SELIM 
Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature

Revista de la Sociedad Española de Lengua y Literatura Inglesa Medieval

Nº 
Oviedo, 

Edited by - Dirigida por 
Trinidad Guzmán & S. G. Fernández-Corugedo

Universidad de Oviedo &
Sociedad Española de Lengua y Literatura Inglesa Medieval

Oviedo – Murcia 



Clara Molina & Manuela Romano, Selim  (): –ISSN: 1132–631X

OLD TEXTS IN NEW VESSELS: 
TEACHING AND LEARNING HEL ONLINE

Abstract
University education is nowadays undergoing exhaustive revision under the auspices of 
the European Higher Education Area reform initiative. More oen than not, proposals 
for teaching/learning improvement are linked to technological innovations. ICT provide 
platforms that foster autonomous learning while training students in technological 
competences without which they are severely impaired today. Online teaching/learning is 
therefore not only more dynamic than traditional methodologies, but also in line with the 
ECTS amework, which contemplates less contact hours and more independent student 
work under the guidance of the lecturer. Against this setting, we present a website for the 
analysis of historical texts in English. The website has been designed so as to ⒤ enhance 
self-learning by means of readings, problems and textual commentaries and (ii) familiarize 
students with the technologies they will be using in their professional future. Keywords: 
English historical texts, online teaching/learning, HEL, ECTS

Resumen
En el marco cambiante en que se encuentran los estudios universitarios, todo proyecto de 
mejora pasa por la progresiva adaptación a las innovaciones que propone el Espacio Europeo 
de Educación Superior. Las nuevas tecnologías de la información y la comunicación 
proporcionan plataformas que fomentan el aprendizaje autónomo sin necesidad de 
enseñanza presencial continua, al tiempo que entrenan al alumno en competencias que 
hoy resultan imprescindibles. La enseñanza online no es sólo más dinámica, sino también 
más acorde a los parámetros de la innovación docente con ECTS, que contempla menos 
docencia presencial y más trabajo personal del alumno tutorizado por el profesor. En este 
contexto, presentamos una página web para el análisis de textos históricos de la lengua 
inglesa diseñada con el fin de ⒤ fomentar el autoaprendizaje mediante lecturas, problemas 
y comentarios textuales y (ii) familiarizar al estudiante con las tecnologías con las que 
habrá de convivir en su futuro profesional. Palabras clave: textos históricos del inglés, 
enseñanza/aprendizaje online, historia de la lengua inglesa, ECTS

N V  O T 

T he Bologna Process, a reform initiative aiming at establishing a European Higher Education Area by , is steering the introduction of the ECTS credit system 
in Spanish universities. The ANECA, Spanish contributor to 
the European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies (ENQA), 



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has stressed the significance of the European Credit Transfer 
System for an adequate upgrade of university degree structures. 
The pursuit of easily readable and comparable degrees aims not 
only at increased mobility and employability of both students and 
academics throughout Europe, but also at increased excellence 
within the higher and lifelong education systems. As a transfer and 
accumulation system, ECTS supports the adoption of innovative 
teaching and learning procedures in which the student workload 
is at the core of the qualification process. One of the immediate 
effects is therefore the need for online platforms that allow 
independent student practice while promoting the acquisition of 
ICT competences, without which students will be severely impaired 
once university years are over.

Nowadays, being literate involves both multi- and transliteracies, 
that is, a proficient command of the multimodal ways for making 
meaning today, and within these, IT/ICT literacy stands out. 
However, online teaching platforms (synchronous or asynchronous) 
are not widely implemented yet, which widens the gap between 
the vocational and scholarly pursuits of students. Website browsing, 
SMS texting, instant messaging, chat rooms and forums are part 
of the everyday life of students, who choose them over traditional 
media for a wide variety of uses. Such a demand, however, is not met 
by the educational arena, in which traditionally there has been little 
room for technological innovation. The university reform process, 
however, has placed an emphasis on competences and learning 
outcomes that brings the need for such an innovation to the fore.

Learning outcomes are statements of the competences a student 
must have acquired as a result of the learning process. Such 
competences typically emphasize what students will “be able to do” 
rather than what students will “know”, and in the case of a discipline 
such as the study of the History of the English Language (HEL) 



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verbs such as “analyzing”, “appraising”, “assessing”, “categorizing”, 
“collecting”, “contrasting”, “describing”, “designing”, “discussing”, 
“explaining”, “formulating”, “identiing”, “interpreting”, “locating”, 
“relating”, “reviewing” or “solving” should come up and replace 
mere “knowing”. Outcomes-based instruction is a learner-centred 
approach that fosters the professional component in university 
education while training students for autonomous life-long 
learning and flexibility towards change. And if there is one thing 
that studying HEL promotes, that is indeed an open approach to 
change. The attachment of increased technological competences to 
this far-reaching learning outcome predicts a bright future for the 
historical study of language even in an increasingly matter-of-fact 
scenario.

