Since the dates are given in Latin, and the Latin way saying the date is a little unusual from a modern point of view, here is a short explanation of how it works:
https://www.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_write_dates_in_Latin wrote:Each Roman month only has names for three days: the kalends of the 1st day, the nones of the 9th, and the ides of the 15th. In the rest of the month, the days are given numbers according to how far away they are from the particular day. So after the kalends, the numbers count the number of days before the nones. After the nones, the countdown is to the ides. After the ides, the countdown is to the kalends of the next month.
This means that the date given in the first text, .iii. nonas Aprelis, is the sixth of April. Unless they count like the Greeks did, in which case it is the seventh. I know I have a thorough explanation of the Latin date system in a book somewhere, but unfortunately, I can't remember where.
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I was a little curious about the statement "Old English often placed the verb in second position with the subject following" on page 5. Is this an indirect way of saying that Old English was a V2 language? (V2 = in main clauses, the verb always takes the second position (technically, is the second constituent) of the clause, demoting the subject to the third position whenever another constituent, typically an adverbial phrase, is promoted to the first position). Checking in the "Old English Grammar" (Quirk/Wrenn) which I got at the library yesterday, V2 isn't mentioned there either, but they do say (p. 92 in the 1994 edition) that SVO order is typical, but that VSO is more usual if certain adverbs come first. Again, this seems like V2, but they also say that the word order is quite variable and that it is therefore difficult to state more than tendencies concerning word order. The same pages informs us that in the case of compound verbs, the second element will come directly afterwards (like in Scandinavian languages) or at the end (like in German).
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Thinking about studying Old English has made me remember a piece of research that was making headlines a while back. Originally I couldn't remember who and when, but I have now managed to dig it up, and there is a book ("English: The Language of the vikings") as well as a summary of the book in an article ("English as North Germanic") by Joseph E. Emonds and Jan Terje Faarlund.
lavengro wrote:I have recklessly signed on to IronMike’s challenge of a four week stomp through Old English, which begins today. I assumed this would be pretty simple, based on the mistaken impression that Old English is exactly identical to Modern English except with a bunch of "forsooths" and "egads" thrown in for dramatic effect. But I am now getting the sense that this impression was not entirely accurate.....
Faarlund and Emonds would probably tell you that you would be better off trying to read Old Norse. Their theory is, as the titles suggest, that modern English should be considered a branch of the North Germanic group, i.e. Scandinavian. I know that the theory is contested, but I still think the article is well worth reading, and that it will be especially interesting to read while learning Old English (however, please note that this is my opinion of it
before reading it myself). If anyone else is interested, the article can be downloaded for free here:
https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1 ... e-p1_1.xml("Download PDF" didn't work for me, I had to use the DOI link)
So far to me it is very Germanic, which makes sense. Thanks for that article link, Mista. Gonna read it now.