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33. WHAT NEW LETTERS AND DIGRAPHS DENOTING CONSONANTS APPEARED IN ME
The most conspicuous feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms of the words in Late ME texts resemble their modern forms, though the pronunciation of the words was different.
In ME the runic letters passed out of use. Thorn – þ – & the crossed d – d, ð – were replaced by the diagraph th, which retained the same sound value: [θ] & [ð]; the rune “wynn” was displaced by “double u” – w –; the ligatures æ & æ fell into disuse.
After the period of Anglo-Norman dominance (11th-13th c.), English regained its prestige as the language of writing. Many innovations in ME spelling reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraph ch which occurred in many French borrowings & was regularly used in Anglo-Norman texts was adopted as new ways of indicating the sound [t∫].
The letters j, k, v & q were probably 1st used in imitation of French manuscripts. The two-fold use of g & c, which has survived today owes its origin to French: these letters usually stood for [dﮔ] & [s] before front vowels & for [g] & [k] before back vowels.
Late ME notaries introduced sh (also ssh & sch) to indicate the new sibilant [∫]; dg to indicate [dﮔ] alongside j & g (before front vowels); the digraph wh replaced the OE sequence of letters hw. Long sounds were shown by double letters. The introduction of the digraph gh for [x] & [x’] helped to distinguish between the fricatives [x, x’], which were preserved in some positions, & the aspirate [h].
G & c stand for [dﮔ] & [s] before front vowels & for [g] & [k] before back vowels respectively.
The letters th & s indicate voiced sounds between vowels, & voiceless sounds – initially, finally & next to other voiceless consonants. F stands for the voiceless [f] while the voiced [v] is shown by v or u.
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Letters indicating consonants |
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Single letters |
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c [s / k] f [f] g [dﮔ / g] j [dﮔ] k [k] s [s / z] v (often spelt as u) [v] y [j] |
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Digraphs |
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ch, tch [t∫] dg [dﮔ] gh [x / x’] qu [kw] th [[θ / ð] sh, sch, ssh [∫] wh [hw] |
34. THE OLD ENGLISH VERB. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS, GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES.
The OE verb was characterized by many peculiar features. Verbs fell into numerous morphological classes & employed a variety of form-building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear.
Gramm. Categories of the finite verb
The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in 2 gramm. categories: number & person. Its specifically verbal categories were mood & tense.
Finite forms regularly distinguished between 2 numbers: sg. & pl.
The category of person was made up by 3 forms: the 1st, the 2nd & the 3rd. person distinctions were neutralized in many positions. Person was consistently shown only in the Pres. Tense of the Ind. Mood sg. Person was not distinguished in the pl; nor was it shown in the Subj. Mood.
The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative & Subjunctive.
The category of Tense in OE consisted of 2 categorial forms, Pres. & Past. The tenses were formally distinguished by all the verbs in the Ind. & Subj. Moods.
The use of the Subj. Mood in OE was in many respects different from its use in later ages. Subj. forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. Subj. was common in other types of constructions: in clauses of time, clauses of result & in clauses presenting reported speech.
The meanings of the tense forms were also very general, as compared with later ages & with present-day English. The forms of the Pres. Were used to indicate present & future actions. With verbs of perfective meaning or with adverbs of future time the Pres. Acquired the meaning of futurity. Future happenings could also be expressed by verb phrases with modal verbs.
The Past tense was used in a most general sense to indicate various events in the past (including those which are nowadays expressed by the forms of the Past Cont, Past Perf, Pres. Perf. & other analytical forms).
The category of aspect was expressed by the regular contrast of verbs with & without the prefix ﮔe- verbs with the prefix had a perfective meaning while the same verbs without the prefix indicated a non-completed action. In some recent explorations it has been shown that the prefix ﮔe- in OE can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, it could change the aspective meaning of the verb by making it perfective, but it also could change its lexical meaning. It has also been noticed that verbs without a prefix could sometimes have a perfective meaning. It follows that the prefix ﮔe- should rather be regarded as an element of word-building, a derivational prefix of vague general meaning, though its ties with certain shades of aspective meaning are obvious.
It’s important to note that in OE texts there were also other means of expressing aspective meanings: - verb phrases made up of the verbs habban, beon, weorðan (have, be, become) & the Past or Pres Participle. The phrases with Participle I were used to describe a prolonged state or action, the phrases with Participle II indicated a state resulting from a previous, completed action.
These phrases didn’t form regular oppositions with the simple forms of the verb & cannot be treated as members of gramm. categories.
