Old English Morphology. Old English Nouns 1 страница
Е. О. Кущ
ТЕКСТИ (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни
Історія англійської мови. Протогерманський
та давньоанглійський періоди.
для студентів спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія”
Тексти (конспект) лекцій з дисципліни “Історія англійської мови. Протогерманський та давньоанглійський періоди” для студентів усіх форм навчання спеціальності 6.030500 “Філологія” /Укл.: доцент, к.філ.н., Е.О. Кущ. - Запоріжжя: ЗНТУ, 2013. – 60 с.
Укладач: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Рецензент: Г.Б. Підгорна, доцент, к.філ.н.
Відповідальний
за випуск: Е.О. Кущ, доцент, к.філ.н.
Затверджено
на засіданні кафедри “Теорії і практики перекладу”
Протокол № 2
від “18” вересня 2013 р.
CONTENTS
1. Theoretical Aspects and Sources of the History of English Classification of Indo-European and Germanic Languages…………………4
2. The Earliest Period of Germanic History. Classification
of Ancient Germanic Tribes. Alphabets and Written Records
of Germanic Tribes.........................................................................................8
3. Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages. Phonetic
Pecularities of Germanic Languages……………………………………….13
4. Basic Grammatical Features of Germanic Languages.
Principal Features of Germanic Vocabulary……………………………….17
5. Periods in the History of the English Language………………….20
6. Old English Period. Historical Background. Germanic Settlement
of Britain. Old English Dialects. Written Records and Manuscripts……....25
7. Old EnglishPhonology…………………………………….28
8. Old English Morphology. Old English Nouns………………...31
9. Old English Pronouns……………………………………………43
10 Old English Adjectives……………………………………45
11. Morphological Classification of Old English Verbs …………...46
12. Old English Vocabulary. Etymological composition……………47
13. Word-building in Old English…………………………………...52
14. Principal Features of Old English Syntax…..…………………..57
1. Theoretical Aspects and Sources of the History of English. Classification of Indo-European and Germanic Languages
A language can be considered from different angles. In studying Modern English we regard the language as fixed in time and describe each linguistic level synchronically, taking no account of the origin of present-day features or their tendencies to change. It has long been recognised that a living language can never be absolutely static. It develops together with the speech community, that is, with the people who speak it. That is why the synchronic approach should be contrasted to the diachronic. When considered diachronically, every linguistic fact is interpreted as a stage or step in the never-ending evolution of language.
The evolution or historical development of language is made up of diverse facts and processes. In the first place it includes the ‘internal’ or structural development of the language system, its various subsystems and component parts. The description of internal linguistic history is usually presented in accordance with the division of language into linguistic levels. The main commonly accepted levels are: the phonetic and phonological levels, the morphological level, the lexical level, the syntactical level.
The evolution of language includes also many facts which pertain to the functioning of language in the speech community. These functional aspects contribute what is known as the ‘external’ history of the language and embrace a large number of the matters: the spread of the language in geographical and social space, differentiation of language into functional varieties (geographical variants, dialects, standard and subsandard forms, etc.), contacts with other languages, the migration of tribes, economic and political events, the growth of culture and literature. Unlike human society, language undergoes no revolutions or sudden breaks. The slow rate of linguistuc change is seen in the gradual spread of new features in language space.
Some factors and causes of language evolution are confined to a ceratin group of languages or to one language only and may operate over a limited span of time. These specific factors are trends of evolution characteristic of separate languages or linguistic groups, which distinguish them from other languages. Since English belongs to the Germanic group of languages, it shares many Germanic trends of development with cognate languages. These trends were caused by common Germanic factors but were transformed and modified in the history of English, and were combined with other trends caused by specifically English internal and external factors. The combination of all these factors and the resulting course of evolution is unique for every language; it accounts for its individual history which is never repeated by other languages. Thus English, like other Germanic languages, displayed a tendency towards a more analytical grammatical structure, but it has gone further along this way of development than most other languages, probably owing to the peculiar combination of internal and external conditions and interaction of changes at different linguistic levels.
The Germanic languages in the modern world are as follows:
English – in Great Britain, Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the South African Republic, India and many other former British colonies and dominions;
German – in Germany, Austria, Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, part of Switzerland;
Netherlandish – in the Nertherlands and Belgium;
Afrikaans – in the South African Republic;
Danish – in Demnark;
Swedish – in Sweden and Finland;
Norwegian – in Norway;
Icelandic – in Iceland;
Frisian – in some regions of the Nertherlands and Germany;
Faroese – in the Faroe islands;
Yiddish – in different countries.
