QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

1.Did word stress in OE always fall on the first syllable? Recall some regular shifts of stress in word-building and give similar examples from present-day English.

2. Comment on the phonemic status of OE short diphthongs (give your reasons why they should be treated as phonemes or as allophones). Account for the difference between the vowels in OE pæt, eat and monn, all going back to PG words with [a] (cf Gt pata, manna, alls).

4. Account for the interchange of vowels in OE dæʒe, daʒas (NE day — Dat. sg and Nom. pl); bæð, baðian (NE bath, bathe).

5. Say which word in each pair of parallels is OE and which is Gt. Pay attention to the difference in the vowels;

raups — rēad (NE red); hām — haims (NE home); beald — balpei (NE bold); barms — bearm (‘chest’); dēaf — daufs (NE deaf); triu — trēo (NE tree); lēof — liufs (‘dear’, rel. to NE love); qiþan — cweðan (NE quoth ‘say’).

In the same way classify the following words into OE and O Scand: bēaʒ — baugr (‘ring’); fár — fǣr (NE fear); man or mon — maðr (Gt manna); daupr — dēap (NE death); eall —allr (NE all); earm — armr (NE arm); harpa — hearpe (NE harp); faðir — fæder (NE father); fæst — fastr (NE fast).

6. Account for the difference between the root-vowels in OE and in parallels from other OG languages:

Gt langiza, OE lenʒra (NE longer); Gt marei, OHG meri, OE mere (NE obs. mere ‘lake’); Gt sandian, OE sendan (NE send); Gt ubils, OE yfel (NE evil); Gt be-laibian, OE lǣfan (NE leave); Gt. baugian, OE bӯʒan, bieʒan (‘bend’); Gt fulljan, OE fyllan (NE fill); Gt laisjan — OE iǣran ‘teach’.

7. Explain the term "mutation" and innumerate the changes referred to mutations in Late PG and in Early OE. What do they all have in common?

8. Which word in each pair could go back to an OE prototype with palatal mutation and which is more likely to have descended from the OE word retaining the original non-mutated vowel? Mind that the spelling may often point to the earlier pronunciation of the word: old — elder; strong — strength; goose — geese; man — men; full — fill; food — feed; brother — brethren; far — further.

9. Was the OE vowel system symmetrical? State your arguments in favour and against its interpretation as a completely balanced system (See also question 2).

10. Define the sound values of the letters f, ð, s and comment on the system of OE consonant phonemes:

OE heofon, faran, ʒe-faran, hæfde, offrung, ofer (NE heaven, fare, had, offering, over); oððe, oðer, Norð, ðanne (‘or’, NE other, North, then); sǣ, wisse, cēosan, cēas (NE sea, ‘knew’, choose, chose).

11. What consonant and vowel changes are illustrated by the following pairs of words?

Gt maiza — OE māra (NE more); Gt kunþian, OE cӯðan (‘inform’); Gt daups — OE dēad (NE dead).Gt saljan — OE sellan (NE sell);OE pyncan — pūhte (NE think — thought);OE mæʒden, mǣden (NE maiden);Gt kinnus, OE cinn (NE chin); OHG isarn — OE iren (NE iron).

Gt hausjan — OE hieren (NE hear); O Scand skaft — OE sceaft (NE shaft).

12. Why can the voicing of fricative consonants in Early OE be regarded as a sort of continuation of Verner's Law? Describe the similarities and the differences between the two processes.

13. What peculiarities of OE consonants can account for the difference in the sound values of the italicised letters in the following modern words?

sand; rise (OE risan); house — houses (OE hūs); hose (OE hosa); horse (OE hors); think, bathe, path (OE pyncan, bāðian, pæð).

Chapter IX
OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR (§ 148-226)

Preliminary Remarks. Form-Building.
Parts of Speech and Grammatical Categories

§ 148.OE was a synthetic, or inflected type of language; it showed the relations between words and expressed other grammatical meanings mainly with the help of simple (synthetic) grammatical forms. In building grammatical forms OE employed grammatical endings, sound interchanges in the root, grammatical prefixes, and suppletive formation.

Grammatical endings, or inflections, were certainly the principal form-building means used: they were found in all the parts of speech that could change their form; they were usually used alone but could also occur in combination with other means.

Sound interchanges were employed on a more limited scale and were often combined with other form-building means, especially endings. Vowel interchanges were more common than interchanges of consonants.

The use of prefixes in grammatical forms was rare and was confined to verbs. Suppletive forms were restricted to several pronouns, a few adjectives and a couple of verbs.

§ 149. The parts of speech to be distinguished in OE are as follows: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral (all referred to as nominal parts of speech or nomina), the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection. Inflected parts of speech possessed certain grammatical categories displayed in formal and semantic correlations and oppositions of grammatical forms. Grammatical categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in nominal parts of speech and verbal categories found chiefly in the finite verb.

We shall assume that there were five nominal grammatical categories in OE: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison, and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness (see § 185). Each part of speech had its own peculiarities in the inventory of categories and the number of members within the category (categorial forms). The noun had only two grammatical categories proper: number and case (for the distinction of gender see § 160 below). The adjective had the maximum number of categories — five. The number of members in the same grammatical categories in different parts ofspeech did not necessarily coincide: thus the noun had four cases. Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative, whereas the adjective had five (the same four cases plus the Instrumental case)[13]. The personal pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p., unlike other parts of speech, distinguished three numbers — Singular, Plural and Dual. Cf.

sg OE ic (NE I), dual wit ‘we two’, pl wē (NE we)

OE stān n (NE stone) — stānas (stones).

Verbal grammatical categories were not numerous: tense and mood — verbal categories proper — and number and person, showing agreement between the verb-predicate and the subject of the sentence.

The distinction of categorial forms by the noun and the verb was to a large extent determined by their division into morphological classes: declensions and conjugations.

§ 150.The following survey of OE grammar deals with the main parts of speech: the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, and the verb. Many features of the OE syntactic structure will be self-evident from the study of morphology; therefore the description of syntax is confined to the main peculiarities which may help to trace the trends of development in later periods.

The OE grammatical system is described synchronically as appearing in the texts of the 9th and 10th c. (mainly WS); facts of earlier, prewritten, history will sometimes be mentioned toaccount for the features of written OE and to explain their origin.

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