An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press
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n-declension by choosing a noun current today:
Masculine Singular Plural Nominative sta¯n sta¯nas Accusative sta¯n sta¯nas Genitive sta¯nes sta¯na Dative sta¯ne sta¯num Feminine Singular Plural Nom. talu tala Acc. tale tala Gen. tale tala Dat. tale talum THE FUTURE 131 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 131 N- Singular Plural Nom. nama naman Acc. naman naman Gen. naman namena Dat. naman namum Let us now see what happens if we assume that every unstressed vowel becomes reduced to something like schwa. You may also recall that in Chapter 9 I suggested that the dative plural ending had already started to develop as -an rather than -um. Taking these two points together, it is quite easy to see that both the feminine declension and the n-declension suffer disproportionately badly. The former will no longer have any distinctive inflexions, not even in terms of number, except in the dative plural. But there, of course, every declension will have the same inflection because of the spread of -an. The n-declension will retain a distinction between nominative singular and nominative plural, but every other distinction except the marginal genitive plural will have gone. On the other hand, the masculine declension remains relatively intact, since the final -s is preserved, both in the genitive singular and the nominative-accusative plural. The consequences of this are highly significant. Since this means that the feminines and the n-nouns no longer have any helpful inflectional markers, there is quickly a shift in most, but not all, areas of the country to a single major declension, based on the historical masculine declen- sion. Furthermore, there are other phonological developments which cause the loss of final -n, a process already well underway in North- umbria in the Old English period itself and which is partly, although somewhat obscured, reflected in the form foldu in the Northumbrian text at the end of Chapter 9; it comes from an earlier form foldun. At a later stage still, although still in the early part of the Middle English period, there is a process by which short stressed vowels are lengthened when followed by a single consonant. We can take as an example the following changes in the nominative singular and plural of the Old English noun nama: nama n → nam ə n → nam ə → na m ə → na m naman → nam ə n → nam ə → na m ə → na m That exemplification is a dramatic demonstration of why such nouns become associated with the masculine declension and why that declension is now the only regular declension in English. That, in other words, is why we now have the plural names. Obviously present-day English has a number of exceptions, such as the retention of the 132 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 132 n-declension in oxen, and there may be even more examples in various dialects, for example shoon ‘shoes’ in Scots. There are other unusual developments too, such as the shift to Ø-plurals of some animal names, for example sheep, which is an innovation but based on a transfer to the general neuter declension. To think that the above discussion, however interesting, is all there is to say here would be a mistake. The repercussions, or interactions, go well beyond the matter of noun declensions. The most important place to look in order to gauge the extent of the overall changes in English is to be found in the changes which are about to take place in word order. Let us, therefore, turn to this subject and the interaction between those changes and the declensional changes. The essential point about word order in Old English which we have to take into account is that during the period there was a general rise in the proportion of clauses with verb-second word order. There is consider- able argument about how this might have occurred. There is perhaps some agreement that several different factors were at work. These may have included the preference for light elements to appear at the beginning of clauses and, correspondingly, for heavy elements to appear towards the end; allied to this is an increasing preference for relative clauses to appear to the right of the whole clause containing the antecedent; and a further point may be the increasing preference to place the object after the whole verb structure rather than after the first verb in the group. These issues were raised in Chapter 7, but it is noteworthy that in a text of the mid-twelfth century, namely The Peterborough Chronicle, the dominance of verb-second structure is considerable and clearly the move to the strict SVO order of present-day English is beginning to be possible. To what extent is the shift due, not to the points raised in the previous paragraph, but rather to the loss of inflections in nouns (and perhaps also, but there is no space to argue this here, in verbs)? Clearly, the loss of distinctive noun inflections, in particular the loss of nomin- ative ~ accusative ~ dative distinctions so that only number and genitive inflections remain, as in present-day English, is significant. So at first sight we could argue that the loss of inflections is para- mount. It is certainly true that the loss of inflections makes it more diffi- cult to distinguish between subjects and objects and, indeed, indirect objects. In the latter case it is noticeable that at the end of Old English period there is a greater use of prepositions, a further indication of the ongoing structural changes in the language. In the former case, however, it should be noted that pronouns retain the distinctive nominative ~ accusative forms. There can be no doubt that the loss of inflections is part THE FUTURE 133 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 133 of the overall picture, but it would still be rather rash to assume that this was the defining cause of the word order changes. Firstly, it has to be noted that several of the changes, as described above, were already under way before the loss of declensional structure caused the loss of unstressed vowels. Secondly, the placement of light and heavy elements was undoubtedly entirely independent of the situ- ation in unstressed syllables. Thirdly, it is noticeable that in closely related languages where, for example, case marking also becomes ves- tigial, as happens, albeit at a much later stage, in Dutch, word order changes, although clearly observable, do not result in the strict SVO order found in present-day English. Even in a somewhat more remote, in structural terms, language such as French, note how object pronouns precede their verb, even although noun objects follow their verb. This neatly leads us to the next point. An alternative view, which I explored earlier in this chapter, namely that the changes are due to the Viking and Norman invasions, is all the more unlikely in light of the further discussion. Everything we have seen points to the various changes having germinated in English before the influence of either invading group had made itself felt. It would be foolish to deny such influences, but they have to be seen for what they produced. Viking influence was to be in many ways more influential in core areas of the language than French, and may therefore have promoted the changes we have been discussing. Thus we owe to the Scandinavian languages not only the verb form are, already mentioned, but also key items in the pronoun system, such as they, which replaces the Old English pronoun hı¯. The Old English prepositional system too was significantly modified with some pronouns, such as æt ‘at’ and wi ´ ‘with’ receiving additional meaning and more prominence. Such cases, however, are probably merely symptomatic, for it is the overall situation which is crucial. Throughout the north and the east, the area of the Danelaw, there must have been many Anglo-Viking com- munities comprised of both English and Danish or Norwegian speakers. In such a situation, where the languages were so similar, there must have been considerable language contact, perhaps resulting in something of a creole situation. This would result in, amongst other things, a simpli- fication of grammatical structures. Such simplification would interact with the changing structures of English and emphasise them. This is rather confirmed by the effects of Norman French. Although we often think that French, of whatever variety, caused most of the major changes in English, in fact the influence of French was much more restricted. The greatest impact of French was undoubtedly, and remains, 134 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 134 on vocabulary. To some extent this may have occurred because the Old English methods of word-formation were being lost in any case. How- ever, it also caused the creation of new vocabulary alongside the old, and to some extent this is still reflected today; compare, for example, kingly from OE cyninglic Yüklə 1,93 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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