Old English Morphology. Old English Nouns 3 страница
Reliable evidence of the period is extremely scarce. The story of the invasion is told be Bede (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatian in 449 A.D. under the leadership of the Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa. The invaders came in multitude, with families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories like Celts before them. The Germanic invasion was different from the Roman military conquest, although it was by no means a peaceful affair.
The invaders of Briatin came from the western subdivision of the Germanic tribes. The newcomers were of the three strongest races of Germany, the Saxon, the Angles and the Jutes. The first wave of the invaders, the Jutes or the Frisians, occupied the extreme south-east: Kent and the Isle of Wight. The second wave of immigrants was largely made up of the Saxons, who had been expanding westwards across Frisia to the Rhine and to what is now known as Normandy. The final stage of the drift brought them to Britain by way of the Thames and the south coast. They set up their settlements along the south coast and on both banks of the Thames and depending on location were called South Saxons, West Saxons and East Saxons. The Saxons consolidated into a number of petty kingdoms, the largest and the most powerful of them being Wesswx, the kingdom of West Saxons.
Last came the Angles from the lower valley of Elbe and southern Denmark. They made their landing on the east coast and moved up the rivers to the central part of the island to occupy the districts between the Wash and the Humber and to the north of the Humber. They founded large kingdoms which had absorbed their weaker neighbours: East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria.
There were probably little intermixture between the newcomers and the Celtic aborigines. The invadres certainly prevailed over the natives so far as language was concerned. After the settlement West Germanic tongues came to be spoken all over Britain. The migration of the Germanic tribes to the British Isles and the resulting separation from the Germanic tribes on the mainland was a decisive event in their linguistic histiry. Geographical separation as well as mixture and unification of people are major factors in linguistic differentiation and in the formation of languages. Being cut off from related Old Germanic languages the closely related group of West Germanic dialects developed into a separate Germanic language – English. That is why the Germanic settlement of Britain can be regarded as the beginning of the independent history of the English language.
The history of Anglo-Saxon Briatin form the 5th to the 11th c has been reconstructed from multiple sources: Bede’s History, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon historical chronicles some legal documents. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatin in 449 A.D. under the leadership of two Germanic kings, Hengest and Horsa. Vortigen invited them because he wanted then to help in the local war. The first wave of newcomers occupied the extreme south-east Kent and the Isle of Wight.
The period from the 5th till 11th was a transitional period from the tribal and slave-owning system to feudalism.The basic economic unit was a feudal manor; it was a self-contained economic unit as it grew its own food and carried on some small industries to cover its needs. Consequently there was little intercourse between population of neighbouring areas. Tribal and clan division was gradually supressed by townships. These conditions were reflected in the development of the West Germanic tongues brought to Britain. The economic isolation of the regions as well as the political disunity of the regions led to the formation of new geographical boundaries between the speech of different localities.
Old English Phonology
Apart from the differences in consonants we may see that vowels і similar words are different too. Especially prominent are the instances of numerous diphthongs in Old English replacing simple vowels as in eahta jooc, meolc, heard (eight, yoke, milk, hard), or when vowels change their I quality in certain positions as in waster, stdn, fyllan (water, stone, fill). Some I sounds merge, some get doubled - all these are to be studied among Old English sound changes.
The system of vowels in Old English included seven long and eight short vowels (monophthongs) (aaeeiouya –ааёёу) and four short and four long diphthongs (ea eo ie io - ёа eo j). The length of the vowel was a phonemic quality. The words having long and short vowels differed in meaning: jod (god) - jod (good), west (west) - west (waste), for (preposition for) - for (past tense of the verbjfa ran - go). Comparing Old English sounds with the system of sound of other Germanic languages, one can see that in English it is more complicated and the origin of some sounds is blurred. Some of the sounds had counterparts in other Indo-European languages So, for instance, such sounds as i, и can be found in similar words in other Germanic and non-Germanic Indo-European languages: Old English niman (Ukr. знімати); Old English sunu (Lat. 'sums). But the majority of sounds deviated from the way they were pronounced in other languages. So, for instance, Indo-European short о and a merged into one sound a in Germanic; but this a had several ways of development: a - a haban - habban (have); but harda - heard (hard), arm - earm (arm), manna - man (man); long Gothic a changed and gave several other variants, but there appeared a new long a from Gothic ai. Various changes occurred in the Old English phonology. These can be called spontaneous, independent, and assimilative, influenced by the 'surrounding sounds.