A glance into the TUNING¹ taxonomy of university competences 
reveals interesting insights, such as the presence of “synthesis”, 
“analysis”, “time management”, “learning strategies”, “problem 
solving”, “decision making”, “planning”, “ICT competence” and 
“written and spoken competence in a foreign language as well as in 
the mother tongue” among unavoidable instrumental competences. 
Is there anything in the list which is not fully addressed by HEL—
even if “synthesis” and “analysis” were not keywords both in the list 
and in the historical study of English? Let us now take a look at 
key TUNING interpersonal competences: “critical and self-critical 
attitude”, “multicultural and diversity awareness”, “teamwork”… 
Once again, is there anything in the list not addressed by HEL? The 
same might be applied to systemic competences in TUNING: “skills 
for project design and management”, “creativity”, “entrepreneurial 
spirit”, “innovativeness”, “leadership” or “success and achievement 
orientation”.

¹ The Tuning Project is available at http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/
educ/tuning/tuning_es.html and http://tuning.unideusto.org/tuningeu



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What is the problem with HEL then? What has been the 
reason for the steady neglect of historical disciplines in philological 
curricula? The answer is manifold for sure, but some degree of 
uncreativeness in teaching and learning methodology is likely to 
play a role, and in this respect, the adoption of ICT innovations 
stands out as an optimal candidate for a revival of the discipline. 
Within this amework, the paper presents a website² (http://www.
ffil.uam.es/textoshel/HEL/Home.htm) designed for the analysis 
of historical texts of the English language by means of readings, 
problems and textual commentaries. In providing students with tools 
and materials for the textual analysis of early texts, the website aims 
at fostering autonomous learning and hands-on acquisition of ICT 
competences. Online teaching (and online-aided in-class teaching) 
is not only more dynamic, in that it allow courses to “grow” and 
meet student needs as they come up. It is also much more in line 
with the parameters of ECTS innovation, in that it encompasses 
less class attendance and more independent student work under 
the supervision of the lecturer. For these reasons, the enterprise of 
creating a website for the analysis of HEL texts seems worthwhile 
and the pages that follow will be devoted to the description of the 
website against the relevant context.

T S  H   E L  UAM  

The Autónoma University of Madrid (http://www.uam.es) is a 
state university founded in  and known for its distinguished 
record in scientific research as well as for its social commitment. 
The UAM offers a wide choice of undergraduate and postgraduate 
study programmes, one of which is a four-year bachelor degree in 
English Studies (http://www.uam.es/departamentos/filoyletras/

² ® M-/



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filoinglesa). The historical study of English within the degree is 
addressed by three subjects, two core subjects in the first and second 
semesters of the third course (History of the English Language I & 
II) and one elective subject in the fourth year (Diachronic English 
Linguistics).

The theoretical basis for delimiting the contents and methodology 
of the two HEL courses at UAM is based on the recent³ idea that 
synchrony and diachrony overlap and stress the significance of one 
another. On the one hand, historical linguistics (in fact, dynamic 
approaches to language at large) helps corroborate synchronic 
analyzes and is therefore at the center of linguistic research within 
fields such as cognitive linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, 
pragmatics, anthropology and so on. On the other hand, the 
findings and theoretical premises of these synchronically-oriented 
fields are helping unravel the past. This is a healthy state of affairs, 
with historical linguistics at the core of linguistic theories, which 
sharply contrasts with the scarce presence of diachronic subjects in 
the curricula of most European universities, Spain among them.

The causes for the gradual reduction of diachrony om European 
university curricula have already been analyzed in depth (Schousboe,⁴ 
Tejada ). Let us just recall, among some of the most significant 
reasons for this decrease, the shi within English departments 
towards more experimental subjects with concrete and immediate 
applications within society, to the detriment of more relational, 
open subjects such as historical linguistics. The distinction (Savater 
) between open and closed disciplines is one that opposes 

³ Although already present in the pre-structuralist historical approach (Geeraerts 
 and ), this conception of language was not reintroduced until the birth 
of the functional and cognitive paradigms in the late s.

⁴ Teaching Historical Linguistics is available at http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/
hoe/pschousboe.htm



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technical subjects, which can be completely mastered and directly 
applied within society, to open-ended ones, which can never be 
thoroughly learnt with no ifs nor buts. Indeed, the more one learns 
about an open subject (be it language, music or philosophy), the 
more conscious one becomes of what is still le to know, and the 
more paths and questions appear—a scenario which does not seem 
particularly tuned with the fast, earthbound requirements of the 
world today.

