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This course offers an introduction to Old English (OE), the version of English spoken between the Germanic invasions (the traditional date is 449) and the Norman Conquest. We will first recapitulate the historical backdrop of the period (as is closely linked to some of the linguistic developments of OE) and will set the stage for an investigation of OE by looking at the predecessors of OE, viz., Indo-European and Germanic. Then we will review the different linguistic levels of OE, in particular, phonetics/phonology incl. spelling, morphology, syntax, semantics, and lexicon. We will also read short sections from original OE texts, both prose and poetry, but with a focus on the linguistic aspects of the texts. |
