1. King Khalid University 1st Semester 1432-1433 H
Faculty of Science & Arts, Bisha History of English Language: Mid-Term: 2
Department of English Marks: 10 (50 pts/5=10)
Answer Key
1- Put (T) for the true statements and (F) for the false ones and explain briefly: (15 pts)
The Norman Conquest made no changes to the structure of the society in Britain. (F)
The Norman Conquest changed the social structure. The Old English nobility was practically wiped
out and the important positions and the great estates were almost always held by Normans.
During Norman England, the distinction between those who spoke French and those who spoke (F)
English was only ethnic.
The distinction between those who spoke French and those who spoke English was not ethnic but largely
social; that English was an uncultivated tongue, the language of a socially inferior class.
The Names “England” and “English” are named after the Angles. (T)
Although the Saxons were the dominant group, the new nation gradually came to be known as England and
its language as English, after the rather more obscure Angles.
When the Normans came to France, they soon absorbed the most important elements of (T)
French civilization
The Normans had soon absorbed the most important elements of French civilization; they accepted
Christianity and soon gave up their own language and learned French.
Middle English grammar was simpler than Old English grammar. (T)
The grammar of Middle English is much closer to that of modern English than that of Old English. The
changes in English grammar may be described as a general reduction of inflections.
Middle English is called Anglo-Norman. (T)
Middle English is called Anglo-Norman because it is a mixture of Old English and French
The gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex. (T)
As in Indo-European languages generally, the gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon
considerations of sex. Although nouns designating males are often masculine and those indicating females
feminine, those indicating neuter objects are not necessarily neuter. Stān (stone) is masculine, mōna (moon)
is masculine, but sunne (sun) is feminine, as in German.
Middle English inherited all its pronouns from Old English. (F)
Middle English inherits its pronouns from Old English, with the exception of the third person plural. The first
and second person pronouns in Old English survived into Middle English largely unchanged, with only minor
spelling variations.
Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article (T)
The article changes according the number and case of the noun that it modifies.
History of English Language: Mid-Term: 2 Page 1 of 3

2. 2- Fill in the gabs in the following statements: (15 pts)
• The Norman Conquest started when William had won the battle of Hastings
• Celtic was probably the first Indo-European tongue to be spoken in England.
• The Germanic tribes that conquered England were the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles
• In Spain and Gaul the Roman occupation resulted in entirely new languages, Spanish and
French , but in Britain they left barely five words, while the Celts left no more than twenty
• The vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic
• In its grammar Old English resembles modern German
• A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great
classes, the weak and the strong
• The inflection of the Old English noun indicates distinctions of number and case
3- Write short notes on TWO only of the following: (6 pts)
• Middle English as a creole that started as a pidgin
• Inflectional languages fall into two classes.
• Old and Middle English Literature.
• Middle English was a creole. A pidgin is a simplified language used for
communication between speakers of different languages. If the simplified language
is then learned as a first language by a new generation, it is known as a creole.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
• Inflectional languages fall into two classes: synthetic and analytic.
A synthetic language is one that indicates the relation of words in a sentence
largely by means of inflections: endings on the noun and pronoun, the adjective
and the verb. Languages that make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary
verbs and depend upon word order to show other relationships are known
as analytic languages.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
• Old English Literature: The greatest single work of Old English literature
is Beowulf. It is a poem of some 3,000 lines belonging to the type known as the
folk epic.
Middle English Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 –1400), known as the
Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of
the Middle Ages. Among his many works, which, he is best loved today for The
Canterbury Tales.
History of English Language: Mid-Term: 2 Page 2 of 3

3. 4- Account for TWO of these characteristics: (4 pts)
• gōd mann and sē gōda mann.
• "name" and "namen".
• ich here, þou spekest, and he comeþ.
• In Old English: gōd mann (good man) as the noun has no definite article, and sē
gōda mann (the good man) because the noun has a definite article (sē) befor it.
• In Middle English: "name" for the singular. and "namen" for the plural. The noun
retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system
of inflection in Old English.
• In Middle English: ("ich here" - "I hear"), the first person singular of verbs in the
present tense ends in –e, ("þou spekest" - "thou speakest"), the second person in -
(e)st), and ("he comeþ" - "he cometh/he comes") the third person in -eþ
5- Answer TWO of these questions: (5 pts)
• What are some of the Old English vocabularies that survive in modern English?
• How do you account with example for the triplicate synonymy of English?
• What are the main characteristics of the Grammar of Old English?
• A large part of Old English vocabulary, moreover, has disappeared from the
language. However, those that survive are basic elements of our vocabulary like
mann (man), wīf (wife, woman), cild (child), hūs (house), weall (wall), mete (meat,
food), gœrs (grass), lēaf (leaf), fugol (fowl, bird), gōd (good), hēah (high), strang
(strong), etan (eat), drincan (drink).
• The Middle English period was a period of trilingual activity. This developed much
of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern English. For instance, English has
three words meaning roughly "of or relating to a king":kingly from Old English,
royal from French and regal from Latin.
• Old English was a synthetic language. In its grammar Old English resembles
modern German. Theoretically the noun and adjective are inflected for four cases
in the singular and four in the plural, although the forms are not always distinctive,
and in addition the adjective has separate forms for each of the three genders. The
inflection of the verb is less elaborate than that of the Latin verb, but there are
distinctive endings for the different persons, numbers, tenses, and moods.
6- Match column A with column B: (5 pts)
B About the year 449 A. The Roman conquest of the England
D analytic B. The Germanic Conquest
C in 1066 C. the Norman Conquest
A in A.D. 43 D. Modern English language
E synthetic E. Old English a language
- the bands of Northmen
History of English Language: Mid-Term: 2 Page 3 of 3