Glossary of terms.

Ablaut: the alliteration of sounds within a word that indicates grammatical information, as in English verbs (sing- sang- sung). Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: a collection of annals narrating the history of the Anglo-Saxons and their settlement in Britain. Much of the information consists of rumours of events that happened elsewhere, so many may be unreliable. The manuscripts were written in the South-West of England to be sent later to different parts of England. They were written in the 9th century, and 8 manuscripts have survived, as the Peterborough Chronicle or the Parker Chronicle, some of them having an entry for 60 BC recording Julius Caesars invasion of Britain. Bede: eminent priest and scholar who wrote Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, a chronicle describing the invasion of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes in England. It is written in Latin and completed in 731, and is a referent in understanding English peoples origins. Bell: scholar who distinguished seven criteria for distinguishing languages from other languages or dialects, being standardization, vitality, historicity, autonomy, reduction, mixture and de facto forms. Beowulf: (c. 700-1000 A.D.) is a heroic epic poem. At 3,182 lines, it is notable for its length in comparison to other Old English poems. It represents about 10% of the extant corpus of Old English poetry. The poem is untitled in the manuscript, but has been known as Beowulf since the early 19th century. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of a Germanic tribe from southern Sweden called the Geats, travels to Denmark to help defeat a monster named Grendel. He later returns to Geatland, where he becomes king, and when he is old he kills a dragon and dies. Although dealing primarily with Scandinavian matters, the work has risen to such prominence that it is sometimes called "England's national epic." British: native language of the Roman Britain, form the family of the Celtic languages, whose modern descendants are Welsh and Breton. Charter: A document incorporating an institution and specifying its rights; includes the articles of incorporation and the certificate of incorporation

Clitic: a morpheme that functions like a word, but appears not as an independent word but rather is always attached to a following or preceding word. In English, the possessive -'s is an example.

Cursor Mundi: (Messenger of the World) is a Middle-English anonymous religious poem of nearly 30,000 lines written around 1300 in the North of England. It narrates the story of the world as described in the Christian Bible, with additional legendary material. The different manuscripts reveal the differences between northern and Southern dialects, crucial for English history studies.

Danelaw: it was an area of England under the administrative control of the Vikings from the late 9th century. It is represented by a line going from London to Chester. The term is also used to describe the set of legal terms and definitions established between Alfred the Great and the Viking Guthrum, which were set down in agreements such as the Treaty of Gedmore which established a modus vivendi between the Anglo-Saxons and the Viking incomers.

Diacritics: A diacritical mark or diacritic, in some cases also called an accent mark, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. A diacritical mark can appear above or below a letter, or in some other position. Its main usage is to change the phonetic value of the letter to which it is added, but it may also be used to modify the pronunciation of a whole word or syllable, to distinguish between homographs, to make abbreviations or to change the meaning of a letter.

Diglossia: the coexistence of two closely related native languages among a certain population one of whom is regarded to be more respectable than the other.

Facsimile: from Latin fac-simile, to make similar, to make an exact copy. Germanic tribes: tribes coming from the north of Europe who settled in England. The Jutes settled in Kent and the Isle of Wight. The Angles in East Anglia, Middle Anglia, mercia and Northumbria. The Saxons did so in Essex, Suxssex and Wessex. Their leaders were the brothers Hengest and Horsa.

Grimms Law: or First Sound Shift, name given to one of the several changes occurred in the Germanic languages which made them differ from the IndoEuropean language.

Isogloss: A line of equal or constant linguistic feature on a graph, chart or map. Language contact: when speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence mutually.

Language convergence: the blending oftwo languages that are perceived as having equal social status.

Language shift: Language shift, sometimes referred to as language transfer or rate of assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The process whereby a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shift allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When a linguistic community ceases to use their original language, we speak of language death.

Language shift: sometimes referred to as language transfer or assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a given mother tongue who speak another language more often in the home. The data is used to measure the use of a given language in the lifetime of a person, or most often across generations within a linguistic community.

Legitimisation: selection of one variety of standard and its codification through historicisation (although recurring to myths) to give it status and rejecting the rest of varieties. It has an elitist and ideological character.

Levelling: linguistic process of regularisation through which inflections were lost amongst Middle English dialects. It was quicker in Northern and Midland dialects, in contrast to Southern and Western dialects. Mandevilles Travels: 14th century text written in South-East Midlands dialect. The original is written in French by a French author claiming to be born in England. It gives an idea of the standard literary language starting to be used.

Middle English: (1100-1500) name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of English language spoken between the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the 15th century, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become midespread through the introduction of the printing press in England by William Caxton in the 1770s. The dialects of Middle English are usually divided into four groups: Southern, East Midland, West Midland, and Northern.

Modern English: (1500-1950) term used for the contemporary use of the English language. This period overcame the English Renaissance and Golden Age, important literary features (Shakespeare), the Restoration of the Monarchy, the Industrial Revolution or Johnsons dictionary.

