The Anglo-Saxon Settlement. Little is known of this period with any certainty, but we do know that Germanic invaders came and settled in Britain from the north-western coastline of continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. The invaders all spoke a language that was Germanic (related to what emerged as Dutch, Frisian, German and the Scandinavian languages, and to Gothic), but we'll probably never know how different their speech was from that of their continental neighbours. However it is fairly certain that many of the settlers would have spoken in exactly the same way as some of their north European neighbours, and that not all of the settlers would have spoken in the same way.
The reason that we know so little about the linguistic situation in this period is because we do not have much in the way of written records from any of the Germanic languages of north-western Europe until several centuries later. When Old English writings begin to appear in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries there is a good deal of regional variation, but not substantially more than that found in later periods. This was the language that Alfred the Great referred to as ‘English’ in the ninth century.
The Celts were already resident in Britain when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, but there are few obvious traces of their language in English today. Some scholars have suggested that the Celtic tongue might have had an underlying influence on the grammatical development of English, particularly in some parts of the country, but this is highly speculative. The number of loanwords known for certain to have entered Old English from this source is very small. Those that survive in modern English include brock(badger), and coomb a type of valley, alongside many place names.
The Scandinavian Settlements. The next invaders were the Norsemen. From the middle of the ninth century large numbers of Norse invaders settled in Britain, particularly in northern and eastern areas, and in the eleventh century the whole of England had a Danish king, Canute. The distinct North Germanic speech of the Norsemen had great influence on English, most obviously seen in the words that English has borrowed from this source. These include some very basic words such as take and even grammatical words such as they. The common Germanic base of the two languages meant that there were still many similarities between Old English and the language of the invaders. Some words, for example give, perhaps show a kind of hybridization with some spellings going back to Old English and others being Norse in origin. However, the resemblances between the two languages are so great that in many cases it is impossible to be sure of the exact ancestry of a particular word or spelling. However, much of the influence of Norse, including the vast majority of the loanwords, does not appear in written English until after the next great historical and cultural upheaval, the Norman Conquest.
3) The Norman Conquest. The centuries after the Norman Conquest witnessed enormous changes in the English language. In the course of what is called the Middle English period, the fairly rich inflectional system of Old English broke down. It was replaced by what is broadly speaking, the same system English has today, which unlike Old English makes very little use of distinctive word endings in the grammar of the language. The vocabulary of English also changed enormously, with tremendous numbers of borrowings from French and Latin, in addition to the Scandinavian loanwords already mentioned, which were slowly starting to appear in the written language. Old English, like German today, showed a tendency to find native equivalents for foreign words and phrases (although both Old English and modern German show plenty of loanwords), whereas Middle English acquired the habit that modern English retains today of readily accommodating foreign words. Trilingualism in English, French, and Latin was common in the worlds of business and the professions, with words crossing over from one language to another with ease. You only have to flick through the etymologies of any English dictionary to get an impression of the huge number of words entering English from French and Latin during the later medieval period. This trend was set to continue into the early modern period with the explosion of interest in the writings of the ancient world.
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4) Standardization. The late medieval and early modern periods saw a fairly steady process of standardization in English south of the Scottish border. The written and spoken language of London continued to evolve and gradually began to have a greater influence in the country at large. For most of the Middle English period a dialect was simply what was spoken in a particular area, which would normally be more or less represented in writing - although where and from whom the writer had learnt how to write were also important. It was only when the broadly London standard began to dominate, especially through the new technology of printing, that the other regional varieties of the language began to be seen as different in kind. As the London standard became used more widely, especially in more formal contexts and particularly amongst the more elevated members of society, the other regional varieties came to be stigmatized, as lacking social prestige and indicating a lack of education. In the same period a series of changes also occurred in English pronunciation (though not uniformly in all dialects), which go under the collective name of the Great Vowel Shift. These were purely linguistic ‘sound changes’ which occur in every language in every period of history. The changes in pronunciation weren’t the result of specific social or historical factors, but social and historical factors would have helped to spread the results of the changes. As a result the so-called ‘pure’ vowel sounds which still characterize many continental languages were lost to English. The phonetic pairings of most long and short vowel sounds were also lost, which gave rise to many of the oddities of English pronunciation, and which now obscure the relationships between many English words and their foreign counterparts.
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Colonization and Globalization. During the medieval and early modern periods the influence of English spread throughout the British Isles, and from the early seventeenth century onwards its influence began to be felt throughout the world. The complex processes of exploration, colonization and overseas trade that characterized Britain’s external relations for several centuries led to significant change in English. Words were absorbed from all over the world, often via the languages of other trading and imperial nations such as Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. At the same time, new varieties of English emerged, each with their own nuances of vocabulary and grammar and their own distinct pronunciations. More recently still, English has become a lingua franca, a global language, regularly used and understood by many nations for whom English is not their first language. The eventual effects on the English language of both of these developments can only be guessed at today, but there can be little doubt that they will be as important as anything that has happened to English in the past sixteen hundred years.