It is difficult to estimate the number of people speaking Germanic languages, especially on account of English, which in many countries is one of two languages in a bilingual community, e.g. in Canada. The estimates for English range from 250 to 300 million people who have it as their mother tongue. The total number of speaking Germanic languages approaches 440 billion. To this rough estimate we could add an indefinite number of billingual people in the countries where English is used as an official language (over 50 countries).
Al the Germanic languages are related through their common origin and joint development at the early stages of history. The survey of their external will show where and when the Germanic languages arose and acquired their common features and also how they have developed in independent languages.
The history of the English language has been reconstructed on the basis of written records of different periods. The earliest extant written texts in English are dated back to the 7 th century, the earliest records in other Germanic languages go back to the 3rd or 4th century A.D. The development of English, however, began a long time before it was first recorded. In order to say where the English language came from, to what languages it is related, when and how it was acquired its specific features, one must get acquainted with of the prewritten history of the Germanic tribes. Certain information about the early stages of English and Germanic history is to be found in the works of ancient historians and geographers, especially Roman. They contain descriptions of Germanic tribes, personal names and place names. Some data are also provided by early borrowings from Germanic made by other languages. But the bulk of our knowledge comes from scientific study of extant texts.
Genetically, English belongs to the Germanic or Teutonic group of languages. Germanic group is one of the first major group of the Indo-European linguistic family, which consists of Indian, Iranian, Baltic, Slavonic, Germanic, Romanic, Celtic, Greek, Albanian, Armenian as well as Hettish and Tokharian languages. Germanic branch of Indo-European family of languages contains three subbranches: East Germanic, North Germanic, West Germanic.
The East Germanic subgroup contains dead languages: Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic. Goths were the first tribes who returned from Scandinavia at the beginning of our era. They left the coast of the Baltic Sea and started on their great migrations. The Goths were the first of the Teutons to become Christian. In the 4th century Ulfilas, a West Gothic bishop, made a translation of the Gospels from Greek into Gothic. This was the Silver Codex, one of the earliest texts in the languages of the Germanic group. This document throws light on the pre-written stages of history of all the languages of the Germanic group, incuding English. The other East Germanic languages have left no written traces.
The Teutons who stayed in Scandinavia after the departure of the Goths gave rise to the North Germanic subgroup of languages. This subgroup contains dead and modern languages: Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2-nd - 3-rd c.), Old Icelandic (12th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Danish (13th c), Old Swedish (13th c.) as well as Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese.
Around the beginning of our era the would-be West Germanic tribes dwelt between the Order and the Elbe. The dialectal differention of West German was quite distinct even at the beginning of our era. On the eve of their great migrations of the 4th and 5 th centuries the West Germans included different tribes, who speak Anglian, Frisian, Saxon, Jutish, Franconian, High German. The High German dialects consolidated into a common language known as Old High German. The first written records in Old High German date from the 8th and 9th centuries. Towards the 12 th century High German had intermixed with neighbouring languages and eventually developed into the literary German language.
At the later stage of the great migration period – in the 5 th century – a group of West Germanic tribes started out on their invasion of the British Isles. Their dialects in the British Isles developed into the English language.
The following table shows the classification of old and modern Germanic languages.
Table 1
Germanic Languages
| East Germanic | North Germanic | West Germanic | |
| Old Germanic languages (with dates of the earliest records) | Gothic (4 th c.) Vandalic Burgundian | Old Norse or Old Scandinavian (2-nd - 3-rd c.), Old Icelandic (12th c.), Old Norwegian (13th c.), Old Danish (13th c), Old Swedish (13th c.) | Anglian, Frisian, Saxon, Jutish, Franconian, High German, Old English (7 th c.), Old Saxon (9 th c.), Old High German (8 th c.), Old Dutch (12 th c.) |
| Modern Germanic languages | No living languages | Icelandic Norwegian Danish Swedish Faroese | English German Netherlandish Afrikaans Yiddish Frisian |
2. The Earliest Period of Germanic History. Classification of Ancient Germanic Tribes. Alphabets and Written Records of Germanic Tribes
The History of the Germanic group begins with the appearance of what is known as the Proto-Germanic (PG) language. PG is the linguistic ancestor of the parent-language of the Germanic group. It is supposed to have split from related IE lanuages sometime between the 15th and 10th c B.C. The would-be Germanic tribes belonged to the western division of the IE speech community. As the Indo-Europeans extended over a lаrger territory, the ancient Germans or Teutons moved and settled on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in the region of Elbe a few hundred years before our era. This place is regarded as the most probable original home of the Teutons. It is here that they developed their first specifically Germanic linguistic features which made them a separate group in the IE family.
