Oe Syntax Outline

1. The order of sentence elements.

2. Multiple negation.

3. Compound and complex sentences.

Recommended Books

Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. – M., 1983. – P. 124-129

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

Костюченко Ю.П. Історія англійської мови. – Київ, 1963. – С. 135-146

1. The order of sentence elements

OE was primarily a spoken language, therefore the written forms of the language resemble oral speech. The syntax of the sentence was relatively simple. Complicated syntactical constructions were rare.

In Germanic the order of sentence elements was usually SOV, but this was no longer the rule in OE. The word order of sentence elements in OE is mixed, though there was a tendency to put the verb in second position. This often led to a SVO order, except that when an adverbial came at the beginning of a sentence, this provided an AVSO order to give a clause like Þa cwxD sum oDer deofol (said another devil). Whereas in Germanic the object had tended to precede the verb, in OE this was no longer the case, and more often than not the object followed the verb either directly or after the subject. This is by no means invariable and there were two clausal arrangements where it was infrequent. The first is where the verb consisted of an auxiliary element and infinitive or participle. In this situation it was frequent to have the order S – aux – OV as in we sceolon eac Cristes acennednysse … wurDian (we must also honour Christ’s birth). The second is in subordinate clauses where the verb was commonly placed at the end of the clause, as in þxt hi heora lare Zymon (that they attended to their instruction). Because of these variations there is a dispute among scholars what the precise word-order patterns were in OE. It was not a verb-second language and it did not retain the SOV order. OE was in transitional stage moving from SOV to SVO, though with a preference for AVSO.

2. Multiple Negation

One of the characteristic features of OE syntax was multiple negation within a simple sentence or clause. The most common negative particle was ne. It was placed before the verb. It was often accompanied by other negative words: naht or noht. These words reinforced the meaning of negation:

Ne con ic noht sinZan … ic naht sinZ an ne cuDe (I cannot sing (I cannot sing nothing))

3. Compound and Complex Sentences

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since earliest times. But many constructions in early original prose were disorderly and looked clumsy.

Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunction of a most general meaning:

And þa ouZeat se cyninZ þxt ond he, on þa duru eode, and þa unbeanlice hine werede

And then the king saw that, and he went to the door, and then bravely defended himself

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause was common in complex sentences:

Þa he þxr to Zefaren wxs, þa eodon hie to hiora scipum

then (when) he came there, then they went to their ship

The pronoun and conjunction þxt was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words:

oD Dxt (until)

xr þxm þe (before)

þxt (so that)

Some clauses were joined asyndetically.