This is not the place to insist on the many reasons to promote 
dynamic approaches to language in present and future university 
curricula (Tejada , Romano ) but let us go over our main 
aims in the choice of contents for HEL I and HEL II, which will 
help explain our methodology within the new ECTS system. The 
course of instruction for both subjects falls within the conception of 
language as a complex, dynamic and open system, an approach within 
which students should be made aware of:

The variety and complexity of the linguistic and extralinguistic () 
factors which intervene in any linguistic change.
The interdisciplinary nature of the field and the necessity to () 
take into account the findings of related disciplines for the 
explanation of language (change), especially those which relate 
language to cognition and culture.
The fact that we carry, om school, linguistic prejudices on the () 
superiority of certain languages, styles, registers and therefore 
people over other varieties/people⒮. Prejudices which are not 
based on linguistic, scientific data.

Upon the bases of the foregoing aims, which provide the 
encompassing theoretical rationale for these two subjects, let us 
now summarize the contents of both courses in terms of learning 
outcomes. At the end of HEL I, students should have a basic 



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understanding of ⒤ the place of historical linguistics within the 
history of linguistics, (ii) the main causes and processes of language 
change, (iii) the main research methods in historical linguistics 
as well as (iv) acquaintance with the sociolinguistic and historical 
backgrounds of English. By the end of HEL II, students should ⒤ 
have a basic understanding of the most significant lexico-semantic, 
morpho-syntactic and grapho-phonological changes undergone by 
the English language over time (in particular om the seventh to 
the seventeenth centuries, but also into the present day) and (ii) 
they must be able to identi and analyze the grammatical structures 
of a historical text.

Together with these learning outcomes, a number of conceptual, 
procedural and attitudinal competences should have been developed 
over the course of both HEL semesters. To our mind, the following 
outstand out the many competences enhanced by the historical 
study of language:

Conceptual competences: ⒤ to understand language change () 
as a natural, universal process, (ii) to learn the importance 
of diachronic linguistics for the explanation of present-day 
linguistic problems, (iii) to develop linguistic awareness in 
order to promote a scientific rather than intuitive approach 
to the analysis of different languages and cultures by learning 
to establish connections between different disciplines and 
languages and by acquiring theoretical background for linguistic 
analysis—in the case of HEL I, together with those conceptual 
competences fostered by HEL II: ⒤ to understand the major 
lexico-semantic, morpho-syntactic and grapho-phonological 
changes undergone by English over time and (ii) to acquire the 
theoretical background and applied expertise for the linguistic 
analysis of English historical texts.



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Procedural competences: to learn how to ⒤ explore diverging () 
approaches to a topic, (ii) pose questions and formulate 
hypotheses upon data, (iii) locate and assess relevant references, 
(iv) acquire learning autonomy by means of analytic reading, 
⒱ improve oral and written communication in English and 
(vi) present work to an audience.
Attitudinal competences: to become critically aware ⒤ of the () 
different means that different languages and periods of the same 
language have to express similar grammatical meanings and (ii) 
of the ever-changing character of language, (iii) to develop an 
analytic advance towards linguistic issues and a critical attitude 
towards linguistic theories and (iv) to cooperate towards the 
success of teamwork while ⒱ stressing the value of sustained 
effort when cononted with texts and realities at first alien to 
our eyes and minds.

Once the rationale and learning outcomes looked for have been 
presented, let us briefly turn to the teaching/learning methodology 
and procedures for assessment within the new ECTS system, which 
will help us show the usefulness of the website within the new 
amework. As discussed earlier on, one of the most challenging 
demands of the new system is the introduction of notable changes 
in the teaching/learning methodology, with an emphasis on learner 
autonomy. In this way, for the estimated  hours of student work 
assigned to each of the HEL courses, the following contact/non-
contact arrangements are suggested:

A weekly in-class session devoted to ⒤ a brief lecture on the () 
weekly topic, (ii) solving the weekly assignments and (iii) 
discussing the weekly readings (some  hours altogether)
Independent study devoted to ⒤ reading a weekly paper, (ii) () 
completing a weekly task (including both problems and critical 



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discussion of relevant topics) and (iii) preparing a joint oral 
presentation on a topic selected by out of an assortment of 
research lines, coupled with a short essay on the same topic 
once incorporated the feedback om the audience, as well as 
(iv) regular revision of class notes and course website materials 
and drawing of conceptual maps (some  hours altogether)
Seminars and/or workshops devoted to ⒤ hands-on activities at () 
the library or the language lab and (ii) audiovisual tasks (some 
 hours altogether)
Tutorials which students have to attend at least twice as a () 
compulsory requirement in order to ⒤ keep up momentum 
with the summative evaluation scheme and (ii) address the 
composition and presentation of the research project (some  
hours altogether)
Online teaching by means of UAM teaching platform (which () 
encompasses both synchronous chat rooms and asynchronous 
forums as well as sections for student contributions and teacher 
posting of relevant materials) and also by means of the HEL 
website presented in this paper

