An introduction to Old English.(Book Review)

An introduction to Old English. (Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language) By Richard Hogg. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002. Pp. ix, 163.

A mere half a century ago knowledge of the history of English was considered one of the basic requirements for someone graduating in English studies. Karl Brunner's two-volume Die Englische Sprache (1960-1962) was intended as a standard university textbook, and Alistair Campbell in the preface to his Old English Grammar (1959) pointed out with almost palpable regret that the scope of his book is clearly limited. Since that day historical linguistics in its classical, philological form has been ever on the defense (cf. Frank 1997 on the more general issue of the face of philology as such), and its revival in the 1980s was in fact birth of a new historical linguistics, variationist, sociolinguistic, speaker-oriented. Campbell and Brunner would probably be appalled at the very thought of a textbook on the history of English, even an introductory one, with virtually no phonological content. Today such an idea not so much as falses an eye-brow; in fact, it is looked upon as a most welcome development. Such is signum temporis in an age when not just historical linguistics but linguistics itself fights for curricular survival at many universities.

Richard Hogg's An introduction to Old English (Edinburgh University Press, 2002), consists of ten chapters, followed by an Old English glossary, a glossary of linguistic terms used in the book, and an index. However, despite this traditionally-looking table of contents the layout of the book is all but traditional. It is determined by its intended readership, "students for whom this is the first experience of the language of the earliest period of English" (Hogg 2002: viii). To this specification one may safely add "and for whom linguistics is to a large extent an uncharted territory". Hogg's idea is to equip the reader with just enough information to start him on his way, and to do this in a relatively short time (the book is designed to serve a one-semester introductory course).

The first chapter of the book (pp. 1-12) introduces basic facts about the history of the Anglo-Saxons, as well as a very brief discussion of the pronunciation of Old English. The next two chapters (pp. 13-38) deal with the inflection of noun phrase constituents, while Chapters Four and Five (pp. 39-67) discuss verbal conjugations together with a short phonological aside. Syntactical issues are covered in Chapters Six and Seven (pp. 68-101), vocabulary--which includes word-formation--constitutes Chapter Eight (pp. 102-114), while in Chapter Nine (pp. 115-127) the aspects of linguistic variation in Old English are presented. The main body of the book closes with Chapter Ten (pp. 128-137), where Hogg points out developments which were to change the structure of Old English in the Middle English period.

To a traditionalist such a layout may seem outrageous, however, if the principal objective of the book is understanding written Old English at the lower-intermediate level, detailed phonological analyses are not necessary, unlike issues of word order or affixation, usually ignored or glossed over in standard textbooks. Reading Hogg's Introduction ... Alcuin would probably mutter approvingly, "Quid fractura cum Christo ...?" Nevertheless, as if is intended as a starting point for a more detailed study of Old English, at least in some places the author seems to have gone a bit too far in his attempts at making if as user-friendly as possible. The discussion of Old English pronunciation gives the impression of being somewhat hasty and disorganised. From personal experience I have repeatedly seen that students do appreciate, and indeed demand, straightforward, precise lists of graphophonemic correspondences, and Chapter One would definitely benefit largely from such a summary, even if in the form of an optional appendix.

Similarly, the closing chapter seems a little out of synch with ...