What had changed spontaneously, or independently is the following: Gothic ai corresponds to long a\au to long ea\ lu to long eo in Old English ddud-deadi&z&d); aust- east (east); dlups-deop (deep). These changes occurred irrespective of whatever sounds surrounded the sounds in question.
Assimilative changes are the changes that occurred in the language in specific surroundings і the sound might change when it was preceded or followed by some other sound or sound cluster. Many of the sounds that appeared in the language as a result of these changes returned to their previous quality in. the next period, some did not, but we are concerned with these because the changes transformed the words formerly common in Germanic languages to their Anglo-Saxon variety.
There are two types of assimilation - regressive and progressive assimilation. If a sound influences the preceding sound, the assimilation is regressive, if it influences the following it sound - it is called progressive assimilation. Both types of assimilation are found in Old English. Most common, mutilating the general Germanic picture ofthe sounds are:
Breaking (fracture). This is the process of formation of a short diphthong from a simple short vowel when it is followed by a specific consonant cluster.
In the Northumbrian and Kentish dialects l л-cons does not lead to fracture of the sound as, which turns into a {aid, all).
Palatal mutation (i-umlaut) The essence of this change is that a back sound, a or o, changes its quality if there is a front sound in the next syllable. Especially frequent are the changes in the roots of the verbs influenced by the /-sound of the suffix of the infinitive -ian (the suffix lost its front sound in the same process, and in the Old English we have already the result of this change, not seeing the cause of it): a > ae; a > e wakjan — wasccan (to observe, to be awake); sandian — sendan (to send) namnian — nemnan (to name) talian — tsolan — tellan (to tell), salian - saelan - sellan ( to sell, originally to give) satian — sastan - settan (to set) a > аё larian - /аё ran (to learn, to teach); kalian - /іае lan (to heal) an — аёnij (any) о > oe > e ofstian - efstan (to hurry)
dohter - dehter (dative case of daughter) о > oe > ё wopian — wepan (to weep)
domian - danan (to deem, to judge) u > у fidlian - fyllan (to fill)
kunin j - су піп j (king) \x > у m Us - mys (mice)
Palatal mutation was found not only in monophthongs but in diphthongs, too. The modified system of diphthongs looks like the following: ea > ie
eald - ieldra (elder)
hleahian - hliehhan (to laugh) -
eo > ie
feor - fierra (further) J'eorij - jienjra (younger) и- ^
ea > hear ran (hear) 1
jeleafa - jellefan (believe) eo > Ге jetreowi - jetnewe (true)
In the Northumbrian and Mercian dialects long and short ea mutate into long and short e (eldra, jelefan).
Very often palatal mutation thus distanced a noun or an adjective and a verb derived from it, for the most frequent case of palatal mutation was under the influence of the verbal (infinitival) suffix -ian. We find the reflexes of Old English palatal mutation in such pairs in present-day English as sale- sell; tell - tale; doom - deem; full - fill - in Old English the verb had mutated vowel tasllan (from talian) whereas the noun had no such mutation - talu. As we will see later, plurals of some nouns had a mutated vowel in the stem, which was very much in accordance with the rule-miff- mys (mouse- mice), foot - feet. Later developments of sounds in these words blurred the initial identity of the roots.
Diphthongization after palatal consonants. Diphthongs may have resulted from another process in Old English - diphthongization after palatal consonants sk\ k' and j (in spelling sc, c, j): a > ea, skal — sceal shall, scacan — sceacan (shake) scamu — sceamu (shame) a > ea skaggxvon — sceawian (to show) e > ie jefan — jiefan (give), jetan — jietan (get) ж > ea (the as sound was actually derived from a) 3&f - jeaf (gave) jast - jeat (gate) ж > ea (the аё sound was actually derived from a), jar — joar (year) о > eo scort - sceort (short), yong - jeonj (young)
However, there are linguists who still doubt whether the і sound (that is the resulting sound, it was actually a diphthong) was pronounced. Some stick to the opinion that the letter і simply signified the palatal nature of the preceding sound. The words beginning with j, Ц and с (such may be found in (he texts) with non-palatalized vowel represent dialects other than West-Saxon (junj, Jefan) etc.
