- •English as a Germanic Language, its place among other langs of the word.
- •Common Germanic Vowel Shift. Common Germanic Vowel Fracture.
- •Periods in the History of English.
- •The structure of the word in oe, its previous and subsequent stages.
- •Development of Vowels in oe. (p. 47)
- •Assimilative Process in oe vocalism and their traces in Mod e.
- •The oe vowel system. Phonological process in oe and their traces in me (oe Breaking, Velar Umlaut, I-Umlaut, Palatal Diphthongization).
- •The Origin and Status of short diphthongs in oe.
- •Oe system of vowels.
- •Lengthening of Vowels in oe.
- •Oe vowels. Development of Vowels in Unstressed Syllables in oe.
- •The oe Consonant System.
- •Development of Consonants in oe.
- •The oe Vowel System.
- •Nominal Grammatical Categories in oe and their Historical Development.
- •Grammatical categories of the noun in oe.
- •The Declension of the Noun in oe. Types of stems.
- •The Categories of the oe Adjective and their further development.
- •The Adjective in oe.
- •The Pronoun in oe.
- •Strong, Weak, Preterite-Present and Anomalous Verbs in oe.
- •Verbal Grammatical Categories in oe.
- •Strong Verbs in oe.
- •Weak Verbs in oe.
- •Preterite-Present Verbs in oe and their further development.
- •The Morphological Classification of the oe Verbs.
- •Principal Features of oe Syntax.
- •Oe Vocabulary.
- •The Peculiarities of the Complex Sentence. Structure in oe and its historical development.
- •The Structure of the Simple sentence in oe.
- •Principal Features of oe vocabulary.
- •The Word formation oe.
- •Changes within the Consonant System in me.
- •Me Vowels: Qualitative changes.
- •Reduction of Vowels in Final Unstressed Syllables in me.
- •Me Vowels: Quantitative changes.
- •Changes within the System of Vowels in me. Таблица 71
- •Sources of New me diphthongs.
- •Formation of New Diphthongs in me.
- •Changes within the Noun System in me.
- •Changes within the Adjective System in me.
- •Changes within the Pronoun System in me.
- •Rise of the Article System in me.
- •Changes within the System of Strong and Weak Verb in me.
- •Categories of the Verb in me.
- •Development of Future and Passive in English.
- •Development of Continuous Aspect in English.
- •Development of Perfect Forms in English.
- •Middle English Dialects.
- •The Linguistic Consequences of the Norman Conquest.
- •The Great Vowel Shift.
- •Historical Development of Analytical Forms of the verb in English.
- •Development of vowels in Unstressed Syllables in oe, me, Early New English.
- •Development of Non-Finite Forms of the verb in the English language.
- •Latin Development of Vocabulary in me.
- •The Unstressed Vocalism and its Role in the Morphological Structure of the English language.
The Peculiarities of the Complex Sentence. Structure in oe and its historical development.
Types of subordinate clauses occurring within the complex sentence (Table: 57): 1. Subject clause is not often found in OE texts 2. Predicative clause do not seem to occur in OE texts 3. Object clause is mainly found in indirect speech. They may be introduced by the conjunction ðæt or ʒif, by an interrogative pronoun or adverb. 4. Attributive clause is introduced either by the relative pronoun ðe or by the pronoun sē, which from a demonstrative acquired a relative meaning, or by the compound pronoun sēðe. 5. Adverbial clauses of different types (terminal clause, of place, of cause, of purpose, of result, of concession, of manner and comparison, conditional clause) OE complex sentences often contained correlative strictures which served as connecting elements to join parts of the sentence: ða…ða, swā…swā, ðonne…ðonne etc.
The Structure of the Simple sentence in oe.
There were 6 parts of the sentence in OE: the subject, the predicate, the object, the attribute the adverbial modifier, the apposition. Apposotion followed the head noun, attribute precedes or follows the head noun. Word order could be direct, inverted or synthetic.
Principal Features of oe vocabulary.
The full extent of the OE vocabulary is not known to present day scholars. Some colloquial words are lost. According to modern estimates – 30 000 words (total vocabulary). Native words can be subdivided into:
Indo-European layer: numerals 1-100.
pronouns: OE-ic L-ego Gr-ego´;
OE-ðu Sl-ти L-tu Sancr-tuvan.
OE-fæder Gr-pater L-pater Sancr-pitā(r).
Common Germanic layer: OE-hand G-Hand Gt-handus
West Germanic layer: OE-bi,be OHG-bi (Mod.E-by)
OE-macian OHG-mahhon (Mod.E-make)
Specifically Old English Words: OE-wimman (Mod.E-woman).
There were Latin (1 layer – stræt (road) L-strata; 2 layer – mæsse L-missa) and Celtic (loans) borrowings (dun “dune” also in Dumfries).
The Word formation oe.
There were4 ways of word formation in OE:
suffixation : nouns –ere (fiscere); adjectives -isc (Englisc); adverbs –e (harde).
prefixation: un- (uncuÞ).
composition: ƷoldsmiÞ.
semantic shift: ēastron (a heathen spring holiday) Easter (a Christian holiday).
Changes within the Consonant System in me.
The main changes in the ME consonant system:
assibilation (started already in OE: k’˃tʃ, Ʒ’˃dƷ, sk’>ʃ (ic-ich, fisc-fish)
shortening of long consonants: OE-full ME-[ful] full
vocalization of consonants:
in final position: Ʒ˃u (OE-aƷ ME-owe[ou]; Ʒ’˃i (OE-dæƷ ME-dey [dei];
in the suffix: iƷ˃y ( OE-mistiƷ ME-misty [misti];
after r,l : Ʒ˃u ( OE-morƷen ME-morwen [moruen];
vocalization of f (OE-hlafdiƷe ME-lady [ladi].
loss of initial h hr>r, hl>l, hn>n (hlud>loud [lud]).
gradual loss of –n in inflexions (OE-sittan ME-sit [sitten,sit].
Me Vowels: Qualitative changes.
In ME a great change affected the system of vowel phonemes.
OE dipthongs began to turn into monophtongs: /ea/>/æ/>/a/ (heard>hard). Reduced the number of monophtongs: from 8 long→5 long, 7 short→6 short. The number of diphtongs: 4 short→12 short, 4 long→−. 5 new diphtongs appeared (ei, ai, oi, au, ou). Also there were dialect changes: tbibal→territorial.