- •1. When did the historical study of languages begin? Who was the first to prove the relations of many languages to each other and the existence of their common source?
- •2. What is the character of internal and external language changes?
- •3. What are considered to be the main reasons for language changes?
- •4. What groups belong to the Indo-European family of languages? What are Satem and Centum languages?
- •5. What group does English belong to? Name the closest linguistic relations of English.
- •6. What territory did the ancient Germanic tribes inhabited?
- •7. What are the distinctive features of Germanic languages that made them different from other Indo-European languages?
- •8. What is the nature of the First Consonant Shift? Who was the first to explain its regularities?
- •9. Who was the first to explain the irregularities in the First Consonant Shift?
- •Ie voiceless stop was preceded by an unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricative
- •10. How long is the history of the English language?
- •11. What periods do we distinguish in the History of the English language?
- •12. What languages were spoken in the British Isles before the Germanic invasion? Which of their descendants have survived today?
- •13. When did the Germanic invasion in the British Isles begin? What Germanic tribes came to live there?
- •14. What Germanic kingdoms existed on the British Isles?
- •15. How did the country acquire the name of England?
- •16. What important event took place at the end of the 8th century ad on the territory of the British Isles?
- •17. What alphabet did Anglo-Saxons used for their writings? What written records have survived from that time?
- •18. What vowels existed in Old English? How were they represented in writing?
- •19. What consonants existed in Old English? How were they represented in writing?
- •20. What main phonetic changes occurred during the Old English period?
- •Vowel changes
- •Consonants changes
- •21. What was the etymological composition of the oe vocabulary? What languages did the loan words come there from? Composition
- •Foreign influences on Old English
- •22. What word building patterns were common in oe?
- •23. What categories did the oe noun have?
- •24. What categories did the oe adjective have?
- •25. What were the classes of oe pronouns?
- •26. What categories did the oe verb have?
- •27. What were the most common syntactical patterns in oe?
- •28. Did there exist any analytical forms in oe?
- •29. What events of the Modern English period launched the process of forming the National English Language?
- •30. What important changes in phonetic system happened in Early ModE?
- •The Great Vowel Shift
- •31. What was the Nature of the Great Vowel Shift?
- •32. Describe the main changes in grammar system in Modern English.
- •33. Changes in the categories of nouns and adjectives. What old forms of substantive plural survived in ModE? Changes and features of ModE noun system
- •34. Describe the main changes in the ModE pronoun system.
- •35. Describe the main changes in the categories of verb in ModE. Changes and features of Early ModE verbal system
- •36. Describe the main changes in ModE syntax.
- •37. Describe the main changes in vocabulary system in Early Modern English.
22. What word building patterns were common in oe?
Main word building patterns in OE were affixation, composition and
expanding the meaning of old words.
Affixation was a very important means of word builing in OE, there existed a
plenty of productinve word building suffixes and prefixes, for example:
The suffix –erewas used to derive masculine substantives,fiscere
(fisherman), wrītere (writer).
The suffix –Þ, -uÞ, oÞwas used to derive abstract substantives,trēowÞ
(truth) fromtrēow(true).
Composition is widely used in OE. too. There appeared compound nouns,
adjectives, verbs, for example: ǣfentīd (evening time). Names of the days of the
week were also formed by composition:
Mōnandæg (Moon’s day) – Monday.
Tīwesdæg (Tiw’s, the war god’s, day) – Tuesday.
Wednesday (Woden’s, the foremost Germanic god’s, day) – Wednesday.
Þunresdæg (Thunor’s, the god of thunder’s, day) – Thursday.
Frigedæg (Friya’s, the goddess of love’s, day) – Friday.
Sæternesdæg (Sturn’s day) – Saterday.
Sunnandæg (Sun’s day) – Sunday.
23. What categories did the oe noun have?
Nouns are categorised by grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, or
neuter), cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental (lately merged
with the dative)), number (singular, plural). Furthermore, Old English nouns are
divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. In general,
weak nouns are easier than strong nouns, since they had begun to lose their
declensional system. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the various
classes of noun: they are not totally distinct from one another.
24. What categories did the oe adjective have?
Adjectives in Old English are declined using the same categories as nouns:
five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three
genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and two numbers (singular, plural). In
addition, they can be declined either strong or weak. The weak forms are used in
the presence of a definite or possessive determiner, while the strong ones are used
in other situations. The weak forms are identical to those for nouns, while the
strong forms use a combination of noun and pronoun endings.
25. What were the classes of oe pronouns?
There were personal pronouns(First, Second, Third Person).
The possessive pronounsare derived from the genitive case of the personal
pronouns. The 1stand 2d person possessive pronouns are declined like adjectives to
show the agreement with the noun, the 3d person possessive pronouns (his, hire,
hiera) are unchanged.
There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE, that could also act as
determiners (similar to the modern definite article): se, which could function as
both 'the' or 'that', and þes for 'this'.
The interrogative pronouns hwā? (who?) and hwæt? (what?) have only
singular forms. The interrogative pronoun hwilc? (which) is declined as a strong
adjective.