10Changes within the Pronoun System in me.

In OE all pronoun were declined, and the pronominal paradigm was very complicated. In Middle the system was greatly simplified and nowadays what remained of the pronominal declension is mainly represented by the declension of the personal pronoun and on a small scale – demonstrative and interrogative.

There were personal, demonstrative, possessive, interrogative, indefinite (и неопределенно-личные местоимение?) pronouns in Old English. The number of pronouns increased in Middle English. Reflexive pronoun and relative pronoun were added in this period.

Case

The four-case system that existed in OE gave way to a two-case system in Middle.

Gender

As a grammatical phenomenon gender disappeared already in Middle, the pronoun he and she referring only to animate notions and it – to inanimate.

Number

The three number system that existed in Early OE was substituted by a two number system already in Late OE.

12 Changes within the Noun System in me.

In OE there were three principal types of declension: a-stem, n-stem and root-stem declension, and also minor declension – i-stem, u-stem and others. These types are preserved in Middle, but the number of nouns belonging to the same declension in OE and Middle varies. The n-stem declension though preserved as a type has lost many of the nouns belonging to it while the original a-stem declension grows in volume, acquiring new words from the original n-stem, root-stem declension, and also different groups of minor declensions and also borrowed words.

There are only two grammatical categories in the declension of nouns against three in OE: number and case, the category of gender having been lost at the beginning of the Middle English period.

Number. There are two forms in ME: Singular and Plural.

Case. The number of cases in Middle English is reduced as compared to OE. There are only two cases in Middle English: Common and Genitive, the OE Nominative, Accusative and Dative case having fused into one case – the Common case at the beginning of ME.

11Oe vowels. Development of Vowels in Unstressed Syllables in oe.

The phonetics of the OE period was characterized by a system of dynamic stress. The fixed stress fell on the 1^st root syllable.

The vowels had the following characteristic features:

1. the quantity and the quality of the vowel depended upon its position in the word. Under stress any vowel could be found, but in unstressed position there were no diphthongs or long monophthongs, but only short vowels a, e, I, o, u.

2. the length of the stressed vowels was phonemic, which means that there could be two words differing only in the length of the vowel .

3. there was an exact parallelism of long and short vowels.

There were the following vowel phonemes in Old English:

Monophthongs: i, i:, y, y:, u, u:, e, e:, o, o:, ae, ae:, a, a:

Diphthongs: eo, eo:, ea, ea:

All the diphthongs were falling diphthongs with the first element stronger than the second, the second element being more open that the first.

OE vowel system classified according to the following principles:

1. According to the place of articulation or to the position of the bulk of the tongue: front, central, back.

2. According to the tongue-high: high, mid, low

3. According to the length: long and short. For every short vowel there was a long vowel.

The Old English vowel system formed on the basis of Common Germanic vowel system and also under the influence of different processes. OS monophthongs are, as a rule, a further development of some Common Germanic monophthongs.

For example

OE [ae] [i ] [o]

From Common Germanic [a] [i] [u]

Some OE monophthongs developed from Common Germanic diphthongs

OE [a:]

From Common Germanic [ai]

OE diphthongs are a result of some further development of Common Germanic diphthongs, though in the course of history the quality of the diphthong may have undergone a change

OE ceosan ceas

From Common Germanic kiusan kaus

OE short diphthongs originated from monopgthongs

OE eald heorte

From Common Germanic ald herte

Changes in OE vowel phonemes

The changes that took place in the prehistoric period of the development of the English language and which explain the difference between OE and Common Germanic vowels were of two types: assimilative changes and independent changes. Independent changes do not depend upon the environment in which the given sound was found. They cannot be explained, but they are merely stated. Assimilative changes are explained by the phonetic position of the sound in the word and the change can and must be explained. Among the many phonetic assimilative changes which took place in the prehistoric period of the development of the English language and which account for the discrepancy between the OE and the Common Germanic vowel system the most important are breaking and palatal mutation. Breaking (I-mutation). The process of breaking took place in the 6^th century. It affected two vowels – [ae] and [e] when hey were followed by the consonant [r], [l], [h] generally followed by another consonant. The resulting vowel was a diphthong; consequently the process may be summed up as diphthongization of short vowels [ae] and [e] before certain consonant clusters. Palatal mutation it occurred somewhere during the 6^th-7the centuries. The process affected Germanic words where a vowel in a stressed syllable was immediately followed by the sound [i] or [j] in the next syllable. Almost all vowels, both diphthongs and monophthongs, in the context described above became further forward and higher, or more palatal and more narrow, with the exception of [e] and [i] which could go no further.

As a result of this process a new phoneme entered the vowel system in Old English – y/y/. It appeared as a result of narrowing u/u/.