Histori of English Language

8/12/2019 Histori of English Language

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21. Finite and non-finite forms of verbs.

Finite forms of verbs can fulfill the function of predicate while the non-finite can not.The OE verbal

system included finite forms of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd persons, singular and plural; and non-finite forms: participle I

and II as well the infinitive. There were no gerund in OE.

22. The Infinitive and Participle I and II.

In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: the Infinitive and the Participle. The Infinitive had no

verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two

forms which roughly corresponded to the Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns

beranuninflected Infinitive (Nom. case)

t berenneor t beranneinflected Infinitive (Dat. case)

Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the preposition tcould be used to indicate thedirection or purpose of an action. The uninflected Infinitive was used in verb phrases with modal verbs or

other verbs of incomplete predication.

The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by

certain verbal features. Participle I (Present Participle) was opposed to Participle II (Past Participle) throughvoice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities,

while Participle II expressed states and qualities resulting from past action and was contrasted to Participle I

as passive to active, if the verb was transitive. Participle II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; itindicated a past action and was opposed to Participle I only through tense. Participles were employed

predicatively and attributively like adjectives and shared their grammatical categories: they were declined as

weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case.

23.The category of aspect and voice in OE.

There were 2 aspects in OE verb: perfective and imperfective. Aspect was a lexical-grammatical categorysince it was expressed by prefixes, the later being often used for changing the lexical meaning of the verb

at the same time, e.g stean-to beat, ofstean-to kill. The prefix in these cases was a word building

element. Aspect in OE was unstable as a grammar category. Not all of the verbs possessed it. There were

no pairs or correlative form distinguished by aspect. From this point of view it forms with the prefix g-,

that express completion of an action, but there were forms without it. Only sometimes this prefix indicated

the determination of an action, in a such way approached to the meaning of the perfective aspect. For

example the verb coman-to come, never appears with this prefix.

Voice as a verbal characteristic was not connected with all the system and was only expressed n in

participle II. Participle Iactive voice, Participle IIpassive voice.

There was no special system of thepassive voice in OE, there were combinations of the verbs beon and

wassan with participle II. They were nominal predicates.

24. The category of mood. The conjunction of verbs in 3 moods.

There were 3 moods in OE: Indicative, Imperative, Subjunctive. The last one was rather often used in OE

because it was applied in indirect speech. Only the simple forms of the subjunctive were in existence

although Should and Would + infinitive existed. They still kept their lexical meaning , in Middle

English they turned in auxiliary verbs.

25. Seven classes of strong verbs, their characteristic features.

Strong verbs. There were about three hundred strong verbs in OE. They formed their

stems by means of vowel gradation (ablaut) and by adding certain suffixes.The classes of strong verbs


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Principal

forms

Classes

Infinitive Past

Singular1

Past Plural Participle II NE

1 Wrtan wrt writon writen Write

2(a) cosan

(b) ban

cas

bacuron buon coren bn

choose

bow

3 (a) findan

(b) helpan

(c) feohtan

fand

healp

feaht

fundon

hulpon

fuhton

funden holpen

fohten

ind

help

ight

4 Beran br bron boren Bear

5 (a) cwean

(b) sittan

cw

st

cwdon

ston

cweden

seten

say

(obs. quoth)

Sit

6 Scacan scc sccon scacen Shake

7 (a) htan

(b) rwan

ht (heht)

row

hton (hehton)

rowonhten rwen

call, name

Grow

26. Weak verbs and preterite-present verbs. Supplitive forms of verbs.

Weak verbs.The weak verbs derived their Past Tense stem and the stem of Participle II

from the Present Tense stem with the help of the dental suffix.

The classes of weak verbs. Weak Verbs In Old English

Principal

forms

Classes

Infinitive Past Tense Participle II NE

I -an/-ian -de/-ede/-te -ed/-d/-t


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(a) styrian

(b) temman

(c) dman

(d) cpan

(e) tellan

(f) yncan

styrede

teraede

dmde

cpte

tealde

hte

styred

temed

dmed

cped

teald

ht

Stir

tame

deem

keep

tell

thin

II -ian -ode -od

lcian lcode lcod Look

III -an -de -d

libban

habban

lifde

hfde

lifd

hfd

Live

have

Class 1: includes regular and irregular verbs.The verbs of the Class I, being i-stems,

originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings. This caused palatal

mutation of the root vowel, and the lengthening of consonants. [-i/-j] was lost in all verbs

before the age of writing.Two groups of verbs in Class I types (e) and (f) had an interchange of root-vowels:

the Infinitive had a mutated vowel like all the verbs of ClassI, while the other two formsretained the original non-mutated vowel. These verbs are called irregular in Class1

Minor groups of verbs.

