In me and ne the personal pronouns underwent some significant changes:

The OE pronoun ‘heo’ was replaced by ‘sho’ or ‘she’ from the OE demonstrative ‘seo’ used in the North-East; oblique case form was retained: OE heo – ME hir – NE her.

OE ‘hie’ (heo) (3rd person plural) was replaced by the Scandinavian borrowing ‘they’; the oblique case form was ‘them’.

The form of the 2nd person plural ‘ye’ and ‘you’ began to be used both for singular and plural; the form ‘thou’ became obsolete. The form ‘ye’ (the Nominative case) was used in elevated speech and later became obsolete.

The Category of Case: Already in OE personal pronouns began to lose their case distinctions. The Genitive case of the personal pronoun was used as an object and as an attribute and its attributive function gave origin to the modern possessive pronoun. The forms of the Dative and Accusative cases merged into one form used as an object. Personal pronouns ‘it’ and ‘you’ lost all case distinctions.

The Category of Number: The forms of the dual number of the 1^st and the 2^nd person went into disuse.

Demonstrative pronouns: in OE there were two of them. They distinguished three genders in the singular and had one plural form for all the genders. One of them was the future pronoun that. The forms of the masculine and feminine were suppletive. The other pronoun was the prototype of the modern pronoun this.

They were used as noun determiners and indicated the number, gender and case of the noun they modified. The pronoun se, þæt, seo, þā had a very weak demonstrative meaning and their use was close to the use of modern definite article. But they can’t be regarded as proper articles because they could be used anaphorically. In the ME they would develop into the definite article.

In ME demonstrative pronouns no longer agreed with the noun in case and gender but retained the category of number.

In ME new classes of pronouns appeared – possessive and reflexive.

Possessive pronouns developed from the Genitive case of personal pronouns. The pronoun ‘his’ was both with ‘he’ and ‘it’. The forms ‘my’ and ‘mine’ were both used; ‘my’ was used before a noun beginning with a vowel, while ‘myne’ was used before a noun beginning with a consonant.

Reflexive pronouns were compounds consisting of the oblique case of a personal pronoun and the adjective ‘self’ (сам): myself, themselves etc.

ЛЕКЦИЯ 6

PHRASE

The basis of a word phrase as a syntactical unit is the syntactical relations, existing between the notional words of the phrase (agreement, government, parataxis). The development of phrases was characterized by the following changes:

1. syntactical relations between the members of a phrase changed;

2. the members of the phrase changed.

Agreement is a type of connection in which a dependent form repeats the grammatical form of the head word. In OE words modifying a noun agreed with it in gender, number and case. In ME and NE, when agreement practically disappeared, the connection between an adjective and a noun was shown by placing an adjective immediately before or after a noun; an adjective could be preceded by a determiner - an article or a demonstrative pronoun. The Genitive case was also used as an attribute as well as prepositional phrases.

Government is a type of connection in which a dependent word takes the form determined by the head word. In OE verbs demanded a certain oblique case of a noun or pronoun. Nouns and pronouns were used in oblique cases with or without prepositions. In ME and NE a verb could govern a pronoun in the oblique case and a noun in the Nominative (Common) case. It couldn’t govern a noun in the Genitive case. The meaning of prepositions became more specific as they began to fulfill the functions of former case forms. The use of nouns as adverbial modifiers became more restricted.

Parataxis is a word connection which is expressed lexically, with the word order or intonation. In ME and NE the role of parataxis grew.

In OE verb and substantive phrases were used; they were phrases in which a verb or a noun was the head word. Adjectival or adverbial phrases were not often.

A noun phrase consisted of a noun as the head word and a pronoun, an adjective, a numeral, used as an attribute or a determiner. As a rule, the words modifying a noun agreed with it in gender, number and case. If a noun was modified by a noun, the latter had the form of the Genitive case.

Verb phrases included a verb as a head word and dependent words that were nouns, pronouns or adverbs. Nouns and pronouns were used in oblique cases with or without prepositions. As there were many homonymous case forms, prepositions were widely used to specify the meaning of the case. The prepositions were lexically motivated; there were no purely grammatical ones. Infinitives and participles could also enter verb phrases as dependent words. The development of phrases was characterized by a) changing syntactical relations between the members of a phrase (parataxis was gaining momentum), b) changing the members of the phrase.

The verb ‘habban’ was losing its meaning of possession in some phrases as its meaning was becoming more abstract. Among the nouns used as direct objects of the verb ‘habban’ there appeared verbal nouns, nouns expressing feelings, abstract nouns: habban rest, habban sorʒe, habban cyppe

In the ME period the changes in syntax were connected with the changes in morphology. As the nominal system was simplified and the inflections didn’t any longer denote the connections between the words, the structure of phrases and sentences became more standard and the OE variety was lost.

In noun phrases agreement was practically no longer used and the connection between an adjective and a noun was shown by placing an adjective immediately before or after a noun; an adjective could be preceded by a determiner – an article or a demonstrative pronoun. The Genitive case and prepositional phrases were also used as attributes.

