History of english

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ Федеральное государственное бюджетное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования «НИЖЕГОРОДСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ ИМ. Н.А. ДОБРОЛЮБОВА» Н.Н. Лисенкова A COURSE OF LECTURES IN HISTORY OF ENGLISH Нижний Новгород 2017 I. Печатается по решению редакционно-издательского совета ФГБОУ ВПО «НГЛУ». Направление подготовки: 035700.62 – Лингвистика (профиль: ТиМПИЯК). Дисциплина: История английского языка и введение в спецфилологию. УДК 802.0.2 ББК 81.432.1-93 Г 859 Н. Н. Лисенкова. Курс лекций по истории английского языка. – Н. Новгород: ФГБОУ ВПО «НГЛУ», 2017. – 80 с. ISBN 978-5-85839-229-3 Пособие, состоящее из трех частей, содержит сведения о фонетических и грамматических особенностях протогерманского языка-основы, а также английского языка на различных этапах его развития. Данное пособие представляет собой краткий курс по истории английского языка, имеющий целью помочь студентам выделить главные моменты исторического процесса языкового развития. Материал в курсе лекций расположен по периодам: индоевропейский и общегерманский, древнеанглийский, среднеанглийский, новоанглийский. Студентам рекомендуется ознакомиться с содержанием лекционного курса еще до начала занятий по истории английского языка и затем по возможности прорабатывать материал после каждого занятия, ориентируясь на планы семинаров и список экзаменационных вопросов. Для более глубокого усвоения материала наряду с данным пособием рекомендуется использование имеющихся учебников по истории английского языка (см. список литературы). Все замечания и пожелания по содержанию пособия будут приняты авторами с благодарностью. На базе достаточно репрезентативного фактического материала прослеживается преемственность в развитии общеиндоевропейской и германской систем фонетики, морфологии и синтаксиса. В частях II и III, охватывающих древнеанглийский, среднеанглийский и ранненовоанглийский периоды истории английского языка, даны учебные материалы, в основу разработки которых положена преемственность между практическим разделом введения в германскую филологию и данными частями пособия в принципах составления комментариев к текстам и упражнений. Предназначается для студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей лингвистических вузов, специализирующихся в области теории английского языка, в качестве учебного пособия по курсу «История английского языка и введение в спецфилологию». ISBN 978-5-85839-229-3 УДК 802.0.2 ББК 81.432.1-93 Рецензенты: ФГБОУ ВПО «НГЛУ», 2014 © Лисенкова Н.Н.., 2017 CONTENTS PART I PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN AND PROTO_GERMANIC. THE CONCEPTION OF A PARENT LANGUAGE PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES PHONETICS Word-stress Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic vowels Independent vowel changes in Proto-Germanic Dependent vowel changes Proto-Gemanic breaking Ablaut in PIE and PG Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic consonants Sonorous consonants (nasals and liquids) The System of Stops. The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) Verner’s law MORPHOLOGY Form-building means The Noun The Adjective The Verb Strong verbs Weak verbs IE and PG SYNTAX Simple sentences Structural variants of simple sentences Verbless sentences Subjectless sentences PART II CHRONOLOGICAL DIVISION IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH OE WRITTEN RECORDS Alphabets in OE WORD STRESS OE PHONETIC SYSTEM OE VOWELS Monophthongs. Diphthongs PHONETIC CHANGES OE Breaking (Fracture) Abbreviations Acc – Accusative adj. – adjective adv. – adverb anom. – anomalous arch. – archaic Arm – Armenian art. – article book. – bookish borr. – borrowing Clt =Celt - Celtic comp. – comparative conj. – conjunction Dan – Danish Dat – Dative dem. – demonstrative der. – derivative Du – Dutch dial. – dialectal EME – Early Middle English EMnE – Early Modern English EPGmc -Early Proto-Germanic f. – feminine F – French G – German Ga – Gaelic Gen - Genitive Gk – Greek Gmc – Germanic Gth – Gothic hist. – historical Hit – Hittite Icel – Icelandic IE – Indo-European imp. – imperative indecl. – indeclinable indef. – indefinite inf - infinitive Instr – Instrumental interr. – interrogative intj. – interjection intr. – intrasitive irr. – irregular L=Lat – Latin lit. – literally Lith – Lithuanian LLat – Late Latin LME – Late Middle English LOE – Late Old English LPGmc – Late Proto-Germanic m. – masculine MnE – Modern English n. – neuter Obj – Objective OE – Old English OF – Old French OFr – Old Frisian OHG – Old High German OIcel – Old Icelandic OIr – Old Irish OLat – Old Latin ON – Old Norse OS=OSax – Old Saxon OSl – Old Slavonic ORu – Old Russian p. – participle part. – particle pers. – personal pl. – plural poet. – poetic Pol – Polish pr. – pronoun pref. – prefix prep. – preposition pret.- prs. – preterite-present prs. – present Perf. - perfect PGmc=PrGmc – Proto-Germanic PIE=PrIE – Proto-Indo-European PP=pp – past participle pt. – past refl. – reflexive rel. – relative Ru=Rus – Russian Sc – Scandinavian Sco – Scotch sf. – suffix sg. – singular Skt – Sanskrit Sp – Spanish str. – strong subj. – subjunctive s=subst. – substantive Sw – Swedish t – tense tr. – transitive v. – verb w. – weak cf. (Lat. confer) – compare e.g. (Lat. exempli gratis) – for example PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN AND PROTO-GERMANIC THE CONCEPTION OF A PARENT LANGUAGE Languages can be classified according to different principles. The historical, or genealogical classification, groups languages in accordance with their origin from a common linguistic ancestor. Genetically, English belongs to the Germanic group of languages, which is one of the groups, or branches, of the Indo-European linguistic family. Most of the area in Europe and large parts of other continents are occupied today by the Indo-European ( IE ) languages. All the Indo-European languages go back to the same ancestor, or parent language, which is traditionally called Common Indo-European or Proto-Indo-European. According to the accepted point of view, in the 4-th millenium B.C. the Indo-Europeans extended over large territories in South-East Europe and later into India and the rest of Europe About half the world’s population today speaks an Indo-European language of some sort. The Indo-European family comprises the following main branches: 1. The Indian languages: Sanskrit (now extinct), Hindi, Urdu, Gipsy. 2. The Iranian languages: Persian, Kurdish, Pushtu, Tajik, Ossetic. 3. The Slavonic languages: Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian. 4. The Baltic languages: Old Prussian (now extinct), Lithuanian, Latvian. 5. The Romanic languages: Latin (now extinct), French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Rumanian, Moldavian. 6. The Celtic languages: Breton, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish. 7. The Greek language. 8. The Armenian language. 9. The Albanian language. 9. The Tocharian language (now extinct). 10. The Hittite language (now extinct). 11. The Germanic languages. This group is usually divided into three subgroups: a) East Germanic: Gothic, Vandal, Burgundian (all extinct); b) North Germanic: Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese; c) West Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Frisian. Thus, English is one of the West Germanic languages of the Indo-European family. . It is supposed that between the 15-th and 10-th cc. B.C., the so-called Germanic tribes in the process of migration moved further north than other Indo-European tribes and settled on the South coast of the Baltic Sea. These ancient Germanic tribes spoke one parent language which is called Proto-Germanic or simply Germanic. All the Germanic languages are regarded as variant historical developments of that single earlier language. All the Indo-European languages are traditionally divided into satqm-languages and centum-languages, representing Eastern and Western branches of the ancestor language. The Eastern and Western branches are singled out on the basis of the widespread sound correspondences, reflecting a certain phonetic change east and west of a line running roughly north and south at about 20° east latitude. The Eastern (SATӘM) branch includes Indian languages, Iranian languages, Slavonic languages, Baltic languages, Armenian, Albanian. The Western (CENTUM) branch includes Romanic languages, Celtic languages, Germanic languages, Greek, Tocharian. In SATӘM languages the Indo-European palatal consonants became sibilants [s] / [z] ш /ж or affricates ц, ч, in CENTUM-languages they developed into velar, or back-lingual consonants [k] [g] [kw] [gw] [h] [hw]. As for the IE labio-velar consonants, like [kw] and [gw], they also developed in different ways. In CENTUM-languages the labial element is generally preserved, and the velar articulation is sometimes lost. In SATӘM languages the labial element is always lost, so that there is no difference between velar and labio-velar consonants. Thus the IE root for 100, *kmtóm, became satam in Sanscrit, šimtas, in Lithuanian, съто in Old Slavonic. In the Western branch, it remained [k] as in Latin centum and Celtic cant, then developed into [h] in Germanic languages: hundred, or to [s] or [k] in Romanic languages: cent, ciento. CENTUM SATӘM k, g, kw, gw, h s, z ж, ш, ч, ц с, щ, з Lat centum OE hund Rus сто Lat cord MnE heart Rus сердце Gk deka Rus десять MnE he *k Rus сей OE cwena MnE queen *gw Rus жена MnE warm *gw Rus жара Lat ego OE ic *g OSL аз Gk gnōskō *g granum Rus знать зерно MnE whole hello Lat vale Rus целый, исцелять Lat vivus MnE quick *gw Rus живой Lith givus The Eastern branch then split into two: (1) the Balto-Slavonic, which includes Lettish, Lithuanian, and Old Prussian among the Baltic; and Bulgarian, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Czech, and Russian among the Slavonian; and (2) the Indo-Iranian, which includes Sanskrit, Hindi, Persian, Bengali and Gipsy. The Western branch split into at least four more branches: Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, and Germanic. Tokharian, found at the beginning of the 20-th century in Central Asia, far to the east of the West IE languages, resembles them in some important ways. It was probably spoken by a group that originally belonged to the Western branch but shortly after the centum-satqm split migrated eastward. One other language, Hittite, whose evidence has been discovered in Turkey, is also included among the IE languages, though it is not clear exactly how it related to the two main branches1. PRINCIPAL FEATURES OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES PHONETICS Word-stress It is known that in ancient IE, prior to the separation of Germanic, there existed two ways of word accentuation: 1) musical pitch and 2) force stress. 1)The former means that the stressed syllable was made prominent by the change in the pitch level. 2) In the latter case it was the increase in the force of articulation that made the syllable prominent. The position of the stress was free, or variable in the sense that it could fall on any syllable of the word: a root-morpheme, an affix or an ending. Besides, it might shift in the paradigm of a word, from the root syllable to a syllable of the suffix or ending (cf. Rus. пишет – писал; Lat. amo - amamus). These properties of the word stress were changed in Proto-Germanic. Force or expiratory stress, also called dynamic, became the only type of stress used. In Early Proto-Germanic the position of the stress was originally preserved, it was still as movable as in ancient IE, but toward the end of the Proto-Germanic period, however, the stress became fixed on the initial syllable in simple nominal and verbal forms. It could no longer move either in form-building or word building. In compound nominal forms the initial syllable of the first stem had primary stress and the initial syllable of the following stem had secondary stress: OE sunnandæZ “Sunday” sǣman “seaman” Compound verbal forms were accented differently, however. In compound verbal forms the initial syllable of the second stem had primary stress whereas the initial syllable of the first stem bore secondary stress: OE underZitan “understand” In derived forms with prefixes, in case of nouns and adjectives, the stress fell on the prefix, while with the verb the prefix was unstressed and the stress fell on the first root syllable. Thus, there were, in fact, two types of stress, nominal and verbal. The difference between the two types of stress can be illustrated by the following pairs of Gothic related nouns and verbs. NOUNS VERBS 'andahafts "answer" and 'hafjan "to answer" 'andahait "admission" and 'haitan "to admit" As seen from these examples, nouns have the prefix "anda-", while verbs take the prefix "and-". The difference between the two forms of the prefix is due to a difference in stress. The heavy fixed word stress inherited from PGmc has played an important role in the development of Germanic languages. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the sressed and unsressed syllables underwent different changes. Accented syllables were pronounced with great distinctness, while unaccented became less distinct and were phonetically weakened. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings, which, in the long run, brought about simplification and reduction of the morphological system. Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic vowels As reconstructed PIE had the following system of vowels (monophthongs): i u ī ū e o ē ō a ā Taking into account correspondences between PIE and PGmc vowels the vowel system of PGmc may be reconstructed as follows: i u ī ū e ø ē ō a ø Unlike the PIE vowel system, which was symmetrical, the vowel system of EPGmc was asymmetrical. This system was asymmetrical in the sense that a short [a] had no long parallel, and a long [o:] had no short counterpart. It can be accounted for by the fact that in Germanic languages the Proto-Indo-European system of vowels underwent a number of changes, dependent and independent. Independent vowel changes in Proto-Germanic 1. Indo-European short [o] changed into the more open [a] in Germanic, in other words, Indo-European [a] and [o] merged into [a] in Germanic. PIE [o] PGmc [a] L octo “eight” G acht L nox, noctis "night" G Nacht PIE [a] PGmc [a] L ad "at" Gth at 2. Indo-European long [a:] was narrowed to [o:] in Germanic, which means that Indo-European [a:] and [o:] merged into [o:] in Germanic. PIE [a:] PGmc [o:] L māter "mother" OE mōdor L frāter "brother" OE brōDor PIE [o:] PGmc [o:] L flōs "flower" OE blōstma It is assumed, however, that in LPGmc the symmetry of the vowel system was restored as the gaps in the system were filled from different sources. Vowel system in LPGmc i u ī ū e o ē ō ā a Dependent vowel changes In addition to the independent vowel changes described above, there were also dependent vowel changes. The former take place irrespective of phonetic conditions, whereas the latter are restricted to certain positions and contexts. Proto-Gemanic breaking This process is also called Common Germanic breaking, or West and North Germanic breaking. It affected two vowels: e and u. 1. Indo-European [e] in the root syllable is represented as [i] in Germanic languages (was raised) before covered nasals (i.e. before the cluster "nasal + consonant") or before [i], [j] in the following syllable. Otherwise it remained unchanged. PIE [e] PGmc [i] L mens, mentis “mind’ OE mind, MnE mind L est Gr. esti Rus. есть MnE is PIE [e] PGmc [e] L ferre "bear" OE beran 2. Indo-European [u] is represented as [u] in Germanic languages (remained unchanged) when followed by [u] or by covered nasals. Otherwise it has been widened to [o]. PIE [u] PGmc [u] Lith sūnus "son" OE sunu PIE [u] PGmc [o] Celt hurnan "horn" OE horn Scr yugám "yoke" OHG joch MnE yoke Thus, in later PGmc and in separate Germanic languages the vowels displayed a tendency to positional assimilative changes. The pronunciation of a vowel was modified under the influence of the following or preceding sound. Ablaut in PIE and PG The earliest set of vowel interchanges, which dates from PGmc and PIE, is called vowel gradation, or ablaut. Ablaut is an independent vowel interchange unconnected with any phonetic conditions. Different vowels appear in the same environment, surrounded by the same consonants. Vowel gradation was used as a special independent device to differentiate between words and grammatical forms built from the same root. Ablaut is widely used in Indo-European languages as a means of word-building and form-building. It was inherited by Germanic languages from ancient IE. There are two types of ablaut: qualitative (the vowels differ in quality) and quantitative (the vowels differ in quantity). Qualitative ablaut in PIE was expressed by the alternation e - o - ø (zero) e.g. Rus умереть - мор - мрут Gk. derkomai - dedorka - edrakon беру - сбор - брал “help” “helped” “has helped” In PGmc the gradation series was e/i - a - u (in accordance with vowel changes in PGmc). OE drincan –dranc – drunken MnE drink – drank – drunk IE e was manifested as i or e in Germanic languages (Germanic breaking). IE o is represented as a (independent vowel changes). The absence of a vowel in IE realizes itself as Germanic u, which sometimes changes into o under Germanic breaking. Qualitative ablaut was characterized by three grades: normal, or full grade (the vowels e/i), qualitative, or timbre grade (the vowels o/a) and zero grade (the absence of a vowel in IE, u/o in Germanic). Quantitative ablaut in PIE was expressed by the alternation of short and long vowels of the same quality. It is also characterized by three grades: normal, or full grade (short e, o); lengthened grade (long ē, ō), and zero grade (ø). Thus, the gradation series are as follows: Normal Lengthened Zero e ē ø o ō ø L sedeo (prs) "sit" sēdi (perf) ---- L fodio (prs) "dig" fōdi (perf) ---- Gk pétomai (prs) "fly" ---- eptómēn (aorist) In PGmc the system of quantitative ablaut took the following shape: Normal Lengthened Zero e / i a ē ō ø ø Gth stilan (inf) "steal" stēlum (past pl) stulans (pp) faran (inf) "go" fōr (past sg) Germanic languages employed both types of ablaut – qualitative and quantitative – and their combinations. In accordance with vowel changes which distinguished Germanic from non-Germanic the gradation series were modified: IE e/o was changed into e/i – a; quantitative ablaut o/ō was reflected in Germanic as a quantitative-qualitative series a/ō. Of all its spheres of application Germanic ablaut was most consistently used in building the principal forms of the vebs called strong. Each form was characterized by a certain grade; each set of principal forms of the verb employed a gradation series (see Strong verbs) Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic consonants The PIE consonant system include sonorants and noise consonant, the latter subdivided into stops and only one spirant, the sibilant [s]. There were also the so-called semi-vowels j (i) and w (u), which appeared as consonants (non-syllabic) when close to a vowel, while in the position after a consonant they came to be vowels. Sonorous consonants (nasals and liquids) Sonorous consonants of PIE were of two types: non-syllabic and syllabic. Syllabic sonorants were capable of forming a syllable without a vowel. Non-syllabic n, m, l, r : : Syllabic n, m, l, r PIE non-syllabic sonorous consonants were preserved in PGmc without any changes: PIE *r = PGmc *r : L ferō "bear", Gth bairan, OE beran PIE *l = PGmc *l : L lux "light", Gth liuhaþ PIE *m = PGmc *m : L māter, OE mōdor PIE *n = PGmc *n : L nox, Lith naktis, Gth nahts The PIE syllabic short and long sonorous consonants r, l, m, n developed in PGmc into ur, ul, um, un (the epenthetic u was introduced to form a syllable). PIE *wlkwos : Scr vrkas, OE wulf "wolf" PIE *mntis : L mens (mentis), Gth gamunds "thought, recollection" PIE *kmtom : L centum, Gth hund, "hundred" PIE *dhrs : Scr dhrsnōti "(he) dares", OE durran "dare" The System of Stops. The First Consonant Shift (Grimm’s Law) The traditional system of stops in PIE may be represented by the following table: I II III guttural voiced voiced voiceless aspirated labial b bh p dental d dh t velar g gh k palatal ĝ ĝh k labio-velar g w g w h k w Comparison with other languiges within the IE family reveals regular correspondences between Germanic and non-Germanic consonants. The consonants “shifted’ as compared with those of non-Germanic languages. This shifting which is called the First Consonant Shift was first stated in the early 19-th century by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask, but its later formulation by Jacob Grimm gave it the designation "Grimm's law". According to this law correspondences between PIE stops and their PGmc counterparts are as follows: PIE p t k : b d g : bh dh gh PGmc f  h : p t k : b d g The correspondences between the PIE and PGmc consonants exemplified in the table may be grouped under three categories (acts) of the First (or PGmc) consonant shift. 