5. The system of consonants in oe. Phonetic processes in oe consonants

The system of consonant is more stable than the one of vowels. Peculiarities:

• there were no sibilants and affricates;

• [f-v, s-z, θ-∂] were allophones;

• there was difference in length of consonants.

Phonetic processes:

• voicing of fricatives: [f, s, θ] were voiced in intervocalic position or in a combination vowel + sonorant; vowel + voiced consonant;

• palatalization of backlingual consonants: [k, g, sk] became palatalized before a front vowel and sometimes after a front vowel unless followed by a back vowel;

• loss of consonants: nasal consonants were lost before fricative consonants, [h] was lost in intervocalic position;

• assimilation: the process of adaptation of articulation of some consonant sounds. [f] turned into [m] before [n, m];

• metathesis: two sound exchange their place;

• simplification of initial consonantal cluster. [hl, hn, hr] at the beginning of a word were lost and only sonorants left.

6. Oe nouns (types of declensions, grammatical categories)

Grammatical categories:

• number: singular, plural (inflections, umlaut, zero inflection);

• case: Nominative (defined the active agent; subject or predicate), Genitive (the case of the attributes), Dative (with prepositions, denoting the adverbial modifier; indirect object), Accusative (the direct object).

Lexico-grammatical category:

• gender: masculine, feminine, neuter. In some cases, the gender is determined by the lexical meaning of the word. e.g.: mann, faeder – m; modor, cwen – f. Very often the gender in OE is logical, not determined by sex of an object or lexical meaning. e.g.: stan, mona – m; sunne – f; wif, cild – n; wifmann – m.

The OE noun has two-part structure: root + inflection. The stem-building suffixes didn’t survived – they disappeared altogether, some merged with the stem or the inflection and gave a new inflection. Depending on the former stem-building suffixes there was the division of nouns in OE according to their stems:

• strong declension (vowels-stems: a [m, n], o [f], i [all three genders, also names of tribes and people used only in pl], u [m, f]);

• weak declension (n-stem [all three genders]);

• consonantal declension. (r, s-stems [family relationships]);

• root declension (nouns with the root stem which changed their root vowel [m, f]).

7. Oe adjectives (types of declension, degrees of comparison)

The adjective could change for number (sg, pl), gender (m, f, n) and case (Nom, Gen, Dat, Acc, Instr) and agreed with the noun in these categories. Most adjectives were declined in two ways: according to the weak and strong declension. The strong and weak declensions 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, the weak one – with definiteness.

Most adjectives could be 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.

Strong declension when the adjective was a (part of) predicate.

Weak declension when the adjective was proceeded a demonstrative pronoun.

Always declined strong: eall (ME all); mani (ME many).

Always declined weak: in superlative and comparative degrees, the ordinal numerals, the adjective “ilca” (ME same).

Three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative (-ra) and superlative (-ost, -est). Sometimes suffixation was accomplished by vowel interchange. (The mutation of the root vowel was caused by i-umlaut in Early OE. At that stage the suffixes were either ‘-ira/ist’ or ‘-ora/ost’. In the forms with ‘i’ the root vowel was fronted or made narrower, later ‘i’ was lost or weakened to ‘e’ – but the mutated root vowel survived as an additional formal marker of the comparative and superlative degrees.) Some adjectives formed their degrees by means of suppletion.