Word-Formation in Old English

Все темы данного раздела:

Introduction
The History of the English Language appeared as a serious science in the 19th century. Every science has its object, subject and aims. The objectof The History

Main Periods in the History of the English Language
The historical events that took place on the British Isles have influenced the linguistic situation in the country greatly. The table below shows the interconnection between the history and the lan

Classification of the Germanic Languages
There are different classifications of the languages but as far as we deal with the history of the language we will consider genealogical classification. It is based on the concept

First Mention of the Germanic Tribes
As far as the English Language belongs to the Germanic group of languages, this group makes a part of the History of the English Language and we are going to consider the whole group before startin

Proto-Germanic Language
The Proto-Germanic Language (PG) is supposed to have split form the Indo-European Language (IE) some time between 15th and 10th c. B.C.The Ancient Germans (th

East Germanic Languages
The East Germanic tribes were known as the Goths. They were one of the most numerous and powerful Germanic tribes who returned form Scandinavia around 200 A.D. and settled in the e

North Germanic Languages
The North Germanic tribes settled on the southern coast of Scandinavia and in Northern Denmark (since the 4th c. A.D.). They lived relatively isolated and showed litt

West Germanic Languages
The West Germanic tribes lived between the Oder and the Elbe and they never left the mainland. They were: · the Franconians(Low, Middle and High Franconians) – settled the

Phonetic Features
All the Germanic Languages of the past and present have common linguistic features that are not shared by other groups of languages in the Indo-European family (Slavonic group, Romance group, etc.)

Consonants
The comparison of the Germanic and non-Germanic languages within the Indo-European family reveals regular correspondences between German and non-German consonants. First Consonant

Grammatical Features
The Proto-Germanic and the Old Germanic Languages were SYNTHETIC, i.e. the relationships between the parts of the sentience were shown by the forms of the words rather than by their position in the

Historical Background and Linguistic Situation
1. When the first people arrived to Britain 50000 B.C. it was still part of the continent. Later, 5000 B.C., at the end of the Ice Age, Britain became an island

Old English Dialects
  Kingdom Kent Wessex Mercia Northumbria Dialect Kentish West Saxo

Alphabets
The first Old English written records are considered to be the runic inscriptions.To make these inscriptions people used the Runes/the Runic Alphabet – the first original German

Old English Alphabet
The Old English Alphabet was borrowed from Latin, but there were also some letters that were borrowed from the Runic Alphabet: · ? (“thorn”) = [q] and [ð] · ? (“wynn”) = [w]

Old English Manuscripts
Most of the Old English manuscripts were written in Latin characters. The Latin Alphabet was modified by the scribes to suit the English language (some letters were changed and some new letters wer

Old English Poetry
1.Among the earliest textual insertions in Old English are the peaces of Old English poetry. They are to be found in “The Ecclesiastical History of the English People” writt

Historical Background
1042-1066 – King Edward the Confessor: · brought up in France; · had lots of Norman advisors and favourites; · spoke French and wanted his court to speak

Linguistic Situation
After the Norman Conquest: · Frenchbecame the official language of administration (it was used in the king’s court, in the law courts, in the church (as well as Lat

Middle English Dialects
OE Dialects Kentish West Saxon Mercian Northumbrian   ¯ ¯

London Dialect
In the 12th -13th c.the London Dialect became the literary language and the standard,both in written and spoken form. The reasons

Geoffrey Chaucer and His Contribution
Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the most prominent authors of the Middle English Period and he set up a language pattern to be followed. He is considered to be the founder of the literary langua

Middle English Alphabet
The Middle English Alphabet resembled the Old English Alphabet but some changes were introduced: · th replaced ð/þ/Đ/đ; · w r

Introduction of Printing
The first printer of English books was William Caxton (1422-1491). He was born in Kent. In 1441 he moved to Flanders (a region in Belgium) and later, in 1473, he opened up his own

Age of Shakespeare
See lectures in the English Literature on Shakespeare and his works. The sources of information about the language: · private letters (as far as books beca

Normalisation of the English Language
Normalisationis the fixing of the norms and standards of a language to protect it from corruption and change.   Type of Standard

Phonetic Features of Old English
OE sound system developed from PG sound system.   OE Word Stress/Accent: 1. fixed (can’t move either in form- or word-building and

OE Vowels
Unstressed vowelswere weakened and dropped. Stressed vowelsunderwent some changes: · splitting – 1 phoneme split into several al

Rise of Diphthongs
In PG there were no diphthongs. There was just a sequence of two separate vowels. Diphthongs appeared in OE: some (usually long diphthongs) – as a result of merging of two vowels: &

OE Consonants
OE consonants underwent the following changes: 1. Hardening (the process when a soft consonant becomes harder)– usually initially and after nasals ([m, n])

The Development of Vowel System in Middle English and New English
Word Stress/Accent: In ME and NE word stress acquired greater positions freedom and greater role in word derivation. Recessive tendency –

Middle English
The changes that occurred to vowels in ME were as follows: 1. Quantitative: Reduction –weakening and disappearance of unstressed vowels. A

Long Vowels
· [ỹ]changed to [ī]; · [ǽ]fell together with [έ]; · [ā]changed to

New Diphthongs
OE diphthongs turned into monophthongs:   OE Diphth. ME Sounds OE ME ĭě/īē &

New English
Great Vowel Shift – the change that happened in the 14th – 16th c.and affected all long monophthongs + diphthong [au]. As a result the

Short Vowels
  ME Sounds NE Sounds ME NE [a] à à [æ] [o]after [w]!!

Sibilants and Affricates
Sibilants – a type of fricatives, narrower and sharper than all other fricatives ([f, v, q, ð, h]) – [s, z, ∫, ζ]. Affricates – sounds consisting of a

Middle English
New consonants developed from palatal plosives [k’], [g’]and the cluster [sk’]:   OE Sounds ME Sounds

New English
Palatalisation –as a result of reduction of unstressed vowels several consonants merged into one:   ME Sounds NE Sounds

Fricatives
Voicing –occurredin the 16th c. (NE) to fricatives: · in functional words and auxiliaries that are never stre

Loss of Some Consonants
In NE some consonants were vocalised or gave birth to diphthongs and triphthongs. · [r]was vocalised at the end of the word in the 16th -17

ME Spelling
· based on conventional principle; · more ambiguous and less stable (printing was not introduced yet and the manuscripts contained numerous variants of sp

NE Spelling
· based on conventional principle was preserved; · new digraphs appeared (indicated borrowings from other languages) – ph, ps, ch;

Parts of Speech
In OE 9 parts of speech had already been distinguished:   changeable 1. Noun Nominal Categories: Number, Case, Gender, Degre

System of Declensions
Prior to reading this point, see PG word-structure, Lecture 4. In OE there were 25 declensions of nouns. All nouns were grouped into declensions according to: ·

Old English
As it has been mentioned in Lecture 14, the Noun had the following categories in OE: Number –Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl). Case –Nominative (Nom

System of Declensions
Though the stem-suffixes merged with the root, declensions were still existent in OE and were based on the former IE stem-suffixes: a-stem –the most numerous declen

System of Declensions
The system of declension was inherited from PG. Adjectives had two declensions that had to do also with the category of determination – strong(definite) and

Degrees of Comparison
In OE there were three ways of formation of the degrees of comparison:   Way of formation Positive Degree Com

Demonstrative Pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns belong to an ancient class of words that goes back to two Indo-European roots – seand to. In OE the sound [Ө] started to domina

Rise of Articles
The articles have to do with the category of Determination (definiteness/indefiniteness). Causes for Rise of Articles: 1. In OE the there were two declensions

Personal Pronouns
See Lecture 14 for the categories of the personal pronouns. Personal Pronouns possessed (and still do) a very vivid Indo-European feature – suppletivity (i.e. they build their forms

Strong and Weak Verbs in Comparison
  Basis for Comparison Strong Verbs Weak Verbs Number Type/Origin

Strong Verbs and their Development
1.As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. t

Weak Verbs and their Development
1.The division of weak verbs into classes was based on the original stem-building suffix of a verb that was already hard to distinguish even in OE:

Participle 1
The formation of the Participle 1 was as follows:   OE ME NE berende bering

Participle 2
As it has been mentioned in the table above, in OE Participle 2 was formed: · in strong verbs – with the help of the suffix –en(+ sometimes

Infinitive
In OEthe Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of Case (only two Cases – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)): e.g. OE Nom writan (uninflected) –

Anomalous Verbs
They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to

Formation
sculan/willan + Infinitive Willan had more strong modal meaning (volition) that was later weakened and almost lost. 2. 13th – 14th c.

Subjunctive-Mood Forms
1.These forms were not always analytical in OE but were widely used in: · independent clauses – to express wish, command, hypothetical co

Formation
bēon + Participle 1 2.In OEit denoted a “quality” or a “lasting state” and was characterising a person or a thing indicated by

Do-Forms
1.In NE“do-periphrasis” was used in the Past and Present of the Indicative Mood. 2. 16th c. –“Do” was used in negative, aff

Syntactic Connections between the Words
1. Agreement – a correspondence between 2 or more words in Gender, Number, Case, Person: · relation –correspondence between the Subject and

Functions of Cases
Nominative: · Subject of the sentence; · Predicative; · Direct Address. Genitive: · possessive meaning;

Word Order
In OEthe word order was free as far as there were a lot of inflections that showed the relations between the words in a sentence.

Negation
In OEthe common word for negation was ne (IE origin). It was simply placed before a word that was to be negated: e.g. OE Ne can ic (“I don’t

Old English Vocabulary
The history of words throws light on the history of the speaking community and its contacts with other people. According to some rough counts OE vocabulary had between 23 00

Ways of Word-Formation
Word-Derivation: · sound interchange –was employed frequently, but never alone (usually was accompanied by suffixation). Sources

Word-Composition
Word-composition – a combination of 2 ore more root-morphemes – was a highly productive way of word-formation. The main patterns were: · N + N à N (the most fre

French and Scandinavian Borrowings in English
In MEthe main donors of borrowings to English were French and Scandinavian Languages:   Basis for Comparison French Borrow