1. PIE voiceless stops correspond to voiceless fricatives in PGmc: L pecus "cattle", OE feoh; L tenius "thin", OE þynne. p Rus. пламя f MnE. flame t Rus. три  MnE. three k Lat. сord-is h MnE. heart No shifting took place in the PIE clusters [sp], [st], [pt], [pk] because it would have resulted in the development of clusters consisting of two voiceless fricatives which are avoided in Gmc languages. 2. PIE voiced stops correspond to PGmc voiceless stops: Lith balà "pool", OE pōl; L duo "two", OE twēZen; Lith augti "grow", OE ēācian, Gth aukan. b Lat. labrum p MnE. lip d Rus. два t MnE. two g Lat. granum k MnE. corn 3. PIE voiced aspirated stops correspond to PGmc voiced stops without aspiration: Scr bhrātar "brother", L frāter, OE brōþor; Scr madhyas "middle", L medius, OE midde; Scr stighnōti "(he) arises", Gth steigan "to rise". It will be noted that voiced aspirated stops are actually found only in Sanscrit, whereas in other IE (non-Gmc) languages they are reflected as voiceless fricatives (as in Latin and Greek) or unaspirated voiced stops (as in Russian). Sanskrit, Other IE languages Latin and Greek PIE (including English and Russian) Voiced aspirated stops voiced stops voiceless fricatives bh Skt. bharami b MnE. bear f Lat. fero dh Skt. dadhami d MnE. do  Grk. ti-themi gh *[ - ] g MnE. garden h Lat. hortus Among gutturals in addition to velars there were also palatals and labiovelars in the PIE system of stops. PIE palatals are reflected in Gmc languages in the same way as velars. PIE *k: L decem, Rus десять, Gth taihum [t] PIE *ĝ: L co-gnosco "(I) know", Rus знаю, Gth kann, OE can PIE labiovelars also underwent shifting and in PGmc their labial quality was preserved but later lost in the historical development of many Gmc languages. PIE *kw : L sequor "follow", Gth saiƕan [sehwan], G sehen, OE sēōn "see" PIE *gw : Gk gynē "woman", Gth qino [kwino], OE cwēn PIE *gwh : Scr ghnanti "hit, kill", OE Zūþ "battle" Verner’s law Another important series of consonant changes was discovered in the late 19-th century by the Danish scholar Karl Verner. It explains some correspondences of consonants which seemed to contradict Grimm’s Law and were for a long time regarded as exceptions. Grimm's law Verner’s law IE Germ. IE Germ. p f p b t  t d k h k g Verner discovered that many apparent exceptions to Grimm's law were dependent upon a principle of accent. According to Verner's law, the EPGmc voiceless fricatives [f], [], [h], which arose under Grimm's law, underwent voicing between vowels if the preceding vowel was unstressed; otherwise they remained voiceless. This process took place in EPGmc when the accent was still variable. The voiced fricatives [v], [ð], [γ] eventually became voiced stops in many Germanic languages. Verner's law p Lat. capio - f - v - b OE habban MnE have Gk..Hepta Skr saptá, Gth sibun, G sieben "seven"; t Lat. caput -  - ð - d OE heafod НА head Skr. Pita Gk. Pater Gth fadar, OE fæder "father"; k Rus. oко h - γ - g Gth. augo OE eage НА eye Lith akìs G Auge, The spirant [s] remained unchanged in PGmc in most positions, with the exception of its position after an unaccented vowel. By a change known as Verner's law, after an unaccented vowel all PGmc voiceless spirants became voiced. The voiced sibilant [z] from IE [s] due to Verner's law was preserved only in Gothic, whereas in other Germanic languages it changed into [r]. This change is called rhotacism. Gk mistós, Rus мзда, Gth mizdo, OE meord "recompense". Rus. коса MnE. hair Gth. hausjan OE hieran MnE hear Rus. босой MnE. bare Gth. laistjan OE lǣran MnE learn As a result of voicing by Verner’s law there arose an interchange of consonants in the grammatical forms of the word, termed grammatical interchange (alternation). OE cēōsan – cēās – curon – coren “choose” weorðan – wearð – wurdon – worden “worth” Some MnE words have retained traces of grammatical alternation under Verner’s law: seethe – sodden; death – dead. The survival of rhotacism in MnE is found in the past tense of the verb “to be”: was - were MORPHOLOGY Form-building means PIE was a synthetic language in the sense that the relations between the words in the sentence were shown by the form of the words rather than by their order or auxiliaries. PGmc inherited from PIE the synthetic way of building grammatical forms by means of inflections, vowel interchange (ablaut) and suppletion. Suppletive formations are limited to a few pronouns, adjectives and verbs. The most productive means of form building in PIE were inflections, also inherited by PGmc, although in PGmc and, especially later, in various Germanic languages the whole system of inflections underwent simplification mainly caused by the heavy Germanic stress, which shifted on to the root-syllable. The Noun The PIE noun conformed to a three-part structure: root, stem-building suffix, inflection, cf.: PIE *ghost-i-s; L host-i-s. The function of the root is to express the lexical meaning of the noun. The meaning of the inflexion is also clear: it is the grammatical marker of case, number and gender. The function of the stem-building suffix is much more difficult to define. It would appear that, except its derivational function, it was a means of classifying substantives according to their meaning. However, there is only one type of substantive in Gothic which is characterized by a distinct semantic feature. These are substantives denoting relationship, derived by means of the stem-suffix -r-: fadar “father”, modor “mother”, swistar “sister” etc. In other cases the original meaning of the stem-suffix can no longer be seen. In EPGmc this type of structure was still preserved but already in LPGmc the process of simplification led to the gradual reduction of the three-part structure to a two-part structure: the stem suffix and the inflection merged into one. PIE *ghostis; EPGmc *gastiz, Gth gasts, OE Zeast The process of simplification of word-structure can be traced in various case forms of Gth nouns belonging to different stems, i.e. having different stem-building suffixes. In the majority of case forms the stem suffix cannot be singled out, yet it is easily distinguishable in some of them, as, for example, in the Dative case plural. Nominative sg Genitive sg Dative pl dags "day" dagis dagam (dag-a-m) giba "gift" gibōs gibōm (gib-ō-m) gasts "guest" gastis gastim (gast-i-m) sunus "son" sunaus sunum (sun-u-m) The simplification of the word structure and the loss of stem-suffixes was probably caused by the heavy Germanic word stress fixed on the root. There were the following types of substantive stems in PIE and PGmc: I. Vocalic stems: -o- (PGmc -a- ), ā (PGmc -ō- ), -i-, -u- : Gk lúkos "wulf" (o-stem), Gth wolfs (a-stem) L aqua "water" (ā-stem), Gth aƕa [ahwa] (ō-stem) L hostis "stranger " (i-stem), Gth gasts "guest" Lith sūnus "son" (u-stem), Gth sunus II. Consonantal stems: -n-, -r-, -es-/-os- (PGmc -iz-/-az-, with -z- eventually changing to -r- according to Verner's law in the majority of Gmc languages): L homo "man" (n-stem), OE guma hominis (Gen) guman (Gen) L māter "mother" (r-stem) OE mōdor Rus небо "sky" (-es-/-os-stem), OE cīld "child" (-iz-/-az-stem) небеса (pl) cildru (pl) III. Root stems, i.e., without any stem-building suffix: L pēs "foot" OE fōt pēdis (Gen) L dens "tooth", OE tōþ dentis The PIE noun had a system of three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), three numbers (singular, dual, plural), and eight cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, Instrumental, Locative, Vocative). PGmc kept the PIE system of three genders, whilst the systems of number and case underwent reduction: the dual is no longer found and the former eight cases were reduced to six: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental, Vocative (though the last two were obsolescent). In ancient Germanic languages a four-case system is mainly found. Compare the paradigms of the noun "son" in Lithuanian, Gothic and Old English: Lith Gth OE (Sg) Nom sūnùs sunus sunu Gen sūnaũs sunaus suna Dat sūnui sunau suna Acc sūnu sunu sunu Instr sūnumì ---- ---- Loc sūnujè ---- ---- Voc sunaũ sunu ---- The Adjective Declension of adjectives in Old Germanic languages is complicated in a way which finds no parallel in other IE languages. In Latin, for example, declension of adjectives does not basically differ from that of substantives. Thus, the adjective bonus “good” is declined according to the second declension like the masculine noun hortus “garden”; the neuter bonum - like the neuter noun vallum ”wall”; the feminine bona – like the feminine noun silva “forest”. In Russian we also find similar inflections in the paradigms of adjectives and nouns: красна девица, добру молодцу. This state of things reflects an ancient system, in which there was no distinction between adjectives and nouns. There existed one part of speech, the so-called ‘nomen”. One nominal element placed before another denoted the quality of a substance (cf. Rus. бой-баба, душа-девица, царь-колокол, жар-птица). Morphologically the noun and the adjective in PIE were very similar and differed in only two features: (1) the category of gender was grammatical in the adjective and lexico-grammatical in the noun (i.e. unlike the adjective, one and the same noun lexeme could not occur in different gender forms); (2) the adjective had degrees of comparison. PGmc made certain innovations in the adjective declension. Every adjective is declined both according to the strong declension (with a vocalic stem) and to the weak declension (with an -n- stem). To the vocalic types of stems (a-, ō-, i-, u- stems) it added some pronominal endings to give the Germanic strong adjective declension. So the strong declension of adjectives as a whole is a combination of substantival and pronominal forms. Pronominal endings in the adjective declension are also found in Russian. на добра коня – substantival ending на доброго коня - pronominal ending The PIE n-stem endings were extended to all adjectives to give the Germanic weak declension. Weak declension forms were used when the adjective was preceded by a determiner (a demonstrative or a personal pronoun in the Genitive case); they are associated with the meaning of definiteness. In all other contexts the forms of the strong declension were used. The distinction between the two types of declension of the adjective has survived into Modern German, cf. (strong) (weak) ein schwarzes Kleid "a black dress" – das schwarze Kleid "the black dress" In both declension types the adjective agrees with the noun in number, gender and case. The Verb The PIE verb is believed to have had three tense-aspect forms: p r e s e n t, indicating a continuous action in the present; a o r i s t, expressing an instantaneous or momentary action; and p e r f e c t, denoting a state resulting from a past action. In PGmc aorist and perfect lost their aspectual distinctions and came to be opposed to the present as past tense forms of strong verbs. In other words, the former tense-aspect system was reshaped to a single tense contrast: PIE PGmc Present Present Aorist Past Perfect It should be mentioned that since perfect indicated a state, resulting from a past action, with some verbs it could be used with reference not only to the past but also to the present. This phenomenon can be seen both in Non-Germanic and Germanic languages. Scr veda "knows", Gth wait, OE wāt According to how the past tense and second participle are formed, the PGmc verb system falls into two main classes: strong verbs and weak verbs. In the system of strong verbs PGmc transformed the ablaut of PIE into a tense marker. In the weak verb system PGmc formed a completely new past tense and past participle by adding a dental suffix * - t [/ð/d]. Besides these two main classes, in PGmc there were also preterite-present verbs, whose present tense corresponds to the past tense of strong verbs, and a few irregular verbs. In addition to tense, the PIE verb had four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), two voices (active, medio-passive), three persons, three numbers (singular, dual, plural). In PGmc optative and subjunctive merged into one (subjunctive-optative), containing the functions of both and actually derived from the PIE optative. The two voices were preserved in PGmc, although the medio-passive voice was obsolescent (found only in Gothic); the same held true for the dual number. Strong verbs The system of strong verbs in PGmc was based on ablaut (vowel gradation) inherited from PIE. The gradation series are represented in the four principal forms: 1) the infinitive; 2) the past tense singular; 3) the past tense plural; 4) the past participle. All strong verbs fall into seven classes according to the type of gradation. The first five classes of strong verbs are based on qualitative ablaut. The most frequent type of gradation series in PGmc was e/i – a – ø. It can be exemplified in the principal forms of the Gothic strong verbs pertaining to the first three classes. Gth e, i a ø ø Principal forms Inf Past sg Past pl PP Class I reisan "rise" ['ri:san] rais risum risans Class II kiusan "choose" kaus kusum kusans Class III helpan "help" halp hulpum hulpans The first (normal, or full) grade is found in the infinitive and the present tense stem; the second (qualitative, or timbre) grade manifests itself in the past tense singular; the third ( zero) grade is characteristic of the past tense plural and participle II. Graded vowels were combined with other sounds in different classes of verbs and thus formed new gradation series. Class 1 : a vowel + non-syllabic i reisan – rais – risum – risans Class 2: a vowel + non-syllabic u kiusan – kaus – kusum – kusans Class 3: a vowel + a sonorant + another consonant bindan – band – bundum – bundans rinnan – rann – runnum – runnans Class 4 : a vowel + a sonorant niman – nam – nēmum – numans Class 5: a vowel + a noise consonant qiþan – qaþ – qēþum – qiþans In classes 4 and 5 a new type of vowel gradation can be observed. Long ē is introduced in the past tense plural which (apparently) goes back to the lengthened grade of the IE perfect form. It can be accounted for by the intrusion of quantitative ablaut. Lat. sedeo – sēdī (sit –sat) legō – lēgī (elect – elected)) The sound u of the second participle has to be accounted for by the influence of a sonorous consonant (which was originally syllabic), while the vowel i in the same form has been introduced by analogy with the infinitive. Class 6 of strong verbs is based on quantitative ablaut (historically) which is represented as the alternation of short a and long ō: а - ō - ō - а: faran – fōr – fōrum- farans. Short a in Germanic languages is known to correspond to short o, thus the original IE gradation here was о - ō - ō - о. It should be mentioned that PGmc inherited from PIE one more type of formation, called reduplication. PIE reduplicating verbs built their past tense by adding an extra syllable consisting of the initial consonant and the vowel [  ]. (with or without vowel gradation in the root): Present sg Perfect Gk leipō "leave" leloipa Lat pello "push" pepulī In Greek reduplication is a characteristic feature of the perfect form of all verbs, and the same may be said about Sanskrit. The origin of reduplication was probably emphatic repetition meant to stress the completion/duration of an action. Reduplication was found originally in class 7 of strong verbs. Similarly there were two subclasses within the class of reduplicating verbs in PGmc: (a) without ablaut; (b) with the ablaut ē-ō ( parallel to the PIE short vowel gradation). The two subclasses were preserved in Gothic. Principal forms Infinitive Past sg Past pl PP Class VII haitan "call" ['haItan] haihait [hε'hait] haihaitum haitans lētan "let" lailōt [lε'lo:t] lailōtum letans Although the reduplicating verbs of the first subclass have no ablaut, traditionally they are treated as strong verbs, since they bear formal resemblance to other strong verbs. In other Germanic languages we find only very few survivals of reduplication. It was not already productive as early as Common Germanic. Weak verbs The weak verbs are a specifically Germanic innovation, for the device used in building their principal forms is not found outside the Germanic group. The PGmc weak verbs built their past tense and past participle by adding a dental suffix * - t [/ð/d]. This seems to have originated from two sources: 1) the suffixal form of the past tense of the PGmc verb dōn "do" 2) the PIE suffix -to-, used in the past participle, e.g.: factus "done", scriptus "written", битый, бритый, тертый etc. It should be said, however, that so far there is no universally accepted viewpoint concerning the origin of the dental suffix. Germanic weak verbs fell into three classes (in Gothic – four classes) distinguishable by their stem-building suffixes. The stem-building suffix was -i-/-j- in Class I, -ō-/-ōja- in Class II, and -ai- in Class III. The stem-building suffixes are easily distinguishable in the principal forms of Gothic weak verbs. 1 2 3 4 -i-/-j- -ō-/-ōja- -ai- -n(o)- Infinitive nasjan "save" salbōn "salve" haban "have" fullnan “fill” Past sg nasida salbōda habaida fullnoda Past pl nasidēdum salbōdedum habaidēdum fullnodedum PP nasiþs salbōþs habaiþs ----- Originally each of these suffixes must have had its meaning, that is, it characterized verbs of a certain semantic group. In Gothic the original meaning of the stem-suffix is partially seen in class I (most of the verbs are causative verbs) and more or less clearly manifested in class IV (intransitive verbs denoting a change into a new state). IE and PG SYNTAX Simple sentences It may be assumed that word order in PIE was relatively fixed. The neutral sentence with an objective verb as predicate had the structure SOP with the verb in the final position. This type of word order is typical, for instance, of Latin. S O P Lat Manus manum lavat . Rus «Рука руку моет.» Traces of the original PIE word order are also seen in Sanskrit where the predicate verb is often final. As for the subject, it is used either initially or medially. The same tendency towards placing the verb in the final position is evident in sentences with a compound nominal predicate. S O Pred Vcop Lat Homo homini amicus est. «Человек человеку друг (есть).» Scientia potentia est. «Знание – сила (есть)» On the other hand, when the verb was "light", in the sense that it was not very prominent being close to an auxiliary or semi-auxiliary, it could follow the first accented sentence element which was either the subject or an adverbial modifier. PGmc also had a neutral unmarked sentence type with a final verb. S O Adv. P OE He hīne to þæm ade beran wyllaÞ «Они его к костру нести желают (намереваются)» However, in PGmc a change took place which may be seen in the earliest written records of Gmc languages. The second position of the predicate verb after the first accented element in an independent sentence (either the subject or an adverbial modifier ) was becoming generalized at the expense of the final position. This change may be accounted for by the increase in the number of auxiliary and semi-auxiliary verbs which were light. Adv P S OE … þā rād se cyng… «тогда отправился король…» OE ... He cwæÞ... «Он сказал…» Under conditions of emphasis the predicate verb in PIE could appear in the initial position. The main grammatical constructions in which the emphasis is on the verb are imperative sentences and general questions. This type of word order was preserved in Germanic languages. OE … sinZ me hwæt-hwuZu! «…Спой мне что-нибудь!» OE Hwanon sceolon cuman wise lareowas…? «Откуда должны появиться мудрые учителя?» The predicate verb was also regularly used in the initial position in PGmc when it was negated. This feature may be regarded as specifically Germanic. P S OE "Ne seah ic…” «Не видел я…» Apart from this, the predicate verb was often used in the earliest Gmc languages in the initial position in sequence-initial sentences OE Wæs hē sē mon… «Был он этот человек…» As for intra-sequential sentences and clauses, as a rule, the predicate verb is in the final position. S O O P OE Ic hit þē Zehāte: … «Я это тебе обещаю…» Structural variants of simple sentences Verbless sentences The copulative verb "be" was often omitted in PIE. Such omission was especially common, when the predicate verb was present indicative and in the third person. Lat Aurora musis amica. «Aврора – подруга музам». Rus «Наша ветхая лачужка и печальна и темна» (А.