Conjugative terminations of oe verbs

Indicative Subjunctive

Present (str.) / (weak)	Past (str.) / (weak)	Present (str.) / (weak)	Past (str.) / (weak)
Ic –e/-e Pu –(e)st / -(e)st hē –(e)P / -(e)P	- / -de -e / -dest - / -de	-e / -e -e / -e -e / -e	-e / -e -e / -e -e / -e
wē – aP / aP Зē – aP / -aP hīe – aP / - aP	-on / -don -on / - don -on / -don	-en / -en -en / -en -en / -en	-en / -en -en / -en -en / -en

There existed a separate group of preterite-present verbs in OE, some of which developed into modal verbs in MnE, among them:

OE	MidE Infin.	MidE Past	MnE
cunnan	cunnen	coude	can, could
maЗan	mowen	mighte	may, might
sculan	shul(l)en	sholde	shall, should
mōtan	mōtēn, mōt	mōste	must

The Numeral. In OE there existed both cardinal and ordinal numerals. Cardinal round numerals, i.e. numbers ending in 0, such as 20, 30, 40 etc., were formed with the help of the suffix -tfЗ [read as tij]. The numerals from 13 till 19 all had the suffix -tīene,

e.g.: twenti3,fifti3, sixtiЗ; feowertīene, fiftīene, etc.

Ordinal numbers, as a rule, had the suffix -opa,

e.g. twenti3opa, fifti3opa, feowertēopa, fiftēopa, etc.

However, some ordinal numerals were not formed with the suffix -opa. Consider, for instance, the following numerals:

1^st - forma, fyresta; 2^nd - oðer, œfterra;

3^rd - pridda, pīrda; 4^th - fēowerpa, fēorpa;

5^th- fifta; 6^th - sixta, siexta, syxta.

Compound cardinal and ordinal numerals were formed either with the help of the conjunction and or by means of the preposition ēac (‘with’),

e.g. eahta and fēowerti3 (48), eahta ēac fēowerti3um (48);

ān and twenti3opa (21^st), fyresta ēac twenti3um (21^st).

OE Syntax. There were few composite sentences in OE - most of the in OE manuscripts were simple. The order of words was more or less since the developed system of case/conjugation inflections pointed to the relations among words in a sentence. The phenomenon of multiple (several) negation was but a norm in OE,

e.g. Ne con ic nōht sin3an ("I can sing nothing").

2. The Old English Vocabulary was much more homogeneous than it is now: there were few foreign words (see about loans from Latin in the previous lecture) and for the most part OE consisted of native (Anglo-Saxon) words. They may be subdivided into words common to all I-E languages and those common to Germanic languages. Here are some examples of words in OE vocabulary which are common to all I-E languages and constitute the so-called Indo-European layer, having correlates in Ukrainian: OE MnE Ukrainian

modor mother Mamu (мamepi)

broPor brother 6pam

sweostor sister cecmpa

sunu son cun

widwe widow вдoea

trēo tree дepeeo (дpeeo)

twā two дea

Pu thou mu

standan stand cmoяmu

sittan sit cudimu

Below are given some examples of OE words which are common only to Germanic languages (the so-called specifically Germanic layer):

OE MnE MnGerman

hand hand Hand

earm arm Arm

finger finger Finger

grass grass Grass

sœ sea See

land land Land

forst frost Frost

winter winter Winter

hūs house Haus

bleo blue blau

The analysis of the native word-stock of OE from the point of view of the MnE language leads to the conclusion that despite the large-scale borrow­ings native words are still at the core of the English language. They stand for fundamental things dealing with everyday objects. The native stock includes auxiliary and modal verbs, most verbs of the strong conjugation, pronouns, most numerals, prepositions and conjunctions. The frequency value of these elements in the English vocabulary is not open to doubt. Everyday English and the vocabulary of the colloquial speech embrace fewer loan-words than, say, the language of technical literature.

The system of OE vowels is slightly different from the MnE vowel system. Here is the list of OE vowels in comparison with those of the pres­ent-day English.

short vowels long vowels

OE MnE OE MnE

[a] - [a] [a:]

[œ] [œ] [œ] -

[e] [e] [ē] -

[i] [i] [ī] [i:]

[o] - [ō] -

[u] [u] [ū] [u:]

[y] - [ŷ] -

[ə] [ə:]

[A] -

[O] [O:]

As can be seen from the above given list, only four short vowels survived in MnE and three were lost. At the same time three new short vowels appeared. In the system of long vowels only three of OE long vowels exist in MnE while four of them were lost and two new long vowels appeared.

While some of the OE monophthongs are still found in MnE, the system of OE diphthongs was destroyed completely: the existing MnE diphthongs are, so to say, new. In OE there were four short and the same number of long diphthongs: [ea] [ēa], [eo], [ēo], [ie], [īe], [io], [īo]. There are no such diphthongs in MnE where we find the following set: [ei], [ou], [ai], [au], [Oi], [iə], [Fq], [Oə], [uq].

The changes in the system of consonants were less noticeable. There were the same four bilabial [bai'leibiəl] consonants in OE which are preserved in MnE: [p], [b], [m], [w]; the same two labial-dental [f] and [v], and the two interdental [T] [D]. The MnE alveolar [xl'viqlq] sounds [t], [d], [n], [s], [z] were dental sounds in OE, in other words, there were no alveolar consonants in OE. The modern alveolar [1] was backlingual as well as the modern forelingual [r]which was also backlingual in OE.

The MnE backlingual consonants are represented by sounds [k], [g], [N]. In OE the list of backlingual sounds, besides the above mentioned [1] and [r], includes the same three that are found today plus two which disappeared – [y] and [x].

There is only one mediolingual sound in MnE - [j]. In OE, besides this one, there were three more mediolingual consonants, namely [k'], [g'], [x']. There was one pharyngal sound in OE - [h] which is present today, but there were neither hissing sounds nor affricates which appeared at the end of the Old English period.

The table below shows the system of OE consonants in comparison with MnE ones:

Table 3.