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The history of English

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Plan

Lecture Classes 1-2: Old English Phonetics

Historical background.

Pre-Germanic Britain. Celts. Branches of Celtic languages.

Germanic settlement in Britain.

Historical events between 5th and 11th centuries.

The linguistic situation in Britain before and after the Germanic
settlement.

Old English (OE) dialects.

OE written records.

Runic inscriptions

OE manuscripts. OE poetry. OE prose.

OE Alphabet and Pronunciation. Word Stress in OE.

Changes of stressed vowels in Early OE. Development of Monophthongs and
Diphthongs in OE.

Breaking and Diphthongization.

Palatal Mutation. Changes of Unstressed Vowels in Early OE.

OE Consonants.

Treatment of fricatives. Hardening.

Rhotacism.

Voicing and devoicing.

West Germanic Gemination of Consonants. Velar Consonants in Early OE.
Loss of consonants in some positions.

Lecture Classes 3-4: Old English grammar.

The Noun in OE

Grammatical categories of the noun. The use of cases.

Morphological classification of nouns. Declensions.

The Pronoun in OE.

Personal pronouns. Declension of personal pronouns.

Demonstrative pronouns. Declension of demonstrative pronouns.

Other classes of Pronouns.

The Adjective.

Grammatical categories.

Weak and strong declension.

Degrees of Comparison.

The Verb.

Grammatical categories of the Finite Verb.

Conjugation of Verbs in OE.

Morphological Classification of Verbs. Strong Verbs.

Morphological Classification of Verbs. Weak Verbs. Minor Groups of
Verbs.

Grammatical categories of the Verbal.

The Infinitive

The Participle

Syntax.

The Simple Sentence

Compound and Complex Sentences

Word Order

Lecture Classes 5-6: Development of the Grammatical System (11th-18th
centuries)

The Noun

Decay of Noun declensions

Grammatical Categories of the Noun

The Pronoun

Personal and Possessive Pronouns

Demonstrative Pronouns. Development of Articles

Other Classes of Pronouns

The Adjective

Decay of Declensions and Grammatical Categories

Degrees of Comparison

The Verb

Simplifying Changes of the Verb Conjugation

Verbals. The Infinitive and the Participle.

Development of the Gerund.

Changes in the Morphological Classes of Verbs

Strong Verbs

Weak Verbs

Minor groups of Verbs

Growth of New Forms within the Existing Grammatical Categories

The Future Tense

New Forms of the Subjunctive Mood

Interrogative and Negatives Forms with do

Development of New Grammatical Categories

Passive Forms. Category of Voice

Perfect Forms. Category of Time-Correlation

Continuous Forms. Category of Aspect

Lecture 1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

Pre-Roman Britain

Man lived in what we now call the British Isles long before it broke
away from the continent of Europe, long before the great seas covered
the land bridge that is now known as the English Channel, that body of
water that protected this island for so long, and that by its very
nature, was to keep it out of the maelstrom that became medieval Europe.
Thus England’s peculiar character as an island nation came about through
its very isolation. Early man came, settled, farmed and built. His
remains tell us much about his lifestyle and his habits. Of course, the
land was not then known as England, nor would it be until long after the
Romans had departed.

We know of the island’s early inhabitants from what they left behind on
such sites as Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, and Swanscombe in Kent, gravel
pits, the exploration of which opened up a whole new way of seeing our
ancient ancestors dating back to the lower Paleolithic (early Stone
Age). Here were deposited not only fine tools made of flint, including
hand-axes, but also a fossilized skull of a young woman as well as bones
of elephants, rhinoceroses, cave-bears, lions, horses, deer, giant oxen,
wolves and hares. From the remains, we can assume that man lived at the
same time as these animals which have long disappeared from the English
landscape.

So we know that a thriving culture existed around 8,000 years ago in the
misty, westward islands the Romans were to call Britannia, though some
have suggested the occupation was only seasonal, due to the still-cold
climate of the glacial period which was slowly coming to an end. As the
climate improved, there seems to have been an increase in the number of
people moving into Britain from the Continent. They were attracted by
its forests, its wild game, abundant rivers and fertile southern plains.
An added attraction was its relative isolation, giving protection
against the fierce nomadic tribesmen that kept appearing out of the
east, forever searching for new hunting grounds and perhaps, people to
subjugate and enslave.

The Celts in Britain used a language derived from a branch of Celtic
known as either Brythonic, which gave rise to Welsh, Cornish and Breton;
or Goidelic, giving rise to Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. Along with
their languages, the Celts brought their religion to Britain,
particularly that of the Druids, the guardians of traditions and
learning. The Druids glorified the pursuits of war, feasting and
horsemanship. They controlled the calendar and the planting of crops and
presided over the religious festivals and rituals that honored local
deities.

Many of Britain’s Celts came from Gaul, driven from their homelands by
the Roman armies and Germanic tribes. These were the Belgae, who arrived
in great numbers and settled in the southeast around 75 BC. They brought
with them a sophisticated plough that revolutionized agriculture in the
rich, heavy soils of their new lands. Their society was well-organized
in urban settlements, the capitals of the tribal chiefs. Their crafts
were highly developed; bronze urns, bowls and torques illustrate their
metalworking skills. They also introduced coinage to Britain and
conducted a lively export trade with Rome and Gaul, including corn,
livestock, metals and slaves.

Of the Celtic lands on the mainland of Britain, Wales and Scotland have
received extensive coverage in the pages of Britannia. The largest
non-Celtic area, at least linguistically, is now known as England, and
it is here that the Roman influence is most strongly felt. It was here
that the armies of Rome came to stay, to farm, to mine, to build roads,
small cities, and to prosper, but mostly to govern.

The Roman Period

The first Roman invasion of the lands we now call the British Isles took
place in 55 B.C. under war leader Julius Caesar, who returned one year
later, but these probings did not lead to any significant or permanent
occupation. He had some interesting, if biased comments concerning the
natives: “All the Britons,” he wrote, “paint themselves with woad, which
gives their skin a bluish color and makes them look very dreadful in
battle.” It was not until a hundred years later that permanent
settlement of the grain-rich eastern territories began in earnest.

In the year 43 A.D. an expedition was ordered against Britain by the
Emperor Claudius, who showed he meant business by sending his general,
Aulus Plautius, and an army of 40,000 men. Only three months after
Plautius’s troops landed on Britain’s shores, the Emperor Claudius felt
it was safe enough to visit his new province. Establishing their bases
in what is now Kent, through a series of battles involving greater
discipline, a great element of luck, and general lack of co-ordination
between the leaders of the various Celtic tribes, the Romans subdued
much of Britain in the short space of forty years. They were to remain
for nearly 400 years. The great number of prosperous villas that have
been excavated in the southeast and southwest testify to the rapidity by
which Britain became Romanized, for they functioned as centers of a
settled, peaceful and urban life.

The highlands and moorlands of the northern and western regions,
present-day Scotland and Wales, were not as easily settled, nor did the
Romans particularly wish to settle in these agriculturally poorer, harsh
landscapes. They remained the frontier — areas where military garrisons
were strategically placed to guard the extremities of the Empire. The
stubborn resistance of tribes in Wales meant that two out of three Roman
legions in Britain were stationed on its borders, at Chester and
Caerwent.

Major defensive works further north attest to the fierceness of the
Pictish and Celtic tribes, Hadrian’s Wall in particular reminds us of
the need for a peaceful and stable frontier. Built when Hadrian had
abandoned his plan of world conquest, settling for a permanent frontier
to “divide Rome from the barbarians,” the seventy-two mile long wall
connecting the Tyne to the Solway was built and rebuilt, garrisoned and
re-garrisoned many times, strengthened by stone-built forts as one mile
intervals.

For Imperial Rome, the island of Britain was a western breadbasket.
Caesar had taken armies there to punish those who were aiding the Gauls
on the Continent in their fight to stay free of Roman influence.
Claudius invaded to give himself prestige, and his subjugation of eleven
British tribes gave him a splendid triumph. Vespasian was a legion
commander in Britain before he became Emperor, but it was Agricola who
gave us most notice of the heroic struggle of the native Britons through
his biographer Tacitus. From him, we get the unforgettable picture of
the druids, “ranged in order, with their hands uplifted, invoking the
gods and pouring forth horrible imprecations.” Agricola also won the
decisive victory of Mons Graupius in present-day Scotland in 84 A.D.
over Calgacus “the swordsman,” that carried Roman arms farther west and
north than they had ever before ventured. They called their
newly-conquered northern territory Caledonia.

When Rome had to withdraw one of its legions from Britain, the
thirty-seven mile long Antonine Wall, connecting the Firths of Forth and
Clyde, served temporarily as the northern frontier, beyond which lay
Caledonia. The Caledonians, however were not easily contained; they were
quick to master the arts of guerilla warfare against the scattered,
home-sick Roman legionaries, including those under their ageing
commander Severus. The Romans abandoned the Antonine Wall, withdrawing
south of the better-built, more easily defended barrier of Hadrian, but
by the end of the fourth century, the last remaining outposts in
Caledonia were abandoned.

Further south, however, in what is now England, Roman life prospered.
Essentially urban, it was able to integrate the native tribes into a
town-based governmental system. Agricola succeeded greatly in his aims
to accustom the Britons “to a life of peace and quiet by the provision
of amenities. He consequently gave private encouragement and official
assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses.”
Many of these were built in former military garrisons that became the
coloniae, the Roman chartered towns such as Colchester, Gloucester,
Lincoln, and York (where Constantine was declared Emperor by his troops
in 306 A.D.). Other towns, called municipia, included such foundations
as St. Albans (Verulamium).

Chartered towns were governed to a large extent on that of Rome. They
were ruled by an ordo of 100 councillors (decurion). who had to be local
residents and own a certain amount of property. The ordo was run by two
magistrates, rotated annually; they were responsible for collecting
taxes, administering justice and undertaking public works. Outside the
chartered town, the inhabitants were referred to as peregrini, or
non-citizens. they were organized into local government areas known as
civitates, largely based on pre-existing chiefdom boundaries. Canterbury
and Chelmsford were two of the civitas capitals.

In the countryside, away from the towns, with their metalled, properly
drained streets, their forums and other public buildings, bath houses,
shops and amphitheatres, were the great villas, such as are found at
Bignor, Chedworth and Lullingstone. Many of these seem to have been
occupied by native Britons who had acquired land and who had adopted
Roman culture and customs.. Developing out of the native and relatively
crude farmsteads, the villas gradually added features such as stone
walls, multiple rooms, hypocausts (heating systems), mosaics and bath
houses. The third and fourth centuries saw a golden age of villa
building that further increased their numbers of rooms and added a
central courtyard. The elaborate surviving mosaics found in some of
these villas show a detailed construction and intensity of labor that
only the rich could have afforded; their wealth came from the highly
lucrative export of grain.

Roman society in Britain was highly classified. At the top were those
people associated with the legions, the provincial administration, the
government of towns and the wealthy traders and commercial classes who
enjoyed legal privileges not generally accorded to the majority of the
population. In 212 AD, the Emperor Caracalla extended citizenship to all
free-born inhabitants of the empire, but social and legal distinctions
remained rigidly set between the upper rank of citizens known as
honestiores and the masses, known as humiliores. At the lowest end of
the scale were the slaves, many of whom were able to gain their freedom,
and many of whom might occupy important governmental posts. Women were
also rigidly circumscribed, not being allowed to hold any public office,
and having severely limited property rights.

One of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire was its system of
roads, in Britain no less than elsewhere. When the legions arrived in a
country with virtually no roads at all, as Britain was in the first
century A.D., their first task was to build a system to link not only
their military headquarters but also their isolated forts. Vital for
trade, the roads were also of paramount important in the speedy movement
of troops, munitions and supplies from one strategic center to another.
They also allowed the movement of agricultural products from farm to
market. London was the chief administrative centre, and from it, roads
spread out to all parts of the province. They included Ermine Street, to
Lincoln; Watling Street, to Wroxeter and then to Chester, all the way in
the northwest on the Welsh frontier; and the Fosse Way, from Exeter to
Lincoln, the first frontier of the province of Britain.

The Romans built their roads carefully and they built them well. They
followed proper surveying, they took account of contours in the land,
avoided wherever possible the fen, bog and marsh so typical in much of
the land, and stayed clear of the impenetrable forests. They also
utilized bridges, an innovation that the Romans introduced to Britain in
place of the hazardous fords at many river crossings. An advantage of
good roads was that communications with all parts of the country could
be effected. They carried the cursus publicus, or imperial post. A road
book used by messengers that lists all the main routes in Britain, the
principal towns and forts they pass through, and the distances between
them has survived: the Antonine Itinerary.. In addition, the same
information, in map form, is found in the Peutinger Table. It tells us
that mansions were places at various intervals along the road to change
horses and take lodgings.

The Roman armies did not have it all their own way in their battles with
the native tribesmen, some of whom, in their inter-tribal squabbles, saw
them as deliverers, not conquerors. Heroic and often prolonged
resistance came from such leaders as Caratacus of the Ordovices,
betrayed to the Romans by the Queen of the Brigantes. And there was
Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) of the Iceni, whose revolt nearly succeeded in
driving the Romans out of Britain. Her people, incensed by their brutal
treatment at the hands of Roman officials, burned Colchester, London,
and St. Albans, destroying many armies ranged against them. It took a
determined effort and thousands of fresh troops sent from Italy to
reinforce governor Suetonius Paulinus in A.D. 61 to defeat the British
Queen, who took poison rather than submit.

Apart from the villas and fortified settlements, the great mass of the
British people did not seem to have become Romanized. The influence of
Roman thought survived in Britain only through the Church. Christianity
had thoroughly replaced the old Celtic gods by the close of the 4th
Century, as the history of Pelagius and St. Patrick testify, but
Romanization was not successful in other areas. For example, the Latin
tongue did not replace Brittonic as the language of the general
population. Today’s visitors to Wales, however, cannot fail to notice
some of the Latin words that were borrowed into the British language,
such as pysg (fish), braich (arm), caer (fort), foss (ditch), pont
(bridge), eglwys (church), llyfr (book), ysgrif (writing), ffenestr
(window), pared (wall or partition), and ystafell (room).

The disintegration of Roman Britain began with the revolt of Magnus
Maximus in A.D. 383. After living in Britain as military commander for
twelve years, he had been hailed as Emperor by his troops. He began his
campaigns to dethrone Gratian as Emperor in the West, taking a large
part of the Roman garrison in Britain with him to the Continent, and
though he succeeded Gratian, he himself was killed by the Emperor
Thedosius in 388. Some Welsh historians, and modern political figures,
see Magnus Maximus as the father of the Welsh nation, for he opened the
way for independent political organizations to develop among the Welsh
people by his acknowledgement of the role of the leaders of the Britons
in 383 (before departing on his military mission to the Continent) The
enigmatic figure has remained a hero to the Welsh as Macsen Wledig,
celebrated in poetry and song.

The Roman legions began to withdraw from Britain at the end of the
fourth century. Those who stayed behind were to become the Romanized
Britons who organized local defences against the onslaught of the Saxon
hordes. The famous letter of A.D. 410 from the Emperor Honorius told the
cities of Britain to look to their own defences from that time on. As
part of the east coast defences, a command had been established under
the Count of the Saxon Shore, and a fleet had been organized to control
the Channel and the North Sea. All this showed a tremendous effort to
hold the outlying province of Britain, but eventually, it was decided to
abandon the whole project. In any case, the communication from Honorius
was a little late: the Saxon influence had already begun in earnest.

The Dark Ages

From the time that the Romans more or less abandoned Britain, to the
arrival of Augustine at Kent to convert the Saxons, the period has been
known as the Dark Ages. Written evidence concerning the period is
scanty, but we do know that the most significant events were the gradual
division of Britain into a Brythonic west, a Teutonic east and a Gaelic
north; the formation of the Welsh, English and Scottish nations; and the
conversion of much of the west to Christianity.

By 410, Britain had become self-governing in three parts, the North
(which already included people of mixed British and Angle stock); the
West (including Britons, Irish, and Angles); and the South East (mainly
Angles). With the departure of the Roman legions, the old enemies began
their onslaughts upon the native Britons once more. The Picts and Scots
to the north and west (the Scots coming in from Ireland had not yet made
their homes in what was to become later known as Scotland), and the
Saxons, Angles, and Jutes to the south and east.

The two centuries that followed the collapse of Roman Britain happen to
be among the worst recorded times in British history, certainly the most
obscure. Three main sources for our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon
permeation of Britain come from the 6th century monk Gildas, the 8th
century historian Bede, and the 9th century historian Nennius.

The heritage of the British people cannot simply be called Anglo-Saxon;
it is based on such a mixture as took place in the Holy Land, that
complex mosaic of cultures, ideologies and economies. The Celts were not
driven out of what came to be known as England. More than one modern
historian has pointed out that such an extraordinary success as an
Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain “by bands of bold adventurers” could
hardly have passed without notice by the historians of the Roman Empire,
yet only Prosper Tyro and Procopius notice this great event, and only in
terms that are not always consistent with the received accounts.

In the Gallic Chronicle of 452, Tyro had written that the Britons in 443
were reduced “in dicionen Saxonum” (under the jurisdiction of the
English). He used the Roman term Saxons for all the English-speaking
peoples resident in Britain: it comes from the Welsh appellation
Saeson). The Roman historians had been using the term to describe all
the continental folk who had been directing their activities towards the
eastern and southern coasts of Britain from as early as the 3rd Century.
By the mid 6th Century, these peoples were calling themselves Angles and
Frisians, and not Saxons.

In the account given by Procopius in the middle of the 6th Century (the
Gothic War, Book IV, cap 20), he writes of the island of Britain being
possessed by three very populous nations: the Angili, the Frisians, and
the Britons. “And so numerous are these nations that every year, great
numbers migrate to the Franks.” There is no suggestion here that these
peoples existed in a state of warfare or enmity, nor that the British
people had been vanquished or made to flee westwards. We have to assume,
therefore, that the Gallic Chronicle of 452 refers only to a small part
of Britain, and that it does not signify conquest by the Saxons.

The Anglo Saxon Period

To answer the question how did the small number of invaders come to
master the larger part of Britain? John Davies gives us part of the
answer: the regions seized by the newcomers were mainly those that had
been most thoroughly Romanized, regions where traditions of political
and military self-help were at their weakest. Those who chafed at the
administration of Rome could only have welcomed the arrival of the
English in such areas as Kent and Sussex, in the southeast.

Another reason cited by Davies is the emergence in Britain of the great
plague of the sixth century from Egypt that was particularly devastating
to the Britons who had been in close contact with peoples of the
Mediterranean. Be that as it may, the emergence of England as a nation
did not begin as a result of a quick, decisive victory over the native
Britons, but a result of hundreds of years of settlement and growth,
more settlement and growth, sometimes peaceful, sometimes not. If it is
pointed out that the native Celts were constantly warring among
themselves, it should also be noted that so were the tribes we now
collectively term the English, for different kingdoms developed in
England that constantly sought domination through conquest. Even Bede
could pick out half a dozen rulers able to impose some kind of authority
upon their contemporaries.

So we see the rise and fall of successive English kingdoms during the
seventh and eighth centuries: Kent, Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex.
Before looking at political developments, however, it is important to
notice the religious conversion of the people we commonly call
Anglo-Saxons. It began in the late sixth century and created an
institution that not only transcended political boundaries, but created
a new concept of unity among the various tribal regions that overrode
individual loyalties.

During the centuries of inter-tribal warfare, the Saxons had not thought
of defending their coasts. The Norsemen, attracted by the wealth of the
religious settlements, often placed near the sea, were free to embark
upon their voyages of plunder.

The first recorded visit of the Vikings in the West Saxon Annals had
stated that a small raiding party slew those who came to meet them at
Dorchester in 789. It was the North, however, at such places as
Lindisfarne, the holiest city in England, lavishly endowed with
treasures at its monastery and religious settlement that constituted the
main target. Before dealing with the onslaught of the Norsemen, however,
it is time to briefly review the accomplishments of the people
collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, especially in the rule of law.

By the year 878 there was every possibility that before the end of the
year Wessex would have been divided among the Danish army. That this
turn of events did not come to pass was due to Alfred. Leaving aside the
political events of the period, we can praise his laws as the first
selective code of Anglo-Saxon England, though the fundamentals remained
unchanged, those who didn’t please him, were amended or discarded. They
remain comments on the law, mere statements of established custom.