Our knowledge of the ancient Teutons is based on testimonies by Greek and Roman writes, who. The first mention about them was made by Pytheas from Massilia, a Greek historian and geographer of the 4th c. B.C., in an account of a sea voyage to the Baltic Sea. His work has not come doen to us; only a few fragments have been preserved by the Greek geographer Strabo (63 B.C. – 20 A.D.), the author of a large work ‘Geography’ (chapter ‘Teutons and Guttons’), and by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.)
In the 1st c. B.C. in ‘Commentaries on the Gallic War’ Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) described some militant Germanic tribes – the Suevians – who bordered on the Celts of Gaul in the North-East. Caesar statement that the Germans lived in tribes and tribal unions is of great value for the historians. The tribal names Germans and Teutons, at first applied to separate tribes, were later extended to the entire group.
About a century later Pliny the Elder wrote about the Teutons in his great work ‘Natural History’. He gave a classification of Germanic tribes which has been basically accepted by modern historians. According to Pliny Germanic tribes in the 1st century A.D. consisted of the following groups:
1. the Vindili (the Goths, the Burgundians, the Vandals) – eastern Germanic tribes, who inhabited the eastern part of Germanic territory;
2. the Ingvaeones – western Germanic tribes, inhabited the north-western part of Germanic territory – the shores of the Northern Sea, including what is now Netherlands;
3. the Iscaveones (the Franks who eventually conquered Gaul and others) – western Germanic tribes, who occupied the western part of Germanic territory on the Rhine;
4. the Hermiones or the Herminones – western Germanic tribes, who inhabited southern part of Germanic territory (now southern Germany);
5. the Peucini and Bastrnae – eastern Germanic tribes, who live close to what is now Romania;
6. the Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes,, who inhabited Scandinavia.
Germanic tribes were also mentioned by the great Roman historian Tacitus Cornelius (55-120 A.D). In his short work ‘Germania’ Tacitus characterized the social structure of the Old Germanic tribes around 100 A.D. The historian’s worj contains Pliny’s classification. Tacitus’ results were widely used by Friendrich Engles in his work ‘On the History of Ancient Germans’. Quoting Pliny’s classification of Germanic tribes. Engels introduced one amendment. He pointed out that group 5 (the Peucini and Bastarnae) should be included into group 1, just as they also lived in the east and Pliny didn’t denote it by a generalizing term, but merely gave the names of tribes which made it up. The following classification of the Germanic tribes was accepted: the Vindili - eastern Germanic tribes; the Ingvaeones, the Istaevones, the Herminones – western Germanic tribes; Hilleviones – northern Germanic tribes. In due course these groups split into separate subgroups.
Eastern Germanic group of tribes was made of Goths, Visigoths (western Goths) and Ostrogoth (eastern Goths). Around 200 A.D. they moved south-east and some time later reached the lower basin of the Danube where they made attacks on the eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium. Their western branch the Visigoths invaded Roman territory, participated in the assault on Rome, moved on to southern Gaul and found the first barbarian kingdom – the Toulouse kingdom. It had being existed till the eight century and was absorbed by native population – Romanized Celts. Eastern Goths (Ostrogoths) consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance in the lower basin of the Dniester and set up a kingdom in Northern Italy with Ravenia as its capital. In the 5th c . their kingdom disappered.
The Northern Germanic tribes lived in the southern coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and in Northern Denmark. They didn’t participate in migrations and were relatively isolated, though they they came into contacts with the western tribes after the Goths left the coast of the Baltic Sea. Their dialectical variation was little and old Scandinavian came down to us in runic inscriptions dated from the 3rd to the 9th c. After the 9th c. the Scandinavian started out on their sea voyage. The famous Viking age from about 800 to 1050 A.D. is the legendary age of Scandinavians raids and expansion overseas t the same period. Due to overpopulation they spread over inner Scandinavia.
West Germanic tribes dwelt in lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe bordering on the Slavonian tribes in the East and the Celtic tribes in the south. Under the pressure of Goths they went to the south and to the east. In the 4th and 5th century there were several tribes: the Franks, the High Germans, the Low Germans, the Angles and the Frisians, the Jutes, the Saxons. The Franks lived in the lower basin of the Rhine. In early Middle Ages they consolidated into a powerful tribal alliance. Towards the 8th c. their kingdom grew into one of the largest states in Western Europe. In 768-814 it embraced France and half of Italy and stretched up to the North and Baltic sea. Their empire broke into parts in the 9th c.The High German group of tribes didn’t go far in their migration. They lived in the mountanious southern region of Germany and expanded only to the east. Low Germans inhabited low-lying northern areas of Germany.
