SEMINAR 2

Old English Grammar. Morphology. Syntax.

1. The noun: grammatical categories. The use of cases.

System of declensions.
Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case.

There are three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter.

There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases - nominative,
genitive, dative and accusative.

The nouns in Old English are commonly classified as belonging to strong

(ending a vowel) and of n-stems weak, and to designate all other
declensions as minor. They are usually denoted in grammar books by
the last sound the stem-building suffix of the corresponding nouns is
thought to have possessed in the common Indo-European language or
its dialects.

The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming
suffix.

-o-stems They may be either masculine or neuter. This group of nouns is of

the same origin as that of Ukrainian nouns : стіл, день, дно, вікно.
The Ukrainian (and Russian) 2nd declensions of nouns (masculine and neuter)
originates from the same Indo-European group of nouns (Germanic short о
proceeds from Indo-European a). The difference between the two genders
may be seen only in the nominative:

The ending -es g. sg. has eventually developed into Modern English `s of the
possessive case, and the ending -as of the n. and a. pl. into the Plural ending -
(e)s of Modern English.

The neuter o-stems differed only in n. and a. pi. where the usual ending was -u
instead of -as. For instance. OE. sg. n. and a. scip (E ship), loc (E. lock) - pl. n.
and a. scipu, locu. That -u ending regularly disappeared after long syllables
and the form of the plural became identical with that of the singular.

Eventually the nouns word, wife and others have acquired the regular plural
ending -s, while sheep, deer, swine have retained their uninflected plurals.

o-stems are usually subdivided into pure o-stems, jo-stems and wo-stems,
some peculiarities of the paradigm being connected with the semivowels, [j ]
and [w] of the stem-build suffix. b) Other Vowel Stems.

The a-declension comprised only feminine nouns. It responded to the first or

a-declension of Russian or Latin. Cf. R. рука, нога, L. silva, “forest” . This
declension has left no traces in Modern English. The nouns of these
declensions gradually got the inflections of the o-stems
c) n-stems.
The weak n-declension comprised many masculine and feminine nouns, but
only two nouns of the neuter gender OE. еаЗе (E. eye) and OE eare (E. ear).
The ending -an was originally the stem-building suffix. The Modern English
plural ending -en in oxen is derived from OE. -an in oxan pl. n. and a. The
ending -an (ME. -en) was later extended to some nouns of other declensions,
e, g. children, brethren.

d) Root-stems
The peculiarity of the rootstems was that they contained no stem-building
suffixes, the endings being simply added to the root. In OE there existed a few
masculine and feminine nouns of that type.
e) s-stems. Less numerous and less significant for the development of the
presentday nominal system -s- stems. Later the s-stem became an r-stem in
OE. Nouns of this declension were neuter (cf. чудо, небо, слово).

The present-day plural form children we find the remains of the Old Endlish
stem-forming suffix -s- turned through rhotacism into -r-.

f) r-stems. These are probably the only Indo-European stems, that have been
preserved in Modern English. In OE. a few masculine and feminine nouns of
relationship belonged to this type: faeder (E. father), bropor (E. brother),
modor (E. mother), dohtor (E. daughter), sweostor (E. sister). The endings of
the o-stems were later extended to these nouns.

2. The adjective: grammatical categories. Weak and strong

declensions. Degrees of comparison.
There are primary adjectives, dating back from the very old times and
derivative adjectives made by adjective-forming suffixes from nouns. The
adjectives of those times are similar to our Slavic adjectives, that is, this part
of speech agrees with the noun it modifies in number, gender and case
(adjectives have the same categories as the nouns do).

The adjective in Old English had the following categories:

number - the singular and the plural;

gender - masculine, neuter and feminine;

case - 4/5 (nominative, genitive, dative accusative and partly

instrumental)

Besides, the adjectives had two declensions, strong and weak (we may
compare them to 2 forms in Ukrainian зелений гай /зелен клен, though in
Ukrainian the second is found only in the nominative case. The weak form of
the adjective is used after a demonstrative pronoun, a personal pronoun or a
noun in the genitive case, no matter whether the adjective is before the noun or
after it. When the adjective is not so accompanied, or is preceded by an
adjective of quantity or number, it is declined strong.

Adjectival categories are the degrees of comparison - the positive, the

comparative and the superlative. These are characteristic only for the
qualitative adjectives.

The forms of the comparative and the superlative degree are made
synthetically, by adding suffixes -ra and ~ost/-est.

soft - softra - softost (soft)

blsec - blasera - blacost (black)

Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by t-mutation of a root vowel:

feor - fierra - fierrest (far)

eald - ieldra - ieldest (old)

The remains of the mutated vowel now may be found only in two adjectives:
old (older/elder) and far (further/farther).