Hence, the new methodological approach is paired with continuous 
assessment in which the final grade depends not only on a final 
exam (worth no more than fi per cent of the final grade), but 
also on class engagement and completion of weekly assignments 
(worth fieen per cent of the final grade) and on the submission of 
a short essay about a topic previously presented in class (worth the 
remaining thirty five per cent of the final grade). Such a work plan, 
which promotes uninterrupted student (and teacher) work, is paired 
with reduced contact hours (for, although students are encouraged 
to attend office hours liberally, most prefer the advantage of email 
consultations), which creates a new scenario in which no more than 
fourteen in-class sessions can ever be planned per semester. This is 



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of course the setting against which the website “Texts for the Study 
of the History of English” has proved to be most useful, since it 
has allowed to counteract the difficulties posed by reduced teaching 
hours. Let us then explore the website.

T  “T   S   H   
E”
The website is divided into four major sections: ⒤ How to analyze a 
historical text, (ii) Sample textual commentaries, (iii) Texts for the 
study of the history of English and (iv) Links, each of which will 
be reviewed in the subheadings below.

.. How to analyze a historical text is a theoretical guide on how 
to analyze (rather than translate, since texts in the website are 
transliterated) English historical texts, since students must be able 
to date and comment on a text by the end of the two HEL courses. 
The principle underlying the compilation of this template was the 
assumption that students have never been taught how to comment 
on the linguistic features of an early text, and therefore, the hard 
Labovian (:) target of “making the best use of bad data” 
becomes even harder. These guidelines insist on the complexity 
of using historical texts as raw data, as well as on the necessity to 
study the socio-historical and cultural factors surrounding the text 
before attempting the linguistic analysis, as well as on a number of 
practicalities with which students are oen not aware of beforehand. 
Since no such guide had been previously compiled within the arena 
of English historical studies until the moment (to our knowledge), 
the section stands out as one of the most significant contributions 
of the website, and for this reason it is replicated in full below.



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A few remarks to get you started

Texts are not stable, perfectly defined entities. They are 
subject to a great number of variables, such as social, 
geographical, rhetorical, cultural and historical factors which 
make them fuzzier than they seem at first sight. This fact 
becomes even more evident when analyzing a text om the 
past, since historical texts are not without problems. To begin 
with, texts are limited in number and oen restricted to given 
genres or registers. Besides, there exist many difficulties in 
interpreting written language, typically more conservative 
than spoken discourse, when there are naturally no native 
speakers to consult. Texts are, nevertheless, our best data to 
unravel the past, and as Labov points out, we can learn to 
“make the best use of bad data.”

And the very first thing we have to learn when dealing 
with linguistic data is honesty. This means that we should 
never try to squeeze textual data into our previous theoretical 
knowledge of the language: the linguistic evidence should 
match the theory rather than vice versa. And only those 
linguistic features actually present in the text should count as 
data: how could it count as evidence otherwise?

The second thing that we have to learn is that we have 
to be very careful: dealing with texts om the past is tricky. 
Why is this so? Because in interpreting a historical text om 
a contemporary standpoint, we might end up analyzing the 
function and meaning of linguistic constructions om the 
past as though they were the antecedent of present-day ones, 
which is oen not the case: Old English did have -ing patterns, 
which does not mean the progressive existed at the time.



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Besides, when analyzing a text we should never forget that 
language is ingrained within a context. Therefore, before 
attempting the linguistic analysis of any given text, we should 
always try to find as much information as possible about 
aspects such as the following:

Social, historical and cultural highlights of the period.• 
Overall linguistic features of the language at that time.• 
Specific features of the language variety displayed by the • 
text: dialectal belonging, genre and stylistic constraints 
such as alliteration and rhyme in the case of poetry, calques 
in the case of translations, degree of formality in epistolary 
correspondence and so on.
Author and intended audience as well as means of • 
transmission: texts to be said aloud, manuscripts to be read 
by a selected few, printed matter, handwritten letters and 
the like.

More oen than not, however, we will not know such details 
beforehand, in which case we should not try to decide on the 
date and variety of the text until having analyzed it carefully 
as a whole. Thus, we should only try to advance a rough date 
and location for the text once we have already considered the 
morphosyntactic, lexical and phonological levels in detail. Even 
at this point, precise dating or dialectal location might well 
be elusive, which is nothing to et about, since a proficient 
textual analysis is never restricted to it.

