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Originally they were also Germanic tribes, but having won the territory of France, they practicaly assimilated with the people of France and took its high culture and language.

1. French is the lang. of upper classes.
2. Many synonyms appeared: Eg: language (Fr) – tongue (Engl);

lange, huge (Fr) – great (Engl)

3. French effected all aspects of life: education, teaching

= Government and administration: nation, people.

= Legislation: eg.: judge, court.

= Military term: navy, war.

= Literature and arts: music/

= Education: ink, college.

= Fashion: dress.

= Trade, profession: tailor, grocer.

= Religion: pray.

= Cooking: roast, fry, boil.

75% of words have survived in NE.

At first the two languages existed side by side without mixing. Then, slowly and quietly, they began to permeate each other. The Norman barons and the French town-dwellers had to pick up English words to make themselves understood, while the English began to use French words in current speech. A good knowledge of French would mark a person of higher standing giving him a certain social prestige.

The three hundred years of the domination of French affected English more than any other foreign influence before or after.

13. The OE vowel system. Major changes during the OE period.

Short: [ĭ, ĕ, æﬞ , ŭ, ŏ, ă]  - ĭ,  ŭ – high, ĕ, ŏ – mid,

           æﬞ, ă – low.

Long: [ī, ē, æ‾, ū, ō, ā]

This system existed before breaking took place in the 5^th cent. BREAKING is a process which led to the split of the short front vowels into diphthongs.

                   Early OE         OE       eg.

Before ll          æﬞ     →   ea      all → eall

h + other cons. æﬞ :    →  ea:    nah → neah                              

r + other cons  ĕ     →  eo      herza - heorte

                        æ  -       ea       arm - earm 

Diphthongization: after the palatal consonant (k’),  (sk’) and (j) short and long [e] and [æ] turned into diphthongs ie or ea (scal – sceal, jār - jēar); 

14. Major vowel changes in NE. Great Vowel Shift. Vocalization of [r].

The short vowels were more stable.

1. ME [α] – NE [æ] man – mæn

after w (a) → o    wæs > wαs > [woz]

2. ME short “u” lost its labial character and became [۸] except in some dialects. Eg: ME ‘comen’ [kumen] > NE come [k۸m].
3. lengthening before –ss, -ft, -nt, -st;
4. shortening before sing. dental and velar cons. [e:], [u:] before ∂, θ.
5. Towards the end of the OE period some of the diphthongs merged with monophthongs

the Great Vowel Shift (O. Gerpersen 14th cent.)

Short Vowels:

  i>i>I sitten – sit [sit]

y>i>i byllan>bill [bil]

æ>a>æ     æppel>apple [æpl]

u>u>۸ under>under [۸ndə]

e>e>e bedd>bed [bed]

o>o>o god>god [god]

a>a>æ cat>cat [kæt]

Long vowels:

ī>ī>āī tīme>time [taim]

                 e>e>i:        metan-meet [mi:t]

              o>u

ū>ū>au hūs>house [haus]

a>a>ei nama>name [neim]

                au>o

[r] was vocalized to the neutral vowel [ә] when final or before another consonant in the 17th cent. Eg: far [faә], bird As a result a number of new vowels appeared in E: a: (far), o: (fork), ε: (girl). Also such new diphthongs appeared iә, uә, εә (here, care, sure); thriphthongs [auә, ouә] (our, lower) + lengthening: arm, four

Intrusive [r] – that’s not found in the word but it’s pronounced.

 

15. I-mutation and its traces in Modern English.

Mutation is the change of one vowel to another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable.

(i-umlaut) it took place in all Germanic languages in VI – VIII cent, except Gothic. Palatal mutation is the fronting and raising of vowels through the influence of [i] or [j] in the immediately following syllable. The vowel was fronted and made narrower so as to approach the articulation of [i]. It is a case of regressive assimilation with –i- or semivowel ‘j’. Eg: kuning – cyning (король), fulljan – fūllan (fill – full).  fōti – fōel (foot). We find traces of i-mutation in: foot – feet, goose – geese, blood – bleed. 4 new phonems appear y‾˘, œ‾˘ Palatal mutation led to the grouth of new vowel interchanges and to increase variability of the root morphemes.

