An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

particle precedes the verb. The negative often behaves as the first
element in the clause, and therefore the following is a typical example:
(34) Ne co¯m he¯
not came he
It should be apparent from (34) that not only does ne precede the verb,
but also that there is no sign of any dummy auxiliary verb as would be
found today, as in he did not come.
The most remarkable feature of negation in Old English, however, is
that seen in a sentence such as:
(35) Ne me¯tte he¯ æ
¯
r na¯n g
.
ebu¯n land
not found he earlier no occupied land
This, of course, looks like the non-standard forms of present-day
English which are quite widely found everywhere in Britain, as in he
didn’t buy nothing, i.e. ‘he didn’t buy anything’. The similarity is not
accidental. The standard forms of today show one of the few successful
attempts at prescriptivism. On the other hand the non-standard forms
demonstrate a direct line of descent from Old English.
The general, but not absolute, usage in Old English was that in nega-
tive clauses ne appeared before the finite verb and that it also attached
94
AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH
02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 94

---

itself to any suitable indefinite pronoun or quantifier. The usual name for
this construction is negative concord, rather than multiple negation, for
the latter could imply that each negative element had its own effect (the
false claim of the prescriptivists). But negative concord shows that the
actual effect is that negation spreads from an initial negation to any other
items which can take the particle.
Negative concord is by no means restricted to one further instance of
the particle. As an example of extended concord, consider the following
example:
(36) … 
e
a¯
e
a¯ we¯ hit no¯hwæ
e
er ne selfe ne lufedon, ne e¯ac o¯
e
rum
monnum ne le¯fdon
… when we it neither not selves not loved, nor also to other men
not allowed
‘when we neither loved it ourselves, nor even allowed it to
others’
Very often the negative particle is cliticised, or attached to the following
word. This process can be seen in the na¯n of (35) and the no¯hwæ
´
er of
(36). The cliticisation to indefinite pronouns is probably clear enough.
But there is also cliticisation to the following verb under certain con-
ditions. The verbs affected are wesan ‘be’, wile ‘will’, witan ‘know’, habban
‘have’, a¯gan ‘own/owe’. These verbs share the property of starting with
either /w/, /h/ or a vowel, but interestingly they are all, with the ex-
ception of witan, which has been lost, related to present-day auxiliary
verbs. This is even true of a¯gan, which develops into ought. No other verbs
show the cliticisation, not even weor
†
an ‘become’, and forms of be¯on
(as opposed to wesan) do not cliticise either, since they begin with the
consonant /b/. This cliticisation is normally called negative contraction,
and typical examples of it are seen in:
(37) Ac he¯ nyste hwæt
t
æs so¯
t
es wæs
But he didn’t know how true that was
(38) Næfde he¯
t
e¯ah ma¯
e
onne twentig
.
hry
e
era
He didn’t have, however, more than twenty cows
(39) Ac heora tal næs na¯ of rihtwı¯snysse ac of nı¯
e
e
But their story wasn’t at all of truth but of evil
7.6 Relative and other clauses
After the interruption of §7.5, due to the necessity of discussing a topic
which is so salient in Old English that I couldn’t delay its introduction
any longer, let me now return to clause structure. The first issue that has
CLAUSES
95
02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 95

---

to be considered here concerns three methods by which clauses may be
linked together, namely coordination, parataxis and hypotaxis. Each of
these is important in Old English.
The easiest of these, because it is the most familiar, is undoubtedly
coordination, in which two main, or independent, clauses are linked
together by a coordinating conjunction. The most obvious examples use
the conjunction and ‘and’, but Old English deployed a wide range of
conjunctions. The following example is both typical and interesting:
(40) Ond se Cynewulf oft mic
.
lum g
.
efeohtum feaht uui
t
[= wi
t
]
Bretwa¯lum
And this Cynewulf often great fights fought against the Welsh
The example is interesting because there is verb-final word order (the
final phrase being where it is because of considerations of weight). It is
a feature of such clauses that verb-final order is common. You may also
have noticed that in this example there is actually no coordination, but
instead merely a simple clause.
Parataxis is a kind of halfway house between coordination and hypo-
taxis, where the latter involves overt subordination. In parataxis there
is a relationship between a main clause and a subordinate clause, but
crucially there is no overt signal of subordination, except that there is
no overt subject. Thus the second clause in the following example lacks
an overt subject, which would be identical with the subject of the first
clause:
(41)
T
a¯ co¯mon
t
e¯ofas eahta, woldon stelan 
t
a¯ ma¯
e
mas
Then came eight thieves, wanted to steal the treasures
Very often the verbs in such structures correspond to present participles
in present-day English:
(42) He¯ sæt on 
e
æ¯m muntum, we¯op ond hearpode
He sat on the mountain tops, weeping and playing the harp
Hypotaxis, or subordination, is used extensively in Old English, 
often together with correlation, where two (or more) clauses are linked
together by means of correlative elements. Thus we find examples such
as the following, where the subordinate clause is first introduced by 
†