An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

æs mannes the cause;
this is a two-place impersonal. It is also possible to obtain one-place
impersonals:
(53) Longa
e
hine [
] hearde
he longs grieviously
The general rule for all impersonal constructions is that the experiencer
is in either the accusative or the dative case, whilst the cause, if a noun
phrase, is in the genitive case.
Clearly, as noun morphology began, if not to disappear, at least to lose
some of its crucial case distinctions, then examples such as (51) would
begin, also, to look strange, for the norm would be for something which
had both the morphological properties of a subject and the positional
place of a subject to have the normal case of a subject, namely the nomi-
native. Thus alongside (51) we find both the following types:
(54)
T
a¯ ofhre¯ow 
e
a¯m munece [
]
t
æs hreoflian mæ¯g
.
enle¯ast [
]
Then pitied the monk the leper’s feebleness
(55) Se mæssepre¯ost [
]
t
æs mannes [
] ofhre¯ow
The priest for the man felt pity
These variations, however, demonstrate that the use of impersonal
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constructions can highlight semantic differences which have to be
handled by very different constructions in present-day English. In both
(54) and (55) we would be most likely to use the phrasal construction feel
pity, as in:
(56) The leper’s feebleness caused the monk to feel pity (for him)
(57) The priest felt pity for the man
I am conscious that the above account scarcely scratches the surface
of the subject, but perhaps there is sufficient here for you to see that
impersonals are not only quite unlike any structure in present-day
English, but that there is much work to be done to explain the develop-
ments which eventually bring us to the situation today. And as a final
aside it may be noted that there are still a very few idiomatic and plainly
archaic forms around, notably methinks for I think.
Exercise
So far I have presented texts from both the time of Alfred and the time
of Ælfric and Wulfstan. In this exercise I have taken an extract from just
before the Norman Conquest. There are two reasons for this choice:
one historical, one linguistic. Historically I have chosen an extract from
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles which outlines some of the internal fighting
that occurred during the reign of Edward the Confessor, and therefore
serves as a brief insight into the kinds of issue which were to lead to the
disappearance of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
Linguistically, although undoubtedly little has been lost from the
classical forms of Old English, there are a few signs in this extract of the
changes which begin to occur after the Norman Conquest. You should,
therefore, pay special attention to forms which show developments
which reflect the way in which the language is already beginning to
change. In addition, since in this chapter we have mostly been concerned
with word order, you should examine each clause and the word order
used there. This passage is written in a relatively non-literary style
and consists of quite short clauses, so there is a considerable amount of
material to examine.
And co¯m 
t
a¯ Eustatius fram g
.
eondan s毠so¯na æfter 
t
a¯m bisc
.
op and
g
.
ewende to¯
e
a¯m cynge, and spæc wi
e
hine
t
æt
t
æt he¯
t
a¯ wolde and
g
.
ewende
t
a¯ ha¯mweard.
E
a¯ he¯ co¯m to¯ Cantwarbyrig
.
e¯ast,
t
a¯ snædde he¯
t
æ¯r, and his menn, and
to¯ Dofran g
.
ewende.
T
a¯ he¯ wæs sume mı¯la o
ee
e ma¯re beheonan
Dofran,
t
a¯ dyde he¯ on his byrnan and his g
.
efe¯ran ealle, and fo¯ran to¯
Dofran.
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T
a¯ hı¯
t
ider co¯mon,
t
a¯ woldon hı¯ innian hı¯
t
æ¯r heom sylfan g
.
elı¯code.
T
a¯ co¯m a¯n his manna and wolde wı¯cian æt a¯nes bundan hu¯se his
un
e
ances, and g
.
ewundode
t
one hu¯sbu¯ndon, and se hu¯sbu¯nda ofslo¯h
t
one o¯
e
erne. 
E
a¯ wear
e
Eustatius uppon his horse, and his g
.
efe¯ran
upon heora, and fe¯rdon to¯
t
a¯m hu¯sbu¯ndon and ofslo¯gon hine binnan
his a¯g
.
enan heor
e
e, and wendon him 
t
a¯ up to¯
t
æ¯re burg
.
e weard, and
ofslo¯gon æ¯g
.
e
er g
.
e wi
e
innan g
.
ewi
e
u¯tan ma¯
t
anne xx manna. And 
t
a¯
burhmenn ofslo¯gon xix menn on o¯
e
re healfe and g
.
ewundoden
t
æt hı¯
nystan hu¯ fela.
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8
Vocabulary
8.1 The sources of vocabulary
If we examine almost any random sample of present-day English,
what we shall find is a mixture of linguistic sources. The following, for
example, is from the beginning of Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train
(Heinemann, 1932):
The purser took the last landing-card in his hand and watched the
passengers cross the grey wet quay, over a wilderness of points and rails,
round the corners of abandoned trucks.
The italicised words are of French origin, whilst took is from
Scandinavian and trucks from Latin. Perhaps about thirty per cent of
present-day vocabulary is of French origin, and there are significantly
large proportions of our vocabulary from other languages. In particular,
there are exceptionally important words of Scandinavian origin, even
although they are not nearly as numerous as the French words. Thus
core grammatical items such as they, are and she are all Scandinavian as
are the body-part nouns leg and neck and the kinship term sister.
The picture presented above, which ignores many of the words in the
present-day language whose origin lies in other languages, for example
Dutch sketch, but often from even more distant languages, such as shampoo
from Hindi or wigwam from the North American language Ojibwa, is
in stark contrast to the situation in Old English. For there the over-
whelming majority of words are of native, Germanic, origin; none of the
words I have mentioned above formed part of Old English vocabulary,
not even the Scandinavian grammatical items. Those terms replaced the
Old English words hı
¯
, synd and he¯o during the Middle English period.
As I shall show later, there are words of non-native origin in Old
English, the vast majority of which are from Latin. It has been estimated
only about 3 per cent of Old English vocabulary is taken from non-native
sources and it is clear that the strong preference in Old English was to
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use its native resources in order to create new vocabulary. In this respect,
therefore, and as elsewhere, Old English is typically Germanic.
We can classify Old English vocabulary into the following four types.
Firstly, native core vocabulary; secondly, affixation, the process by
which a native affix is attached to an existing word to create a new word,
as in present-day English brightness from bright plus the suffix -ness;
thirdly, compounding, the process by which two independent words
are joined together to create a new third word, as in present-day railway,
created from the two dependent words rail and way; fourthly, borrow-