歴史時代の古英語諸方言，すなわち紀元700年前後から文証される古英語の諸変種は，いかにして成立したのだろうか．5世紀に大陸から西ゲルマン諸民族がブリテン島に侵攻してきたが，そのときに彼らが持ち込んだ各々の方言が，多少の変化を遂げたにせよ，基本的にはそのまま保たれて，8世紀以降の文献に現れている，ということなのだろうか．
　古英語方言の形成について論じた Crowley は，そのようには考えていない．Crowley は，むしろ8世紀以降に確認される古英語の諸方言は，彼らがブリテン島へ移住した後の諸状況を主たる要因として生じたものであると論じている．5世紀からの移住にあたって，西ゲルマンの諸民族は各々の方言を携えていた，ということはあったろう．しかし，ブリテン島に渡ってからは，諸民族はやがて融合し，言語的な差異もいったんはおよそ水平化された可能性が高い (cf. dialect levelling) ．その後，再びブリテン島内部において方言化の動きが生じ，歴史時代の始まりまでに，私たちが観察できる古英語の諸方言が生まれていたのではないか．Crowley は，この改めて生じた方言の形成に関わる諸要因として，重要な順に，地形，軍事・政治史，キリスト教，教育，言語接触を挙げている．Crowley (97--98) に直接語ってもらおう．

   In the genesis of the Old English dialects, post-migration factors appear to have been more important than pre-migration factors. For the most part, the dialects were not brought over from the continent. While there is historical and archaeological evidence to support Bede's statement that the principal peoples in the settlement were the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes . . . , there is even more evidence, archaeological, documentary, and onomastic, to indicate that more tribes than these three took part in the migration and that the settlement groups were heterogeneous --- that there were rarely coherent, homogeneous, separate areas of settlement exclusively for the Angles or Saxons or Jutes. Though it is a fact that certain distinct regional groups in sixth-century Anglo-Saxon jewelry correspond to particular cultures of the continental Angles and Saxons respectively, this proves nothing about the dialect divisions of Old English in that period. The linguistic features which differentiate Old English dialects, except for ǣ¹/ē . . . and perhaps breaking/retraction, seem to have developed in England after the migration and primarily because of isolative geographical and political conditions. The invaders probably spoke various dialects of Germanic, but the differences between those dialects were not (ǣ¹/ē excepted) those that by c. 750 AD (the time our witness documents begin) distinguished the Old English dialects. Most of the division between the continental tribes were probably lost in the mixing and social reorganisation of the migration and settlement.
   The chief factors, then, in shaping the attested Old English dialects seem to have been forces in post-migration England: physiography, military and political history, Christianity and education, and contacts with other languages --- in order of descending importance. . . . Once regional differences in phonology and inflections developed during the proto-Old English period, the spoken dialects were probably not radically modified by later political and educational changes, for such factors directly affected the speech of only a minority of the population.

　古英語の方言区分についての教科書的な記述は，「#1433. 10世紀以前の古英語テキストの分布」 ([2013-03-30-1]) の記事を参照．

　・ Crowley, Joseph P. "The Study of Old English Dialects." English Studies 67 (1986): 97--104.

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