1. Grammatical prefixes, suffixes and endings

There were prefixes which made the perfective aspect of the word:

a-, be-, for-, ge-

e.g. ridan- ехать верхом

for-ridan – поехать

(But then after a thorough investigation the scholars discovered that some verbs with the above mentioned prefixes denoted non-perfective aspect)

Nouns were declined in O.E. and had the following endings:

e.g. stanas – Nom. Pl.

stanum – Dat. Pl.

Verbs were cojugated;

e.g. sedeo (to sit, 1^st person, singular, present tense)

2. Vowel alternation – the changing of the vowel in the root morpheme.

e.g. writan- wrat-writon-writen ( i-a-i-i)

3) Suppletive formations – are the forms of one and the same paradigm (a system of forms of one and the same unit, word) made up from different stems. In O.E. not many parts of speech had suppletive forms.

e.g. god- bettera - betst

yfel-wiersa- wierst

(“Yfel” was split later into 2 lexemes- ill and evil)

e.g. beon (to be): eom (am), is, was, warow (were)

Already in O.E. tere were some tendencies which gradually led to considerable changes which became noticeable in M.E., the period reguarded as transitional from a synthetic language to an analytical, which is English today.(the majority of grammatical forms are made with the help of auxiliary verbs).

13. Old English phonetic changes.

All O.E. phonetic changes were of assimilated character. On the phonetic level assimilation is a kind of influence one sound makes upon another. Assimilation may be progressive, regressive, reciprocal, or double. In O.E. the main types of assimilated changes were:

1. Lengthening (удлинение)

2. breaking or difthongization (преломление или дифтонгизация)

3. i-Umlaut or palatal mutation (и-умлаут или палатальная перегласовка на «и»)

Lengthening is a result of 2 phonetic situations:

1. Vowels became long before ld, md, nd. Our organs of speech adopted to the pronunciation of these sonorants

e.g. bindan>bindan

climban> climban

cild>cild (pl. cildu)

Short i changed into long, then into ai. But if after the lengthening groups there were other consonants – no lengthening occurred. That’s why childru (children) didn’t change i into i.

2. Vowels became long after the falling out of the succeeding consonant

e.g. fimf>fif (five) – “m” fell out

uns>us (us)

Comparing O.E. forms with long vowels with corresponding words with short vowels in other Germanic languages the scholars see that it was the result of the lengthening, e.g. five-fünf (germ.). The preceding vowels became long in O.E., because O.E. was very rhythmical. For the sake of preservation of rhythm the loss of any consonant in the root morpheme led to the lengthening of the preceding vowel.

Breaking, or difthongization means that vowels became difthongs, in other words broke into difthongs before “h”, “l”, “r” + a consonant in the final position, and after some palatal consonants.

e.g. warm>wearm

salt> sealt (соль)

sah> seah (saw-видели)

I-Umlaut or palatal mutation. The essence of i-Umlaut lies in the character of the sound [i]. Under its influence the preceding vowels became narrower, adjusting themselves to the phoneme [i].

e.g. man-mani>men (the only variant met in O.E. texts)

i was the common Indoeuropean suffix of plurality (c.f. modern Russian мыши, гуси, девочки). It was the most widely spread way of creating plural form.

e.g. fot- foti>fet (foot)

mus-musi>mys (mouse)

I-Umlaut as a phonetic change of assimilative character can explain the existence of an exceptional group which exists in modern English. This is a group of nouns which make up their plural forms with the help of the vowel alternation (чередование гласных корня). It is a phenomenon that is common not only of English (мелю-молол, везу-возил). This group is exceptional because phonetics lies in its foundation. (e.g. mouse-mice)

14. Middle English Graphic changes

The graphic changes in M.E. were really numerous and one can state that the spelling standard (the graphic system) of today was formed in M.E. Those changes took place mainly due to the fact that writing was in the hands of the French scribes (переписчики) who introduced new letters, new digraphs (сочетания) to stand for both old sounds and for newly developed sounds.

Changes:

O.E. u> M.E. au, ou (the pronunciation stayed the same) e.g. cu > cou, cow

e.g. O.E. tun (городок) – tunas (pl.) > M.E. townes, tounes > N.E. towns

u before m,n,f was replaced with “o”

O.E. cumin > M.E. comen (again only graphic changes but not pronunciation)

O.E. lufu > M.E. love

cw > qu

O.E. cwen > M.E. queen

Besides a new sound [ts ]- a fricative developed from [k’] and the digraph ch signified it ( cild > child)

The palatal sound [sk’] developed into [s ] and was marked with sh ( scipu > shipe (корабль))