The last question for today but not the least is distinguishing two approaches. These approaches are synchronic and diachronic. Synchronic approach studies phenomena of a language comparing them with the same in other languages at a particular period. A synchronic approach analyzes a particular something at a given, fixed point in time. Diachronic approach studies the development of a phenomenon through time and periods. A diachronic approach is one that analyzes the evolution of something over time, allowing one to assess how that something changes throughout history. Approach that we are using in a History of English is diachronic. All the units, phenomena of the language we shall observe diachronically.
And now some questions for you to answer.
1) Can you answer now when the English language began?
2) Why do some people in France still speak the Celtic Language of Breton?
3) What alphabet was used in Old English period?
4) Give 2/3-minute talk on each period historical background.
English phonetics diachronic approach. Word-stress. Vowels. Consonants. Vowels(2d lecture)
No one knows exactly how Old English sounded, for no native speakers survive to inform us. Rather, linguists have painstakingly reconstructed the pronunciation of the language from various kinds of evidence: what we know of Latin pronunciation (since the Anglo-Saxons adapted the Latin alphabet to write their own language), comparisons with other Germanic languages and with later stages of English, and the accentuation and quantity of syllables in Old English poetry. We believe that such reconstruction of Old English pronunciation is reasonably accurate; but some aspects of the subject remain controversial, and it is likely that we will never attain certainty about them. The greatest Old English scholar in the world today might very well have difficulty being understood on the streets of King Alfred's Winchester.
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Old English had six simple vowels, spelled a, æ, i, o, u and y, and probably a seventh, spelled ie. It also had two diphthongs (two-part vowels), ea and eo. Each of these sounds came in short and long versions. Long vowels are always marked with macrons (e.g. ā) in modern editions for students, and also in some scholarly editions. However, vowels are never so marked in Old English manuscripts. When we speak of vowel length in Old English, we are speaking of duration, that is, how long it takes to pronounce a vowel. This fact can trip up the modern student, for when we speak of "length" in Modern English, we are actually speaking of differences in the quality of a vowel. Vowel length (that is, duration) is significant in Old English because it does make a difference in the meanings of words. For example, Old English is means 'is' while īs means 'ice', ac means 'but' while āc means 'oak', and ġe means 'and' while ġē means 'you' (plural). The significance of length means that the macrons that appear in the texts you will be reading are not there only as guides to pronunciation, but also to help you decide what words mean. If you absent-mindedly read mǣġ 'kinsman' as mæġ 'may', you will never figure out the meaning of the sentence you are reading.
Do you want to know how it was agreed to pronounce the vowels? Let’s find it in the table 1
| vowel | pronunciation | how it should sound | OE examples |
| a | [ɑ] | as in Modern English father | macian 'make', bāt 'boat' |
| æ | [æ] | as in Modern English cat | Bæc 'back', rǣdan 'read' |
| e | [e] | as in Modern English help | Helpan 'help', fēdan 'feed' |
| i | [i] | as in Modern English feet | Sittan 'sit', līf 'life' |
| o | [o] | as in Modern English boat | God 'God', gōd 'good' |
| u | [u] never pronounced like [ʌ] | as in Modern English tool | Full 'full', fūl 'foul' |
| y | like the ü in German über or Füße | Cyning 'king', brȳd 'bride' | |
| ie | appears mainly in early West Saxon, is difficult to interpret. |
Most Old English consonants are pronounced as in Modern English, and most of the differences from Modern English are straightforward:
1. Old English scribes wrote the letters þ ("thorn") and ð ("eth") interchangeably to represent [θ] and [ð], the sounds spelled th in Modern English. Examples: þing 'thing', brōðor 'brother'.
2. There are no silent consonants. Old English cniht (which comes to Modern English as knight) actually begins with [k]. Similarly hlāf (Modern English loaf) and hring (ring) begin with [h], gnæt (gnat) with [ɡ], and wrīðan (writhe) with [w]. Some Old English consonant combinations may be difficult to pronounce because they are not in Modern English. If you find this to be so, just do your best.
3. The consonants spelled f, s and þ/ð are pronounced as voiced [v], [z] and [ð] (as in then) when they fall between vowels or other voiced sounds. For example, the f of heofon 'heaven', hæfde 'had' and wulfas 'wolves' is voiced. So are the s of ċēosan 'choose' and the ð of feðer 'feather'.
4. These same consonants were pronounced as unvoiced [f], [s], and [θ] (as in thin) when they came at the beginning or end of a word or adjacent to at least one unvoiced sound. So f is unvoiced in ful 'full', cræft 'craft' and wulf 'wolf'. Similarly s is unvoiced in settan 'set', frost 'frost', and wulfas 'wolves', and þ/ð is unvoiced in þæt 'that' and strengð 'strength'.
5. When written double, consonants must be pronounced double, or held longer. We pronounce consonants long in Modern English phrases like "big gun" and "hat trick," though never within words. In Old English, wile 'he will' must be distinguished from wille 'I will', and freme 'do' (imperative) from fremme 'I do'.
