1. Old English or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the______?
A:) mid-6th century
B:) Early-7th century
C:) mid-7th century
D:) early 8th century
springline- Correct option: C:) mid-7th century
2. The Norman conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, as the language of the upper classes by Anglo-Norman, a relative of French. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and______
A:) East Midland
B:) Scotland
C:) Roman
D:) France
springline- Correct option: B:) Scotland
3. Middle English (abbreviated to ME) was a form of the English language spoken after the Norman conquest (1066) until the late 15th century Scholarly opinion varies, but the Oxford English Dictionary specifies the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and_____
A:) punctuation
B:) semiotics
C:) syntax
D:) orthography
springline- Correct option: D:) orthography
4. The more standardized Old English language became fragmented, localized, and was, for the most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470) and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery StandarD:) had become established. Scots developed concurrently from a variant of the ____?
A:) Northumbrian dialect
B:) Welsh English
C:) Yorkshire Dialect
D:) Manx English
springline- Correct option: A:) Northumbrian dialect
5. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs. Little survives of early Middle English literature, due in part to Norman domination and the prestige that came with writing in _______?
A:) Middle English
B:) French
C:) Latin
D:) Greek
springline- Correct option: B:) French
6. Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle and Modern English would develop mainly from ______
A:) Wessex
B:) Welsh
C:) Persian
D:) Mercian
springline- Correct option: D:) Mercian
7. The Ormulum, a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of the 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group, religious texts written for anchoresses, apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the_____
A:) XY language
B:) AZ language
C:) ABC language
D:) AB language
springline- Correct option: D:) AB language
8. As such, Old English was a ‘thoroughly Germanic cousin of Dutch and German’, unrecognisable as English today. As the Germanic settlers became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain: Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Latin, brought to Britain by _____
A:) Roman invasion
B:) Norman invasion
C:) French invasion
D:) German invasion
springline- Correct option: A:) Roman invasion
9. Within Old English grammar nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms, and word order is much freer. The oldest Old English inscriptions were written using a runic system, but from about the 8th century this was replaced by a version of the ____?
A:) Greek Alphabet
B:) German alphabet
C:) Latin alphabet
D:) Hebrew alphabet
springline- Correct option: C:) Latin alphabet
10. The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Which had no standard language, only dialects that derived from the dialects of the same regions in the Anglo-Saxon period?
A:) Middle English
B:) Cumbrian dialect
C:) Yorkshire dialect
D:) Caxton
springline- Correct option: A:) Middle English
11. From around the early 14th century, there was significant migration into London, particularly from the counties of the East Midlands. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt, a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a _______?
A:) Cumbrian dialect
B:) Manx English
C:) Kentish dialect
D:) Scots dialects
springline- Correct option: C:) Kentish dialect
12. In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland, an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect. The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote in the second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in the_______?
A:) Reeve's Tale
B:) Miller’s Tale
C:) Squire’s Tale
D:) Cook’s Tale
springline- Correct option: A:) Reeve's Tale
13. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is an arbitrary process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflexions, a ______?
A:) European language
B:) Semitics language
C:) synthetic language
D:) Aryan language
springline- Correct option: C:) synthetic language
14. Celtic speech also remained established in certain parts of England: Medieval Cornish was spoken all over Cornwall and in adjacent parts of Devon, while Cumbric survived perhaps to the 12th century in parts of Cumbria, and Welsh may have been spoken on the English side of the Anglo-Welsh border. Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under _____?
A:) Danish law
B:) Norse law
C:) Saxon law
D:) Greek law
springline- Correct option: A:) Danish law
15. Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea GermaniC:) dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the _______?
A:) 6th century
B:) 7th century
C:) 8th century
D:) 9th century
springline- Correct option: B:) 7th century
16. The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c.1430 in official documents that, since the Norman Conquest, had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East-Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and _______?
A:) Greek
B:) Scandinavian
C:) Latin
D:) Italy
springline- Correct option: C:) Latin
17. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer_____?
A:) Richard Pynson
B:) Steven Pinker
C:) Michael Tomasello
D:) Johanna Nichols
springline- Correct option: A:) Richard Pynson
18. Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English, before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns. This derives from the Old English ‘weak’ declension of ___?
