The grammar of Old English is quite different from that of
Modern English, predominantly by being much more
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
. As an old Germanic language,
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
has a
morphological system that is similar to that of the
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as the
umlaut.
Among living languages, Old English morphology most closely resembles that of modern
Icelandic, which is among the most conservative of the
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
. To a lesser extent, it resembles modern
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
.
Noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fully
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
, with four
grammatical case
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...
s (
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
,
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
,
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
,
dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
), and a vestigial
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
, two
grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
s (
singular
Singular may refer to:
* Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms
* Singular homology
* SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS)
* Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
and
plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
) and three
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
s (masculine, feminine, and neuter). First- and second-person
personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
s also had
dual forms for referring to groups of two people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms.
The instrumental case was somewhat rare and occurred only in the masculine and neuter singular. It was often replaced by the dative. Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agreed with their corresponding nouns in case, number and gender. Finite
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s agreed with their subjects in person and number.
Nouns came in numerous
declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
s (with many parallels in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
). Verbs came in ten main
conjugations (seven ''strong'' and three ''weak''), all with numerous subtypes, as well as a few additional smaller conjugations and a handful of irregular verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs could be conjugated in only two tenses (compared to the six "tenses", really tense/aspect combinations, of Latin), and the absence of a
synthetic passive voice, which still existed in
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
.
Nouns
Old English nouns are grouped by
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
, and
inflect
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and def ...
based on
case and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
.
Gender
Old English still had all three genders of
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
Each noun belongs to one of the three genders, while
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s and
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
s take different forms depending on the gender of the noun they describe. The word for "the" or "that" is ''sē'' with a masculine noun, ''sēo'' with a feminine noun, and ''þæt'' with a neuter noun. Adjectives change endings: for instance, since ''hring'' ("ring") is masculine and ''cuppe'' ("cup") is feminine, a golden ring is ''gylden hring'', while a golden cup is ''gyldenu cuppe''.
In Old English the words for "he" (''hē'') and "she" (''hēo'') also mean "it." ''Hē'' refers back to masculine nouns, ''hēo'' to feminine nouns, reserving the neuter pronoun ''hit'' for grammatically neuter nouns. That means even inanimate objects are frequently called "he" or "she." See the following sentence, with the masculine noun ''snāw'':
Compare this parallel sentence, where the neuter noun ''fȳr'' is referred to with ''hit'':
Only a few nouns referring to people have a grammatical gender that does not match their natural gender, as in the neuter word ''mæġden'' ("girl"). In such cases,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s and
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
s follow grammatical gender, but
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s follow natural gender: ''Þæt mæġden
sēo þǣr stent, canst þū
hīe?'' ("The girl
who eminineis standing there, do you know
her?").
When two nouns have different genders,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
s and
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
s that refer to them together are inflected neuter: ''Hlīsa and spēd bēoþ twieċġu'' ("Fame
asculineand success
eminineare double-edged
euter plural).
Gender assignment
In Old English (and
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
languages generally), each noun's gender derives from
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
rather than directly from
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
(word-meaning). In other words, it is not the 'thing' itself that determines the gender of its name (
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
), but rather the particular speech-sounds (previously) used to denote that thing's kind (
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
). In the ancestor of Old English (namely
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
and later
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
), certain speech-sounds in a word-ending generally indicated the word's gender (i.e. kind, sort), but once these word-ending sounds had disappeared from speech over generations, a noun's gender was no longer immediately clear.
Nevertheless, the gender of Old English nouns can be partly predicted, but the means by which a noun's gender was assigned (due to historical
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
) is a different issue from the means by which a noun's gender can be predicted or remembered (due to various techniques). For example, the Old English names of metals are neuter, not ''because'' they are metals, but because these words historically ended with sounds that can be assigned as neuter. Below are means of predicting/remembering gender.
In general, a thing that has biological sex will have that same gender; masculine ''fæder'' ("father") and feminine ''mōdor'' ("mother"), masculine ''cyning'' ("king") and feminine ''cwēn'' ("queen"), masculine ''munuc'' ("monk") and feminine ''nunne'' ("nun") is feminine, etc. The three major exceptions are neuter ''wīf'' ("woman") and ''mæġden'' ("girl"), and masculine ''wīfmann'' ("woman").
Animal names that refer only to males are masculine (e.g. ''hana'' "rooster," ''henġest'' "stallion," ''eofor'' "boar," ''fearr'' "bull," ''ramm'' "ram," and ''bucc'' "buck"), and animal names that refer only to females are feminine (e.g. ''henn'' "hen," ''mīere'' "mare," ''sugu'' "sow," ''cū'' "cow," ''eowu'' "ewe," and ''dā'' "doe"). The only exception is ''drān'' ("drone"), which is feminine even though it refers to
male bees.
''General'' names for animals (of unspecified sex) could be of any gender (though determined by their historical ending): for example, ''ūr'' ("aurochs") is masculine, ''fifalde'' ("butterfly") is feminine, and ''swīn'' ("pig") is neuter.
