The subject of the history of the English

The Genitive case forms were used both as objects and as attributes; e.g. OE hīs mōdor NE his mother. Thus they constituted possessive pronouns.

 Demonstrative Pronouns. There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: se "that" and es "this". They were declined like adjectives and thus had a five-case system, including the Instrumental case.

Demonstrative pronouns took specific pronominal endings in the Genitive Plural (-r) and in the Dative Singular (-m).

The Adjective

        The OE adjective was characterized by the categories of case, number and gender. The adjective agreed with the noun in all these categories and had 2 types of declensions: weak and strong (almost any adjective could be declined according to the strong and to the weak declension).

         Adjectives in the comparative and superlative degrees were declined' as weak; weak forms were also used when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun.

 

DECLENSION OF ADJECTIVES

Strong Declension
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine		Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
N.	blæc “black”	blæc	blacu	N.	blace	blacu	blace
G.	blaces	blæces	blæcre	G.	blacra	blacra	blacra
D.	blacum	blacum	blæcre	D.	blacum	blacum	blaca
A.	blæcne	blæc	blace	A.	blace	blacu	blaca
Instr.	blace	blace	-

 

 

 

 

Weak Declension
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
N.	blace “black”	blace	Blace	blacan
G.	Blacan	blacan	Blacan	blæcra, blacena
D.	Blacan	blacan	Blacan	blacum
A.	Blacan	blacan	Blacan	blacan

 

        Degrees of Comparison. Most OE adjectives fanned degrees of comparison. The regular means used in building the comparative and superlative degrees were the suffixes -ra and -est/ost combined with the change of the root-vowel or without it.

Examples:

Form-building means	Positive	Comparative	Superlative	NE
suffixes	Soft	softra	softost	soft
suffixes plus vowel alternation	blæc	blecra	blacost	black
	long	lengra	lengest	long
suppletive forms	Ōd	betera	betst	good
	l tel	l ssa	l st	little
	micel	māra	m st	much

 

The Verb

The Finite Forms

        The Finite forms of the OE verb had the following grammatical categories: number, person, mood, tense.

        Number. There were two numbers in the finite forms of the OE verb: singular and plural. Singular and plural forms were always contrasted.

        Person. The forms of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person were distinguished only in the Singular of the Present Tense, Indicative Mood; in the Past Tense, Indicative Mood only the 2nd person-forms were distinguished. In the Plural the difference was altogether lost; nor was it shown in the Subjunctive Mood.

        Tense. There were two sets of tense forms in OE: the Present tense forms and the Past tense forms. The Present tense referred the action to the present or future. The Past tense referred the action to the past without differentiating between prior or non-prior actions.

        Mood. The category of Mood was constituted by the Imperative, the Indicative and the Subjunctive moods. However in some forms of the Past tense the difference between the moods was lost. The Subjunctive mood presented events as unreal or probable and it was often used in indirect speech to describe events of which the speaker was not absolutely certain.

        The Non-Finite Forms. There were two non-finite verb forms in OE: the Infinitive and the Participle.

        The Infinitive. The Infinitive was a verbal noun and had no verbal categories. It had some isolated case-forms corresponding to the Nominative and the Dative case of nouns:

uninflected form                          inflected form 
(Nominative case)                        (Dative case)

OE helpan                            OE to helpenne              NE help

        The Participle. The Participle had both the verbal and nominal categories. Participle I was opposed to Participle II through voice and tense differences. Participle I (maciende "making") was present and active. Participle II was past and passive when built from transitive verbs (   e)macod "made") and it was past and active when built from intransitive verbs (ā   ād "gone").

        Like adjectives, Participles I and II could be declined as weak and strong and had the categories of case, number and gender.

 

                                    Morphological Classification of Verbs

        OE verbs were divided into two large groups according to the way they built their principal forms, i.e. the group of strong verbs and the group of weak verbs.

        The two groups differed in the following:

• the strong verbs were characterized by vowel gradation in the four principal forms (the Infinitive, the Past tense (2 forms) and Participle II); they had no ending in the Past tense forms;
• the weak verbs did not change the root-vowel, had 3 principal forms (the Infinitive, the Past tense (one form) and Participle II); they added the dental suffix -d in the Past tense form and Participle II and the ending-e in the Past Tense form.

        Besides the two major groups of verbs there existed some other groups which either combined the traits of the strong and weak verbs or were altogether anomalous.

        Strong Verbs. OE strong verbs are divided into seven classes, according to vowel gradation. In some classes vowel alternations were accompanied by a consonant interchange: 2nd and 5th classes: [z] -[s] - [r]; [ð] – [θ] -[d].