С. Пушкин) This type of omission of the copulative verb was preserved in PGmc. Nevertheless, in PGmc the omission of the copula became less frequent than in PIE. Thus in Gothic there are instances of the copulative verb "wesan" introduced in a compound nominal predicate against the Greek original. S Vcop Pred Gth þata auk ist wilja gudis "for that is the will of God." A specifically Gmc type of ellipsis of the predicate verb common to all the earliest Gmc languages consists in the omission of a non-finite verb of motion if the direction and mode of action are evident or clear from the context. The remaining part of the predicate is usually expressed by a modal verb: OE Đēōs bōc sceal tō WioZoraceastre "This book should (be sent) to Worcester." Subjectless sentences There were two main types of subjectless sentences in PIE. 1. Sentences where the subject is omitted but can be easily restored. Such sentences are typical of Russian and Latin. Omnia mea mecum porto. «Все мое ношу с собой» Люблю тебя, Петра творенье! (A.C. Пушкин) Such sentences are quite frequent in Gothic, but in other Germanic languages they are rare. 2. Sentences where the subject cannot be expressed. They can be, in their turn, subdivided into two subtypes. a) Sentences which were used to describe natural phenomena. Rus Светает. Вечереет. This type was inherited by PGmc and can be exemplified by the following sentences. OE Norþan snywde. "It snowed in the North." b) Another type of subjectless sentences in PIE was used to express a subjective state. In this sentence type the person whose state is denoted by the predicate verb is expressed by a noun or pronoun in the Accusative case. Rus Меня знобит, страшит, веселит. This type of subjectless construction was also preserved in PGmc. The nominal part was used either in the Dative or in the Accusative case. Dat P OE Him þūhte. "It seemed to him." Rus Ему казалось… CHRONOLOGICAL DIVISION IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH There are three distinctly marked stages, or periods, in the history of the English language: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME) and Modern English (MnE), or New English (NE), within which Present Day English is distinguished. The Old English period dates from the 5th century, when the first Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to the British Isles, till the 11th century, up to the date of the Norman conquest in 1066. The Middle English period (ME) lasts from the end of the 11th century (or the beginning of the 12th century) to the 15th (or to the beginning of the 16th century.) Sometimes the ME period is marked in the following way: from William the Conqueror to William Shakespeare (1564). The New English period, or Modern English, lasts from the 16th century up to the present day. Within it historians usually distinguish the Early New English (ENE) period - from the 15th century to the 17th, including the age of Shakespeare. It must be understood that any kind of precise chronological division in the history of a language is contrary to the very character of its development and is therefore conventional. The transition from one stage to another is always slow and gradual. The English language has a long and eventful history. Its development began in the 5th century A.D., when groups of West Germanic tribes settled in the British Isles. During the sixteen hundred years of its history the English language has been undergoing great changes and it is changing still. Though it is universally accepted that the Old English period dates from the 5th century, the earliest records of English that have come down to us are dated in the 7th century. It may seem that the development of Early OE cannot be described at all as we possess no written evidence to study it from. Yet it has been reconstructed by means of comparing certain data found in later OE texts with those of other Old Germanic dialects, which have retained more common Germanic features than English (for instance Gothic). OE WRITTEN RECORDS Writings in OE (from the 7th to the 11th century) are very numerous and belong to different genres. On the one hand, there is a great variety of prose texts, part of them translations from Latin, and on the other - a number of poems. Among the prose works we should first of all note the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a year-for-year account of the events in English history starting in 787. Then there are a number of texts associated in one way or another with the name of King Alfred. He made a lot of translations himself or some of them were made on his orders. What makes the texts particularly valuable for us is King Alfred's own original additions to the texts. The best known of these is the passage telling of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, two Scandinavian travelers who arrived in England and told Alfred of their experiences. Beginning with the 8th century OE poetry came to flourish. It was during this time that the great epic poem "Beowulf" was composed. The author of the poem is unknown. It contains more than 3000 lines. Among late OE texts we must mention the works of Alfric, a priest from Wessex, who is famous for "Homilies Lives" composed by himself and the translation of a Latin grammar, supplied with a preface of his own. Alphabets in OE In OE two alphabets were used - the Runic alphabet and the Latin alphabet. The Runic alphabet is the earliest of Germanic alphabets. Each separate letter is called a rune. Runes have a very peculiar look for eyes accustomed to the modern English alphabet. The question of the origin of the Runic alphabet has been discussed by scholars for a long time. It was probably derived either from the Latin alphabet or from some other alphabet close to the Latin. The modifications which Latin letters underwent in the Runic alphabet can be accounted for by the technique of writing used by Germanic tribes in those early times. The letters were not painted or written on some surface, they were carved (engraved) into wood, stone, bone or metal. Not every kind of line could be successfully cut into wood. For example, curves were replaced by broken lines, because it is difficult to carve curves (round figures of letters). Just when and where the Runic alphabet was created is not known. It is supposed that it originated at some time in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. and was widely used in Scandinavia, mainly for religious purposes. The letters called runes were believed to have magical properties. After the Anglo-Saxons came into contact with Roman culture the Runic alphabet was replaced by the Latin script. As the OE sound system differed from that of Latin, the Anglo-Saxon scribes borrowed some letters from the Runic alphabet, for example, the letter þ "thorn", which was used to denote the sounds ð and , as well as the letter ð "crossed d". Sometimes a Latin letter was used to denote several sounds. For example, the letter Z "yogh", a modified form of Latin g, was used to denote: [g] - initially before consonants or back vowels and after n: Zlēō, Zōd, sinZan; [] - after l and r and after back vowels: daZas, folZian, burZ; [j] - initially before and after front vowels: Zear, dæZ. The letter f was used to denote [f] and [v]. The letter s was used to denote [s] and [z]. The letter c was used to denote the sound [k] in all positions. The letter y was used to denote the sound [ü] (fronted u or labialized i): mys. The Latin ligature æ was used to denote the front open vowel [æ]. The clusters cZ and ZZ were used to denote [g]. The letters q, z, x, k were rare or entirely absent. Vowel length was not generally indicated in manuscripts, however, sometimes a dash above the vowel, called a macron, was used. OE writing was based mainly on a phonetic principle: every letter indicated a separate sound. The alphabetic way of writing was designed to give an accurate graphic representation of pronunciation by using letters to indicate sounds. WORD STRESS The system of word stress inherited from Proto- Germanic underwent no changes in early OE. It was a force stress, or, in other words, a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of articulation. Word stress was fixed. It fell generally on the first syllable, which was commonly the root of the word, and remained unchanged in different grammatical forms. It didn't shift in word-building either. In words with prefixes the position of the stress could be different: verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly on the prefix. Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had two stresses - chief and secondary: the chief stress being on the first component and the secondary on the second component: `norðmonna. The prefix Ze- is never stressed irrespective of the part of speech to which it is added. Suffixes and grammatical endings were commonly unstressed. Later it resulted in their weakening and loss.------------------ OE PHONETIC SYSTEM Old English inherited a lot of features of the parent-language and developed its own traits, especially in the sphere of phonetics. OE VOWELS The OE vowel system consisted of both monophthongs and diphthongs. Most OE vowels are of Common Germanic origin. Some of them have certain correspondences in Gothic, others appeared in the OE period as a result of different phonetic changes. All OE vowels, including diphthongs, can be either short or long. Monophthongs. There were ten vowel phonemes: a e i o u ā ē ī ō ū The main feature of the OE vocalic system was parallelism of short and long vowels: every short vowel had a long counterpart. Unlike Proto-Germanic vocalism, OE vowel system was structurally balanced. Two vowel phonemes, /a/ and /u/, had allophones: - the sound å, which is only found before the nasal consonants m and n and is sometimes denoted by the letter a, sometimes by the letter o: mann - monn (pronounced between a and o; close a or open o); - the sound /æ/, which appeared in closed syllables and before front vowels: þæt, wæter - /a/ appeared in all the other cases; - the sound /ü/ (marked by the letter y ) was found before front vowels: byriZ, fullan - /u/ appeared in all the orther cases. Diphthongs OE diphthongs were “falling”, with a wide open glide (unlike MnE “rising” diphthongs). ea eo io ie ēā ēō īō īē The long diphthongs ēā and ēō correspond to Gothic diphthongs /au/ and /iu/. The short diphthongs and the two long diphthongs /īō/ and /īē/ result from OE phonetic changes. The length of a vowel was phonologically relevant: a long vowel and a short one were two different phonemes. The length of a vowel didn't depend on the environment. PHONETIC CHANGES OE vowels underwent a number of qualitative and quantitative changes based mainly on assimilation,, i.e. the influence of other sounds, generally those that followed them (regressive assimilation). I. OE Breaking (Fracture) is diphthongization of front vowels before certain consonant clusters: a ea before r+consonant, l+consonant, h+consonant, final h/l: ærm – earm “arm’ æld – eald “old” æhta – eahta “eight” sæh – seah “saw” e eo before r+consonant, lc, lh, h+consonant, final h/l: herte – heorte „heart“ melcan – meolcan „milk“ feh – feoh „fee“ „cattle“ fehtan – feohtan „fight“ The phonetic essence of fracture is partial assimilation of the front vowel to the following hard consonant by forming a glide. Fracture is most consistently carried out in the Wessex dialect. II. Palatalization (palatal diphthongization of front vowels) A front vowel is diphthongized under the influence of the initial palatal consonants Z, c and the cluster sc. Z and c influence only front vowels, sc influences all vowels. As a result of palatalization a diphthong arises: e – ie Zefan – Ziefan “give” æ - ea *scæl – sceal “shall” cæster – ceaster “camp” a – ea scacan – sceacan “shake” o – eo scort – sceort “short” u – eo ZunZ – ZeonZ „young“ This change, however, can be treated as an orthographic variation. III. Mutation, or umlaut The process of mutation which took place in the 5-7th centuries consisted in the change of the root through the influence of a vowel in the following syllable. Front mutation (i-umlaut) I-mutation (i-umlaut) is the most frequent type of mutation. It means fronting and narrowing of the root vowel under the influence of the following souds i or j. The process began in the 5th or 6th century and embraced all vowels except i and e (they depended on the phonetic environment since earlier times - Germanic breaking). The final root consonant was doubled (becomes long) and the element i(j) was dropped in most cases: a – e namnian – nemnan “ name’, sandian – sendan “send” æ – e tæljan – tellan “tell”, læZian – lecZan “lay’ ā – æ lārian – læran “learn” o – e ofstian - efstan "hurry" ō – ē dōmjan – dēman „deem“, fōdjan – fēdan „feed“ u – y fuljan – fyllan “fill’ ū – y cūþian - cyþan "announce" A lot of mutated forms in MnE which have survived since OE can be accounted for by the process of I-umlaut. 1) in form-building: • plural forms of nouns: man – men, foot – feet, mouse – mice; • adjectival forms of comparison: old - elder; • forms of some historically weak verbs: tell – told, think – thought; 2) in word-building: N - V food - feed, blood - bleed, tale - tell, sale – sell Adj.- N long - length, strong – strength; broad - breadth N – Adj. France – French, Angles – English; Adj. – V full – fill (numeral ) one (OE ān) - MnE any (pronoun) Back (velar) mutation A different kind of mutation was caused by a back vowel (u, o, a) in the following syllable. i – io hira – hiora “their’, sifon – siofon “seven” e – eo hefōn – heofōn “heaven” a – ea caru - cearu "care” As a result the root vowel was diphthogized. IV. Lengthening In the 9th century vowels were lengthened before the clusters mb, nd, ld, sometimes before ng, rd, rl, rn (a combination of a sonorant and a voiced consonant): cild – [ki:ld] (child) bindan – [bi:ndan] (bind) climban – [kl:mban] (climb) If the cluster was followed by a third consonant no lengthening took place: cīld – cildru “child – children” Thus in MnE there is a short sound in the plural form (for the reason that there is a third consonant (a stem-suffix)). child – children wild – widerness [wildqnis] behind – hindrance [hindrqns] A vowel could be lengthened when certain consonants were lost in certain positions: - n was lost before fricatives h, f, s, þ: G fünf - OE fīf - h was lost between vowels: Gmc *sehan - OE sēōn OE CONSONANTS The OE consonant system included: • labial - p, b, m, f, v • dental - t, d, , ð, s, r, l, n • palatal and velar – k, g, h According to the way of production there were: • voiced stops p t k • voiceless stops b d g - fricatives f v s z  ð x  • sonorants m n l r • semi-vowels - j w There were no affricates or sibilants. PHONETIC CHANGES Voicing and devoicing of fractives. The distinction between voiced and voiceless fricatives was only positional. A voiceless fricative became voiced in the voiced environment (between vowels or between a vowel and voiced consonant), but a voiced fricative became voiceless in the final position. Initially it was always voiceless. So voiced and voiceless fricatives were allophones, not separate phoneme, they were not distinguished in spelling. The letter f was used for [f] and [v], þ and ð for [] and [ð], h and Z for [h] and [], s for [s] and [z]. The MnE plural forms 'wife - wives', bath – baths [ba:đz], house – houses [hauziz] go back to the OE period when a fricative consonant was voiced in the intervocal position. Every backlingual consonant had a palatal counterpart: cuman - cild [k'] þohte - niht [x'] Zuma - brycZ [g'] daZas [] - dæZ [j] Gemination Gemination was doubling (lengthenig) of the final root consonant that took place along with i-mutation: Gth saljan – OE sellan Gth taljan - OE tellan Palatalization The velar consonants k g when close to front vowels and the cluster sk (in all positions) became palatalized and approached the affricates [t∫], [dZ] and the sibilant [∫] . OE cīld [k] - [t∫] ME child [t∫ild] OE brycZ [g] - [dZ] ME and MnE bridge OE scip [sc] - [∫] ME and MnE ship The development of sibilants and affricates was accomplished in Late Old English. In Scandinavian there was no palatalization. This gave rise to etymological doublets - one of them English, the other Scandinavian: shirt – scirt share – scar shriek – screech shabby – scabby shell - scale Assimilation and Loss of Consonants 1) a velar consonant + t = ht: sōcte – sōhte “sought” þincan – þohte “thought” 2) a labial consonant + t = ft: Zesceapt – Zesceaft “creature” 3) a dental consonant + t = ss: witte – wisse “knew” 4) fn - mn: efm – emn “even” 5) fm - mm: wifman – wimman “woman” 6) h was lost between vowels: tihan – tēōn “accuse” 7) n was lost before the fricatives f, h, s, þ, the preceding vowel was lengthened: G uns - OE us, G funf - OE fif 8) j was dropped before d, n and the preceding vowel was lengthened: mæZden – mæden sæzde – sæde Metathesis Metathesis is a phonetic change which consists in two sounds within a word exchanging their places. In OE it frequently affected the consonant r and a vowel in the word: þridda – þirda “third” rinnan – irnan “run” Occasionally metathesis affected other sounds as well: askian – āxian “ask”. OE MORPHOLOGY OE like PIE was a synthetic, or inflected type of language: it showed the relations between words with the help of grammatical ending, sound interchanges in the root and suppletive formations. Grammaticaal endings, or inflections, were the principal form-building means used: they were found in all the parts of speech that could change their form. THE SUBSTANTIVE Originally the noun in OE like in other Germanic languages contained three elements: the root that carried the lexical meaning, the stem-suffix that served as a means of word-building and had originally distinguished semantically related nouns and the inflection - a means of form-building. At the early stages of the language development the stem-suffix lost its importance, was reduced and finally merged with the ending. In most cases due to this process OE declension names are only etymologically relevant and kept up purely as a matter of convenience. Grammatical Categories The OE noun had two grammatical categories: number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was mainly a classifying feature accounting, alongside with other features, for the division of nouns into morphological classes. Gender The category of gender (unlike the purely grammatical categories of number and case) is lexico-grammatical. Each noun belongs to a certain gender which cannot be changed. With animate nouns gender distinctions are based on sex distinctions: fædar “father’, brōðor “brother’ - masculine; mōdor “mother”, sweostor “sister”- feminine. Sometimes, however, the gender of a noun is in contradiction with its lexical meaning: wīf “wife’ were neuter; wīfman “woman’ was masculine. mæZden “girl” As for inanimate nouns, their gender cannot be accounted for by any semantic or formal grounds. In Russian, for example, стол is masculine, дверь is