Theme 5. Old English Grammar

Aims:

• perceive grammatical terminology of the Old English period;

• be able to identify the distinction between lexical and grammatical categories;

• be able to recognize the morphological and syntactic features of the Old English synthetic language.

Points for discussion

Introduction

1. General tendencies of the Old English Morphology

2. Declension of Nouns in Old English

3. The pronoun and article classification

4. Declension of Adjectives in Old English. The degrees of comparison

5. The verb classification. The Old English Conjugation System

5.1. Development of the Finite Forms of the English Verb

5.2. Development of the Non-Finite Forms of the English Verb

6. The Old English Syntax

Conclusion

Key Terms to Know

paradigm conjugation

category strong verbs

synthetic language weak verbs

morphological structure Preterit-present verbs

declension suppletive verbs

vocalic stems anomalous verbs

consonantal stems

root stems

Literature

Obligatory

• Elly van Gelderen. A History of the English Language.- Amsterdam/ Philadelphia, 2006. -PP. 55-72

• Valery V. Mykhailenko. Paradigmatics in the evolution of English. - Chernivtsi, - 1999. PP. 51-88; 89-115

• T.A. Rastorguyeva. A History of English. - Moscow, 1983. - PP. 92-131

• L.Verba. History of the English language. - Vinnitsa, 2004. - PP. 38-89

Additional

Аракин В. Д. История английского языка. - М., 1985. - C. 43-92

Introduction

Excellent resources on Old English Grammar are Crystal (1994 ), Gelderen (2006), Mykhailenko (1999) and Rastorguyeva (2002).The emphasis in this lecture will be on showing that Old English is an synthetic language , using a lot of words endings or infections to indicate grammatical functions. We will discuss the endings on Old English words – the morphology, and will touch upon the formation of the Old English sentences – the syntax.

In OE as well as in other Indo-European languages, categories of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are expressed not only by their inflexions but also by derivational suffixes.

The noun

In Old English the noun had the grammatical categories of case (4 cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), number (singular and plural) and gender (masculine, feminine and neuter).

The basic type of morphological structure of nouns, as well as of inflected words generally, in the Indo-European languages is as follows:

Stem

inflection (case ending in nouns)

root stem-suffix

This type of structure is clearly exemplified in the forms of Modern Russian and Ukrainian nouns of the ім'я type

e.g. ім-ен| -і, ім-ен| -ем, ім-ен| -а, etc.

According to the original character of the stem (with a vowel or consonant stem-suffix, or no stem-suffix

at all) Old English nouns are commonly divided into vocalic, consonantal and root-stems. -

We shall next consider the declension of the most important classes of nouns within each main type of stems — the classes which comprised the largest number of words and whose characteristic features largely determined the subsequent development of the noun system in English. 1. The declension of the vocalic stems is called strong. The largest and most stable stem classes of the strong declension were the a-stems (i. e. those that once had the stem suffix -a-) and the o-stems.

The a-stems (corresponding to the Indo-European o-stems)comprised nouns of masculine and neuter gender. They were declined as follows:

Masculine Neuter

Sg. N. stān „stone“ scip “ship”

G. stānes scipes

D. stāne scipe

A. stān scip

N. stānas scipu

G. stāna scipa

D. stānum scipum

A stānas scipu

The o-stems (corresponding to the Indo-European a-stems, such as Russ. жена) were all feminine

2. Among the consonantal stems the n-stems (an ancient Indo-European stem class represented in Russian by nouns of the время, имя type) constituted the largest and most stable class comprising nouns of all the three genders. The declension of the n-stems is called weak, because it has little distinctive force: a form ending in -an (the most common ending of this declension type) can be that of the genitive, dative and accusative singular, or nominative and accusative plural, as can be seen from the following examples.

3. The root-stems were remnants of an old type of nouns in which case endings were added to a stem consisting of a root alone, without a stem-suffix. In Old English they made a small group of nouns of all three genders, e. g. man, fot 'foot', £op 'tooth' (all masculine), boc 'book', gos 'goose', mus 'mouse' (feminine), scrud 'clothing'¹ (neuter). In spite of their insignificant number, these nouns deserve special mention here, because their peculiarities are at the root of irregularities in the plural formation of several very common Modern English nouns.

A characteristic feature of the root-stems is the mutation of the root vowel in the dative singular and the nominative and accusative plural caused by the i-element in the inflection which was lost in early (pre-literary) Old English.

It must be noted that as early as the Old Period the declension of nouns in English was considerably simplified as compared to the older Indo-European type, which has been much better preserved in other Indo-European languages, even in modern times (cf. the much more complicated system of noun declension in Modern Russian and Ukrainian). Not only was the number of cases in Old English smaller than in ancient Greek and Latin, in ancient Slavonic and in most modern Slavonic languages, but in the remaining Old English cases many forms had no grammatical ending, and a number of endings coincided.

The levelling (coincidence) of endings was favoured by the weakening of unstressed syllables, which makes some endings indistinct and unstable. There was also a factor at work that lessened the importance of case inflection and thus contributed to the simplifica­tion of noun declension. It was the increasing use of pre­positions to express those relations which are usually expressed by case forms of nouns.¹

Both these factors played an increasingly important part in the subsequent history of English.