As a matter of fact, neither geographic nor diachronic 
boundaries are clear-cut. As such, most texts are somehow 
transitional—in between two historical periods, in between 



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two dialectal zones. Even if we came across a text clearly 
belonging to a given place om a given time, we would still 
face the challenge of the different paces for change at the 
various levels of the language: a Middle English text will 
display a very simplified state of nominal inflection, while 
verbal inflection in the same text will still be very similar to 
that of the Old English period. Likewise, a late Middle English 
romance might well be very archaic in its lexicon because of 
the constraints of alliterative poetry and nonetheless very 
advanced at the morphosyntactic level. This is surely most 
interesting and challenging for the historical linguist and yet 
another reason not to hurry the analysis.

The linguistic analysis of a historical text

The linguistic analysis of a historical text should never be 
approached as a word for word description of the excerpt. 
Thus, each grammatical level, each phrase and each component 
should be analyzed independently rather than at a go and all 
at the same time. We will only have a holistic knowledge 
of the linguistic features of the text under study once we 
have considered all the grammatical levels. The analysis of 
a historical text should therefore include comments on the 
spelling, morphology, syntax, lexis and phonology of the text. 
How to combine them all into a coherent analysis rather than 
a useless checklist?

Spelling is a good starting point, even if not a hundred per 
cent trustworthy. Why not trustworthy? Because every printed 
text we have for the early stages of English is naturally an 
edited version of a manuscript. This means that abbreviations 



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have been filled out, punctuation has been added, gaps in 
the original rounded out and so on. Nonetheless, texts will 
still display graphemes and spelling conventions typical of 
given periods or varieties that will help us place the text in 
context. In addition to fairly broad considerations (such as 
chaotic spellings indicative of no linguistic standardization as 
opposed to orthographic consistency indicative of scriptoria 
and language planning), distinctive signals we should be in 
search of include:

The appearance of runes such as wynn 〈ƿ〉 and asg • 
〈〉, ligatures such as ash 〈æ〉, the use of 〈e〉 to indicate 
palatalization, the occurrence of thorn 〈þ〉 in initial positions 
and eth 〈ð〉 anywhere else or graphemes such as 〈cg〉, 〈cw〉, 
〈hl〉, 〈hn〉, 〈hw〉, 〈lc〉, 〈lh〉 and 〈sc〉—all of them markers of 
an Old English text, as well as the absence of the letters 〈j〉, 
〈q〉, 〈v〉 and 〈z〉.
The presence of yogh 〈ȝ〉, the occurrence of 〈v〉 in initial • 
positions and 〈u〉 anywhere else or the appearance of French 
digraphs such as 〈ch〉, 〈ck〉, 〈ph〉, 〈qu〉, 〈sh〉, 〈th〉 and 〈wh〉—
all of them indicative of a Middle English text.
The addition of a final -e to mark vowel length or the • 
replacement of yogh by 〈y〉 and thorn by 〈th〉—all of them 
suggestive of an Early Modern English text.

The linguistic analysis of a text should also include a brief 
analysis of its phonology. However, reconstructing the 
phonological system of a text is quite a difficult task because of 
the lack of correspondence between spelling and pronunciation 
throughout the history of English. The task is hard for the 



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early times since the idea of a stable spelling did not even 
exist until aer the advent of print. Aerwards, it became 
even more difficult because of the Great Vowel Shi. This 
means that in Old and Middle English there were several 
spellings for the same word, while in Early Modern English 
and beyond there was only one spelling—but it oen had 
nothing to do with the way in which the word was actually 
pronounced! Nevertheless, there are certain features that can 
be observed with the help of our theoretical knowledge:

Changes in the syllable-structure of words, such as the • 
reduction and loss of vowels in final unstressed syllables.
Disappearance of voiceless icatives.• 
Lengthening of short vowels.• 
Disappearance in the number of contrastive units in the • 
vowel system.
Loss of initial • h-sounds (hring into ring), metathesis (frist 
into first) and appearance of initial dg-sound (as in judge) in 
Middle English.

Morphology will then become a crucial level of grammatical 
description, mostly if in ont of an Old or Middle English 
text. Why mostly in early texts? Because the most influential 
change in the history of English was the transition om 
a semantically-oriented synthetic language type to a 
syntactically-oriented analytic language type. To make a 
long story short, this means that, in the transit om Old to 
Middle English, word endings were lost while word order 
became more rigid and prepositions more equently used. 
Since nominal declensions were dropped well before verbal 



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inflections, a close inspection of noun and verb phrases will 
help us identi the stage for development of the text under 
study. Thus, as for the noun phrase, some of the questions 
we should ask ourselves include:

Are nouns inflected for case, gender and number? Is gender • 
natural or grammatical?
Do adjectives agree with the nouns they modi?• 
Are there weak and strong adjectives in the text?• 
Do determiners display different forms for the different • 
functions?
Which forms and functions do personal and possessive • 
pronouns show?
Do we find Anglo-Saxon • h-forms or Scandinavian th-forms 
of third person plural personal pronouns?
Are genitive constructions synthetic or analytic?• 