Back mutation (o, u, a –umlaud) took place in the 8^th cent. It influenced front short vowels → appearance of short diphthongs. Phonetically it’s regressive assimilation.

I → io Eg: hefon → heofon (heaven).

e → eo

æ → æα

I-mutation influenced short and lond vowels. It took place in all Germanic languages except Gothic. It’s a case of regressive assimilation with the vowel ‘I’ or semivowel ‘j’. It took place in the 6th cent.

Condition of i-mutation – presence of j [й]:

Eg:  ky‾ning → OE cyning

fy‾llian → OE fy‾llan

fōti → foēt (foot – feet)

Traces in Mod words:

1 – irregular plural of nouns: mouse – mice;goose - geese

foot – feet;

2 – irregular verbs & adj.: told –tell, old –  elder

3 – word formation: long –length, blood – bleed

I-mutation – both syntactic and paradigmatic change (structure of the word changes, produces a new phoneme).

æ

α   →  e badi OE – bedid (bled)

o  

α: → æ:      dails              OE - dælan (deal)

o → e       motjan OE – metan (meet)

u → y         fuljan             OE -  fyllan (feel)

u: → y:  mūs → my‾s

ea, eo→ ie  ealdira           ieldra (elder)

New vowels appeared: ŷ & iē

 

16. The OE consonant system. Grimm’s & Verner’s Laws, treatment of fricatives.

All the consonants fell into noise consonants and sonorant. The noise c-ts were subdivided into plosive & fricative; plosives were subdivided into voiced & voiceless, the difference being phonemic. Fricative were also subdivided voiced & voiceless (bin –pin  the dif-ce in sonority is phonemically relevant; hlāf – hlāford  where the dif-ce is positional). Back fricatives:

1. voiced: [x] – velar;
2. voiceless: [x’] – palatalized. Eg: [nix’t] → niht → night.

The most universal distinctive feature in the cons-t system was the difference in length. Long cons-t have been opposed to short ones on a phonemic level; they were mostly distinguished in intervocal position (sticca – Gen. case pl. of stice )

Grimm’s law: The first Germanic consonant shifts took place in the V-II cent. BC. Jacobs Grimm’s Law. According to Grimm, he classified consonant correspondences between indoeuropean and germanic languages.

There are 3 acts of this law:

1. IE plosive (stops) p, t, k correspond to G voiceless fricatives f, Þ, h. Eg: пламя – flame, пена – foam, колода – holt, cordis – heort.
2. IE voiced plosives b, d, g, →G voiceless fricatives p, t, k. Eg: яблоко - apple, дерево – tree, ego(lat) – ic (OE).
3. IE aspirated voiced plosives bh, dh, gh →to voiced plosives without aspiration. Eg: bhrāta(sanscr.) – bropor (OE) - brother, rudhira Lat – read (OE) - red, ghostis – giest (OE - )guest.

The second consonant shift was Carl Verner’s law. According to C.Verner all the common Germanic consonants became voiced in intervocalic position if the preceding vowel was unstressed.

p-f > v           septem

t- Þ > đ, d       сто – hund (OE)

k-x > j, g       

s-s > z/r         auris – ēare

Devoicing took place in early common germanic when the stress was not yet fixed on the root.

A variety of Verner’s law is rhotacism (greek letter rho). [s] →[z]→[r] we find traces of this phenomenon in form of the verb to be →was – were, is – are; ist – sind – war.

II consonant shift occurred in dialects of southern germanic. Eg: еда – eat – essen, вода – water – wasser, hope – hoffen, bed – bett.

Ch (G) → C (OE) : reich – ricostan.

 

17. Major consonant changes in the history of English.

OE consonants underwent the following changes:

1)Hardening (the process when the soft  cons becomes harder) – usual initially and after nasals [m,n] (ð-d, v-b, j-g)

2)Voicing (the proc. When a voiceless cons becomes voiced in certain position):- intervocally, - between a vowel and a voiced cons. and sonorant. [f,θ,h,s – v,ð,g,z]

3) Rhotacism (a pr. When [z] turns into [r] maize Goth – mara OE (more)) to be →was – were, is – are; ist – sind – war.

