This basic introduction to Old English is an essential guide for students with little or no linguistic knowledge. Unlike other textbooks on the subject, Beginning Old English focuses on the explanation and demonstration of how the language works, using accessible illustrations from simplified Old English texts and showing how many features of present-day English have their roots in this stage of the language. Beginning Old English - builds up reading skills by using simple texts to support the acquisition of key vocabulary and to develop awareness of language structure - offers an introduction to the conventions of Old English poetry and how they are realised across different genres: religious verse, riddles, elegies and heroic poetry - explores issues in the translation of Old English verse - guides the reader through four major texts: Cynewulf and Cyneheard, Beowulf (extract), The Battle of Maldon and The Dream of the Rood - features activities, glossaries, illustrations and a Further Reading section. Concise and approachable, this invaluable text will appeal to anyone with an interest in the early history of English language and literature. This is a simple introduction to Old English for students with little linguistic knowledge. Unlike other textbooks, Beginning Old English focuses on the explanation of how the language works, using accessible illustrations from Old English texts and showing how features of present-day English have their roots in this stage of the language. Assumes no previous linguistic knowledge Second edition updated and revised to take advantage of the availability of digital and online resources, such as the Electronic Beowulf and Learning with the Online Thesaurus of Old English A new chapter, Introducing Old English Prose, added to Part I, complements the existing chapter on Introducing Old English Poetry, by analysing the extent to which different prose genres draw on the techniques of poetry Two new texts, The Ruin and AElfric's Life of St AEthelthryth, have been added to Part II, which provides graded readings from simplified texts to canonical works in Old English (contains long extracts from Beowulf, Cynewulf and Cyneheard, The Battle of Maldon and The Dream of the Rood)

In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. All known languages make use of names, most commonly to identify individual people and places. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

The relationship between Anglo-Saxon kingship, law, and the functioning of power is explored via a number of different angles. The essays collected here focus on how Anglo-Saxon royal authority was expressed and disseminated, through laws, delegation, relationships between monarch and Church, and between monarchs at times of multiple kingships and changing power ratios. Specific topics include the importance of kings in consolidating the English "nation"; the development of witnesses as agents of the king's authority; the posthumous power of monarchs; how ceremonial occasions wereused for propaganda reinforcing heirarchic, but mutually beneficial, kingships; the implications of Ine's lawcode; and the language of legislation when English kings were ruling previously independent territories, and the delegation of local rule. The volume also includes a groundbreaking article by Simon Keynes on Anglo-Saxon charters, looking at the origins of written records, the issuing of royal diplomas and the process, circumstances, performance and function of production of records. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Ann Williams, Alexander R. Rumble, Carole Hough, Andrew Rabin, Barbara Yorke, Ryan Lavelle, Alaric Trousdale

In this handbook, scholars from around the world offer an up-to-date account of the state of the art in different areas of onomastics, in a format that is both useful to specialists in related fields and accessible to the general reader. Since Ancient Greece, names have been regarded as central to the study of language, and this has continued to be a major theme of both philosophical and linguistic enquiry throughout the history of Western thought. The investigation of name origins is more recent, as is the study of names in literature. Relatively new is the study of names in society, which draws on techniques from sociolinguistics and has gradually been gathering momentum over the last few decades. The structure of this volume reflects the emergence of the main branches of name studies, in roughly chronological order. The first Part focuses on name theory and outlines key issues about the role of names in language, focusing on grammar, meaning, and discourse. Parts II and III deal with the study of place-names and personal names respectively, while Part IV outlines contrasting approaches to the study of names in literature, with case studies from different languages and time periods. Part V explores the field of socio-onomastics, with chapters relating to the names of people, places, and commercial products. Part VI then examines the interdisciplinary nature of name studies, before the concluding Part presents a selection of animate and inanimate referents ranging from aircraft to animals, and explains the naming strategies adopted for them.

This volume offers an empirical and diachronic investigation of the foundations and nature of metaphor in English. Metaphor is one of the hot topics in present-day linguistics, with a huge range of research focusing on the systematic connections between different concepts such as heat and anger (fuming, inflamed), sight and understanding (clear, see), or bodies and landscape (hill-foot, river-mouth). Until recently, the lack of a comprehensive data source made it difficult to obtain an overview of this phenomenon in any language, but this changed with the completion in 2009 of The Historical Thesaurus of English, the only historical thesaurus ever produced for any language. Chapters in this volume use this unique resource as a basis for case studies of semantic domains including Animals, Colour, Death, Fear, Food, Reading, and Theft, providing a significant step forward in the data-driven understanding of metaphor.

This volume comprises essays in lexicography, lexicology and semantics by leading international experts in these fields. The contributions cover Old, Middle and Present-Day English and Scots, and specific subjects include medical vocabulary, colour lexemes, and semantic and pragmatic meaning in terms for politeness, money and humour. In the area of Old English studies there are articles on kinship terminology and colour lexemes, and in Middle English a semantic and syntactic study of the overlapping of the verbs dreden and douten. Many of the essays make use of the Historical Thesaurus of English project at the University of Glasgow, and pay tribute to its Director, Professor Christian Kay; e.g., one article demonstrates how the HTE, a project which is at the interface between historical semantics and lexicography, may present a rich resource for information about the lexicalization of concepts within our culture, such as changing social attitudes in the area of will, consent and coercion. Other resources, such as The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, and the Oxford English Dictionary provide a rich source for information on historical lexicography, semantics and editing. A number of essays concern the Scots language, such as an analysis of evaluative terms in modern Scots speech and writing, the rich potential of rhyme in Scots, and the role of lexicon in th- fronting in Glaswegian.

This basic introduction to Old English is an essential guide for students with little or no linguistic knowledge. Unlike other textbooks on the subject, Beginning Old English focuses on the explanation and demonstration of how the language works, using accessible illustrations from simplified Old English texts and showing how many features of present-day English have their roots in this stage of the language. Beginning Old English - builds up reading skills by using simple texts to support the acquisition of key vocabulary and to develop awareness of language structure - offers an introduction to the conventions of Old English poetry and how they are realised across different genres: religious verse, riddles, elegies and heroic poetry - explores issues in the translation of Old English verse - guides the reader through four major texts: Cynewulf and Cyneheard, Beowulf (extract), The Battle of Maldon and The Dream of the Rood - features activities, glossaries, illustrations and a Further Reading section. Concise and approachable, this invaluable text will appeal to anyone with an interest in the early history of English language and literature. This is a simple introduction to Old English for students with little linguistic knowledge. Unlike other textbooks, Beginning Old English focuses on the explanation of how the language works, using accessible illustrations from Old English texts and showing how features of present-day English have their roots in this stage of the language. Assumes no previous linguistic knowledge Second edition updated and revised to take advantage of the availability of digital and online resources, such as the Electronic Beowulf and Learning with the Online Thesaurus of Old English A new chapter, Introducing Old English Prose, added to Part I, complements the existing chapter on Introducing Old English Poetry, by analysing the extent to which different prose genres draw on the techniques of poetry Two new texts, The Ruin and AElfric's Life of St AEthelthryth, have been added to Part II, which provides graded readings from simplified texts to canonical works in Old English (contains long extracts from Beowulf, Cynewulf and Cyneheard, The Battle of Maldon and The Dream of the Rood)