Old English A Historical Linguistic Companion

Old English is a companion to Old English studies and to historical studies of early English in general. It is also an introduction to Indo-European studies in the particular sense in which they underpin the history of English. Professor Roger Lass makes accessible in a linguistically up-to-date and readable form the Indo-European and Germanic background to Old English, as well as what can be reconstructed about the resulting state of Old English itself. His book is a bridge between the more elementary Old English grammars and the major philological grammars and recent interpretations of the Old English data.Old English assumes a basic knowledge of phonetics and phonology, the elements of syntactic and morphological theory, and an introduction to historical linguistics. An extensive glossary gives definitions of the major technical terms used.

Part I. Historical Prelude: 1. Background and origins; 2. Indo-European to proto-Germanic to West Germanic; Part II. Old English Phonology: 3. Evolution of old English phonology: the major early sound changes; 4. Suprasegmentals; Part III. Morphophonemic Intermezzo: 5. Ablaut, laryngeals, and the IE root; Part IV. Morphology, Lexis and Syntax: 6. Inflectional morphology, I: Nouns, pronouns and adjectives; 7. Inflectional Morphology, II: The Verb; 8. Vocabulary and word-formation; 9. Topics in old English historical syntax: word-order and case; Part V. Historical Postlude: 10. The dissolution of old English; Glossary; References; Index.

Old English is a companion to Old English studies and to historical studies of early English in general. It is an accessible and linguistically up-to-date introduction to the Indo-European and Germanic background to Old English, as well as what can be reconstructed about Old English itself.