The main trends in the development of E syntax

Old English was a synthetic language, i.e. there were a lot of inflections that showed the relations between the words in a sentence. Syntactic Connections between the Words: 1)Agreement – a correspondence between 2 or more words in Gender, Number, Case, Person: 1. relation – correspondence between the Subject and the Predicate in Number and Person; 2. correlation – agreement of an adjective, a demonstrative pronoun, a possessive pronoun, Participle 1, 2 with noun in Gender, Number, Case. 2) Government – a type of correspondence when one word (mainly a verb, less frequently – an adjective, a pronoun or a numeral) determines the Case of another word.

3) joining – an adj referring to a verb\ adj is connected with it without any formal means.

Word Order: In OE the word order was free as far as there were a lot of inflections that showed the relations between the words in a sentence. Most common word-order patterns were: 1)S + P + O (in non-dependent clauses); 2) S + O + P (when the Object was a pronoun,); (in dependent clauses,); 3)P + S + O (in questions);(in sentences starting with adverbial modifier,). In ME and NE, due to the loss of the Cases and, as a result, loss of the inflections the distinction between the Subject and the Object of a sentence was lost. Thus the word order became fixed and direct (S + P + O – The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object). Such word order led to the appearance of the formal Subject (formal it, there, e.g. It was winter; There is a book.) that took the place of the Subject if a sentence did not have one and thus preserved the direct word order. Inversion was used only in questions and for emphasis.

Negation: In OE the common word for negation was ne (IE origin). It was simply placed before a word that was to be negated. As a result of this position before a word the particle ne often fused with: 1) a verb; 2)a numeral; 3) a pronoun; 4) an adverb. Multiple negation was perfectly normal. Often the particle ne was strengthened by the particle naht. In ME particle ne fell out of use and was replaced completely by the particle naht that later developed into not, stood manly after a verb (V + not) and negated it. In NE, during the Normalisation Period, no-double-negation rule appeared that prohibited more than one negative word in a sentence

 

29. OE vocabulary & its etymological character-cs

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 23 000 and 24 000 lexical units. About only 15% of them survived in ModE. In OE there were an extremely low percentage of borrowings from other languages (only 3% as compared to 70% in ModE). Thus OE from the point of view of its vocabulary was a thoroughlyGermanic language.

Native OE words can be subdivided into 3 following layers: 1) Common IE words – the oldest and the largest part of the OE vocabulary that was inherited by the Proto-Germanic, and later by all the Germanic languages, from the Common Indo-European Language.

Semantic fields: 1) family relations (father, mother, daughter, brother, etc. (except aunt, uncle – words of the Germanic origin)); 2) parts of human body (eye, nose, heart, arm, etc.); 3) natural phenomena, plants, animals (tree, cow, water, sun, wind, etc.).

Parts of speech: nouns (eye, brother, etc.); verbs (basic activities of man)(to be, can, may, to know, to eat, to stand, to sit, etc.); adjectives (essential qualities)(new, full, red, right, young, long, etc.); pronouns (personal and demonstrative) (I, my, this, that, those, these, etc.); numerals (most of them) (1-10, 100, 1000, etc.); prepositions (for, at, of, to, etc.).

2) Common Germanic words – the part of the vocabulary that was shared by most Germanic languages. These words never occurred outside the Germanic group of languages. This layer was smaller than the IE layer.

Semantic fields: nature, plants, animals (earth, fox, sheep, sand, etc.); sea (starve, sea, etc.); everyday life (hand, sing, find, make, etc.).

Parts of speech: nouns (horse, rain, ship, bridge, life, hunger, ground, death, winter, evil, etc.); verbs (to like, to drink, to bake, to buy, to find, to fall, to fly, to make, etc.); adjectives (broad, sick, true, dead, deaf, open, clean, bitter, etc.); pronouns (such, self, all, etc.); dverbs (often, again, forward, near, etc.).

3) Specifically Old English words – native words that occur only in English and do not occur in other Germanic and non-Germanic languages. They are very few and are mainly derivatives and compounds (e.g. fisher, understand, woman, etc.).

4) Borrowed words – this part of OE vocabulary, as it has already been mentioned above, was a small portion of words that remained on the periphery of OE vocabulary. The words were mainly borrowed from: Latin (around 500 words only) (abbat, anthem, alms, etc.); Celtic dialects: common nouns (bin, cross, cradle, etc.) – most of them died out, some survived only in dialects; place names and names of waterways: Kent, London, York, etc.; Ouse, Avon, Evan, Thames, Dover – all with the meaning “water”; -comb (“deep valley”) – Duncombe, Winchcombe, etc.; -torr (“high rock”) – Torr, Torcross, etc.; -llan (“church”) – Llandoff, Llanelly, etc.; -pill (“creek”) – Pylle, Huntspill, etc. hybrids: