Old English Grammar.

Plan:

1. Preliminary remarks.

2. The noun.

3. The pronoun.

4. The adjective.

5. The verb

1. Old English was a synthetic language; it means inflective type of a language. The relations between words are expressed with the help of syntactic forms and endings. The main means of word-building and form-building were endings, prefixes, consonant and vowel interchanges, and suppletive words. They were found in all parts of speech. Sound interchanges were employed less, and usually word combined with other means.

As for suppletive forms, they were restricted to several pronouns and a few adjectives. The parts of the speech were the following: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction and interjection. There were five nominal grammatical categories: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison, category of definiteness and indefiniteness. Each part of speech has its own number of categories. So, noun has three categories: number, case, gender. But the adjective has maximum number of categories: number, case, gender, degree of comparison.

The number of members in the same grammatical category in different parts of speech was also different. Thus the noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative. But the adjective had five cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Instrumental (творительный падеж).

Noun had two numbers (singular and plural), but the personal pronouns of the first and the second persons had three numbers (singular, plural and dual).(!) E.g. 1^st sing. – Ic (I)

1^st plur. - We

dual – two of us.

Verbal grammatical categories were not numerous: tense and mood are verbal categories proper, number and person showed agreement of the predicate and the subject. The verb and the noun had two categorical forms: conjugation (спряжение) and declension (склонение).

2. The Old English noun had three grammatical categories: case, number and gender. Two numbers, four cases and three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter. The cases of the noun had some functions. So, the Nominative case defined the active agent. Commonly it was the case of the subject and was used with verbs denoting activity. The Genitive case – it was the case of the attributes. The Dative case was chiefly used with prepositions, denoting the adverbial modifier. E.g. on morenne - in the morning. Accusative case denoted the direct object.

The most remarkable feature was the elaborate system of declinations. The total number of declinations including major and minor types was more than 25. The criteria for distinctness were the following: stem - suffix, the gender of noun, the phonetic structure of the word, and the phonetic changes in the finite syllables. According to this criterion the nouns distinguished into vowel and consonant declensions. (!) Stem – suffixes could consist of vowels and consonants. E.g. a-stem, r-stem

o-stem, n-stem

i-stem, s-stem

u-stem.

Sometimes both elements stem-suffix and original ending were shortened or even dropped.

Another criterion is according to gender, 7 groups of nouns were distinguished. To the first group of nouns masculine neuter belong to the nouns denoting human beings and animals. To the second declension belong the nouns of family gender. The third group – masculine and feminine neuter. Fourth group – feminine and masculine inanimate things. The fifth group – masculine neuter and feminine. The sixth group – masculine –feminine. Seventh group – masculine neuter feminine.

The third reason for distinguishing was in structure and phonetic. There were four types of nouns:

• Monosyllabic nouns with a short vowel in the root.

• Monosyllabic nouns with a long vowel in the root.

• Polysyllabic nouns with a short vowel in the root.

• Polysyllabic nouns with a long vowel in the root.

According to these criteria, declensions were divided into strong and weak. Strong declension included the declensions of the vowel stem-suffix. Weak one – the declensions of the consonants.

3. Old English pronouns fell under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. The other group of pronouns, such as relative, possessive and reflexive was not fully developed and was not always distinctly separated for the four main classes.

The grammatical categories of the pronoun were either similar to those of nouns, so called pronouns, or corresponded to the adjectives – the adjective pronouns.

Old English personal pronouns had three persons: 1, 2, 3; three numbers in the 1^st and the 2^nd plural; two numbers in the third person, and three genders only in the third person.

In Old English, while nouns distinguished their four cases, personal pronouns began to loose some of their distinctions. The forms of the Dative case were frequently used instead of the Accusative case, and it led to the fusion (слияние) of these two cases.

The Genitive case of personal pronouns was usually employed as possessive pronouns, but possessive pronouns can’t be regarded as possessive pronouns proper.

There were two demonstrative pronouns in Old English. The proper time of Modern English “that” which distinguished three genders in the singular and one gender in the plural. E.g. Masc. þes; Fem. þeos; Nuet. þis; Plural: þas.

These pronouns were declined according to a five case system: Nominative,

Genitive,

Dative,

Accusative,

Instrumental.

Instrumental case has a special form only in masculine and neuter singular.

Interrogative pronouns: hwa (who?); hwǽt (what?); in instrumental case - hwy (why?). Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class, including several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: “an” and its derivatives. E.g. ǽni (M.E. any); nan (M.E. none); nani(M.E. nothing).

4. On Old English the adjective could change for number, gender and case. These categories were dependent; it means that the adjective agreed with the noun in its case, gender and number. Adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case differed from the category of case of noun (five cases in its paradigm). Most adjectives were declined in two ways: according to the weak and strong declension. The difference between these declensions was similar to those of the noun declension. The strong and weak declension arouse due to several stem-suffixes: vocalic: a; a:; u; i; and consonantal: n. The difference between them was not only formal, but also semantic. The strong declension was always associated with indefiniteness, but the adjectives belonging to weak one – associated with definiteness. That’s why the opposition of strong and weak declensions sometimes is regarded as the opposition of definiteness – indefiniteness.

Most adjectives could de declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors:

• Syntactical function of the adjective,

• The degree of comparison,

• The presence of noun determiners.

The adjectives had a strong form of declension when it was used predicatively. (Or part of the predicate). E.g. þa, menn sindon ode. (M.E. These men are good).

The weak form was employed when the adjective was proceeded a demonstrative pronoun. E.g. þat weste land. (M.E. That uninhabited land).

