Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Conventions, symbols and abbreviations
- Introduction and caveats: the notion ‘Old English’
- Part I Historical prelude
- Part II Old English Phonology
- Part III Morphophonemic intermezzo
- Part IV Morphology, lexis and syntax
- Part V Historical postlude
- 10 The dissolution of Old English
- Glossary
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
- Index of Old English words and affixes
10 - The dissolution of Old English
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Conventions, symbols and abbreviations
- Introduction and caveats: the notion ‘Old English’
- Part I Historical prelude
- Part II Old English Phonology
- Part III Morphophonemic intermezzo
- Part IV Morphology, lexis and syntax
- Part V Historical postlude
- 10 The dissolution of Old English
- Glossary
- References
- Index of names
- Subject index
- Index of Old English words and affixes
Summary
Stasis, flux, transition
The decay and transformation of a given language system are as much part of its history as its origin and development. In this book the focus is of course on origins and persistences; dissolution, and the rebuilding of the remains into a new system are really more part of the next phase, say ‘the origins of Middle English’. Still, the picture is not complete without at least a glance at the other end. This chapter presents a sketch of what happened at the end of the OE period, and how it led on to what followed; in particular, the dissolution of some of the major structures we saw either as continuations of or emergences from IE and PGmc. Like all emergences, Old English was of limited duration. But the precise way in which it turned into its descendant, Middle English, is of considerable interest, at least as a pendant to our concerns with Old English itself; and we can see in the transition the germs of the major typological features of later English, and the flowering of directions of change already implicit in Old English itself.
A major part of the historian's craft is juxtaposing successive language states, and constructing good stories out of the observed (or reconstructed) transitions between states. ‘Language-state’ is of course a fairly gross idealization: no language is ever (absolutely) static or homogeneous, there is always some change going on, some variation present that may (or may not) be the prelude to change.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Old EnglishA Historical Linguistic Companion, pp. 243 - 252Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994