6. This book sometimes prints c with a dot (ċ) and sometimes without. Undotted c is pronounced [k]; dotted ċ is pronounced [ʧ], like the ch in Modern English chin. This letter is never pronounced [s] in Old English. It has a special function in the combination sc (see item 10 below).
7. The letter g, like c, is sometimes printed with a dot and sometimes without. Dotless g is pronounced [ɡ], as in good, when it comes at the beginning of a word or syllable. Between voiced sounds dotless g is pronounced [ɣ], a voiced velar spirant. This sound became [w] in Middle English, so English no longer has it. Dotted ġ is usually pronounced [j], as in Modern English yes, but when it follows an n it is pronounced [ʤ], as in Modern English angel.
8. The combination cg is pronounced [ʤ], like the dge of Modern English sedge. Examples: hrycg 'ridge, back', brycg 'bridge', ecg 'edge'.
9. Old English h is pronounced [h], as in Modern English, at the beginnings of syllables, but elsewhere it is pronounced approximately like German ch in Nacht or ich --that is, as a velar [x] or palatal [ç] unvoiced spirant (pronounced with the tongue against the velum [soft palate] or, after front vowels, against the hard palate). Examples: nēah 'near', niht 'night', þēah 'though', dweorh 'dwarf'.
10. The combination sc is usually pronounced [ʃ], like Modern English sh: scip 'ship', æsc 'ash (wood)', wȳscan 'wish'. But within a word, if sc occurs before a back vowel (a, o, u), or if it occurs after a back vowel at the end of a word, it is pronounced [sk]: ascian 'ask' (where sc was formerly followed by a back vowel), tūsc 'tusk'. When sc was pronounced [sk] it sometimes underwent metathesis (the sounds got reversed to [ks]) and was written x: axian for ascian, tux for tusc. Sometimes sc is pronounced [ʃ] in one form of a word and [sk] or [ks] in another: fisc 'fish', fiscas/fixas 'fishes'.
The system of writing in OE was changed with the introduction of Christianity. Before that the English used the runes. Then Roman Alphabet was used. There were 23 letters. Interesting fact is æ, ð (developed from the rune), Ʒ pronounced like [g] and [j]. The stress in OE was dynamic, and shifted to the first syllable.
Through history V-s displayed a strong tendency to change. They underwent different kinds of alterations: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. Qualitative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g. [o>a], quantitative changes make long sounds short or visa versa, e.g. [i>i:]; dependent changes are restricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for instance a sound may change under the influence of the neighboring sounds; independent changes take place irrespective of phonetic conditions, they affect a certain sound in all positions.
The system of vowels in OE included 7 long[ā ǣ ē ī ō ū ȳ] and 8 short vowels [a æ e i o u y å] (monophthongs); and 4 short [ea eo ie io] and 4 long [ēa ēo īe īo] difthongs.
Various changes in the OE phonology can be called spontaneous, independent and assimilative, influenced by surrounding sounds.
Spontaneous, independent changes are: Gothic ai corresponds to ā; āū to ēa; īu to ēo (example, dāūð – dēað (dead)). These changes occurred irrespective of whatever sounds surrounded the sounds in question.
Assimilative changes occurred in specific surroundings. Incidentally many of the sounds that appeared in the language as the result of these changes returned to their previous quality in the next period. These changes are:
1) Breaking (fracture) – processs of formation of a short diphthong from a simple short vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster.
e →eo, a→ea, æ→ea
(ahta →eahta (eight), nah→neah (near), erl →eorl (earl) etc.)
2) Palatal mutation – back sound (for example a or o) changes its quality if there is a front sound in the next syllable.
(sandian →sendan (to send) sallian →sellan (to sell)).
That was common for diphthongs too. (ea→ie, eo→ie etc).
The reflexes of OE palatal mutation can be observed in Modern English in such pairs as sale- sell, tale-tell, full-fill. And in plural of nouns – fōt – fēt (foot-feet)
3) Diphthongization after palatal consonants sc [sk], c [k], Ʒ [j].
(ex. a→ea scal→sceal (shall), e→ie Ʒefan→ Ʒiefan (give)).
The words beginning with palatal consonants and with non-palatalized vowel represent other dialects.
4)Back or velar mutation. The formula of mutation here reminds very much that of palatal mutation, but the difference is that the syllable that influenced the preceding vowel contained a back vowel – o or u. Not al the dialects had this mutation. So the essence is that
i ˃io (hira – hiora (their))
e ˃ eo (hefon-heofon (heaven))
a ˃ea (saru-searu (armour))
5) Mutation before H
(a, e preceded H →ea, ie→i/y naht – neaht – niht – nieht – nyht (night))
6) contraction (сжатие) h interfered with the development of sounds. When H was placed between two vowels it was reduced and the following changes of vowels occurred:
A+H+vowel→ēa slahan→ slēan (to slay)
E+H+vowel→ ēo sehen – sēon (to see)
And others. The Old German had no contraction, and H is present in corresponding words – in corresponding present-day German words this consonant is still found in spelling though lost in pronunciation.