In 896, Alfred occupied London, giving the first indication that the
lands which had lately passed under Danish control might be reclaimed.
It made him the obvious leader of all those who, in any part of the
country, wished for a reversal of the disasters, and it was immediately
followed by a general recognition of his lordship. In the words of the
Chronicle, “all the English people submitted to Alfred except those who
were under the power of the Danes.”

Around 890 the Vikings (also known as Norsemen or Danes) came as hostile
raiders to the shores of Britain. Their invasions were thus different
from those of the earlier Saxons who had originally come to defend the
British people and then to settle. Though they did settle eventually in
their newly conquered lands, the Vikings were more intent on looting and
pillaging; their armies marched inland destroying and burning until half
of England had been taken. However, just as an earlier British leader,
perhaps the one known in legend as Arthur had stopped the Saxon advance
into the Western regions at Mount Badon in 496, so a later leader
stopped the advance of the Norsemen at Edington in 878.

But this time, instead of sailing home with their booty, the Danish
seamen and soldiers stayed the winter on the Isle of Thanet on the
Thames where the men of Hengist had come ashore centuries earlier. Like
their Saxon predecessors, the Danes showed that they had come to stay.

It was not too long before the Danes had become firmly entrenched
seemingly everywhere they chose in England (many of the invaders came
from Norway and Sweden as well as Denmark). They had begun their
deprivations with the devastation of Lindisfarne in 793, and the next
hundred years saw army after army crossing the North Sea, first to find
treasure, and then to take over good, productive farm lands upon which
to raise their families. Outside Wessex, their ships were able to
penetrate far inland; and founded their communities wherever the rivers
met the sea.

Chaos and confusion were quick to return to England after Cnut’s death,
and the ground was prepared for the coming of the Normans, a new set of
invaders no less ruthless than those who had come before. Cnut had
precipitated problems by leaving his youngest, bastard son Harold,
unprovided for. He had intended to give Denmark and England to Hardacnut
and Norway to Swein. In 1035, Hardacnut could not come to England from
Denmark without leaving Magnus of Norway a free hand in Scandinavia.

Although the two hundred years of Danish invasions and settlement had an
enormous effect on Britain, bringing over from the continent as many
people as had the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the effects on the language and
customs of the English were not as catastrophic as the earlier invasions
had been on the native British. The Anglo-Saxons were a Germanic race;
their homelands had been in northern Europe, many of them coming, if not
from Denmark itself, then from lands bordering that little country. They
shared many common traditions and customs with the people of
Scandinavia, and they spoke a related language.

There are over 1040 place names in England of Scandinavian origin, most
occurring in the north and east, the area of settlement known as the
Danelaw. The evidence shows extensive peaceable settlement by farmers
who intermarried their English cousins, adopted many of their customs
and entered into the everyday life of the community. Though the Danes
who came to England preserved many of their own customs, they readily
adapted to the ways of the English whose language they could understand
without too much difficulty. There are more than 600 place names that
end with the Scandinavian -by, (farm or town); some three hundred
contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village), and the same number with
thwaite (an isolated piece of land). Thousands of words of Scandinavian
origin remain in the everyday speech of people in the north and east of
England.

There was another very important feature of the Scandinavian settlement
which cannot be overlooked. The Saxon people had not maintained contact
with their orginal homelands; in England they had become an island race.
The Scandinavians, however, kept their contacts with their kinsman on
the continent. Under Cnut, England was part of a Scandinavian empire;
its people began to extend their outlook and become less insular. The
process was hastened by the coming of another host of Norsemen: the
Norman Conquest was about to begin.

William of Normandy with his huge host of fighting men, landed unopposed
in the south. Harold had to march southwards with his tired, weakened
army and did not wait for reinforcements before he awaited the charge of
William’s mounted knights at Hastings. The only standing army in England
had been defeated in an-all day battle in which the outcome was in doubt
until the undisciplined English had broken ranks to pursue the Normans’
feigning retreat. The story is too well-known to be repeated here, but
when William took his army to London, where young Edgar the Atheling had
been proclaimed king in Harold’s place, English indecision in gathering
together a formidable opposition forced the supporters of Edgar to
negotiate for peace. They had no choice. William was duly crowned King
of England at Westminster on Christmas Day, 1066.

William’s victory also linked England with France and not Scandinavia
from now on. Within six months of his coronation, William felt secure
enough to visit Normandy. The sporadic outbreaks at rebellion against
his rule had one important repercussion, however: it meant that threats
to his security prevented him from undertaking any attempt to cooperate
with the native aristocracy in the administration of England.

By the time of William’s death in 1087, English society had been
profoundly changed. For one thing, the great Saxon earldoms were split:
Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and other ancient kingdoms were abolished
forever. The great estates of England were given to Norman and Breton
landowners, carefully prevented from building up their estates by having
them separated by the holdings of others.

The majority of Old English manuscripts are scattered throughout the
libraries of England. The two largest collections belong to the British
Library and the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. While these
documents are national treasures and should be accessible to anyone,
they obviously need to be protected; hence, heightened powers of
persuasion notwithstanding, it is unlikely that an individual without an
academic position or recommendation will be allowed access. Fortunately,
many of these documents are on public display.

Most of the existing Old English manuscripts were made in the scriptoria
of monasteries by members of the clergy. Anyone who has ever visited the
remnants of such a monastery can imagine how difficult this must have
been, with such little comfort, light and warmth in winter. It only goes
to show the skill of monastic scribes in rendering their words so
beautifully.

Anglo-Saxon manuscripts were written exclusively on parchment or vellum.
While in modern times we know these media as semi-transparent writing
papers used for tracing and sketching, they were originally made out of
calf, goat or pig skins which had been stretched, shaved and treated.
The result of this process was a thin membrane with one completely
smooth side and another with a thin layer of leftover hair. Hundreds of
animal skins were required to make a single book. This meant that the
cost of creating literature during the Anglo-Saxon period was staggering
– and hence the value of the finished product.

After the skins had been treated, they were folded into page-size
squares (one fold created a folio, two folds a quarto, four folds an
octavo, and so on – denoting the number of pages created by the folds).
The result was a “quire,” or section of pages. This process permitted
the scribe to prick small holes through the pages of each quire, which
could then be ruled, making uniformly straight lines of text on each
page. Finally the quires would be bound together and covered.
Unfortunately, we have few decent examples of what these covers looked
like; one notable exception is the small Gospel book found in St.
Cuthbert’s tomb, now on display at the British Library. This method of
book production meant that manuscripts could be easily unbound,
permitting portions of texts to become separated, swapped or lost. For
this reason, and because medieval writers frequently wrote wherever they
could fit text (in blank spaces, on flyleaves, etc.), many manuscripts
contain a wide assortment of different documents.

The dominant script of the Old English manuscripts is Anglo-Saxon (also
called Insular, a Latin word meaning “island”; in this context, the term
means “from England or Ireland”). It stemmed from the Uncial script
brought to England by Augustine and his fellow missionaries, and
incorporated the initially Irish Roman Half-Uncial. The Anglo-Saxon hand
was generally miniscule (a calligraphic term meaning smaller, lower-case
letters), reserving majuscule characters (larger, upper-case letters)
for the beginnings of text segments or important words (this developed
into the norm for modern writing – beginning sentences and “important”
words with capital letters). These fonts are perfect for calligraphers
who want to work on their hand or experiment with page layouts before
writing. They may also be useful for those who are unfamiliar with the
slight variations between the appearances of Old English and modern
English characters.

The most popular element of medieval manuscripts in general is
illumination – the decoration of text with drawings. Latin texts were
more often illuminated than were Old English texts. But there are some
spectacular examples of Old English illumination, including the stark
line drawings, the biblical illustrations of Cotton Claudius, the
mysterious Sphere of Apuleius in Cotton Tiberius, the Lindisfarne
Gospels (Cotton Nero – one of the few manuscripts that approaches the
Book of Kells), and so on.

Why would someone want to read a manuscript facsimile of an Old English
text rather than a printed edition? A couple answers come to mind. First
of all, Old English manuscripts are, by and large, beautiful. Second,
you never know exactly what you’re getting when you read a printed
edition (maybe this is a slight exaggeration, but still only a slight
one). Some printed texts are “normalized,” reducing the natural
variation in spelling, conjugation, declension, etc., common in Old
English works (most medieval writers were not nearly as concerned with
consistency of spelling as modern writers). Furthermore, some printed
texts collate or “average” between multiple manuscripts of the same
work, offering a composite text which, while perhaps more representative
of that work, loses the qualities which make a manuscript unique.
Naturally, this process can thwart anyone trying to make deductions
about the dialectical, calligraphic or interlinear aspects of a
particular manuscript (sometimes the most interesting aspects).

Lecture 2. OLD ENGLISH PHONETICS

OE is so far removed from Mod E that one may take it for an entirely
different language; this is largely due to the peculiarities of its
pronunciation.

The survey of OE phonetics deals with word accentuation, the systems of
vowels and consonants and their origins. The OE sound system developed
from the PG system. It underwent multiple changes in the pre-written
periods of history, especially in Early OE. The diachronic description
of phonetics in those early periods will show the specifically English
tendencies of development and the immediate sources of the sounds in the
age of writing.

Word Stress

The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes
in Early OE.

In OE a syllable was made prominent by an increase in the force of
articulation; in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed.
In disyllabic and polysyllabic words the accent fell on the
root-morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed; it
remained on the same syllable in different grammatical forms of the word
and, as a rule, did not shift in word-building either. The forms of the
Dat. case of the nouns hlaforde [‘xla:vorde], cyninge [‘kyninge] used in
the text and the Nom. case of the same nouns: hlaford [‘xla:vord],
cyning [‘kyning]. Polysyllabic words, especially compounds, may have had
two stresses, chief and secondary, the chief stress being fixed on the
first root-morpheme, e.g. the compound noun Nor?monna from the same
extract, received the chief stress upon its first component and the
secondary stress on the second component; the grammatical ending -a
(Gen. pl) was unaccented. In words with prefixes the position of the
stress varied: verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and
adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix.

Cf: a’risan – arise v., ‘toweard – toward adj., ‘misdaed – misdeed n.

If the words were derived from the same root, word stress, together with
other means, served to distinguish the noun from the verb, cf:

Changes of Stressed Vowels in Early Old English

Sound changes, particularly vowel changes, took place in English at
every period of history.

The development of vowels in Early OE consisted of the modification of
separate vowels, and also of the modification of entire sets of vowels.

It should be borne in mind that the mechanism of all phonetic changes
strictly conforms with the general pattern. The change begins with
growing variation in pronunciation, which manifests itself in the
appearance of numerous allophones: after the stage of increased
variation, some allophones prevail over the others and a replacement
takes place. It may result in the splitting of phonemes and their
numerical growth, which fills in the “empty boxes” of the system or
introduces new distinctive features. It may also lead to the merging of
old phonemes, as their new prevailing allophones can fall together. Most
frequently the change will involve both types of replacement, splitting
and merging, so that we have to deal both with the rise of new phonemes
and with the redistribution of new allophones among the existing
phonemes. For the sake of brevity, the description of most changes below
is restricted to the initial and final stages.

Independent Changes. Development of Monophthongs

The PG short [a] and the long [a:], which had arisen in West and North
Germanic, underwent similar alterations in Early OE they were fronted
and, in the process of fronting, they split into several sounds.

The principal regular direction of the change – [a]>[ae] and [a:]>[ae:]
– is often referred to as the fronting or palatalisation of [a, a:]. The
other directions can be interpreted as positional deviations or
restrictions to this trend: short [a] could change to [o]or [a] and long
[a:] became [o:] before a nasal; the preservation (or, perhaps, the
restoration) of the short [a ] was caused by a back vowel in the next
syllable— see the examples in Table 1 (sometimes [a] occurs in other
positions as well, e.g. OE macian, land, NE make, land).

Table 1

Splitting of [a] and [a:] in Early Old English

Change illustratedExamplesPG OEother OG languagesOENEa

ae

Gt ?ata

O Icel dagr?aet

daegthat

dayaoGt mann(a)monmanO Icel landlandlandaGt maganmaganmayGt
dagosdagasdaysae:

a:

o:OHGdar

OHG slafen

OHG mano?aer

slaepan

m?nathere

sleep

moonOI cel mana?rmфna?month

Development of Diphthongs

The PG diphthongs (or sequences of monophthongs) [ei, ai, iu, eu, au] —
uderwent regular independent changes in Early OE; they took place in all
phonetic conditions irrespective of environment. The diphthongs with
i-glide were monophthongised into [i:] and [a:], respectively; the
diphthongs in u-glide were reflected_a&_long__diphthongs [io:], [eo:]
and [au] >[ea:].

If the sounds in PG were not diphthongs but sequences of two separate
phonemes, the changes should be defined as phonologisation of vowel
sequences. This will mean that these changes increased the number of
vowel phonemes in the language. Moreover, they introduced new
distinctive features into the vowel system by setting up vowels with
diphthongal glides; henceforth, monophthongs were opposed to diphthongs.

All the changes described above were interconnected. Their independence
has been interpreted in different ways.

The changes may have started with the fronting of [a] (that is the
change of [a] to [ae]), which caused a similar development in the long
vowels: [a:]>[ae:], and could also bring about the fronting of [a] in
the biphonemic vowel sequence [a + u], which became [aea:], or more
precisely [ae: :], with the second element weakened. This weakening as
well as the monophthongisation of the sequences in [-i] may have been
favoured by the heavy stress on the first sound.

According to other explanations the appearance of the long [a:] from the
sequence [a+i] may have stimulated the fronting of long [a:], for this
latter change helped to preserve the distinction between two phonemes;
cf. OE rod (NE road) and OE raed (‘advice’) which had not fallen
together because while [ai] became [a:] in rad, the original [a:] was
narrowed to [ae:] in the word raed. In this case the fronting of [a:] to
[ae:] caused a similar development in the set of short vowels: [a] >
[ae], which reinforced the symmetrical pattern of the vowel system.

Another theory connects the transformation of the Early OE vowel system
with the rise of nasalised long vowels out of short vowels before nasals
and fricative consonants ([a, i, u] plus [m] or [n] plus [x, f, 0 or
s]), and the subsequent growth of symmetrical oppositions in the sets of
long and short vowels .

Assimilative Vowel Changes: Breaking and Diphthongisation

The tendency to assimilative vowel change, characteristic of later PG
and of the OG languages, accounts for many modifications of vowels in
Early OE. Under the influence of succeeding and preceding consonants
some Early OE monophthongs developed into diphthongs. If a front vowel
stood before a velar consonant there developed a short glide between
them, as the organs of speech prepared themselves for the transition
from one sound to the other. The glide, together with the original
monophthong formed a diphthong.

The front vowels [i], [e] and the newly developed [ae], changed into
diphthongs with a back glide when they stood before [h], before long
(doubled) [ll] or [l] plus another consonant, and before [r] plus other
consonants, e.g.: [e]>[eo] in OE deorc, NE dark. The change is known as
breaking or fracture. Breaking is dated in Early OE, for in OE texts we
find the process already completed: yet it must have taken place later
than the vowel changes described above as the new vowel [ae], which
appeared some time during the 5th c., could be subjected to breaking
under the conditions described.

Breaking produced a new set of vowels in OE – the short diphthongs [ea]
and [eo]; they could enter the system as counterparts of the long [ea:],
[eo:], which had developed from PG prototypes.

Breaking was unevenly spread among the OE dialects: it was more
characteristic of West Saxon than of the Anglian dialects (Mercian and
Northumbrian); consequently, in many words, which contain a short
diphthong in West Saxon, Anglian dialects have a short monophthong, cf.
WS tealde, Mercian talde (NE told).

Diphthongisation of vowels could also be caused by preceding consonants:
a glide arose after * palatal consonants as a sort of transition to the
succeeding vowel.

After the palatal consonants [k‘], [sk‘] and [j] short and long [e] and
[ae] turned into diphthongs with a more front close vowel as their first
element, e.g. Early OE *scaemu>OE sceamu (NE shame). In the resulting
diphthong the initial [i] or [e] must have been unstressed but later the
stress shifted to the first element, which turned into the nucleus of
the diphthong, to conform with the structure of OE diphthongs (all of
them were falling diphthongs). This process known as “diphthongisation
after palatal consonants” occurred some time in the 6th c.

Breaking and diphthongisation are the main sources of short diphthongs
in OE. They are of special interest to the historians of English, for OE
short diphthongs have no parallels in other OG languages and constitute
a specifically OE feature.

The status of short diphthongs in the OE vowel system has aroused much
discussion and controversy. On the one hand, short diphthongs are always
phonetically conditioned as the)’ are found only in certain phonetic
environments and appear as positional allophones of respective
monophthongs (namely, of those vowels from which they have originated).
On the other hand, however, they are similar in quality to the long
diphthongs, and their phonemic status is supported by the symmetrical
arrangement of the vowel system. Their very growth can be accounted for
by the urge of the system to have all its empty positions filled.
However, their phonemic status cannot be confirmed by the contrast of
minimal pairs: [ea], [ae], [a] as well as [eo] and [e] occur only in
complementary distribution, never in identical phonetic conditions to
distinguish morphemes; they also occur as variants in different
dialects. On these grounds it seems likely that short diphthongs,
together with other vowels, make up sets of allophones representing
certain phonemes: [a, ae, ea] and [e, eo]. Perhaps the rise of short
diphthongs merely reveals a tendency to a symmetrical arrangement of
diphthongs in the vowel system, which was never fully realised at the
phonemic level.

Palatal Mutation

The OE tendency to positional vowel change is most apparent in the
process termed “mutation”. Mutation is the change of one vowel to
another through the influence of a vowel in the succeeding syllable.

This kind of change occurred in PG when [e] was raised to [i] and [u]
could alternate with [o] under the influence of succeeding sounds.

In Early OE, mutations affected numerous vowels and brought about
profound changes in the system and use of vowels.

The most important series of vowel mutations, shared in varying degrees
by all OE languages (except Gothic), is known as “i-Umlaut” or “palatal
mutation”. Palatal mutation is the fronting and raising of vowels
through the influence of [i] or [j] (the non-syllabic [i]) in the
immediately following syllable. The vowel was fronted and made narrower
so as to approach the articulation of [i]. Cf. OE an (NE one) with a
back vowel in the root and OE aenig (NE any) derived from the same root
with the root vowel mutated to a narrower and more front sound under the
influence of [i] in the suffix: [a:]>[ae:].

Since the sounds [i] and [j] were common in suffixes and endings,
palatal mutation was of very frequent occurrence. Practically all Early
OE monophthongs, as well as diphthongs except the closest front vowels
[e] and [i] were palatalised in these phonetic conditions.

Due to the reduction of final syllables the conditions, which caused
palatal mutation, that is [i] or [j], had disappeared in most words by
the age of writing; these sounds were weakened to [e] or were altogether
lost (this is seen in all the examples above except aenig).

Of all the vowel changes described, palatal mutation was certainly the
most comprehensive process, as it could affect most OE vowels, both long
and short, diphthongs and monophthongs. It led to the appearance of new
vowels and to numerous instances of merging and splitting of phonemes.

The labialised front vowels [y] and [y:] arose through palatal mutation
from [u] and [u:], respectively, and turned into new phonemes, when the
conditions that caused them had disappeared. Cf. mus and mys (from the
earlier *mysi, where [y:] was an allophone of [u:] before [i]). The
diphthongs [ie, ie:] (which could also appear from diphthongisation
after palatal consonants) were largely due to palatal mutation and
became phonemic in the same way, though soon they were confused with [y,
y:]. Other mutated vowels fell together with the existing phonemes, e.g.
[oe] from [o] merged with [e, ae:], which arose through palatal
mutation, merged with [ae:] from splitting.

Palatal mutation led to the growth of new vowel interchanges and to the
increased variability of the root-morphemes: “owing to palatal mutation
many related words and grammatical forms acquired new root-vowel
interchanges. Cf., e.g. two related words: OE gemot n ‘meeting’ and OE
metan (NE meet), a verb derived from the noun-stem with the help of the
suffix -j- (its earlier form was *motjan; -j- was then lost but the root
acquired two variants: mot’/met-). Likewise we find variants of
morphemes with an interchange of root-vowels in the grammatical forms
mus, mys (NE mouse, mice), boc, bec (NE book, books), since the plural
was originally built by adding -iz. (Traces of palatal mutation are
preserved in many modern words and forms, e.g. mouse — mice, foot—feet,
tale — tell, blood— bleed; despite later phonetic changes, the original
cause of the inner change is t-umlaut or palatal mutation.)