If a noun could refer to both males ''and'' females, it was usually masculine. Hence ''frēond'' ("friend") and ''fēond'' ("enemy") were masculine, along with many other examples such as ''lufiend'' ("lover"), ''bæcere'' ("baker"), ''hālga'' ("saint"), ''sċop'' ("poet"), ''cuma'' ("guest"), ''mǣġ'' ("relative"), ''cristen'' ("Christian"), ''hǣðen'' ("pagan"), ''āngenġa'' ("loner"), ''selfǣta'' ("cannibal"), ''hlēapere'' ("dancer"), and ''sangere'' ("singer"). The main exceptions are the two words for "child," ''ċild'' and ''bearn'', which are both neuter.
However, it is not as easy to predict the gender of a noun that refers to a thing without biological sex, such as neuter ''seax'' ("knife"), feminine ''gafol'' ("fork"), and masculine ''cucler'' ("spoon").
That said, there are still ways to predict the gender even of nouns referring to things without biological sex:
* Nouns ending in ''-a'' are almost all masculine. The exceptions are a small number of learned borrowings from Latin, such as ''Italia'' ("Italy") and ''discipula'' ("
emaledisciple").
* Compound words always take the gender of the last part of the compound. That is why ''wīfmann'' ("woman") is masculine, even though it means "woman": it is a compound of ''wīf'' ("woman") plus the masculine noun ''mann'' ("person").
* Similarly, if a noun ends in a suffix, the suffix determines its gender. Nouns ending in the suffixes ''-oþ'', ''-dōm'', ''-end'', ''-els'', ''-uc'', ''-ling'', ''-ere'', ''-hād'', and ''-sċipe'' are all masculine, nouns ending in ''-ung'', ''-þu'', ''-nes'', ''-estre'', ''-rǣden'', and ''-wist'' are all feminine, and nouns ending in ''-lāc'', ''-et'', ''-ærn'', and ''-ċen'' are all neuter. ''Mæġden'' ("girl") is neuter because it ends in the neuter
diminutive suffix
A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment. A (abbreviated ) is a word-formati ...
''-en''.
* Letters of the alphabet are all masculine.
* Metals are all neuter.
* Adjectives used as nouns, such as colors, are neuter unless they refer to people. When they ''do'' refer to people, they are masculine by default unless the person is known to be a female, in which case they duly follow the feminine inflections: ''fremde'' ("stranger"), ''fremdu'' ("
emalestranger"); ''dēadlīċ'' ("mortal"), ''dēadlīcu'' ("
emalemortal").
* Likewise, verbs are neuter when used as nouns.
Since gender is noun-specific and ultimately a feature of
morphophonology
Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonological or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in morphemes (mi ...
rather than
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
(word-meaning), it is needless to say that any "thing" (
referent
A referent () is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence ''Mary saw me'', the referent of the word ''Mary'' is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, ...
) might be referred to as a different name (
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
) of a different gender: a "mountain" could be denoted by the masculine ''beorg'' or feminine ''dūn'', a "star" could be denoted by masculine ''steorra'' or neuter ''tungol'', a "window" could be denoted by neuter ''ēagþȳrel'' or feminine ''ēagduru'', a "tree" could be denoted by neuter ''trēo'' ("tree") or masculine ''bēam'', a "shield wall" denoted by masculine ''sċieldweall'' or feminine ''sċieldburg''.
Feminizing suffixes
Old English has two nouns for many types of people: a general term which can refer to both males and females, like Modern English "waiter," and a separate term which refers only to females, like Modern English "waitress." Several different suffixes are used to specify females:
* ''-en'' is added to miscellaneous words such as ''god'' ("god") → ''gyden'' ("goddess"), ''ielf'' ("elf") → ''ielfen'' ("female elf"), ''þeġn'' ("servant") → ''þiġnen'' ("female servant"), ''þēow'' ("slave") → ''þiewen'' ("female slave"), and ''nēahġebūr'' ("neighbor") → ''nēahġebȳren'' ("female neighbor").
* ''-estre'' is the female equivalent of ''-ere'' and ''-end'', both meaning "-er." It is used on many nouns such as ''sangere'' ("singer") → ''sangestre'' ("female singer"), ''lufiend'' ("lover") → ''lufestre'' ("female lover"), ''bæcere'' ("baker") → ''bæcestre'', ''tæppere'' ("bartender") → ''tæppestre'', and ''forspennend'' ("pimp") → ''forspennestre''.
* ''-e'' is the female equivalent of ''-a'', which was sometimes a regular noun ending with no meaning and sometimes yet another suffix meaning "-er." Examples include ''wyrhta'' ("worker") → ''wyrhte'' and ''foregenġa'' ("predecessor") → ''foregenġe''.
Sometimes the female equivalent is a totally separate word, as in ''lārēow'' ("teacher") ~ ''lǣrestre'' ("female teacher," as if the general term were ''*lǣrere''), ''lǣċe'' ("doctor") ~ ''lācnestre'' ("female doctor," as if the general term were ''*lācnere''), and ''hlāford'' ("master," literally "bread guardian") ~ ''hlǣfdiġe'' ("mistress," literally "bread kneader").
Case
As in several other old
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
, Old English declensions include five
cases:
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
,
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
,
dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
,
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
, and
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
.