4) Gemination (a pr. Of doubling a consonant after  a short vowel (as a result of palatal mutation)) settan OE – set, fullan –  fill

5) Palatalization of consonants (a pr. when hard vowels become soft) – before a front vowel and sometimes after a front vowels [d,j,k,h – g’,j’,k’,h’]

6) Loss of consonants: The loss of nasals before fricatives:

Eg: fimf (OE)> fif (five); loss of [j] as a result of palatal mutation; fricatives between vowels and some plosives;

ME & NE

New sets of cons-s:

In OE there were no affricates and no sibilants, except [s, z]. The new type of consonants developed from OE palatal plosives [k', g’].  The three new phonemes which arose from these sources were [tʃ], [dʒ] and [ʃ]. In Early ME they began to be indicated by special letters and digraphs, which came into use mainly under the influence of the French scribal tradition — ch, tch, g, dg, sh, sstt, sck

In Early NE the clusters [sj, zj, tj, dj] — through reciprocal assimilation in unstressed position—regularly changed into [ʃ, ʒ , t ʃ, d ʒ ].

-sibilants (a type of fricatives narrower and sharper than others) [f,v,h,θ,ð]-[s,z,S,?]

-affricates (sounds consisting of a plosive immediately followed by a fricative) [tS, d?]

Loss of Consonants

some changes led to the reduction of the consonant system and also to certain restrictions in the use of consonants. With the disappearance of [х‘] the system lost one more opposition — through palatalisation, as "hard" to "soft". Another important event was the loss of quantitative distinctions in the consonant system. In Late ME long consonants were shortened and the phonemic opposition through quantity was lost. The loss of long consonant phonemes has been attributed to a variety of reasons. Long consonants disappeared firstly because their functional load was very low, and secondly, because length was becoming a prosodic feature, that is a property of the syllable rather than of the sound. In ME the length of the syllable was regulated by the lengthening and shortening of vowels; therefore the quantitative differences of the consonants became irrelevant.

The most important changes: simplification of initial, mid and final clusters (early NE):

initial: Eg: k – know; wr – write; g – gnat;

mid: sth – listen; stl – whistle;

final: mb – climb; mn – autumn;

[r] was vocalized in the 17th cent. Eg: far, bird. Gave birth to diphthongs and triphthongs

18. Changes in Unstressed   Vowels reduction

unstressed vowels had lost many of their former distinctions, namely their differences in quantity as well as some of their differences in quality. The tendency towards phonetic reduction (a simplified form) operated in all the subsequent periods of history and was particularly strong in unstressed final syllables in ME.

In Early ME the pronunciation of unstressed syllables became increasingly indistinct. As compared to OE, which distinguished five short vowels in unstressed position (representing three opposed phonemes [e/i], [a] and [o/u]), Late ME had only two vowels in unaccented syllables; [нейтральный] and [i ], which are never directly contrasted; this means that phonemic contrasts in unstressed vowels had been practically lost. The occurrence of only two vowels, [нейтральный] and [i], in unstressed final syllables is regarded as an important mark of ME, distinguishing it on the one hand from OE with its greater variety of unstressed vowels, and on the other hand from NE, when the ME final  [нейтральный] was dropped.

These developments show that the gap between the stressed and unstressed vowels has narrowed

19. The OE noun system (gramm cat, declension)

OE was a synthetic, or inflected type of language; it showed the relations between words and expressed other grammatical meanings mainly with the help of simple (synthetic) grammatical forms. In building grammatical forms OE employed grammatical endings, sound interchanges in the root, grammatical prefixes, and suppletive formation.

Grammatical endings, or inflections, were certainly the principal form-building means used: they were found in all the parts of speech that could change their form; they were usually used alone but could also occur in combination with other means.

Sound interchanges were employed on a more limited scale and were often combined with other form-building means, especially endings. Vowel interchanges were more common than interchanges of consonants.

The use of prefixes in grammatical forms was rare and was confined to verbs. Suppletive forms were restricted to several pronouns, a few adjectives and a couple of verbs.