feminine, окно is neuter. We may suppose that originally certain groups of nouns were associated with male or female beings, but nowadays the principles of the ancient classification cannot be traced. OE gender distinctions realized themselves through a few endings: each gender had some particular endings. Number The category of number includes two forms: the singular number to denote one object or person and the plural number to denote two or more. The OE number system is reduced if compared with the PIE number system (singular, dual, plural). The dual number is no longer found in OE. Case Of the eight IE case forms four have survived into OE: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative. The meaning and the use of cases correspond to those in Russian. The Nominative can be defined as the case of the active agent, used as the subject of the sentence. The Genitive case denotes possession and functions as an attribute or an object (with partitive meaning). The Dative case denotes generally the living being towards which the action is directed and functions as an indirect object. The OE Dative case could also convey an instrumental meaning, the function which belonged formerly to the Instrumental case. The Accusative case is used to denote the recepient of an action and functions as a direct object. Case relations are expressed by an extended system of inflexions. Noun Declension The following types of declensions are singled out based on the original noun stems: 1) the strong declension that includes vocalic stems -a-, -ō-, -i-, -u-; 2) the weak declension that includes n-stems; 3) other consonantal stems -r-, -s-, -nd-stems; 4) root- stems, without the stem-suffix. The stem-suffix can hardly be seen within the word structure in OE (it merged with the ending). The Strong Declension It is the most numerous declension type. A-stems can be either masculine or neuter. Neuter a-stems differed from the masculine in the plural of the Nominative and Accusative cases. While masculine nouns took -as (stān – stānas “stones”), the neuter nouns took -u for short stems (scip – scipu “ships”) and no inflection for long stems (with a long vowel: scēāp “sheep” or with a short one followed by two consonants: hors “horse”). So the ending of the neuter nouns depended on two factors: the number of syllables and the quantity (length) of the root vowel. Monosyllabic nouns with a long root syllable had no inflections in the plural form. MnE zero plurals like sheep, deer, swine belonged originally to the a-stem neuter nouns. Some inflections of a-stem appeared to be productive and gave rise to certain MnE forms: • -as in the Nominative and Accusative plural masculine gave rise to the MnE marker of plurality -es; • -es in the Genitive singular gave rise to the MnE Genitive (possessive) inflection -'s. There were also ja-stems and wa-stems in the OE noun system - the varieties of a-stems. Ō-stems were all feminine. Their paradigm was reduced. There were only two forms in the singular (the Nominative case and the Oblique cases) and two forms in the plural (the Dative case and all the other cases) - four case forms instead of eight. The distinction was made between short-syllable stems (talu - tale - tala – talum “tale”) and long-syllable ones (lār - lāre - lāra - lārum "lore" - учение). I-stems are not numerous though they include the nouns of all the three genders. The masculine and neuter nouns are declined like a-stems, the feminine nouns do not much differ from ō-stems. The root vowel has undergone mutation (i-umlaut due to the stem-suffix -i-): tīd "tide", ylde "generation". U-stems are very few. Among these are masculine and feminine nouns. They were not very frequent and very few of them survived. Some of them are widely used: sunu “sun” , feld “field”, hand “hand”, winter “winter”, sumor “summer”. Their paradigm is unstable: there are a lot of variants and coincidences. The singular number has two forms: Nominative and Accusative vs Genitive and Dative (sunu - suna, feld - felda, hand - handa). The plural form also has two forms: Dative vs the other cases (suna - sunum, felda - feldum). To draw a line under what we have said we must mention the most characteristic, typical inflections of the strong declension: • -um for the Dative case plural; • -es for the Genitive case singular; • -a for the Genitive case plural. The Nominative and the Accusative generally coincide; the Genitive and Dative are often identical. The forms of the Oblique cases may coincide as well. The Weak Declension N-stems were very numerous and included the nouns of all the three genders. There were five homonymous forms in the paradigm of n-stems, the characteristic inflexion being -an which developed from the stem-suffix -n- (nama - naman “name”(m), tunZe – tunZan “tongue” (f), ēāZe - ēāZan “eye” (n). -um is found in the Dative case plural: namum, tunZum, ēāZum. -ena in the Genitive case plural: namena, tunZena, ēāZena. N-stems were parallel to Russian nouns of the type племя, бремя, имя where the stem-suffix is manifested in the Oblique Cases: имени, племени. Root-stems (the stem= the root) They have never had any stem-building suffix, so the ending was added immediately to the root. These nouns represent the oldest type. They were not numerous, but very stable. They include nouns of all the three genders. In three case forms - Dative singular, Nominative and Accusative plural - there is the result of mutation (i-umlaut): man(n) - men(n), mūs - mys. Obviously the original form of the Dative singular must have been *manni, *musi. The ending -i was added to the root causing mutation and then disappeared. The mutated vowel became the marker of the plural form in MnE: foot - feet, goose - geese, man - men, tooth - teeth, mouse - mice. R-stems are represented by a few masculine and feminine nouns denoting relationship, kinship (brōþor “brother”, mōdor “mother”). It is the only declension type where the original meaning of the stem suffix can be traced. Most r-stem declension forms were homonymous. The Dative singular of these nouns usually has mutation: brōþor - brēþer, mōdor - mēder. The mutated form has survived into MnE as the marker of plurality alongside the regular form: brothers / brethren. S-stems were all neuter. They are very few. The IE suffix -s- appears as -r- in OE like in other Germanic languages due to rhotacism: cīld - cildru. In Russian: небо – небеса, in Latin: genus – genera, opus – opera. Nd-stems are substantivized participles: freond “friend”, hælend “saviour” (Jesus) The distinction between morphological classes was not strict. Many forms took new variants under the influence of the more numerous classes. Towards the end of the OE period the number of formal variations grew. None of the declensions made a distinction between eight forms: some distinguished between five forms, some between four, three or even two. As a result the declension system was reconstructed in later days. The homonymy of forms brought about the break-up of the system in later periods. This, in its turn, favoured the growth of other means of word connections in the sentence (prepositions, word order), which came to be used instead of case inflexions. THE PRONOUNS In OE we find personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite pronouns. Other groups (relative, conjunctive, possessive and reflexive) were not fully developed. Personal and demonstrative pronouns are of Commom IE origin and have cognates in non-Germanic languages: OE ic Lat ego Ru азъ OE þū Lat tu Ru ты OE he Lat cis Ru сей OE þæt Lat iste Ru тот Personal pronouns had three persons, three numbers (the extra number form is dual in the first and second persons, the survival of the ancient IE form) and four cases. The first and the second person pronouns had suppletive forms like their parallels in other IE languages: Rus я – меня; Lat ego – mihi. The pronouns of the third person were of demonstrative nature. Gender distinctions were only found in the third person singular (like in Russian). The Genitive case forms were used as attributes or noun determiners, like possessive pronouns. They cannot, however, be regarded as possessive pronouns proper, as a separate class of pronouns. The grammatical characteristics of these forms were not homogeneous. The forms of the first and second person - min, ūre, þīn - were declined like adjectives to show agreement with the nouns they modified, while the forms of the third person behaved like nouns: they remained uninflected and did not agree with the nouns they modified: þinne boZan “thine bow” vs his mēder “his mother” mīnum brēðer “to my brother” The Dative and Accusative cases of personal pronouns were often used reflexively: wende he hine "повернул он себя, направился". The paradigm abounds in variants and homonymous forms which made the system less precise and eventually brought about its break-up. Demonstrative Pronouns Demonstrative pronouns had two numbers, three genders and five cases (an extra case in Instrumental). There were two sets of demonstrative pronouns in OE: - pronouns of far reference and pronouns of near reference. The first set was more frequent. There were suppletive forms in the sg masculine and feminine Nominative which had a root in -s- ,while the other forms began with -þ- sē (m) sēō (f) þæt (n) þā (pl) - pronouns of far reference þēs þēos þis þās - pronouns of near reference The paradigm had a lot of homonymous forms. Some cases resembled those of personal pronouns: • m - Dative singular and plural masculine and neuter • r - Dative, Genitive singular feminine, Genitive plural • ne - Accusative singular masculine These are looked upon as pronominal endings. Similar endings can be found in other IE languages: Ru ему, тому, им. The pronouns sē, sēō, þæt were used with a weakened demonstrative meaning. In this case their function was very close to that of the definite article: sē mann “ the man”. THE ADJECTIVE The adjective declension in Germanic languages is entirely different from that of other IE languages. In Russian and Latin it coincides fully with the noun declension. In OE, like in other Germanic languages, most adjectives could be declined in two ways: according to the weak declension (with an –n-stem) and according to the strong declension (with a vocalic stem). The paradigm which combined the endings of the strong declension of nouns with pronominal ones was called strong. Its substantival (nominal) endings coincided with the endings of a-stems for the masculine and neuter and ō-stems for the feminine. The pronominal endings were: • ne - Accusative masculine singular • um - Dative masculine, neuter singular, Dative plural • re - Genitive, Dative feminine • ra - Genitive plural Adjectives used attributively without a determiner or used predicatively are declined strong: wæs sēō fæmne ZeonZ "that woman was young". The endings of the weak declension of adjectives coincided with the weak declension of nouns, except for the Genitive case plural -ra (borrowed from the strong declension). The weak declension was employed in direct address or when the adjective was preceded by a determiner (a demonstrative pronoun). Comparatives and superlatives were also declined weak (the latter sometimes take strong forms). The adjective in OE could change for number, gender and case. Like nouns adjectives had two numbers, three genders, but five cases (+ Instrumental). Those were dependent grammatical categories that served as a means of agreement with the noun. Degrees of Comparison Like adjectives in other IE languages most OE adjectives distinguished three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative, built synthetically with the help of two suffixes: -ra for the comparative degree (developed from Gmc –iza/oza due to rhotacism) -est/-ost for the superlative. All adjectives can be sorted in three groups according to how they formed degrees of comparison: 1) adjectives with an unchanged root vowel: Zlæd - Zlædra – Zlædost blæc - blæcra - blæcost 2) adjectives with an umlauted (mutated) root vowel: lonZ - lenZra (< lonZira) - lenZest (< lonZist) 3) adjectives having suppletive forms of comparison: Zōd - betera - betst yfel - wiersa - wierst mīcel - māra - mǽst lytel - lǽssa - lǽst The suppletive system of comparison is a feature of the PIE adjectives which has been preserved by many IE languages, mostly adjectives of the same meaning: Ru хороший – лучше, плохой - хуже. THE VERB According to the way of forming their past tense and participle II OE verbs fell into: 1) Strong verbs (with ablaut) 2) Weak verbs (with the dental suffix) 3) Preterite-present verbs 4) Anomalous and suppletive (irregular) Strong verbs were primary verbs. The meanings of their roots were in themselves verbal. There were about 300 verbs in OE. They were all native words (PIE and PGmc) and denoted basic actions and states. They had four principal forms: the infinitive (present tense stem), past singular, past plural, participle II. Each of the principal forms was distinguished by a different ablaut grade, which was inherited from PIE with some PGmc modification. The class of strong verbs was closed in membership, it was not productive. OE strong verbs (like strong verbs of other Germanic languages) fell into 7 classes. The first 5 classes were based on qualitative ablaut i/e - a – ø. Verbs of class 6 were distinguished by a qualitative-quantitative ablaut. The 7th class was known for reduplication. Some strong verbs besides the vowel interchange also had consonant interchange that took place under Verner's law. The last consonant in the stems of past plural and past participle was voiced and appeared as d, ð, r: wesan - wæs - wǽron cwēðen - cwæð - cwǽdon The original system of IE ablaut was obscured in OE by different phonetic changes. Class I (i-class) had the gradation series ī (e/i + i)- ā (a + i) - i - i: wrītan - wrāt - writon - writen rīsan - rās - rison - risen The gradation series reflected the interaction of the gradation vowel with the non-syllabic i: • the long ī of the present represented i + i (gradation vowel + root vowel); • the vowel ā of the past singular represented a + i when the two vowels merged into a diphthong ai that later was monophthongized; • i in the 3rd and the 4th forms was the non-syllabic root vowel, the gradation vowel was a zero. Thus the ablaut series in this class was very well preserved. Class II (u-class) verbs also had modifications of the Germanic ablaut i/e - a - ø. The gradation vowel merged with the non-syllabic element u: Gth e/i +u=eu/iu a+u=au ø+u=u ø+u=u OE eo/u ea u o seoðan seað sudon sodden “seethe” ceosan ceas curon coren “choose” The present ēō represented the graded vowel + non-syllabic u (Gothic iu = OE ēō). The past ēā represented Gothic au while o in the 4th class appeared after Germanic breaking. Class III (nasal, r, l, h + cons. in the root) verbs either correspond to the Germanic gradation series in its original state i/e - a - ø or change under OE breaking in their gradation vowel: bindan - band - bundon – bunden “bind” feohtan - feaht - fuhton - fohten “fight” In the 1st, 2nd forms diphthongs appear after OE breaking. The 3rd, 4th forms develop epenthetic u/o. In class IV verbs the graded vowel is followed by a sonorant. In the 2nd form /æ/ appears before l, r in a closed syllable. Vowels in the 2nd, 3rd forms /æ/-/æ:/ are due to quantitative ablaut. The epenthetic /o/ is the result of Germanic breaking. beran – bær -- bæron – boren “bear” Class V verbs had a noise (non-sonant) consonant in the root. Their gradation series are analogous to that of the 4th class, except the fourth form. The epenthetic vowel appeared there similar to the vowel of the first form. sprecan - spræc - spræcon - sprecen “speak” Class VI was based on quantitative ablaut which has become quantitative-qualitative. It corresponds to the IE gradation o/ ō/ ō/ o . a faran (fare) ō fōr ō fōron a faren Class VII was the class of reduplicating verbs. Reduplication is clearly seen in Gothic. In OE there were only a few survivals of reduplicated forms. On the whole the class is miscellaneous. lætan – lēt (lelt) - lēton (lelton) - læten “let” Weak Verbs The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeds the number of strong verbs. Their number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other stems were conjugated weak. Most weak verbs were derivatives from adjectives, nouns or strong verbs. Weak verbs formed their past and participle II by means of the dental suffix t/d (a specifically Germanic feature). They distinguished only three forms because their past singular and plural stems were identical. In OE three classes of weak verbs were distinguished according to the stem-suffix. Class I had the suffix -ja-. Verbs of class I were subdivided into regular and irregular. Regular verbs had the same vowel in all the principal forms due to i-mutation: dēman - dēmde – dēmed “deem” sendan – sende – send, sended “send” Irregular verbs had i-mutation only in the infinitive and the present tense stem. As a result the vowel of the past tense and participle II differs from that of the infinitive. ðencan – ðohte - ðoht “think” They were also characterized by the loss of consonants, OE breaking and other phonetic changes: sellan - sealde – seald ”sell, give” Many class I verbs were causative: their meaning is "to make someone do something". Class II verbs were characterized by the stem-suffix -o-. In the past tense and participle II it appears before the dental suffix, later it developed into a neutral sound and gave rise to -ed - the productive means of building the past tense and participle II forms of regular verbs. macian - macode – macod “make” Class III verbs originally had the stem-suffix -ai- but in OE it is no longer found, the dental suffix is added directly to the root. Only a few verbs belonged to the 3rd class, but some of them were widely used. habban - hæfde – hæfd “have” libban - lifde – lifd “live” Some of them had doubled consonants in the infinitive and mutated vowels which can be accounted for by the presence of the element i/j in some forms in Early OE. Preterite-Present Verbs. Their present tense corresponds to the past tense of strong verbs while their past is built up with the help of the dental suffix (like weak verbs). The present forms built with the help of ablaut were originally past tense forms of these verbs which had acquired the meaning of the present. Preterite-present verbs were used to express the state of the subject as the result of its previous activity: Ru знаю (< узнал), могу (< научился), имею (< приобрел). They expressed different shades of modality: obligation, ability and the like. The paradigm of preterite-present verbs was incomplete: some lacked infinitives, very few had participle II. Principal forms A. Classes Infinitive Present sg Present pl Past sg Part II (1) I witan "know" wāt witon wiste II duZan "avail" dēāZ duZon dohte III cunnan "can" cann cunnon cūðe cūð unnan "grant" ann unnon ūðe durran "dare" dearr duron dorste þurfan "need" þearf þurfon þorfte IV 2. sculan "shall" sceal sculon sceolde munan "remember" man munon munde V maZan "may" maeZ maZon meahte "enough" Zeneah ZenuZon Zenohte VI "must" mōt mōton moste VII āZan "have" āZe āZon āhte Preterite-present verbs were not numerous, only twelve in OE. Six of them have survived in MnE as modal verbs: can, may, must, shall, dare, ought to. The paradigm of MnE modal verbs is also defective: they lack analytical forms, the -s inflection in the 3rd person singular, some of them have no past tense. Anomalous Verbs. "Willan" and "dōn" built their past with the dental suffix, but there were also alternations of the root vowel: dōn - dyde (past sg) - Zedōn (past participle) “do – did” willan – wolde “will - would” Both of them are of PIE origin and have cognates in non-Germanic languages: Ru велеть, деть; Lat velle, Grk ti-themi. Suppletive Verbs. Their forms are derived from different roots. The verb bēōn “to be”combined three roots in its paradigm: wes*-, es*-, bhe*-. Similar phenomena are found in other IE languages: Rus был – есть; Lat sum – fui – est. The elements originally had different meanings which were more concrete than the abstract meaning "be". The verb