As for the verb phrase, questions such as the following should 
be a must:

Are verbs inflected for person and number?• 
Which ending do we find for present indicative plural • 
forms: -eth, -en or Ø?
Which weak and strong preterits are there in the text? Have • 
any of these forms disappeared or been replaced in PDE?
What is the ending for present participles?• 

An analysis of the syntax of the agment should follow the 
morphological review. Nonetheless, remember the transit 
om a synthetic to an analytic language type was not abrupt. 
Inflections did not disappear overnight as a means of signalling 



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relations among words within the sentence. Rather, they were 
gradually replaced by word order and prepositional constraints. 
This means that the boundaries between morphology and 
syntax got steadily blurred over the history of English. For 
this reason, analyzing the morphosyntax of a text rather than 
the morphology and the syntax as discrete levels will oen be 
helpful. In any case, a comprehensive insight should combine 
overall textual matters and much more specific reflections 
about salient features. Questions such as the ones below will 
help us ame the analysis:

Examine word-order constructions: Are they different om • 
PDE in independent and subordinate clauses? What about 
in questions and imperatives? Does word order seem to be 
ee or not? In the case of poetry, do not forget to observe 
whether the metrical system imposes any constraints on 
syntax!
Is the number of different prepositions remarkable in • 
any way? What about their equency? Does the form or 
function of prepositions seem to have changed ever since?
Are there any instances of redundant overmarking?• 
How are definite and indefinite articles used in the text?• 
Is there double negation?• 
Are there impersonal verbs and dummy subjects such as • 
there or it?

Besides, a detailed analysis of the formation and use of verb 
tenses should include questions such as the following:

Is the tense system reduced to present and past only?• 



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Are there compound verbal forms for perfects, futures and • 
passives instead?
How advanced is the development of auxiliaries? Is the use • 
of be, do and have equivalent to PDE in the formation of 
periphrastic constructions?
Have modal verbs become auxiliaries? Do they seem • 
grammaticalized already?

An analysis of how information is organized or structured 
within the text can also provide valuable data om a historical 
point of view. The earlier stages of the English language 
would be more semantically-oriented; that is, organized around 
communicative factors which determine word order, the 
appearance or non-appearance of subject forms, conjunctions, 
deictic markers, etc. In short: a language which is based on 
the speaker’s need for economy and expressiveness. On the 
contrary, stages closer to Present-Day English would be 
more syntactically-oriented; that is, a language with more 
and clearer grammatical categories, a fixed word order and 
a higher degree of conventionalisation; in short: a language 
based on the hearer’s need for transparency (Tejada ).

Where are the most informative elements of the sentence/• 
text? How is this salience marked?
Are coordination and parataxis more equent than • 
subordination or hypotaxis?
Are deictic markers (demonstrative pronouns, personal • 
pronouns, þa and so on) equent in the text? What are 
their functions?



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In any case, remember “Why?” and “Why is this significant?” 
are questions we cannot do without in our analysis. Always 
remember to discuss the entailments of every finding: there 
is no point in noticing the presence (or absence) of whatever 
feature if we do not discuss its relevance. Likewise, there 
is no point in analyzing the various levels of grammatical 
description as distinctively discrete entities with no relation 
to one another. There exist no coincidences in language, 
which means that the morphosyntactic analysis above will 
surely have a lot to do with the analysis of lexical and semantic 
aspects to follow.

The analysis of lexis within the text should ideally be tackled 
with the aid of an etymological dictionary such as the OED. 
An etymological dictionary will reveal the origin of words—
when a given word entered the language and where om. 
This seems certainly relevant since as many as  per cent of 
the words in English today are of a foreign origin! Besides, an 
etymological dictionary will display all the various senses every 
word has and has had over the history of the language. This 
will allow us to trace changes in the meaning of words such 
as generalization (bridd ‘small bird’ into ‘bird’), specialization 
(tid ‘time’ into ‘tide’), amelioration (nice ultimately om Latin 
nescius) or pejoration (sælig ‘happy’ into ‘silly’)—in short, 
whether the meaning of a word has undergone a metaphorical 
or metonymic extension (gebedu ‘bead for keeping count of the 
rosary’ into bede ‘prayer’) or whether it has been subjectified.

