10. Strong and weak verbs in Old English and their further development.

Morphologically all OE verbs were divided into 2 large classes: the strong and the weak verbs. The main difference btw strong and weak verbs lay in in the means of forming stem of the verb. There were some differences in conjugation as well.

Strong Verbs: there were about 3000 in OE. It’s native verbs from PG. The s.v. usually divided into7 classes. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation and by adding some suffixes. The strong v. had 4 stems. The classes differ in the series of root-vowels used to distinguish 4 stems. Some verbs employed a consonant interchange. Classes 1 and 3 were the most numerous of all. In a course of time 7 classes of s. v. underwent some changes. Final syllables were weakened of even lost. Some classes fell together. There was a tendency to make the system of verbs more regular. All consonant interchanges were particularly lost in ME. The number of stems were reduced from 4 to 3. In ME and early NE many strong v. became weak. In Present day English there are small group of irregular verbs, which have developed mostly from strong verbs.

Weak Verbs: derived their stems from the Present tense form with the help of suffix –d or –t and didn’t change the root vowel. Their number exceeded that of the strong v. Among these v. there were many derivatives from nouns and adj. In OE w.v. were subdivided into 3 classes: class I(infinitive ending –an/ian), class II(inf. Ending –ian), class 3 (-an). Weak v. were simplified as well in the ME. The number of classes was reduced from 3 to 2. In the past tense all weak v. employed the suffix –d/t. It was regular form of building past tense, even borrowed verbs acquired these suffix.

11. The Old English vocabulary and its etymological characteristics.

The OE vocab was almost purely Germanic, except for a small numb of borrowings. It consisted of native words inherited from PG or formed from native roots and affixes. Native OE wors can be subdivided into: a) common IE words; b) com-n Germanic w-s; c) specifically OE w-s. Words belonging to the common IE layer are the oldest part of the OE vocab. These are names of plants and animals, parts of the human body, etc.; it includes personal and demonstr pron-s and most numerals. Verbs of this layer denote the basic activities of man; adj. indicate the most essential qualities.

The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germ lang. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of com IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

The 3^rd layer of native w-s is specifically OE that is words which do not occur in other Germ or non-Germ lang-s. There are few of them, if we include here only the words whose roots have not been found outside Engl. But they are more numerous if we include OE compounds and derived w-s formed from Germ roots in England.

There’re very few borrowed words in English (600):There are very few Celtic words in the OE vocabulary. Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names(Kent, York, London, Themes).

Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and concepts which the Teutons had learnt from the Romans. They are connected with war, trade, agriculture, building and home life.

The next period began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words clearly fall into 2 main groups: 1) connected with religion2)with learning.

12. Word order and negation in the history of the English language.

In OE the order of words was relatively free, because parts of the sentence were connected with the help of inflexions. But in course of the time the importance of fixed word order grew, the language became more analytical than synthetical.

Late OE prose shows the most common word-order patterns: 1)subject+verb+object, 2)Subject+Object+Verb, when Object is Pronoun, 3)VSO(sentences which open adv.mod. or subordin.clauses were generally characterized by so-called syntactic word order, while the predicate placed last in the sentence.

One of the feature of OE syntax was multiple negation within one sentence or clause. The most common negator was participle ne, which was placed before the verb and often was used with other negative words, which reinforced the negative meaning. Another peculiarity was that ne could be attached to some verbs, adverbs and pronouns to form single verbs.

In 17^th c. contracted forms don’t/haven’t/won’t appeared.

13. Celtic, Scandinavian, French, Italian loans in English. Loans from classical languages. Borrowings in NE.

Borrowed words constituted only a small portion of OE vocabulary, but they reflect contacts of English with other languages. The major part OE borrowings come from Celtic and Latin sources.

There are very few Celtic words in the OE vocabulary. Abundant borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names(Kent, York, London, Themes). There are very few Celtic borrowed common nouns in modern English, the majority of them have died out and survived only in some dialects.

