7. Word order

The order of words in the OE sentence was relatively free.The position of words in the sentence was often determined by logical and stylistic factors rather than by grammatical constraints. The word order depends on the order of presentation and emphasis laid by the author on different parts of communication.

The order of words could depend on the communicative type of the sentence – question versus statement, on the type of clause, on the presence and place of some secondary parts of the sentence.

Inversion was used for grammatical purposes in questions; full inversion with simple predicates and partial – with compound predicates, containing link-verbs and modal verbs.

A peculiar type of word order is found in many subordinate and in some coordinate clauses: the clause begins with the subject following the connective, and ends with the predicate or its finite part, all the secondary parts being enclosed between them.

Those were the main tendencies in OE word order. In many respects OE syntax was characterized by a wide range of variation and by the co-existence of various, sometimes even opposing, tendencies.

SPOO- occurred in non-defendant clauses in simple sentences and main clauses unless they open with an adverb

SOP- occure when the object was a pronoun or was used in dependent clauses.

PSO- in questions

8. The Great Vowel Shift.(gvs)

During the period of 14-17 c. all 7 long vowels in existence at this time came into motion and were involved in highly systematic change, which brought the qualitative changes and the appearance of diphtongs. GVS didn’t bring any new phonems, as all of them existed before, but changed the quality.

ai ← ei ← i: u:→ au →əu ↑- narrowing

↑ ↑

e: o: → diphtongization

↑ ↑

ei← ε:←a: (front) O: → ou

ti:me (ME)→taim(NE), kepen[ke:pən]→keep, moon[mo:n]→moon

It is important to note that the Great Vowel Shift (unlike most of the earlier phonetic changes) was not followed by any regular spelling changes: as seen from the examples the modification in the pronunciation of words was not reflected in their written forms. (The few graphic replacements made in the 16th c. failed to reflect the changes: the digraphs ie, ee, and the single e were kept for the close [e:], while the digraph ea was introduced to show the more open [ε: ]

During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed, for they contained long vowels. Cf. the names of some English letters before and after the shift:

ME: A [a:]. E [e:], 0 [o:], I [i:], B [be:]. K [ka:]

NE: A [ei],E [i:] O [ou] I [ai] B [bi:]. K [kei].

The Great Vowel Shift has attracted the attention of many linguists (K. Luick. 0. Jespersen. F. Mosse. A. Martinet, V. Plotkin and others).

1) Many linguists agree that the intensification of changes in Late ME not only to phonological but also to morphological factors (V. Plotkin). The shift may have been stimulated by the loss of the final [e] in the 15th c., which transformed disyllabic words into monosyllables.

2) The changes have been interpreted as starting at one end of each set of vowels—front and back—the initial change stimulating the movement of the other sounds. If the changes started at the more open vowels, [a:] and [o:]. every step "pushed" the adjoining vowel away to avoid coincidence, so that finally the closest vowels, which could not possibly become narrower were "pushed" out of the set of monophthongs into diphthongs: [i:] > [ai] and [u:l > [au]. This interpretation of the shift is known as the "push-chain" (K. Luick).

The opposite view is held by the exponents of the theory of "drag-chain" (0. Jespersen); according to this theory the changes started at the two closest vowels, [i:] and [u:]; these close vowels became diphthongs, "dragging” after themselves their neighbours, [e:] and [o:]. which occupied the vacant positions; every vowel made one step in this direction, except [ε:] which made two: [ε:] became (e:] and then [i:].