Four adjectives in Old English had supplétive degrees of comparison,

that is their comparative and superlative degrees are formed by adding the

suffixes to the stems of other adjectives.

3. The pronoun. Personal pronouns. Demonstrative

pronouns.
Pronoun as a part of speech is a very specific class of words; it does not have
meaning, it simply points to something mentioned earlier or situated within
the range of visibility of the speakers. Hence we can see that pronouns have
frequency even greater than they have nowadays when the rules of indication
have been worked out and certain correlations established.

There are several types of pronouns in Old English: personal, demonstrative,

definite, indefinite, negative and relative. Not all of them are equally developed;
they are different in the type of deixis; the very existence of some classes is
sometimes disputed. But no one ever denied the existence of: Personal
pronouns, that constitute a system of words replacing nouns; they are also
called noun-pronouns.

In Old English they had

● 3 persons: the first, the second and the third.

● 3 numbers: singular, plural and the remains of the dual number in the
second person.
● 3 genders: masculine, feminine, neuter.

The table of declension of the personal pronouns is as follows:

The genitive case of personal pronouns might be used as possessive; the
pronouns of the 1st and second persons were declined, and might be
considered a separate class of pronouns; the third person pronouns were not
declined (compare them with the Ukrainian - мій син, моя донька, моє село,
мої сини, мого сина but його син, його донька, його село, його сини, його
сина).
These pronouns are especially important for the development of the language
because they are the most frequently used as noun determiners, and through
agreement it indicated the noun's number, gender and case. That was
especially important because in Old English some classes of nouns already
had few endings. Besides, in a number of cases they already had a weakened
meaning which approached the function of an article. So, for instance, the
form of the noun sunu - suna might render the meanings of the genitive, dative
and accusative in the singular and nominative, genitive and accusative in the
plural. If it was modified by a demonstrative pronoun, almost no ambiguity
arose
4. The verb: grammatical categories of the finite verb.
Grammatical categories of the verbals. Strong verbs. Weak
verbs. Minor groups of verbs.
General Characteristics of English Verbs

The verb performs the central role in realizing predication – connection

between situation in the utterance and reality. That is why the verb is of
primary informative significance in an utterance.

The verb possesses the grammatical meaning of verbiality – the ability to

denote a process developing in time.

This meaning is inherent not only in the verbs denoting processes, but also in
those denoting states, forms of existence, evaluations, etc.

Morphological features of the verb

The verb possesses the following grammatical categories:

● tense,
● aspect,
● voice,
● mood,
● person,
● number,
● finitude
 ● phase.

The common categories for finite and non-finite forms are voice, aspect,
phase and finitude.

The grammatical categories of the English verb find their expression in

synthetical and analytical forms.

The formative elements expressing these categories are grammatical affixes,

inner inflexion and function words.

Some categories have only synthetical forms (person, number), others – only
analytical (voice).

Verbal Categories: The Category of Tense

● a verbal category that reflects the objective category of time;

● relates the time of the action, event or state of affairs referred to in the
sentence to the time of the utterance (the time of the utterance being
‘now’ or ‘the present moment’);
● is realized through the oppositions.

Morphological classification of Old English Verbs

The above table of conjugation of verbs shows the that the means of building
grammatical forms differed in Old English for different groups of verbs. Most
forms were made by means of vowel interchange or grammatical suffixes
accompanied (or not) by inflections; one form - Participle II was formed either
by vowel interchange or by a suffix and was sometimes marked by a prefix. In
addition, there are verbs that had suppletive forms.

The majority of Old English verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs
and the weak verbs. In addition to these two main groups there were a few
verbs which could be put together as "minor" groups. The main difference
between these groups lays in the way they form the principal forms; besides
there were a few other differences in conjugation. Accordingly, the verbs may
be divided into the following groups:

● strong
● weak
● preterite-present
● suppletive.

The strong verbs formed their stems by means of vowel gradation and by
adding certain inflections and suffixes; in some verbs gradation was
accompanied by changes of consonants, but these were mainly due to the
activity of assimilative phonetic processes of the period (assimilation before /,
loss of consonants, rhotacism or Verner's Law).
There were four basic forms (stems) of the strong verbs, and the use of the
stems was as follows:

1. I - the stems with this vowel are used in the infinitive, the present tense
indicative and subjunctive, the imperative mood and participle I;
2. II - in the past tense singular, the 1 and the 3 person
3. III - in the past tense plural, 2nd person singular and Past Subjunctive
4. IV - in the form of the Participle II.

The weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and that of Participle II by
adding dental suffix -d- and -(-; normally they did not change their root vowels
apart from the cases when assimilative changes split these sounds into
diphthongs.

Strong Verbs

In Germanic languages the classes of the strong verbs had the following
vowels in four basic forms.

Weak verbs

There are three classes of Old English weak verbs as contrasted to the four in
Gothic. Their number was ever growing in the Old English as it was a
productive pattern. They had three basic forms, their past tense and Participle
II were made by adding the dental suffix -t- or -d- to the root morpheme. They
are divided into three classes depending on the ending of the infinitive, the
sonority of the suffix and the sounds preceding the suffix. New verbs derived
from nouns, adjectives and partly adverbs (that was a very productive way of
word-building in Old English) were conjugated weak.

Another group of weak verbs were causative (transitive) verbs derived from
strong intransitive verbs .

1. Class I

The verbs of this class ended in -an (or -ion after r). Originally they had had a
stem-forming suffix -/- that caused the mutation of the root vowel. That is why
they all have a front (mutated) vowel in the root. When the root vowel was
short, the consonant after it was geminated. This class of verbs is subdivided
into regular and irregular.

Regular class I verbs have mutation of their root vowel (due to an original -i-
element in the suffix in all their forms), and the three basic forms of the verb
end in

2. Class II

These verbs originally had the suffix -oia- in the infinitive; the root vowel is the
same in all three forms. The absence of mutation in the infinitive is due to the
fact that the -і- (from -oja-) appeared at the time when the process of mutation
was over. The suffix gave the vowel -o- in the past tense and in the infinitive.
Their paradigm is the most regular, and so the majority of latter lexical
innovations joined this class. The pattern of the three basic forms has the
following endings:
 3. Class III

The suffix -ai-, that determined the peculiarities of conjugation of the weak
verbs of the third class in Old English is no longer found. The class is not
numerous (there are about eight verbs) and a closed system. Moreover, there
is a tendency to disintegration of this class, some of the verbs changing into
the first and the second classes.

Some verbs of this class have doubled consonants in the Infinitive and the
mutated vowels, which are accounted for by the presence of the element in
some forms in Old English. The pattern of the most frequent class III verbs
forms is

5. Old English Syntax. The simple sentence. Compound

and complex sentences. Word order. The phrase.
The syntax of Old English sentences was relatively simple. Coordination of clauses prevailed
over subordination. Complicated syntactical constructions were rare. The syntactic structure
of Old English can be described at the level of phrases and at the level of sentences.

Phrase
There were great varieties of word phrases in Old English: noun, adjective, verb patterns.
They have their specific features.
Noun pattern consisted of a noun as the head word and pronoun, adjective, numerals and
other nouns as determiners and attributes. Most noun modifiers agreed with the noun in
gender, number, case. Nouns which served as attributes to other nouns usually had the form
of Genitive case.
Adjective patterns included verbs, nouns, pronouns with or without prepositions in the non-
direct cases and infinitives.
Verb patterns included a lot of dependent components: nouns, pronouns, infinitives,
particles. Infinitives and particles were often used in verb phrases with verbs of incomplete
predication (some of phrases were later transformed into analytical forms).

In Old English phrases attribute could precede or follow the head noun. Negations were not
limited in number. The most common negative particle ne was placed before verbs. Verbs
were often accompanied by negative words nãht, nõht, that had developed from particle ne.
Nõht was lately shortened to not — a new negative particle. Particle ne attached to some
verbs, pronouns, adverbs to form single words: nãn — ne an — not one

Syntactic relations
The main types of syntactic relations existed in Old English were agreement,
government, joining.
Agreement is one of the way of expressing syntactic relations when different words,
especially adjectives and nouns were agreed in case, in gender.

In government one word stands in this or that form (case) due to the other word which
governs it.

Joining deals with the parts of speech which have unchangeable forms (adverbs in
particular).

Word Oder
The word order in the sentence was relatively free. The presence of formal markers made it
possible to miss out some parts of the sentence, which would be obligatory in an English
sentence now. The Subject was not repeated but the form of the predicate showed that the
action was performed by the same person as the preceding action. The formal subject was
lacking in many impersonal sentences (though it was present in others). The position of the
words in the sentence was often determined by logical and stylistic factors. But the word
order depended on the communicative type of the sentence – a question or a statement, on
the type of clause, on the presence and place of some secondary parts of the sentence.
Inversion was used in questions. Full inversion was used with simple predicates and partial –
with compound predicates, containing link verbs and modal verbs. If a sentence began with
an adverbial modifier, the word order was inverted. A peculiar type of word order is found in
many subordinate and some coordinate clauses. The clause began with the subject followed
the connective and ended with the predicate or its finite part, all the secondary parts being
enclosed between them. This is the type of synthetic word order, i.e. secondary parts were
inserted between the subject and the predicate or its parts.

