Lecture 1 Introduction

1 letter = several sounds
several letters/combinations of letters = 1 sound
letter	sounds	letters	sound
o	[o], [u], [o:], [ǿ]	g, dg, j	[dζ]
c	[s], [k]	k, c, q	[k]
g	[g], [dζ]
u	[u], [v]

NE Spelling

• 
  based on conventional principle was preserved;
  
• 
  new digraphs appeared (indicated borrowings from other languages) – ph, ps, ch;
  
• 
  spelling became fixed.
  

There reasons for such stabilisation were as follows:

• 
  Introduction of Printing (1475) (see Lecture 9)  one obligatory standard!
  
• 
  Normalisation of the language (17^th – 18^th c.) (see Lecture 9) one obligatory standard!
  

ModE Spelling
Modern English spelling reflects pronunciation of the 14^th – 15^th c.
See also Table 12 on p. 216-218 in “История английского языка” by Т.А. Расторгуева.
Lecture 14
Old English Morphology

Old English was a synthetic language, i.e. there were a lot of inflections.

Parts of Speech
In OE 9 parts of speech had already been distinguished:

changeable	1. Noun	Nominal Categories: Number, Case, Gender, Degrees of Comparison, Determination
	2. Adjective
	3. Pronoun
	4. Numeral
	5. Verb	Verbal Categories: Tense, Mood, Person, Number, Voice, Aspect, Order, Posteriority
unchangeable	6. Adverb (only Degrees of Comparison)	-
	7. Prepositions	-
	8. Conjunctions	-
	9. Interjections	-

Below all notional parts of speech will be discussed, their categories described and the meanings of these categories stated as related to the Old English Period

Noun
Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).
Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N).
Case – Nominative (Nom) (agent), Genitive (Gen) (attribute), Dative (Dat) (instrument, indirect/prepositional object), Accusative (Acc) (recipient, direct/prepositionless object).


System of Declensions
Prior to reading this point, see PG word-structure, Lecture 4.
In OE there were 25 declensions of nouns. All nouns were grouped into declensions according to:

• 
  stem-suffix;
  
• 
  Gender.
  

We will mention only the most numerous declensions/stems here:

Strong Vocalic Stems		Weak Consonantal Stems
Stem-suffix	Gender	Stem-suffix	Gender
a-stem	M, N	n-stem	M, N, F
o-stem	F	r, s, nd-stems	M, N, F
i-stem	M, N, F	root-stem	M, F
u-stem	M, F

These stems will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 15.

Adjectives
Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).
Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N).
Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc) + Instrumental (Instr).
Instrumental Case was used to express instrumental meaning but only in the adjective while the noun stood in Dative Case:
by/with + Adjective (Instr) + Noun (Dat)
Degrees of Comparison – positive, comparative, superlative.
Determination (Definiteness/Indefiniteness) – today this category has to do with the Article but in OE there were no articles and definiteness/indefiniteness was expressed with the help of inflections of the Adjective, i.e. the inflections of the Adjective helped to determine whether a noun was definite or indefinite.
In OE there existed the weak and strong declensions of the Adjective. They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 16.


Pronoun
Classification:

1. 
   Personal (Noun-Pronouns (had some categories of the Noun and resembled the Noun in syntactic function)).
   

They had the following categories:

• 
  Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;
  
• 
  Number – Singular (Sg), Plural (Pl) + Dual (1^st, 2^nd pers. (we both, you both) when only two persons were meant);
  
• 
  Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N) – only in 3^rd person!;
  
• 
  Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).
  
1. 
   Demonstrative (Adjective-Pronouns (had some categories of the Adjective and resembled the Adjective in syntactic function)).
   

They had the following categories:

• 
  Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);
  
• 
  Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);
  
• 
  Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc) +
  

Instrumental (Instr).

3. 
   Interrogative – unchangeable.
   
4. 
   Indefinite – unchangeable.
   

Personal and Demonstrative Pronouns will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 17.


Numeral
Classification:

1. 
   Cardinal – ān (one), twēζen (two), þrēō (three) – had the categories of Gender and Case. All the other cardinal numerals were unchangeable.
   
2. 
   Ordinal – were unchangeable.
   

Verbs
Classification:

1. 
   Finite
   

They had the following categories:

• 
  Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);
  
• 
  Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative;
  
• 
  Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;
  
• 
  Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);
  
• 
  Conjugation – strong and weak.
  
1. 
   Non-finite:
   
   • 
     Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:
     
   • 
     Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)
     

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to berenne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

• 
  Participles 1, 2 resembled the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:
  

• 
  Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);
  
• 
  Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);
  
• 
  Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);
  
• 
  Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);
  
• 
  Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).
  

Finite and Non-finite Verbs will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.


Preterite-Present Verbs
There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs. They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.


Anomalous Verbs
They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do). They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.
Lecture 15
The Development of the Noun
Old English
As it has been mentioned in Lecture 14, the Noun had the following categories in OE:


Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).


Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).


Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N):

• 
  Originally (in PG) it was a semantic division (he/she/it – associated with the lexical meaning of a noun), but in OE this principle did not work any more (e.g. wīf (wife) = Neuter);
  
• 
  In OE the nouns started to grouped into genders according to the suffix:
  
  • 
    -þu (F) – e.g. lenζþu (length);
    
  • 
    -ere (M) – e.g. fiscere (fisher).