Thesis advisor: Michael J. Connolly / Old English, Old Norse (both Danish and Norwegian variants), Latin, Old French and various Celtic languages have influenced the development of the Scots language in different ways than they have British Standard English due to Scotland’s unique political relationships with each of these cultures. This paper explores the linguistic developments of these interactions, drawing examples from the Scottish poem Sir Patrick Spence, place names in Scotland, and other sources, with especial focus on the Germanic languages. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Slavic and Eastern Languages.

<p>In this paper, relative clauses in King Alfred’s Old English translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care were examined using relative frequency as a tool to determine whether or not certain factors influenced the choice of relativization strategy. These factors include antecedent case, antecedent gender, antecedent number, distance, animacy, noun phrase type, case of relativized NP, and syntactic function.</p><p>The method involved gathering together all the occurrences of relative clauses using the Old English corpus and a Modern English translation. This process was not unproblematic as the correct translation from Old English to modern English sometimes was left to the discretion of the translator. Some clauses that were initially thought to be relative clauses were, in fact, not relative clauses. The components of each of the clauses were then examined and categorized after any problematic examples were discarded. Relative frequencies for each of the categories were calculated and chi-square tests were performed to check the reliability of the results.</p><p>The results of this paper were compared to another paper which did somewhat similar research to determine if the findings were consistent although that paper did not look at as many factors as this paper.</p>

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This thesis uses a study of the collocation of words for treasure to address the question of the relationship between the conventionality and originality of Old English verse. Collocation will be defined as the tendency for words to appear together. Such a definition allows for the examination of patterns of repetition beyond the half-line while also including the half-line formula thereby including stylistic features which have been considered, negatively, as constraints and restrictions on the freedom of the Old English poet, as well as other stylistic features which have been considered positively, as evidence of the rhetorical skill of the Old English poet. Rather than restrict the number of poems which I study, I have chosen to restrict the number of words to five words (mađm, hord, gestreon, sinc and frætwe) for treasure. This restriction allows for a wide spectrum of Old English verse to be examined since the words appear widely throughout the corpus. I hope thus to avoid the tendency common in scholarship to study not the whole of Old English poetry but to focus on Beowulf and verse at one time thought to be at least partly heroic. With few exceptions, the study of the style of Old English verse has largely ignored meaning. The restriction of this study to five words will allow for comments on stylistic features to be drawn with reference not only to the needs of verse form but with careful attention to the subtlety of the semantic fields of the words involved. In Chapter One, I review past scholarship on the lexis and style of Old English Verse with particular emphasis on the question of conventionality and originality. Chapter Two examines the place of treasure in Old English verse. Chapter Three focuses on the semantic analysis of the five words for treasure. I devote attention to the referents of each word and also include an account of such semantic aspects as nuance, connotation and themes associated with each word. Chapter Four consists of a study of the lexical collocations associated with each of these five words for treasure. Chapter Five considers the implications of the collocations of words for treasure for the conventionality and originality of the style and lexis of Old English verse. The conclusion attempts to comment on the style and quality of individual Old English poems. Lexical collocation is an aspect of lexis and style which has been largely ignored and which offers a new vantage point from which to consider Old English poetics further.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [403]-432).

Thesis (doctoral)--Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin, 1902. / Published in full in Palaestra ; 37. Vita.

abstract: I investigate how complementizers, which connect subordinate clauses to the main sentence, develop from other parts of speech, namely prepositions and adverbs. This occurs by the process of grammaticalization, in which a word loses lexicality and gains grammatical function instead. I use computer-based corpus analysis to determine how often certain words are used as each part of speech in my selected texts, and whether they are accompanied by other grammatical words. I use two Old English glosses of the Latin gospels, the Rushworth and Lindisfarne glosses, in order to analyze possible diachronic and geographical differences between the texts. I demonstrate that prepositions develop into adverbs and thence into complementizers with the assistance of certain grammatical accessory words which are later lost. This occurs by the process of reanalysis, in which the language user interprets a word or phrase differently than before. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. English 2010

