An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

part of the fifth century. However, apart from a few fragments, texts
only begin to appear regularly around 
 700. These texts, however, are
mostly very short. It is usual to suggest that the first flourishing of texts
is just before and just after 900, under the encouragement of Alfred.
In terms of West Saxon that is certainly true, although there are some
important Mercian texts spread over the preceding two centuries. It
becomes a little clearer, therefore, why the impression of an unvarying
mass tends to prevail.
Even within West Saxon, however, there are signs of distinct differ-
ences beginning to appear within the relatively short time of the
available texts. Inevitably, given the amount of material we have, these
changes can appear as minor details, but I want simply to take two cases
and show how these are clear indications of change in progress. Both
these cases involve morphology, one relating to verbs, the other to nouns.
It will be recalled from Chapter 4 that there were two principal classes
of weak verbs, class 1, as in trymman ‘perform’, and class 2, as in lufian.
But within class 1 there was a sub-group of verbs like nerian ‘save’. In
an earlier chapter I mentioned that by the time of Ælfric verbs like this
were beginning to adopt the forms of weak class 2, so that we find nera
´
rather than the expected nere
´
. In fact this process had already started,
but in a very small way, at the time of Alfred.
So what we can see is a progression, the change becoming more wide-
spread. And the change is one which makes class 2 the more dominant
class, a situation which is confirmed when we look at loan words from
Latin. The verbs which are borrowed are much more likely to come into
class 2 than class 1 (note that only one Latin verb is adopted as a strong
verb, namely sc
.
rı¯fan ‘decree’). Therefore it should not be surprising
to realise that the eventual single regular weak verb class, as today, is
primarily based on class 2 rather than class 1.
In nouns, the point I want to consider is the shape of the dative plural.
When I presented the noun conjugations you may have noted that the
dative plural of all nouns had the inflection -um. But in later texts, such
as Ælfric and after, there is a growing tendency for -an to replace -um.
This is trivial in itself, but of course in the n-declension it reduces signi-
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ficantly the degree of inflectional variation which occurs in the plural.
This is, therefore, perhaps the first step towards the loss of any variation
in the plural of nouns which is one of the marks of Middle English and
beyond.
Both these changes are undoubtedly associated with a more general
phonological issue. This is that the later the text the more likely it is that
unstressed vowels will begin to fall together, so that there can even be
a falling together of all the unstressed vowels into something like the