1. What role did demonstratives play in OE ?

Is it comparable to their role in

Modern English?  What are the remnants of the OE demonstratives in Modern
English?

In the OE period demonstratives not only marked the noun that they modified as definite as
they do in ModE. They also played a key role in providing information related to gender,
case and number. Nominal inflections were often of little help in determining the function,
gender and even number of a noun since in many cases they were similar.  Take, the
word nama 'name'   as an example. 

Nom nama              naman

Acc. naman            naman
Gen. naman            namena
Dative naman         namum

In this context demonstratives were essential. They supported the nominal inflections to
clarify the gender, number and case of nouns when inflections were not transparent enough.
Thus, for example, þisne marked a noun as masculine and accusative (þisne naman)
while þisses  (þisses nama) marked it as masculine genitive and  þā as nom/acc plural (þā
naman).

In Modern English not only the funtion of demonstratives has been simplified but also the
number of them that are still in use. Only the forms: þis > this; Þās > those and Þæt > that
have survived and continue to be used in ModE. The definite article, the, also comes from the
OE demonstrative: se.

2. Account for the evolution of PIE Klutós into OE hlud 'loud'. Focus on

consonants and describe the sound changes that led to the development of the OE
form. If applies, state the phonetic environment in which those changes occurred.  
PIE klutós > OE hlud

The development of PIE klutós into OE hlud illustrates one of the major changes from IE to
Germanic.

The first one has to do with the evolution that the PIE plosives underwent in Germanic.
Germanic is distinguished from the other IE languages by the fact that in this group plosives
evolved differently. These changes were pointed out for the first time by Rask and described in
detail by Grimm in what we know as Grimm’s  law or the First Consonant shift/ the Germanic
consonant shift.

The changes that apply to the example are:

1. Voiceless plosives became fricatives in Germanic /p,t,k/ > /f, θ, h/  

Moreover, this word also shows the effects of Verner`s law. A sound change whereby PIE /p,t,k/
evolved into /b,d,g/ in  Germanic when they were in a voiced environment and the stress did not
fall on the syllable immediately preceding this consonant. That is the case in the example. In PIE
/t/ is between a vowel and the stress falls on the following syllable.
3. Using examples from ModE, explain the difference between umlaut and ablaut and
provide an account of their current legacy. 

Umlaut is an assimilatory sound change that took place in the OE period. It affected back and
low vowels that underwent fronting or fronting and raising whenever they were followed by /i, i:,
j/.  Its effect were found in OE athematic  nouns, where the dative singular and nominative and
accusative forms had an umlauted vowel. Thus, in OE it marked case and number. In Modern
English it survives in words such as feet, teeth or mice, where the umlauted vowel distinguishes
the plural form of these nouns . Moreover, its effects were and are still found in the comparative
and superlative forms of adjectives (old-elder, eledest), verbs formed out of nouns or adjectives
whose root vowel was back such as food-feed, adjectives formed out of nouns such as English or
nouns formed out of adjectives such as strength. In these cases umlaut distinguishes different
part of speech (i.e., nouns from verbs, adjectives from verbs, adjectives from nouns etc.)

Ablaut is a sound change that affected the root vowel of strong verbs and indicated tense and
aspect. It was inherited from PIE and it is still present in Modern English verbs such as
sing  /sang / sung where this way of marking verbs for tense and aspect coexists with another
one developed in Germanic, the use of a dental suffix.
4. Translate the following sentences and answer the questions belo2

Ohthere sæde his hlaforde þæt hē ealra Norðmanna norþmest bude. Hē sæde þæt hē wolde
fandian hu longe þæt land norþryhte læge.
"Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that he lived to the north of all north men"
"He said that he wanted to check how long that land extended northwards"

QUESTIONS

What is the case of Norðmanna and westene?

 Norðmanna is a genitive plural form of a masculine root-consonant stem (athematic) noun as
reflected by the ending -a

Are wolde and læge weak or strong verbs? Why?

Wolde is the past tense of willan, the addition of /d/ marks this form as a past tense form, thus it
is a weak verb.
Læge is the past tense of licgan, in this case the past tense formed is distinguished by a mutation
in the stem (ablaut), thus it is strong.

How are oþþe, hlaforde and ænig pronounced?

/oθθe/, /hlavorde/   /ænij/