Prosody

OE verse, alliteration, stress-timed line, root syllable took major stress; compounds stressed on first element

Graphics

beginning of Christian era, Germanic alphabet, Futhorc or runic alphabet (p. 90), derived from Greek/Latin alphabets, 24 symbols; Ruthwell Cross, 8th c. inscribed in runes with portion of "Dream of the Rood"; sixth c. Christianization of England led to adoption of Latin alphabet; influence of Irish practice, Insular alphabet, special characters for f, g, r, s (p. 91).

Punctuation: raised point to indicate pause; semicolon and inverted semicolon (punctus elevatus) also indicated pause; no capitals/lowercase distinction

Morphology

loss of inflections: reduction of vowels in inflectional endings, need for syntactical support, adaptation of imported words, inflections in form of suffixes

Old English noun declensions (p. 97)

Adjective declensions: definite/weak declension (needing demonstrative, numeral, or possessive pronoun), indefinite/strong declension ( p. 99)

Personal pronouns (p. 100)

Demonstrative pronouns (p. 101)

Interrogative pronouns (p. 101)

Other pronouns (indeclinable pe, indefinite pronouns: aelc, hwilc, aenig, eall, nan, swilc, sum, man)

Verbs

• inflected for tense, person, number, and mood; two tenses: present and preterite

• Strong verbs: seven subclasses, ablaut system, four principal parts (infinitive, past sing., past plural, past participle)(p. 103, 104)

• Weak verbs: Germanic innovation (dental preterite), led to regular verbs in PDE (p. 104)

• Other verbs: irregular, beon/wesan, don, willan, gan; preterite-present verbs (sculan, cunnan, magan, agan, ic dearr, durfan), ancestors of Present Day English modal auxiliaries (shall, can, may, ought, dare, must)

Uninflected words

prepositions (to, for, be, in, under, ofer, mid, wip, fram, geond, purh, ymbe, of)

conjunctions (and, ac, gif, peah, forpæm, see also correlative conjunctions, p. 105)

adverbs (ofer, under, on, purh, æfter, ne, eac, næfre, hider, to)

• formed by addition of -an to other words (innan, feorran, sippan)

• formed through inflection in genitive/dative of other words (ealles, geara, hwilum)

• formed by adding -e or -lice to adjective (rihte, rihtlice),

interjections (la, eala, whæt)

 

Syntax

modifiers close to modified word

prepositions preceded objects

interrogative formed by inverting the subject and the verb

SVO order in main declarative clauses, SOV in dependent clauses, VSO in interrogative and imperative clauses;

parataxis vs hypotaxis: less subordination than in PDE (hypotaxis) , simple links with conjunctions (parataxis) and, pa, some subordination with pa, gif, forpan

use of apposition/variation in poetry

idioms: correlative comparative ("the bigger, the better"), genitive with numerals (twentig geara), some Latinisms

 

Lexicon

Indo-European or Germanic, IE: basic words, 1-10 numerals, kinship terms; some words found only in Germanic/West Germanic languages: baec, ban, folc, grund, rotian, seoc, swellan, werig, wif, broc, crafian, idel, cniht, sona, weod)

few Celtic borrowings, some place names (Thames, Dover, London, Cornwall, Carlisle)

some Scandinavian influence

major Latin influence (words for religious, intellectual concepts/activities, plants, calques or loan translations)

formation of new words:

• compounding: noun+noun (sunbeam), adjective+noun (yfelweorc), adverb+noun (innefeoh), compound adjectives (isceald, wishydig), some compound adverbs (neafre, eallmaest), compound verbs (goldhordian)

• prefixing, ge-: past participles, perfective sense, association in nouns, derivation from verb

• abstract nouns with -nes, -ung, -dom, -scipe, etc.

• agent nouns with -end, -a, -bora, -ere, -estre

• adjective suffixes: -ig, -lic, -ful, -leas, -ed, -isc, -sum, etc.

• prefixes: un-, in-, ofer-, æfter-, fore-, mis-, under-, etc.

loss in PDE of large part of OE vocabulary due to sound changes, reductions, confusions with other words, cultural and technological change, taboo, chain reactions in semantic changes, dialectal differences, fashion