*
Nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
: the subject of a sentence, which carries out the action. ''
Hē lufode hīe'' ("
he loved her"), ''
þæt mæġden rann'' ("
the girl ran"). Words on the other side of "to be" also take this case: in the phrase ''wyrd is eall'' ("destiny is all"), both "destiny" and "all" are nominative.
*
Accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
: the
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
, that which is acted upon. ''Hē lufode
hīe'' ("he loved
her"), ''sē ridda ācwealde
þone dracan'' ("the knight slew
the dragon").
*
Genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
: the possessor of something. ''Ġesāwe þū
þæs hundes bān?'' ("Have you seen
the dog's bone?"). The genitive in Old English corresponds to 's in present-day English and to "of" in present-day English. Hence, "The fall of Rome" was ''
Rōme hryre'', literally "
Rome's fall," and "the god of thunder" was ''
þunres god'', literally "
thunder's god." Old English has the preposition "of" but the genitive was the main way of indicating possession.
The genitive case could be used
partitively, to signify that something was composed of something else: "a group of people" was ''
manna hēap'' (literally "
people's group"), "three of us" was ''
ūre þrī'' ("
our three"), and "a cup of water" was ''
wætres cuppe'' ("
water's cup").
*
Dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
: the
indirect object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
. ''Iċ sealde
hire þone beall'' ("I gave
her the ball").
*
Instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
: something that is being used. ''Hwæl mē meahte mid
āne sleġe besenċan oþþe ofslēan'' ("A whale could sink or kill me with
one blow"). This case can be used without prepositions when the meaning is clear, as in ''ōðre naman'', which means "
yanother name": ''Ūhtred sē Godlēasa æt Bebban byrġ,
ōðre naman sē Deneslaga'' ("Uhtred the Godless of Bebbanburg,
also known as the Daneslayer"). During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having mostly merged with the dative. It was distinguished from the dative only in the masculine and neuter singular of strong adjectives and
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s, and even then the dative was often used instead.
Noun classes
Not all nouns take the same endings to
inflect
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and def ...
for
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
case. Instead, each noun belongs to one of eight different classes, and each class has a different set of endings (sometimes several, depending on subtype).
In
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
, one could tell which class a noun was by its ending in the nominative singular. But by the Old English period, most of these endings had disappeared or merged with other endings, so this was no longer possible.
a-stems
A-stem nouns are by far the largest class, totaling 60% of all nouns. Some are masculine, some are neuter. They are called a-stems because in Proto-Germanic times, they ended in ''-az'' (if masculine) or ''-ą'' (if neuter). However, in Old English, both these endings have vanished, and masculines only differ from neuters in the nominative/accusative plural.
Masculine a-stems are almost all inflected the same, as in ''hund'' ("dog") below. The neuter a-stems, however, are split in two: some of them end in ''-u'' in the nominative/accusative plural, while others have no ending there at all. This was caused by a sound change called
high vowel
A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of th ...
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
, which occurred in the prehistory of Old English.
Short
Short may refer to:
Places
* Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon
* Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place
People
* Short (surname)
* List of people known as ...
''-i'' and ''-u''
disappeared at the ends of words after a
heavy syllable
In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable ...
—that is, a syllable containing a
long vowel
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, f ...
or
long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
or ending in two or more consonants—and after two light syllables. Nouns which kept short -i/-u are called light, while nouns which lost them are called heavy.
The a-stems come in three separate declensions: one for masculine nouns, one for "heavy" neuter nouns, and one for "light" neuter nouns. They are exemplified by ''hund'' ("dog"), ''sċip'' ("boat"), and ''hūs'' ("house"):
ō-stems
The ō-stems are by far the largest class after a-stems. They include the vast majority of feminine nouns, and zero nouns of any other gender.
They are called ō-stems because they ended in ''-ō'' in Proto-Germanic, but in Old English that ending has changed to ''-u'' or vanished. In the nominative singular, "light" ō-stems end in ''-u'' while "heavy" ō-stems have no ending, just like neuter a-stems in the nominative/accusative plural.
n-stems
N-stems can be any gender, though there are only a few neuters: ''ēage'' ("eye"), ''ēare'' ("ear"), ''wange'' ("cheek"), and compounds ending in them, such as ''þunwange'' ("temple
f the head
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
His ...
). N-stems are also called "weak nouns," because they are "weakly" inflected; i.e., most of their inflections have the same ending, ''-an''. All other nouns are called "strong nouns."
Masculine and feminine n-stems are inflected the same except in the nominative singular, where masculines end in ''-a'', feminines in ''-e'':
The few neuter n-stems are declined the same as feminines, except they also have ''-e'' in the accusative singular:
i-stems
The i-stems are so called because they ended in ''-iz'' in Proto-Germanic, but in Old English that ending has either become ''-e'' (in light i-stems) or vanished (in heavy i-stems). These nouns come in every gender, though neuter i-stems are rare.
By the earliest Old English prose, this class has already largely merged with other classes: masculine and neuter i-stems have taken on the same declension as a-stems, and feminine i-stems have ''almost'' the same declension as ō-stems. So, they are really only called i-stems because of their history, not because of how they inflect.
