- •2. The common features of Germanic languages.
- •1. The old Germanic languages, their classification and principal features.
- •3. The chronological division of the history of English. General characteristics of each period.
- •4. The Scandinavian invasion and its effect on English.
- •5. The Norman Conquest and its effect on English.
- •6. The dialectal situation of English from a historical perspective.
- •7. Principal Old English and Middle English written record.
- •8. Major spelling changes in me.
- •12. Consonant changes in the history of English
- •9. The oe sound system. Vowel and consonant changes in Old English.
- •Loss of Consonants:
- •10. Monophthongs in the history of English.
- •11. Diphthongs in the history of English
- •14. The oe noun system.
- •15. The simplification of the noun declension in English
- •30. The main trends in word formation in history of English
- •16. The development of personal pronouns in the history of English.
- •17. The development of the adjective in history of English
- •18. The development of demonstrative pronouns in the history of English.
- •13. Form-building means in the history of English
- •19. Oe verbal system.
- •20.Weak verbs in oe & their further development.
- •21. Strong verbs in oe and their development.
- •22. Oe preterite-present verbs and anomalous verbs and their further development.
- •26. The causes of changes in the morphological system in me & ne. The origin of modern English regular and irregular noun forms.
- •23 .Changes in the verb conjugation in the history of English.
- •27. The principal features of oe syntax.
- •24. The rise of analytical forms within the verbal system in the history of English.
- •Formation
- •25. Verbals in the history of English
- •Infinitive
- •28. The main trends in the development of English syntax.
- •29. Oe vocabulary & its etymological characteristics.
- •31. Borrowings as a source of the replenishment of e vocabulary in me & ne.
22. Oe preterite-present verbs and anomalous verbs and their further development.
Preterite-present verbs can be referred to minor morphological group. There were 12,only 6 survived in NE
e.g. maзan (may)-мочь
āз (ought)
cunan (can,could)
dear (dare)
sculan (shall,should)
mōt (must)
They denote not action but state.
The conjugation:
1. str. verbs’ Past = the Pres.
2. weak verbs’ Past = the Past
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.).
There were several anomalous (dōn (do), willan, beōn, зān (go)). These verbs combined the features of weak and str. verbs. Irregular verbs, which forms are derived from different roots.
beōn, зān were suppletive (зan – Inf.; eode – Past)
Infinitive |
Past |
Participle 2 |
strong verb feature (root-sound interchange) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d) |
strong verb feature (suffix -n and prefix ζe-) |
|
dōn |
dyde |
ζedōn |
Re-arrangement:
The example of it we have in NE (willan – will like modal verb and like Future tense of the verb to be)
26. The causes of changes in the morphological system in me & ne. The origin of modern English regular and irregular noun forms.
In ME the masculine gender became the main. The gender lost its inflections. The OE Nom, Acc, Dat cases fell together into Common case.
The Gen used to denote possession → becomes possessive case (In Singular it was marked by -‘s. In the 17th – 18th c. the apostrophe (‘) started to be used in Pl)
In ME the regular plurals usually take –es which is the continuation of OE –as.
I-MUTATION. It is a case of regressive assimilation with –i- or semivowel ‘j’. Eg: fuljan – fūllan (fill – full). We find traces of i-mutation in NE, especially in irregular plurals: foot – feet, goose – geese.
Process of simplification:
changing in the structure of the word;
unstable position of gender. Also the principle of analogy – ability of the language to adapt a less common form to a more widely used one. Eg: черное кофе.
Adj – an unchangeable part of speech (except for the degrees of comparison).
Causes for simplification:
Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar.
Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections).
The preference of the consonantal endings can be explained by the fact that the vowels were more apt to change and reduction then the consonants that in general proved to be more stable.