The influence of the Roman civilization if quite manifest, so that there are lot of Latin words can be found in English. Early OE borrowings from Latin indicate the new things and concepts which the Teutons had learnt from the Romans. They are connected with war, trade, agriculture, building and home life.

The next period began with the introduction of Christianity in the late 6th c. and lasted to the end of OE. Numerous Latin words clearly fall into 2 main groups: 1) connected with religion2)with learning.

Some religious concepts and their names were adopted from Greek (angel, idil, nun, pope, rule, temple & etc.) Most Latin borrowed words were treated as native, which meant that they were already assimilated.

There are lot of words of Scandinavian origin in ME. The majority of such a words can be found in northern dialects, but some words were so assimilated that they are used in Standard English, they don’t differ from native words.

Norman conquers left a deep impress on a language. A grate number of French borrowings was found during ME. The majority of word relating to the government & law(country, court, people, crown, power, nation), titles & ranks(king, earl, lord) , military matters(arms, battle), church & religion(abbey, Bible, divine, saint). Assimilation of French words was more complicated than that of Scandinavian ones, because French belongs to a dif. Linguistic group. Such a words contained many sounds witch does not exist in English. French sounds were replaced by similar English ones, the stress was shifted according to an English rules. Many French words were borrowed in NE, there are words concerning literature, art, fashion, food, social life. During the period of Renaissance English language took a lot of words from Italian, there were words relating to art, music, culture.

14. Major syntactical changes in the history of English.

In ME syntax was stricter and more prepositions were used. New compound tenses were used, such as the perfect tenses, and there was more use of the progressive and passive voice. The use of double negation also increased as did impersonal constructions. The use of the verbs will and shall for the future tense was first used too.

1)The most obvious difference between OE syntax and the syntax of the ME and NE periods is that the word order became more strict and the use of prepositions more extensive. 2)Agreement in noun phrases practically fell in discuse except number; 3)Noun was mostly preceded by an Adj. In NE noun patterns were also built by means of predicative constr-s with gerund and inf. 4) connection between the adj and noun appeared.In ME the objects in Dat. Or Gen. were replaced by common case us-ly preceded by preposition; 5)some verb-phrases merged into single gram-l and lexical unit. Many v-p. became phras-l units.In general v-p. were simplified

In ME is used the direct word order. But in the sentences which began with adjunct (обстоятельственное) word, it was indirect word order. The synthetical word order gradually disappears. The word order in ME is not so fixed, as in NE, but has important meaning. Then a direct word order becomes obligatory. The indirect word order begins to be used in questions. The auxiliary word do is entered, which was fixed in questions and negations.

15. Major vowel changes in NE. The interpretations of the Great Vowel Shift.

In ME and NE the tendency towards the reduction increased. In late ME there were only 2 vowels in unstressed position (schwa & i). The final unstressed schwa was dropped in speech, but continued to be spelt. Stressed vowels undergo great changes both in quality and in quantity. Most historically unstable were long vowels, they became narrower and more open. 1) Short vowels before 2 homorganic C, a sonorant, a plosive became long; 2)2 or more consonants made preceding vowel short; 3)in open syllables vowel became long.

The Great Vowel Shift took place during 14^th – 18^th c. It was a series of changes which involved monophtongs and some diphthongs. During the shift all the long vowels became closer, these changes can be described as independent , they affected almost every stressed long vowel in any position. ( i: - ai, e: - i:, ё-e:-i:, a: - ei, _: - O: - ou, O: - U:, au - _:. The Great Vowel shift was not followed by any changes in spelling. During the shift even the names of some English letters were changed (A/a:/ - /ei/, K/ka:/ - /kei/).

There are certain remarkable aspects in the shift. All the vowels were changed in a single direction. The changes were interpreted differently by linguists. One said that the changes were caused by general tendency of long vowels to become closer and to diphtongonise, which was determined by physical properties. Other said that shift introduced new qualitative differences btw vowels. Another theory attributes the changes to morphological factors: it caused by the loss of final schwa – words became monosyllabic – many words sounded equally – shift emphasized the difference.