Simple Sentences:
● Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) word order: This is the most common order, but
not the only one, unlike modern English.
 ● Inflections: Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns have grammatical cases
(nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative) and genders (masculine,
feminine, and neuter). These inflections play a crucial role in identifying the
sentence's structure and the relationship between words.
● Verb conjugations: Verbs are conjugated based on tense, mood, and
person.

Compound and complex sentences

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times.
Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles have a lot of
sentences which begin with and. Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause was
common in complex sentences. Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by
means of various connectives, as there was no special class of relative pronouns in Old
English. The main connective was the indeclinable particle ƥe, employed either alone or
together with demonstrative and personal pronouns. The pronoun and conjunction ƥæt was
used to introduce object and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words. Some
clauses were intermediate between coordinate and subordinate. The joined asyndetically
and their status was not clear. The structure of the complex sentences was greatly improved
due to King Alfred, the greatest writer of the late 10-th – early 11-th centuries, who employed
a variety of connectives that indicated the relations between the clauses with greater clarity
and precision.

Summary
Because of the greater use of inflections in Old English, word order
was freer than today.
● The sequence of subject, verb, and complement was normal, but
when there were outer and inner complements the second was put
in the dative case after to: Sē biscop hālgode Ēadrēd tō cyninge
“The bishop consecrated Edred king.”

● After an introductory adverb or adverbial phrase the verb generally

took second place as in modern German: Nū bydde ie ān thing “Now
I ask [literally, “ask I”] one thing”;

● Impersonal verbs had no subject expressed. Infinitives constructed

with auxiliary verbs were placed at the ends of clauses or
sentences: Hīe ne dorston forth bī thære ēa siglan “They dared not
sail beyond that river” (siglan is the infinitive);

The connection of words in the utterance is performed through a ramified system of endings,
hence word order is relatively free. Common Indo-European traits, such as double negation
or formation of impersonal sentences without any subject in the nominative case are quite
common.
Exercise 4.
Identify words in the following sentence that are in the genitive case.
þæs eorles scyld (the nobleman’s shield) - eorles (nobleman's)

se hlaford þære healle (the lord of the hall) - þære (of the)

þæs wlancan andsacan earga fleam (the proud enemy’s cowardly flight) - wlancan
(proud), andsacan (enemy's)

þære lopystran sciell (the lobster’s shell) - þære (of the), lopystran

seo lar þara sweorda (the teaching of the swords) - þara (of the)

þære ealdan lafe agend (the old heirloom’s owner) - ealdan (old), lafe (heirloom's)

þisra manna mod (the courage of these men) - þisra (of these)

þæs cealdan brimes isigu grap (the cold sea’s icy grip) - cealdan (cold), brimes
(sea's)

ic seah ures feondes leger (I saw our enemy’s lair) - ures (our), feondes (enemy's)

þa wicingas ofslogon þære cwene burþegn (the vikings killed the queen’s
chamberlain) - þære (of the), cwene (queen's)

Exercise 5.
Identify words in the following sentence that are in the dative case
þa flotan foron on þam scipe (the sailors travelled in the ship) - þam (in the)

þa laðe gystas spræcon on wordum (the hateful strangers spoke in words) - on (in)

ic geaf þe minne maþm, þu geafe me þine lufe (I gave to you my treasure, you gave
to me your love) - þe (to you), me (to me)

butan helmum, weras sindon fæge (without helmets, men are doomed) - (no dative
case)

seo bot wunode on þære cealdum healle (the remedy dwelt in the cold hall) - on (in)

we sellaþ scyldas þam wigan (we are giving shields to the warrior) - þam (to the)

se eorl feaht mid þam sweorde (the nobleman fought with the sword) - mid (with)

þæt wif ofsloh þone wigan on þære wælstowe (the woman killed the warrior on the
battlefield) - on (on)

þa wlancan cyningas fuhton on þam swiftum wicgum (the proud kings fought on the
swift horses) - on (on), þam (in the)
þu hine lufodost ond þu him geafe þine beagas (you loved him and you gave your
rings to him) - him (to him)

Exercise 6.
Translate into Modern English, and state the case.

Model: cealdum wæpnum - cold weapons (dative).