A:) noun
B:) adjectives
C:) objects
D:) verb
springline- Correct option: B:) adjectives
19. Another source of loanwords was Old Norse, which came into contact with Old English via the Scandinavian rulers and settlers in the Danelaw from the late 9th century, and during the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the early 11th century. Many place-names in eastern and northern England are origin of ______?
A:) Scandinavian
B:) French
C:) Hebrew
D:) Greek
springline- Correct option: A:) Scandinavian
20. Nouns decline for five cases : nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental; three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and two numbers: singular, and plural; and are strong or weak. There is also sparse early Northumbrian evidence of a sixth case: the locative. The evidence comes from Northumbrian ______?
A:) Hebrew texts
B:) Runic texts
C:) medieval texts
D:) antique
springline- Correct option: B:) Runic texts
21. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between the old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as ________ ?
A:) yogh
B:) yogi
C:) yego
D:) yoeh
springline- Correct option: A:) yogh
22. The Verbs conjugate for three persons: first, second, and third; two numbers: singular, plural; two tenses: present, and past; three moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative; and are strong (exhibiting ablaut) or weak (exhibiting a dental suffix). Verbs have two infinitive forms: bare and_______?
A:) bard
B:) bound
C:) folk
D:) word
springline- Correct option: B:) bound
23. Old English was first written in runes, using the futhorc—a rune set derived from the Germanic 24-character elder futhark, extended by five more runes used to represent Anglo-Saxon vowel sounds and sometimes by several more additional characters. From around the 8th century, the runic system came to be supplanted by a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by _____ ?
A:) Greek Christian missionaries
B:) German Christian missionaries
C:) French Christian missionaries
D:) Irish Christian missionaries
springline- Correct option: D:) Irish Christian missionaries
24. The corpus of Old English literature is small but still significant, with some 400 surviving manuscripts. The pagan and Christian streams mingle in Old English, one of the richest and most significant bodies of literature preserved among the early Germanic peoples. Some of the most important surviving works of Old English literature are Beowulf, an _____ ?
A:) folk-epic
B:) mock-epic
C:) Religious poem
D:) literary-epic
springline- Correct option: A:) folk-epic
25. The opening lines of the Beowulf, a poem of some 3,000 lines and the single greatest work of Old English. This passage describes how Hrothgar's legendary ancestor Scyld was found as a baby, washed ashore, and adopted by a noble family. The translation is literal and represents the original poetic word order. As such, it is not typical of ____?
A:) Old English poetry
B:) Old English prose
C:) Middle English Poetry
D:) Middle English Prose
springline- Correct option: B:) Old English prose
26. Old English lexicography was revived in the early modern period, drawing heavily on Anglo-Saxons' own glossaries. The major publication at this time was William Somner's Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum. The next substantial Old English dictionary was Joseph Bosworth's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of _______
A:) 1836
B:) 1837
C:) 1838
D:) 1839
springline- Correct option: C:) 1838
27. Old English language, also called Anglo-Saxon, language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of ______
A:) West Germanic languages
B:) East Germanic Language
C:) Indo-European Language
D:) West European Language
springline- Correct option: A:) West Germanic languages
28. Four dialects of the Old English language are known: Northumbrian in northern England and southeastern Scotland; Mercian in central England; Kentish in southeastern England; and West Saxon in southern and southwestern England. Mercian and Northumbrian are often classed together as the ______?
A:) American dialects
B:) East Midland
C:) Anglian dialects
D:) Sussex
springline- Correct option: C:) Anglian dialects
29. In contrast to Modern English, Old English had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) in the noun and adjective, and nouns, pronouns, and adjectives were inflected for case. Noun and adjective paradigms contained four cases—nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative—while pronouns also had forms for the instrumental case. Old English had a greater proportion of ______?
A:) pure verbs
B:) vowels
C:) Weak verbs
D:) strong verbs
springline- Correct option: D:) strong verbs
30. After the Norman conquest of England, Law French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and society. The Norman dialects of the ruling classes mixed with the Anglo-Saxon of the people and became Anglo-Norman, and Anglo-Saxon underwent a gradual transition into_______ ?
A:) East Midland
B:) Middle English
C:) West Midland
D:) Modern English
springline- Correct option: B:) Middle English