Their only distinct inflection survives in the accusative singular of feminine heavy i-stems, which fluctuates between ''-e'' (the ō-stem ending) and no ending (the inherited ending):
The exceptions are a few nouns that
only come in the plural, namely ''lēode'' ("people") and various names of nationalities, such as ''Engle'' ("the English") and ''Dene'' ("the Danes"). These nouns kept the nominative/accusative plural ''-e'' that they inherited through regular sound change.
u-stems
The u-stems are all masculine or feminine. They are all declined the same way, regardless of gender:
There are few pure u-stem nouns, but some are very common: ''duru'' ("door"), ''medu'' ("mead"), ''wudu'' ("wood"). Most historical u-stems have been transferred over to the a-stems. Some nouns follow the a-stem inflection overall, but have a few leftover u-stem forms in their inflection. These forms may exist alongside regular a-stem forms:
* ''feld'': dative singular ''felda''
* ''ford'': dative singular ''forda''
* ''winter'': dative singular ''wintra''
* ''æppel'': nominative/accusative plural ''æppla''
Root nouns
Root nouns are a small class of nouns which, in
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
, had ended in a consonant without any intervening vowel.
These nouns undergo
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
in the dative singular and the nominative/accusative plural. This is the source of nouns in Modern English which form their plural by changing a vowel, as in man ~ men, foot ~ feet, tooth ~ teeth, mouse ~ mice, goose ~ geese, and louse ~ lice. In Old English, there were many more such words, including ''bōc'' ("book"), ''cū'' ("cow"), ''gāt'' ("goat"), ''āc'' ("oak"), ''hnutu'' ("nut"), ''burg'' ("city"), and ''sulh'' ("plow").
All root nouns are either masculine or feminine. Masculine root nouns are all heavy, but among feminines there is a contrast between light nouns and heavy nouns: light nouns end in ''-e'' where they have umlaut of the root vowel, while heavy nouns have no ending. The typical declension is this:
nd-stems
Nd-stems are nouns formed with the suffix ''-end'', which creates
agent nouns from verbs: ''āgan'' ("to own") → ''āgend'' ("owner"). All are masculine.
Single-syllable nd-stems are only possible when the stem ends in a vowel, which is rare; hence, only three are attested: ''frēond'' ("friend") ← ''frēoġan'' ("to love"), ''fēond'' ("enemy") ← ''fēoġan'' ("to hate"), and ''tēond'' ("accuser") ← ''tēon'' ("to accuse"). They are declined just like masculine root nouns:
The multi-syllable nd-stems are declined very differently. Their stem vowel never undergoes
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
, and in fact, they are inflected just like a-stems in the singular. Moreover, their plural forms are truly unique: the genitive plural always ends in ''-ra'', which is normally used for adjectives, and the nominative/accusative plural varies between no ending, the adjective ending ''-e'', and the a-stem ending ''-as''. The adjectival endings are a relic of the nd-stems' origin as
present participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s.
r-stems
The r-stems comprise only five nouns: ''fæder'', ''mōdor'', ''brōþor'', ''sweostor'', and ''dohtor''.
''Brōþor'', ''mōdor'', and ''dohtor'' are all inflected the same, with i-umlaut in the dative singular. ''Sweostor'' is inflected the same except without i-umlaut. ''Fæder'' is indeclinable in the singular like ''sweostor'', but has taken its nominative/accusative plural from the a-stems. In addition, ''brōþor'' and ''sweostor'' often take the prefix ''ġe-'' in the plural, while the rest never do.
z-stems
Z-stems are the name given to four neuter nouns which inflect like light neuter a-stems, except the plural endings begin with ''-r-''. These nouns are ''ċild'' ("child"), ''ǣġ'' ("egg"), ''lamb'' ("lamb"), and ''ċealf'' ("calf").
Irregularities
The above only mentions the most common ways each noun class is inflected. There are many variations even within classes, some of which include:
*
High vowel
A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of th ...
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
(loss of
short
Short may refer to:
Places
* Short (crater), a lunar impact crater on the near side of the Moon
* Short, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
* Short, Oklahoma, a census-designated place
People
* Short (surname)
* List of people known as ...
''-i'' and ''-u'' at the end of a word) isn't entirely consistent. At first, these sounds were lost after a heavy syllable or two light syllables. But then, at some point before the written period, speakers started re-adding ''-u'' to the plurals of some neuter nouns where it had originally vanished. These nouns have two competing plurals, one with ''-u'' and one without it. So, "dreams" is either ''swefn'' or ''swefnu'', "sails" is either ''seġl'' or '' seġlu'', and "waters" is either ''wæter'' or ''wætru'', among many other examples. Note that this mainly happened to a very specific set of nouns: those whose inflectional endings are preceded by a consonant plus /n/, /l/, or /r/.
* Some nouns have ''-u'' after a heavy syllable because, when high vowel apocope occurred, they had an intervening light syllable which later disappeared. Examples include nouns with the suffix ''-þu'' such as ''strengðu'' ("strength") and ''iermðu'' ("poverty"), z-stem plurals such as ''ǣġru'' ("eggs") and ''ċealfru'' ("calves"), and the a-stem plurals ''hēafdu'' ("heads") and ''dēoflu'' ("demons"). Also the plurals of all neuter a-stems that end in ''-e'': ''wīte'' ("punishment"), pl. ''wītu''; ''ǣrende'' ("message"), pl. ''ǣrendu''.