1. wisne wigan - wise warrior (nominative)
2. tilu heall - splendid hall (nominative)
3. wacra wicinga - watchful Viking (nominative)
4. miclu sweord - great sword (nominative)
5. grimmes brimes - fierce sea (genitive)
6. geornre helpe - eager help (dative)
7. se laða gyst - the hateful guest (nominative)
8. þam ilcan maþme - that same treasure (dative)
9. minne wlancan hund - my proud dog (genitive)
10. þeos frode modor - this wise mother (nominative)
11. þinra bradena heafda - your raven's heads (genitive)
12. þy beorhtan beage - that bright ring (dative)
13. þa fægran cirice - the fair church (accusative)
14. urum eargum lopystrum - with our poor songs (instrumental)
Посилання на глосарій
https://www.asnc.cam.ac.uk/spokenword/oe_gr_oetomod.php?d=nap&n=2

Exercise 7.
Translate into Modern English, and give grammatical information for
the weak verb(s.)

Model: þa wicingas weredon hira scipu (the vikings defended their

ships (weredon = 3 pl. preterite indicative, werian)

Translations with Grammatical Information for Weak Verbs:

1. se cyning meteð þone biscop - The king feeds the bishop (meteð = 3rd
person singular present indicative, weak verb of the first class, metan)
2. lufast þu minne hund? - Do you love my dog? (lufast = 2nd person
singular present indicative, weak verb of the first class, lufian)
3. þæt gear licode þære cwene - The year pleased the queen (licode = 3rd
person singular past tense indicative, weak verb of the first class, lician)
4. se læreda munuc wunaþ in þære cirice - The learned monk dwells in the
church (wunaþ = 3rd person singular present indicative, weak verb of the
third class, wunian)
5. þu feddest swiftlice þone dracan - You fed the dragon quickly (feddest =
2nd person singular past tense indicative, weak verb of the first class, fedan)
 6. hit þynceð me þæt þa olfendas fremeden gode dæde - It seems to me
that the wolves performed a good deed (þynceð = 3rd person singular
present indicative, weak verb of the third class, þencan)
7. neriaþ þa hwistliende nædran! - Rescue the hissing snakes! (neriaþ =
2nd person plural imperative, weak verb of the first class, nerian)
8. þa preostas feormiað þa bec - The priests celebrate the books (feormiað
= 3rd person plural present indicative, weak verb of the first class, feormian)
9. þa hlafordas secgað þæt hie ræren þa wæpnu - The lords say that they
bear the weapons (secgað = 3rd person plural present indicative, strong
verb, secgan) & (ræren = 3rd person plural present indicative, weak verb of
the first class, ræran)
10. se hattefagol hydde bifiende under þam huse - The hoopoe hid the
enemy under the house (hydde = 3rd person singular past tense indicative,
weak verb of the first class, hydan)
11. heo bletsað þa gegaderodan beornas - She blesses the gathered
warriors (bletsað = 3rd person singular present indicative, weak verb of the
first class, bletsan)

Exercise 8.
Translate into Modern English, and give grammatical information
for the strong verb(s).

Model: þa grimman beornas heoldon þa bricge (the fierce warriors

held the bridge(s) (heoldon = 3 pl. preterite indicative, healdan))
Translations with Grammatical Information for Strong Verbs:
1. singest þu leoð? - Do you sing a song? (singest = 2nd person singular
present indicative, strong verb, singan)
2. se grimma þyrs creap to þære healle - The fierce giant crept to the hall
(creap = 3rd person singular past tense indicative, strong verb, creopan)
3. help – þa wicingas farað hider! - Help - the Vikings are coming here!
(farað = 3rd person plural present indicative, strong verb, faran)
4. þæt mearhgehæc bið to etenne - The horse-equipment is to eat (bið = 3rd
person singular present indicative, strong verb, beon)
5. þa helmas wurdon scinende - The helmets became shining (wurdon = 3rd
person plural past tense indicative, strong verb, weorðan)
6. ic seah þæt se ealda maþm fæger wære - I saw that the old treasure was
beautiful (seah = 1st person singular past tense indicative, strong verb, seon)
7. se dysiga munuc feoll ut of þam eagþyrle - The foolish monk fell out of
the window (feoll = 3rd person singular past tense indicative, strong verb,
feallan)
8. we spræcon wisdom þam bundenan andsacan - We spoke wisdom to
the bound opponents (spræcon = 1st person plural past tense indicative,
strong verb, sprecan)
9. ge sculon standan oþþæt þa dracan cumen - You shall stand until the
dragons come (cumen = past participle, strong verb, cuman)
10. þa modgan wigan ridon on þam frodum wicgum - The brave warriors
rode on the wise warriors (ridon = 3rd person plural past tense indicative,
strong verb, ridan)
11. ðu brugde þone hladenan olfend - You brought the laden wolf (brugde =
2nd person singular past tense indicative, strong verb, bringan)