandinavian 265 8.6 Remaining problems and conclusions 267 Special phonetic symbols 270 Primary sources: Texts and editions 275 References 283 Name index 336 A 336 B 336 C 336 D 336 E 336 F 336 G 336 H 336 I 336 K 336 L 336 M 336 N 336 O 336 P 337 R 337 S 337 T 337 V 337 W 337 Y 337 Word index 338 A 338 B 338 C 339 D 341 E 342 F 342 G 343 H 343 I 343 J 344 K 344 L 344 M 344 N 345 O 345 P 346 Q 347 R 347 S 347 T 349 U 349 V 349 W 349 Y 350 This book provides the fullest account ever published of the external influences on English during the first thousand years of its formation. In doing so it makes profound contributions to the history of English and of western culture more generally. English is a Germanic language but altogether different from the other languages of that family. Professor Miller shows how and why the Anglo-Saxons began to borrow and adapt words from Latin and Greek. He provides detailed case studies of the processes by which several hundred of them entered English. He also considers why several centuries later the process of importation was renewed and accelerated. He describes the effects of English contacts with the Celts, Vikings, and French, and the ways in which these altered the language's morphological and syntactic structure. He shows how loanwords from French, for example, not only increased the richness of English derivation but resulted in a complex competition between native and borrowed suffixes. Gary Miller combines historical, cultural, and linguistic perspectives. His scholarly, readable, and always fascinating account will be of enduring value to everyone interested in the history of English. In this fascinating history of the influences on English during the first thousand years of its formation the author shows when and why the Anglo-Saxons began to borrow words from Latin and Greek and the effects of contact with the Vikings, Celts, and French. A book of enduring value to everyone interested in the history of English.