* Some ō-stems unexpectedly end in ''-u'' in the singular, such as ''þīestru'' ("darkness"), ''hǣtu'' ("heat"), ''meniġu'' ("crowd"), ''ieldu'' ("age"), and ''bieldu'' ("bravery"). These nouns once belonged to a separate class called the īn-stems, which all ended in ''-ī''. Then they merged with the ō-stems when this ending was replaced with ''-u''—well after high vowel apocope had gone to completion, so the ''-u'' remained.
* Many nouns which end with an unstressed vowel plus a single consonant
lose the unstressed vowel when they take inflectional endings: ''gristel'' ("cartilage"), ''gristles'' ("of cartilage"). However, it is impossible to predict which nouns this happens to without knowing the history of the word. For example, ''Dryhten'' ("the Lord") loses its unstressed ''-e-'' when inflected, but ''nīeten'' ("animal") does not; ''ēðel'' ("homeland") does, but ''crypel'' ("cripple") does not.
* If an a-stem ends in one consonant and its stem vowel is short /æ/, it becomes /ɑ/ in the plural. "Day" is ''dæġ'' but "days" is ''dagas'', "bath" is ''bæþ'' but "baths" is ''baðu''. Other examples include ''fæt'' ("container"), ''sċræf'' ("cave"), ''stæf'' ("staff"), ''pæþ'' ("path"), ''hwæl'' ("whale"), and ''blæd'' ("blade").
* A-stems which end in ''ġ'', ''ċ'', or ''sċ'' after a vowel have hard ''g'', ''c'', or ''sc'' in the plural: ''fisċ'' /fiʃ/ ("fish"), pl. ''fiscas'' /ˈfiskɑs/. Other examples include ''dæġ'' ("day"), ''weġ'' ("way"), ''twiġ'' ("twig"), ''disċ'' ("plate"), ''dīċ'' ("ditch"), ''līċ'' ("corpse"), and ''wīċ'' ("village").
* If a noun ends in ''h'', the ''h'' disappears before inflectional endings. This
lengthens the preceding
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
or
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
(if it is short). Unless the ''h'' comes right after a consonant, it also
deletes the following vowel, except in the genitive plural, where an ''-n-'' has been inserted to prevent this from happening. All this is exemplified by two masculine a-stems, ''sċōh'' and ''fearh'':
* If an a-stem ends in ''-u'', the ''u'' is replaced with ''w'' before inflectional endings: ''searu'' ("machine"), dat. sg. ''searwe''.
* Something similar happens with a subgroup of ō-stem nouns called the wō-stems. These nouns once ended in ''-wu'', before a sound change occurred which caused the ''w'' to disappear in the nominative singular; subsequently some also lost the ''-u'' by high vowel apocope. By the written period, they are indistinguishable from other ō-stems in the nominative singular, except they keep the ''w'' before inflectional endings. These nouns include ''sċeadu'' ("shadow/shade"), ''sinu'' ("sinew"), ''mǣd'' ("meadow"), and ''lǣs'' ("pasture").
Adjectives
Adjectives
take different endings depending on the
case,
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
, and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
of the noun they describe. The adjective ''cwic'' ("alive"), for example, comes in eleven different forms: ''cwic'', ''cwicu'', ''cwicne'', ''cwice'', ''cwices'', ''cwicre'', ''cwicum'', ''cwica'', ''cwicra'', ''cwican'', and ''cwicena''.
Strong and weak declension
There are two separate sets of inflections, traditionally called the "strong declension" and the "weak declension." Together, both declensions contain many different inflections, though just ten or eleven unique forms typically cover all of them. The usual endings are exhibited by ''cwic'' ("alive") among many other adjectives:
In general, the weak declension is used after the words for "the/that" and "this" and
possessive determiner Possessive determiners (from la, possessivus, translit=; grc, κτητικός / ktētikós - en. ktetic
Lallu) are determiners which express possession. Some traditional grammars of English refer to them as possessive adjectives, though they do ...
s such as "my," "your," and "his," while the strong declension is used the rest of the time. Hence "a live scorpion" is ''cwic þrōwend'', while "the live scorpion" is ''sē cwica þrōwend''. Further details:
* The weak declension is also used in direct address, as in ''Ēalā
fæġere mæġden'' ("Hey
beautiful girl") or ''þū
dysiġe hōre'' ("you
stupid whore").
*
Ordinal number
In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets.
A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
s and
comparative adjective
Comparison is a feature in the morphology or syntax of some languages whereby adjectives and adverbs are inflected to indicate the relative degree of the property they define exhibited by the word or phrase they modify or describe. In languages ...
s only take the weak declension, even in situations that would otherwise call for the strong declension. The most important exception is ''ōðer'' ("other/second"), which is always strong despite being both an ordinal number and a comparative. Of the four words for "first," ''forma'' and ''ǣrra'' are always weak, but ''ǣrest'' and ''fyrest'' can be either strong or weak just like most other adjectives.