The dating, mechanism and causes of palatal mutation have been a matter
of research and discussion over the last hundred years.

Palatal mutation in OE had already been completed by the time of the
earliest written records; it must have taken place during the 7th c.,
though later than all the Early OE changes described above. This
relative dating is confirmed by the fact that vowels resulting from
other changes could be subjected to palatal mutation, e. g. OE ieldra
(NE elder) had developed from *ealdira by palatal mutation which
occurred when the diphthong [ea] had already been formed from [ae] by
breaking (in its turn [ae] was the result of the fronting of Germanic
[a]). The successive stages of the change can be shown as follows:
fronting – breaking – palatal mutation [a] > [ae] > [ea] > [ie] The
generally accepted phonetic explanation of palatal mutation is that the
sounds [i] or [j] palatalised the preceding consonant, and that this
consonant, in its turn, fronted and raised the root-vowel. This
“mechanistic” theory is based on the assumed workings of the speech
organs.. An alternative explanation, sometimes called “psychological” or
“mentalistic”, is that the speaker unconsciously anticipates the [i] and
[j] in pronouncing the root-syllable – and through anticipation adds an.
i-glide to the root-vowel. The process is thus subdivided into several
stages, e.g. *domjan >*doimjan >*doemjan >*deman (NE deem). It has been
found that some OE spellings appear to support both these theories, e.g.
OE secgan has a palatalised consonant [gg‘] shown by the digraph cg;
Coinwulf, a name in BEOWULF, occurring beside another spelling Cenwulf,
shows the stage [oi:] in the transition from PG [o:] to OE [oe:], and
[e:]: OE cen ‘bold’. The diphthongoids resulting from palatal mutation
developed in conformity with the general tendency of the vowel system:
in Early OE diphthongal glides were used as relevant phonemic
distinctive features. In later OE the diphthongs showed the first signs
of contraction (or monophthongisation) as other distinctive features
began to predominate: labialisation and vowel length. (The merging of
[ie, ie:] and [y, y:] mentioned above, can also be regarded as an
instance of monophthongisation of diphthongs.)

Changes of Unstressed Vowels in Early Old English

All the changes described above affected accented vowels. The
development of vowels in unstressed syllables, final syllables in
particular, was basically different. Whereas in stressed position the
number of vowels had grown (as compared with the PG system), due to the
appearance of new qualitative differences, the number of vowels
distinguished in unstressed position had been reduced. In unaccented
syllables, especially final, long vowels were shortened, and thus the
opposition of vowels – long to short – was neutralised. Cf. OE nama (NE
name) to the earlier *namon. It must also be mentioned that some short
vowels in final unaccented syllables were dropped. After long syllables,
that is syllables containing a long vowel, or a short vowel followed by
more than one consonant, the vowels [i] and [u] were lost. Cf. the
following pairs, which illustrate the retention of [u] and [i] after a
short syllable, and their loss after a long one: OE scipu and sceap (NE
ships, sheep, pl from *skeapu); OE werian—demon (NE wear, deem; cf. Gt
domjan).

Old English Vowel System (9th-10th c.)

The vowels shown in parentheses were unstable and soon fused with
resembling sounds: [a] with [a] or [o], [ie, ie:] with [y, y:].

The vowels are arranged in two lines in accordance with the chief
phonemic opposition: they were contrasted through quantity as long to
short and were further distinguished within these sets through
qualitative differences as monophthongs and diphthongs, open and close,
front and back, labialised and non-labialised. Cf. some minimal pairs
showing the phonemic opposition of short and long vowels:

OE dael — dael (NE dale, ‘part’) is — оs (NE is, ice)) col — cфl (NE
coal, cool).

The following examples confirm the phonemic relevance of some
qualitative differences:

OE rїd — rвd — rзad (NE ‘advice’, road, red), sз — sзo ‘that’ Masc. and
Fern. mв — mз (NE

more, me)

The OE vowel system displayed an obvious tendency towards a symmetrical,
balanced arrangement since almost every long vowel had a corresponding
short counterpart. However, it was not quite symmetrical: the existence
of the nasalised [a] in the set of short vowels and the debatable
phonemic status of short diphthongs appear to break the balance.

All the vowels listed in the table could occur in stressed position. In
unstressed syllables we find only five monophthongs, and even these five
vowels could not be used for phonemic contrast:

i – aenig (NE any)

e – stвne, Dat. sg of stвn as opposed to

a – stвna Gen. pl of the same noun (NE stone)

o – baeron — Past pl Ind (of beran as opposed to baeren. Subj. (NE bear)

u — talu (NE tale), Nom. sg as opposed to tale in other cases

The examples show that [e] was not contrasted to [i], and [o] was not
contrasted to [u]. The system of phonemes appearing in unstressed
syllables consists of three units: e/i a o/u

Consonant Changes in Pre-Written Periods

On the whole, consonants were historically more stable than vowels,
though certain changes took place in all historical periods.

It may seem hat being a typical OG language OE ought to contain all the
consonants that arose in PG under Grimm’s and Verner’s Law. Yet it
appears that very few noise consonants in OE correspond to the same
sounds in PG; for in the intervening period most consonants underwent
diverse changes: qualitative and quantitative, independent and
positional.

Some of the consonant changes dated in pre-written periods are referred
to as “West Germanic” (WG) as they are shared by all the languages of
the WG subgroup; WG changes may have taken place at the transitional
stage from PG to Early OE prior to the Germanic settlement of Britain.

Treatment of Fricatives. Hardening. Rhotacism. Voicing and Devoicing

After the changes under Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law PG had the
following two sets of fricative consonants-voiceless [f, 0, x, s] and
voiced [v, ?, y, z].

In WG and in Early OE the difference between the two groups was
supported by new features. PG voiced fricatives tended to be hardened to
corresponding plosives while voiceless fricatives, being contrasted to
them primarily as fricatives to plosives, developed new voiced
allophones.

The PG voiced [?] (due to Verner’s Law or to the third act of the shift)
was always hardened to [d] in OE and other WG languages, cf., for
instance, Gt goths, godai [?], O Icel go?r and OE god (NE good), The two
other fricatives, [v] and [y] were hardened to [b] and [g] initially and
after nasals, otherwise they remained fricatives.

PG [z] underwent a phonetic modification through the stage of [ж] into
[r] and thus became a sonorant, which ultimately merged with the older
IE [r]. Cf. Gt. wasjan, 0 Icel verja and OE werian (NE wear). This
process, termed rhotacism, is characteristic not only of WG but also of
NG.

In the meantime or somewhat later the PG set of voiceless fricatives [f,
0, x, s] and also those of the voiced fricatives which had not turned
into plosives, that is, [v] and [y], were subjected to a new process of
voicing and devoicing. In Early OE they became or remained voiced
mtervocally and between vowels, sonorants and voiced consonants; they
remained or became voiceless in other environments, namely, initially,
finally and next to other voiceless consonants Cf. Gt qithian, qathi
with [0] in both forms, and OE cwe?an [?] between vowels and cwae? [0]
at the end of the word (NE arch, quoth ‘say’).

The mutually exclusive phonetic conditions for voiced and voiceless
fricatives prove that in OE they were not phonemes, but allophones.

West Germanic Gemination of Consonants

In all WG languages, at an early stage of their independent history,
most consonants were lengthened after a short vowel before [j]. This
process is known as WG “gemination” or “doubling” of consonants, as the
resulting long consonants are indicated by means of double letters,
e.g.: *fuljan > OE fyllan (NE fill); * saetjan OE > settan (NE set), cf.
Gt satjan.

During the process, or some time later, [j] was lost, so that the long
consonants ceased to be phonetically conditioned. When the long and
short consonants began to occur in identical phonetic conditions, namely
between vowels, their distinction became phonemic.

The change did not affect the sonorant [r], e.g. OE werian (NE wear);
nor did it operate if the consonant was preceded by a long vowel, e. g.
OE demon, metan (NE deem, meet) — the earlier forms of these words
contained [j], which had caused palatal mutation but had not led to the
lengthening of consonants (the reconstruction of pre-written forms
*motjan and *domjan is confirmed by OS motion and Gt domjan).

Velar Consonants in Early Old English. Growth of New Phonemes

In Early OE velar consonants split into two distinct sets of sounds,
which eventually led to the growth of new phonemes.

The velar consonants [k, g, x, y] were palatalised before a front vowel,
and sometimes also after a front vowel, unless followed by a back vowel.
Thus in OE cild (NE child) the velar consonant [k] was softened to [k’]
as it stood before the front vowel [i]: [*kild]>[k’ild]; similarly [k]
became [k’] in OE spraec (NE speech) after a front vowel but not in OE
sprecan (“NE speak) where [k] was followed by the back vowel [a]. In the
absence of these phonetic conditions the consonants did not change, with
the result that lingual consonants split into two sets, palatal and
velar. The difference between them became phonemic when, a short time
later, velar and palatal consonants began to occur in similar phonetic
conditions; cf. OE cild [k’ild], ciest [k’iest] (NE child, chest) with
palatal [k’] and ceald, cepan (NE cold, keep) with hard, velar [k] —
both before front vowels.

Though the difference between velar and palatal consonants was not shown
in the spellings of the OE period, the two sets were undoubtedly
differentiated since a very early date. In the course of time the
phonetic difference between them grew and towards the end of the period
the palatal consonants developed into sibilants and affricates:
[k’]>[t?], [g’]>[dz]; in ME texts they were indicated by means of
special digraphs and letter sequences.

The date of the palatalisation can be fixed with considerable precision
in relation to other Early OE sound changes. It must have taken place
after the appearance of [ae, ae:] (referred to the 5th c.) but prior to
palatal mutation (late 6th or 7th c.); for [ae, ae?:] could bring about
the palatalisation of consonants (recall OE spraec, NE speech), while
the front vowels which arose by palatal mutation could not. In OE cepan.
(from *kopjan) and OE cyning (with [e:] and [y] through palatal
mutation) the consonant [k] was not softened, which is confirmed by
their modern descendants, keep and king. The front vowels [y] and [e:]
in these and similar words must have appeared only when the splitting of
velar consonants was well under way. Yet it is their appearance that
transformed the two sets of positional allophones into phonemes, for a
velar and a palatal consonant could now occur before a front vowel, that
is, in identical phonetic conditions: cf. OE cyning and cyse (NE king,
cheese).

Loss of Consonants in Some Positions

Comparison with other OG languages, especially Gothic and O Icel, has
revealed certain instances of the loss of consonants in WG and Early OE.

Nasal sonorants were regularly lost before fricative consonants; in the
process the preceding vowel was probably nasalised and lengthened. Cf.:

Gt fimf, 0 Icel fim, OHG fimf — OE fif (NE five)

Gt uns, OHG uns — OE ыs (NE us)

Fricative consonants could be dropped between vowels and before some
plosive consonants; these losses were accompanied by a compensatory
lengthening of the preceding vowel or the fusion of the preceding and
succeeding vowel into a diphthong, cf. OE sзon, which corresponds to Gt
saihwan, OE slзan (NE slay), Gt slahan, G. schlagen, OE saegde and saede
(NE said).

We should also mention the loss of semi-vowels and consonants in
unstressed final syllables, [j] was regularly dropped in suffixes after
producing various changes in the root: palatal mutation of vowels,
lengthening of consonants after short vowels. The loss of [w] is seen in
some case forms of nouns: Norn, treo, Dat. treowe (NE tree);

Nom. sae, Dat. saewe (NE sea), cf. Gt triwa, saiws.

Lecture 3. OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Preliminary Remarks

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 nominal, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the
conjunction, and the interjection. Inflected parts of speech possessed
certain grammatical categories displayed in formal and semantic
correlations and oppositions of grammatical forms. Grammatical
categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in
nominal parts of speech and verbal categories found chiefly in the
finite verb.

We shall assume that there were five nominal grammatical categories in
OE: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison, and the category of
definiteness / indefiniteness. Each part of speech had its own
peculiarities in the inventory of categories and the number of members
within the category (categorial forms). The noun had only two
grammatical categories proper: number and case. The adjective had the
maximum number of categories — five. The number of members in the same
grammatical categories in different parts of speech did not necessarily
coincide: thus 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. Cf.

sg OE ic (NE I), dual wit ‘we two’, pl we (NE we)

OE stвn (NE stone) — stвnas (NE stones).

Verbal grammatical categories were not numerous: tense and mood — verbal
categories proper — and number and person, showing agreement between the
verb-predicate and the subject of the sentence.

The distinction of categorial forms by the noun and the verb was to a
large extent determined by their division into morphological classes:
declensions and conjugations.

In OE there were with the following parts of speech: the noun, the
adjective, the pronoun, and the verb.

The OE grammatical system is described synchronically as appearing in
the texts of the 9th and 10th c. (mainly WS); facts of earlier,
prewritten, history will sometimes be mentioned to account for the
features of written OE and to explain their origin.

The noun. Grammatical Categories. The Use of Cases

The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories: number and
case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this
distinction was not a grammatical category; it was merely a classifying
feature accounting, alongside other features, for the division of nouns
into morphological classes.

The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural. As
will be seen below, they were well distinguished formally in all the
declensions, there being very few homonymous forms.

The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. In
most declensions two, or even three, forms were homonymous, so that the
formal distinction of cases was less consistent than that of numbers.

Before considering the declension of nouns, we shall briefly touch upon
the meaning and use of cases. The functions of cases in OE require
little explanation for the Russian student, since they are those, which
ought to be expected in a language with a well-developed case system.

The Nom. can be loosely defined as the case of the active agent, for it
was the case of the subject mainly used with verbs denoting activity;
the Nom. could also indicate the subject characterised by a certain
quality or state; could serve as a predicative and as the case of
address, there being no special Vocative case, e. g.:

?aet flod weox ?в and вbїr upp ?one arc — subject, active agent (‘that
flood increased then and bore up the arc’)

wear? ?в їlc ?ing cwices вdrenct — subject, recipient of an action or
state (‘was then everything alive drowned’)

Hз wїs swi?e spзdig man — predicative (‘He was a very rich man’)

Sunu mоn, hlyste minre lвre — address (‘My son, listen to my teaching’).

The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as
attributes to other nouns. The meanings of the Gen. were very complex
and can only roughly be grouped under the headings “Subjective” and
“Objective” Gen. Subjective Gen. is associated with the possessive
meaning and the meaning of origin, e. g.:

Beowulf gзata ‘Beowulf of the Geats’. hiora scipu “their ships”

Objective Gen. is seen in such instances as ?aes landes sceawung
‘surveying of the land’; and is associated with what is termed
“partitive meaning” as in sum hund scipa ‘a hundred of ships’, hыsa
sзlest ‘best of the houses’. The use of the Gen. as an object to verbs
and adjectives was not infrequent, though the verbs which regularly took
a Gen. object often interchanged it with other cases, cf.: hз bвd …
westanwindes ‘he waited for the west wind’

frige menn ne mфtan wealdan heora sylfra – ‘free men could not control
themselves’ (also with the Acc. wealdan hie.).

Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions, e. g.: on morgenne ‘in
the morning’ from ?aem here ‘from the army’, ?a sende sз cyning tф?aem
here and him cy?an hзt ‘then sent the king to the army and ordered (him)
to inform them’.

The last example illustrates another frequent use of the Dat.: an
indirect personal object. The OE Dat. case could convey an instrumental
meaning, indicating the means or manner of an action: hit hagolade
stвnum ‘it hailed (with) stones’, worhte AElfred cyning lytle werede
geweorc ‘King Alfred built defense works with a small troop’.

Alongside the Acc., Dat. could indicate the passive subject of a state
expressed by impersonal verbs and some verbs of emotion:

him gelicode heora ?зawas ‘he liked their customs’ (lit. ‘him pleased
their customs’).

The Acc. case 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:

se wulf nim? and tфdїl? ?в scзap ‘the wolf takes and scatters the
sheep’. (Its use as an object of impersonal verbs, similar to the use of
Dat., is illustrated by hine nвnes ?inges ne lyste ‘nothing pleased
him’).

It is important to note that there was considerable fluctuation in the
use of cases in OE. One and the same verb could be construed with
different cases without any noticeable change of meaning. The semantic
functions of the Gen., Dat. and Acc. as objects commonly overlapped and
required further specification by means of prepositions. The vague
meaning of cases was of great consequence for the subsequent changes of
the case system.

Morphological Classification of Nouns. Declensions

The most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborate system of
declensions, which was a sort of morphological classification. The total
number of declensions, including both the major and minor types,
exceeded twenty-five. All in all there were only ten distinct endings
(plus some phonetic variants of these endings) and a few relevant
root-vowel interchanges used in the noun paradigms; yet every
morphological class had either its own specific endings or a specific
succession of markers. 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.

In the first place, the morphological classification of OE nouns rested
upon the most ancient (IE) grouping of nouns according to the
stem-suffixes. Stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (vocalic stems, e.
g. a-stems, i-stems), of consonants (consonantal stems, e. g. n-stems),
of sound sequences, e. g. -ja-stems, -nd-stems. 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, bфc (NE man, book).

The loss of stem-suffixes as distinct component parts had led to the
formation of different sets of grammatical endings. The merging of the
stem-suffix with the original grammatical ending and their phonetic
weakening could result in the survival of the former stem-suffix in a
new function, as a grammatical ending; thus n-stems had many forms
ending in -an (from the earlier -*eni, -*enaz, etc.); u-stems had the
inflection -u in some forms.

Sometimes both elements — the stem-suffix and the original ending — were
shortened or even dropped (e. g. the ending of the Dat. sg -e from the
earlier -*ai, Nom. and Acc. pl -as from the earlier -os; the zero-ending
in the Nom. and Acc. sg) in a-stems.

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. Though originally a
semantic division, gender in OE was not always associated with the
meaning of nouns. Sometimes a derivational suffix referred a noun to a
certain gender and placed it into a certain semantic group, e. g.
abstract nouns built with the help of the suffix -?u were Fern. — OE
len?u, hyh?u (NE length, height), nomina agentis with the suffix -ere
were Masc. — OE fiscere, bфcere (NE fisher, ‘learned man’). The
following nouns denoting human beings show, however, that grammatical
gender did not necessarily correspond to sex: alongside Masc. and Fem.
nouns denoting males and females there were nouns with “unjustified”
gender, cf:

OE widuwa, Masc. (‘widower’) — OE widow, Fem. (NE widow);

OE spinnere, Masc. (NE spinner) — OE spinnestre. Fem. (‘female spinner’;
note NE spinster with a shift of meaning) and nouns like OE wоf, Neut.
(NE wife). OE maegden, Neut. (NE maiden, maid), OE wоfman, Masc. (NE
woman, originally a compound word whose second component -man was
Masc.).

In OE gender was primarily a grammatical distinction; Masc., Fem. and
Neut. nouns could have different forms, even if they belonged to the
same stem (type of declension).

The division into genders was in a certain way connected with the
division into stems, though there was no direct correspondence between
them: some stems were represented by nouns of one particular gender, e.
g. o-stems were always Fem., others embraced nouns of two or three
genders.

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

monosyllables with a long root-syllable (that is, containing a long
vowel plus a consonant or a short vowel plus two consonants — also
called “long-stemmed” nouns) differed in some forms from nouns with a
short syllable (short-stemmed nouns).

The majority of OE nouns belonged to the a-stems, o-stems and n-stems.
Special attention should also be paid to the root-stems which displayed
specific peculiarities in their forms and have left noticeable traces in
Mod E.

a-stems included Masc. and Neut. nouns. About one third of OE nouns were
Masc. a-stems, e. g. cniht (NE knight), hвm (NE home), mы? (NE mouth);
examples of Neut. nouns are:

lim (NE limb), hыs (NE house), ?ing (NE thing). (Disyllabic nouns, e. g.
finger, differed from monosyllables in that they could drop their second
vowel in the oblique cases: Nom, sg finger, Gen. fingres, Dat. fingre,
NE finger.

The forms in the a-stem declension were distinguished through
grammatical endings (including the zero-ending). In some words
inflections were accompanied by sound interchanges: nouns with the vowel
[ae] in the root had an interchange [ae>a], since in some forms the
ending contained a back vowel, e. g. Nom. sg daege Gen. daeges — Nom.
and Gen. pl dagas, daga. If a noun ended in a fricative consonant, it
became voiced in the intervocal position, cf. Nom. sg mu?, wulf— [0],
[f] — and Nom. pl mu?as, wulfas — [o], [v]. (Note that their modem
descendants have retained the interchange: NE mouth — mouths [0>?],
wolf-wolves, also house—houses and others.) These interchanges were not
peculiar of a-stems alone and are of no significance as grammatical
markers; they are easily accountable by phonetic reasons.

