Lecture 5. The oe vocabulary

The OE vocabulary was almost purely Germanic with the exception of a small group of borrowings. Native OE words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers coming from different historical periods. The three main layers in the native OE words are: common IE words, common Germanic words and specifically OE words. The words belonging to the common IE layer constitute the oldest part of the OE vocabulary. One can come across the names of some natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of the parts of the human body, the terms of kinship, etc.

The common Germanic layer includes the words shared by most Germanic languages. They constitute an important an important distinctive mark of the Germanic languages at the lexical level. It is smaller than the layer of common IE words. From the point of view of semantics these words are connected with nature, the sea and everyday life.

The third etymological layer of native words can be defined as specifically OE, i.e. the words that are not found in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages.

The borrowings were from Celtic and Latin languages.

Word formation in OE

OE word formation was based on the ability of a single root to appear in a great number of simple, derived and compound words. Many derivational affixes were productive.

OE employed two ways of word formation: derivation and word composition. Derived words were built with the help of affixes: prefixes and suffixes. Words were also distinguished with the help of sound interchange and word stress.

The sound interchange was accompanied by suffixation. Genetically, sound interchange went back to various sources and periods.

Word composition was a highly productive way of developing the vocabulary in OE. The method of word-formation was common to all IE languages but in none of the groups has it become so widespread as in Germanic. An abundance of compound words, from poetic metaphors to scientific terms, are found in OE texts.

As in other OG languages, word composition in OE was more productive in nominal parts of speech than in verbs.

Lecture 6. OE Syntax

The syntactical structure of OE was determined by two major conditions: the nature of OE morphology and the relations between the spoken and written forms of the language.

OE was a synthetic type of language. It possessed a system of grammatical forms which could indicate the connection between words; the functional load of syntactic ways of word connection was relatively small.

The syntax of the sentence was relatively simple; coordination of clauses prevailed over subordination; complicated syntactical constructions were rare.

Lecture 7. The historical background of the ME period

The ME starts in 1066 and lasts till the 14^th c. Since the 8^th c the British Isles were attacked by the Danes then by Norwegians. By the end of the 9^th c part of the country had been recognized as Danish territory – “Danelaw”. The new settlers and the English intermarried and intermixed. They lived close together and did not differ in social rank and the level of culture and customs.

In October 1066 in the battle of Hastings Harold was killed and the English were defeated. This date is known as the date of the Norman conquest. The Norman conquest was not only a great event in British political history but also the greatest event in the history of the English language.

The most immediate consequence of the Norman domination in Britain was the wide use of the French language in many spheres of life. For almost three hundred years French was the official language of administration: it was the language of the king’s court, the law courts, the church, the army and the castle. The intellectual life, literature and education were in the hands of French – speaking people.

Three hundred years of the domination of French affected the English more than any other foreign influence before or after.