Back, or VelarMutation.The formula of mutation here reminds very much that of И mutation, but the difference is that the syllable that influenced the preced vowel contained a back vowel - о or и (sometimes even a might serve^ background for back mutation). Not all the dialects had this mutation, and th process was not universal (in West Saxon literary language it occurred only before the sounds r, I, p, b, f, гіг): і > io hira - Mora (their); silufr - siolufr (silver) sifon - siofon (seven) liniu - liomu (limbs) e > eo heorot - heorot (hart), hefon - lieofon (heaven) efor - eofor (boar) a > ea saru - searu (armour).
Mutation before h. Sounds a and e that preceded h underwent several changes, mutating to diphthongs ea, ie and finally were reduced to i/y: - naht - nealit - niht - nieht - nyht (night). The second may be quite easily traced to breaking, but the origin of the other three is rather vague. Probably, the very nature of the h sound was the reason for further development of the sound.
The words with such mutation are not very numerous, still we cannot ignore them altogether. It is observed in the past tense of the verb majan (may) meahte - miehte - mihte - myhte and several other words.
Contraction. Somehow or other the consonant h proved to have interfered with the development of many sounds. When h was placed between two vowels the following changes occurred: a + h +vowel > ea slahan - slean (slay) e + h + vowel > eo selien - soon (see) і + h + vowel > eo tihan - teon (accuse) о + h + vowel > о fohan - fon (catch),hohan - Hon (hang).
The Old German had no contraction, and this consonant is present the corresponding words - in corresponding present-day German wordsconsonant is still found in spelling, though later it was lost in pronunciation, too (in the words like sehen).
These were qualitative changes of vowels; the significant quantitative change that is still felt in present-day English is the lengthening of vowels before the clusters nd, ldy mb - bindan, cild, climban (bind, child, climb). Further development of the sound system led to diphthongization of long vowels, and that explains the exception in the rules of reading the sounds in the closed syllables in the present-day English (the words like climb, find, bold, told, comb, bomb).
Still, if there was a consonant after this cluster the vowel was not lengthened: cildru (now children).
As far as other vowel changes, we can also mention gradation, or ablaut - grammatical interchange of vowels in different forms of the verb and in word-formation (чергування голосних у корені слова).
This was frequently found in making past tenses and participles of some verbs (they will be mentioned in studying Old English verbs).
Old English Morphology. Old English Nouns
Old English morphology was that of a typical inflected if somewhat simplified Indo-European language. Parts of speech included noun, pronoun adjective, numeral and verb; all of which formed their paradigmatic forms by inflections, suffixes, and sound interchange. There were no analytical, formations. Nouns in Old English retained only four of the Indo-European 8 cases, adjectives, partly pronouns and numerals agreed with the nouns they modified in number, gender and case. The Old English had two adjective declensions, a strong and a weak. The weak forms were used generally after demonstrative pronouns, and possessive adjectives; the strong were used independently. The comparison of adjectives and adverbs in Germanic languages differs from that in the Romanic languages. Generally, -r and -st endings are added: long, longer, longest.
Free stress (accent) became recessive, and precise accent rules became dominant, with the first root syllable carrying the stress. Umlauting, a processl of modifying vowel sounds, took place extensively in formation of paradigmatic I forms Сman - men; fot -fa) and word building. A system of strong verbs I developed as the result of vowel alternation (ablaut), and a unique way of forming the past tense using dental suffix for weak verbs (ealdian - ealdode to grow old) was created. The number of strong verbs in Germanic is steadily being reduced, and the system does not seem to permit the creation of new strong verbs. Conversely, the number of weak verbs is increasing.
Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a grammatical category in a strict sense of the word for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender (the other nominal parts of speech have gender forms), so this category was formal; but case and number had a set of endings. Nouns used to denote males are normally masculine - maim, faeder, brodor, abbod (man, father, brother, abbot). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor, cwene, abbudissa (mother, sister, queen, abbess). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as masjden (maid), wif (wife) are neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп'я, дівча). And unfinan (woman) is masculine, because the second element of the compound is masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated, the same as in Ukrainian. Still in Ukrainian nouns have endings that can indicate the gender of the noun - степ (чол.), вікно (сер.) вода (жін.). In Old English there are no such endings, and words very similar in form may be of different genders. The same form may have two different meanings distinguished by gender, for example lood masc. "man", but leod (fem.), "people", secj (masc) - man, but secj (fem) - "sword".