Declension of nouns: a-stem*

SingularM

short-stemmed

Nlong-stemmed

Nja-stems

Mwa-stems

NNom. fisc

Gen. fisces

Dat. fisce

Acc. fiscscip

scipes

scipe

scipdзor

dзores

dзore

dзorende

endes

ende

endecnзo(w)

cnзowes

cnзowe

cnзo(w)PluralNom. fiscas

Gen. fisca

Dat. fiscum

Acc. fiscas

(NE fish)scipu

scipa

scipum

scipu

(NE ship)dзor

dзora

dзorum

dзor

(NE deer)endas

enda

endum

endas

(NE) endcnзo(w)

cnзowa cnзowum cnзo(w)

(NE knee)*For more examples, consult “History of English” by
Rastorguyeva, pp.98-99

Neut. a-stems differed from Masc. in the pl of the Nom. and Acc. cases.
Instead of-as they took -u for short stems (that is nouns with a short
root-syllable) and did not add any inflection in the long-stemmed
variant — see Nom. and Acc. pl of scip and dзor in the table.
Consequently, long-stemmed Neuters had homonymous sg and pl forms: dзor
— dзor, likewise sceap—sceap, ?ing – ?ing, hus—hus. This peculiarity of
Neut. a-stems goes back to some phonetic changes in final unaccented
syllables which have given rise to an important grammatical feature: an
instance of regular homonymy or neutralisation of number distinctions in
the noun paradigm. (Traces of this group of a-stems have survived as
irregular pl forms in Mod E: sheep, deer, swine.)

wa- and ja-stems differed from pure a-stems in some forms, as their
endings contained traces of the elements -j- and -w-. Nom. and Acc. sg
could end in -e which had developed from the weakened -j-, though in
some nouns with a doubled final consonant it was lost — cf. OE bridd (NE
bird); in some forms -j- is reflected as -i- or -ig- e.g. Nom. here,
Dat. herie, herige or herge (‘army’). Short-stemmed wa-stems had -u in
the Nom. and Acc. sg which had developed from the element -w- but was
lost after a long syllable (in the same way as the plural ending of
neuter a-stems described above); cf. OE bearu (NE bear) and cnзo; -w- is
optional but appears regularly before the endings of the oblique cases
(see the declension of cnзo in Table 2).

o-stems were all Fem., so there was no further subdivision according to
gender. The variants with -j- and -w- decline like pure o-stems except
that -w- appears before some endings, e.g. Nom. sceadu, the other cases
— sceadwe (NE shadow). The difference between short-and long-stemmed
o-stems is similar to that between respective a-stems: after a short
syllable the ending -u is retained, after a long syllable it is dropped:
wund, talu. Disyllabic o-stems, like a-stems, lost their second vowel in
some case forms: Nom. ceaster, the other cases ceastre (‘camp’), NE
-caster, -Chester—a component of place-names). Like other nouns, o-stems
could have an interchange of voiced and voiceless fricative consonants
as allophones in intervocal and final position: glof—glofe [f>v] (NE
glove). Among the forms of o-stems there occurred some variant forms
with weakened endings or with endings borrowed from the weak declension
— with the element -n- wundena alongside wunda. Variation increased
towards the end of the OE period.

The other vocalic stems, i-stems and u-stems, include nouns of different
genders. Division into genders breaks up i-stems into three declensions,
but is irrelevant for u-stems: Masc. and Fem. u-stems decline alike,
e.g. Fem. duru (NE door) had the same forms as Masc. sunu shown in the
table. The length of the root-syllable is important for both stems; it
accounts for the endings in the Nom. and Acc. in the same way as in
other classes: the endings -e, -u are usually preserved in short-stemmed
nouns and lost in long-stemmed.

Comparison of the i-stems with a-stems reveals many similarities. Neut.
i-stems are declined like Neut. ja-stems; the inflection of the Gen. for
Masc. and Neut. i-stems is the same as in a-stems -es; alongside pl
forms in -e we find new variant forms of Masc. nouns in -as, e. g. Nom.,
Acc. pl —winas ‘friends’ (among Masc. i-stems only names of peoples
regularly formed their pl in the old way: Dene, Engle, NE Danes,
Angles). It appears that Masc. i-stems adopted some forms from Masc.
a-stems, while Neut. i-stems were more likely to follow the pattern of
Neut. a-stems; as for Fem. i-stems, they resembled o-stems, except that
the Acc. and Nom. were not distinguished as with other i-stems.

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
for the Nom. case and the other for the three oblique cases; the element
-n- in the inflections of the weak declension was a direct descendant of
the old stem suffix -n, which had acquired a new, grammatical function,
n-stems included many Masc. nouns, such as boga, cnotta, steorra (NE
bow, knot, star), many Fem. nouns, e. g. cirice, eor?e, heorte,
hlaefdige (NE church, earth, heart, lady) and only a few Neut. nouns:
зaga (NE eye).

The pronoun

OE pronouns fell roughly under the same main classes as modem pronouns:
personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. As for the other
groups — relative, possessive and reflexive — they were as yet not fully
developed and were not always distinctly separated from the four main
classes. The grammatical categories of the pronouns were either similar
to those of nouns (in “noun-pronouns”) or corresponded to those of
adjectives (in “adjective pronouns”). Some features of pronouns were
peculiar to them alone.

Personal Pronouns*

OE personal pronouns had three persons, three numbers in the 1st and 2nd
p. (two numbers—in the 3rd) and three genders in the 3rd p. The pronouns
of the 1st and 2nd p. had suppletive forms like their parallels in other
IE languages. The pronouns of the 3rd p., having originated from
demonstrative pronouns, had many affinities with the latter.

In OE, while nouns consistently distinguished between four cases,
personal pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: the
forms of the Dat. case of the pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p. were
frequently used instead of the Acc.; in fact the fusion of these two
cases in the pi was completed in the WS dialect already in Early OE:
Acc. eowic and usic were replaced by Dat. eow, us; in the sg usage was
variable, but variant forms revealed the same tendency to generalise the
form of the Dat. for both case’s. This is seen in the following
quotation:

Se ?e me gehaelde, se cwae? tф me ‘He who healed me, he said to me’ —
the first me, though Dat. in form, serves as an Acc. (direct object);
the second me is a real Dat.

*See a table of personal pronouns declension at p.103 in “History of
English” by Rastorguyeva.

Demonstrative Pronouns

There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that,
which distinguished three genders in the sg and had one form for all the
genders in the pi. and the prototype of this with the same subdivisions:
?es Masc., ?eos Fem., ?is Neut. and ?as pl. They were declined like
adjectives according to a five-case system:

Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. (the latter having a special form
only in the Masc., Neut.sg).

Declension of sз, sзo, ?aet

CaseSingularPluralM N FAll gendersNorn.sз, se ?aet sзo?aGen.?aes ?aes
?aere?вra, ?aeraDat.?aem, ?вm ?aem, ?вm ?aere?вm, ?aemAcc.?one ?aet
?в?вInstr.?y, ?on ?y, ?on ?aere?aem, ?вm

The paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun se contained many homonymous
forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. –m –
Dat. Masc. and Neut. and Dat. pl;

the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pl. These
case endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often
referred to as “pronominal” endings (-m, -r-, -t).

The adjective. Grammatical Categories

As stated before, the adjective in OE could change for number, gender
and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of
agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject
of the sentence — if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns,
adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in
adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of
nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the adjective
served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an
instrumental meaning — e.g.: lytle werede ‘with (the help of) a small
troop’.

Weak and Strong Declension

As in other OG languages, most adjectives in OE could be declined in two
ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The formal
differences between the declensions, as well as their origin, were
similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak
declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG:
vocalic a-, o-, u- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there
developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding
with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc. and
Neut. and of o-stems — in the Fem., with some differences between
long-and short-stemmed adjectives, variants with j- and w-, monosyllabic
and polysyllabic adjectives and some remnants of other stems. Some
endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the
noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: -um for
Dat. sg, -ne for Acc. Masc., [r] in some Fem. and pl endings. Therefore
the strong declension of adjectives is sometimes called the “pronominal”
declension. As for the weak declension, it uses the same markers as
(n-stems of nouns except that in the Gen. pl the pronominal ending -ra
is often used instead of the weak -ena.

The difference between the strong and the weak declension of adjectives
was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did
not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjectives could be
declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a
number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective, the degree
of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a
strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without
any determiners, e.g.:

?a menn sindon gode ‘the men are good’

The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a
demonstrative pronoun or the Gen. case of personal pronouns.

SingularStrong (pure a- and o-stems)

M N FWeak

M N FNom. blind blind blind

Gen. blindes blindes blindre

Dat. blindum blindum blindre

Acc. blindne blind blinde

Instr. blinde blinde blindreblinda blinde blinde

blindan blindan blindan

blindan blindan blindan

blindan blinde blindan

blindan blindan blindanPluralNom. blinde blind blinda, -e

Gen. blindra blindra blindra

Dat. blindum blindum blindum

Acc. blinde blind blinda, -e

Instr. blindum blindum blindum

(NE blind)All genders

blindan

blindra, -ena

blindum

blindan

blindum

Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules.

Degrees of Comparison

Like adjectives in other languages, most OE adjectives distinguished
between three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and
superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the
superlative from the positive were the suffixes -ra and -est/ost.
Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an interchange of the
root-vowel.

The adjective god had suppletive forms. Suppletion was a very old way of
building the degrees of comparison

god – bettra – bet(e)st,

lytel – laessa – laest.

Lecture 4. OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR

The OE verb was characterised by many peculiar features. Though the verb
had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a very complicated
structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a
variety of form-building means. All the forms of the verb were
synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The
non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared
many features with the nominal parts of speech.

Grammatical Categories of the Finite Verb

The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two
grammatical categories: number and person. Its specifically verbal
categories were mood and tense. Thus in OE he binde? ‘he binds’ the verb
is in the 3rd p. Pres. Tense Ind. Mood; in the sentence Bringath me
hider tha ‘Bring me those (loaves)’ bringath is in the Imper. Mood pl.

Finite forms regularly distinguished between two numbers: sg and pl. The
homonymy of forms in the verb paradigm did not affect number
distinctions: opposition through number was never neutralised.

The category of Person was made up of three forms: the 1st, the 2nd and
the 3rd. Unlike number, person distinctions were neutralised in many
positions. Person was consistently shown only in the Pres. Tense of the
Ind. Mood ‘In the Past Tense sg of the Ind. Mood the forms of the 1st
and 3rd p. coincided and only the 2nd p. had a distinct form. Person was
not distinguished in the pl; nor was it shown in the Subj. Mood.

The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and
Subjunctive. There were a few homonymous forms, which eliminated the
distinction between the moods: Subj. did not differ from the Ind. in the
1st p. sg Pres. Tense — here, deme — and in the 1st and 3rd p. in the
Past. The coincidence of the Imper. and Ind. Moods is seen in the pl —
lociath, demath.

The category of Tense in OE consisted of two categorial forms, Pres. and
Past. The tenses were formally distinguished by all the verbs in the
Ind. and Subj. Moods, there being practically no instances of
neutralisation of the tense opposition.

The use of the Subj. Mood in OE was in many respects different from its
use in later ages. Subj. forms conveyed a very general meaning of
unreality or supposition. In addition to its use in conditional
sentences and other volitional, conjectural and hypothetical contexts
Subj. was common in other types of construction: in clauses of time,
clauses of result and in clauses presenting reported speech, e.g.:

tha giet he ascode hwaet heora cyning haten waere, and him man
andswarode and cwae?? thaet he AElle haten waere. ‘and yet he asked what
their king was called, and they answered and said that he was called
AElle’. In presenting indirect speech usage was variable: Ind. forms
occurred by the side of Subj.

Conjugation of Verbs in Old English

StrongWeakInfinitive

NEfindan

findberan

beardeman deemlocian

lookPresent tenseSingular 1st

2nd

3rd

Pluralfinde fintst

fint findathbere bir(e)st bir(e)th berathdeme demst demth demathlocie

locast

locath lociathSubjunctive Singular Subjunctive Pluralfinde findenbere
berendeme demenlocie

locienImperative SingularfindberdemlocaImperative Plural

Participle Ifindath findendeberath berendedemath demendlociath
lociendePast Singular
1stfondbaerdemdelocode2ndfundebaeredemdestlocodest3rdfondbaerdemdelocode
Pluralfundonbaerondemdonlocodon

The meanings of the tense forms were also very general, as compared with
later ages and with present-day English. The forms of the Pres. were
used to indicate present and future actions. With verbs of perfective
meaning or with adverbs of future time the Pres. acquired the meaning of
futurity; Cf: thonne thu tha in bringst, he ytt and bletsath the —
futurity — ‘when you bring them, he will eat and bless you’ thu gesihst
thaet ic ealdige ‘you see that I am getting old’ the Pres. tense ealdie
indicates a process in the present which is now expressed by the
Continuous form. Future happenings could also be expressed by verb
phrases with modal verbs:

forthaem ge sculon … wepan ‘therefore you shall weep’.

The Past tense was used in a most general sense to indicate various
events in the past (including those which are nowadays expressed by the
forms of the Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Present Perfect and other
analytical forms). Additional shades of meaning could be attached to it
in different contexts, e. g.:

Ond thaes ofer Eastron gefor AEpered cyning; ond he ricsode fоf gear
‘and then after Easter died King Aethered, and he had reigned five
years’ (the Past Tense ricsode indicates a completed action which
preceded another past action — in the modem translation it is rendered
by had reigned).

Grammatical Categories of the 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 the finite verb; their nominal features were far more
obvious than their verbal features, especially at the morphological
level. The verbal nature of the Infinitive and the Participle was
revealed in some of their functions and in their syntactic
“combinability”: like finite forms they could take direct objects and be
modified by adverbs.

The forms of the two participles were strictly differentiated. P I was
formed from the Present tense stem (the Infinitive without the endings
-an, -ian) with the help of the suffix -ende. P II had a stem of its own
— in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of the root-vowel
interchange and by the suffix -en; with weak verbs it ended in -d/-t. P
II was commonly marked by the prefix ge-, though it could also occur
without it, especially if the verb had other word-building prefixes.

Infinitive Participle I Participle II (NE bindan bindende gebunden bind)

Morphological Classification of Verbs

The conjugation of verbs shows the means of form-building used in the OE
verb system. Most forms were distinguished with the help of inflectional
endings or grammatical suffixes; one form — P II — was sometimes marked
by a prefix; many verbs made use of vowel interchanges in the root; some
verbs used consonant interchanges and a few had suppletive forms. The OE
verb is remarkable for its complicated morphological classification
which determined the application of form-building means in various
groups of verbs. The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions:
the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there
were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main
difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming
the principal parts, or the “stems” of the verb. There were also a few
other differences in the conjugations.

All the forms of the verb, finite as well as non-finite, were derived
from a set of “stems” or principal parts of the verb: the Present tense
stem was used in all the Present tense forms, Indicative, Imperative and
Subjunctive, and also in the Present Participle and the Infinitive; it
is usually shown as the form of the Infinitive; all the forms of the
Past tense were derived from the Past tense stems; the Past Participle
had a separate stem.

The strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation (ablaut)
and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs vowel gradation was
accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems,
as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense – one for the 1 st and
3rd p. Ind. Mood, the other — for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and
Subj.

The weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle
II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or
-t- normally they did not change their root vowel, but in some verbs
suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange.

The Past tense stem of the weak verbs is the form of the 1st and 3rd p.
sg; the pl locodon is formed from the same stem with the help of the
plural ending -on). The same ending marks the Past pl of strong verbs.

Both the strong and the weak verbs are further subdivided into a number
of morphological classes with some modifications in the main
form-building devices.

Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs but were
not homogeneous either. Some of them combined certain features of the
strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs);
others were suppletive or altogether anomalous. The following chart
gives a general idea of the morphological classification of OE verbs.

Strong Verbs

There were about three hundred strong verbs in OE. They were native
words descending from PG with parallels in other OG languages; many of
them had a high frequency of occurrence and were basic items of the
vocabulary widely used in word derivation and word compounding. The
strong verbs in OE (as well as in other OG languages) are usually
divided into seven classes.

Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE
ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance
with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating
verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the
root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of
root-vowel interchange.

The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings
irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg
stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II. Two of these
markers – the zero-ending in the second stem and -en in Participle II –
are found only in strong verbs and should be noted as their specific
characteristics. The classes differ in the series of root-vowels used to
distinguish the four stems. Only several classes and subclasses make a
distinction between four vowels as marker of the four stems – see Class
2, 3b and c, 4 and 5b; some classes distinguish only three grades of
ablaut and consequently have the same root vowel in two stems out of
four (Class 1, 3a, 5a); two classes, 6 and 7, use only two vowels in
their gradation series.

In addition to vowel gradation some verbs with the root ending in -s,
-th or -r employed an interchange of consonants: [s-z-r]; [0-?-d] and
[f-v]. These interchanges were either instances of positional variation
of fricative consonants in OE or relics of earlier positional sound
changes; they were of no significance as grammatical markers and
disappeared due to levelling by analogy towards the end of OE.

The classes of strong verbs – like the morphological classes of nouns –
differed in the number of verbs and, consequently, in their role and
weight in the language. Classes 1 and 3 were the most numerous of all:
about 60 and 80 verbs, respectively; within Class 3 the first group –
with a nasal or nasal plus a plosive in the root (findan, rinnan – NE
find, run) included almost 40 verbs, which was about as much as the
number of verbs in Class 2; the rest of the classes had from 10 to 15
verbs each. In view of the subsequent interinfluence and mixture of
classes it is also noteworthy that some classes in OE had similar forms;
thus Classes 4 and 5 differed in one form only – the stems of P II;
Classes 2, 3b and c and Class 4 had identical vowels in the stem of P
II.

The history of the strong verbs traced back through Early OE to PG will
reveal the origins of the sound interchanges and of the division into
classes; it will also show some features which may help to identify the
classes.

The gradation series used in Class 1 through 5 go back to the PIE
qualitative ablaut [e–o] and some instances of quantitative ablaut. The
grades [e–o] reflected in Germanic as [e/i–a] were used in the first and
second stems; they represented the normal grade (a short vowel) and were
contrasted to the zero-grade (loss of the gradation vowel) or to the
prolonged grade (a long vowel) in the third and fourth stem. The
original gradation series split into several series because the
gradation vowel was inserted in the root and was combined there with the
sounds of the root. Together with them, it was then subjected to regular
phonetic changes. Each class of verbs offered a peculiar phonetic
environment for the gradation vowels and accordingly transformed the
original series into a new gradation series.

In Classes 1 and 2 the root of the verb originally contained [i] and [u]
(hence the names i-class and u-class); combination of the gradation
vowels with these sounds produced long vowels and diphthongs in the
first and second stems. Classes 3, 4 and 5 had no vowels, consequently
the first and second forms contain the gradation vowels descending
directly from the short [e] and [o]; Class 3 split into subclasses as
some of the vowels could be diphthongised under the Early OE breaking.
In the third and fourth stems we find the zero-grade or the prolonged
grade of ablaut; therefore Class 1 – i-class – has [i]. Class 2— [u] or
[o]; in Classes 4 and 5 the Past pl stem has a long vowel [ae]. Class 5
(b) contained [j] following the root in the Inf.; hence the mutated
vowel [i] and the lengthening of the consonant: sittan.

In the verbs of Class 6 the original IE gradation was purely
quantitative; in PG it was transformed into a quantitative-qualitative
series.

Class 7 had acquired its vowel interchange from a different source:
originally this was a class of reduplicating verbs, which built their
past tense by repeating the root. In OE the roots in the Past tense
stems had been contracted and appeared as a single morpheme with a long
vowel. The vowels were different with different verbs, as they resulted
from the fusion of various root-morphemes, so that Class 7 had no single
series of vowel interchanges.

Direct traces of reduplication in OE are rare; they are sometimes found
in the Anglian dialects and in poetry as extra consonants appearing in
the Past tense forms: Past tense ofhatan — heht alongside het (‘call’).
Past tense of ondraedan – ondred and ondreord (NE dread).