Nonetheless, there will be times in which an etymological 
dictionary will not be an available resource. Even so, there will 
still remain a number of lexical questions to ask ourselves:



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Are there many words of Germanic origin that have been • 
dropped om the language ever since? The knowledge 
of other contemporary Germanic languages becomes an 
asset at the time of identiing cognates not present in 
the language any more, such as Middle English bocstæf 
‘letter’ (besides German Buchstabe), Middle English frið 
‘peace’ (German Frieden) or Middle English stund ‘hour’ 
(German Stunde). This knowledge will also prove useful 
for identiing processes of semantic change, since this is 
the reason why existing cognates oen become false iends 
in related languages.
Are there many borrowings that make the lexicon of the • 
text seem familiar to a contemporary speaker of English? Is 
it possible to identi the source om which the borrowings 
have been loaned?
Do the words in the text belong to any specific genre or • 
register? Are there calques (ælmihtig ‘almighty’ om Latin 
omnipotens), doublets (lonely versus solitary) or learned 
words?
Do the semantic fields help to reconstruct the social and • 
cultural context of the text?

New words are always being created—mostly out of other 
words through compounding and derivation. Even though the 
former stands out as a particularly inventive device for lexical 
innovation, derivation has always been the most productive 
source of new words in English. A close examination of the 
patterns for word formation will also become a useful tool for 
placing the text within its context:



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Old English exhibited a vast stock of prefixes and suffixes. • 
Among the former, ge- is particularly outstanding. As a 
matter of fact, it was so widely used in so many different 
ways that it ultimately became meaningless and was dropped 
om the language shortly aer the end of Anglo-Saxon 
times. Other prefixes were æfter-, fore-, forþ-, ofer-, þurh- 
or wiþ-, whereas common Old English suffixes included 
-cund, -fæst, -ig, -isc, -leas, -lic, -sum or -wende.
Despite the loss of a number of native prefixes and suffixes, • 
the new affixes borrowed om French and Latin in Middle 
English further increased the equency of affixing as a 
means for creating new words. The novel affixes included 
prefixes such as counter-, de-, dis-, in-, inter-, mal-, pre-, 
re-, sub- or super- and suffixes such as -able, -age, -ance, -al, 
-ant, -ence, -ery, -ess, -ify, -ist, -ity or -ment.
The massive loss of inflections during Middle English • 
prompted the rise of a highly productive source of new 
vocabulary: functional shi or zero derivation, widespread 
om Early Modern English onwards and particularly 
distinctive of the English language ever since.

Rounding up

Now, once you have analyzed all and every one of the levels of 
grammar above, put your pencil down, think for a while and 
then write an all-encompassing review: a textual commentary 
should never reduce to a checklist of features! Plan your essay 
carefully, quote whenever using ideas other than your own and 
provide illustrative examples om the text. Remember length 
does not stand for quality—orderly argumentation does.



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.. As a companion to the guide How to analyze a historical text, 
the website includes a section entitled Sample textual commentaries 
which provides two models for the analysis of a historical text, one 
om Old English (Matthew) and another one for Middle English 
(Cursor Mundi). Both textual commentaries follow the principles 
advanced in the guidelines, but with a slightly different twist so that 
students understand there is no one single way in which a text can 
be analyzed, and that each text and commentator will necessarily 
follow different paths in their journey through the data.

.. The third section in the website, Texts for the Study of the 
History of English, constitutes the backbone of the site, for it 
includes a collection of transliterated texts of diverse origin, both 
om a stylistic and om chronological point of view, for students 
to comment once acquainted with the instructions for the analysis 
of historical texts and the sample commentaries. This section 
of the website is further divided into four sub-sections, three of 
which correspond to the Old, Middle and Modern stages of the 
language and a fourth one dedicated to the biblical text on the 
Tower of Babel, presented in three versions, one for each of the 
main periodizations. Each of the sub-sections (Old, Middle and 
Modern English) presents the same structure:

Readings on the period• : an introductory article on the linguistic 
features of the period together with a list of suggested references 
on the socio-historical and linguistic context.
Audio sample• : a brief recording of an excerpt which provides 
students with some hints on what the oral language could have 
been like at each of the three main periods.
Texts• : a series of texts for each of the three stages of the language—
all of them transliterated and accompanied by a number of guided 
questions which have been included to help students with the 



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analysis. The texts om which the excerpts were chosen are listed 
below:

Old English:  ○ Beowulf ’s Fight with Grendel, Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, Ælfric’s Parable of the Two Sons, Ælfred’s Preface 

to the Pastoral Care and Peterborough Chronicle.
Middle English:  ○ The Owl and the Nightingale, Ormulum, 
Layamon’s Brut, Sir Orfeo, Piers Plowman, Canterbury 

Tales, Sir Gawain and The Book of Margery Kempe.
Modern English:  ○ Everyman, William Caxton’s Preface to 
Malory’s La Morte Darthur, Thomas More’s Last Letter and 
The Scholemaster.
Parallel texts:  ○ The Tower of Babel (Genesis chapter ) in 
Old, Middle and Early Modern English.

.. The fourth and final section of the website contains a series of 
relevant links, organized again into periods, on various theoretical 
and practical linguistic issues, as well as on the socio-historical, 
cultural and literary context of the period.