The category of voice is another debatable issue. In OE texts we find a few isolated relics of synthetic Mediopassive forms. The passive meanings was frequently indicated with the help of Participle II of transitive verbs used as predicatives with the verbs beon & weorðan. During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the Passive voice.
Gr4amm. categories of the verbals.
In OE there were 2 non-finite forms of the verb: the Infinitive & the Participle. Functions: like finite forms they could take direct objects & be modified by adverbs.
The Infinitive had no verbal gramm. categoties. It had a sort of reduced case-system: 2 forms which roughly corresponded to the Nom. & Dat. Cases of nouns.
The Participle was a kind of verbal adj. which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Participle I (Pres. Participle) was opposed to Part. II (Past Part.) through voice & tense distinctions: it was active & expressed present or simultaneous processes & qualities, while Part. II expressed states & qualities resulting from past action & was contrasted to Part. I as passive to active, if the verb was transitive. Part. II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action & was opposed to Part. I only through tense.
Participles were employed predicatively & attributively like adj. & shared their gramm. categories: they were declined as weak & strong & agreed with nouns in number, gender & case.
Morphological classification of verbs
The majority of OE verbs fell into 2 main divisions: the strong verbs & the weak verbs. There were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong & weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or the “stems” of the verb. there were also a few other differences in the conjugations.
Minor groups of verbs combined certain features of the strong & weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.
Strong verbs. There were about 300 strong verbs in OE. The strong verbs are usually divided into 7 classes. The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Part. II.
Weak verbs formed their Past & Part. II by means of the dental suffix –d- or –t-. In OE the weak verbs are subdivided into 3 classes differing in the ending of the Infinitive, the sonority of the suffix, & the sounds preceding the suffix.
Class I: -an (-ian after r) originally they had had a stem forming suffix –i- that caused the mutation of a root vowel. Regular: when the suffix was preceded by a voiceless consonant the suffix -d > -t. Irregular verbs: mutated vowel only in the infinitive while in the past tense & in Part II it remained unchanged. The sound a in the root of the 2nd & 3rd forms is changed through breaking into ea, but it is not mutated.
In class II the Infinitive ended in –ian & the Past tense stem & Part. II had [o] before the dental suffix. This was the most numerous & regular of all the classes.
Class III. An Infinitive ended in –an. It included only 4 verbs with a full conjugation & a few isolated forms of other verbs.
Minor groups of verbs. The most important group of these verbs were the so-called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally the Pres. Tense forms of these verbs were Past tense form.
Most of the preterite –presents didn’t indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the eventually developed into modern modal verbs.
Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms. Willan (meaning of volition & desire), don (do), ﮔān (go), beon (be).
35. OE SYNTAX. TYPES OF SENTENCES. TYPES OF PREDICATE.
The syntactic structure of a language can be described at the level of the phrase & at the level of sentence. In OE texts we find a variety of word phrases (word groups/ patterns). OE noun patterns, adj. patterns & verb patterns had certain specific features which are important to note in view of their later changes.
A noun patt. Consisted of a noun as a head word & pronouns, adjectives (including verbal adj./participles), numerals & other nouns as determiners & attributes. Most noun modifiers agreed with the noun in gender, number & case.
An adj. patt. Could include adverbs, nouns or pronouns in one of the oblique cases with or without prepositions, & infinitives.
Verb patt. included a great variety of dependant components: nouns & pronouns in oblique cases with or without prepositions, adverbs, infinitives & participles.
Infinitives & participles were often used in verb phrases with verbs of incomplete predication (some of these phrases were later transformed into analytical forms).
The Simple Sentence. Structure: subject + simple predicate. Predicates could also be compound, modal, verbal or nominal. Secondary parts of the sentence: direct object & attribute. In the examples of verb & noun patterns we can find other secondary parts of the sentence: indirect & prepositional objects, adverbial modifiers & appositions. The structure of the OE sentence can be described in terms of Mod E syntactic analysis, for the sentence was made up of the same parts, except that those parts were usually simpler. Attributive groups were short & among the parts of the sentence there were very few predicative constructions (“syntactical complexes”). Absolute constructions with the noun in the Dat. Case were sometimes used in translations from Latin in imitation of the Latin Dativus Absolutus. The objective predicative construction “Accusative with the Infinitive” occurred in original OE texts.
Predicative constructions after habban (NE have) contained a Past Participle.
The connection between the parts of the sentence was shown by the form of the words as they had formal markers for gender, case, number & person. Agreement & government played an important role in the word phrase & in the sentence. Accordingly the place of the word in relation to other words was of secondary importance & the order of words 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 formal subject was lacking in many impersonal sentences (though it was present in others).