To account for the interchanges of consonants in the strong verbs one
should recall the voicing by Verner’s Law and some subsequent changes of
voiced and voiceless fricatives. The interchange [s–z] which arose under
Verner’s Law was transformed into [s–r] due to rhotacism and acquired
another interchange [s–z] after the Early OE voicing of fricatives.
Consequently, the verbs whose root ended in [s] or [z] could have the
following interchange:

ceosan [z] ceos [s] curon[r] coren [r] (NE choose)

Verbs with an interdental fricative have similar variant with voiced and
voiceless [0, ?] and the consonant [d], which had developed from [?] in
the process of hardening:

snithan [?] snath [0] snidon sniden (NE cut) Class 1

Verbs with the root ending in [f/v] displayed the usual OE interchange
of the voiced and voiceless positional variants of fricatives:

ceorfan [v] cearf [f] curfon [v] corfen [v] (NE carve) Class 3

Verbs with consonant interchanges could belong to any class, provided
that they contained a fricative consonant. That does not mean, however,
that every verb with a fricative used consonant interchange, for
instance risan, a strong verb of Class 1, alternated [s] with [z] but
not with [r]: risan – ras – rison – risen (NE rise). Towards the end of
the OE period the consonant interchanges disappeared.

Weak Verbs

The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs. In
fact, all the verbs, with the exception of the strong verbs and the
minor groups (which make a total of about 320 verbs) were weak. Their
number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other
stems were conjugated weak (except derivatives of strong verbs with
prefixes). Among the weak verbs there were many derivatives of OE noun
and adjective stems and also derivatives of strong verbs built from one
of their stems (usually the second stem — Past sg)

talu n – tellan v (NE tale, tell) full adj – fyllan v (NE full, fill)

Weak verbs formed their Past and Participle II by means of the dental
suffix -d- or -t- (a specifically Germanic trait). In OE the weak verbs
are subdivided into three classes differing in the ending of the
Infinitive, the sonority of the suffix, and the sounds preceding the
suffix. The main differences between the classes were as follows: in
Class I the Infinitive ended in -an, seldom -ian (-ian occurs after
[r]); the Past form had -de, -ede or -te; Participle II was marked by
–d, -ed or -t. Some verbs of Class I had a double consonant in the
Infinitive, others had a vowel interchange in the root, used together
with suffixation.

Class II had no subdivisions. In Class II the Infinitive ended in -ian
and the Past tense stem and P II had [o] before the dental suffix. This
was the most numerous and regular of all the classes.

The verbs of Class III had an Infinitive in -an and no vowel before the
dental suffix; it included only four verbs with a full conjugation and a
few isolated forms of other verbs. Genetically, the division into
classes goes back to the differences between the derivational
stem-suffixes used to build the verbs or the nominal stems from which
they were derived, and all the persons of the sg Subj. (cf.
restan—reste, wendan— wende, (NE rest, wend).

Participle II of most verbs preserved -e- before the dental suffix,
though in some groups it was lost.

Minor Groups of Verbs

Several minor groups of verbs can be referred neither to strong nor to
weak verbs. The most important group of these verbs were the so-called
“preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Present
tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms (or, more precisely, IE
perfect forms, denoting past actions relevant for the “present). Later
these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal
features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms
built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the
forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives; most verbs did not
have a full paradigm and were in this sense “defective”.

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong
verbs: the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. sg were identical and had no
ending – yet, unlike strong verbs, they had the same root-vowel in all
the persons; the pl had a different grade of ablaut similarly with
strong verbs (which had two distinct stems for the Past: sg and pl). In
the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the
dental suffix plus the endings -e, -est, -e. The new Infinitives sculan,
cunnan were derived from the pl form. The interchanges of root-vowels in
the sg and pl of the Present tense of preterite-present verbs can be
traced to the same gradation series as were used in the strong verbs.
Before the shift of meaning and time-reference the would-be
preterite-presents were strong verbs. The prototype of can may be
referred to Class 3 (with the grades [a–u] in the two Past tense stems);
the prototype of sculan — to Class 4, magan — to Class 5, witan, wat
‘know’ – to Class 1.

In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have
survived in Mod E: OE ag; cunnan, cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; magan,
maeg, mot (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most of the
preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of
attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive, which
followed the preterite-present. In other words, they were used like
modal verbs, and eventually developed into modem modal verbs. (In OE
some of them could also be used as notional verbs:

the him aht sceoldon ‘what they owed him’.)

Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs
with irregular forms. OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning
of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite-presents in meaning
and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often
followed by an Infinitive.

tha ?e willa? mines forsi?es faegnian ‘those who wish to rejoice in my
death’

hyt moten habban eall ‘all could have it’.

Willan had a Past tense form wolde, built like sceolde, the Past tense
of the preterite-present sculan, sceal. Eventually willan became a modal
verb, like the surviving preterite-presents, and, together with sculan
developed into an auxiliary (NE shall, will, should, would).

Some verbs combined the features of weak and strong verbs. OE don formed
a weak Past tense with a vowel interchange: and a Participle in -n: don
— dyde – gedon (NE do). OE buan ‘live’ had a weak Past – bude and P II,
ending in -n, gebun like a strong verb.

Two OE verbs were suppletive. OE gan, whose Past tense was built from a
different root gan – eode – gegan (NE go); and beon (NE be).

Beon is an ancient (IE) suppletive verb. In many languages – Germanic
and non-Germanic – its paradigm is made up of several roots. In OE the
Present tense forms were different modifications of the roots *wes- and
*bhu-, 1st p. sg eom, beo, 2nd p. eart, bist. The Past tense was built
from the root *wes-on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5. Though the
Infinitive and Participle II do not occur in the texts, the set of forms
can be reconstructed as: *wesan — waes — waeron — *weren.

OE syntax

The syntactic structure of OE was determined by two major conditions:
the nature of OE morphology and the relations between the spoken and the
written forms of the language,

OE was largely a synthetic language; it possessed a system of
grammatical forms, which could indicate the connection between words;
consequently, the functional load of syntactic ways of word connection
was relatively small. It was primarily a spoken language, therefore the
written forms of the language resembled oral speech – unless the texts
were literal translations from Latin or poems with stereotyped
constructions. Consequently, the syntax of the sentence was relatively
simple; coordination of clauses prevailed over subordination;
complicated syntactical constructions were rare.

The syntactic structure of a language can be described at the level of
the phrase and at the level of the sentence. In OE texts we find a
variety of word phrases (also: word groups or patterns). OE noun
patterns, adjective patterns and verb patterns had certain specific
features, which are important to note in view of their later changes.

A noun pattern consisted of a noun as the head-word and pronouns,
adjectives (including verbal adjectives, or participles), numerals and
other nouns as determiners and attributes. Most noun modifiers agreed
with the noun in gender, number and case:

on thaem othrum thrim dagum … ‘in those other three days’ – Dat. pl
Masc.

Ohthere saede his hlaforde, AElfrede cyninge ‘Ohthere said to his lord,
king Alfred’ – the noun in apposition is in the Dat. sg like the head
noun.

Nouns, which served as attributes to other nouns, usually had the form
of the Gen. case: hwales ban, deora fell ‘whale’s bone, deer’s fell’.

Some numerals governed the nouns they modified so that formally the
relations were reversed: tamra deora … syx hund ‘six hundred tame
deer’; twentig sceapa ‘twenty sheep’ (deora, sceapa – Gen. pl).

The following examples show the structure of the simple sentence in OE,
its principal and secondary parts:

So?lice sum mann haefde twegen suna (mann – subject, haefde – Simple
Predicate) ‘truly a certain man had two sons’. Predicates could also be
compound: modal, verbal and nominal:

Hwae?re thu meaht singan ‘nevertheless you can sing’.

He was swy?e spedig mann ‘he was a very rich man’. The secondary parts
of the sentence are seen in the same examples: twegen suna ‘two sons’ –
Direct Object with an attribute, spedig ‘rich’ – attribute. In the
examples of verb and noun patterns above we can find other secondary
parts of the sentence: indirect and prepositional objects, adverbial
modifiers and appositions: hys meder ‘to his mother’ (Indirect Object),
to his suna ‘to his son’ (Prep. Object), his hlaforde, AElfrede cyninge
‘his lord king Alfred’ (apposition). The structure of the OE sentence
can be described in terms of Mod E syntactic analysis, for the sentence
was made up of the same parts, except that those parts were usually
simpler. Attributive groups were short and among the parts of the
sentence there were very few-predicative constructions (“syntactical
complexes”). Absolute constructions with the noun in the Dat. case were
sometimes used in translations from Latin in imitation of the Latin
Dativus Absolutus. The objective predicative construction “Accusative
with the Infinitive” occurred in original OE texts:

… ?a li?ende land gesawon, brimclifu blican, beorgas steape (BEOWULF)

‘the travellers saw land, the cliffs shine, steep mountains’.
Predicative constructions after habban (NE have) contained a Past
Participle.

The connection between the parts of the sentence was shown by the form
of the words as they had formal markers for gender, case, number and
person. As compared with later periods agreement and government played
an important role in the word phrase and in the sentence. Accordingly
the place of the word in relation to other words was of secondary
importance and the order of words was relatively free.

The presence of formal markers made it possible to miss out some parts
of the sentence which would be obligatory in an English sentence now. In
the following instance the subject is not repeated but the form of the
predicate shows that the action is performed by the same person as the
preceding action:

tha com he on morgenne to thaem tungerefan se the his ealdorman waes;
saegde him, hwylce gife he onfeng ‘then in the morning he came to the
town-sheriff the one that was his alderman; (he) said to him what gift
he had received’.

The formal subject was lacking in many impersonal sentences (though it
was present in others): Northan snywde ‘it snowed in the North’; him
thuhte ‘it seemed to him’, Hit hagolade stвnum ‘it hailed with stones’.

One of the conspicuous features of OE syntax was multiple negation
within a single sentence or clause. The most common negative particle
was he, which was placed before the verb; it was often accompanied by
other negative words, mostly naht or noht (which had developed from ne
plus awiht ‘no thing’). These words reinforced the meaning of negation’.

Ne con ic noht singan… ic noht singan ne cu?e ‘I cannot sing’ (lit.
“cannot sing nothing”), ‘I could not sing’ (noht was later shortened to
not, a new negative particle).

Another peculiarity of OE negation was that the particle ne could be
attached to some verbs, pronouns and adverbs to form single words: he ne
mihtenan thing geseon ‘he could not see anything’ (nan from ne an ‘not
one’), hit na buton gewinne naes ‘it was never without war’ (naes from
ne waes ‘no was’; NE none, never, neither are traces of such forms).

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the
earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of
coordination and subordination and a large inventory of subordinate
clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses adverbial
clauses. And yet many constructions, especially in early original prose,
look clumsy, loosely connected, disorderly and wanting precision, which
is natural in a language whose written form had only begun to grow.

Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunction of a most
general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic
relations. The A-S CHRONICLES abound in successions of clauses or
sentences all beginning with and, e.g.:

And tha ongeat se cyning, thaet ond he, on tha duru eode, and tha
unbeanlice hine werede, oth he on thone aetheling locude, and tha ut
raesde on hine, and hine miclum gewundode; and hie alle on thone cyning
waeron feohtende, oth thaet hie hine ofslaegenne haefdon, ‘and then the
king saw that, and he went to the door, and then bravely defended
himself, until he saw that noble, and then out rushed on him, and
wounded him severely, and they were all fighting against that king until
they had him slain’ (from the earliest part of the CHRONICLES A.D. 755).

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (termed
“correlation”) was common in complex sentences: tha he thaer to gefaren
waes, tha eodon hie to hiora scipum ‘then (when) he came there, then
they went to their ship.’

Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means of
various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns.
The main connective was the indeclinable particle Re employed, either
alone or together with demonstrative and personal pronouns: and him
cypdon’paet hiera maezas him mid waeron, pa pe him from noldon ‘and told
him that their kinsmen were with him, those that did not want (to go)
from him’.

The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the particle
the:

Hit gelamp gio thaette an hearpere waes on thaere ?iode the Dracia
hatte, sio waes on Creca rice; se hearpere waes swi?e ungefraeglice god,
?aes nama waes Orfeus; he haefde an swi?e aenlic wif, sio waes haten
Eurydice ‘It happened once that there was a harper among the people on
the land that was called Thrace, that was in the kingdom of Crete; that
harper was incredibly good; whose name (the name of that) was Orpheus;
he had an excellent wife; that was called Eurydice’.

The pronoun and conjunction thaet was used to introduce object clauses
and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: o? ?aet ‘until’,
aer thaem the ‘before’, thaet ‘so that’ as in: Isaac ealdode and his
eagan thystrodon, thaet he ne mihte nan thing geseon ‘Then Isaac grew
old and his eyes became blind so that he could not see anything’.

Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordinate and
subordinate: they are joined asyndetically and their status is not
clear: tha waes sum consul, Boethius waes haten ‘There was then a
consul, Boethius was called’ (perhaps attributive: ‘(who) was called
Boethius’ or co-ordinate ‘(he) was called Boethius’).

Lecture 5. MIDDLE ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Evolution of the grammatical system

In the course of ME, Early NE the grammatical system of the language
underwent profound alteration. Since the OE period the very grammatical
type of the language has changed; from what can be defined as a
synthetic or inflected language, with a well developed morphology
English has been transformed into a language of the “analytical type”,
with analytical forms and ways of word connection prevailing over
synthetic ones. This does not mean, however, that the grammatical
changes were rapid or sudden; nor does it imply that all grammatical
features were in a state of perpetual change. Like the development of
other linguistic levels, the history of English grammar was a complex
evolutionary process made up of stable and changeable constituents. Some
grammatical characteristics remained absolutely or relatively stable;
others were subjected to more or less extensive modification.

The division of words into parts of speech has proved to be one of the
most permanent characteristics of the language. Through all the periods
of history English preserved the distinctions between the following
parts of speech; the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the
verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the
interjection. The only new part of speech was the article which split
from the pronouns in Early ME.

Between the 10th and the 16th c., that is from Late OE to Early NE the
ways of building up grammatical forms underwent considerable changes. In
OE all the forms which can be included into morphological paradigms were
synthetic. In ME, Early NE, grammatical forms could also be built in the
analytical way, with the help of auxiliary words. The proportion of
synthetic forms in the language has become very small, for in the
meantime many of the old synthetic forms have been lost and no new
synthetic forms have developed.

In the synthetic forms of the ME, Early NE periods, few as those forms
were, the means of form-building were the same as before: inflections,
sound interchanges and suppletion; only prefixation, namely the prefix
ge-, which was commonly used in OE to mark Participle II, went out of
use in Late ME (instances of Participle II with the prefix ge- (from OE
ge-) are still found in Chaucer’s time. Suppletive form-building, as
before, was confined to a few words, mostly surviving from OE and even
earlier periods. Sound interchanges were not productive, though they did
not die out: they still occurred in many verbs, some adjectives and
nouns; moreover, a number of new interchanges arose in Early ME in some
ups of weak verbs. Nevertheless, their application in the language, and
their weight among other means was generally reduced.

Inflections – or grammatical suffixes and endings – continued to be used
in all the inflected “changeable” parts of speech. It is notable,
however, that as compared with the OE period they became less varied. As
mentioned before the OE period of history has been described as a period
of “full endings”, ME – as a period of “leveled endings” and NE – as a
period of “lost endings” (H. Sweet). In OE there existed a variety of
distinct endings differing in consonants as well as in vowels. In ME all
the vowels in the endings were reduced to the neutral [a] and many
consonants were leveled under -n or dropped. The process of leveling
besides phonetic weakening, implies replacement of inflections by
analogy, e.g. -(e)s as a marker of pi forms of nouns displaced the
endings -(e)n and -e. In the transition to NE most of the grammatical
endings were dropped.

Nevertheless, these definitions of the state of inflections in the three
main historical periods are not quite precise. It is known that the
weakening and dropping of endings began a long time before – in Early OE
and even in PG; on the other hand, some of the old grammatical endings
have survived to this day.

The analytical way of form-building was a new device, which developed in
Late OE and ME and came to occupy a most important place in the
grammatical system. Analytical forms developed from free word groups
(phrases, syntactical constructions). The first component of these
phrases gradually weakened or even lost its lexical meaning and turned
into a grammatical marker, while the second component retained its
lexical meaning and acquired a new grammatical value in the compound
form. Cf, e. g. the meaning and function of the verb to have in OE he
haefde tha ‘he had them (the prisoners)’, Hie him ofslaegene haefdon
‘they had him killed’ or, perhaps, ‘they had killed him’. Hie haefdon
ofergan Eastengle ‘they had overspread East Anglian territory’. In the
first sentence have denotes possession, in the second, the meaning of
possession is weakened, in the third, it is probably lost and does not
differ from the meaning of have in the translation of the sentence into
ME. The auxiliary verb have and the form of Part. II are the grammatical
markers of the Perfect; the lexical meaning is conveyed by the
root-morpheme of the participle. The growth of analytical grammatical
forms from free word phrases belongs partly to historical morphology and
partly to syntax, for they are instances of transition from the
syntactical to the morphological level.

Analytical form-building was not equally productive in all the parts of
speech: it has transformed the morphology of the verb but has not
affected the noun.

The main direction of development for the nominal parts of speech in all
the periods of history can be defined as morphological simplification,
Simplifying changes began in prehistoric, PG times. They continued at a
slow rate during the OE period and were intensified in Early ME. The
period between c. 1000 and 1300 has been called an “age of great
changes” (A.Baugh), for it witnessed one of the greatest events in the
history of English grammar: the decline and transformation of the
nominal morphological system. Some nominal categories were lost Gender
and Case in adjectives. Gender in nouns; the number of forms
distinguished in the surviving categories was reduced – cases in nouns
and noun-pronouns, numbers in personal pronouns. Morphological division
into types of declension practically disappeared. In Late ME the
adjective lost the last vestiges of the old paradigm: the distinction of
number and the distinction of weak and strong forms. Already at the time
of Chaucer, and certainly by the age of Caxton the English nominal
system was very much like modern, not only in its general pattern but
also in minor details. The evolution of the verb system was a far more
complicated process-it cannot be described in terms of one general
trend. On the one hand, the decay of inflectional endings affected the
verb system, though to a lesser extent than the nominal system. The
simplification and leveling of forms made the verb conjugation more
regular and uniform; the OE morphological classification of verbs was
practically broken up. On the other hand, the paradigm of the verb grew,
as new grammatical forms and distinctions came into being. The number of
verbal grammatical categories increased, as did the number of forms
within the categories. The verb acquired the categories of Voice, Time
Correlation or Phase and Aspect. Within the category of Tense there
developed a new form – the Future Tense; in the category of Mood there
arose new forms of the Subjunctive. These changes involved the
non-finite forms too, for the infinitive and the participle, having lost
many nominal features, developed verbal features: they acquired new
analytical forms and new categories like the finite verb. It is
noteworthy that, unlike the changes in the nominal system, the new
developments in the verb system were not limited to a short span of two
or three hundred years. They extended over a long period: from Late OE
till Late NE. Even in the age of Shakespeare the verb system was in some
respects different from that of ME and many changes were still underway.

Other important events in the history of English grammar were the
changes in syntax, which were associated with the transformation of
English morphology but at the same time displayed their own specific
tendencies and directions. The main changes at the syntactical level
were: the rise of new syntactic patterns of the word phrase and the
sentence; the growth of predicative constructions; the development of
the complex sentences and of diverse means of connecting clauses.
Syntactic changes are mostly observable in Late ME and in NE, in periods
of literary efflorescence.

The noun. Decay of Noun Declensions in Early Middle English

The OE noun had the grammatical categories of Number and Case which were
formally distinguished in an elaborate system of declensions. However,
homonymous forms in the OE noun paradigms neutralised some of the
grammatical oppositions; similar endings employed in different
declensions – as well as the influence of some types upon other types –
disrupted the grouping of nouns into morphological classes.