        Crass I. In Class I (i-class) the gradation vowel was combined with "i" in the root. As a result we find long vowels in the first two forms and “i” in the 3rd and the 4th forms (the zero grade).

 

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II
(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Ī	ā	i	i
wrītan “write”	wrāt	writon	writen

        Class II. In Class II (u-class) the gradation vowel was combined with "u". As a result we find long diphthongs in the first two forms and "u" in tile 3rd form.

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II
(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
ē	ēa	u	o
bēodan “offer”	bēad	budon	boden

     

  Classes III - V. In Classes III -V the gradation vowel was followed by consonants. Thus the vowels in the first two forms were short. The verbs of Class III contained consonant combinations (sonorant or "h" plus a plosive).

        Hence three variants were distinguished in Class III.

Class III
Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II	NE
I	a (o)	u	u
drincan	dranc	druncon	drunken	drink
e/i	ea	u	o
heplan	healp	hulpan	holpen	help
Eo	ea	u	o
feohtan	feaht	fuhton	fohten	fight

Class IV
Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II	NE
E	æ		o
stelan	stæl	st lon	steal	steal

         Class VI. In class VI the underlying gradation series is the Indo-European quantitative abtaut o - ō, modified to a-ō in Germanic.

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II
A	ō	ō	a
faran “go”	for	foron	faren

        Class VII. Most vowel interchanges in Class VII resulted from the doubling of the root ("reduplication") in the Past tense stems. That is why the Past tense stems had a long monophthong or a long diphthong in the root.

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Past Plur.	Participle II
hātan “call”	hēt	hēton	hāten
feallan “fall”	feoll	feollon	feallen
cnēawan	cnēow	cnēowon	cnāwen

  

        Weak Verbs. There were three classes of weak verbs in OE which built their Past tense forms by adding a dental suffix -d or -t to the Present tense stem and the ending -e.

The form of Participle II was built only by adding the dental suffix.

Class I (verbs of i-stems), There were several variants of  Class I verbs depending on whether they added the suffix directly to the stem or had a vowel before it. The irregular weak verbs of Class I besides the dental suffix had a vowel alternation.

Class I
Infinitive	Past Sing.	Participle II
-an/ -ian	-de/-ede/-te	-ed/-d-/-t
dēman “deem”	dēmde	dēmed
cēpan “keep”	cēpte	cēped
werian “wear”	werede	wered
tellan	tealde	teald

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Class II (verbs of ō-stems). The verbs of Class II were originally built with the help of the stem suffix ō; They had lost ō in the Infinitive but retained its traces in the other principal forms: -ode, -od.

Class II

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Participle II
-ian	-ode	-od
lufian (love)	lufode	lufod

Class III (verbs of a-stems). In OE verbs of Class III added the dental suffix directly to the last consonant of the root and doubled the consonant in the Infinitive.

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Participle II
-an	-de	-d
libban "live"	lifde	lifd

         Suppletive and AnomalousVerbs. The verb dōn, NE do, willan NE will,   ān, NE go and bēon, NE be combined both ways of form- building - that of strong and weak verbs.

The verbs   ān and bēon had suppletive forms.

Examples:

Infinitive	Past Sing.	Participle II
dōn “do”	dyde	dōn
bēon “be”	wæs, w ron	bēn

 

        Preterite-Present (or Past-present) Verbs. The Present Tense forms of the preterite-present verbs correspond to the past of strong verbs, while their past is derived according to the past of weak verbs.

Thus, in OE the present tense of the verb wītan "know" is wāt for the singular and witon for the plural, while its past is wisse or wiste. Its present thus corresponds to the past of class I strong verbs (compare: wrāt - writon), while its past is derived on the pattern of weak verbs (wisse < *wit-te).

In OE there were twelve preterite-present:

OE  ā   NE own, "ought"; OE cunnan, NE can;

OE dear, N dare; OE sculan, NE shall; OE  ma  an, NE may;

OE mōt, NE must; OE wītan, NE know; OE  du  an, "be fit"; OE unnan "wish"; OE ðuran "need"; OE munan "remember"; OE   eneah "be enough".

Lecture 6

Old English Word-stock

Elymology

        The bulk of the OE word-stock was made up of native words, loanwords or borrowings constituted but a small part of the vocabulary.

        Native words in OE were not homogeneous. They included:

1. Common Indo-European Words which comprised a considerable portion of the OE vocabulary and denoted the most important notions and things indispensable in everyday life; e.g. OE brōþor > NE brother, OE twā > NE two.

2. Specifically Germanic Words going back to the Common Germanic period appeared when the ancient Germanic tribes formed an independent linguistic group. These words denote notions referring to the sea, nature and everyday life; e.g. OE hand > NE hand, OE dēop > NE deep.