zan “to go” is also suppletive in many IE languages: Rus иду - шел. Its principal forms in OE were Zān - ēōde - ZeZān. The past tense form probably corresponds to Gothic iddja, Rus иду. GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE VERB There were two tenses (present and past), three moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive), three persons and two numbers (no survivals of the dual number in OE). OE verbs forms were synthetic: they were built with the help of inflections. The conjugation system was rather complicated. There was, however, great coincidence of forms in the verb paradigm. The plural imperative was homonymous with the 3rd person plural indicative. The present subjunctive singular -e and plural -en also occurred in the past subjunctive. The subjunctive present singular was the same as the 1st person present indicative. The present tense paradigm of weak verbs did not differ from that of strong verbs. bindan “bind” cēpan “keep” Present Indicative 1 sg binde cēpe 2 sg bintst cēpst 3 sg bint cēpð pl bindað cēpað Present Subjunctive sg binde cēpe pl binden cēpen Imperative 2 sg bind cēp 2 pl bindað cēpað Participle I bindende cēpende Past Indicative 1 sg bånd cēpte 2 sg bunde cēptes(t) 3 sg bånd cēpte pl bundon cēpton Past Subjunctive sg bunde cēpte pl bunden cēpten Participle II (Ze)-bunden (Ze)-cēped The Category of Tense. The meanings of tenses were very general as compared with later periods and with present-day English. The forms of the present were used to indicate both present and future actions (like in other IE languages). Future events could be also expressed by the combination of "sculan" (shall) or "willan" (will) with the infinitive of the notional verb. Such combinations, however, cannot be looked upon as future forms because the first component of the phrase retained its full lexical meaning. The Category of Mood. The meanings of OE moods correspond to those of other IE languages. The Indicative mood presents an action as real. The Imperative mood expresses an order or a request. The OE Subjunctive mood expressed all kinds of unreality and was of considerably wider usage when compared with the modern Subjunctive. It could occur in the main and subordinate clauses to express desirable, necessary or supposed actions. It was especially typical of conditional clauses and object clauses that rendered reported speech, in constructions of comparison, clauses of purpose. The Subjunctive was obligatory in indirect speech, including indirect questions. All Subjunctive forms were synthetical; they correspond to MnE Subjunctive I and Subjunctive II. The Category of Aspect. Originally OE - like other old Germanic languages - had aspect forms that go back to the IE aspects (momentary, durative, perfective). Later they developed into tenses, that is the categories expressing the time of the action and its relation to the time of the utterance. Thus the category of aspect did not exist in OE. In OE there existed pairs of verbs in which one member differed from the other only by one formal characteristic - that is the use or non-use of this member with the prefixes Ze-, ā- and some others: wrītan - Ze-wrītan rīsan - a-rīsan The function of these prefixes was very close to that of the perfective aspect. In Slavonic languages the prefixless form had a meaning which corresponded to the imperfective aspect (Rus ехать - уехать/приехать/заехать etc.) Still this fact doesn't seem to be sufficient to claim that there existed the category of aspect in OE. Ze- cannot be regarded as the categorical marker for the following reasons: 1) not all verbs could take it (cuman, secZan), so its use is not regular; 2) the meaning of completion could be expressed without any prefix; 3) Ze- could also express lexical meaning (seah - Ze-seah "видел - увидел") The meanings of completion and result could be also expressed by verb phrases: the verbs "habban" or "bēōn" + Participle II. The verb “habban” was used with transitive verbs, "bēōn" was used with intransitive verbs, mainly with verbs of motion (come, go, etc.). The Category of Voice. In OE texts we find very few isolated forms (relics) of synthetic Mediopassive which existed in PG and was well developed in Gothic. The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of finite forms of "bēōn / weorðan (to become)" together with Participle II of transitive verbs. These forms meant originally the presence or appearance of some property ("was killed" стал убитым”) and should be regarded as compound predicates. OE Hē wearð ofslægen = he was killed = he was dead During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the Passive voice. Thus in OE we find verb phrases that are parallel to MnE analytical forms (Future, Passive, Perfect). They cannot, however, be regarded as the categorical markers of tense, voice, correlation because they are not grammatical forms but free word combinations. They retain syntactic relations of subordination between the components and full lexical meaning of the first element which in later periods came to be an auxiliary. VERBALS In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb – the Infinitive and the Participle. In many respects they were closer to the nouns and adjectives than to finite verbs; their nominal features were far more obvious than verbal features, especially at the morphological level. The verbal nature of the Infinitive and the Participle was revealed in some of their functions (subjects and objects) and their syntactic combinability: they could take direct objects and be modified by adverbs. THE INFINITIVE. The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. It was a sort of verbal noun that used to have a reduced case-system: two forms which roughly correspond to the Nominative/Accusative (uninflected Infinitive) and the Dative case of nouns (inflected Infinitive). • uninflected: wrītan • inflected: to wrītanne/writenne The uninflected Infinitive represented the Nominative case of the verbal noun neuter formed with the suffix -an. It could function as the second part of a compound predicate or as a secondary predicate in the objective construction, both in translations from Latin and in original OE texts. It was often used in verb phrases with modal verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication. The Inflected infinitive was used mostly after the preposition tō. It represented the Dative case of the verbal noun and was a purely West-Germanic form: tō wrītanne "in order to write". The inflected Infinitive with the preposition tō expressed the direction or purpose of an action: "ManiZ cōmon tō bycZenne þā þinZ" (Many people came to buy those things) Sometimes, however, the Infinitive governed by tō lost its primary meaning of purpose and direction. On the other hand, the proposition tō could also govern the uninflected Infinitive: "Micel is tō secZan" (Much is to be said). THE PARTICIPLE. The participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was chracterized by nominal and verbal features. Paticiple I was active in meaning and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Participle II of transitive verbs had a passive meaning and expressed states and qualities resulting from past actions. Participle I was formed from the present tense stem of the verb by adding the suffix -ende: slæpan - slæpende. Syntactically Participle I was mostly used as an attribute or as a predicative: swōpendum windum "to blowing winds". Participle II had a stem of its own – in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of ablaut and by the suffix –en; with weak verbs it ended in –d/t-. Participle II was commonly marked by the prefix ge- though it was not obligatory. Both the Participles were used predicatively and attributively; like adjectives they were declined strong or weak and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case. OE SYNTAX As OE was a synthetical language, it had a system of grammatical forms which could indicate connections between words. OE was mainly a spoken language, that is why the written forms resembled oral speech. The syntax of the sentence was relatively simple. Coordination of clauses prevailed over subordination, complicated syntactical constructions were rare. Types of Syntactic Bond in OE. When two or more words are connected syntactically their relations may be described as coordination, subordination and predication. In a coordinate phrase the components were equal in rank and relatively independent. The members of the coordinate phrase could be joined syndetically and asyndetically. The connection between the components of a coordinate phrase can be realized through simple conjunctions ( and, ac “but” etc.) or correlative conjunctions which were used in pairs: ne…ne “neither…nor”, ge…ge “both…and”. Predicative relations unite the subject and the predicate. The components of a predicative phrase predetermine each other. There were units of primary predication (a finite verb served as a predicate) and units of secondary predication (with the non-finite verb). The distinctive feature of the predicative bond was that it could produce a sentence. Joined through subordination the words were not equal in rank. In a subordinate phrase one element (adjunct) is subordinated to the other (head word). Subordination is realized through agreement, government, adjoinment, enclosure. Agreement consistes in making the adjunct take a form similar to that of the head word. In OE adjectives, indefinite, demonstrative pronouns agreed with the head word expressed by a noun in gender, number and case: spēdiZ mann "rich man" ōðrum monnum "to other men" Government consistes in the use of a certain form of the adjunct required by the head word. It could be: -nominal: mannes sunu “man’s son”(Genitive case) -verbal: bad westan windes "waited for westwind" (Genitive case) -adjectival: full ealað “full of ale” -prepositional: on lande “on the land” (Dative case) Adjoinment implied such subordination of the adjunct to the head word as was achieved by their position and meaning. In OE adjoinment was practically confined to the relations between the adverb and verb: Zrētan eadmōdlice "to greet respectively", swiðe oft "very often" Enclosure consisted in putting a component of a phrase between the two constituents of another component: sē dēāda mann "that dead man". Agreement and government were most frequent in OE due to its synthetical character. Adjoinment and enclosure were not of great importance. THE SIMPLE SENTENCE The structure of the OE sentence can be described in terms of MnE syntactic analysis, for the sentence was made up of the same parts, except that those parts were usually simpler. Most structural and communicative sentence types of MnE are found in OE. Still there were certain peculiarities. In OE we find impersonal sentences without the formal subject: "Me þuhte" (It seemed to me), "Norþan snywde" (It snowed in the north). The presence of formal markers made it possible to miss out some parts of the sentence which would be obligatory now: the subject was sometimes omitted if implied by the context. Sometimes the pronoun "hit" and the adverb "þær" weakened their meaning approaching the formal subject (it is, there is). Hit was gehyred... “It was heard…” One of the conspicuous features of OE syntax was multiple negation. The number of negative words was not limited. The negative particle"Ne" could be used together with other negators: negative pronouns and adverbs. It could be also attached to some verbs, adverbs and pronouns to form single words: ne + ān = nān “none” ne + hæfde = næfde “did not have” ne + wæs = næs “was not” ne + wolde = nolde “did not want” MnE forms "none, never, neither" are survivals of such forms. Word Order in OE. Word order in OE was relatively free, the functional load of syntactic ways of word connection was not great due to the extended system of grammatical endings.The position of words in a sentence was often determined by logical an stylistic factors rather than grammatical rules. On the whole word order could depend on the communicative type of the sentence, on the type of the clause, on the presence and place of some secondary parts in the sentence. Three principal types of word order can be singled out: 1. Direct word order: S - P - O Þā þēōwan drincað mede “The servants drink honey” It was most frequent in OE simple declarative sentences. 2. Inverted (indirect) word order: P - S – O. Inverted word order was chiefly used when an adverbial element or the negative ne occurred initially and also for grammatical purposes in questions: Þonne tōdælaþ hī his fēōh “They share out his cattle…” 3. Synthetic word order or framing : S - O – P He hine forbærnað “They burn him…” It was used when secondary members (an object or an adverbial modifier) were placed between the subject and the predicate. The latter occupied the final position. (If the predicate was compound, secondary members could be placed between the components of the predicate.) This is a typical feature of OE syntax, especially characteristic of subordinate clauses and the second of the two coordinate clauses. The OE epic poem "Beowulf" contains about 70% of sentences with synthetic word order. THE COMPOSITE SENTENCE. Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times. Compound sentences were more frequent since the pattern of a compound sentence is similar to a sequence of simple sentences (subordination is a later phenomenon than coordination). Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and - a conjunction of the most general meaning. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle abounds in sentences beginning with and, as well as the text of the Bible. Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause termed correlation was common in both compound and complex sentences: þa….þa, ne…ne, þonne…þonne. Correlation may be regarded as a transitional construction from coordination to suborination. Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clause by means of various connectives (as there was no special class of relative pronouns). The most frequent of them was the unchangeable particle þe used either alone or together with demonstrative or personal pronouns. The pronoun and conjunction þæt was used to introduce object and adverbial clauses. Some clauses can be regarded as intermediate between coordinate and subordinate. The distinction between coordination and subordination was not strict, especially if they were joined asyndetically or in case of correlation. All types of subordinate clauses can be found in OE - subject, object, attributive, adverbial - except predicative clauses that hardly ever occur. OE LEXICON I. Native Words. OE native words can be subdivided into a number of etymological layers coming from different historical periods. 1. Words of the Common Indo-European stock constitute the oldest layer of the English vocabulary. They go back to the days of the IE parent-language before the appearance of the Germanic group, so they are common for both Germanic and non-Germanic languages. IE words include: -terms of kinship: fæder “father”, mōdor “mother”, brōÞor “brother”, sunu “son”; - parts of human body: heorte “heart”, fōt “foot”, tōth “tooÞ”; - some natural phenomena, plants and animals: niht “night”, mōn “moon”, snaw “snow”, swīn “swine”, mūs “mouse”, cū “cow”; - verbs denoting basic activities of man: etan “eat”, slǣpan “sleep”, sittan “sit”; - adjectives indicating the most essential qualities and some adverbs: nū “now”, mycel “much”, eald “old”, ZeonZ “young”; - personal, demonstrative and interrogative pronouns: Þæt “that”, ic “I”, hwæt “what”; - most numerals: twa “two”, eaht “eight”, hund “hundred”; - most simple prepositions and conjunctions: on, tō, for, and. Some words of this older layer are not shared by all groups of IE family but are found only in certain areas. 3. Words of the Common Germanic stock are shared by most Germanic languages but do not occur outside this group. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of Common IE words. Here refer: • natural phenomena: land, sand, sea, earth, rain, storm; • plants and animals: horse, fowl, sheep, leaf; • words of everyday life: house, hall, bridge, ship, shoe, rope; • some parts of human body: arm, hand, finger, bone; • a certain group of verbs: make, sing, find, drink, bind, look, like; • some adjectives: little, green; - some abstract nouns: life, hope. 3. Specifically English words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These were very few: clipian (later replaced by the Scandinavian "call") hlāford – “lord” hlāēfdiZe – “lady” brid, later "bird" wīfman - wimman - “woman” II. Borrowings. Borrowed words constituted only a small part of the OE vocabulary. 1. Celtic borrowings. The Celtic tribes were the ancient inhabitants of the British Isles. Abundant borrowings from Celtic are found in place names: Kent, York, London - these names have been traced to Celtic sources; in various designations of rivers: Avon, Dover, Thames. Outside the place names Celtic borrowings are very few: bin, cradle, down, cross. 2. Latin borrowings. The 1st layer of Latin borrowings comprises words which the West Germanic tribes brought from the continent when they came to settle in Britain. Contact with the Roman civilization began a long time before the Anglo-Saxon invasion as Julius Caesar attacked Britain in the 1st century B.C. and Britain was made a province of the Roman Empire. Early OE borrowings from Latin refer to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life: pound, inch, mint "чеканить монету", wine, butter, cheese, pepper, plum, copper, dish, cup, wall, street. The 2nd layer began with the introduction of Christianity in the 7th century: bishop, candle, monk, nun, angel, creed, school, master. 