- •Contents
- •Unit 2: The Comparative Method ………………………..8 Unit 3: The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law ………………………10
- •Unit 1 The Indo-European Family
- •Centum and Satem Groups of ie Languages
- •Unit 2 The Comparative Method
- •Unit 3 The First Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law
- •Exceptions to Grimm’s law:
- •Unit 4 The Accent Shift and Verner’s Law
- •Rhotacism
- •The Palatal Mutation
- •Unit 6 The Early Germans
- •The Life and Social Organization of the Germans
- •The Great Migration
- •Unit 7 Ancient Germanic Tribes and Their Classification
- •The Proto-Germanic Language
- •Unit 8 The East Germanic Group The Goths
- •Ulfilas and the Gothic Bible
- •Unit 9 The North Germanic Group
- •Unit 10 Northern Mythology
- •The Joys of Valhalla
- •Thor and the Other Gods
- •The Death of Balder
- •Unit 11 The West Germanic Group
- •Unit 12 Old English
- •Three Periods of the History of English
- •Unit 13 Old English Alphabet and Pronunciation
- •Diphthongs
- •Consonants in Old English
- •Unit 14 Some Phonetic Changes of the Old English Period
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Oe Fracture, or Breaking
- •II. Unstressed Vowels
- •III. Consonants
- •Palatalization of Velar Consonants
- •Voicing and Unvoicing of Fricatives
- •Metathesis
- •IV. Word Stress
- •Unit 15 The Noun Grammatical Categories
- •Declensions
- •Unit 16 The Adjective
- •The Weak Declension
- •D. Other classes of pronouns
- •Unit 18 The Verb
- •Mutation or Umlaut
- •The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
- •Unit 19 Strong Verbs
- •Weak Verbs
- •To Class III belong only four verbs:
- •Preterite-Present Verbs
- •Irregular Verbs
- •Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
- •Changes in the Orthographic System
- •Unit 21 Middle English Phonetic Changes
- •Consonants
- •Unstressed Vowels
- •Stressed Vowels
- •Quantitative Changes
- •Qualitative Changes
- •Monophthongs
- •New Diphthongs
- •Unit 22 Middle English Morphology Nouns
- •Articles
- •Pronouns
- •Adjectives
- •Unit 23 The Formation of the National English Language
- •The Great Vowel Shift (gvs)
- •Unit 25 The Mood
- •Conjugation of Strong Verbs
- •Conjugation of Weak Verbs
- •Unit 26 Development of the System of Verbids and Their Grammatical Categories
- •Unit 27 Syntactic Structure
- •Unit 28
- •Varieties of English
- •Unit 29 Etymological Composition of the English Vocabulary
- •Unit 30 The connection of the history of the English language with the history of the English people
Mutation or Umlaut
The most important type of mutation is the i/j-mutation (See Unit 5). It affected practically all vowels. Only short e and i have no connection with it. The result is the fronting and raising of vowels. In OE:
Back vowel |
Front vowel |
|
|
a > |
e |
*sandian > |
sendan (send) |
ǣ > |
e |
*tælian > |
tellan (tell) |
ā > |
ǣ |
*hālian > |
hǣlan (heal) |
o > |
e |
ofstian > |
efstan (hurry) |
ō > |
ē |
dōmjan > |
dēman (judge) |
u > |
y |
fullian > |
fyllan (fill) |
ū > |
ӯ >i/y |
ontūnian > |
ontӯnan (open) |
ea > |
ie >i/y |
hleahian > |
hliehhan (laugh)> hlihhan/hlyhhan |
ēā > |
īē >ī/ӯ |
hēāran > |
hīēran (hear) > hīran/hӯran |
eo > |
ie >i/y |
afeorrian..> |
afierran (remove) >afirran/afyrran |
ēō > |
īē >ī/ӯ |
getrēōwi..> |
getrīēwi (true) > getrīwe/getrӯwe. |
The i-mutation was very important for the phonemic structure of OE. As a result of it a new phoneme arose which was different from the original one.
The phoneme resulting from mutation had existed before, so that the phonetic structure of the language was not affected by the change (sandian > sendan).
The phoneme appearing as a result of mutation had not existed in the language before (fullian > fyllan). The phonemic structure of the language was affected by the change.
The Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb
The Indo-European verbal system underwent many radical changes in Early Germanic. In the Germanic languages the verbs are divided into two great classes: Strong and Weak.
The strong verbs form their preterite and past participle by means of ablaut. The weak verbs form their preterite by the addition of a syllable containing a dental (Goth. -da/-ta; OE -de/te) and their past participle by means of a dental suffix, too (Goth. -þ/-t; OE -d/-t).
Besides these two great classes of strong and weak verbs, there are a few other minor groups.
The strong verbs were originally subdivided into reduplicated and non-reduplicated verbs (Goth. letan – lailōt). In OE, the reduplication almost entirely disappeared in the prehistoric period of the language. The non-reduplicated verbs are divided into six classes according to six ablaut-series. The originally reduplicated verbs were put together and called class 7.
The OE verb has the following independent forms (All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear):
1) one voice (active); 2) two numbers (sg., pl); 3) three persons (distinct forms appear only in sg); 4) two tenses (present and preterite); |
5) two complete moods (indicative and subjunctive, the latter originally the IE optative; the imperative mood which is only used in the present tense); 6) three non-finite forms: the infinitive; the present participle with active meaning; the past participle (passive). |
The forms of the present were used to indicate present and future actions. But already in OE the present forms of ‘bēon’ (be), ‘sculan’ (shall), ‘willan’ (will) with the infinitive came to be used to express the future.
The past tense (preterite) was used in a most general sense to indicate events in the past, including those which are nowadays expressed by the forms of the Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Present Perfect and other analytical forms.
Grammatical categories of the verb: number, person, mood (indicative, subjunctive, imperative), tense.
The existence of these four grammatical categories is confirmed by consistent opposition of form and meaning. In addition to those categories we must mention two debatable categories: aspect and voice.
In OE, there were word combinations, including ‘habban’, ‘bēon’, ‘weorþan’ (have, be, become) + the past or present participle. The combinations with the present participle were used to describe a prolonged state or action; the combinations with the past participle indicated a state resulting from previous completed action (the forerunners of modern continuous and perfect forms).
These combinations did not form regular oppositions with the simple forms of the verb, so some linguists say they cannot be treated as members of grammatical categories. They belonged to the periphery of the verb system and provided a supply of word combinations which was later used for further extension of the system.
The category of voice in OE is another debatable problem. The only trace of the old synthetic passive forms in OE is ‘hātte’ (sg); ‘hātton (pl)’ (is/was called, are/were called). Otherwise the passive voice was expressed by the forms of ‘bēon; ‘wesan’ (to be), occasionally also ‘weorþan’ (to become), and the past participle.
During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the passive voice.