System of Declensions

Old English

The Development of the Noun

Lecture 15

Anomalous Verbs

Preterite-Present Verbs

Finite

Verbs

Classification:

They had the following categories:

· Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);

· Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative;

· Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;

· Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

· Conjugation – strong and weak.

2. Non-finite:

v Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:

· Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to beren ne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

v Participles 1, 2 resembledthe Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:

· Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);

· Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

· Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);

· Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);

· Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).

Finite and Non-finite Verbs will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs. They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do). They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

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), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).

Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N):

· Originally (in PG) it was a semantic division (he/she/it – associated with the lexical meaning of a noun), but in OE this principle did not work any more (e.g. wīf (wife) = Neuter);

· In OE the nouns started to grouped into genders according to the suffix:

- -þu (F) – e.g. lenζþu (length);

- -ere (M) – e.g. fiscere (fisher).

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 declension (M, N):

Case	Masculine	Neuter
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nom, Acc	fisc	fiscas	dēor	dēor!
Gen	fisces	fisca	dēores	dēora
Dat	fisce	fiscum	dēore	dēorum

Traces of a-stem in Modern English:

· -es (M, Sg, Gen) à ‘s (student’s book) – Possessive Case;

· -as (M, Pl, Nom) à -(e)s (watches, books) – plural ending for the majority of nouns;

· -  (N, Pl, Nom) à zero ending (deer, sheep) – homogeneous Sg and Pl.

n-stem (M, N, F):

Case	Masculine
Singular	Plural
Nom	nama	naman
Gen	naman	namena
Dat	naman	namum
Acc	naman	naman

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

· -an (M, Pl, Nom) à -en (oxen, children, brethren) – irregular plural ending.

root-stem – never had stem-suffix, words consisted of just a root(M, F):

Case	Masculine
Singular	Plural
Nom, Acc	fōt	fēt
Gen	fotes	fōta
Dat	fēt	fōtum

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

· root-sound interchange (M, Pl, Nom) à root-sound interchange (men, geese, mice) – irregular Plural.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-04