- •L. Tsvet History of the English Language
- •Preface
- •General characteristics
- •1. The history of English as a subject
- •2. Britain under the Romans. Celtic tribes
- •3. The Anglo-Saxon invasion
- •4. Periods of the history of English
- •5. The heptarchy
- •6. The Scandinavians in Britain.
- •Phonological system
- •Correlation of Old English and Gothic Vowels
- •4. The system of consonants.
- •5. Changes in the system of consonants.
- •Morphology. Parts of speech
- •Personal Pronouns
- •Declension of Personal Pronouns
- •1. Verbal categories.
- •2. Strong verbs.
- •Conjugation of oe Strong Verbs
- •3. Weak verbs.
- •The conjugation of the oe verbs dōn and willan
- •Syntax and word stock
- •1. Oe sentence and word order
- •2. Etymology of oe vocabulary
- •1. Borrowings into proto-West-Germanic
- •3. Oe word-formation
- •General characteristics
- •The Scandinavian invasion.
- •The Norman French conquest.
- •Bilingual situation in the country.
- •Prevalence of English over French.
- •Me orthography.
- •Middle english phonetical system
- •Vocalism.
- •Consonantism.
- •Formation of new diphthongs.
- •Morphology
- •3. The Adjective
- •Weak verbs in Middle English
- •Conjugation
- •The Passive Voice.
- •Evolution of the literary english language
- •The reader
- •Beowolf
- •XXII. The Pursuit
- •Alfred the great
- •Wulfstan’s narrative
- •From ohtere’s account of his first vouage
- •Geoffrey chaucer
- •The canterbery tales
- •Symbols
- •Literature
1. Verbal categories.
OE verb had fewer grammatical categories than NE verb:
a) The verb-predicate agreed with the subject by means of two grammatical categories: the number and the person.
b) The category of tense was represented by the present and the preterite. No future forms existed. THe future was rendered by perfect forms.
The category of mood consisted of the indicative, the subjunctive and the imperative. Tenses were synthetic.
The present and the preterite: the latter referred to the past without differentiating between prior and non-prior actions: And þxs ofer Ēastron Zefōr Æþerēd cyning and hē riscode V (fif) Zear. The present referred the action to any period of time except the past. The present regularly denoted a future action: ic nāt hwxnne mīne daZas āZāne bēoþ.
Moods were synthetic: OE subjunctive was often used in the indirect speech to describe events of which the speaker was not certain: hē sxde … þxt land sīe swīþe lanZ.
Non-finite forms included:
a) the infinitive which was of two kinds - uninflected nominative (e.g. helpan) and inflected dative (e.g. to helpanne);
b) the participle.
Participle I ending in -ende/ -ande (e.g. lufiende “loving”) and participle II (e.g. (Ze)lufod “loved”, (Ze)risen “risen”). Participle II of transitive verbs had passive meaning. Participles were declined as adjectives.
2. Strong verbs.
There were over 300 strong verbs in OE which were subdivided into 7 classes. 1 through 5 class had ablaut or qualitative gradation of the root vowel corresponding to
IE e - o - zero:
Germ. i - a - zero
NOTE: gradation is a spontaneous vowel change that is not conditioned by any surrounding phonemes.
Cf. Russ. |
беру- брать |
e - zero |
|
беру- сбор |
e - o |
|
лежу- ложе |
e - o |
|
гоню- гнать |
o - zero/see Table 9, p. 22. |
Table 9
Classes of Strong Verbs
# |
Infinitive |
Preterite |
Particilpe II |
|||
Singular |
Plural |
|||||
|
|
a |
Z |
Z |
||
1 |
wrītan “write” |
wrāt |
writon |
writen |
||
Goth. ei |
ai |
i |
i |
|||
|
i (i-a-zero) |
i-root-extension |
i-root-extension |
|||
2 |
cēosan “choose” |
cēas |
curon |
coren |
||
Goth. iu |
au |
u |
u |
|||
u (i-a-zero) |
o/u-variant of one phoneme (s-r: Verner’s law) u-root extension |
|||||
3 |
bīndan “bind” |
band
|
bundon
|
bunden
|
||
helpan “help” |
healp |
hulpon |
holpen |
|||
Goth. hilpan |
halp |
Combination “bnd” and “hlp” are impossible, so they develop “u/o” |
||||
e > ea before l + consonant (breaking) |
sonorant + consonant is root-extension |
|||||
4 |
beran “bear” |
bxr
|
bxron
|
boren
|
||
stelan “steal” |
stxl
|
stxlon
|
stolen
|
|||
Goth. stilan |
stal |
stēlum |
stulans |
|||
x - æ - intrusion of quantitative ablaut Cf. lege – lēgi (Perfect) in Latin |
o/u is explained as in class 3; sonorant or ‘h’ is root-extension |
|||||
5 |
tredan “tread” |
tread
|
trxdon
|
treden
|
||
Ziefan “give” (Zie-palatalisation) |
Zeaf
|
Zxfon
|
Ziefen
|
|||
Goth. giban |
gaf |
gēbum |
gibans |
|||
|
|
x - æ explained as in class 4. |
e/ei – influence of the Infinitive; any consonant –non-sonant is root-extension |
|||
6 |
faran |
fōr |
fōr |
faren |
||
Germanic quantitative gradation a – ō – ō – a, corresponding to Indo-European quantitative |
||||||
7 |
hātan “call” |
hēt (hēht) |
hēt (hēhton) |
hāten
|
||
lātan “let” |
lēt
|
lēton
|
lāten
|
|||
Goth. lētan |
lailōt |
lailōtum |
lētans |
|||
Some verbs had traces of IE reduplication (doubling of the initial syllable or root). Other verbs had never had any reduplication. |
||||||
blāwen |
blēow |
blēowon |
blāwen |
|||
Table 10