Although the significant influence of lecturers’ beliefs on their practices in the classroom is well known, not much is known about teachers’ beliefs and the extent to which they influence reading instructional techniques (Woods, 2006). Furthermore, no comprehensive studies have been carried out in the context of Libyan universities, where lecturers in English are non-native speakers of the language and have only minimal resources and limited access to published research and scholarship regarding this topic. The present qualitative study aims to fill this gap in knowledge, considering contextual factors such as limited access to expert knowledge, a fixed curriculum, time restrictions and the isolation of lecturers, in an analysis of the beliefs that lecturers in English hold and the correspondence between these beliefs and their teaching practices. The study explores the factors that shape lecturers’ beliefs and examines the relationship between their beliefs and practices. Twenty-three unstructured observation sessions were conducted with male and female lecturers teaching English reading. Each class was observed 3 times, giving a total of 69 classes. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty male and female lecturers. The observation and interview data were analysed inspired by grounded theory. The findings revealed that lecturers held a variety of beliefs, and these did not always inform their practices in the classroom. This study provides a more in-depth understanding of the multifaceted relationship between what lecturers believe and what they practise regarding the teaching of English reading. The study acknowledges the themes of the differences and similarities between lecturers’ beliefs and practices, with observations such as ‘lecturers knew, but did not do’; ‘lecturers did, but were not aware that they did’; and ‘lecturers did, and they knew’. In addition, the study demonstrates that correspondence between beliefs and practices does not necessarily result in positive pedagogical consequences, while a lack of such correspondence may not have negative results. The research also reveals that, irrespective of the relationships between beliefs and practices, the underpinning rationales are linked to the complex relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and practices and a range of other factors. The findings of this study could be of benefit to both current and future EFL lecturers of reading and should also provide directions for further research in this field.

While the political and social spaces of Old English literature are fairly well understood, this project examines the conceptual spaces in Old English poetry. The Anglo-Saxons possessed a richly metaphorical understanding of the world, not merely in the sense of artistically ornamental metaphor, but in Lakoff and Johnson's sense of conceptual metaphor, which reflects the structures of thought through which a culture understands their world. Three domains exhibit developed systems of conceptual metaphor for the Anglo-Saxons: the self, death, and the world. First, the Anglo-Saxon self is composed of four distinct entities--body, mind, soul, and a life-force--which each behave independently as they compete for control in poems like The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Soul and Body. Second, death for the Anglo-Saxon is expressed through a number of metaphors involving the status or placement of the body: removal to a distant place; separation of the body and the soul; location down on or within the earth; and the loss of life as a possession. Predominance of a particular metaphor contributes to the effects of individual poems, from The Fates of the Apostles and Beowulf to The Battle of Maldon and The Wife's Lament. Third, the Anglo-Saxon world is a large structure like a building, with its three primary components--heaven, hell, and earth--each themselves presented as building-like structures. Old English poetry, including native versions of Genesis, reveal heaven to be a protective Anglo-Saxon hall, while hell is a cold prison. The earth, in poems like Christ II and Guthlac B, is either a wide plain or a comforting house. Christ I connects these worlds through gates, including Mary, characterized as a wall-door. Finally, the apocalyptic Christ III employs metaphorical spaces for all three conceptual domains treated in this study but dramatizes their breakdown even as it reveals spatial enclosure the overarching structure of metaphorical concepts in Old English poetry.

This thesis compiles a working corpus of Anglo-Saxon self-referential inscribed artifacts to examine how the inscriptions and supports utilize self-reference to push the viewer to understand the social and cultural significance of such objects. The inscriptions fall into two broad categories: personal inscriptions reinforce the prestige of the makers, owners, and commissioners associated with them, while impersonal inscriptions authorize philosophical and social discourse through the adoption of literary and oral types (i.e. genres). In addition to an analysis of specific artifacts—ranging from diminutive rings to monumental stone crosses—I provide a quantitative analysis that illustrates the different uses of languages, scripts, and object types. As opposed to literary texts, self-referential inscribed objects create internally complete hermeneutic units that connect the text’s discursive meaning with the function and significance of the thing itself. The inscriptions and their supports structure knowledge about Anglo-Saxon social relationships, liturgical practices, and cultural wisdom.