Increased variation of the noun forms in the late 10th c. and especially
in the 11th and 12th c. testifies to impending changes and to a strong
tendency toward a re-arrangement and simplification of the declensions.
The number of variants of grammatical forms in the 11th and 12th c. was
twice as high as in the preceding centuries. Among the variant forms
there were direct descendants of OE forms with phonetically weakened
endings (the so-called “historical forms”) and also numerous analogical
forms taken over from other parts of the same paradigms and from more
influential morphological classes. The new variants of grammatical forms
obliterated the distinction between the forms within the paradigms and
the differences between the declensions, e.g.. Early ME fisshes and
bootes, direct descendants of the OE Nom. and Acc. pl of Masc. a-stems
fiscas, batas were used, as before, in the position of these cases and
could also be used as variant forms of other cases Gen. and Dat. pi
alongside the historical forms fisshe, hoofs. (OE Gen. pl. fisca, bвta)
and fischen, booten or fisshe, boots (OE Dat. pl fiscum, batum); (NE
fish, boat). As long as all these variants co-existed, it was possible
to mark a form more precisely by using a variant with a fuller ending,
but when some of the variants went out of use and the non-distinctive,
levelled variants prevailed, many forms fell together. Thus after
passing through the “variation stage” many formal oppositions were lost.
The most numerous OE morphological classes of nouns were a-stems,
o-stems and n-stems. Even in Late OE the endings used in these types
were added by analogy to other kinds of nouns, especially if they
belonged to the same gender. That is how the noun declensions tended to
be re-arranged on the basis of gender.

The decline of the OE declension system lasted over three hundred years
and revealed considerable dialectal differences. It started in the North
of England and gradually spread southwards. The decay of inflectional
endings in the Northern dialects began as early as the 10th c. and was
virtually completed in the 11th; in the Midlands the process extended
over the 12th c., while in the Southern dialects it lasted till the end
of the 13th (in the dialect of Kent, the old inflectional forms were
partly preserved even in the 14th c.).

The dialects differed not only in the chronology but also in the nature
of changes. The Southern dialects rearranged and simplified the noun
declensions on the basis of stem and gender distinctions. In Early ME
they employed only four markers -es, -en, -e, and the root-vowel
interchange plus the bare stem (the “zero “-inflection) but
distinguished, with the help of these devices, several paradigms. Masc.
and Neut. nouns had two declensions, weak and strong, with certain
differences between the genders in the latter: Masc. nouns took the
ending -es in the Nom., Acc. pl, while Neut. nouns had variant forms:
Masc. fishes Neut. land/lande/landes. Most Fem. nouns belonged to the
weak declension and were declined like weak Masc. and Neut. nouns. The
root-stem declension, as before, had mutated vowels in some forms’ and
many variant forms which showed that the vowel interchange was becoming
a marker of number rather than case.

In the Midland and Northern dialects the system of declension was much
simpler. In fact, there was only one major type of declension and a few
traces of other types. The majority of nouns took the endings of OE
Masc. a-stems: -(e)s in the Gen. sg (from OE -es), -(e)s in the pi
irrespective of case (from OE -as: Nom. and Acc. sg, which had extended
to other cases).

A small group of nouns, former root-stems, employed a root-vowel
interchange to distinguish the forms of number. Survivals of other OE
declensions were rare and should be treated rather as exceptions than as
separate paradigms. Thus several former Neut. a-stems descending from
long-stemmed nouns could build their plurals with or without the ending
-(e)s; sg hors — pl hors or horses, some nouns retained weak forms with
the ending -en alongside new forms in -es; some former Fem. nouns and
some names of relations occur in the Gen. case without -(e)s like OE
Fem. nouns, e. g. my fader soule, ‘my father’s soul’; In hope to standen
in his lady grace ‘In the hope of standing in his lady’s grace’
(Chaucer) though the latter can be regarded as a set phrase.

In Late ME, when the Southern traits were replaced by Central and
Northern traits in the dialect of London, this pattern of noun
declensions prevailed in literary English. The declension of nouns in
the age of Chaucer, in its main features, was the same as in ME. The
simplification of noun morphology was on the whole completed. Most nouns
distinguished two forms: the basic form (with the “zero” ending) and the
form in -(e)s. The nouns originally descending from other types of
declensions for the most part had joined this major type, which had
developed from Masc. a-stems.

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of
the noun in different ways and to a varying degree. The OE Gender, being
a classifying feature (and not a grammatical category proper)
disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun
declensions. (Division into genders played a certain role in the decay
of the OE declension system: in Late OE and Early ME nouns were grouped
into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of
stems.

In the 11th and 12th c. the gender of nouns was deprived of its main
formal support the weakened and leveled endings of adjectives and
adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender. Semantically gender was
associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore: the formal
grouping into genders was smoothly and naturally superseded by a
semantic division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further
subdivision of the latter into males and females.

In Chaucer’s time gender is a lexical category, like in ME: nouns are
referred to as “he” and “she” if they denote human beings, e. g She
wolde wepe, if that she saw a mous. Caught in a trappe, if it were deed
or bledde (Chaucer) “She” points here to a woman while “it” replaces the
noun mous, which in OE was Fem. (‘She would weep, if she saw a mouse
caught in a trap, if it was dead or it bled.’) (Sh.)

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound
changes in Early ME. The number of cases in the noun paradigm was
reduced from four (distinguished in OE) to two in Late ME. The
syncretism of cases was a slow process which went on step by step. As
shown above even in OE the forms of the Nom. and Ace. were not
distinguished in the pi, and in some classes they coincided also in the
sg. In Early ME they fell together in both numbers.

In the strong declension the Dat. was sometimes marked by -e in the
Southern dialects, though not in the North or in the Midlands; the form
without the ending soon prevailed in all areas, and three OE cases,
Nom., Acc. and Dat. fell together. Henceforth they can be called the
Common case, as in present-day English.

Only the Gen. case was kept separate from the other forms, with more
explicit formal distinctions in the singular than in the pi. In the 14th
c. the ending -es of the Gen. sg had become almost universal, there
being only several exceptions nouns which were preferably used in the
uninflected form (names of relationships terminating in -r, some proper
names, and some nouns in stereotyped phrases). In the pl the Gen. case
had no special marker it was not distinguished from the Comm. case as
the ending -(e)s through analogy, had extended to the Gen. either from
the Comm. case pi or, perhaps, from the Gen. sg. This ending was
generalised in the Northern dialects and in the Midlands (a survival of
the OE Gen. pl form in -ena, ME -en(e), was used in Early ME only in the
Southern districts). The formal distinction between cases in the pi was
lost, except in the nouns which did not take -(e)s in the pl. Several
nouns with a weak plural form in -en or with a vowel interchange, such
as oxen and men, added the marker of the Gen. case -es to these forms:
oxenes, mennes. In the 17th and 18th c. a new graphic marker of the Gen.
case came into use: the apostrophe e. g. man’s, children’s: this device
could be employed only in writing; in oral speech the forms remained
homonymous.

The reduction in the number of cases was linked up with a change in the
meanings and functions of the surviving forms. The Comm. case, which
resulted from the fusion of three OE cases assumed all the functions of
the former Nom., Acc., Dat. and also some functions of the Gen. The ME
Comm. case had a very general meaning, which was made more specific by
the context: prepositions, the meaning of the verb-predicate, the word
order. With the help of these means it could express various meanings
formerly belonging to different cases. The following passages taken from
three translations of the Bible give a general idea of the transition;
they show how the OE Gen. Dat. cases were replaced in ME, Early NE by
prepositional phrases with the noun in the Comm. case. OE translation of
the Gospels (10th c.) Eadige synd tha gastlican thearfan, fortham hyra
ys heofena rice. (Gen.) Wyclifs translation (late 14th c. Blessed be the
pore in spirit, for the kingdom in heuenes is heren. King James’ Bible
(17th c. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.

The replacement of the Dat. by prepositional phrases had been well
prepared by its wide use in OE as a case commonly governed by
prepositions.

The main function of the Ace, case to present the direct object was
fulfilled in ME by the Comm. case; the noun was placed next to the verb,
or else its relations with the predicate were apparent from the meaning
of the transitive verb and the noun, e. g. He knew the tavernes well in
every town. For catel hadde they ynogh and rente (Chaucer) (‘He knew
well the taverns in every town for they had enough wealth and income’.)

The history of the Gen. case requires special consideration. Though it
survived as a distinct form, its use 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 Gen. case is used only attributively, to modify a
noun, but even in this function it has a rival prepositional phrases,
above all the phrases with the preposition of. The practice to express
genitival relations by the of-phrase goes back to OE. It is not uncommon
in AElfric’s writings (10th c). but its regular use instead of the
inflectional Gen. does not become established until the 12th c. The use
of the of-phrase grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th c. In some texts
there appears a certain differentiation between the synonyms: the
inflectional Gen. is preferred with animate nouns, while the of-phrase
is more widely used with inanimate ones. Usage varies, as can be seen
from the following examples from Chaucer: Ful worthy was he in his
lordes werre (‘He was very worthy in his lord’s campaigns’)

He had maad ful many a mariage of yonge wommen (‘He made many marriages
of young women’) And specially, from every shires ende, Of Engelond to
Caunterbury they wende.

(‘And especially from the end of every shire of England they went to
Canterbury’)

Various theories have been advanced to account for the restricted use of
the Gen. case, particularly for the preference of the inflectional Gen.
with “personal” nouns. It has been suggested that the tendency to use
the inflectional Gen. with names of persons is a continuation of an old
tradition pertaining to word order. It has been noticed that the
original distinction between the use of the Gen. with different kind of
nouns was not in form but in position. The Gen. of “personal” nouns was
placed before the governing noun, while the Gen. of other nouns was
placed after it. The post-positive Gen. was later replaced by the
of-phrase with the result that the of-phrase came to be preferred with
inanimate nouns and the inflectional Gen. with personal (animate) ones.
Another theory attributes the wider use of the inflectional Gen. with
animate nouns to the influence of a specific possessive construction
containing a possessive pronoun: the painter’ys name, where ‘ys is
regarded as a shortened form of his “the painter his name”. It is
assumed that the frequent use of these phrases may have reinforced the
inflectional Gen., which could take the ending -is, -ys alongside -es
and thus resembled the phrase with the pronoun his, in which the initial
[h] could be dropped.

It may be added that the semantic differentiation between the
prepositional phrase and the s’-Gen. became more precise in the New
period, each acquiring its own set of meanings, with only a few
overlapping spheres. (It has been noticed, that in present-day English
the frequency of the ‘s-Gen. is growing again at the expense of the
of-phrase.)

The other grammatical category of the noun. Number proved to be the most
stable of all the nominal categories. The noun preserved the formal
distinction of two numbers through all the historical periods. Increased
variation in Early ME did not obliterate number distinctions. On the
contrary, it showed that more uniform markers of the pl spread by
analogy to different morphological classes of nouns, and thus
strengthened the formal differentiation of number. The pl forms in ME
show obvious traces of numerous OE noun declensions. Some of these
traces have survived in later periods. In Late ME the ending -es was the
prevalent marker of nouns in the pl.

In Early NE it extended to, more nouns to the new words of the growing
English vocabulary and to many words, which built their plural in a
different way in ME or employed -es as one of the variant endings. The
pi ending -es (as well as the ending -es of the Gen. case) underwent
several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of
unstressed vowels in final syllables. The following examples show the
development of the ME pl inflection -es in Early NE under different
phonetic conditions.

The ME pl ending -en, used as a variant marker with some nouns (and as
the main marker in the weak declension in the Southern dialects) lost
its former productivity, so that in Standard ME it is found only in
oxen, brethern, and children. (The two latter words originally did not
belong to the weak declension: OE bro?or, a-stem, built its plural by
means of a root-vowel interchange; OE cild, took the ending -ru:
cild—cildru; -en was added to the old forms of the pl in ME; both words
have two markers of the pl.). The small group of ME nouns with
homonymous forms of number (ME deer, hors, thing,) has been further
reduced to three “exceptions” in ME: deer, sheep and swine. The group of
former root-stems has survived only as exceptions: man, tooth and the
like. Not all irregular forms in ME are traces of OE declensions; forms
like data, nuclei, antennae have come from other languages together with
the borrowed words.

It follows that the majority of English nouns have preserved and even
reinforced the formal distinction of Number in the Comm. case. Meanwhile
they have practically lost these distinctions in the Gen. case, for Gen.
has a distinct form in the pi. only with nouns whose pl ending is not
-es.

Despite the regular neutralisation of number distinctions in the Gen,
case we can say that differentiation of Number in nouns has become More
explicit and more precise. The functional load and the frequency of
occurrence of the Comm. case are certainly much higher than those of the
Gen.; therefore the regular formal distinction of Number in the Comm.
case is more important than its neutralisation in the Gen. case.

The pronoun. Personal and Possessive Pronouns

Since personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, it might have been expected
that their evolution would repeat the evolution of nouns-in reality it
was in many respects different. The development of the same grammatical
categories in nouns and pronouns was not alike. It differed in the rate
and extent of changes, in the dates and geographical directions, though
the morphology of pronouns, like the morphology of nouns, was
simplified.

In Early ME the OE Fern. pronoun of the 3rd p. sg heo (related to all
the other pronouns of the 3rd p. he, hit, hie was replaced by a group of
variants he, ho, see, sho, she: one of them she finally prevailed over
the others. The new Fern. pronoun. Late ME she, is believed to have
developed from the OE demonstrative pronoun of the Fern. gender seo (OE
se, seo, ?aet, NE that). It was first recorded in the North Eastern
regions and gradually extended to other areas.

The replacement of OE heo by ME she is a good illustration of the
mechanism of linguistic change and of the interaction of intra- and
extra linguistic factors. Increased dialectal divergence in Early ME
supplied ‘the “raw material” for the change in the shape of co-existing
variants or parallels. Out of these variants the language preserved the
unambiguous form she, probably to avoid an homonymy clash, since the
descendant of OE heo ME he coincided with the Masc. pronoun he. The need
to discriminate between the two pronouns was an internal factor which
determined the selection. The choice could also be favored by external
historical conditions, for in later ME many Northern and East Midland
features were incorporated in the London dialect, which became the basis
of literary English. It should be noted, however, that the replacement
was not complete, as the other forms of OE heo were preserved: hire/her,
used in ME as the Obj. case and as a Poss. pronoun is a form of OE heo
but not of its new substitute she; hers was derived from the form
hire/her.

About the same time in the course of ME another important lexical
replacement took place: the OE pronoun of the 3rd p. pl hie was replaced
by the Scand. loan-word they [?ei]. Like the pronoun she, it came from
the North-Eastern areas and was adopted by the mixed London dialect.
This time the replacement was more complete: they ousted the Nom. case,
OE hie, while them and their (corning from the same Scand. loan)
replaced the oblique case forms: OE hem and heora. The two sets of forms
coming from they and hie occur side by side in Late ME texts, e. g.:
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. (‘Who has helped them
when they were sick.’) It is noteworthy that these two replacements
broke up the genetic ties between the pronouns of the 3rd p.: in OE they
were all obvious derivatives of one pronominal root with the initial
[h]: he, heo, hit, hie. The Late ME (as well as the NE) pronouns of the
3rd p. are separate words with no genetic ties whatever: he, she, it,
they (it is a direct descendant of OE hit with [h] lost).

One more replacement was made in the set of personal pronouns at a later
date in the 17th or 18th c. Beginning with the 15th c. the pi forms of
the 2nd p. ye, you, your were applied more and more generally to
individuals. In Shakespeare’s time the pi. forms of the 2nd p. were
widely used as equivalents of thou, thee, thine. Later thou became
obsolete in Standard English. (Nowadays thou is found only in poetry, in
religious discourse and in some dialects.) Cf. the free interchange of
you and thou in Shakespeare’s sonnets. But if thou live, remember’d not
to be. Die single, and thine image dies with thee. Or I shall live your
epitaph to make. Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.

Personal and Possessive Pronouns in ME and Early NE

PersonSingularPluralMEEarly NEMEEarly NE1st p.

Nom.

Obj. (from OE

Acc. and Dat.)

Poss. (from OE Gen.)

ich/I

me

myn(e)/my

I

me

my/mine

we

us

our(e)/ ours

we

us

our, ours2nd p.

Nom.

Obj. (from OE

Acc. and Dat.)

Poss. (from OE Gen.)

thou/thow

thee

thyn(e)/thy

thou/ye

thee/you

thy/your/thine/yours

ye

you

your(e)/yours

you/ye

you

your, yours3rd p.

Nom.

Obj. (from OE

Acc. and Dat.)

Poss. (from OE Gen.)

M. F. N.

he he/she hit/it

him hir(e)/ him/

her it

his her(e) his

hir

he, she, it

him, her, it

his,her,his/its

his, hers, his/its

hie/they

hem/them

her(e)/

their(e)

they

them

their,

theirs

ME texts contain instances where the use of articles and other noun
determiners does not correspond to modern rules, e. g. For hym was
levere have at his beddes heed twenty bookes clad in blak or reed… /
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. ‘For he would rather have
at the head of his bed twenty books bound in black or red than rich
robes, or a fiddle, or a gay psaltery’ (a musical instrument); Yet hadde
he but litel gold in cofre ‘yet he had but little gold in the coffer
(or: in his coffer)’.

It is believed that the growth of articles in Early ME was caused, or
favored, by several internal linguistic factors. The development of the
definite article is usually connected with the changes in the declension
of adjectives, namely with the loss of distinctions between the strong
and weak forms. Originally the weak forms of adjectives had a certain
demonstrative meaning resembling that of the modern definite article.
These forms were commonly used together with the demonstrative pronouns
se, seo, ?aet. In contrast to weak forms, the strong forms of adjectives
conveyed the meaning of “indefiniteness” which was later transferred to
an, a numeral and indefinite pronoun. In case the nouns were used
without adjectives or the weak and strong forms coincided, the
form-words an and ?aet turned out to be the only means of expressing
these meanings. The decay of adjective declensions speeded up their
transition into articles. Another factor which may account for the more
regular use of articles was the changing function of the word order.
Relative freedom in the position of words in the OE sentence made it
possible to use word order for communicative purposes, e. g. to present
a new thing or to refer to a familiar thing already known to the
listener. After the loss of inflections, the word order assumed a
grammatical function, it showed the grammatical relations between words
in the sentence; now the parts of the sentence, e. g. the subject or the
objects, had their own fixed places. The communicative functions passed
to the articles and their use became more regular. The growth of the
articles is thus connected both with the changes in syntax and in
morphology.

The adjective. Decay of Declensions and Grammatical Categories

In the course of the ME period the adjective underwent greater
simplifying changes than any other part o speech. It lost all its
grammatical categories with the exception of the-degrees of comparison.
In OE the adjective was declined to show the gender, case and number of
the noun it modified; it had a five-case paradigm and two types of
declension, weak and strong.

By the end of the OE period the agreement of the adjective with the noun
had become looser and in the course of Early ME it was practically lost.
Though the grammatical categories of the adjective reflected those of
the noun, most of them disappeared even before the noun lost the
respective distinctions. The geographical: direction of the changes was
generally the same as in the noun declensions. The process began in the
North and North-East Midlands and spread south. The poem Ormulum,
written in 1200 in the North-East Midland dialect reveals roughly the
same state of adjective morphology as the poems of G.Chaucer and J.Gower
written in the London dialect almost two hundred years later.

The decay of the grammatical categories of the adjective proceeded in
the following order. The first category to disappear was Gender, which
ceased to be distinguished by the adjective in the 11th c. The number of
cases shown in the adjective paradigm was reduced: the Instr. case had
fused with the Dat. by the end of OE; distinction of other cases in
Early ME was unsteady, as many variant forms of different cases, which
arose in Early ME, coincided. Cf. some variant endings of the Dat. case
sg in the late 11th c.: mid miclum here, mid miclan here, ‘with a big
army’ mid eallora his here ‘with all his army’.

In the 13th c. case could be shown only by some variable adjective
endings in the strong declension (but not by the weak forms); towards
the end of the century all case distinctions were lost. The strong and
weak forms of adjectives were often confused in Early ME texts. The use
of a strong form after a demonstrative pronoun was not uncommon, though
according to the existing rules, this position belonged to the weak
form, e. g.: in there wildere sae ‘in that wild sea’ instead of wilden
see. In the 14th c. the difference between the strong and weak form is
sometimes shown in the sg. with the help of the ending -e.

The general tendency towards an uninflected form affected also the
distinction of Number, though Number was certainly the most stable
nominal category in all the periods. In the 14th c. pl forms were
sometimes contrasted to the sg forms with the help of the ending -e in
the strong declension. Probably this marker was regarded as
insufficient; for in the 13th and particularly 14th c. there appeared a
new pl ending -s. The use of-s is attributed either to the influence of
French adjectives, which take -s in the pi or to the influence of the
ending -s of nouns, e. g.:

In other places delitables. (‘In other delightful places.’)

