Around the North Sea are there was an emphasis on cattle raising. Germany also had a great strategic adv that was appealing to the Romans.

Strong verbs

Strong verbs use the Germanic form of conjuctaion,which is called Ablaut. In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense. We still have verbs like this in modern English,it’s 3 formf of the verb-infititive& 2 participles. F. ex. “swim,swam,swum” or “sing, sang, sung”. In strong verbs the root changes rather than its ending. In OE there were 7 classes of strong verbs,which had its own pattern of stem changes.

Weak verbs.

Weak verbs are formed by adding endings to past and participles. We still have them in modern English,they are called regular verbs. F ex. “dance,danced,danced”, “learn,learned,learned”. In comparison with strong verbs, weak verbs had very little classes,only 3:

With t stem in –j- nerian-nerede-nered(save)

2)with –o- stem – endian-endode-endod(end)

With –ai- stem – habban-haefde-haefd(have).

In Gothic there were 4 classes of weak verbs.

Preterite-Present verbs.

Were a very ancient group,which now has a peculiar place in the system of all t OG langs. Their root of t present form derived from Past form,and the Past tense was formed by means of the dental suffix –D(-T), which possibly derived from old form of the verb DO,or from IE suffix of Verbal Adjectives. F.ex. sculan-sceal-sceolde(shall), cunnan-cann,cuthe(can), witan-wat-wisse(know).

OG Irregular verbs.

There is a group of 4 verbs which are anomalous or atypical,the verbs “will”, “do”, “go” and “be”. They have their own conjugation schemes which differ from all the other classes of verb. These verbs are the most commonly used in the lang and are very important to the meaning of the sentence they are used in. ga(go,OE); don,dyde(OE).

They have their own conjugation schemes to make them as distinct as possible, to reduce the possibility that a listener will mishear the word.

OG vocabulary. Word-formation in OG langs and stylistic stratification of Ancient Germanic lexicon.

The most typical ways of word-formation in Germanic langs were:

1. affixation -suf –ari(ME –er,-or)-bocere(a man of books);

-suf -ing,-ung – lytling(a small thing)

-l- Wulfila

-ig – a suffix of adjectives - staenig(stony)

-prefix bi- bistanden (to stand around)

2. Ablaut+affixation – brinnan-gabrannjan (to burn)

Word connection - gold-smith(jeweler) gudhus(church).

Main stylistic layers of old Germanic vocabulary were:

1.Common words used by all people. F ex. Stan,geiz, aex,iss. They mainly denoted the objects of nature,flora,fauna(handus,land)

2.Poetical terms(metaphors,epithets,synonyms) which were widely used in literary texts. F.ex. Beado-swat – battle sweat=blood

3.Bookish vocabulary(Latin words connected with the church service,terms,etc). F ex. Creda (I believe), regol(rule).

Stratification of OG lexicon according to its origin

IE words denoted natural phenomena(sunna), animals(wulf), plants(boc), birds(aened), people (eare), relatives(modor), activity(feoh) etc.

There were a great deal of Latin words in Glangs,among them the days of week,military terms,everyday words like butter,cup,wine.

The words were borrowed into Germanic from many langs,1st of all,from Latin,cos many people at that time were competent in Latin. The 2nd major source of loanwords to OE was the Scandinavian words during the Viking raids of the 9th&10th c. There were also words borrowed from Celtic. Those were names of geographical features, especially rivers.

Page.20. part.1.Practice.

In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration (alliteration refers to repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases.) as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic languages. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, and the Old Norse Poetic Edda all use alliterative verse

№21.OG system of vowels

Indo-European system of vowels included 5 short and 5 long ones (a, o, u, i, e). the first 3 were used in stressed syllables and are considered the basic ones. From Indo-European A and O changed into Germanic long A: Lat. hostis – Goth. gasts, OHG – gast.