29. Strong verbs in oe and their development.

The OE verb had numerous persons and number cases, but fewer gram. categ. than NE verb had.

Str. verbs form their Past tense by changing their root vowel, had 4 principle forms:

• Infinitive – wrētan;

• Past sg – wrāt;

• Past pl – writan;

• Participle II – writēn.

They can be found in Rus → IE origin. Eg: беру – брал, несу – нес.

Often denoted the most important actions and states. In NE they are mainly irregular verbs.

Had 7 classes:

1. 1-6 classes use vowel gradation;

2. 7 class include reduplication verbs, build their Past tense repeating the root vowel.

3. The principle forms have the same endings:

Inf. - -an;

Past sg - ---;

Past pl - -on;

Part. II - -en.

4. some verbs with the root ending in –s; -p; -f employed an interchange of consonants [s → z → r], [θ → ð → d], [f → v];

5. The classes differed in the number of verbs and in their role and weight in the language.

6. Classes 4 and 5 deffered in the stems of Part. II. Classes 2, 3 and 4 – had identical vowels in the stems of Part. II.;

7. Classes 1 and 2 - contained in the root [I, u]. Classes 3, 4 and 5 – contained the gradation.

8. In ME many str. verbs changed into weak – they began to use dental suffix instead of the root verb change.

9. The root vowel in the Past sg and pl fell together. In the 15^th cent – one stem is used. In NE – 3 forms of str verbs are used. Eg: writ – wrote – written.

10. The OE endings –an

-en →-en (NE)

-en

24. The sources of ne plural forms of the noun.

OE singular and plural.

They were well distinguished formally in all the declensions, very few homonymous forms.

The pers. pronoun of the 1^st and 2^nd pers – 3 numbers: sg, pl and dual. Eg: ic (sg) – wit (dual) – wē (pl).

ME the noun preserved the formal distinctions of 2 numbers. Late ME –es.

The –es under went several phonetic changes:

• the voicing of fricatives;

• the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables.

Eg:

1. after a voiced consonant/vowel: stones OE > stoυəz > stæυnz

2. after a voiceless cons.: bookes [bo:kəs] > bu:ks > bυks.

3. after affricative [s, z, ∫], [t∫], [dg]: di∫əs > di∫iz;

The ME –en- last its productivity in NE: oxen, brethren, children.

Some nouns with homonymous form of number: sheep, deer, swine.

The gram. of former root –st has survived only as exceptions: man – men, tooth – teeth.

Forms like “data”, “antennae” have come from other languages.

27. The oe demonstrative pronouns. The rise of the articles in English.

Demonstrative pronouns:

1. 2 of them:

   1. prototype of “that” (sē (m), þæt (n), sēo(f));

   2. prototype of “this” (þes(m), þēos(n), þis(f));

2. sē simple, sg, m, Nom;

þis – emphatic, sg, m, Nom (именно этот)ж

3. were used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, case and gender. They can help to distinguish between gender: Eg: þæm lande – n; þæ‾re heorde –f.

4. Dem. pron. became unchangeable. In OE there were 5 cases: Nom, Dat, Gen, Acc, Instr.

5. Its declension disappeared in ME. Traces of its Instr. case are found: Eg: the more the better followed by the comparative degree.

The ind. article developed from numeral ‘ān’ and often preserves traces of its meaning: Eg: a steaching time saves night.

In ME the OE demonst. pron. lost most of their inflected forms. Dem pron sē, sēo, þæt led to the formation of the def article.

In OE texts these pron were used as noun determiners with a weakened meaning (as Mod def art).

16. I-mutation and its traces in Modern English.

I-mutation influenced short and lond vowels. It took place in all Germanic languages except Gothic. It’s a case of regressive assimilation with the vowel ‘I’ or semivowel ‘j’. It took place in the 6^th cent.

Condition of i-mutation – presence of j [й]:

Eg: ky‾ning → OE cyning

fy‾llian → OE fy‾llan

fōti → foēt (foot – feet)

Traces in Mod words:

1 – irregular plural of nouns: mouse – mice;goose - geese

foot – feet;

2 – irregular verbs & adj.: told –tell, old – elder

3 – word formation: long –length, blood – bleed

I-mutation – both syntactic and paradigmatic change (structure of the word changes, produces a new phoneme).

æ

α → e badi OE – bedid (bled)

o

α: → æ: dails OE - dælan (deal)

o → e motjan OE – metan (meet)

u → y fuljan OE - fyllan (feel)

u: → y: mūs → my‾s

ea, eo→ ie ealdira ieldra (elder)

New vowels appeared: ŷ & iē