Some adjectives did not confirm with this rule: a few adjectives were always declined strong: eall (M.E. all); mani (M.E. many). But some adjectives were always declined weak: adjectives in superlative and comparative degrees, the ordinal numerals, the adjective “ilca” (M.E. same).

Degrees of comparison.

Old English adjectives had three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the superlative degrees from the positive were the suffixes: -ra^; -ost^; est^. Sometimes suffixation was accomplished by vowel interchange: E.g. positive comparative superlative

soft softra softrost

lǽd lǽdra ladest

Some adjectives formed their degrees by means of suppletion (change of the whole word). E.g. Gt. gut – besser – beste.

O.E. od – bettra – bettest.

5.

Grammatical categories of the verb.

The Old English verb was characterized by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a very complicated structure. Firstly, verbs fell into numerous morphological classes. Secondly, verbs employed a variety of form - building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The verb in the function of the predicate agreed with the subject in two grammatical categories: number and person. Specifically verbal categories were a mood and a tense.

The category of person was made up of three forms: 1, 2, and 3 person. The category of mood was made up of three moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive. The category of tense consisted of two forms: present and past.

The meaning and the use of moods and tenses in Old English was different from Middle English and Modern English. E.g. Subjunctive Mood conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. In conditional sentences it had volitional (!), conjectural and hypothetical functions.

The meanings of the Tense forms were also very general in comparison with present day English. E.g. The forms of the Present Tense were used to indicate both Present and Future actions. The Past Tense was used to indicate various actions in the past, including the forms which are nowadays expressed by Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Present Perfect.

The category of aspect and voice. Until recently it was believed that in Old English the category of aspect was expressed by the regular contrast of verbs with or without prefix “e”. Verbs with the prefix have a perspective meaning, while the same verbs without this prefix indicated a non-completed action. E.g. feohtan - efeohtan (M.E. to fight); lician -elician (M.E. to like)

In some recent explanations it was shown that this prefix “e” can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, because it could change this prefix not only the aspective meaning, but also the lexical meaning of the verb. E.g. beran (M.E. to care) - eberan ( M.E. to give the birth to a child). Besides, verbs without this prefix could have perfective meaning. E.g. sittan (to seat) - esittan (to preoccupy) (!).

Grammatical category of the verbals.

There were two non-finite forms of the verb: the infinitive and the participle. In many respects they were closer to the nouns and the adjectives than to the verb. Their nominal features were more obvious than the verbal features.

The verbal nature of the Infinitive and Participle was revealed (!) in some of their functions and in their syntactic combinability (!). Like finite forms of the verbs, they could take direct objects and could be modified by adverbs.

The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by its origin it had a reduced case system. It had Nominative and Dative cases. E.g. Nom. c. beran

Dat. c. to beranne.

Like the Dative case of nouns, the Infinitive in the Dative case was used to denote the direction or a purpose of the action.

The Participle was a kind of a verbal adjective. It was an opposition of two Participles: 1^st and 2^nd. Participle 1 expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities. Participle 2 expressed states and qualities, resulting from the past actions, and was contrasted to Participle 1, as passive to active, if the verb was transitive.

Participle 1 was formed from the Present Tense with the help of the suffix –ende^. Participle 2 formed from the Past Tense of the verb by means of the vowel interchange and the suffix –n^. E.g. bindan Part. 1 – bindande; Part.2. –e- bunden (M.E. to bind) (!).

Both Participles were employed predicatively and attributively. They were declined as weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case. Both strong and weak are further subdivided into a number of morphological classes with some modifications in the form-building means.

Strong and weak verbs.

There were about 300 strong verbs. They were native Old English verbs, which were descended from Proto-Germanic language. Most of them had parallels in other Germanic languages. Strong verbs are commonly divided into 7 classes: classes from 1 to 6 formed their past tense by means of vowel gradation. Class 7 included verbs which built their past form by means of reduplication (repetition of the root vowel).

The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings, irrespective of the class. The ending –“an” for the Inf. (Class 1) (Class 2)

writan (to write) ceosan (to choose)

No endings in the past sing: wrat ceos

“- on” in the plural past tense: writon curon

“– en” in Part 2.: writen coren

The classes of strong verbs differed in the number of verbs and consequently in their role in the language. Classes from 1 to 3 were the most numerous (they contained about 60 -80 verbs). Class 4 had 40 verbs and the rest - 10 – 15 verbs.

The number of weak verbs in Old English exceeded (превышает) that of strong verbs. Their number was constantly growing because all new verbs appeared in Old English were conjugated (!) weak. Besides, among weak verbs there were derivatives of noun and adjective stems. E.g. talu (n.) – tellan (v.) M.E. to tell.; full (agj.) – fyllan (v.) M.E. to feel.

Weak verbs form their past by means of suffixes: “d^ and t^”. They had three classes. The criterion for subdivision was the following:

• The ending in the Infinitive,

• The sound preceding the suffix,

• Desonority of the suffix.

Class 1: Inf. “–an (ian)” The Past Tense: “de^, ede^, te^”. Participle 2: d^, t^, ed^. E.g. cepan – cepte – ceped (M.E. to keep).

Class 2: Inf.: “ian”, Past Tense, Part 2: “ode^, ote^” E.g. locian – locoed – locod (M.E. to look).

Class 3: Inf., Pest Tense and Part. 2: “d^, t^”. E.g. libban – lifde – lifd. (M.E. to live)

In Old English there was a group of minor verbs. They cannot be referred to strong or weak verbs. The most important peculiarity was that their present tense was at the same time their past form. There are 12 minor verbs; 6 of them served in Modern English as modal verbs.

E.g. Old English: cunnan – can

dear – dare

sculan – shall

maan – may

a - ought

mot – must.

Lecture 9