The parts of speech to be distinguished in OE are as follows: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral (all referred to as nominal parts of speech or nomina), the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection. Grammatical categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in nominal parts of speech and verbal categories found chiefly in the finite verb.

there were five nominal grammatical categories in OE: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison, and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness

The noun had only two grammatical categories proper: number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category. The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural. The adjective had the maximum number of categories — five. the noun had four cases. Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative, whereas the adjective had five (the same four cases plus the Instrumental case). The personal pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p., unlike other parts of speech, distinguished three numbers — Singular, Plural and Dual.

Declensions

exceeded twenty-five. All in all there were only ten distinct endings.

Historically, the OE system of declensions was based on a number of distinctions: the stem-suffix, the gender of nouns, the phonetic structure of the word, phonetic changes in the final syllables.

Stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (a-stems, i-steins), of consonants (n-stems), of sound sequences, e. g. -ja-stems, -nd-stetns. Some groups of nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a "zero-suffix"; they are usually termed "root-stems" and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e. g. OE man, boc (NE man, book).

Another reason which accounts for the division of nouns into numerous declensions is their grouping according to gender. OE nouns distinguished three genders; Masc, Fem, and Neut.

Other reasons accounting for the division into declensions were structural and phonetic: monosyllabic nouns had certain peculiarities as compared to polysyllabic.

Strong declension: a-stems included Masc. and Neut. o-stems were alf Fem. I-stems into three declensions, u-stems: Masc. and Fem.

The most numerous group of the consonantal stems were 
n-stems or the weak declension, n-stems had only two distinct forms 
in the sg: one form /or the Nom. case and the other for the three ob 
lique cases.

The other consonantal declensions are called minor consonantal stems as they included small groups of nouns. The most important type are the root-stems, which had never had any stem-forming suffix.

Among the other consonantal stems we should mention a small group of nouns denoting family relationship with the stem-suffix -r, e.g. brdpor, fwder, modor (NE brother, father, mother). They commonly had a mutated vowel in the Dat.

20. Meaning&use of cases in OE.

The OE noun had 4 cases:Nom.,Gen.,Dat.,Acc.

In most declensions 2-3 forms were homonymous. The OE had 2 categories:-number -case(+gender)

1. Nom.c. can be defined as the case of active agent,it was the case of the subject. Mainly used with verbs denoting activity.

2. Gen.c. – case of nouns&pron. serving as an attr. to other nouns;   -possessive meaning, meaning of origin.

3. Dat.c. – used with prepositions (as an indirect personal obj.(to inform him)

              - could convey an instrumental meaning(haild with stones)

4. Acc.c. – indicate the passive obj. of a state

              - relationship to a verb.)

The Nom. Is used as the case of the active agent. The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as attributes to other nouns. Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions. case could convey an instrumental meaning, indicating the means or manner of an action. The Acc. case, above all, was the form that indicated a relationship to a verb. Being a direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings.

 

21.The history of the noun gramm. categories

In OE the noun had the following categ-s:

1. gender: m, f, n; (but this distinction was non a gramm. category, it was like a classifying feature for the devision of nouns into morph. classes)
2. number: sg, pl.
3. case: Nom, Dat (with prepos-s – on mor?enne – in the morning), Gen (hiora scipu – their ships), Acc.

Simplification of noun morph. affected the gramm. categ-s of the noun in dif. Ways. The OE gender disappeared. The gramm. category of case was preserved but underwent profound changes in ME. The number of cases was redused from 4 to 2.

OE cases: Nom,Dat,Accus →

→ME cases: Common (subj. (former Nom); direct Obj (former Acc.); prep/inder Obj (former Dat)

OE Genetive→ME Genetive (Possessive) – in the 17-18^th c.the apostrophe started to be used in Pl. The practice to express genitival relations by the of-phrase goes back to OE.

The ME Common case had a very general meaning, which made more specific by the context.

Number was the most stable gramm. c-ry . The noun preserved the formal distinction of 2 numbers through all the historical periods. Pl. ending –es. The ME –en is found in NE just in oxen, brethren, children.

 

22. The sources of NE plural forms of nouns

In Early NE ending –es extended to many words, even to those which build their pl forms in a different ways or employed –es as one of the variant endings. The pl ending –es underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables.