Old English Internal Structure

1. Old English Internal Structure The Grammar of Old English

2. I. Synthetic Language • OE is a synthetic rather than an analytic language. • Languages that make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs and depend upon word order to show grammatical relationships are analytic. • Languages that use inflections to indicate grammatical relationships are synthetic. • OE like Modern German (and unlike Modern English) is synthetic. In terms of grammar, Old English resembles Modern German more than it does Modern English. • HOWEVER, OE is less synthetic in its structure than other I-E languages such as Latin.

3. II. Inflections in Old English • OE nouns, pronouns, and adjectives had four inflectional cases, used according to the word's function in a sentence. • Case is a grammatical category associated with nouns, pronouns and adjectives that indicates their grammatical relationships with other elements in a sentence.

4. II. Inflectional Endings The four inflectional cases are as follows: • Nominative Case (Subject)-- The tree is big. • Accusative Case (Direct object)-- He hit the ball. • Genitive Case (Possessive)-- This is John'shouse. • Dative Case (Indirect Object)-- I gave the paper to Mary.

5. III. Nouns • The inflection of OE nouns indicates: • Distinctions of number or persons (singular and plural); and • case (the four listed above). • Consequently, OE nouns are less complex than other Germanic and I-E languages like Latin or Sanskrit.

6. III. Nouns • Present Day English (PDE) has further reduced these inflections to only two: • 1. No inflectional ending (eg. “Girl”)-- Signifies the singular. Can be applied to subjects and direct/indirect objects. • We distinguish between subjects and objects through word order and auxiliary phrases.

7. III. Nouns • 2. Plural inflectional endings (usually -s or –es, but others like –en and –ren remain from earlier OE noun forms) • Also used to indicated possession (genitive case) as in boy's and boys'. • All are pronounced the same, so word order (again) is very important. • The use of the contraction is a more recent (early modern) convention.

8. III. OE Noun Patterns or Paradigms • There are a large number of patterns for declining nouns in OE. This is why we get some of the variant plural endings in words like oxen and children • We’ll look at two of the most common ones that survived into PDE (the rest have essentially disappeared). Note: vowel declensions are strong; consonant declensions are weak.

9. III. OE Noun Patterns or Paradigms • 1. Masculine a- stem (see handout). Declension of the noun stone. • Over half of the nouns you will encounter in OE come from this category. • Our modern day possessive singular case (stone's) and general plural case (stones) come from this stem.

10. III. OE Noun Patterns or Paradigms • 2. Weak masculine or n- stem • For a long time, this ending rivaled the -s ending (above) as the typical plural in English. A standard Middle English speaker would say: eyen, treen, housen, and shoen. As a result of analogy, all of these have changed over time to conform to the dominant s- stem paradigm. Only one remains: oxen.

11. III. Nouns: Grammatical Gender • Like most other I-E languages, the gender of OE nouns was defined in grammatical terms (by the inflectional endings). For example: • Stan (stone) = masculine • mona (moon) = masculine • sunna (sun) = feminine • (Note: this is the exact opposite of French!) • Words like wif (wife) and cild (child) are neuter. • PDE has natural gender.

12. IV. Adjectives • 1. OE inflected adjectives for number, gender and case to agree with the noun. • For example there 10 different forms (42 combinations in all) of the adjective good in OE (see Handout). • 2. This elaborate inflectional system is strikingly different from PDE where inflections of the adjective are virtually absent except for the comparative and superlative forms (eg., great / greater / greatest). • Why do all of these inflections disappear?

13. V. Definite Articles • Like German, OE possessed a fully inflected definite article (see Handout). • 5 cases / 3 genders in the singular. • 4 cases for all genders in plural. • What forms survive into PDE? • the(definite article) • that(demonstrative).

14. VII. Verbs • Like the other Germanic languages, inflections of verbs were much simpler in OE than in other I-E languages but much more complex than PDE forms. • Like all other Germanic languages, OE has 2 major verb categories which we retain to this day:

15. VII. Verbs • A. Germanic Weak or Regular Verbs: This group adds a dental suffix [d / t] in the past tense (walk / walked). What causes this development in the Germanic languages is not clear, but it does over time become the dominant past tense inflection in PDE. • Over time many other verb forms conform to this weak paradigm. • All new verbs entering into the language today take this form (grammatical rule).

16. VII. Verbs • In OE there were three major classes of weak verbs: • --ede (fremman / fremede = "to perform") • --ode (lufian / lufode = "to love") • --de (libban / lifde = "to live")

17. VII. Verbs • B. I-E Strong or Irregular Verbs: • Derived mainly from Proto I-E, these verbs are inflected through a modification of an internal vowel sound (eg., sing / sang / sung). • There are very few of these in OE (around 300). T • There were seven classes of OE strong verbs (see Handout).

18. VII. Verbs • For example, there are 24 conjugations of the verb drifan (to drive) in OE, • These include 12 distinct forms. • In PDE, there are usually only four or five (drive / drives / drove / driven / driving).

19. VIII. Personal Pronouns • 1. PDE personal pronouns contain more of their earlier inflectional complexity than any other part of speech (see handout). • 2. OE has distinctive forms for all genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), persons (singular, plural and dual) and four cases. • 3. Notice that OE has a distinct number and case for the second person pronoun. In PDE, we only have one (you). Why do these other forms disappear?

20. IX. Lexical (Words) • Absence of most of the words from French and Latin that make up a large part of our modern English vocabulary but which did not enter the language until the Middle English and Early Modern (Renaissance) era.

21. IX. Lexical (Words) • OE word stock is almost purely Germanic. • A majority of this earlier word stock has disappeared. 85% no longer in use. • But the words that remain, make up the most basic elements of the language we speak today.

22. IX. Lexical (Words): Semantics • Semantic Degradation in words like LUST, WENCH, and VULGAR. • Semantic Elevation in words like KNIGHT, CHIVALROUS, and EARL. • Semantic Reduction in words like DEER, HOUND, MEAT, STARVE, WORM, and GIRL. • Semantic Expansion in words like DOG, BIRD, MILL or MEAL, and BARN.

23. X. Orthography (Writing) • Different Letters that are no longer used: thorn, eth, ash, wynn. • OE [sc] > PDE [sh] (sceap > sheep or sceotan > shoot) • OE [c] becomes PDE [k] and [ch] (cynn kin; nacod > naked; spraec > speech) • Loss of initial g [y] in words like gelamp. • J and Q not used. Enter via French. • V and K rarely used.