3. Scandinavian borrowings (in late OE and early ME). Here belong: • place names in northern and eastern areas: Grimsby, Woodthorp • conceptions of everyday life: knife, to take, to call • military terns (found in OE but later disappeared as were replaced by French words) and legal matters: law, wrong, husband, fellow "a partner or shareholder". MIDDLE ENGLISH AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH Two great political events influenced the language of the ME period: • the Scandinavian invasion • the Norman conquest The Scandinavian conquest of England was a great military and political event which also influenced the English language. Since the 8th century the British Isles were attacked by sea rovers from Scandinavia: first Danes, later Norwegians. In the late 9th century the Scandinavians occupied the whole of English territory north of the Thames. More than half of England was recognized as Danish territory - Danelaw. In 1016 England fell to the invaders and became part of a vast Scandinavian empire in Northern Europe. Scandinavian power in England lasted till 1042 when the power of the OE noblemen was restored. Influence of Scandinavian dialects made itself clear in two spheres: vocabulary and morphology. About 650 Scandinavian words entered the English language. In the sphere of morphology the Scandinavian invasion favoured the process of reduction in the word paradigm due to the weakening of grammatical endings. The reason was that a considerable part of the vocabulary was common to OE and Scandinavian: the roots of the words were identical while the endings were different. As the root expressed the lexical meaning of the word it helped the process of communication while the endings were just an obstacle to it. So it was natural that both the speakers concentrated on the root and neglected the endings. OE and Scandinavian were spoken by the same social layers and had equal rights. The Norman Conquest proved to be a turning point in the English history and had a considerable influence on the English language. In 1066 William Duke of Normandy landed in England. In the battle of Hastings fought in October, 14 King Harold was killed and the English were defeated. This date is commonly known as the date of the Norman Conquest. The ruling class of Anglo-Saxon noblemen vanished almost completely: some of them perished in battles and upriisings, others were executed, the remainder emigrated. This nobility was replaced by Norman barons who spoke French, namely its Norman dialect. Thus as a result of the Conquest England came to be ruled by a foreign ruling class. During several centuries the ruling language of England was French. It was the language of the court, the government, the courts of law and the church. The English language was reduced to a lower social sphere. It was spoken by peasantry and townspeople. Writings in ME During several centuries after the Norman Conquest the business of writing was in the hands of French scribes. They introduced into English some peculiarities of French graphic habits. Traces of French tradition in writing have stayed on in English to the present day. Changes in the alphabet and spelling in ME. In the sphere of vowels: 1. The letter æ went out of use and was replaced by a or e: OE wæs – ME was, wes OE slæpan – ME slepen “sleep” 2. The sound [u:] came to be represented by the digraphs ow, ou due to French influence, especially in the final position: town [tu:n], hous [hu:s] 3. The vowel [u] is often represented as o when close to the letters consisting of vertical strokes, such as v, n, m, l to avoid confusion: sunu – sone [sunә], lufu - love [luvә] 4. The letter y for the sound [ü] was replaced by ui, u: OE byldan – ME builden “build” 5. The letter y was used for the sound [i] in the final position (like in MnE “lovely”, “quickly”) and sometimes in the medial possition: OE niht - ME nyght [niXt] “night” 6. The length of a vowel was marked by double letters: [e:] - ee, sometimes ie: deep [de:p], field [fe:ld] [o:] - oo: foot, book [bo:k] The system of consonants: 1. |The runic letters þ and ð were replaced by the digraph th: OE þæt - ME that 2. The letter c was replaced by k of Greek origin before front vowels and before consonants: macian – maken “make”, cnīf – knif “knife” 3. The letter Z "yogh" was replaced by g, y: Zēār - year, Ziefan - give 4. The new affricate [t∫] was marked by the digraph ch: cīld - child 5. The new sibilant [∫] was marked by sh or sch: scip - ship 6. The sound [dZ] was marked by dge or j: bridge, joy, judge (both in native and borrowed words) 7. The consonant [X] was marked by the digraph gh: night [niXt], light 8. The cluster [kw] was spelt qu: cwēna - queen 9. The sound [v] was represented by a new letter v or sometimes u: love, loue 10. The sound [z] was sometimes marked by the new letter z: zero 11. The cluster [hw] came to be represented as wh: OE hwæt [hwæt] - ME what [hwat] OE hwylc [hwülk] - ME which [hwit∫] Conclusion 1. The phonetic principle of writing (one letter = one sound) no longer exists. 2. The runic alphabet was ousted by the Latin alphabet (no runic letters remained in English) 3. A number of new letters were introduced: g, j, q, k, z, v 4. A lot of new digraphs were introduced both in the sphere of vowels and consonants. On the whole ME spelling was far from uniform. Purely phonetic spelling mixed with French spelling habits and also with traditions inherited from OE. In late ME there was a certain tendency to unification due to the introduction of printing. The following innovations can be mentioned: 1. The mute e was introduced to mark the length of the root vowel: mīn - mine, hūs - house. In some words it was the remnant of the reduced vowel (OE lufu - ME love) but very often it was added to the words which had never had any reduced vowels. It was purely a graphic marker. 2. The digraph ea was introduced for open [:], ee for close [e:]. Differentiation was also made between close [o:] which was marked by oo and open [ơ:] marked by oa: book (close), boat (open) 3. It became a habit in ME to replace final -i by -y. The motive was purely graphic: y being more ornamental than i. The letter u when final was replaced by w for the same reasons: nou - now, hou - how, snow, slow, low. English spelling remained unstable and abounded in variants and deviations. It was only in the 17th and 18th centuries that dictionaries and grammars fixed the written forms of words. ME PHONETICS Vowel Changes As a result of important changes in the 10-12th centuries the ME vowel system became basically different. 1. Reduction (levelling, neutralization) of unstressed vowels is the most important phonetic change of the ME period. All unstressed vowels were weakened and reduced to a neutral vowel [ә] which was marked by the letter e, for example, in the Infinitive marker –-an, which was reduced to –en: OE risan – ME risen [rizәn] and in noun endings: OE sunu - ME sone [sunә], stones [stonәs] This weakening of unstressed vowels is closely connected with certain changes in declension and conjugation. It is difficult to say which of these processes was primary. It is evident, on the one hand, that all grammatical endings, being unstressed, were weakened and gradually lost. On the other hand, it may be so that grammatical endings lost their importance and became pronounced indistinct. Evidently both these tendencies were parallel and interdependent 2. All OE diphthongs were monophthongized in ME: ea - a eald - ald ea: - : strēām - str:m eo - e heorte - herte eo: - e: dēōp - deep ie - i Ziefan - given 3. In ME new diphthongs appeared entirely different from those in OE by having the second narrow element (rising diphthongs, unlike OE falling diphthongs) Their sources: a. Vocalization of consonants j, , w: dæZ [dæj] - dai [dai] “day” draZan [draan ] - drawen [drauәn] “draw” cnāwan [knawan] - knowen [knouәn] ‘know’ The vocalized consonant formed a glide and made up a diphthong with a narrow second element. b. The development of a glide before [X]: tahte - taughte [tauhtә] “taught” brōhte – broughte “brought” ehte - eighte “eight’ c. Similar diphthongs with -i and -u glides were found in ME borrowings from Scandinavian and French: OSc they [ei] OFr choice [oi] 4. The quantity of vowels became dependent on their environment, to be exact on what follows, while in OE quantity/length of a vowel was a distinctive phonemic feature: • A long vowel occurring before two consonants is shortened: OE cēpan - cēpte ME keepen – kepte “keep - kept” • Vowels remained long before the "lengthening" consonant groups -ld, -nd, -mb, -rd, -st: hēran – hērde “heard” child [i:] māēsta – mōst “most” finden [i:] “find” • Short vowels a, e, o were lengthened in open syllables: OE macian - ME māken [ma:kәn] “make” nama – nāme [na:mә] “name” • Short vowels i and u remained unchanged in most cases, but if they did change the narrow vowel was widened in the process of lengthening: wices - weekes [we:kәs] “weeks” dures – doores [do:rәs] “doors” 5. Changes of individual vowels • OE a/o before a nasal is found as a in ME (in East Midland): man, land In West Midland o was preserved: mon • long ā developed into long open ō (except Northern dialects): hām - home [ho:m], stān – stone [sto:n] , Zān – goon [go:n] “go” • OE short æ became a (æ - e in West Midland and Kent): wæs - was, þæt - that • long æ: developed into : slāēpan – slepen [sl:pәn] • the sound y [ü] both long and short developed differently in different dialects: i in Northern and East Midland: first e in Kentish: ferst ü in other dialects: furst • e ē i ī remained unchanged in most dialects o ō u ū Consonant Changes 1. Growth of affricates and sibilants as a result of palatalization The process began in late OE and was completed in Early ME. The sounds [t∫], [dZ], [∫], [Z] (from French) became separate phonemes and entered the phonetic system of the English language: [k]- [t∫], [g] - [dZ], [sc] - [∫]. OE cīld [k] - [t∫] ME child [t∫i:ld] OE brycZ [g] - [dZ] ME and MnE bridge OE scip [sc] - [∫] ME and MnE ship 2. Phonologization of voiced and voiceless fricatives. In OE the pairs of fricative sounds [f]- [v], [s] - [z], [] - [ð] were treated as allophones. In ME these allophones became separate phonemes with special designation for them in writing. It can be proved by the fact that a voiced and voiceless sound could occur in the identical positions in ME (in MnE of - off; rise - rice; this – thin etc.) while in OE they could be only found in mutually exclusive positions. 3. Decay and growth of consonant clusters. a. In early ME the clusters hr, hl, hn underwent simplification and appeared as single phonemes r, l, n: OE hnutu - ME nute “nut” OE hrinZan - ME ringen “ring” b. k disappeared before d: OE macode – Early ME makde – Late ME made c. Additional consonants appeared in certain positions: OE þuma - ME thumbe "thumb" OE æmtiZ - ME empty EARLY MODERN ENGLISH VOWEL CHANGES The Great Vowel Shift The Great Vowel Shift is the name given to a series of long vowel changes between the 14th and 18th centuries. It was the most significant phonetic change of this period that left the traces of its influence on the entire vowel system of the MnE period. The essence of the Shift was the narrowing of all ME long vowels and diphthongization of the narrowest long ones: a: - ei name [na:mә] - [neim] : - e: - i: strete [str:tә - stre:tә - stri:t] „street“ e: - i: keepen [ke:pәn] - [ki:p] “keep” i: - ai time [ti:mә] - [taim] “time” ơ: - ou boat [bo:t] - [bout] “boat” o: - u: moon [mo:n] - [mu:n] “moon” u: - au how [hu:] - [hau] „how“ Long [u:] remained unchanged if it was followed by a labial consonant: room (OE rum). The diphthong au was monohpthongized into ơ: during the same period though it is not usually included into the Shift These changes can be regarded as independent as they were not caused by any phonetic conditions in the syllable or in the word. A view has been put forward that the Shift introduced new qualitative differences between long and short vowels to emphasize the difference between them. Another view claims that the changes were caused by intonation conditions. According to this view pronunciation of a vowel with a high tone (in emotional speech) contributes to a narrowing of its articulation. Exceptions: If the vowel had been shortened before the Shift began there were no traces of narrowing as in bread, death, let, ate, sweat. The vowel was usually shortened before a dental (d, t, th), before s (less, lest) and before f (deaf). Some words entered the English language when the shift was over, thus the vowel remained unchanged as in machine, police, vase, promenade, group, soup. Other Vowel Changes 1. The development of a vowel uder the influebce of r. When a long vowel was followed by the consonant r the result of its development was different. a: + r - ә fare, hare : + r - iә fear, ear : + r - ә bear, there e: + r - iә beer i: + r - aiә tire, shire ơ: + r - ơ: floor o: + r - uә poor u: + r - auә power, flower The sound r was vocalized after vowels. Losing its consonantal character it changed into the neutral sound [ә] which was added to the preceding vowel as a glide forming a new diphthong (with the neutral sound [ә] as a glide). 2. Loss of unstressed [ә]: love [luvә] - [l∆v]. The vowel [ә] was lost when it was final and also when it was followed by a consonant • in the plural form of nouns: tables, books • in the 3rd person singular present: likes, shines • in the past tense of regular verbs: lived The sound [ә] was preserved and later changed into [i] in the groups [sәz], [zәz], [∫әz], [t∫әz], [dZәs], [tәd], [dәd] (in combinations with sibilants, affricates, dentals): boxes, houses, bushes, matches, bridges, wanted, founded. In spelling the letter e was preserved in words having a long root vowel. Thus the so-called "mute e" arose which denoted the length of the preceding syllable: MnE Pete, deceive. On the analogy of such words the letter e was added in words which had never had any unstressed vowel, like in house, stone, wrote (ME hous, ston, wrot). Loss of unstressed [ә] was connected with important changes in grammatical structure. Many verbs coincided in their phonetic form with nouns: love, answer, work. 3. Loss of vowels in intermediate syllables. In some polysyllabic words the vowel of a middle syllable was lost: chapiter – chapter medicine - medicine [medsin] 4. The change of [er] into [ar]: sterre - star, ferre – far. Spelling in most cases reflected the change. In a few words the combined spelling was adopted: herte - heart. In some words the spelling er was preserved: clerk ME [klark] Some words remained unchanged: certain, perfect, learn, mercy, person. 5. Short [a] changed into [æ] in all words except those preceded by [w] where it later developed into [o], [o:]: hat was war cat wash warm have watch water The change [wa] - [wo] did not take place when [a] was followed by one of the velar consonants [k], [g], [ŋ], so [a] turned into [æ]: wagon, wax. 6. The vowel [a] was lengthened (a - æ - æ: - a:) before , ð, s, st, sk, sp: bath, father, class, fast, ask, grasp. In America it is pronounced as [æ] (except "father"). 7. When [a] was followed by the cluster l + cons it developed into [au] and then into [o:]: all, call, tall, talk, walk. But before l + m /f/v the vowel [a] developed into [a:]: calm, palm, calf, half, salve. 8. The diphthong [au], whatever its origin, changed into [o:] : cause, autumn, author, dawn. Words in which the dihpthong [au] had developed from [a] before l retained their a-spelling: all, walk. The diphthong [ou] which appeared between a vowel and [h] changed into [o:]: thought, bought 9. A new vowel [ә:] appears from the combination of the vocalized r and a vowel: i + r first e + r her u + r burst o + r word (after w) e: + r learn 10 . Shortening of vowels. Long vowels [u:] and [e:] were shortened before dentals t, d, , ð, before k, g and sometimes before m, n: good breath hook room foot death book done, come 11. Short [u] changed into [∆]: sun, cut, but, luck - with u-spelling come, son, some, love - with o-spelling rough, enough, young, double - with ou-spelling The vowel [∆] is also found in some words which had [o:] originally. OE ōðer [o:] - [u:] - [u] - [∆] - these words went through the Shift at a quicker rate. Short [u] remained unchanged when it was preceded by a labial consonant p, b, w: put, pull, push, bull, wolf. Exceptions: pulse, butter, but, etc. 12. The diphthongs [ai] and [ei] were towards the end of the ME period merged in [æi] which eventually developed into [ei]: day, wey, rain, tail. EARLY MODERN ENGLISH CONSONANT CHANGES 1. The sound [X] was lost before [t], the preceding vowel was lengthened: night [niXt] - [ni:t] light [liXt] - [li:t] broughte [brouXtә] - [bro:t] Long [i:] arising from the change took part in the Vowel Shift: [nait], [lait]. [X] in the final position changed into [f]: enough [inu:X] - [inuf], rough, laugh. In a few words final [X] was lost: though, through. 2. [l] was lost before [k] and the labial consonants [m, f, v]: talk, calm, calf + calves. [l] was also lost in should, would due to their unstressed position. But in words of Latin origin [l] was preserved before [v]: dissolve, resolve, valve. 3. Voiceless consonants were voiced in several types of words. • s - z resemble, possess, observe (words of French origin) • ks - gz e'xhibit (but exhi'bition), e'xecutor (but 'execute) • t∫ - dZ knowledge, Greenwich ['grinidZ], Norwich ['noridZ] Here the sound [w] is lost in an unsressed syllable after a consonant. Voiceless fricative consonants were voiced in the unstressed position, mainly in form words: the definite article, prepositions, conjunctions and also pronouns, pronominal adverbs and link-verbs. Notional words did not undergo any change (no voicing) because they are usually stressed: house, thin but: the that this his with of there is was 4. The sound [r] was vocalized after vowels either finally or followed by another consonant. The preceding short vowel was lengthened, long vowels formed a diphthong: horse for bare morning poor year 5. The consonant [d] became [ð] when close to [r]; fader – father gadere - gather modor - mother autor - author (a similar change of [t] in a borrowed word) 6. Growth of sibilants and affricates. They first appeared in ME as a result palatalization of [k], [g], [sk]. The affricates [t∫] and [dZ] entered the English language from French (in French loan-words): charm, gentle. [t∫] and [dZ] could also appear as a result of the phonetic assimilation of French borrowings. The clusters [sj], [zj], [tj], [dj] regularly changed into [∫], [Z], [t∫] and [dZ] (the sound [j] merged with the preceding consonant after a stressed vowel): [sj] -[∫], [zj] - [Z], [tj] - [t∫], [dj]- [dZ] Late ME MnE condicion [kondi'sju:n] condition pleasure [ple'zju:r(ә)] pleasure nature [na'tju:r] nature souldier [soul'djәr] soldier The process is called historical assimilation. As a result a new phoneme arose [Z] due to assimilation and borrowing of French words with [Z]: genre. If the syllable was stressed no assimilation took place: duty, suit, mature. 7. Simplification of consonant clusters If two or more consonants followed one another, one or two of them were lost: mb - m lamb mn - m autumn, condemn stl - sl castle stn - sn fasten stm - sm Christmas ftn - fn often st - s listen kn - n know (but: in acknowledge [k] is preceded by a vowel) gn - n gnaw "make anxious", gnat "mosquito", gnash "grind" wr - r write, wrong sw - s answer kw - k conquer (but conquest) ln - l miln - mill hw – w/h what (OE hwæt), which, who lf - f calf, half lv - v calves lm - m palm, calm lk - k folk [h] was lost in unstressed syllables: forehead, shepherd MIDDLE ENGLISH AND MODERN ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY Since the OE period the grammatical type of the language has changed. In the ME period it was still a synthetic language, though the analytical ways of formation began to grow. Inflections were still used in changeable parts of speech but they became fewer and weaker: OE - full endings ME - levelled endings (division proposed by Henry Sweet) NE - lost endings Sound interchange and suppletive ways of form-building were not productive but they were stable and exist nowadays as well as in OE. The main direction of development in the sphere of morphology can be defined as simplification and reduction of word paradigms. THE NOUN IN MIDDLE ENGLISH AND NEW ENGLISH The process of reduction in the nominal system began as early as OE. The distinctions between the morphological classes were not strict, a lot of forms were homonymous, the nouns of one declension type were declined according to another: ( i-stem and u-stem nouns were influenced by a-stem and o-stem nouns). In early ME these tendencies developed more intensively due to the Scandinavian influence. Thus reduction of the morphological system developed more quickly in the Northern dialects. Grammatical distinctions of gender were lost by the 12th century, so gender was the first to disappear. The typical OE weak declension ending -n was ousted by the form in –es. Only the noun ox retained the old plural form in –en (oxen). (Other survivals of this kind are the poetic kine “cows” and the mixed plurals children and brethren.) So the weak declension lost its most characteristic feature. Two endings appeared to be stable: -es of the Genitive singular masculine a-stems and -as of the Nominative and Accusative plural masculine a-stems. They were both reduced to [әs] and spread to all nouns with a few exceptions. In ME and NE -es expresses number alone and isn't connected with any notion of case. It is clearly seen when the markers of number and case are different: children's book. The number of cases was reduced from four to two in late ME: Common (having a general meaning) and Genitive (denoting possession). Other case forms were replaced by prepositional phrases: the meaning of the Dative - by, to; Instrumental - by, with; Genitive - of. The Accusative form was only recognized by its position in the sentence. After the final unstressed vowel was dropped the noun practically lost its declension system. THE PRONOUN IN MIDDLE ENGLISH AND NEW ENGLISH New groups of pronouns arose in ME (In OE there were personal, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite pronouns): possessive, relative, conjunctive, reflexive pronouns. Rise of possessive pronouns in ME. The OE Genitive case of personal pronouns split from the other forms and turned into a new class of pronouns - possessive. In OE the Genitive case of personal pronouns was commonly used in the attributive function. In Late