The quantitative changes were lengthening of vowels before clusters nd, ld, mb – bindan, cild, climban (bind, child, climb). And further development of the sound system led to diphthongization of long vowels and that explains the exceptions in the rules of reading the sounds in the closed syllables in the present-day English.
Middle English
For various reasons the first change in the phonological system to be mentioned is the leveling of sounds – vowels in the unstressed syllables. OE had a fixed stress on the first syllable. In OE at the ends of the words we might find whatever sound: cara, caru, care – now all the forms merged into one –care (talu OE – tale ME). With the stressed vowels the situation was different. First of all there were quantitative changes in vowels. In ME the quantity of the vowels becomes dependent on the environment, on what follows the vowel. In some phonetic environment only short vowels are possible, in the other the vowels are long. So a long vowel before two consonants is shortened (the exceptions are the clusters mb, ld, nd (short vowels before these consonants were lengthened OE wild – ME wild) or when the two consonants belong to the second syllable of the word. (mæst læst → most least) e.g. OE - f ēdan - f ēdde – ME feed – fed. It should be remembered that while the OE unstressed vowels were thus reduced and lost, new unstressed vowels appeared in borrowed words or developed from stressed ones. (e.g. shifting of word stress and vocalization of [r] in such endings as writer where [er] became [ə]). Short vowels became long in open syllables. This lengthening mainly affected the more open of the short vowels [e] [a] [o]. (OE nama – ME name) These developments show that the gap between the stressed and unstressed vowels has narrowed, so that in ME and NE we can no longer subdivide the vowels into stressed and unstressed.
So the most significant change was monophthongization of OE diphthongs.
Earm – arm ea→æ→a
Heofon – heven eo →e
Some individual changes occurred in the sounds:
æ → a (thæt – that)
ǣ → Ɛ: (sound like i:) strǣt – street
ā→ō (stān →stōne (stone)
Alongside the changed English sounds ME had a number of French unassimilated sounds, nasal. Their fate was to assimilate later. Nature, simple, abandon.
New English
The changes in the sound system of the period were significant. The process of the leveling of endings continued, and the most significant, of course, Great vowel shift.
1) Loss of unstressed e. We can observe total disappearance of neutral sound Ə marked by letter e in the endings (it was preserved and even pronounced more distinctly like [i] only when two identical consonants were found in the root and in the endings) (dresses, stresses, wicked)
2) The sound e before r hanged into a: (sterre – star)
3) Great Vowel Shift (GVS).
Most scholars agree that it was the most significant event which influenced Modern English emergence. GVS was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that took place in the south of England between 1450 and 1750 (the years are not the same in all the sources: some are giving 1400 – 1600) for reasons that are not entirely well known. Of course the surprising speed and the exact cause of the shift are continuing mysteries in linguistics and cultural history, but some theories attach the cause to the mass migration to the southeast part of England after the Black Death, where the difference in accents led to certain groups modifying their speech to allow for a standard pronunciation of vowel sounds. The different dialects and the rise of a standardised middle class in London led to changes in pronunciation, which continued to spread out from that city. Another explanation highlights the language of the ruling class: the medieval aristocracy had spoken French but by the early fifteenth century they were using English. This may have caused a change to the "prestige accent" of English. Whatever the reason was, it happened. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term. GVS is one of the historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.
The essence of GVS is certainly connected with the pronunciation. For those of us who are “into it”, there is one spelling in particular that deserves a lot of attention – the “ough” combination. There are at least ten pronunciations for this combination of letters, ranging from “cough” to “through” to “dough” to “bough” in most common usage. Each of these was standardized at a different time during the Great Vowel Shift, causing the confusion that we have today. GVS explains why police and polite so close in spelling are so different in pronouncing. Here is the simplified table.
| ME VOWEL (ca. 1400) | EME VOWEL (ca. 1600) | PDE VOWEL (after 1800) |
| /i:/ | /'i/ | /aI/time |
| /e/ | /i/ | /i/meet |
| /e:/ | /e/ | /i/east |
| /a:/ | /e/ | /ei/take |
| /ô:/ | /o/ | /o/stone |
| /o/ | /u/ | /u/tool |
| /u/ | /'u/ | /aU/noun |
PDE – Present Day English
GVS affected all long vowels in native as well as borrowed before it words. Though some borrowed words preserve i: and u: in the open syllable (routine)
In general as compared to the Great vowel shift other vowel changes of the NE period seem few and insignificant. In ME and NE the development of new long monophthongs and diphthongs took place. First of all because of the vocalization resulted from the development of [r]. (Verba, 166)
Consonants (3d lecture)
OE From Germanic philology you remember the First Consonant shift (Grimm’s law) appearance of voiceless fricatives. Their development continues in OE.
1. So voicing of fricatives in intervocal position f>v (ofer-over; wīf – wīfe, wīfa wife-wives); θ > ð (ōðer – other); s>z>r (voiced sibilant (шипящий) z was very unstable in OE and very soon changed into r. The process is called rotacism. (wesun –weren). Suffix iza used to form the degrees of comparison and now has the variant er.
2. Palatalization of the sound k’’, sk’ and kg’ (marked as c, sc and sƷ) k’ >tʃ (cild – child); sk’ > ʃ (sceal – shall); kg’>dƷ (brycƷ- bridge); back γ sound before palatal consonants turned into j – Ʒear (year).
3. Assimilation before t. The sound t when it was preceded by a number of consonants changed the quality of a preceding sound. (e.g. stefn→stemn /fn >mn/ etc.)
4. Loss of consonants in certain positions. The sounds n and m were lost before h. (bronhte – brōhte – brought). Other examples of similar loss was the loss of Ʒ before d and n. (sæƷde – sǣde (said))
5. Metathesis (метатеза) of r. (cons +r+vowel→cons+vowel+r brunnan-burnan (burn)).
6. West Germanic gemination (удваивание) of consonants (salian – sellan –sell).
ME:
English consonants were on the whole far more stable than vowels. A large number of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. Thus we can assume that the sonorants [m, n, l], plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been subjected to any noticeable changes. The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the growth of new sets of sounds, - affricates and sibilants.
The writing system changed dramatically in Middle English:
- þ and ð were replaced by th (and sometimes y, as in ye meaning the)
- c before i or e became ch
- sc became sh
- an internal h was added after g
- hw became wh
- cw became qu
- the new symbols v and u were added; v was used word initially, and u was used everywhere else
- k was used much more often (cyning became king)
- new values were given to old symbols too; g before i or e was pronounced ǰ; ʒ became j, and c before i and e became s in some cases
- a historical h (usually not pronounced) was added to some words (it was assumed that these words had once begun with an h): honor, heir, honest, herb, habit
- Loss of initial h in a cluster (hleapan - to leap; hnutu - hut)
- [w] lost between consonant and back vowel (w is silent in two, sword, answer)
- [č] lost in unstressed syllable (ič - I)
- [v] lost in middle of words (heofod - head; hæfde - had)
- Loss of final -n in possessive pronouns (min fæder - mi fæder) and the addition of -n to some words beginning with a vowel (a napron - an apron, a nuncle - an uncle)
- Voiced fricatives became phonemic with their voiceless counterparts
- [ž] phoneme was borrowed from French as the voiced counterpart for [š]
NE: In many cases the change is resulted in the loss of consonants in certain positions. The sound l was lost in combination before k, m, f, v
Talk, palm, half.
The sound l was preserved in the words of Latin origin such as resolve. It was also lost after a vowel before d in should and others.
Sound b was dropped in combination mb at the end of the words climb, lamb
G, k at the beginning of the word knight, gnome
W before a consonant (mainly r) and in unstressed syllables write, answer.
Qualitative change of consonants is illustrated by voicing of fricatives.
s→z – dessert, resemble
f→v – of
tʃ→dƷ – knowledge
Some sounds mainly in the borrowed words merged with the preceding consonant forming a sibilant:
Sj, tj - ʃ Asia, session
Zj – Ʒ collision, division
Tj - tʃ question, nature
Dj – dƷ soldier, procedure
These are the most noticeable changes in consonants.
Noun (4th lecture)
The morphology of Old English is quite different from that of Modern English, predominantly by being much more highly inflected.
Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formation of plural of Present-day English too. For example, why foot-feet but boot – boots.
Nouns had categories of number, gender and case. Gender is not actually a grammatical category in a strict sense of the word (except for the notions mann, fæder, brōðor – masculine and modor, sweostor – feminine; wīfman is masculine because the send element of the compound is masculine.) for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender; but case and number had a set of endings. There are 2 numbers – singular/plural – There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.
§ The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence, for example se cyning means 'the king'. It was also used for direct address. Adjectives in the predicate (qualifying a noun on the other side of 'to be') were also in the nominative.
§ The accusative indicated the direct object of the sentence, for example Æþelbald lufode þone cyning means "Æþelbald loved the king", where Æþelbald is the subject and the king is the object. Already the accusative had begun to merge with the nominative; it was never distinguished in the plural, or in a neuter noun.
§ The genitive case indicated possession, for example the þæs cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship". It also indicated partitive (разделительный) nouns.
§ The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence, for example hringas þæm cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.
§ The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example lifde sweorde, "he lived by the sword", where sweorde is the instrumental form of sweord. During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.
There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, hring 'one ring') or plural (for example, hringas 'many rings').
In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes which determined what inflections (флексия, окончание) were taken by the nouns. The nouns in OE are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups.
The strong declension.
The strong noun paradigm declines for case, gender and singular/plural.
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | -- | -as | -- | -u / -- | -u / -- | -a, -e |
| Genitive | -es | -a | -es | -a | -e | -a |
| Dative | -e | -um | -e | -um | -e | -um |
| -Accusative | -- | -as | -- | -u / -- | -e | -a, -e |
Stone- stān (m) Ship – scip (n) tale – talu (f)
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | stān | stānas | scip | scipu / scip | talu | tala, |
| Genitive | stānes | stāna | scipes | scipa | tale | tala |
| Dative | stāne | stānum | scipe | scipum | tale | talum |
| Accusative | stān | stānas | scip | scipu / scip | tale | tala |
Of course there were some peculiarities in this declension. If you want to find them out you should bury yourself in the books.