One of the conspicuous features of OE syntax was multiple negation within a single sentence or clause. The most common negative particle was ne , which was placed before the verb; it was often accompanied by other negative words, mostly nāht or nōht (which had developed from ne plus ā-wiht ‘no thing’). These words reinforced the meaning of negation.
Another peculiarity of OE negation was that the particle ne could be attached to some verbs, pronouns & adverbs to form single words.
Compound & complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of coordination & subordination & a large inventory of subordinate clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses, adverbial clauses.
Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunction of a most general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic relations. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles abound in successions of clauses or sentences all beginning with and.
Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (termed “correlation”) was common in complex sentences.
Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means of various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns. The main connective was the indeclinable particle þe employed either alone or together with demonstrative & personal pronouns.
The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the particle þe.
The pronoun & conjunction þæt was used to introduce object clauses & adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: oð ðæt ‘until’, ær, þæm þe ‘before’, þæt ‘so that’.
Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordinate & subordinate: they are joined asyndetically & their status is not clear.
In the course of OE the structure of the complex sentence was considerably improved. Ælfric, the greatest writer of the late 10th – early 11th c., employed a variety of connectives indicating the relations between the clauses with greater clarity & precision.
Word order
The order of words in the OE sentence was relatively free. The position of words in the sentence was often determined by logical & stylistic factors rather than by grammatical constraints.
Nevertheless the freedom of word order & its seeming independence of grammar should not be overestimated. The order of words could depend on the communicative type of the sentence – question versus statement, on the type of clause, on the presence & place of some secondary parts of the sentence.
Inversion was used for grammatical purposes in questions; full inversion with simple predicates & partial – with compound predicates, containing link-verbs & modal verbs.
If the sentence began with an adverbial modifier, the word order was usually inverted
A peculiar type of word order is found in many subordinate & in some coordinate clauses & the clause begins with the subject following the connective, & ends with the predicate or its finite part, all the secondary parts being enclosed between them.
Those were the main tendencies in OE word order. It appears that in many respects OE syntax was characterized by a wide range of variation & by the co-existence of various, sometimes even opposing, tendencies.
36. HOW DID THE FORMS OF PERFECT TENSES DEVELOP IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Like other analytical forms of the verb, the Perf. Forms have developed from OE verb phrases.
The main source of the Perf. form was the OE “possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object & Part. II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.
The meaning of the construction was: a person (the subject) possessed a thing (the object), which was characterized by a certain state resulting from a previous action (the participle). The participle, like other attributes, agreed with the noun-object in Number, Gender & Case.
Originally the verb habban was used only with participles of transitive verbs; then it came to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival & prepositional objects & even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was developing into a kind of auxiliary.
The other source of the Perf. forms was the OE phrase consisting of the link-verb bēon & Part. II of intransitive verbs. In this phrases the participle usually agreed with the subject.
Towards ME the 2 verb phrases turned into analytical forms & made up a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of agreement with the noun (the subject – in the construction with ben, the object – in the construction with haven); the places of the object & the participle in the construction with haven changed: the Participle usually stood close to the verb have & was followed by the object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole – instead of being governed by have.
In the Perfect form the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession & was used with all kinds of verbs, without restriction. Have was becoming a universal auxiliary, whereas the use of be grew more restricted. Shakespeare employs be mainly with verbs of movement, but even with these verbs be alternates with have.
By the age of Literary Renaissance the perfect forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories. The isolated instances of Perfect Cont. &Perf. Passive are found in Chaucer.
Perfect forms in the Pass. Voice, Perf. forms of the Subj. Mood, Future Perf. forms are common in Shakespeare.
In the beginning the main function of the Perf. forms was to indicate a completed action, to express “perfectivity”, rather than priority of one action to another & relevance for the subsequent situation (the meanings ascribed to the Perf. forms today). For a long time the Perf. forms were used as synonyms of the Simple Past: the perfective meaning, as well as that of priority, could be expressed both by the simple form of the Past tense (Past. Indef.) & by the Perf. form.
Towards the age of Shakespeare the contrast between the Perf. & non-Perf. forms became more obvious. In the main Shakespeare & his contemporaries employ the Perf. forms in the same way as they are employed in present-day English.
Thus the meaning of “priority & relevance for the subsequent situation” became the domain of the Perf. forms & the meaning of the non-Perf. forms, particularly the Past Indef., was accordingly narrowed.