- •1№ 1. Germanic languages: their history & classification
- •Table. The classification of old & modern Germanic languages.
- •2. The common features of germanic languages
- •In phonetics:
- •In grammar:
- •In lexis:
- •3. The chronological division of the history of English.
- •4 The Scandinavian invasion and its effect on English.
- •5. Norman Conquest and its effect on English
- •6. The dialectial situation of english
- •Old English Dialects
- •7. Principal oe and me written records
- •8. Spelling changes in me
- •9. Oe sound system
- •Palatal Mutation/I-Umlaut
- •Velar Consonants in Early Old English. Growth of New Phonemes
- •10. Monophthongs in the history of english
- •Qualitative vowel changes in early middle english
- •11. Dipthongs
- •12.Consonant changes in the history of english.
- •Treatment of Fricative Consonants in me and Early ne
- •13. Form-building means in the histoey of english
- •14. Old english noun system
- •15. The Simplification of the Noun Declension in English
- •16. The development of personal pronouns in the history of English.
- •17 The Development of the Adjective
- •18.The development of demonstrative pronouns in the history of English .(Dem pron, their categories , declentions, the decay of declentions & gramm. Categ in Middle e, the rise of articles.)
- •19. The oe verb, its grammatical categories and morphological types.
- •Grammatical Categories oF the Finite Verb
- •20. Old English weak verbs and their further development
- •21. Strong verbs
- •22. Preterite-present and anomalous
- •23. Changes in the verb conjugation
- •25. Verbals in the history of English
- •Development of the Gerund
- •24. The rise of analytical forms in verbal system in me.
- •Category of Voice. Passive
- •Perfect Forms.
- •Interrogative and Negative Forms with do (ne)
- •26. Causes of Grammatical Changes
- •27. Oe syntax
- •28. English syntax.
- •29 Old English Vocabulary
- •30 Word-Formation in Old English
- •31. Borrowings Конспект French and Scandinavian Borrowings in English
21. Strong verbs
The terms strong and weak verbs were introduced by Jacob Grimm but since they are not self exclamatory modern linguists use the terms verbs with suffixation (weak) and vocalic (strong). The strong type was from IE origin. The verbs of this type are based on the use of IE phenomenon ablaut or vowel gradation. It can be found in Russian: иёз – везу, гром-гремит/ The most typical variety of IE ablaut was e-o (qualitative). e-zero (quantitative).
The strong type (about 300 verbs) was based on IE ablaut e-o, i-a, e-zero. the past tense was formed by changing the root vowel. Participle 2 with the help of suffix –en. Non productive type. 4 principal parts (inf, past sing, past pl, participle 2) Subdivided in all GMC lang into 7 classes: cl 1 wrītan(inf) wrāt(past sg) writon (past pl) written (participle
Classes 6,7 differ from the first 5 classes bec they show identical vowels in the past sg and pl forms – a step towards the modern verb system.
The number of strong verbs was decreasing bec it was a non-producive type. Only about 70 survived in ME. Some died out as lexical units, others became weak verbs (laugh, help)
Strong Verbs and their Development
As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.
The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut. The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6: cl 3:NE find found found
We can see that the following changes occurred: In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection -en. In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms. In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2)) the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.
In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.
22. Preterite-present and anomalous
The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics: Their Present-Tense forms resembled Past-Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so); Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “defective”; These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs); Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE: āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must).
ME The following changes happened to the preterite-present verbs: They lost their Verbals (non-finite forms) (e.g. OE cunnen – Part 2 of cunnan); They lost the Number and Mood distinctions (e.g. OE cann (Indicative) – cunne (Subjunctive); OE cann (Sg) – cunnon (Pl)).
NE The paradigm of the preterite-present verbs (that had already become modal verbs) was reduced to one or two forms (e.g. must (just one form), can, could (just two forms), etc.).
Anomalous Verbs They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).
Willan: had the meaning of volition; resembled the preterite-present verbs in meaning (attitude) and in function (was followed by the Infinitive without “to”); eventually became a modal verb and also together with sculan developed into an auxiliary for the formation of the Future-Tense forms.
Dōn This verb combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:
ζan This verb was suppletive and also combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:
Bēon This verb was highly suppletive and in OE employed two separate words/roots