Weak Declension
The weak paradigm is more simplified and has less variation between the genders and cases.
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Nominative | -a | -an | -e | -an | -e | -an |
| Genitive | -an | -ena, -a | -an | -ena, -a | -an | -ena, -a |
| Dative | -an | -um | -an | -um | -an | -um |
| Accusative | -an | -an | -e | -an | -an | -an |
| Example declension of nama 'name', ēage 'eye', and tunge 'tongue' | |||||||
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | |||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | ||
| Nominative | nama | naman | ēage | ēagan | tunge | tungan | |
| Genitive | naman | namena, -a | ēagan | ēagena, -a | tungan | tungena, -a | |
| Dative | naman | namum | ēagan | ēagum | tungan | tungum | |
| Accusative | naman | naman | ēage | ēagan | tungan | tungan |
There was also a group of root-stem nouns that was not numerous but comprised the words used in everyday life, that’s why it was very conservative – a group of exceptions with mutated root vowel preserved the majority of nouns belonging to this class. It comprised such nouns as man, goose, calf, child and others. Though the flexion coincided the root vowel changed, that’s why in plural in present-day English we have exceptions in forming plural forms.
The form of declined word completely depended on a vocalic stem-forming suffix.. –a- stems may be either masculine or neuter, the difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative. If there was a mutated vowel in the stem, this sound might be preserved only in the singular. There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally –j- or –w- in the stem (-ja –stem and wa-stem) they may preserve this sound in declension, but otherwise the differences are minor. Nouns belonging to ō-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u; if there are 2 and more syllables or the root vowel is long there is no ending at all. In this group of nouns the suffix ō may also be accompanied by additional I or w that is jō or wō. i-stem the nouns might belong to all the three genders. Nouns belonging to –u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender.
Weak declension This class of nouns consists of a rather numerous group of nouns originally having – n-stems. They may be of all three genders. But actually no difference in declension of nouns of different genders can be found.). Less numerous and less significant for the development of the present-day nominal system are nouns of –s-stem. They had had this suffix in older times, in OE due to rhotacism they changed it into occasional appearance of –r- sound in indirect cases. They are all neuter. In OE was a separate group of –nd-stems. They are all masculine and their declension combines the peculiarities of the declension of –a-stem and to some extent –r-stem as they all denote persons.
Middle English. The category of gender was lost; and the loss was total. The category of number was preserved. In OE the plural endings originally were: -as, 0, -u, -a, -e,, -an. Due to the reduction of the unstressed vowels all these came to –es, -0, -e or -0, -en. So finally we have –es, -en. –es was added to form of plural form of numerous borrowings. Several nouns retain their OE plural with the mutated vowel (man-menn, foot-feet etc.) – these were more frequently used than those that changed their ending to –es. The number of cases was reduced from OE 4 to 2, the nominative and the genitive. The very nature of the genitive case is almost unchanged, it has the same functions as that of the OE noun, and practically all nouns can be used in this form.
Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English. The early Modern English words engel (angel) and name (name) demonstrate the two patterns:
| strong | weak | |||
| singular | plural | singular | plural | |
| nom/acc | engel | engles | name | namen |
| gen | engles* | engle(ne)** | name | namen |
| dat | engle | engle(s) | name | namen |
NE: The noun paradigm looks very much the same as we have it today. Having lost the category of gender and much of its case forms it has the genitive case as opposed to nominative; the number of nouns taking it is reduced mainly to those denoting living beings. In fact we may call it possessive. At the same time the unification of plural endings takes place, and former relics of –en disappear, giving way to –es. So the general rule of formation of the plural of the noun is enriched by archaic forms (geese, feet) – we call them grammatical archaisms. Some words borrowed from Latin and used mainly in scientific texts retain their Latin plurals (datum-data). Of-phrase replaces the former genitive case.
Verb (5th lecture)
OE: Some people say that Old English was much like modern German, not more. This question is really interesting. In fact she is right, there is much more in common between Old English and German, than between Modern English and German. That happens because different languages have different speed of development. English through history was very progressive and active - the whole revolution happened with it in the 15th and the 16th centuries, not only taking into consideration the Great Vowel Shift, but also the major grammar changes. The result was the Modern, or New, English, which has practically no declension, lost genders, shortened words and forms, simplified the syntax. Modern English makes a distinction between regular and irregular verbs. This distinction goes back to the Old English system of strong and weak verbs: the ones which used the ancient Germanic type of conjugation (the Ablaut), and the ones which just added endings to their past and participle forms. Strong verbs make the clear majority. According to the traditional division, which is taken form Gothic and is accepted by modern linguistics, all strong verbs are distinguished between seven classes, each having its peculiarities in conjugation and in the stem structure.
