- •1. The comparative-historical method in linguistics.
- •3. Semantic change and analogy in historical linguistics.
- •4. Indo-European family of the languages.
- •5. Ancient Germanic tribes and their classification. The Great Migration of Germanic tribes.
- •6. Linguistic characteristics of Germanic languages
- •7. Grimm’s law. Verner’s law. Vowel changes.
- •8. Germanic alphabet. The earliest writings. Grammatical peculiarities of Germanic languages.
- •9. Chronological division of the history of English.
- •10. Pre-Germanic Britain. The Roman conquest.
- •11. The Anglo-Saxon invasion. Old English kingdoms and dialects.
- •12. Old English word stress. Old English phonetics.
- •13. Old English grammar. Nomina.
- •The Noun Grammatical categories. The use of cases
- •The Pronoun
- •Personal pronouns
- •Demonstrative pronouns
- •Other classes of pronouns
- •The Adjective
- •14. Old English grammar. Verb.
- •Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •Minor groups of Verbs
- •15 The Scandinavian invasion. Its influence on English.
- •16 The Norman conquest. Its influence on English.
- •17 Struggle between English and French. Middle English dialects.Hyperlink "http://www.Ranez.Ru/article/id/684/" The London dialect
- •18 Me Word Stress. Vowels in Middle English
- •19. Middle English consonants. Middle English syntax.
- •20. Middle English grammar
- •21. The development of Middle English noun and adjective.
- •22. The development of Middle English verb.
- •23????????????????
- •24. The system of Middle English spelling.
- •25. Spread of the London dialect in the 15th century. Formation of the literary language.
- •26. The Great Vowel Shift.
- •27. Sound changes in early modern English.
- •28. The expansion of English.
- •29. The characteristic features and historical reasons of the American vowels. The American dialects.
- •30. Modern Germanic languages.
Demonstrative pronouns
There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that, which distinguished three genders in the sg. And had one form for all the genders in the pl. and the prototype of this. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. Demonstrative pronouns were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun indicated its number, gender and case.
Other classes of pronouns
Interrogative pronouns – hwā, Masc. and Fem., and hwæt, Neut., - had a four-case paradigm (NEwho, what). The Instr. case of hwæt was used as a separate interrogative word hwў (NE why). Some interrogative pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e.g. hwelc.
Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: ān and its derivative ǽniз (NE one, any); nān, made up of ān and the negative particle ne (NE none); nānþinз, made up of the preceding and the noun þinз (NE nothing).
The Adjective
The adjective in OE could change for number, gender and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject of the sentence – if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the adjective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning.
14. Old English grammar. Verb.
The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense – one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other – for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix-d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.
Strong Verbs
The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange.
The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.