- •Lecture 5. English phraseology
- •5.1. Phraseological Tradition of Studying Language
- •5.2. Methods of Phraseological Investigation
- •5.3. Semantic Classification of Phraseological Units
- •5.4. Stable Combinations of Words
- •5.5. Other Classifications of Phraseological Units
- •Lecture 6. Grammar aspect of the english language study
- •History of Grammar Studies
- •6.1. The Grammatical Categories
- •6.2. The Grammatical Classes of Words
- •6.3. The Sentence: General Notions
- •The Simple Sentence
- •Communicative Types of Sentence
- •6.4. The Actual Division of Sentence
- •6.5. The Composite Sentence
- •Lecture 3. Main stages of the english language historical development
- •1. Three Periods of the English Language History
- •2. The Old English Period
- •Orthography and Phonology
- •Morphology
- •Lexicon
- •3. The Middle English Period
- •Orthography and Phonology
- •Morphology
- •Lexicon
- •4. The New English Period Orthography and Phonology
- •Morphology
- •Lexicon
- •5. Suppletivism and Etymological Doublets
- •1.Metaphoric Group
- •2. Metonymic and Mixed Group
- •3. Contrast Relations
- •Syntactic Stylistic Devices
- •1. Reduction of Logical Components
- •2. Redundance of Logical Components
- •Lecture 8. Stylistic aspect of the english language
- •8.1. Stylistics: General Notions
- •8.2. Functional Styles
- •8.3. Stylistic Lexicology
- •8.4. Stylistic Semasiology
- •Lexical Stylistic Devices
- •Syntactic Stylistic Devices
- •I. Reduction of logical components
- •II. Redundance of logical components
- •III. Changing of word order
- •Iy. Transposition of sentence meaning
2. The Old English Period
The Old English period (449 – 1066) – the Period of Full Endings (any vowel can be found in the ending, majority of parts of speech were connected in a sentence by means of endings).
Orthography and Phonology
Upon introducing Christianity (597 A.D.) Latin alphabet was introduced in England. Three English sounds [q], [ð] (thorn) and [æ] (ash) had no Latin counterparts and remained their Runic spelling.
Letter c represented sound [k] – folc (folk) and [t∫] – cild (child).
The sequence sc represented sound [∫] – Englisc, scip (ship).
Consonant clusters cn, hl, hn, hr also existed: hlūd (loud), hnecca (neck), hring (ring), cniht (survived in knight).
Three pairs of sounds whose members are now distinct phonemes were the allophones: [f] & [v], [θ] & [ð], [s] & [z], cf.: wīf [wi:f] “a woman” & wīfes [wi:vz] “women”.
OE had long and short vowels, plus diphthongs. Short vowels remained unchanged: him, fisc, glæs, ecg “edge”.
Long vowels underwent changes called the vowel shift. All long vowels were systematically raised and the highest were diphthonized.
The length of vowels was a phonetic quality. The words having long and short vowels differed in meaning, e.g.: ʒod (god) – ʒōd (good).
Morphology
OE nouns had 3 grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neutral), and inflections for 5 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative (знахідний), instrumental). Nominative and accusative forms were identical as well as dative and instrumental. Nouns had several declensions (відміни) denoted by the last sound of the stem-building suffix: o-stem, ā-stem, i-stem, u-stem (strong declensions), n-stem (weak declension), root-stem, r-stem, s-stem (minor declensions).
O-stem declension produced the only productive inflexions, with pl. & possessive sg. – s.
U-stem declension survived in pl. form of words like deer & sheep.
Root-stem declension yielded foot / feet, goose / geese, tooth / teeth, mouse / mice, man / men.
The words of n-stem declension had the ending –an (OE sg. nom. oxa, gen./dat./acc. oxan) which survived in modern English oxen. The ending was further added to some nouns of other declensions: children & brethren.
OE adjectives were inflected for gender, number and case in agreement with nouns.
OE pronouns of the 1st and 2nd persons had 3 numbers – singular, dual and plural.
sg. dual pl.
1st pers. Nom. ic (I) wit (we two) wē (we)
Gen. mīn (my, mine) uncer ūre (our)
Dat./acc./inst. Mē (me) unc ūs (us)
OE exhibits 2 types of verbs – weak, with [d] or [t] in past tense, as in love – loved, and strong, with gradation (ablaut), as in ring – rang – rung. Verbs were inflected for present and past tenses, indicative and subjunctive moods, had 3 persons and 2 numbers.
Syntax
OE relied on inflexions to mark grammatical relations, thus word order was flexible. In subclauses there existed direct (SP) word order, inverted (PS) and “framing structure” (S…P) – subject at the beginning, predicate at the end, all secondary parts being inserted between them.
The subject was frequently unexpressed in OE sentences: Bugon to bence ([They] bent to the bench).
Multiple negation was normal: Nīs nū cwicra nān ([There] isn’t now alive no one).Negation was shown by negative particle ne before the verb.
There were 3 moods in OE – indicative, imperative and subjunctive. The subjunctive mood was used much more frequently than now. OE verbs distinguished 2 tenses by inflexions – the present and the past. There was no futuretense form, a future action being denoted by the present tense. When futurity was bound up with compulsion, the verb sculan with the meaning “must” / “ought to” was used: Hwæt sceal ic sing an? (What must I sing?). When futurity was bound up with desire, the verb willan was used.