The system of the verbs was less developed than it is now, it had fewer forms, and its categories were somewhat different from the similar categories in present-day English. All the paradigmatic forms of the verb were synthetic. There were also lexical structures with non-finite forms of the verb rendering some grammatical meaning. The non-finite forms of the verb in OE were the infinitive and two Participles. They had no categories of the finite verb but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech. The infinitive had the suffix –an/ian. It had the grammatical category of case: the nominative and dative, the latter form was made by the suffix –enne/anne: wrītan – to wrītenne. The infinitive in this form was associated with the preposition tō. Participle I is formed by means of the suffix –ende added to the stem of the infinitive: wrītan – wrītende (to write – writing). It was active in meaning and expressed the action simultaneous with the tense of the finite verb. Like all nominal parts of speech, it had the categories of number, gender and case and was declined like a strong adjective.
Participle II expressed actions and states resulting from past action and was passive in meaning. Depending on the class of the verb it was formed by vowel interchange and the suffix –en (strong verbs) or the dental suffix –d/t (weak verbs). Participle II was commonly marked by the prefix Ʒe-, though may be found without it. Wrītan – written, Ʒewriten. Categories: Number is not specifically verbal category. The choice of singular or plural form depends on the number of the noun/pronoun subject of the sentence. The category of person is represented by all the three persons, though this opposition is neutralized in many positions. Present tense singular has all forms, in plural it is not shown. Past tense singular had only one form for the 1 and 3 person, and in the Imperative and Subjunctive mood it was absent. The category of mood was represented by the opposition of 3 moods – Indicative (represents action as a real fact), Subjunctive (expresses condition, desire, supposition), Imperative (expresses order, or request to a second person).
The category of tense was represented by opposition past – non-past (preterit-non-preterit). The current form for the non-preterit. The majority of OE verbs fell into 2 great divisions: weak (derived their past tense stem and that of Participle II by adding dental suffix – d and –t, normally they didn’t change their rot vowels) and strong (formed their stems means of vowel gradation and by adding certain suffixes); in some verbs gradation was accompanied by changes of consonants. There were 4 basic forms of strong verbs: I – the stem with this vowel are used in the infinitive, the present tense indicative and subjunctive, the imperative mood and participle I; II – in the past tense singular, the 1st and the 3d person; III – past tense plural< 2d person singular and past Subjunctive; IV – in the form of the Participle II).
Strong verbs. There were about three hundred strong verbs in OE. They are derived into 7 classes.
Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel. Thus stelan 'to steal' represents the strong verb conjugation paradigm.
| Conjugation | Pronoun | 'steal' |
| Infinitives | stelan | |
| tō stelanne | ||
| Present Indicative | ||
| ic | stele | |
| þū | stilst | |
| hē/hit/hēo | stilð | |
| wē/gē/hīe | stelaþ | |
| Past Indicative | ic | stæl |
| þū | stæle | |
| hē/hit/hēo | stæl | |
| wē/gē/hīe | stælon | |
| Present Subjunctive | ic/þū/hē/hit/hēo | stele |
| wē/gē/hīe | stelen | |
| Past Subjunctive | ic/þū/hē/hit/hēo | stǣle |
| wē/gē/hīe | stǣlen | |
| Imperative | Singular | stel |
| Plural | stelaþ | |
| Present Participle | stelende | |
| Past Participle | stolen |
Of course it’s the easiest example. Cause you can find out that the word changed a lot, its root vowels and so on. But this example can show you the main idea of changes in OE strong verb.
Weak verbs. Weak verbs are formed by adding alveolar (t or d) endings to the stem for the past and past-participle tenses. Some examples are love, loved or look, looked.
Originally, the weak ending was used to form the preterite of informal, noun-derived verbs such as often emerge in conversation and which have no established system of stem-change. By nature, these verbs were almost always transitive, and even today, most weak verbs are transitive verbs formed in the same way. However, as English came into contact with non-Germanic languages, it invariably borrowed useful verbs which lacked established stem-change patterns. Rather than invent and standardize new classes or learn foreign conjugations, English speakers simply applied the weak ending to the foreign bases.
The linguistic trends of borrowing foreign verbs and verbalizing nouns have greatly increased the number of weak verbs over the last 1,200 years. Some verbs that were originally strong (for example help, holp, holpen) have become weak by analogy; most foreign verbs are adopted as weak verbs; and when verbs are made from nouns (for example "to scroll" or "to water") the resulting verb is weak. Additionally, conjugation of weak verbs is easier to teach, since there are fewer classes of variation. In combination, these factors have drastically increased the number of weak verbs, so that in modern English weak verbs are the most numerous and productive form (although occasionally a weak verb may turn into a strong verb through the process of analogy, such as sneak (originally only a noun), where snuck is an analogical formation rather than a survival from Old English).
There are three major classes of weak verbs in Old English. The first class displays i-mutation in the root, and the second class none. There is also a third class explained below.
Class-one verbs with short roots exhibit gemination of the final stem consonant in certain forms. With verbs in <r> this appears as <ri> or <rg>, where <i> and <g> are pronounced [j]. Geminated <f> appears as <bb>, and that of <g> appears as <cg>. Class one verbs may receive anepenthetic vowel before endings beginning in a consonant.