The Angles and the Frisians (the Anglo-Frisian group), the Jutes and Saxons inhabited the coastal area of the modern Nertherland, Germany and southern part of Denmark. In the 5th c. started out on their invasion of the British Isles. The invaders came from the lowlands near the North Sea: the Angles, part of the Saxon and the Frisian, and, probably, the Jutes. The Frisian and the Saxon didn’t take part in the invasion stayed on the continent. The area of Frisian which at one extended over the entirecoast of the North sea was reduced under the pressure of Low German tribes.
The ancient Germanic tribes used three different alphabets for their writings. These alphabets partly suceeded each other in time. The most ancient one was runic alphabet. The word rune originally meant ‘secret’, ‘mystery’ and hence came to denote inscriptions believed to be magic. The runic alphabet is a specifically Germanic alphabet, not to be found in languages of other groups.
Runes have a very peculiar look for eyes accustomed to modern European alphabets. The letters (runes) are angular; straight lines are preferred, curved lines avoided. For example the rune denoting the vowel e was Μ, the rune denoting the consonant s was Ѱ. Horizontal lines didn’t exist in this alphabet. They were substituted by broken lines. This is due to the fact that runic inscriptions were cut in hard material: stone, bone or wood. To this day the origin of runes is a matter of conjecture. Some scholars believe that it was derived either from Latin alphabet or from some other Italic alphabet close to the Latin.
Just when and where the Runic alphabet was created is not known. It is supposed that it originated at some time in the 2nd and 3rd century A.D., somewhere on the Rhine or the Danube, where Germanic tribes came into contact with Roman culture. The Runic alphabet was used by different Germanic tribes: Goths, Anglo-Sacons and Scandinavians. There are runic inscriptions on the Golden horn which was found in Denmark. The two best known runic inscriptions are the earliest ectant OE written records. One of them is an inscription on a box called “Franks Casket”, the other is a short text on a stone cross near the village of Ruthwell known as the “Ruthwell Cross”. The Franks Casket was discoivered in the early years of the 19th c. in France and was presented to the British Museum by a British archeologist A.W.Franks.The Ruthwell Cross is a 15 ft tall stone cross inscribed and ornamented on all sides. The principal inscription has been reconstructed into a passage from an OE religious poem “the Dream of the Rood”, which was also found in another version in a later manuscript. A lot of runic inscriptions were also found on movable objects: hemlets, rings, amulets, coins, etc.Eventually the Runic alphabet underwent changes with different Dermanic tribes: new letters were added, some of the original ones were dropped.It is customary, for this reason to distinguish between an older and a younger Runic alphabet.
Ulfila’s Gothic alphabet appeared in the 4th century. This is the alphabet of Ulfila’s Gothic translation of the Bible, a peculiar alphabet based on the Greek alphabet, with some admixture of Latin and Runic letters was created. It is known as the Silver Codex.
The latest alphabet to be used by Germanic tribes is the Latin alphabet. It is superseded both the Runic and the Gothic alphabet when a new technique of writing was introduced, namely that of spreading some colour or paint on a surface instead of cutting or engraving letters. The material used for witings was either parchment or papyrus. Introduction of the Latin alphabet accompanied the spread of Christianity and of Latin language Chrisitian religious texts. The Latin alphabet was certainly not adequate to represent all sounds of Germanic languages. That’s why letters and signs from runic alphabet were also used. Written records of Germanic tribes are given in the table 2:
Table 2
Written Records of Germanic Languages
| Manuscript | Period | Dialect |
| Silver Codex. Ulfilas’ translation of the Gospel | V-VI cc. | East Germanic: Gothic |
| Runic inscriptions (the Ruthwell Cross, the Franks | VIII c. | West Germanic: Northumbrian |
| The Insertions in Latin texts (“Bede’s Death Song Cadmon Hymn”) | VIII c. | |
| Anglo-Saxon Charters | VIII-IX cc. | West Germanic: Kentish, West Saxon, Mercian |
| The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles; King Alfred’s translation of Orosius World history with insertions | IX c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| King’s Alfred translation of Poper Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, a book of instructions for priest | IX c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| Beowulf, an epic of the VII or the VIII c., composed in Nothumbrian or Mercian dialect | X c. | West Germanic: West Saxon copy |
| Glosses to the Gospel | X-XI c. | West Germanic: West Saxon |
| The Elder Edda, a collection of heroic songs | XII c. | North Germanic: Old Icelandic |
| The Younger Edda; Shorri Sturluson’s prose text-book for poets | XIII c. | North Germanic: Old Icelandic |
3. Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages.