There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases - nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that number proved to be a stable category, relevant for rendering the meanings and expressing the true state of things in reality. Case is supplanted by other means to express the relations between the words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.
All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes, which were hardly visible even in Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by centuries. The remnants of these suffixes are even more vague in Old English. Still, these stem-forming suffixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. Though lost in Old English they still worked in the way the case and number forms were made (we may compare it with some Russian nouns - without knowing the history of declensions, for instance, it is difficult to explain why in Russian the plural of стол - столы, but that of стул is not стулы but стулья, very similar nouns ночь and дочь are not so similar in the plural: ночи but дочери and not дочи. In Ukrainian the nouns ім'я and хлоп'я look alike but the plural of the first is імена and of the second not хлопена but хлоп'ята.
Without mentioning the effect of the common Indo-European stem- forming suffixes in Russian and Ukrainian І о and | і and er, en we can hardly find reasons for that. Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns, too. Why goose -pi. geese, but moose -pi. moose, foot - feet but boot - boots, sheep pl. sheep, but sheet - sheets. In treating the Old English nouns special attention is to be paid to the original groups of nouns in the language with due respect to their dwindling stem-forming elements. The classification based on historical principles seems to be at least a logical continuation of what the language had had earlier. We are fully aware that the stem-forming elements are just something slightly tangible; one can agree that some classes of nouns lose specific features of the class and tend to be merging with stronger groups of nouns; that the inflections in many cases are almost the same, that the gender of nouns may become more relevant than the original stem-forming suffix.
The nouns in Old English are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups.
The Strong Declensionincludes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix. Former suffixes (a,o,i,u) are no longer found in Old English, moreover, even the very paradigms of these groups of nouns were already splitting (we can see considerable difference in declension of nouns of different genders within the class of nouns originally having the same stem-forming suffix.) Yet the traditional classification will look like this: -a-stems.
They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative:
m n (short root vowel) n (long root vowel)
Singular
Nom. stan scip sceap
Gen. stänes scipes sceapes
Dat. stäne scipe sceape
Асc. stän scip sceap
Plural
Nom. stanas scipu sceap
Gen. stana scipa sceapa
Dat. stänum scipum sceapum
Асc. stänas scipu sceap
stone ship sheep
So, we can see that Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel might give an unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being an exception from the general rule of formation of the plural form goes back to the Old English period.
If there was a mutated vowel in the stem, this sound might be preserved only in the singular:
| m | n | |
| Singular | ||
| Norn. | dæ3 | fæt |
| Gen. | dæ3es | fætes |
| Dat. | dæ3e | fæte |
| Асc. | dæ3 | fæt |
| Plural | ||
| Norn. | da3as | fatu |
| Gen. | da3a | fata |
| Dat. | da3um | fatum |
| Асc. | da3as | fatu |
| day | vessel |
This group of nouns is of the same origin as that of Ukrainian nouns стіл, день, дно, вікно.
The Ukrainian (and Russian) 2nd declension of nouns (masculine and neuter) originates from the same Indo-European group of nouns (Germanic short о proceeds from Indo-European a).
Examples of Old English a-stems are: masculine earm (arm), eorl (earl), helm (helmet, protection), hrinз (ring), muð (mouth), зear (year), biscop (bishop), cyninз (king), ham (home), heofon (heaven), hrоf (roof) etc.; neuter dor (door), hof (hoof), зeoc (yoke), word (word), deor (wild animal), bearn (child), feoh (cattle), зear (year), hus (house), leað (song), lim (limb), оr (beginning).
There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally -/'- or -w- in the stem (they are called -/'a-stems and -vva-stems); they may preserve this sound in declension: but otherwise the differences are minor. Also, some nouns which are rather clumsy in the nominative might have become still clumsier when an inflection was added; so we may see the omission of such sound (the second root vowel in such words as heafod -heafdes (head): seolh (seal, the animal) - seole).
Examples of -ja- stems are: hyse (young warrior), böcere (a learned man), fiscere (fisherman), net (net), bedel (bed), wite (punishment, fine); -Wüstems: treo (tree), deaw (custom), deow (servant), seam (device), спёо (knee). We can find similar modification of the former Indo-European -o-(which is -e- in Germanic languages) suffix in Ukrainian (the nouns of the second declension листя, життя, where -i-sound merges with -o-, giving the sounds -m 'а (-тя) and a divergency in the paradigm).
