Old English: Grammar Flashcards
Main characteristics of Old English Grammar
- Synthetic language
-relatively free word order - many inflections express grammatical relation
- nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs were inflected
- Strong and weak inflection/declension of adjectives
- Strong and weak inflection/conjugation of verbs
Possible word order in OE
- Adverbial-Verb-Subject
- S-V-A
- S-O-V
- V-S-V
= Synthetic language
Word order in ModE
- S-V-O
= Analytic Language
Analytic language
- few inflections/affixes, grammatical relationships expressed through word order - extensive use of auxiliaries & propositions
> Modern English
Synthetic language
- many inflections carrying information on grammatical relationships - relations of words in a sentence largely indicated by inflections (rather free word order; nouns, adjectives, verbs and pronouns all inflected)
> Old English, German, Latin
Inflection
- process
- works via affixes (prefix, suffix)
> grammatical bound morphemes denoting grammatical information)
Inflection on nouns in OE
- grammatical categories
- number: singular, (dual), plural
- case: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental
- gender: not overtly marked but correlated strongly with declensional class
Declension
- form of a word is changed to show its syntactic function in a sentence
Declension classes (nouns in OE)
- a-stem declension (most frequent, only mask & neuter)
- n-stem declension (ox - oxan)
- root/ consonant declension (stem itself changes)
Declension of nouns, a-stem
- a-stem (masculine or neuter) = most frequent declension class
n-stem declension
plural
e.g.: day, king, foot ox
> irregularities in Modern English often go back to Old English inflectional forms
Inflections of adjectives in Old English
Grammatical categories
- Number: Singular, Plural, Dual
-Case: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Instrumental
- Comparison: Positive, Comparative, Superlative
2 sets of inflections on adjectives
- Weak Declension (with article): der dumme König (se dola cyning)
- Strong Declension (without article): dummer König (dol cyning)
Syncretism
reduction, system that claims to be distinctive but is not
Verbal inflection
- weak verbs: adding dental suffix (ed, t)
- strong verbs: change of the stem vowel/ vowel gradation (Ablaut)
Strong verbs
- 4 (basic) verb forms
- Infinitive
- Past tense 1st + 3rd person singular
- Past tense 2nd person singular and all persons plural
- past participle
- change in the stem vowel, gradation of the stem vowel
Strong verbs
- classes
- Is old English a synthetic or an analytical language?
- synthetic language
- many inflections
-rather free word order
> Old English, German, Latin
- Is þone dolan cyning an example for a weak or a strong adjective declension?
weak declension
- needs an article, here pone
- Which two groups of Old English verbs are differentiated when considering the formation of the past tense?
- strong verbs (vowel gradation)
- weak verbs (adding a dental suffix, -ed or -t)
- Does Modern English have strong and weak verbs?
No, but there are regular and irregular verbs. There are less irregular than regular verbs.
- Give the order of the clause elements in Modern English. How could they be ordered in OE?
In Modern English
1. S-V-O
= Analytic Language
In Old English
1. Adverbial-Verb-Subject
2. S-V-A
3. S-O-V
4. V-S-V
= Synthetic language
