An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

imperative – see mood.
indicative – see mood.
Indo-European – the language family from which are descended not only the
Germanic languages, but a very wide range of languages throughout Europe
and many parts of the Middle East and Indian sub-continent.
infinitive – usually taken as the basic or unmarked non-finite verbal form.
infinitive, inflected – special form of the Old English infinitive which occurs
when governed by the preposition to¯.
inflectional morphology – area of morphology concerned with changes in
word shape (e.g. through affixation) that are determined by, or potentially
affect, the grammatical context in which a word appears. See also lexeme.
instrumental – a case used when the noun phrase exhibits functions such as
‘association with’, but such functions often shown by the dative rather than
the instrumental. The instrumental is also used in a variety of idiomatic
expressionism.
language family – a set of languages which are cognate, as in the case of Indo-
European.
lexeme – word seen as an abstract grammatical entity, represented concretely
by one or more different inflected word forms according to the grammatical
context. For example, the verb lexeme ‘perform’ has four inflected word
forms: ‘perform’, ‘performs’, ‘performing’ and ‘performed’.
lexicon – inventory of lexical items, seen as part of a native speaker’s knowledge
of his or her language.
loan word – a word from another language which is taken into English.
macron – a mark placed above a vowel by editors in order to show that the vowel
is long.
mood – a set of semantic contrasts signalling the attitudes of the speaker and
in Old English shown by three different moods, indicative, subjunctive and
imperative.