OE some of these forms agreed with the head-noun in case and number: mīnum brēðer “to my brother”. They were declined like strong adjectives. It proves the fact that as early as Late OE (early ME) these forms can no longer be regarded as the Genitive case forms but should be looked upon as a special class of pronouns. In ME these pronouns lost all their forms of agreement and became unchangeable. His originally corresponded to both he and it and was used with reference to animate and inanimate things. In early NE there arose a new possessive pronoun its on the analogy of his. Some possessive pronouns had two forms: my/mine, our/ours. They could be used in free variation, but the variant with n was preferred before a vowel. Later two variants of the possessive pronouns split into two distinct sets of forms: the conjoint form used before a noun and the absolute form used predicatively. Reflexive pronouns developed from combinations of the Oblique cases of personal pronouns with the adjective self. Myself, ourselves include the Genitive case forms; himself, themselves contain the original Dative case forms. Relative pronouns. In OE the unchangeable relative particle þe was used to subordinate attributive clauses. In ME that became frequent in relative clauses. Þe disappeared and that became a universal relative. Also interrogative pronouns who (OE hwa) and what (OE hwæt) appeared as relative subordinators. Some time later which (OE hwilc) began to be used for that purpose. Relative pronouns began to be widely used due to the development of the literary form of the language. Personal pronouns. In the ME period the inflectional system of personal pronouns underwent simplification. The remnants of the dual number disappeared in the second half of the 12th century. The OE plural hīē "they" began to be ousted by they of Scandinavian origin. The Genitive case of personal pronouns gave rise to the group of possessive pronouns. The OE feminine form of the third person singular hēō was ousted by a new pronoun - she. Supposedly it developed from the OE demonstrative pronoun sēō. The introduction of she helped to avoid ambiguity: the masculine hē and the ME feminine hē from the OE hēō would have become identical in form and sounding. hēō - hē (f) - hē (m) The Accusative and the Dative cases fused into the Objective case. The Dative and Accusative forms of personal pronouns - ich, thow, wē, yē - were identical already in OE. The final sound [t∫] in the pronoun ich of the first person sg was lost, as well as the initial [h] in the neuter pronoun hit. In ME the personal pronouns had the following paradigm: singular plural 1 2 3 1 2 3 m f n Nom Obj I, ich mē thow thē hē him hē, shē her, hir hit, it hit, it Nom Obj wē us yē yow hī, they hem, them By the 16th century the modern two case system of personal pronouns had established itself all over the country. In this period the personal pronouns were changed in the following way: After the loss of [t∫] in ich I began to be used both in stressed and unstressed positions. When stressed it was lengthened to Ī and then turned into I [ai]. The form of the Nominative case ye was replaced by the objective case plural you. In MnE ye only survived in poetry and dialects. The forms of the second person singular thou and thē were gradually replaced by you. In ME the plural ye and you were already used instead of thou and thē in polite and respectful address to a single person. In early MnE the singular was used in addressing inferior or in intimate or affectionate speech. In MnE thou and thee are confined to poetry and religious speech. Demonstrative Pronouns. In early ME the OE demonstrative pronouns sē, sēō, þæt and þēs, þēos, þis lost most of their inflected forms. The forms that and this of the neuter gender Nominative and Accusative served as the singular of all cases and genders. The distinction between them was preserved: far reference - near reference. Number distinctions in demonstrative pronouns have survived as an archaic feature as a means of agreement with the noun. In the MdE period the inflected forms of these pronouns at first blended and then were finally lost. The Late OE masculine and feminine singular sē and sēō began to take þ/th like the rest of the demonstratives. When grammatical gender disappeared in ME and the inflexions were lost these two forms coincided. The forms the (þe) and that (þat) and the plural thō were employed for some time in the double function: as demonstrative pronouns pointing out an object at some distance and as a definite article. Eventually the form the became established for the definite article only, while that began to be used as the demonstrative pronoun of all genders. The plural thō towards the end of the MdE period took the ending -s which was the prevailing inflexion of the noun. Then e was added to thōs to signalize the length of the root vowel. With the pronouns þēs, þēos, þis the neuter Nomunative and Accusative singular this (þis) established itself as a demonstrative pronoun pointing out an object near at hand for all genders. The plural was thes. There was another plural thise. Eventually by the year 1500 the plural these which was preferred in London and Southern dialects spread all over the country. RISE OF THE ARTICLE SYSTEM In OE texts the pronouns sē, sēō, þæt were used as noun determiners with a weakened meaning approaching that of the modern definite article. There arose a formal difference between demonstrative pronouns and the definite article. The demonstratives preserved number distinctions while the definite article was unchangeable. As it was unstressed it was reduced and became a form word. The meaning and functions of the definite article became more specific when it came to be opposed to the indefinite article which also arose in ME. As in many other languages it had its origin in the numeral ān "one". In OE it was used to mark the general character of a noun. Long ā in the unstressed position was shortened, there appeared an unstressed variant an. So there appeared two different words: the numeral and the indefinite article. The numeral underwent all regular phonetic changes: ān - oon - oon [u:n] - one [wu:n] - one [wun] - one [w∆n] - while in the article the only phonetic change was reduction due to its unstressed position. If the following word began with a consonant -n was dropped. The growth of articles in early MnE was favoured by the break-up of adjective declensions. When the strong and the weak forms coincided the article became the only means of expressing definiteness/indefiniteness (In OE the meanings of definiteness/indefiniteness were expressed by the form of the adjective: weak - definite, strong - indefinite). Besides when the word order became fixed the article was used for communicative purposes: to present a new thing or to refer to a familiar thing. THE ADJECTIVE IN MIDDLE ENGLISH AND NEW ENGLISH The adjective underwent greater simplifying changes than any other part of speech. In OE the adjective was declined to show the gender, number and case of nouns it modified; it had a five-case paradigm and two types of declension. As the noun lost its grammatical gender and most case inflexions, the agreement of the adjective with the noun became looser and in EMnE was practically lost. The characteristic weak declension ending -en was dropped. There were two homonymous endings: -e for the plural number strong declension, -e for both plural and singular weak declension. Then it was also lost and the adjective became unchangeable. Degrees of comparison. The basic ways of ofrming the degrees of comparison were preserved in ME – suffuxation, vowel interchange, suppletivity. The suffixes underwent phonetic changes due to their unstressed position. - ra - re - r – er - for the comparative degree ◦ ost/est – est - for the superlative degree The OE mutated forms were preserved in ME, but became less frequent. ōld - elder - eldest strong - strenger - strengest The suppletive forms were also preserved. gōd - betre – best evil - werse - werst muchel - mōre – mōst litel - lasse - lēst In ME evil began to be ousted by the adjective bad. Alongside the synthetical forms of comparison in ME appeared the analytical forms of comparison built by means of more and most. First they were used with all kinds of adjectives, monosyllabic and polysyllabic. The only adjective that retained the mutated root vowel in NE is old (MnE old - elder). Evil was completely ousted by bad. A few adjectives with suppletive forms have survived into MnE: good, bad, little, much. In Early NE we find a peculiar phenomenon called "double comparatives" and "double superlatives": both the synthetical and analytical forms occurred combined in one and the same adjective: strong - more stronger - the most strongest; the most unkindest (Shakespeare). So in the course of history the adjective has lost all its dependent gramatical categories but has preserved the only specifically adjectival category – degrees of comparison. SURVIVALS OF THE OE PARADIGMATIC FORMS OF NOUNS, ADJECTIVES AND PRONOUNS IN MODERN ENGLISH The history of the possessive case inflection – ’s. The Possessive Case inflection ‘s goes back to the OE Genitive inflection sg -es of masculine and neuter nouns a-stems. The Genitive case was kept separate from the other forms, with more explicit formal distinctions in the singular than in the plural. In the 14th century the ending –es of the Genitive sg became almost universal. In the 17th and 18th centuries a new graphic marker of the Genitive came into use – the apostrophy ‘s. Its became more limited - unlike OE it could not be employed in the function of an object to a verb or to an adjective. In ME the Genitive case is only used attributively, to modify a noun, and even this is used along with another means of expressing possession – the preposition of. In Late ME there appears a certain differentiation: the inflectional Genitive is preferred with animate nouns while the of-phrase is more widely used with inanimate ones. Another theory attributes the wider use of the inflectional Genitive with animate nouns to the influence of a specific possessive construction containing a possessive pronoun (like Arthur his men = Arthur’s men) where the apostrophy ‘s is regarded as a shortened form of his. The history of the plural noun ending -s. The MnE universal marker of plurality –s goes back to the OE ending –as of masculine nouns Nominative and Accusative plural a-stems. In OE it was added to some nouns of differeent declension types: OE fæderas “fathers” r-stems. In the course of ME all noun declension types were levelled after the pattern of the a-stem declension. In Late ME the ending –es (the reduced form of –as) became the prevalent marker of nouns in the plural. In early NE it came to be attached to the majority of nouns, including those that built their plural in a different way. The plural ending –es underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables. Borrowings which came into ME also followed the paradigm of the most powerful declension type – a-stems masculine and received the plural marker –(e)s. Zero plurals: sheep, deer, swine. The small group of OE neuter a-stems with a long root-syllable had no inflection in the plural. Cosequently, long-stemmed Neuters had homonymous sg and pl forms. In the course of ME most nouns of this type joined the regular pattern with –s except some animal names, due to the meaning of collectivity. The plural of these nouns is used to denote a mass (a flock of sheep, a herd of swine etc.) rather than a multitude of individuals. This semantic peculiarity seems to have influenced the plural form of these words. Traces of this group of a-stems have survived as irregular plural forms in MnE. Some nouns have retained the OE consonant interchange due to voicing of fricatives in the intervocal position: wife - wives (OE wīf ) In the singular form the fricative consonant occurs in the final position, so it remains voiceless; in the plural form it becomes voiced. Sometimes the alternation of the voiceless fricative with its voiced counterpart was eliminated: roof – roofs; with a few words two variants are possible: scarfs, scarves; some nouns followed the pattern of voicing by analogy: handkerchief – handkerchieves. Mutated plurals man – men, foot – feet go back to the OE root-stems where the ancient ending -i-* ( which was added directly to the root due to the absence of the stem-suffix) assimilated the root vowel (the process of i-umlaut). In MnE there are only few survivals of umlauted forms, most of them joined the regular type: book – books (OE bōc - bēc). Plurals in –en go back to the OE weak declension with the stem-suffix -n-. In ME the ending –en was widely used in Southern dialects (handen “hands”, eyen “eyes”) and extended to some nouns of other declension types: children (s-stem), brethren (r-stem), kine (pl of "cow", root-stem). The only noun in –en of the weak declension is ox – pl. oxen. Adjectives. In the sphere of adjectives survivals of the OE forms were less numerous. They can be listed as: • suppletive forms of comparison: good - better • mutated degrees of comparison: old – elder Other traces of the old alternation are found in the pairs farther and further and also in the modern words nigh, near and next, which go back to the old degrees of comparison of the OE adjective neah “near”, but have split into separate words. Pronouns. The following can be regarded as the OE paradigmatic forms: • possessive pronouns that go back to the Genitive case of personal pronouns; • the conjunction that originating from the neuter form of demonstrative pronouns; • number distinctions of demonstrative pronouns as a means of agreement with the noun • reflexive pronouns that have retained the Genitive and the Dative case forms of personal pronouns in their structure: myself, himself THE VERB IN MIDDLE ENGLISH AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH Strong Verbs The seven classes of PE strong verbs underwent multiple grammatical and phonetic changes. In ME the final syllables of the principal forms were weakened. Thus the OE endings -an (Infinitive), -on (past plural) and -en (Participle II) were all reduced to –en [әn]. The ending -en was lost in the Infinitive and in the past tense plural but was preserved in Participle II (to distinguish the Participle from other forms): show - shown, steal - stolen. In classes 6 and 7 the Infinitive and the Participle had the same gradation vowel, so these forms fell together, so did the 3rd and the 4th forms in classes 1 and 3. The root vowel of the principal forms underwent the regular changes of stressed vowels. Consequently vowel gradation was considerably modified: the interchange became less consistent and less justified than before: class 3 findan (with the long vowel) – found – found [au] drinkan (with the short vowel) - drank - drunk [∆] Classes 1 and 3 had the same vowel in the Infinitive (writen, finden) but different in Participle II (written, found). The prefix Ze- (the formal marker of Participle II) was reduced to y- [i] and then disappeared. At the same time there was a tendency to make the system of forms more regular. Strong verbs were easily influenced by analogy. It was due to this phenomenon that they lost practically all consonant interchanges in ME and Early MnE. The most important change in the system of strong verbs was the reduction in the number of stems from four to three by removing the distinction between the two past tenses. The vowel of past singular tended to replace that of past plural (especially in Northern dialects) or the vowel of past singular was replaced by that of the past plural and past participle (especially in Southern and Midland dialects). The tendency to reduce the number of stems continued in Early NE. It affected the distinction between the new past tense and participle II. Shakespeare used "sang" and "took" both as past tense forms and participle II. In MnE : sit - sat - sat Another important tendency in the history of strong verbs was their transition into weak. More than a hundred out of three hundred OE strong verbs acquired weak forms: they began to form their past and participle II with the help of the dental suffix instead of vowel gradation (climb, help, wash, bake etc.). During the period from the 12th to the 18th century many parallel forms were used in free variation: historical forms due to regular phonetic changes and analogical forms which arose under the influence of other forms and other classes. By the end of the ME period the 7 classes of strong verbs tended to disappear completely. Weak Verbs The evolution of the weak verbs in ME and Early NE reveals a strong tendency towards greater regularity and order. The marker of the Past tense and Participle II of weak verbs - the dental suffix t/d proved to be very productive in all historical periods. Along with many former strong verbs that began to build weak forms, all the borrowed verbs and all the newly-coined verbs in ME and NE built their forms on the analogy of weak verbs, so their number was constantly growing. Their subdivision into classes was neutralized due to the reduction of unstressed syllables. In ME we can distinguish two classes (instead of three in OE). The only difference between them was the presence or absence of the element -e- before the dental suffix in the Past tense stem: demde - class 1; lovede - class 2. It was class II of weak verbs with the stem-suffix -o- that gave rise to the MnE regular verbs, the inflection (e)d(e) being the reduced form of –ode (OE luvode). In Late ME the vowel [ә] in unstressed medial or final syllables became very unstable and was lost. This change eliminated the difference between the two classes and also the distinction between the 2nd and the 3rd principal forms. Thus the number of stems in the weak verbs was reduced from three to two. A few weak verbs adopted strong forms, such verbs as wear, hide, ring (it came to be associated with class 3 verb sing due to the obvious phonetic resemblance). A new type of vowel interchange developed in weak verbs due to the process of shortening before two consonants: OE cēpan - cēpte - cēpt ME keepen - kepte - kept MnE keep - kept - kept (the same with feel- felt, meet - met, sleep - slept). A number of weak verbs have retained the change of the root vowel that goes back to OE: teach – taught, buy - bought, tell – told, sell – sold. Preterite-present verbs. In ME "Zeneah" was lost. The rest were well preserved, though with changes in meaning and phonetic structure. In NE their number was reduced to six: can, may, must, shall, dare, ought (which formed the group of modal verbs) and the regular verbs to owe, to own. The verb "dare" had developed another form of past tense "dared", nowadays it tends to become a regular verb. The verb "owe" (āZan) lost its primary meaning "to have" and began to denote "to be in debt". "Witan" was replaced by its synonym "know". The form of the present singular "wot" has survived in the expression "God wot" God knows. Anomalous and suppletive verbs. In ME bēōn remained suppletive, but it lost its parallel form of the infinitive - thus wesan falls into disuse. The present participle wesende was replaced by the form beinde which later on took the -ing ending. The past participle bēn came into use providing the missing form. The plural forms of the present indicative sind and sindon were replaced by aren. In Chaucer's works the plurals bē(n) and are occur. In NE are became standard throughout England. The verb Zān remained suppletive, but its pat tense ēōde was substituted by went - the past form of wenden (направляться). Dōn underwent only phonetic changes. Will/would developed into an auxiliary and is used as a means of building Future forms, Future-in-the-Past and the Conditional Mood forms. Rise of new grammatical forms and categories of the verb in ME. The category of aspect. Since from the viewpoint of the category of aspect the two verbs were synonymous: either the one with Ze- or another without it - the prefix Ze- gradually fell into disuse in ME: first changed into y- and then disappeared (Ze - y - ø). The context was the only indicator of whether