The map of the website is therefore as follows:

How to analyze a historical text• 
Sample textual commentaries• 
Texts for the study of the history of English• 

Old English ○
Readings on the Old English period 

A reading on the linguistic features of OE –
Suggested readings on the OE period –

Old English audio sample 
Old English texts 



82

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Selim  ()

 F P
Over the course of the two years in which the website “Texts for 
the Study of the History of English” has been accessible online, it 
has become more and more of a key factor for students aiming at 
fuller command of the textual commentary of early texts in English. 
Since a highly significant outcome of the learning of HEL as it is 
taught at UAM is being able to identi and analyze the linguistic 
features of an historical text while providing an approximate date 
for it, the possibility of extensive practice becomes indispensable 
in a competence not likely to be encountered by students in other 
subjects. For this reason, the website has become increasingly 
welcome by students who, aer an introductory tour to the website 

Middle English ○
Readings on the Middle English period 

A reading on the linguistic features of ME –
Suggested readings on the ME period –

Middle English audio sample 
Middle English texts 

Early Modern English ○
Readings on the Early Modern English period 

A reading on the linguistic features of EModE –
Suggested readings on the EModE period –

Early Modern English audio sample 
Early Modern English texts 

Parallel texts ○
Suggested readings on the history of English 
Biblical parallel texts 

Links• 



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(and once familiar with the theoretical developments undergone by 
the language), feel more and more at ease with early English texts 
and their analysis.

In order to further promote the exploitation of the resources 
made available by the website, throughout the fourteen-week HEL 
II course, both theory and practice are dealt with simultaneously, 
and extra work on commentaries is not only always welcome, but also 
oen mandatory. As the course proceeds and students gain more 
theoretical knowledge on the subject, more and more commentaries 
are set for homework and later on revised in class and/on online in 
the online teaching platform (which also allows students to ask one 
another for help, hence promoting self-learning and peer-revision 
under the supervision of the lecturer). It is at the arena of distant, 
autonomous learning where the website has proved most useful, 
particularly during the last weeks of instruction and for exam 
preparation. At the same time, UAM Erasmus students registered 
for the course but living abroad as well as all other students not 
attending lectures for whatever reason, have also appreciated the 
innovative teaching/learning methodology provided by the website.

In the future, reduced contact hours and increasing emphasis 
being placed on autonomous learning will undoubtedly stress the 
role of distant learning and students being able to control their own 
workload without attending in-class sessions as oen as in the past 
but with the novel aid of online tutorials. Against this setting, the 
website provides a new dynamic tool both for online and online-
aided in-class teaching which we hope will be of use not only to 
UAM students but also to all those who approach it at its URL. In 
addition, it might be the right time for the website to become the 
jumping-off point for a unified platform for the teaching/learning 



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of HEL in Spain.⁵ We are all in the same boat, and there are many 
other websites⁶ created by Spanish lecturers of English Historical 
Linguistics which we all should start sharing for the benefit of our 
field and students. Let us start doing so—and to this end we remind 
you of our electronic addresses (clara.molina@uam.es and manuela.
romano@uam.es) in the hope that sooner rather than later you take 
up the glove!

Clara Molina & Manuela Romano
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

R

Geeraerts, D. : “Cognitive grammar and the history of lexical 
semantics”. In B. Rudzka-Ostyn ed. Topics in Cognitive 
Linguistics. Amsterdam, John Benjamins: –.

Geeraerts, D. : “The theoretical and descriptive development 
of lexical semantics” In D. Geeraerts ed. Words and other 
Wonders. Papers on Lexical and Semantic Topics. Berlin, 
Mouton de Gruyter: –.

Labov, W. : Principles of Linguistic Change. Oxford, Blackwell.

Romano, M. : Proyecto Docente “Lengua y Lingüística Inglesas: 
Sincronía y Diacronía”— Teaching Project “English Language 

and Linguistics: Synchrony and Diachrony”. Madrid, Universidad 
Autónoma de Madrid. Unpublished MS.

⁵ Suggestion by professor González y Fernández-Corugedo at  SELIM 
(Almagro: October )

⁶ Personal Communication with professors Guzmán and Alcaraz at  SELIM 
(Almagro: October )



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Savater, F. : El Valor de Educar. Barcelona, Ariel.

Schousboe, S. // [no date]: Teaching Historical Linguistics 
http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/hoe/pschousboe.htm.

Tejada, P. : “Aplicaciones de la lingüística histórica”. Perspectivas 
Europeas sobre Enseñanza Universitaria. º Seminario de 
Lingüística Aplicada. Madrid, Departamento de Filología 
Inglesa de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Tejada, P. : El Cambio Lingüístico. Claves para Interpretar la 
Historia de la Lengua Inglesa. Madrid, Alianza.

!

Received  Nov ; revision received  Dec ; accepted  Jan 