Preterite-present or past-present verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these

verbs were Past tense forms (or, more precisely, IE perfect forms, denoting past actions for

the present). Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal

features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new forms of the Past tense built with the

help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles

and Infinitives; most of the verbs did not have a full paradigm and were in this sense

defective.

These verbs had noParticiple I; some preterite-presents built Participle I from the

Present Tense stem, e. g. OE maon, m, Participle Imaende (NE may).

In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Most of them did not indicate actions,

but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive of which

followed the preterie-present, eventually preterite-present verbs developed into modal verbs.

Anomalous verbs had irregular forms. The verb willan had a past tense form wolde.

Some verbs combined the features of strong and weak verbs. OE dnhad a week Past tenseform with a vowel interchange and a Participle in n like strong verbsn: dn dyde

edn.Ban-bde-ebn.


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Suppletive verbs.Two verbs were suppletive. OEn whose Past tense was built from

a different root: n ede en and wesan,bon. The verb bon is an ancient IEsuppletive verb. N nmany languages its paradigm is made up oif several roots (R. ,

). In Oe the Present tense forms were the modifications of the roots *wes-and *bhu-.The

Past tense was built from the root *wesanon the pattern of the strong verbs of the Class 5.

27. The Scandinavian invasion , its influence on the futher development of the English language.

English is a Germanic language, as are German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages. Near the end of

the Old English period English underwent a third foreign influence, the result of contact with another

important language, the Scandinavian.The age of Vikings, starting around year 750 AD, had an important

role in the making of modern Europe. The Scandinavian colonisation of the British Isles had a considerable

effect on the English language and vocabulary, as well as culture. There are many hundreds of Scandinavian

place-names that can still be found in the British Isles, an endings such as -by, -ness, and -thorp, are some

typical Scandinavian place-name elements. The Vikings had a influence on the English language itself,

judging by the amount of words that were borrowed and the fact that they are part of everyday vocabulary

even today. Scandinavian words that entered the English language included landing, score, beck, fellow,

take, busting, and steersman.The vast majority of loan words did not appear in documents until the early

12th century; these included many modern words which used sk- sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other

words appearing in written sources at this time included again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog, freckles,

gasp, law, moss, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly, smile, want, weak, and window from Old Norse

meaning "wind-eye". Some of the words that came into use are among the most common in English, such

as to go, to come, to sit, to listen, to eat, both, same, get, and give. The system of personal pronouns was

affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse influenced the verb to be; the

replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singularending -s in the present tense of verbs.

There are more than 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

(within the former boundaries of the Danelaw): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for "village" or

"town"for example Grimsby, Naseby, andWhitby; many others end in -thorpe ("farm"), -

thwaite ("clearing"), and -toft("homestead").

28. The 3 subgroups of the Germanic languages. The expansion of English.

The Germanic languages today are conventionally divided into three linguistic groups: East Germanic,

North Germanic, and West Germanic. This division had begun by the 4th cent. A.D. The East Germanic

group, to which such dead languages as Burgundian, Gothic, and Vandalic belong, is now extinct. However,the oldest surviving literary text of any Germanic language is in Gothic .

The North Germanic languages, also called Scandinavian languages or Norse, include Danish, Faeroese,

Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish. They are spoken by about 20 million people, chiefly in Denmark, the

Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. These modern North Germanic languages are all descendants

of Old Norse and have several distinctive grammatical features in common. One is the adding of the

definite article to the noun as a suffix. Thus "the book" in English is expressed in Swedish as boken,"book-

the" (bokmeaning "book" and -enmeaning "the"). Also distinctive is a method of forming the passive voice

by adding -sto the end of the verb or, in the case of the present tense, by changing the active ending -rto -

s(-stin Icelandic). This is illustrated by the Swedishjag kaller,"I call";jag kallas,"I am called";jag

kallade,"I called";jag kallades,"I was called."

The West Germanic languages are English, Frisian, Dutch, Afrikaans, German, and Yiddish. They are

spoken as a primary language by about 450 million people throughout the world. Among the dead West

Germanic languages are Old Franconian, Old High German, and Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) from which

Dutch, German, and English respectively developed.