* The adjective ''āgen'' ("own") is usually strong in the phrase "one's own": ''Hēo forlēt ōðre dæġe on hire
āgnum horse'' ("She left the next day on her
own horse").
Irregularities
Adjectives once came in many different classes just like nouns, but by Old English times, all adjectives have basically the same endings as ''cwic'' above. However, there are still a good number of differences and irregularities:
* As with nouns, there are "light" adjectives which retain the inflectional ending ''-u'' (which occurs in the feminine nominative singular and neuter nominative/accusative plural), and "heavy" adjectives which have lost it. Originally ''-u'' disappeared after a heavy syllable or two light syllables, but speakers have re-added it to some adjectives where it had been lost. Namely, those with the suffixes ''-iġ'' or ''-līċ'': ''bisigu sweord'' ("busy swords"
om. pl. neut., ''broðorlīcu lufu'' ("brotherly love"
om. sg. fem..
* Some adjectives have ''-u'' after a heavy syllable because, when high vowel apocope occurred, they had an intervening light syllable which later disappeared. Examples include ''lȳtel'' ("little"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neut ''lȳtlu''; ''ōðer'' ("other"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neut ''ōðru''; and ''ēower'' ("your"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neut. ''ēowru''.
* Adjectives ending in ''-e'' all lose the ''-e'' before inflectional endings: ''blīðe'' ("happy"), nom. sg. masc. ''blīðne''. They also all retain ''-u'': ''blīðu ċildru'' ("happy children").
* If an adjective ends in short ''æ'' plus a single consonant, the ''æ'' becomes ''a'' before endings beginning with a vowel: ''glæd'' ("glad"), nom. pl. masc. ''glade''.
* If an adjective ends in ''h'', the ''h'' disappears before inflectional endings. This
lengthens the preceding
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
or
diphthong
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
: ''þweorh'' ("crooked"), ''þwēorre'' gen. sg. fem. Also, if the ''h'' comes right after a vowel, any immediately following vowel disappears: ''hēah'' ("high"), acc. sg. masc. ''hēane'', dat. sg. masc. ''hēam'', nom. pl. masc. ''hēa''.
* If an adjective ends in ''-u'', it changes to ''o'' before an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant: ''ġearu'' ("ready"), acc. sg. masc. ''ġearone'', dat. sg. fem. ''ġearore''. Before a vowel, it changes to ''w'': nom. pl. masc. ''ġearwe''.
* Most adjectives ending in ''ġ'', ''ċ'', or ''sċ'' have hard ''g'', ''c'', or ''sc'' before an ending beginning with a
back vowel
A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be c ...
(/ɑ/, /o/, /u/). ''Ġesċādlīċ'' ("rational"), nom. pl. fem. ''ġesċādlīca''; ''mennisċ'' ("human"), dat. sg. neut. ''menniscum''.
* Many adjectives which end in an unstressed vowel plus a single consonant
lose the unstressed vowel before endings beginning with vowels: ''lȳtel'' ("little"), nom. pl. fem. ''lȳtla''.
Degree
Old English never uses the equivalents of "more" and "most" to form
comparative
In general linguistics, the comparative is a syntactic construction that serves to express a comparison between two (or more) entities or groups of entities in quality or degree - see also comparison (grammar) for an overview of comparison, as wel ...
or
superlative adjectives. Instead, the equivalents of "-er" and "-est" are used (''-ra'' and ''-ost'', for some words ''-est''). "More beautiful" is ''fæġerra'', literally "beautiful-er," and "most beautiful" is ''fæġerost'', literally "beautiful-est." Other examples include ''beorht'' ("bright") → ''beorhtra'' ("brighter"), ''beorhtost'' ("brightest"); ''bearnēacen'' ("pregnant") → ''bearnēacenra'' ("more pregnant"), ''bearnēacnost'' ("most pregnant"); and ''cnihtlīċ'' ("boyish") → ''cnihtlīcra'' ("more boyish"), ''cnihtlīcost'' ("most boyish"). The only exception is that "more" (''
mā'' or ''
swīðor'') and "most" (''
mǣst'' or ''
swīðost'') were sometimes used with
participle
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
s: ''swīðor ġelufod'' ("more loved"), ''swīðost ġelufod'' ("most loved").
A handful of words form the comparative and superlative with
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
, namely ''eald'' ("old") → ''ieldra'', ''ieldest''; ''ġeong'' ("young") → ''ġingra'', ''ġinġest''; ''strang'' ("strong") → ''strengra'', ''strenġest''; ''lang'' ("long") → ''lengra'', ''lenġest''; ''sċort'' ("short") → ''sċyrtra'', ''sċyrtest''; and ''hēah'' ("high") → ''hīera'', ''hīehst''.
A few more
become totally different words: ''gōd'' ("good") → ''betera'', ''betst''; ''yfel'' ("bad") → ''wiersa'', ''wierrest''; ''miċel'' ("much/a lot/big") → ''māra'' ("more/bigger"), ''mǣst'' ("most/biggest"); ''lȳtel'' ("little") → ''lǣssa'' ("less/smaller"), ''lǣsest'' ("least/smallest").
Articles
Old English has no
indefinite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
. Instead, a noun is most often used by itself:
The
definite article
An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.
