Oe Consonant Changes

Consonants were more stable than vowels, but certain changes took place in OE period.

1. Palatalisation of Velar Consonants

The velar consonants [k g x y] were palatalized before a front vowel and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel.

OE cild [k] [k']  (child)

sprxc [k]  [k']  (speech)

2. Loss of Consonants

Nasal sonorants were regularly lost before fricative consonants. In the process the preceding vowel was nasalized and lengthened.

OHG uns  OE ūs (us)

Fricative consonants could be dropped between vowels and before some plosive consonants. The proceeding vowel was lengthened or there was the fusion of the proceeding and succeeding vowel into a diphthong.

Gothic slahan  OE slean (slay)

Gothic saihwan  OE seon (see)

[j] was regularly dropped in suffixes after producing various changes in the root: palatal mutation of vowels, lengthening of consonants after short vowels. The loss of [w] was fixed in some case forms of nouns.

e.g. Nom. treo Dat. treowe (tree)

Nom. sx Dat. sxwe (sea)

Old English Inventory of Consonants

Place of articulation Manner of articulation		Labial, labiodental	Forelingual (dental)	Mediolingual (palatal)	Back lingual (velar)
Noise consonants	plosive voiceless voiced	p p: b b:	t t: d d:	k' k': g':	k k: g g:
	fricative voiceless voiced	f f: v	T T: s s: D z	x' x': y' (j)	x x: (h) y
Sonorants		m m: w	n n: r l	j	(N)

The distinctive feature of OE consonants was difference in length (long :: short). It happened in intervocalic position. Sometimes single and long consonant were found in identical phonetic conditions:

OE lxde (1^st person singular) and lxdde (Past) (to lead)

Old English Grammar: Morphology Outline

1. General Characteristics of Old English Grammar.

2. The OE Noun.

3. The OE Pronoun.

4. The OE Adjective.

5. The OE Verb.

Recommended Books

Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. – M., 1983. – P. 92-124

Blake N.F. A History of the English Language. – New York: New York University Press, 1996. – P. 64-74

Костюченко Ю.П. Історія англійської мови. – Київ, 1963. – С. 92-134

1. General Characteristics of Old English Grammar

OE was a synthetic (inflected) language. The relations between words and expression of other grammatical meanings were shown with the help of simple (synthetic) grammatical forms. Grammatical endings, or inflections, were the main form-building means.

There were the following parts of speech in OE:

t he noun

t he adjective

t he pronoun nominal parts of speech

the numeral

the verb

the adverb

the preposition

the conjunction

the interjection

There were 5 nominal grammatical categories:

• number

• case

• gender

• degrees of comparison

• categories of definiteness/indefiniteness

Verbal grammatical categories were not many:

t ense verbal categories proper

mood

number

person