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29. Factors conditioning the formation of the national English language and its development into

literary one.

The formation of the national English language, or Standard English, is considered to date from the period

between the 15th and 17th centuries. After that time the language continued to change, yet, henceforth one

can speak of the evolution of Standard English instead of trading the similar or different trends in the history

of its dialects.

We must mention at least two of the external factors that led to this development: the unification of the

country and the progress of culture. Other historical events, such as the increased foreign contacts, produced

a more specific kind of influence on the language: they affected the word stock.The 15th and 16th centuries

saw striking changes in the life of the country. Trade had extended beyond the local, boundaries and apart

from farming and cattle-breeding an important wool trade and industry was carried on in the country-side.

As the demand for wool and cloth rose, Britain began to export woolen cloth produced by the first big

enterprises, the manufactures. The changes in the economic and social conditions were accompanied by

the intermixture of people coming from different regions, the growth of towns with a mixed population, and

the strengthening of social ties between the various regions. All these processes played an important role in

the unification of the English language. Towards the end of the 16th century the period of feudal disunity inBritain came to an end, and Britain became a centralized state. In 1485 the strongest royal power under

Henry VII was established. Henry VII was the founder of the Tudor dynasty and of a new kind of monarchy.

The Tudors encouraged the development of trade inside and outside the country. The great geographical

discoveries gave a new impetus to the progress of foreign trade. English traders set forth on daring journeys

in search of gold and treasures. Sea pirates and slave-traders were patronised by Queen Elizabeth as readily

as traders in wool, for they made large contributions to her treasury. Under the later Tudors England became

one of the biggest trade and sea powers. In 1588 England defeated the Spanish fleet, the Invisible Armada,

thus dealing a final blow to Spain, her main rival in overseas trade and in colonial expansion. In the late 16th

century England founded its first colonies abroad. Thus the contacts of England with other nations

although not necessarily friendlybecame closer, and new contacts were made in distant lands. These new

ties could not but influence the development of the language. The rise of a new vigorous social classthebourgeoisieproved an enormous stimulus to the progress of learning, science, literature and art. Of all the

outstanding achievements of this great age the invention of printing had the most immediate effect on the

development of the language, its written form in particular. The written form of the English language

became standardized earlier than its spoken form. The literary form of English Came into existence in the

age of Chaucer, was fixed and spread with the introduction of printing and was further developed as the

national (lie 16th and 17th centuries. The earliest date suggested as the time of the formation of the spoken

standard is the end of the 17th century; the type of speech used in London and in the Universities was

unanimously proclaimed the best type of English. The phoneticians and grammarians recommend it as a

model of correct English. Naturally we possess no direct evidence of the existence of a spoken standard,

since all the evidence comes from written sources. Valuable information is furnished by the language of

private letters (compared to the language of professional writers), the speech of various characters in the

Early New English drama, and also by some direct references of contemporary writers to different types of

speech.

30. The influence of the Norman conquest on the development of the vocabulary.

For centuries following theNorman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles spoke one

of theFrenchlangues d'ol,that we callAnglo-Norman,a variety ofOld Norman used inEngland and to

some extent elsewhere in theBritish Isles during theAnglo-Normanperiod and originating from a

northernlangue d'ol dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and

English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people.

Since the French-speaking Normans were the ruling class, French was used for all state affairs and for most

social and cultural matters; but the masses continued to speak English. Only towards the end of the fifteenth

century did English become once more the language of the whole country. However, French words are

found in every section of the vocabulary:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest_of_Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Normanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Normanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Normanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isleshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Normanhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest_of_England


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Law and governmental administration:judge, jury, justice, government, parliament, state

Mili tary affairs:conquer, sergeant, victory

Religion:baptism, confess, divine, sermon

Clothing:coat, dress, gown, robe

Art:beauty image design

Literature:chapter, poet, prose, rime

Science:medicine, remedy, surgeon

Even after the decline of Norman-French, standard French retained the status of a formal orprestige

languageas with most of Europe during the periodand had a significant influence on the language,

which is visible in Modern English. A tendency for French-derived words to have more formal connotations

has continued to the present day. For example, most modern English speakers consider a "cordial reception"

(from French) to be more formal than a "hearty welcome" (from Germanic). Another example is the rare

construction of the words for animals being separate from the words for their meat, e.g.,beef and pork (from

the French bufandporc) being the products of "cows" and "pigs"animals with Germanic names.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_dialecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_dialecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_dialecthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prestige_dialect

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Histori of English Language