The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

There seems to be general agreement that data from prose sources reflect thelanguage of speakers most closely. Given this, we are fortunate in having verylong prose texts available in Old English, from various stages. Even there,however, we have to be careful in interpreting the evidence. The early OldEnglish prose works from the time of King Alfred the Great are nearly alltranslations from Latin originals. Some of them are very literal (e.g. that ofBede’s Ecclesiastical History), others rather freer (like that of Boethius’ DeConsolatione Philosophiae). However, they are all directly related to a Latinoriginal, and as such have to be used with special caution. This is less directlythe case with the tenth-century collections of homilies and saints’ lives byÆlfric and Wulfstan. These contain passages that have been translated, but onthe whole they are merely inspired by Latin texts. The dating of texts deservesspecial caution too. The collections by Ælfric and Wulfstan seem to representa single state of the language of the authors. But Allen (1992) points out thatthe Pope edition of homilies of Ælfric contains a number of texts that weregathered from different manuscripts from different dates. This means that theycontain a number of later copies of Ælfric’s texts and this should be taken intoaccount in interpreting the dating. The only substantial body of Old Englishprose that can be regarded as original Old English is the group of manuscriptsknown as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whose writing was instigated by KingAlfred and versions of which were kept up in various locations. This makes ita favourite for many scholars, though its annal style hardly represents a verysophisticated writing tradition. We see, then, that in the prose, there is a limitedrange of text types and there are various pitfalls to be considered. Given duecare, this does not, however, detract from their evidential value.Some people would say that prose sources yield the only reliable data. Thisis not necessarily true. In some cases, poetry, translations, and even word byword glosses, may provide evidence that comes closer to our moderngrammaticality judgements than the evidence just discussed. We give twoexamples of this. The first is from the poetry.Old English poetry is in the alliterative four-stress line: each verse line consistsof two halflines and each halfline contains two stressed positions. At leasttwo, but often three of these stressed positions alliterate, as in the followinglines from Beowulf (stress is marked by an acute accent on the vowel of the relevantsyllable, alliteration by italics):(27) æt gesyne wéarthat evident becamewídcu wérum, / ætte wrécend a gýtwidely known to Men, that avenger then stilllífde æfter láum,/ lánge ráge,lived after foe long time,Language change and grammar change 31