The OE Pronoun

Weak Declension

N-stems: they were very numerous. They included many Fem. (cirice, eorÞe, heorte — church, earth, heart) and Masc. nouns (cnotta, steorra — knot, star) and only a few neuter (eaZa — eye). The modern irregular plural forms: oxen, oxetheren-are traced to this type of declension.

R-stems: are represented by a few masculine and feminine nouns, denoting family relationship: faeder, broþor, modor, dohtor

s-stem – a few neuter nouns, denoting cubs.

cild cealf lamb.

In the singular they were declined like neuter a-stems, but in the pl. they had a specific inflection –r. E.g. cild – cildru

Sound –r appearerd due to rhotacism. The only word in rhotacism in NE is children, but in OE such examples were abundant.

Root stems: they were nouns which never had any stem-building suffix, so the ending was added directly to the root. These nouns are the oldest type. In masc. and fem. nouns they are a small group.

m. föt, töþ

f. gäs, mus

n. böc

The peculiar feature of root stem is that in three cases where the original ending contains it (in the Dat. sg., and Nom. pl.) the root vowel was fronted by palatal mutation: föt – fæt (pl/).

Types of pronouns in OE:

Personal, demonstrative, interrogative, definite, indefinite, negative.

Personal pronouns had three personals, three numbers (sg, dual, and pl. in 1 and 2 persons), 2 numbers (sg. and pl. in 3 pers.), 3 genders – masc. fem. neut., 4 cases: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc.

SINGULAR

1^st person	2^nd person	3^rd person Masc. Fem. Neut.
Nom.	ic	þu	he heo hit
Gen.	min	þīn	his hire his
Dat.	me	þē	Him hire him
Acc.	me, mec	þē	Hine hie hit

dual

	1^st person	2^nd person
	wit	Zit
	uncer	incer
	unc	inc
	unc, uncit	inc, incit

The pronouns of 1 and 2 persons had suppletive forms, like the personal pronouns in other IE languages.

The pronouns of the 3^rd person had developed from the demonstrative pronouns. In PG the third person of personal pronouns did not exist. In Latin there were no personal pronouns of the 3^rd pers. Their function was performed by the demonstr. pron.: Ille (that) – for masc., Illa (f), Illud (n.), Illi (pl.), Illæ (pl.f.) Later on from this demonstrative pronoun personal pronouns of the 3^rd person developed.

M. French: ille – she, elles – they

PLURAL

1^st person	2^nd person	3^rd person
Nom.	we	Ze	hie
Gen.	ure	eower	hiera
Dat.	us	eow	him
Acc.	us, usic	eow, eowic	hie

Demonstrative pron. There were two of them in OE: se – that, þis – this They distinguished 3 genders in the sg. and had one form for all the genders in the pl. OE demonst. pron. were declined like adjectives. They had 5 cases: N,G,D,A,Instr. The declination of demonstr. pron. had some peculiar features: they took special pronominal endings in some case forms, that is endings which are not found in the noun declension: -- er (Gen. pl.), -- em (Dat.sg.).

The demonst. pron. of the masc. and fem. gender se, seo had suppletive forms in the oblique cases: þe, þais, seo, þ æ re.

The pronouns se, seo, þæt, þa (that, these) are of special importance as they were used as a noun determiner with a weakened demonstrative meaning. Thus it was the source of the modern definite article, which developed from this OE dem. pron. in ME.

Interrogative Pronouns: hwa (who) – fem., masc.; hwæt (what) – neut.

They had only sg. form. They were declined as dem. pron. The neuter gender is characterised by having 5 cases. The instrumental case of hwa developed into a separate interr. word hwy (why). The interr. pron. hwilc (which) was declined as a strong adj-ve.

Definite pronoun: gehwa (every), gehwilc (each), ælc (each), swilc (such)

Indefinite pronouns: sum, ænig – some, any.

Negative pronouns: were rebuilt from the indefinite one’s by means of negative particle – ne: ne+an = nan (none); ne + ænig = nenig

As for the other types of pronouns, they were as yet not fully developed in OE. Thus, the posessive pronouns were later derived from the Gen. case of the pers. pron. of all persons and numbers: his, þis.

In irrelative function pers. and demonstrative pronouns were widely used either alone or together with a special relative particle þe.

The reflexive function was performed by the simple pers. pronoun se.

se cyning hine wende – The king went.

Wit uns werian þo hton. – We too intended to defend ourselves.

The oblique cases of personal pronouns in combination with pronominal adjective self could serve as reflexive pronoun, but for the most part self was used in OE simply to emphsize: We hit ne selfe ne lufodon – We ourselves did not love it.

THE OE ADJECTIVE

Grammatical categories

Most historians agree that the number or adjectives in Old English is not very significant. There are primary adjectives, dating back from the very old times and derivative adjectives made by adjective-forming suffixes from nouns. The adjectives of those times are similar to our Slavic adjectives, that is, this part of speech agrees with the noun it modifies in number, gender and case. Consequently, the adjectives have the same categories as the nouns do. Besides, they have categories which are purely adjectival. The adjective in Old English had the following categories: number - the singular and the plural; gender - masculine, neuter and feminine; case - 4/5 (nominative, genitive, dative accusative and partly instrumental)

Дата добавления: 2013-12-14