In English, both "the" and "a(n)" ar ...
is ''sē'', which doubles as the word for "that." It comes in eleven different forms depending on
case,
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
, and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
: ''sē'', ''sēo'', ''þæt'', ''þone'', ''þā'', ''þæs'', ''þǣre'', ''þām'', ''þon'', ''þȳ'', and ''þāra''.
The word "the" was used very much like in Modern English. The main difference is that it was used somewhat more sparingly, due to numerous groups of nouns which usually went without it. These include:
* All river names. ''On
Temese flēat ān sċip'' ("A boat was floating on
the Thames").
* Names of peoples. Ex: ''Seaxan'' ("the Saxons"), ''Winedas'' ("the Slavs"), ''Siġelhearwan'' ("the Ethiopians"), ''Indēas'' ("the Indians"). Names of peoples also frequently stand for the place they are from: for example, the word for
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
was ''Ēastseaxan'' ("the East Saxons"), and "the prince of Denmark" was ''Dena æðeling'', literally "prince of the Danes."
* A few nouns denoting types of locations, namely ''sǣ'' ("the sea"), ''wudu'' ("the woods"), and ''eorðe'' ("the ground"). ''Þū fēolle on
eorðan and slōge þīn hēafod'' ("You fell on
the ground and hit your head"). Also "the world," whether expressed with ''weorold'' or ''middanġeard''. Note that "sea" is still sometimes used without "the" in Modern English, in fossilized phrases like "at sea" and "out to sea".
* A couple of abstract concepts, namely ''sōþ'' ("the truth") and ''ǣ'' ("the law").
* Many divisions of time. Namely, the words for the morning, the evening, the four seasons, the past, the present, and the future. ''Iċ ārās on lætne
morgen and ēode niðer'' ("I got up late in
the morning and went downstairs"). But note "I go out
at night."
* ''Dryhten'' ("the Lord"). ''Dēofol'' ("the Devil") often occurs with "the" and often without it.
* The
cardinal direction
The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at ...
s: ''norþ'', ''sūþ'', ''ēast'', and ''west''. Also the
intercardinal direction
The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are at ...
s: ''norðēast'', ''sūðēast'', ''sūðwest'', and ''norðwest''.
* A few set phrases, including ''ealle hwīle'' ("the whole time," literally "all/whole while"), ''be weġe'' ("on the way," lit. "by way"), and ''ealne weġ'' ("all the way" or "always," lit. "all way"). Also ''forma sīþ'' ("the first time"), ''ōðer sīþ'' ("the second time"), and so on.
Note that those words still occur with "the" when they refer to a specific iteration, as in "the future that I want," "the woods behind my house," or "the law they just passed."
Demonstratives
Old English has two main
demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
s: ''sē'' ("that") and ''þēs'' ("this"). ''Sē'' is also the word for "the"; for its declension, see above.
There is also the
distal demonstrative
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
''ġeon'', the source of Modern English "yon." It means "that over there" and refers to things far away. ''Ġeon'' is declined like a regular adjective, that is like ''cwic'' above.
Pronouns
Interrogative pronouns
''Hwā'' ("who") and ''hwæt'' ("what") follow natural gender, not grammatical gender: as in Modern English, ''hwā'' is used with people, ''hwæt'' with things. However, that distinction only matters in the
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
and
accusative case
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
s, because in every other case they are identical:
''Hwelċ'' ("which" or "what kind of") is inflected like an adjective. Same with ''hwæðer'', which also means "which" but is only used between two alternatives:
Personal pronouns
The first - and second-person pronouns are the same for all genders. They also have special
dual form
Dual (abbreviated ) is a grammatical number that some languages use in addition to singular and plural. When a noun or pronoun appears in dual form, it is interpreted as referring to precisely two of the entities (objects or persons) identified ...
s, which are only used for groups of two things, as in "we both" and "you two." The dual forms are common, but the ordinary plural forms can always be used instead when the meaning is clear.
Many of the forms above bear a strong resemblance to the Modern English words they eventually became. For instance, in the genitive case, ''ēower'' became "your", ''ūre'' became "our", and ''mīn'' became "my". However, in stressed positions, the plural third-person personal pronouns were all replaced with
Old Norse
Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...
forms during the
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
period, yielding "they", "them" and "their". (The Old English dative pronoun is retained as unstressed
'em.)
Verbs
Old English verbs are divided into two groups:
strong verbs and
weak verbs. Strong verbs form the past tense by changing a
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
, while weak verbs add an ending.
Strong verbs
Strong verbs use a
Germanic form of
conjugation
Conjugation or conjugate may refer to:
Linguistics
* Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form
* Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language
Mathematics
* Complex conjugation, the chang ...
known as
''ablaut''. They form the past tense by changing their stem vowel. These verbs still exist in modern English, where they are called "irregular verbs": for example ''sing, sang, sung'' is a strong verb, as are ''swim, swam, swum'' and ''break, broke, broken''.