In the age of Chaucer the paradigm of the adjective consisted of four
forms distinguished by a single vocalic ending -e.

sgplStrong

Weakblind

blindeblinde

blinde

This paradigm can be postulated only for monosyllabic adjectives ending
in a consonant, such as ME bad, good. long. Adjectives ending in vowels
and polysyllabic adjectives took no endings and could not show the
difference between sg and pl forms or strong and weak forms: ME able,
swete, bisy, thredbare and the like were uninflected. Nevertheless
certain distinctions between weak and strong forms, and also between sg
and pl are found in the works of careful 14th c. writers like Chaucer
and Gower. Weak forms are often used attributively after the possessive
and demonstrative pronouns and after the definite article. Thus Chaucer
has: this like worthy knight ‘this same worthy knight’; my deere herte
‘my dear heart’, which are weak forms, the strong forms in the sg having
no ending. But the following examples show that strong and weak forms
could be used indiscriminately: A trewe swynkere and a good was he (‘A
true labourer and a good (one) was he.’) Similarly, the pl. and sg forms
were often confused in the strong declension, e. g.: A sheet of
pecok-arves, bright and kene. Under his belt he bar ful thriftily (‘A
sheaf of peacock-arrows, bright and keen. Under his belt he carried very
thriftily.’)

The distinctions between the sg and pl forms, and the weak and strong
forms, could not be preserved for long, as they were not shown by all
the adjectives; besides, the reduced ending -e [a] was very unstable
even in 14th c. English. In Chaucer’s poems, for instance, it is always
missed out in accordance with the requirements of the rhythm. The loss
of final -e in the transition to NE made the adjective an entirely
uninflected part of speech.

The degrees of comparison is the only set of forms which the adjective
has preserved through all historical periods. However, the means
employed to build up the forms of the degrees of comparison have
considerably altered.

In OE the forms of the comparative and the superlative degree, like all
the grammatical forms, were synthetic:

they were built by adding the suffixes -ra and –est/-ost, to the form of
the positive degree. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an
interchange of the root-vowel; a few adjectives had suppletive forms.

In ME the degrees of comparison could be built in the same way, only the
suffixes had been weakened to -er, -est and the interchange of the
root-vowel was less common than before. Since most adjectives with the
sound alternation had parallel forms without it, the forms with an
interchange soon fell into disuse. ME long, lenger, longer and long,
longer, longest.

The alternation of root-vowels in Early NE survived in the adjectival
old, elder, eldest, where the difference in meaning from older, oldest
made the formal distinction essential. Other traces of the old
alternations 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.

The most important innovation in the adjective system in. the ME period
was the growth of analytical forms of the degrees of comparison. The new
system of comparisons emerged in ME, but the ground for it had already
been prepared by the use of the OE adverbs ma, bet, betst, swithor
‘more’, ‘better’, ‘to a greater degree’ with adjectives and participles.
It is noteworthy that in ME, when the phrases with ME more and most
became more and more common, they were used with all kinds of adjective,
regardless of the number of syllables and were even preferred with mono-
and disyllabic words. Thus Chaucer has more swete, better worthy, Gower
more hard for ‘sweeter’, ‘worthier’ and ‘harder’. The two sets of forms,
synthetic and analytical, were used in free variation until the 17th and
18th c., when the modern standard usage was established.

Another curious peculiarity observed in Early NE texts is the use of the
so-called “double comparatives” and “double superlatives”: By thenne Syr
Trystram waxed more fressher than Syr Marhaus. (‘By that time Sir
Tristram grew more angry than Sir Marhaus’.)

Shakespeare uses the form worser which is a double comparative: A
“double superlative” is seen in: This was the most unkindest cut of all.
The wide range of variation acceptable in Shakespeare’s day was
condemned in the “Age of Correctness” the 18th c. Double comparatives
were banned as illogical and incorrect by the prescriptive grammars of
the normalising period.

It appears that in the course of history the adjective has lost all the
dependent grammatical categories but has preserved the only specifically
adjectival category the comparison. The adjective is the only nominal
part of speech which makes use of the new, analytical, way of
form-building.

Lecture 6. MIDDLE ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Unlike the morphology of the noun and adjective, which has become much
simpler in the course of history, the morphology of the verb displayed
two distinct tendencies of development: it underwent considerable
simplifying changes, which affected the synthetic forms and became far
more complicated owing to the growth of new, analytical forms and new
grammatical categories. The evolution of the finite and non-finite forms
of the verb is described below under these two trends.

The decay of OE inflections, which transformed the nominal system, is
also apparent in the conjugation of the verb though to a lesser extent.
Many markers of the grammatical forms of the verb were reduced, levelled
and lost in ME and Early NE; the reduction, levelling and loss of
endings resulted in the increased neutralisation of formal oppositions
and the growth of homonymy. ME forms of the verb are represented by
numerous variants, which reflect dialectal differences and tendencies of
potential changes. The intermixture of dialectal features in the speech
of London and in the literary language of the Renaissance played an
important role in the Conjugation of Verbs in ME and Early New English
formation of the verb paradigm. The Early ME dialects supplied a store
of parallel variant forms, some which entered literary English and with
certain modifications were eventually accepted as standard. The
simplifying changes the verb morphology affected the distinction of the
grammatical categories to a varying degree.

StrongWeakMEEarly NEMEEarly NEInfinitivefinde(n)findlooke(n)lookPresent
tense

IndicativeSg
1stfindefindlookelook2ndfindest/findesfindestlookest/lookeslookest3rdfin
deth/findesfinds/findethlooketh/lookeslooks/lookethPlfinde(n)/findeth/fi
ndesfindlooke(n)/looketh/lookeslookSubjunctiveSgfinde

findlooke

lookPlfinde(n)looke(n)Imperativefind(e)

findeth/findelook(e)

looketh/lookeParticiple 1finding(e)/-ende/

findind(e)/findand(e)

findinglooking(e)/-ende/-ind(e)/-ande

lookingPast tense

IndicativeSg 1stfand

foundlooked(e)

looked2ndfounde/fand/fandeslookedest3rdfandlooked(e)Plfounde(n)looked(en
)SubjunctiveSgfounde

foundlooked(e)

lookedPlfounde(n)looked(en)Participle IIfoundenfoundlookedlooked

Number distinctions were not only preserved in ME but even became more
consistent and regular; towards the end of the period, however, in the
15th c. they were neutralised in most positions. In the 13th and 14th c.
the ending -en turned into the main, almost universal, “marker of the pl
forms of the verb: it was used in both tenses of the Indicative and
Subjunctive moods (the variants in -eth and -es in the Present
Indicative were used only in the Southern and Northern dialects). In
most classes of strong verbs (except Class 6 and 7) there was an
additional distinctive feature between the sg and pl forms in the Past
tense of the Indicative mood: the two Past tense stems had different
root-vowels (see fand, fanciest, fand and founden). But both ways of
indicating pi turned out to be very unstable. The ending -en was
frequently missed out in the late 14th c. and was dropped in the 15th;
the Past tense stems of the strong verbs merged into one form (e. g.
found, wrote). All number distinctions were thus lost with the exception
of the 2nd and 3rd p., Pres. tense Indic. mood: the sg forms were marked
by the endings -esl and -eth -es and were formally opposed to the forms
of the pl. (Number distinctions in the 2nd p. existed as long as thou.
the pronoun of the 2nd p. sg was used. For the verb to he which has
retained number distinction in both tenses of the Indic. mood) Cf. the
forms of the verb with the subject in the pi in the 14th and he 17th c.:
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. (Chaucer) (Then folks long to
go on pilgrimages.’) All men make faults. (Sh)

The differences in the forms of Person were maintained in ME, though
they became more variable. The OE endings of the 3rd p. sg -th, -eth,
-iath merged into a single ending -(e)th.

The variant ending of the 3rd p. -es was a new marker first recorded in
the Northern dialects. It is believed that -s was borrowed from the pl
forms which commonly ended in -es in the North; it spread to the sg and
began to be used as a variant in the 2nd and 3rd p., but later was
restricted to the 3rd. In Chaucer’s works we still find the old ending
-eth. Shakespeare uses both forms, but forms in -s begin to prevail. Cf:

He rideth out of halle. (Chaucer) (He rides out of the hall’) My life
… sinks down to death. (Sh) but also: But beauty’s waste hath in the
world an end. (Sh)

In Shakespeare’s sonnets the number of -s-forms by far exceeds that of
-eth-forms, though some short verbs, especially auxiliaries, take -th:
hath, doth. Variation of -s/-eth is found in poetry in the 17th and 18th
c.: the choice between them being determined by the rhymes: But my late
spring no buds or blossom shew’th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive
the truth.

In the early 18th c. -(e)s was more common in private letters than in
official and literary texts, but by the end of the century it was the
dominant inflection of the 3rd p. sg in all forms of speech. (The
phonetic development of the verb ending -(e)s since the ME period is
similar to the development of -(e)s as a noun ending. The use of—eth was
stylistically restricted to high poetry and religious texts. The ending
-(e)sl of the 2nd p. sg became obsolete together with the pronoun thou.
The replacement of thou by you/ye eliminated the distinction of person
in the verb paradigm with the exception of the 3rd p. of the Present
tense.

Owing to the reduction of endings and levelling of forms the formal
differences between the moods were also greatly obscured. In OE only a
few forms of the Indicative and Subjunctive mood were homonymous: the
1st p. sg of the Present Tense and the 1st and 3rd p. sg of the Past In
ME the homonymy of the mood forms grew.

The Indicative and Subjunctive moods could no longer be distinguished in
the pl, when -en became the dominant flection of the Indicative pl in
the Present and Past. The reduction and loss of this ending in Early NE
took place in all the forms irrespective of mood. In the Past tense of
strong verbs the difference between the moods in the sg could be shown
by means of a root-vowel interchange, for the Subjunctive mood was
derived from the third principal form of the verb Past pl. while the sg
forms of the Indicative mood were derived from the second principal form
Past sg. When, in the 15th c. the two Past tense stems of the strong
verbs merged, all the forms of the moods in the Past tense fell together
with the exception of the verb to be, which retained a distinct form of
the Subjunctive in the Past sg. were as opposed to was.

Compare the forms of the verb in the following quotations from
Shakespeare used in similar syntactic conditions; some forms are
distinctly marked, others are ambiguous and can be understood either as
Subjunctive or as Indicative: If there be truth in sight, you are my
Rosalind… If thou survive my well contented day… Subj Against that
time, if ever that time come… Subj. If truth holds true contents…
Indic. If I lose thee, my loss is my love’s gain… Indic., or Subj.

The distinction of tenses was preserved in the verb paradigm through all
historical periods. As before, the Past tense was shown with the help of
the dental suffix in the weak verbs, and with the help of the root-vowel
interchange in the strong verbs (after the loss of the endings the
functional load of the vowel interchange grew, cf. OE cuman cuom comon,
differing in the root-vowels and endings, and NE come came). The only
exception was a small group of verbs which came from OE weak verbs of
Class I: in these verbs the dental suffix fused with the last consonant
of the root [t] and after the loss of the endings the three principal
forms coincided: cf. OE settan — sette – geset(en). ME seten — sette —
set, NE set—set—set.

Verbals. The Infinitive and the Participle

The system of verbals in OE consisted of the Infinitive and two
Participles. Their nominal features were more pronounced than their
verbal features, the Infinitive being a sort of verbal noun. Participles
I and II, verbal adjectives. The main trends of their evolution in ME,
NE can be defined as gradual loss of most nominal features (except
syntactical functions) and growth of verbal features. The simplifying
changes in the verb paradigm, and the decay of the OE inflectional
system account for the first of these trends, loss of case distinctions
in the infinitive and of forms of agreement in the Participles.

The Infinitive lost its inflected form (the so-called “Dat. case”) in
Early ME. OE writan and to writanne appear in ME as (to) writen, and in
NE as (to) write. The preposition to, which was placed in OE before the
inflected infinitive to show direction or purpose, lost its
prepositional force and changed into a formal sign of the Infinitive. In
ME the Infinitive with to does not necessarily express purpose. In order
to reinforce the meaning of purpose another preposition, for, was
sometimes placed before the to-infinitive: To lyven in delit was evere
his wone. (Chaucer) (To live in delight was always his habit.’)

In ME the Present Participle and the verbal noun became identical: they
both ended in -ing. This led to the confusion of some of their features:
verbal nouns began to take direct objects, like participles and
infinitives. This verbal feature, a direct object, as well as the
frequent absence of article before the -ing-form functioning as a noun
transformed the verbal noun into a Gerund in the modern understanding of
the term. The disappearance of the inflected infinitive contributed to
the change, as some of its functions were taken over by the Gerund.

The earliest instances of a verbal noun resembling a Gerund date from
the 12th c. Chaucer uses the -ing-form in substantival functions in both
ways: with a prepositional object like a verbal noun and with a direct
object, e.g. in getynge on your richesse and the usinge hem ‘in getting
your riches and using them’. In Early NE the -ing-form in the function
of a noun is commonly used with an adverbial modifier and with a direct
object — in case of transitive verbs, e.g.: Tis pity… That wishing
well had not a body in’t Which might be felt. (Sh) Drink, being poured
out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one, doth empty the other.

Those were the verbal features of the Gerund. The nominal features,
retained from the verbal noun, were its syntactic functions and the
ability to be modified by a possessive pronoun or a noun in the Gen.
case: And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his’ entering?

In the course of time the sphere of the usage of the Gerund grew: it
replaced the Infinitive and the Participle in many adverbial functions;
its great advantage was that it could be used with various prepositions,
e.g.: And now lie fainted and cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind. Shall
we clap into ‘t roundly without hawking, or spitting, or saying we are
hoarse…

The historical changes in the ways of building the principal forms of
the verb (“stems”) transformed the morphological classification of the
verbs. The OE division into classes of weak and strong verbs was
completely re-arranged and broken up. Most verbs have adopted the way of
form-building employed by the weak verbs; the dental suffix. The strict
classification of the strong verbs, with their regular system of
form-building, degenerated. In the long run all these changes led to
increased regularity and uniformity and to the development of a more
consistent and simple system of building the principal forms of the
verb.

Strong Verbs

The seven classes of OE strong verbs underwent multiple grammatical and
phonetic changes. In ME the final syllables of the stems, like all final
syllables, were weakened, in Early NE most of them were lost. Thus the
OE endings -an, -on, and -en (of the 1st, 3rd and 4th principal forms)
were all reduced to ME -en, consequently in Classes 6 and 7, where the
infinitive and the participle had the same gradation vowel, these forms
fell together; in Classes 1 and 3a it led to the coincidence of the 3rd
and 4th principal forms. In the ensuing period, the final -n was lost in
the infinitive and the past tense plural, but was sometimes preserved in
Participle II. probably to distinguish the participle from other forms.
Thus, despite phonetic reduction, -n was sometimes retained to show an
essential grammatical distinction, cf. NE stole stolen, spoke spoken,
but bound bound

In ME, Early NE the root-vowels in the principal forms of all the
classes of strong verbs underwent the regular changes of stressed
vowels.

Due to phonetic changes vowel gradation in Early ME was considerably
modified. Lengthening of vowels before some consonant sequences split
the verbs of Class 3 into two subgroups: verbs like findan had now long
root-vowels in all the forms; while in verbs like drinken the root-vowel
remained short. Thus ME writen and finden (Classes 1 and 3) had the same
vowel in the infinitive but different vowels in the Past and Participle
II. Participle II of Classes 2, 4 and 6 acquired long root-vowels [o:]
and [a:] due to lengthening in open syllables, while in the Participle
with Class 1 the vowel remained short. These phonetic changes made the
interchange less consistent and justified than before, for instance,
verbs with long [i:] in the first stem (writen, finden) would, for no
apparent reason, use different interchanges to form the other stems. At
the same time there was a strong tendency to make the system of forms
more regular. The strong verbs were easily influenced by analogy. It was
due to analogy that they lost practically all consonant interchanges in
ME and Early NE. The interchange [z~r] in was were was retained. Classes
which had many similar forms were often confused: OE sprecan Class 5
began to build the Past Participle spoken, like verbs of Class 4 (also
NE weave and tread).

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 tense stems. In OE these stems had the
same gradation vowels only in Classes 6 and 7, but we should recall that
the vast majority of English verbs which were weak had a single stem for
all the past forms. These circumstances facilitated analogical leveling,
which occurred largely in Late ME. Its direction depended on the
dialect, and on the class of the verb.

In the Northern dialects the vowel of the Past sg tended to replace that
of the Past pi; in the South and in the Midlands the distinction between
the stems was preserved longer than in the North In the South and
South-West the vowel of the Past sg was often replaced by that of the
Past pt or of the Past Participle, especially if the 3rd and 4th sterns
had the same root-vowel. Some classes of verbs showed preference for one
or another of these ways.

Different directions of leveling can be exemplified by forms which were
standardised in literary English: wrote, rose, rode are Past sg forms by
origin (Class 1); bound, found are Past pl (Class 3a), spoke, got, bore
(Classes 5, 4) took their root-vowel from Participle II. Since the 15th
c a single stem was used as a base for all the forms of the Past Tense
of the Indicative and Subjunctive Moods. 479. The tendency to reduce the
number of stems continued in Early NE. At this stage it affected the
distinction between the new Past tense stem and Participle II. Identical
forms of these stems are found not only in the literary texts and
private letters but even M books on English grammar: thus B.Jonson
(1640) recommends beat and broke as correct forms of Participle II;
Shakespeare uses sang and spoke both as Past tense forms and Participle
II.

One of the most important events in the history of the strong verbs was
their transition into weak. In ME, Early NE many strong verbs began to
form their Past and Participle II with the help of the dental suffix
instead of vowel gradation. Therefore the number of strong verbs
decreased. In OE there were about three hundred strong verbs. Some of
them dropped out of use owing to changes in the vocabulary, while most
of the remaining verbs became weak. Out of 195 OE strong verbs,
preserved in the language, only 67 have retained strong forms with
root-vowel interchange roughly corresponding to the OE gradation series.
By that time the weak verbs had lost all distinctions between the forms
of the Past tense. The model of weak verbs with two ‘basic forms, may
have influenced the strong verbs. The changes in the formation of
principal parts of strong verbs extended over a long period.

Weak verbs

Some weak verbs preserved the root-vowel interchange, though some of the
vowels were altered due to regular quantitative and qualitative vowel
changes: ME sellen — solde (OE salde > Early ME [‘sa:lde] > Late ME
[‘so:lde] > NE sold [sould]), techen—taughte; NE sell—sold, teach —
taught.

Another group of weak verbs became irregular in Early ME as a result of
quantitative vowel changes. In verbs like OE cepan, fedan, metan the
long vowel in the root was shortened before two consonants in the Past
and Participle II; OE cepte > ME kepte [‘kepte]. The long vowel in the
Present tense stem was preserved and was altered during the Great Vowel
Shift, hence the interchange [i: > e], NE keep — kept, feed—fed. This
group of verbs attracted several verbs from other classes — NE sleep,
weep, read, which formerly belonged to Class 7 of strong verbs. Some
verbs of this group—NE mean, feel—have a voiceless [t]

Verbs like OE settan, with the root ending in a dental consonant, added
the dental suffix without the intervening vowel [e] OE sette. When the
inflections were reduced and dropped, the three stems of the verbs
Present, Past and Participle II fell together: NE set—se—set;
put—put—put: cast—cast—cast. etc. The final -t of the root had absorbed
the dental suffix. (Wherever possible the distinctions were preserved or
even introduced: thus OE sendan, restan, which had the same forms sende,
reste for the Past, Present appear in ME as senden – sente, resten –
rested(e).

It must be noted that although the number of non-standard verbs in Mod E
is not large about 200 items 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. Their significance for the grammatical system lies
in the fact that many of these verbs have preserved the distinction
between three principal forms, which makes modern grammarians recognise
three stems in all English verbs despite the formal identity of the Past
and Participle II.

ME ben (NE be) inherited its suppletive forms from the OE and more
remote periods of history. It owes its variety of forms not only to
suppletion but also to the dialectal divergence in OE and ME and to the
inclusion of various dialectal traits in literary English. The Past
tense forms were fairly homogeneous in all the dialects. The forms of
the Pres. tense were derived from different roots and displayed
considerable dialectal differences. ME am, are(n) came from the Midland
dialects and replaced the West Saxon зom, sint / sindon. In OE the forms
with the initial b- from bзon were synonymous and interchangeable with
the other forms but in Late ME and NE they acquired a new function: they
were used as forms of the Subj. and the Imper. moods or in reference to
the future and were thus opposed to the forms of the Pres. Ind.

Hang be the heavens with black, yield day to night! (Sh) Forms with the
initial b- were also retained or built in ME as the forms of verbals: ME
being/ beande Part. I, ben, y-ben the newly formed Part. II (in OE the
verb had no Past Part.); the Inf. ben (NE being, been, be).

The redistribution of suppletive forms in the paradigm of be made it
possible to preserve some of the grammatical distinctions which were
practically lost in other verbs, namely the distinction of number,
person and mood.

New Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb

The evolution of the verb system in the course of history was not
confined to the simplification of the conjugation and to growing
regularity in building the forms of the verb. In ME and NE the verb
paradigm expanded, owing to the addition of new grammatical forms and to
the formation of new grammatical categories. The extent of these changes
can be seen from a simple comparison of the number of categories and
categorial forms in Early OE with their number today. Leaving out of
consideration Number and Person as categories of concord with the
Subject we can say that OE finite verbs had two verbal grammatical
categories proper: Mood and Tense. According to Mod E grammars the
finite verb has five categories Mood, Tense, Aspect, Time-Correlation
and Voice. All the new forms which have been included in the verb
paradigm are analytical forms; all the synthetic forms are direct
descendants of OE forms, for no new synthetic categorial forms have
developed since the OE period.

The growth of analytical forms of the verb is a common Germanic
tendency, though it manifested itself a long time after PG split into
separate languages. The beginnings of these changes are dated in Late OE
and in ME. The growth of compound forms from free verb phrases was a
long and complicated process which extended over many hundred years and
included several kinds of changes.

A genuine analytical verb form must have a stable structural pattern
different from the patterns of verb phrases; it must consist of several
component parts: an auxiliary verb, sometimes two or three auxiliary
verbs, e.g. NE would have been taken which serve as a grammatical
marker, and a non-finite form Inf. or Part., which serves as a
grammatical marker and expresses the lexical meaning of the form. The
analytical form should be idiomatic: its meaning is not equivalent to
the sum of meanings of the component parts.

The development of these properties is known as the process of
“grammatisation”. Some verb phrases have been completely grammatised
e.g. the Perfect forms. Some of them have not been fully grammatised to
this day and are not regarded as ideal analytical forms in modern
grammars (for instance, the Future tense).

In order to become a member of a grammatical category and a part of the
verb paradigm the new form had to acquire another important quality: a
specific meaning of its own which would be contrasted to the meaning of
its opposite member within the grammatical category (in the same way as
e. g. Past is opposed to Pres. or pl is opposed to sg). It was only at
the later stages of development that such semantic oppositions were
formed. Originally the verb phrases and the new compound forms were used
as synonyms (or “near synonyms”) of the old synthetic forms; gradually
the semantic differences between the forms grew: the new forms acquired
a specific meaning while the application of the old forms was narrowed.
It was also essential that the new analytical forms should be used
unrestrictedly in different varieties of the language and should embrace
verbs of different lexical meanings.

The establishment of an analytical form in the verb system is confirmed
by the spread of its formal pattern in the verb paradigm. Compound forms
did not spring up simultaneously in all the parts of the verb system: an
analytical form appeared in some part of the system and from there its
pattern extended to other parts. Thus the perfect forms first arose in
the Past and Pres. tense of the Ind. Mood in the Active Voice and from
there spread to the Subj. Mood, the Passive Voice, the non-finite verb.

Those were the main kinds of changes which constitute the growth of new
grammatical forms and new verbal categories. They are to be found in the
history of all the forms, with certain deviations and individual
peculiarities. The dating of these developments is uncertain; therefore
the order of their description below does not claim to be chronological.

The Future Tense

In the OE language there was no form of the Future tense. The category
of Tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. The Pres. tense
could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the
context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting
future happenings: modal phrases, consisting of the verbs sculan,
willan, magan, cunnan and others (NE shall, will, may, can) and the
Infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of
futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition,
obligation, possibility.

In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became
increasingly common. Shall plus Inf. was now the principal means of
indicating future actions in any context. (We may recall that the Pres.
tense had to be accompanied by special time indicators in order to refer
an action to the future.) Shall could retain its modal meaning of
necessity, but often weakened it to such an extent that the phrase
denoted “pure” futurity. (The meaning of futurity is often combined with
that of modality, as a future action is a planned, potential action,
which has not yet taken place.) One of the early instances of shall with
a weakened modal meaning is found in the Early ME poem Ormilum (1200);
the phrase is also interesting as it contains willen as a notional verb:
And whase wile/in shall thiss boc efft otherrsipe written.

In Late ME texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a Future
tense auxiliary, though discrimination between them is not always
possible. Cf: Me from the feend and fro his clawes kepe. That day that I
shal drenchen in the depe. (Chaucer) (‘Save me from the fiend and his
claws the day when I am drowned (or am doomed to get drowned) in the
deep (sea). She shal have nede to wasshe away the rede. (Chaucer) (‘She
will have to wash away the red (blood).’)

Future happenings were also commonly expressed by ME willen with an
Int., but the meaning of volition in will must have been more obvious
than the modal meaning of shall: A tale wol I telle (‘I intend to tell a
story’)But lordes, wol ye maken assurance. As I shal seyn, assentynge to
my loore. And I shal make us sauf for everemore (‘But, lordes, will you
(be so kind as or agree to) make assurance (and take this course) as I
shall save and I shall make it safe for us for ever.’)

The future event is shown here as depending upon the will or consent of
the doer. Instances of will with a weakened modal meaning are rare: But
natheless she ferde as she wolde deye. (Chaucer) (‘But nevertheless she
feared that she would die.’) It has been noticed that the verb will was
more frequent in popular ballads and in colloquial speech, which
testifies to certain stylistic restrictions in the use of will in ME.

In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as
the Pres. tense of notional verbs, occurred in free variation; they can
express “pure” futurity and add different shades of modal meanings.
Phrases with shall and will outnumbered all the other ways of indicating
futurity, cf. their meanings in the following passages from
Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Then hate me when thou wilt (desire) When forty winters shall besiege
thy brow. And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field. Thy youth’s proud
livery, so gaz’d on now. Will be a tatter’d weed, of small worth held.
(“pure” future) That thou art blam’d – shall not be thy defect, (future
with the meaning of certainty, prediction)

In the 17th c. will was sometimes used in a shortened form ‘ll, (‘ll can
also stand for shall, though historically it is traced to will): against
myself I’ll fight; against myself I’ll vow debate. (Sh) In Early NE the
causative meaning passed to a similar verb phrase with make, while the
periphrasis with do began to be employed instead of simple, synthetic
forms. Its meaning did not differ from that of simple forms.

At first the do-periphrasis was more frequent in poetry, which may be
attributed to the requirements of the rhythm: the use of do enabled the
author to have an extra syllable in the line, if needed, without
affecting the meaning of the sentence. Then it spread to all kinds of
texts.

In the 16th and 17th c. the periphrasis with do was used in all types of
sentences – negative, affirmative and interrogative; it freely
interchanged with the simple forms, without do. We do not know How he
may soften at the sight o’the child…Who told me that the pour soul did
forsake The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me? But what we doe
determine oft we break…

Negative statements and questions without do are illustrated by Heard
you all this? I know not why, nor wherefo to say live, boy… And
wherefore say not I that I am old?

Towards the end of the 17th c. the use of simple forms and the
do-periphrasis became more differentiated: do was found mainly in
negative statements and questions, while the simple forms were preferred
in affirmative statements. Thus the do-periphrasis turned into
analytical negative and interrogative forms of simple forms: Pres and
Past.

The growth of new negative and interrogative forms with do can be
accounted for by syntactic conditions. By that time the word order in
the sentence had become fixed: the predicate of the sentence normally
followed the subject. The use of do made it possible to adhere to this
order in questions, for at least the notional part of the predicate
could thus preserve its position after the subject. This order of words
was already well established in numerous sentences with analytical forms
and modal phrases. Cf: Do you pity him? No, he deserves no pity …Wilt
thou not love such a woman? And must they all be hanged that swear and
lie? Likewise, the place of the negative particle not in negative
sentences with modal phrases and analytical forms set up a pattern for
the similar use of not with the do-periphrasis. Cf: will not let him
stir and If’1 do not wonder how thou darest venture. The form with do
conformed with the new pattern of the sentence much better than the old
simple form (though sentences with not in postposition to the verb are
still common in Shakespeare: know not which is which).

In the 18th c. the periphrasis with do as an equivalent of the simple
form in affirmative statements fell into disuse (its employment in
affirmative sentences acquired a stylistic function: it made the
statement emphatic).

Passive Forms. Category of Voice

In OE the finite verb had no category of Voice. With the exception of
some traces of the Germanic Mediopassive restricted to the verb hatan
‘call’, there was no regular opposition of forms in the verb paradigm to
show the relation of the action to the grammatical subject. Only in the
system of verbals the participles of transitive verbs, Pres. and Past
were contrasted as having an active and a passive meaning. The
analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases consisting of OE
beon (NE be) and weorthan (‘become’) and Part. II of transitive verbs.

OE beon was used as a link-verb with a predicative expressed by Part. II
to denote a state resulting from a previous action, while the
construction with OE weorthan ‘become’ indicated the transition into the
state expressed by the participle. Werthen was still fairly common in
Early ME (in Ormulum), but not nearly as common as the verb ben: soon
werthen was replaced by numerous new link-verbs which had developed from
notional verbs (ME becomen, geten, semen, NE become, get, seem); no
instances of werthen are found in Chaucer. The participle, which served
as predicative to these verbs, in OE agreed with the subject in number
and gender, although the concord with participles was less strict than
with adjectives. The last instances of this agreement are found in Early
ME: fewe beoth icorene (13th c.) ‘few were chosen’.

In ME ben plus Past Part, developed into an analytical form. Now it
could express not only a state but also an action. The formal pattern of
the Pass. Voice extended to many parts of the verb paradigm: it is found
in the Future tense, in the Pert. forms, in the Subj. Mood and in the
non-finite forms of the verb, e.g. Chaucer has: the conseil that was
accorded by youre neighebores (‘The advice that was given by your
neighbours’) But certes, wikkidnesse shal be warisshed by goodnesse.
(‘But, certainly, wickedness shall be cured by goodness.’) With many a
tempest hadde his berde been shake. (‘His beard had been shaken with
many tempests.’) Traces of Mediopassive in this verb are found even in
Late ME: This mayden, which that Mayus highte. (Chaucer) (‘This maid who
was called Mayus.’) The new Pass. forms had a regular means of
indicating the doer of the action or the instrument with the help of
which it was performed. Out of a variety of prepositions employed in OE
from, mid, with, bi two were selected and generalised: by and with. Thus
in ME the Pass. forms were regularly contrasted to the active forms
throughout the paradigm, both formally and semantically. Therefore we
can say that the verb had acquired a new grammatical category the
category of Voice.

In Early NE the Pass. Voice continued to grow and to extend its
application. Late ME saw the appearance of new types of passive
constructions. In addition to passive constructions with the subject
corresponding to the direct object of the respective active
construction, i.e. built from transitive verbs, there arose passive
constructions whose subject corresponded to other types of objects:
indirect and prepositional. Pass. forms began to be built from
intransitive verbs associated with different kinds of objects, e.g.
indirect objects: The angel ys tolde the wordes. (Higden) (‘The angel is
told the words.’) He shulde soone delyvered be gold in sakkis gret
plenty. (Chaucer) (‘He should be given (delivered) plenty of gold in
sacks.’) prepositional objects: I wylle that my moder be sente for.
(Malory) (‘I wish that my mother were sent for.’) He himself was oftener
laughed at than his iestes were. (Caxton) ’tis so concluded on; We’ll be
waited on (Sh).

It should be added that from an early date the Pass. Voice was common in
impersonal sentences with it introducing direct or indirect speech: Hit
was accorded, granted and swore, bytwene the King of Fraunce and the
King of Engelond that he shulde haue agen at his landes (Brut, 13th
c.)(‘It was agreed, granted and sworn between the King of France and the
King of England that he should have again all his lands.’) The wide use
of various pass. constructions in the 18th and 19th c. testifies to the
high productivity of the Pass. Voice. At the same time the Pass. Voice
continued to spread to new parts of the verb paradigm: the Gerund and
the Continuous forms.

Perfect Forms

Like other analytical forms of the verb, the Perf. forms have developed
from OE verb phrases. The main source of the Perf. form was the OE
“possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a
direct object and Part. II of a transitive verb, which served as an
attribute to the object, e.g.: Haefde se goda cempan gecorene (Beowulf)
(‘had that brave (man) warriors chosen’.) The meaning of the
construction was: a person (the subject) possessed a thing (object),
which was characterised by a certain state resulting from a previous
action (the participle). The participle, like other attributes, agreed
with the noun-object in Number, Gender and Case. Originally the verb
habban was used only with participles of transitive verbs; then it came
to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival and prepositional
objects and even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was
developing into a kind of auxiliary, e.g.: for sefenn winnterr haffde he
ben in Egypte (Ormulum) (‘For seven winters he had been in Egypt’)

The other source of the Perf. forms was the OE phrase consisting of the
link-verb bзon and Part. II of intransitive verbs: nu is se daeg cumen
(Beowulf) (‘Now the day has (“is”) come’) hwaenne mine dagas agane beoth
(AElfric)… (‘When my days are gone (when I die)’.) In these phrases
the participle usually agreed with the subject.

Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up
a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their
forms of agreement with the noun (the subject in the construction with
ben, the object in the construction with haven); the places of the
object and the participle in the construction with haven changed: the
Participle usually stood close to the verb have and was followed by the
object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole – instead of
being governed by have. Cf. the OE possessive construction quoted above
with ME examples:

The holy blisful martyr for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they
were seeke. (Chaucer) (‘To seek the holy blissful martyr who has helped
them when they were ill.’)

In the Perfect form the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of
possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restriction.
Have was becoming a universal auxiliary, whereas the use of be grew more
restricted. Shakespeare employs be mainly with verbs of movement, but
even with these verbs be alternates with have:

He is not yet arriv’d … On a modern pace I have since arrived but
hither.

One of the instances of perfect with both auxiliaries is found in S.
Pepy’s Diary (late 17th c.): and My Lord Chesterfield had killed another
gentlemen and was fled.

By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perfect forms had spread to
all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of
time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories. An
isolated instance of Perfect Continuous is found in Chaucer: We han ben
waityng al this fortnight. (‘We have been waiting all this fortnight.’)
Instances of Perfect Passive are more frequent:

O fy! for shame! they that han been brent Alias! can thei nat flee the
fyres hete?

(‘For shame, they who have been burnt, alas, can they not escape the
fire’s heat?’)

Perfect forms in the Pass. Voice, Pert. forms of the Subj. Mood, Future
Perf. forms are common in Shakespeare: if she had been blessed….

Continuous Forms

The development of Aspect is linked up with the growth of the Continuous
forms. In the OE verb system there was no category of Aspect; verbal
prefixes especially ge-, which could express an aspective meaning of
perfectivity were primarily word-building prefixes. The growth of
Continuous forms was slow and uneven.

Verb phrases consisting of beon (NE be) plus Part. I are not
infrequently found in OE prose. They denoted a quality, or a lasting
state, characterising the person or thing indicated by the subject of
the sentence, e.g. seo… is irnende thurh middewearde Babylonia burg
“that (river) runs through the middle of Babylon”; ealle tha woruld on
hiora agen gewill onwendende waeron neah C wintra “they all were
destroying the world (or: were destroyers of the world) at their own
will for nearly 100 years”.

In Early ME ben plus Part. I fell into disuse; it occurs occasionally in
some dialectal areas: in Kent and in the North, but not in the Midlands.
In Late ME it extended to other dialects and its frequency grew again,
e.g.

Syngynge he was or floytynge al the day. (Chaucer) (‘He was singing or
playing the flute all day long.’) The flod is into the greet see
rennende. (Gower) (‘The river runs into the great sea.’)

At that stage the construction did not differ from the simple verb form
in meaning and was used as its synonym, mainly for emphasis and
vividness of description. Cf.:

We holden on to the Cristen feyth and are byleving in Jhesu Cryste.
(Caxton)

(‘We hold to the Christian faith and believe (lit. “are believing”) in
Jesus Christ.’)

In the 15th and 16th c. be plus Part. I was often confused with a
synonymous phrase – be plus the preposition on (or its reduced form a)
plus a verbal noun. By that time the Pres. Part. and the verbal noun had
lost their formal differences: the Part. I was built with the help of
-ing and the verbal noun had the word-building suffix -ing, which had
ousted the equivalent OE suffix -ung.

She wyst not… whether she was a-wakyng or a-slepe. (Caxton) (‘She did
not know whether she was awake (was on waking) or asleep.’) A Knyght …
had been on huntynge. (Malory) (‘A knight had been hunting (lit. “on
hunting”).’

The prepositional phrase indicated a process, taking place at a certain
period of time. It is believed that the meaning of process or an action
of limited duration – which the Cont. forms acquired in Early NE – may
have come from the prepositional phrase. Yet even in the 17th c. the
semantic difference between the Cont. and non-Cont. forms is not always
apparent, e.g.: The Earl of Wesmoreland, seven thousand strong, is
marching hitherwards. (Sh)

What, my dear lady Disdain! Are you yet living? (Sh). Here the Cont.
makes the statement more emotional, forceful.)

The non-Cont., simple form can indicate an action in progress which
takes place before the eyes of the speaker (nowadays this use is typical
of the Cont. form):

Enter Hamlet reading… Po1onius. What do you read, my lord?

It was not until the 18th c. that the Cont. forms acquired a specific
meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete
concrete process of limited duration. Only at that stage the Cont. and
non-Cont. made up a new grammatical category – Aspect. The meaning of
non-Cont. – Indef. – forms became more restricted, though the contrast
was never as sharp as in the other categories: in some contexts the
forms have remained synonymous and are even interchangeable to this day.

By that time the formal pattern of the Cont. as an analytical form was
firmly established. The Cont. forms were used in all genres and dialects
and could be built both from non-terminative verbs, as in OE, and from
terminative verbs. They had extended to many parts of the verb system,
being combined with other forms. Thus the Future Cont. is attested in
the Northern texts since the end of the 13th c.; the first unambiguous
instances of the Pert. Cont. are recorded in Late ME.

For many hundred years the Cont. forms were not used in the Pass. Voice.
In Late ME the Active Voice of the Cont. form was sometimes used with a
passive meaning:

My mighte and my mayne es all marrande. (York plays) (‘My might and my
power are all being destroyed.’) (lit. “is destroying”).

The Active form of the Cont. aspect was employed in the passive meaning
until the 19th c. The earliest written evidence of the Pass. Cont. is
found in a private letter of the 18th c.: … a fellow whose uppermost
upper grinder is being torn out by the roots…

The new Pass. form aroused the protest of many scholars. Samuel Johnson,
the great lexicographer, called it a “vicious” expression and
recommended the active form as a better way of expressing the passive
meaning. He thought that phrases like the book is now printing; the
brass is forging had developed from the book is a-printing; the brass is
a-forging; which meant ‘is in the process of forging’, and therefore
possessed the meaning of the Pass. Even in the late 19th c. it was
claimed that the house is being built was a clumsy construction which
should be replaced by the house is building. But in spite of all these
protests the Pass. Voice of the Cont. aspect continued to be used and
eventually was recognised as correct.

The growth of the Cont. forms in the last two centuries is evidenced not
only by its spread in the verb paradigm – the development of the Pass.
forms in the Cont. Aspect – but also by its growing frequency and the
loosening of lexical constraints. In the 19th and 20th c. the Cont.
forms occur with verbs of diverse lexical meaning.

The uneven development of the Cont. forms, their temporary regress and
recent progress, as well as multiple dialectal and lexical restrictions
gave rise to numerous hypotheses about their origin and growth.

Some scholars attribute the appearance of the Cont. forms in English to
foreign influence: Latin, French or Celtic. These theories, however, are
not confirmed by facts.

Numerous instances of OE beon + Part. I were found in original OE texts,
particularly in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicals. But the construction is rare
in translations from Latin, for instance in Wyklif’s translation of the
Bible.

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