- •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
Irregular Verbs
The verbs bēon, wesan (be)
The verb bēon is an ancient IE suppletive verb. In many languages – Germanic and non-Germanic – its paradigm is made up of several roots.
The present tense paradigm:
-
1.
eom
bēo
2.
eart
bist
3.
is
biþ
1-3 Pl.
sind/sindon/sint
bēoþ
Note: The two sets of forms are not identical in meaning: the forms eom, eart, is, etc. are used to express present time, the forms bēo, bist, etc. are frequently future in meaning.
The preterite tense paradigm of bēon, wesan is as follows:
-
Singular
Plural
1.
wæs ↘
2.
wǣre →
wǣron
3
wæs ↗
This paradigm was built up from the root *wes- on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5. Though the Infinitive and Participle II do not occur in the texts, the set of forms can be reconstructed as: *wesan – wæs – wǣron - *wesen.
The active (or present) participle in OE ended in -ende:
-
lufian (love)
lufian (love)
timbran (build)
timbrende (building)
helpan (help)
helpende (helping)
gangan (go)
gangende (going)
Anomalous verbs dōn (do), gān (go).
These verbs show many irregularities, and tend to be old words. Both dōn and gān have mutation in the 2nd and 3rd persons singular present indicative. Their past tense is derived according to the weak conjugation. The verb gān has suppletive past forms. The alternation of ō/y in the past forms of the verb dōn is not clear [Ylish, 1973].
-
Present Indicative
Preterite Indicative
1.
dō
gā
dyde
ēode
2.
dēst
gæst
dydest
ēodest
3.
dēþ
gæþ
dyde
ēode
1-3 Pl.
dōþ
gāþ
dydon
ēodon
Participle I
dōnde
gangende
Participle II
(ge)dōn
(ge) gān, (ge)gangen
Note: The participles gangende, (ge)gangen belong to the strong verb gangan (Class VII).
Unit 20 The Middle English Period Early Middle English
Middle English extends from about 1100 AD to 1500. It begins with the Norman Conquest and ends with a transitional period leading to the close of the Middle Ages. It is marked by the sweeping changes in vocabulary caused first by two Scandinavian invasions (8-9th c., 11th c.) and then by the Norman Conquest (1066).
The Scandinavian invasions are attested by geographical names. In Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and some other north-eastern parts of the country, up to 75 per cent of the place-names are Danish or Norwegian. Altogether more than 1400 English villages and towns bear names of Scandinavian origin. Due to the contacts and mixture with Old Scandinavian, the northern Old English dialects, e.g. Northumbrian and East Mercian, had acquired lasting and sometimes indelible Scandinavian features. Yet since the language of the areas where Norsemen settled was scarcely written down in Old English times, it is only in Middle English documents that the real force of the Norse influence on the English language becomes perceptible.
In 1066, England was occupied by the Normans. The Norman conquerors of England had originally come from Scandinavia, but in the 11th century they came to Britain as French speakers and bearers of French culture. They spoke the Northern dialect of French, which differed from Parisian French.
The effects of the Norman Conquest and of the consequent French cultural influences later, were to deprive English finally of its homogeneous character. Old Scandinavian, being fairly closely related to Old English, has left far less distinctive traces on the main stream of English than Norman French, which was not a Germanic language. Inflexions, which had begun to weaken or become blurred in Late Old English, became definitely reduced in the Middle English period. This process caused the word-order to become less free, as well as encouraged the growth of the use of prepositions and word-combinations.
Feudalism in England was established in the 11th century. The majority of the population, which amounted to about 2 million people, were bound to their lord and land. Feudal manors were separated from their neighbours by local feuds and various restrictions concerning settlement, travelling and employment. These historical conditions also produced a certain influence on the development of English.
In Early Middle English the differences between the regional dialects grew. The main dialectal division in England, which survived in later ages, goes back to this period of English history.