Verb phrases became less varied in form. The verb could govern a pronoun in the oblique case and a noun in the Nominative case. It couldn’t govern a noun in the Genitive case. The meaning of prepositions became more specific as they fulfilled now the functions of former case forms. The use of nouns as adverbial modifiers became more restricted.

THE SIMPLE SENTENCE

WORD ORDER

In OE word order as a way of expressing syntactic relations was of minor importance. The syntactical function of a word was already manifested in its form. That’s why agreement and government played an important role. The subject could be omitted as the predicate showed who fulfilled the action.

If there was no secondary member of the sentence at the beginning of a statement, the word order was usually direct. If a sentence began with a secondary member the word order was usually indirect. The word order was obligatory inverted if the sentence began with adverbs of time þa, nu, þonne and place þær, hēr, and negative particle ne. The word order was easily changed for stylistic purpose and it reflected the manner of thinking. Also it was typical of OE to have secondary parts of a sentence between the subject and the predicate.

In the interrogative sentences the word order was indirect – the predicate came first: Hwæt sceal ic sinʒan? – What shall I sing?

A very significant change in the sphere of word order can be seen in ME. Most of the positions of parts of a sentence have become fixed – it is a consequence of morphological development: as the declension system was reduced in ME - new ways of expressing the same relations and dependences had to be found.

In ME the relations of words in the sentence began to be shown by position and semantic connections. The place of a noun before or after a verb showed whether it was the subject or an object; a preposition showed that a noun was an adverbial modifier, an attribute or a prepositional object. In those cases when the syntactic function was shown in some other way (by a case form, for example) the word order was relatively free. The word order was traditionally inverted after some adverbs of place and time.

In Early NE the role of the word order grew even more and it became fixed. The inversion was still used in some cases but it was partial inversion (as it is now in most cases). One member sentences were falling into disuse and the subject became a necessary member of the sentence. The structure of the sentence became more complicated.

In OE there was no structural difference between the exclamatory sentences and statements. In ME they got a specific structure with the inverted word order and it remained through Early NE. By the end of the Early NE period the word order became direct as in Modern English.

ЛЕКЦИЯ 7 VOCABULARY

The Vocabulary of OE has three layers: Common Indo-European words, Old Germanic words, specifically English words and a few loan words. They constituted the nucleus of the OE vocabulary which is called the basic vocabulary. The basic vocabulary has the following characteristics:

1. The words have common use;

2. They are stable and remain in the vocabulary for centuries;

3. They are stylistically neutral;

4. They are often used for derivation and composition;

5. They are used in set expressions, idioms and proverbs.

Common Indo-European words included nouns denoting kinship, parts of the human body, animals and plants; adjectives denoting colors and size; numerals from 1 to 100; some pronouns; verbs denoting basic activities.

Common Germanic words included nouns denoting parts of the human body, animals, plants, natural phenomena, time division, metals, lodgings, and means of transportation; adjectives denoting colors and size; verbs of perception, speaking and some other activities.

Specifically English words are not found in other Germanic languages. Most of them are compounds. Loan words were not numerous and most of them entered Germanic languages at early stages of their development. When the English language began to develop some Celtic words were borrowed/

COMMON INDO-EUROPEAN WORDS
OE	Other Indo-European Languages	NE words
mann mōdor sunu nosu ʒos beorc twā thū sittan	L. mās (mans) L. mater R. мать R. сын L. nasus R. нос R. гусь R. береза L. duo R. два L. tu R. ты L. sedere R. сидеть	man mother son nose goose birch two thou sit
COMMON GERMANIC WORDS
hēaford hānd cealf sǣ reʒn dæʒ winter ʒrēne sēon drincan	Gt. haubiþ Germ. Haupt Gt. handus Germ. Hand Gt. kalbō Germ. Kalb Gt. saiws Germ. See Gt. rign Germ. Regen Sw. regn Gt dags Germ. Tag Sw. dag Gt. wintrus Germ Winter Sw. vinter Germ. grün Sw. gron Gt. saihwan Germ. sehen Sw. se Gt. drinkan Germ. trinken	head hand calf sea rain day winter green see drink
SPECIFIC ENGLISH WORDS
OE	ORIGIN	NE words
wifman hlāford	< wīf – жена + man - человек > hlāf – хлеб + weard – хранитель >	woman lord
LOAN – WORDS
pund strǣt bete munuc	L. pondo L. strāta L. beta L. monachus	pound street beet monk

The vocabulary stock changed during the period of OE. These changes reflected the historical development of English people. New activities appeared, their knowledge about surrounding world grew, and new notions developed. The vocabulary increased in two ways: 1) through coining new words from already existing ones by means of word-building (derivation) and word-composition; 2) through borrowing words from other languages.

ЛЕКЦИЯ 8. Диалекты и варианты английского языка