New Englishes: varieties of English which have developed with their own characteristics of vocabulary, spelling, grammas and pronunciation, as in parts of Africa, India, Pakistan, Philippines...

Old English: (700- 1100) an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and Southern Scotland between the middle 5th century and the mid 12th century. It is a West Germanic language and is similar to Old Frisian and Old Saxon.

Open-syllable lengthening: process that occurred in Old English that caused vowels to be lengthened in open syllables.

Ormulum: a 12th-century work of Biblical exegesis, written in East Midlands dialect verse by a monk named Orm. Because of the unique phonetic orthography adopted by the author, the work preserves many details of English pronunciation at a time when the language was in flux after the Norman Conquest; so despite its lack of literary merit, it is invaluable to philologists in tracing the development of English. Orm developed an idiosyncratic spelling system to tell his readers how to pronounce every vowel, using a strict poetic meter that ensured that readers would know which syllables were stressed. Modern scholars can use these two features to reconstruct Middle English.

Phonotactics: is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints. A word beginning with the consonant cluster (zv), for example, violates the phonotactics of English, but not of Russian.

Piers Plowman: a Middle English allegorical narrative by William Langland circa 1380 in the South-West Midlands variation of the West Midlands dialect. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse. Piers is considered one of the early great works of English literature. It is one of only a few Middle English poems that can stand comparison with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The poem is in part a theological allegory, in part a social satire.

Pure Saxon: romantic aspiration of some scholars who argue that Saxon was a pure and continuous language, rejecting the idea that it was rather a convergence of different dialects and languages such as Celtic.

Rune: a letter of an ancient Germanic alphabet used especially in Scandinavia. There were some runes present in old English texts.

Script: a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: a late 14th century alliterative romance recorded in a single manuscript, which also contains three other pieces of an altogether more Christian orientation. The four poems are linked by their use of a North or West Midland dialect of Middle English. The story embraces many elements central to Celtic mythology, the most prominent being the "severed head" theme, though it is also coloured by events of the time, chief amongst which was the Black Death.

Standard English: a variety of English not confined to any geographical region, which developed as a common system of writing. It is called educated speech, used in the press and the media, and also codified in dictionaries, grammars and taught at school.

Synchretism: the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. It is especially associated with the attempt to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in theology and methodology of religion, and thus assert and underlie unity. The Bestiary: verse text the second half of the 13th century in East Midlands dialect. It deals with an allegory of the animal world written with symbolical meanings with a religious basis. The Bruce: verse chronicle written by John Barbour in Scots dialect in the 14th century. It has 14,000 octosyllabic lines, is a narrative poem with a purpose partly historical, partly patriotic. It celebrates the praises of Robert the Bruce and the Black Douglas, the flowers of Scottish chivalry, opening with a description of the state of Scotland at the death of Alexander III (1286) and concluding with the death of Douglas and the burial of the Bruce's heart (1332). The Fox and the Wolf: early part of the 13th century Middle English text with Southern dialect influences indicated by the change of [a:] into [o:].

The Lay of Havelok the Dane: verse text written in late 13th century in East Midlands dialect (Linconshire). It has 3000 lines in octosyllabic couplets, with ON and OF influences.

The Owl and the Nightingale: Middle English poem written probably by Nicholas de Guildford of Dorsetshire about the end of the 12th cent in SouthEastern dialect, but with a South-West Midland colouring. Written in 2,000 lines of octosyllabic couplets, it describes a debate between the sober owl and the merry nightingale as to their respective merits. It still uses inflections and there are few scandinavisms and French words.

The Pearl: one of four Middle English alliterative poems, all contained in a manuscript of c.1400, composed in the West Midland dialect, almost certainly by the same anonymous author, who flourished c.13701390. The Pearl is usually explained as an elegy for the poet's young daughter; in an allegorical vision of singular beauty he sees her as a maiden in paradise and becomes reconciled to her death. The other manuscripts are Cleanness, Patience and Sir Gawayn.

Variation: term related to the fact that languages are not homogeneous. They have internal changes, but also changes produced by the users of the language throughout history. It has to do with political, social or geographical factors.

Variety: of a language is a form that differs from other forms of the language systematically and coherently.

Wealas: also walas, name given by the Germanic invaders to the own native inhabitants of England. The manu means foreigners, thus showing the status of the Britons under the Anglo-Saxon rule.

West Saxon: one of the four different dialects spoken in old English time. The other three were Kentish, Mercian and Northumbrian.

York Mystery Plays: cycle of forty-eight Mystery Plays based on stories taken from the Bible, performed around Corpus Christi day in the city of York, England, from the Middle Ages until 1569. They are written in Northern dialect, but East Midlands modifications suggest the beginning of a standardised system of spelling.