Where class-one verbs have gemination, class-two verbs have <i> or <ig>, which is a separate syllable pronounced [i]. All class-two verbs have an epenthetic vowel, which appears as <a> or <o>.
In the following table, three verbs are conjugated. Swebban 'to put to sleep' is a class one verb exhibiting gemination and an epenthetic vowel. Hǣlan 'to heal' is a class-one verb exhibiting neither gemination nor an epenthetic vowel. Sīðian 'to journey' is a class-two verb.
| Conjugation | Pronoun | 'put to sleep' | 'heal' | 'journey' |
| Infinitives | swebban | hǣlan | sīðian | |
| tō swebbanne | tō hǣlanne | tō sīðianne | ||
| Present Indicative | ||||
| ic | swebbe | hǣle | sīðie | |
| þū | swefest | hǣlst | sīðast | |
| hē/hit/hēo | swefeþ | hǣlþ | sīðað | |
| wē/gē/hīe | swebbaþ | hǣlaþ | sīðiað | |
| Past Indicative | ic | swefede | hǣlde | sīðode |
| þū | swefedest | hǣldest | sīðodest | |
| hē/hit/hēo | swefede | hǣle | sīðode | |
| wē/gē/hīe | swefedon | hǣlon | sīðodon | |
| Present Subjunctive | ic/þū/hē/hit/hēo | swebbe | hǣle | sīðie |
| wē/gē/hīe | swebben | hǣlen | sīðien | |
| Past Subjunctive | ic/þū/hē/hit/hēo | swefede | hǣlde | sīðode |
| wē/gē/hīe | swefeden | hǣlden | sīðoden | |
| Imperative | Singular | swefe | hǣl | sīða |
| Plural | swebbaþ | hǣlaþ | sīðiað | |
| Present Participle | swefende | hǣlende | sīðiende | |
| Past Participle | swefed | hǣled | sīðod |
During the Old English period the third class was significantly reduced; only four verbs belonged to this group: habban 'have', libban 'live', secgan 'say', and hycgan 'think'. Each of these verbs is distinctly irregular, though they share some commonalities.
| Conjugation | Pronoun | 'have' | 'live' | 'say' | 'think' |
| Infinitive | habban | libban, lifgan | secgan | hycgan | |
| Present Indicative | |||||
| ic | hæbbe | libbe, lifge | secge | hycge | |
| þū | hæfst, hafast | lifast, leofast | segst, sagast | hygst, hogast | |
| hē/hit/hēo | hæfð, hafað | lifað, leofað | segð, sagað | hyg(e)d, hogað | |
| wē/gē/hīe | habbaþ | libbað | secgaþ | hycgað | |
| Past Indicative | (all persons) | hæfde | lifde, leofode | sægde | hog(o)de, hygde |
| Present Subjunctive | (all persons) | hæbbe | libbe, lifge | secge | hycge |
| Past Subjunctive | (all persons) | hæfde | lifde, leofode | sægde | hog(o)de, hygde |
| Imperative | Singular | hafa | leofa | sæge, saga | hyge, hoga |
| Plural | habbaþ | libbaþ, lifgaþ | secgaþ | hycgaþ | |
| Present Participle | hæbbende | libbende, lifgende | secgende | hycgende | |
| Past Participle | gehæfd | gelifd | gesægd | gehogod |
Preterite-present verbs
The preterite-present verbs are a class of verbs which have a present tense in the form of a strong preterite and a past tense like the past of a weak verb. These verbs derive from the subjunctive or optative use of preterite forms to refer to present or future time. For example, witan, "to know" comes from a verb which originally meant "to have seen" (cf. OE wise "manner, mode, appearance"; Latin videre "to see" from the same root). The present singular is formed from the original singular preterite stem and the present plural from the original plural preterite stem. As a result of this history, the first-person singular and third-person singular are the same in the present.
Few preterite present appear in the Old English corpus, and some are not attested in all forms.
Note that the Old English meanings of many of the verbs are significantly different than that of the modern descendants; in fact, the verbs "can, may, must" appear to have chain shifted in meaning.
Preterite-Present Verbs occupy a specific place within the verbal system of OE verbs. They combine the qualities of the strong verbs as well as weak verbs. Their present tense is formed according to the rules of formation of the past tense of strong verbs that is by gradation (vowel interchange) their past tense has all the peculiarities of the weak verbs. It is just that peculiarity that makes them preterite (форма прошедшего времени) (in form) and present (in the meaning). In general, past tense has a strong tinge (оттенок)result in its meaning. A certain group of verbs preserves this strong meaning of result and it turns into their dominant feature, they begin to render the present result of the past action. So the past tense in structure like Ic cann swimman meant and was perceived as the present state of mind of the speaker. However there were situations in which the past tense was still required: one might want to know that once there was a man who could swim. So there appeared the form: h e c u ðe swimman. Participle II had the necessary meaning of result and some verbs preserved it, formed by gradation and the suffix –en, while with some other the pattern of weak verbs was used. The verbs of this group with overburdened system of forms, started losing certain parts of their paradigm. Most preterite-present verbs are classified according to the classes of gradation to which their present tense belongs.