Phonetic Pecularities of Germanic Languages.
All the Germanic languages of the past and present have common features. Some are shared by other groups in the IE family, others are specifically Germanic. The Germanic group acquired their specific distinctive features after the separation of the ancient Germanic tribes from other IE tribes and prior to their further expnsion and disintegration that is during the period of the PG parent languages. These PG features inheruted by the descendant languages, represent the common features of the Germanic group. Other common features developed later, in the course of the individual histories of separate Germanic languages, as a result of similar tendencies arising from PG causes. On the other hand, many Germanic features transformed and even lost in later history.
The peculiar Germanic system of word accentuation is one of the most important distinguishing features of the group. In early PG stress was movable. But in late PG the stress was fixed on the first syllable, which was usually the root of the word and rarely the prefix. Germanic languages inherited this phonetic features. We can observe it in the folowing words:
English – beˈcome, beˈcoming, overˈcome; ˈlover, ˈloving, beˈloved;
German – ˈlieben, ˈliebe, geˈliebt.
The fixed strong word stress has played an important role in the development of the Germanic languages and especially in phometic and morphologivcal changes. Due to the difference in the force of articulation the stressed and unstressed sylables were pronounced with great distincness and precision, while unaccented became less distincted and were phonetically weakened. Unaccented sounds were weakened and lost. Since the stress was fixed on the root, the weakening and loss of sounds mainly affected the suffixes and grammatical endings. Many endings merged with the suffixes and lost, for example:
PG fiskaz, Gt fisks, O Icel fiskr, OE fisc.
As all gramatical endings were unaccented it was the start for the process of reduction which stoped only in the 15th c.
Germanic languages also have some peculiarities in the sphere of vowels sound, which distinguish them from other IE languages. Throughout history, beginnig with PG, vowels displayed a strong tendency to change. They underwent different kinds of alteration: qualitative and quantitative, dependent and independent. Qualitative changes affect the quality of the sound, e.g.: o>a. Quantitative changes make long sounds short or short sounds long, e.g.: [i>i:]. Dependent changes (also positional or combinative) are restricted to certain positions or phonetic conditions, for instance, a sound may change under the influence of the neighbouring sounds or in a certain type of a syllable. Independent changes (also spontatneous or regular) take place irrespectively of phonetic conditions, i.e. they affect a certain sound in all positions.
From an early date the treatment of vowels was determined by the nature of word stress. In accented syllables the oppositions between vowels were carefully maintained and new distinctive features were introduced, so that the number of stressed vowels grew. In unaccented positions the original contrasts between vowels were weakened or lost; the distinction of short and long vowels was neutralised so that by the age of writing the long vowels in unstressed syllables had been shortened. As for originally short vowels, they tend to be reduced to a neutral sound, losing their qualitative distinctions.
The contrast of short and long is supported by the different directions of their changes. While long vowels generally tended to become closer and to diphtongise, short vowels, on the contrary, often changed into more open sounds. IE short [o], [a] appear as short [a] in Germanic languages, e.g.: IE (Lat.) noctem – Germanic (Gothic) nahts; IE (Russian) ночь – Germanic Nacht. IE long [o:], [a:]appear as long [o:] in Germanic languages e.g.: IE (Latin) māter – OE mōdor, Latin flos – OE flōma. This process is known as the Germanic vowel shift.
The quality of a stressed vowel is in some cases dependent on a following sound. The earliest manifestation of this principle has been termed as fracture or breaking. Germanic fracture concerns two pairs of vowels: pairs e–i and u–o. IE e in the root syllable finds its counterpart in Germanic i, if it followed by i, j or the cluster ‘nasal plus consonant’. Otherwise in Germanic languages e is observed in corresponding words, e.g.: Lat. medius – OE midde, ME middle; Lat. ventus – OE wind, Lat. edere – OE etan.
The change of IE e into Germanic i can be explained by assimilation of the sound under the influence of the i, j. Changes of IE e into Germanic i under the influence of the cluster ‘nasal plus consonant’ haven’t got appropriate phonological interpretation yet.
An IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic u if it followed by u or the cluster ‘nasal plus consonant’. Otherwise the IE u finds its counterpart in Germanic o, e.g.: Sanskr. sunus – OE sune; Lat. iugu – OE. ӡeoc (yoke).