The nouns of this class were very numerous and were characterized by high frequency of use in Old English, so this paradigm is highly relevant to the further development of this part of speech.
Nouns belonging to o-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending -u; if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all:
Singular
Nom. talu for
Gen.tale fore
Dat. tale fore
Acc. tale fore
Plural
Nom. tala fora
Gen.tala fora
Dat. talum forum
Acc. tala fora
tale journey
Other nouns of this group are: caru (care), scamu (shame), säwol (soul), lufu (love), lär (learning), sorj(sorrow), scir (district), street (road, street), swefn (dream), fid (time, period).
Ukrainian nouns of the 1st declension of feminine gender are related to these (вода, голова etc.).
In this group of nouns the suffix -ö- may also be accompanied by additional і and w, that is -jö- and -wo- stems will give variants of declension:
-jo- stems -wo -stems
Singular
Nom. bгусз sceadu
Gen. bгусзе sceadwe
Dat. bгусзе sceadwe
Асc. bгусзе sceadwe
Plural
Nom. bгусза sceadwa
Gen. bгусза sceadwa
Dat. bгусзит sceadwum
Асc. bгусза sceadwa
bridge shade
In Ukrainian similar additional sound і gives such formations as стаття, копія.
Other examples of the -jö- stems are: endebyrdnes (order, succession), herenes (praise), hild (battle), rest (rest).
The nouns formerly having -i-sufix, now called -j-stemsmight belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders - masculine and neuter have the same endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the -a- stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems.
m n f
Singular
Nom. hyll spere cweri
Gen. hylles speres cwene
Dat. hylle spere cwene
Acc. hyll spere cwen
Plural
Nom. hyllas speru cwene/cwena
Gen. hylla spera cwena
Dat. hyllum sperum cwenum
Acc. hyllas speru cwene/cwena
hill spear woman
Other nouns of this group are: masculine - sije (victory), mere (sea), mete (food), dsel (part), jiest (guest), drync (drink), jebeorscipe (feast), deodscype (people); neuter - sife (sieve), hilt (hilt), Даме (flesh), yfel (evil), mynster (monastery); feminine - wiht (thing), hyde (hide), woruld (world, age), frumsceaft (first creation), fyrd (army). In Ukrainian the sound і caused the palatalization of the previous consonant and was lost: тесть, гість.Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender:
| m | f | |
| Singular | ||
| Nom. | sunu | dum |
| Gen | suna | dura |
| Dat. | suna | dura |
| Acc. | sunu | dum |
| Plural | ||
| Nom. | suna | dura |
| Gen | suna | dura |
| Dat. | sunum | durum |
| Acc. | suna | dura |
| son | door |
Other nouns of this group are: masculine - wudu (wood), medu (honey), weald (forest), sumor (summer), feld (field), heoro (sword), liefe (weight); feminine: nosu (nose), or (floor), hand (hand), hi en du (dishonour), sal (rope), swadu (way, path).
In the course of language development the nouns belonging to -i-, -ō-and stems preserved nothing of their former appurtenance: yet it is significant that -ō- and -u- stems in Old English had only three distinctive endings both for the singular and the plural and that was sufficient for proper communication; no ambiguity arose when they were accompanied by demonstrative pronouns, -i- stems, on the other hand, illustrate the tendency to dissolution of the former classes of nouns and a certain tendency for regrouping the declensions according to the gender of the noun.
This class of nouns of weak declension consists of a rather numerous group of nouns originally having -n-stems; the suffix is well-preserved in declension of nouns in Old English, but disappeared in the nominative case (compare Ukrainian nouns like ім'я, плем'я), -n- stemnouns may be of all three genders. But actually no difference in declension of nouns of different genders can be found, for example:
| m | Singular | n | f | |
| Nom. | nama | ēare | tun3e | |
| Gen | nam an | ēaran | tun3an | |
| Dat. | naman | ēaran | tun3an | |
| Асc. | naman | Plural | ēaran | tun3an |
| Nom. | naman | ēaran | tun3an | |
| Gen | namena | ēarena | tun3ena | |
| Dat. | namum | ēarum | tun3um | |
| Асc. | naman | ēaran | tun3an | |
| name | ear | tongue |