the action was completed or not. The MnE aspect based on the contrast of continuous and non-continuous forms began to take root in ME. The continuous form as a means of expressing the continuous action goes back to the OE free phrase bēōn / wesan + Participle I: was gangende “was going” where the it had the function of a compound nominal predicate expressing the state in which the subject happened to be in. Another OE phrase that might have been a source of the continuous from is bēōn / wesan + a verbal noun in –ing: he is on huntinZe "he is in the process of hunting" The preposition on was gradually reduced to a: he is a-huntinZ(e) Eventually a was lost: he is hunting It may be the case that the present Participle in -ing affected by the verbal noun ousted the OE form in -ende in ME. By the end of the ME period to be with the present Participle began to denote an action going on continuously at a definite period of time, thus turning into an analytical aspect form of the verb. The Category of Correlation (Perfect Forms) The Perfect forms originate from the phrase habban + Participle II, beon + Participle II. In OE "habban" sometimes had a direct object followed by the Participle II of a transitive verb. (In MnE “I had my hair cut”.) This Participle II agreed in its number, gender, and case with the direct object. Very often, however, the original meaning of "habban" was weakened so that it approached the function of an auxiliary. Further on "habban" lost its lexical meaning. Past Participle no longer agreed with the object in gender, number and case. Thus habban + Participle II developed into a single analytical form of the verb. The Perfect forms of intransitive verbs originally had "bēōn/wesan" as their first component. In later periods the use of the verb be became more restricted and in NE it was ousted by have in most forms (the only survival is the expression “to be gone”). The category of voice. The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases consisting of OE bēōn or weorðan “to become” + Participle II of a transitive verb. Bēōn was more frequent than weorðan. In ME ben + Part II could express not only a state (as in OE) but also an action. The new passive forms had a regular means of indicating the doer of the action or the instrument with the help of prepositions – by and with. The verb to be lost its lexical meaning to become a form-building element, weorðan went out of use. The Future Tense. In OE future actions were expressed with the help of modal phrases consisting of the verbs sculan “shall” or willan “will” + the Infinitive of the notional verb. In ME such phrases became increasingly common. The first component of the phrase often weakened its lexical meaning. In Late ME shall and will are used both as modals and as auxiliaries. The employment of shall and will as Future tense auxiliaries was supported by the use of their past forms – should and would – to indicate future events looked upon from the past. Thus a special future form, which started in OE, becomes in ME a regular part of the tense system. New forms of the Subjunctive Mood. In OE the forms of the Subjunctive Mood, like other forms of the verb, were built up synthetically. In the course of ME and Early NE there appeared new analytical forms of the Subjunctive Mood. The construction wolde (would) / sholde (should) + Infinitive was used to denote unreal actions. In the NE period the analytical forms of the Oblique Moods became more and more frequent while synthetical forms of the old Subjunctive fell into disuse. In MnE the Conditional Mood expressed by the analytical form should/would + Infinitive replaced ancient Subjunctive forms in main clauses of complex sentences. On the whole, as compared with OE, the use of the Subjunctive Mood became more restricted. It was no longer obligatory in indirect speech and is confined mainly to conditional sentences. NEW GROUPING OF VERBS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH The historical changes in the ways of building the principal forms of the verb transformed the morphological classification of verbs. The OE division into classes of strong and weak verbs was completely re-arranged and broken up. The strict classification of verbs degenerated. In the long run all these changes brought about the development of a more consistent and simple system of building the principal forms of the verb. Due to the decay of the morphological classes another grouping of verbs came into existence. In MnE the morphological classification of verbs based on the ways of form-building includes two main types: regular (standard) and irregular (non-standard). Regular verbs form a numerous and productive group. They go back to: 1) most OE weak verbs without vowel interchange: look, love, like; 2) some OE strong verbs which have adopted the way of form-building employed by weak verbs (the dentsl suffix) : help, climb, bake, lock; 3) most Scandinavian and French borrowings. Irregular verbs nowadays include a number of verbs coming from various sources: 1) about a hundred OE strong verbs with vowel gragation; 2) some OE weak verbs of class 1 which had an interchange of the root vowel caused by palatal mutation (i-umlaut) in the Present tense stem and its absence in the other stems: tell - told, sell - sold, think – thought (OE sellan –sealde, ðencan – ðohte) 3) some OE weak verbs which became irregular in Early MnE as a result of quantitative vowel changes: OE cēpan, fēdan, mētan. The long vowel in the root was shortened before two consonants in the past tense and Participle II, while in the Infinitive and the Present tense stem it remained long and changed under the Great Vowel Shift: keep – kept, feed – fed. This group of verbs attracted several verbs from other classes: sleep, weep, read, mean. 4) a few OE weak verbs that acquired strong forms in MnE: wear – wore – worn (OE werian – werede – wered); ring – rang – rung (OE hringan – hringede). 5) unchangeable verbs most of which go back to OE weak verbs with a root ending in -t/-d: set – set - set (OE settan); a few of them come from strong verbs of different classes: let - let - let (OE lætan). 6) OE preterite-present, anomalous and suppletive verbs. They retained most of their speciific peculiarities: may – might, will – would, be - was. Though the number of non-standard verbs in MnE is not great - about 200 - they constitute an important feature of the language. Most of them belong to the basic layer of the vocabulary, have a high frequency of occurrence and are widely used in word-formation and phraseological units. According to the lexico-grammatical criterion (lexical meaning of verbs and their function in the sentence) new types appeared: • auxiliary, which developed from some weak, preterite-pressent or irregular verbs, used as the first part of compound predicates, due to the loss of their lexical meaning; • modal verbs (OE preterite-present). The development of Non-finite forms The main tendency in the development of non-finite forms can be defined as gradual elimination of nominal chracteristics and growth of verbal chracteristics. The simplifying changes in the verb paradigm and the decay of the OE inflectional system account for the first of these tendencies – loss of case distinctions of the Infinitive and of forms of agreement in the participles. The infinitive. The Dative case of the Infinitive (the inflected Infinitive) which was marked by the suffix -enne/anne and was used with the preposition tō tended to diappear as a separate form. When in ME -ne - was lost the two OE forms (inflected and uninflected) merged into one: OE wrītan - ME writen (Nominative / uninflected) OE tō wrītanne - ME tō writen (Dative / inflected) The preposition tō which was used in OE with the inflected form of the Infinitive to show direction or purpose, lost its prepositional force and turned into a particle to become a formal sign of the Infinitive. The use of to as a marker of the Infinitive tended to increase and by the end of the ME period the modern use was more or less established. In order to reinforce the meaning of purpose another preposition, for, was sometimes placed before the to-infinitive. (It is sometimes used in non-standard American English: “I’ve come my true love for to see…”) Analytical forms of the Infinitive – passive and perfect - arose in Late ME. Perfect-passive, continuous and perfect continuous forms developed in Early NE. The participle. In Middle English the OE Participle I in -ende (of IE origin) was gradually ousted by the new form in –ing (of Germanic origin). Towards the end of the ME period -ing appeared in Participle I under the influence of the verbal noun ending in -unZ/-inZ (which was a patronymic suffix by origin.) Participle II of strong verbs retained its –en ending in the North and lost it in the South. In MnE we have the survivals of both forms: come –came –come; give- gave – given. The prefix ge-, the formal marker of Participle II, being unsressed, was reduced and then lost. In ME participles no longer agreed with nouns. Like adjectives they lost their case, number and gender distinctions and also weak and strong forms. Semantically Participle I, being intermediate between verbs on the one hand and adjectives and adverbs on the other, acquired more verbal properties. It began to be modified by an adverb and could take a direct object. In Early MnE the Participle developed perfect forms and voice distinctions. The origin of the gerund. The appearance of the Gerund is an important innovation in the system of the ME verb. The source of this new form of the verb was the OE verbal noun in -unZ/-inZ. Like a noun it combined with demonstratives, adjectives and nouns on the Genitive and was used with prepositions. After the Present Participle adopted the form in -ing from the verbal noun, the two forms became alike. Under the influence of Participle I the verbal noun began to develop verbal chracteristics: it took a direct object and was modified by adverbs. Thus the verbal noun began to be attracted into the system of the verb. In Late ME the Gerund lost some of its nominal chracteristics (it was no longer modified by adjectives and demonstratives) and getting more and more verbal in character acquired in Early MnE perfect and passive forms. Besides, like the Infinitive and the Participle, it developed the ability to combine with its own subject (a noun in the Genitive or a possessive pronoun) to form a predicative construction: MnE “I insist on your answering the question…” MIDDLE ENGLISH AND MODERN ENGLISH SYNTAX Development of complex sentence members (syntactical complexes with verbals) from OE to EMnE. In OE the infinitive could be used with the subject of its own. The relations between the subject of the infinitive (expressed by the Accusative case form of a noun or a pronoun) and the infinitive itself were predicative relations. This type of predicative relations is called secondary predication (while the relations between the subject and the predicate of the sentence are called primary predication). The two elements joined by secondary predication form a predicative construction. Predicative constructions date from the OE period when Dative Absolute was used in translations from Latin and the Accusative-with-the-Infinitive - in original English texts. The earliest instances of the Accusative-with-the-Infinitive are found in "Beowulf", an original OE epic. The Accusative-with-the-Infinitive is called so according to its morphological constituents – a noun or a pronoun in the Accusative + Infinitive; according to its function in the sentence it is known as Complex Object. It occurred after verbs of sense perception, verbs of volition and after causative verbs (let, make, etc.) He geseah tha hearpan him nealecan “He saw the harp approach him”. A short time later a new type of construction appeared which was used after verbs of physical perception - the Accusative-with-the-Participle-I. He geseah twa scipu standende… “He saw two ships standing…” In ME these constructions were not very frequent. He felte his herte blede “He felt his heart bleed”. In late ME and early NE the Accusative-with-the-Infinitive and the Accusative-with-the-Participle I began to be used with an increasing number of verbs of various meanings. New types of predicative constructions appeared in Late ME and Early NE texts: the Nominative-with-the-Infinitive and the Participles I and II (also known as Subjective Predicative Constructions), the Nominative Absolute Construction and the for-phrase with the Infinitive and Gerundial constructions. All predicative constructions were formed according to a single pattern: they consisted of a nominal element indicating the subject of the action (agent) and a non-finite form denoting this action. The Dative Absolute went out of use due to the loss of the formal markers of the Dative case. It was commonly replaced by the construction with nouns in the Common case or pronouns in the Nominative case - the Nominative Absolute Participial construction. The-Accusative-with-the-Infinitive and the-Accusative- with-the-Participle appear in MnE as the-Objective-with-the-Infinitive and the-Objective-with-the-Participle which consist of a noun in the Common Case or a pronoun in the Objective case + Infinitive / Participle I / Participle II. The number of verbs followed by predicative constructions began to grow in Late ME and Early NE since Late ME predicative constructions became very productive and were used both in translations and original texts. Their growing productivity in the NE period is part of the development towards more complicated syntactic structures in the written forms of the language. TYPES OF SYNTACTICAL BOND AND WAYS OF EXPRESSING SUBORDINATION IN MIDDLE ENGLISH AND MODERN ENGLISH Agreement Due to the reduction of the morphological system the sphere of agreement was considerably narrowed in ME. No agreement in gender or case was possible in ME, while agreement in number was in operation in subordinate phrase with adjuncts expressed by • demonstrative pronouns: this tale “this tale”; • possessive pronouns: mine leove sustren “my dear sisters”; • indefinite pronouns: in alle the gramere scoles “in all grammar schools”; • strong adjectives : fresshe floures “fresh flowers”. It may be supposed that the final sound [ә] was very weak and in certain positions was no longer pronounced, therefore these examples of agreement in ME may be regarded as adjoinment. The last traces of agreement between nouns and adjectives disappeared in the 15th century; only demonstrative pronouns and the indefinite article indicated the number of the head-word: a book, this book – these books. Government Government was retained in ME as long as case inflections were preserved. In MnE the sphere of government is also narrowed, it is confined to the relations between a verb / a preposition + the Objective case of personal pronouns (to him, see him) or the pronoun who / whom. A noun may govern the Genitive case of another noun: mother’s dress. Adjoinment It is only natural that due to the reduction of agreement and government the domain of adjoinment extended in passing from ME to ENE. Adjoinment becomes the only means of syntactic bond between the adjective and the noun, between the verb and the noun, the verb and the adverb etc. Enclosure It becomes as significant as adjoinment. The role of enclosure increases as it becomes an important means of identifying the attributive function of a word enclosed between an article or a preposition and a head-word: an interesting book. The simple sentence in ME and EMnE. Word order. With the development of analytical tendencies in the English language a rather fixed and rigid word order began to establish itself. This change in the structure of English was determined by the gradual disappearance of case forms. In OE it was the inflection that marked the syntactical function of a word. S O P He (Nom) hine (Acc) forbærnað “They burn him…” In ME the functions of the lost inflections had to be expresed by some other means. Now the position of the word in a sentence came to be the main factor determining its syntactical function. S P O S P O John loves Mary. Mary loves John. attr. head attr. head garden flower flower garden In Early NE the sequence subject – predicate – object was firmly established in most declarative sentenses. Inversion is only used in questions and as a stylistic device. Synthetic word order (S – O – P ) had been abandoned by the 17th century. Formal subjects. In OE the subject was often omitted. In ME the subject position tends to become obligatory. There was a tendency in ME and Early NE to replace impersonal constructions by personal with the pronoun it as the formal subject. OE Me þūhte ME It semed me “It seemed to me…” Sentences with the so-called anticipatory there may be regarded as one more sentence type with an anticipatory subject. The use of formal subjects it and there can be accounted for by the fact that all the main positions in the sentence (S-P-O) should be occupied (no position could remain vacant). Negation. One of the peculiar features of the OE sentence was multiple negation. The use of several negative words continued throughout the ME period and Early NE. Gradually multiple negation went out of use. In Shakespeare’s works multiple negation is still found, it was used up to the 18th century, then it was ousted into the sphere of uneducated speech. Another change in the sphere of negation my be described as the gradual loss of the OE negative particle ne, which was replaced by not (from the OE negative pronoun naht/noht “nothing”). The composite sentence in ME and MnE. The growth of the written forms of English manifested itself in the further development of the composite sentence. For the OE period it is not always easy to draw the line between coordination and subordination, especially when the clauses where joined by correlative conjunctions (sam…sam…, þa… þa…, þonne… þonne etc.) In ME differentiation between compound and complex sentences became more evident, the use of connectives – more precise. A lot of new conjunctions and conjunctive words appeared during the ME period (but, both…and, because), numerous connectives developed from adverbs and pronouns (who, what, which, where, why, how). All the types of subordinate clauses existing in OE were also found in ME, besides, a new type, which did not exist in OE - predicative clauses – appeared in ME. The structure of the sentence became more complicated, which is natural to expect from a language with a growing and flourishing literature. Correlation as a means of connection in a composite sentence in ME was not so frequent as it used to be in OE. Besides, the correlating elements do not coincide in form: MnE either…or, neither…nor, not only…but, hardly…when etc. The system of connectives underwent a number of changes too. A lot of OE conjunctions fell into disuse, others changed or widened their meanings. For example, the conjunction since (ME sith) which used to express temporal relations, began to express causative relations as well. The means of expressing subordination became more and more stabilized. 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N.Y., 1970. 21. Rastorgueva T.A. A History of English. M., 1983. 22. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol.I. Cambridge, 1992. 23. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol.II. Cambridge, 1997. 24. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol.III. Cambridge, 2000. 25. Walfram W., Johnson R. Phonological Analysis. Washington, 1982. 26. Williams J.M. Origins of the English Language. N.Y., Lnd., 1975. Курс лекций по истории английского языка УЧЕБНОЕ ПОСОБИЕ ПО ИСТОРИИ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА (1) (2) 2-е издание, переработанное и дополненное Составители: 4. Редакторы: А.О. Кузнецова А.С. Паршаков Д.В. Носикова (i) Лицензия ПД № 18-0062 от 20.12.2000 ________________________________________________________________ Подписано к печати Формат 60 х 90 1/16. Печ. л. Тираж экз. Заказ Цена договорная ________________________________________________________ Типография ФГБОУ ВПО «НГЛУ» 603155, Н. Новгород, ул. Минина, 31а