Strong verbs have been growing less and less common over the centuries, because their conjugations are more complicated than weak verbs and harder to predict. That means many verbs that were strong in Old English times are now weak. These include abide, bake, ban, bark, bow, braid, burst, carve, chew, climb, creep, delve, drag, fare, fart, flee, float, flow, gnaw, grip, help, laugh, leap, let, load, lock, melt, milk, mow, quell, read, row, shine, shove, slay, sleep, sneeze, spurn, starve, step, suck, swallow, sweep, swell, thresh, walk, wash, weep, wreak, and yield. Two of these even became weak during the Old English period: sleep (''slǣpan'') and read (''rǣdan'').
Also, by Old English times, people had long since stopped coining new strong verbs. Even today, almost every strong verb in the modern language dates back before Old English, even to before
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
.
Most strong verbs are not considered irregular in Old English, because each belongs to one of seven major classes, each with its own pattern of stem changes. Learning these is often a challenge for students of the language, though English speakers may see connections between the old verb classes and their modern forms.
The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems, each corresponding to particular stem changes within their strong-conjugating paradigms:
The first
past
The past is the set of all events that occurred before a given point in time. The past is contrasted with and defined by the present and the future. The concept of the past is derived from the linear fashion in which human observers experience t ...
stem is used in the past, for the
first- and third-person
singular
Singular may refer to:
* Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms
* Singular homology
* SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS)
* Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
. The second past stem is used for second-person singular, and all persons in the
plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
(as well as the preterite
subjunctive
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality ...
). Strong verbs also exhibit
i-mutation
I-mutation (also known as umlaut, front mutation, i-umlaut, i/j-mutation or i/j-umlaut) is a type of sound change in which a back vowel is fronted or a front vowel is raised if the following syllable contains , or (a voiced palatal approxi ...
of the stem in the second- and third-person singular in the
present tense
The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...
.
The third class went through so many sound changes that it was barely recognisable as a single class. The first was a process called
'breaking'. Before , and + another consonant, turned into , and to . Also, before + another consonant, the same happened to , but remained unchanged (except before combination ).
A second sound change turned to , to , and to before nasals.
Altogether, this split the third class into four sub-classes:
Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel. Thus ''stelan'' "to steal" represents the strong verb conjugation paradigm.
Weak verbs
Weak verbs form the past tense by adding endings with ''-d-'' in them (sometimes ''-t-'') to the stem. In Modern English, these endings have merged as ''-ed'', forming the past tense for most verbs, such as ''love, loved'' and ''look, looked''.
Weak verbs already make up the vast majority of verbs in Old English. There are two major types: class I and class II. A class III also existed, but contained only four verbs.
Class I
By the Old English period, new class I weak verbs had stopped being produced, but so many had been coined in
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
that they were still by far the most common kind of verb in Old English. These verbs are often recognizable because they feature
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
of the word they were derived from, as in ''dēman'' ("to judge") from ''dōm'' ("judgment"), ''blǣċan'' ("to bleach") from ''blāc'' ("pale"), ''tellan'' ("to count") from ''tæl'' ("number"), and ''rȳman'' ("to make room") from ''rūm'' ("room"). They are also the source of alterations in Modern English such as ''feed'' ~ ''food'', ''fill'' ~ ''full'', and ''breed'' ~ ''brood''.
Class I weak verbs are not all
conjugated the same. Their exact endings depend on a complex combination of factors, mostly involving the
length
Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Interna ...
of the stem vowel and which consonants the stem ends in, and sometimes also the history of the word. But the largest number are conjugated the same as ''dǣlan'' ("to share"):
Many verbs ending in a
double consonant are conjugated like ''temman'' ("to tame"), with the same endings and the same alternation between single and double consonants:
Class I weak verbs that end in ''-rian'' are conjugated like ''styrian'' ("to move"):
Class II
Class II weak verbs are easily recognized by the fact that nearly all of them end in ''-ian'': ''hopian'' ("to hope"), ''wincian'' ("to wink"), ''wandrian'' ("to wander").
By the Old English period, this was the only
productive
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
verb class left. Newly created verbs were almost automatically weak class II.
Unlike weak class I, they never cause
i-umlaut
The Germanic umlaut (sometimes called i-umlaut or i-mutation) is a type of linguistic umlaut in which a back vowel changes to the associated front vowel ( fronting) or a front vowel becomes closer to ( raising) when the following syllable cont ...
, so their stems are usually identical to the stem of the word they were derived from: ''lufu'' ("love") → ''lufian'' ("to love"), ''mynet'' ("coin") → ''mynetian'' ("to coin"), ''hwelp'' ("puppy") → ''hwelpian'' ("
f animalsto give birth").
Their conjugation is also much simpler than all other verb classes. Almost all weak class II verbs have precisely the same endings, completely unaffected by the makeup of the stem or the history of the word. A typical example is ''lufian'' ("to love"):
Class III
Though it was once much larger, containing many verbs which later became class II, only four verbs still belonged to this group by the period of written texts: ''habban'' ("to have"), ''libban'' ("to live") ''seċġan'' ("to say"), and ''hyċġan'' "to think." Each of these verbs is distinctly irregular, though they share some commonalities.
Preterite-present verbs
The preterite-presents are verbs whose present tenses look like the past tenses of strong verbs. This resemblance is not an accident: they descend from old
Proto-Indo-European stative verbs, which normally developed into the past tense of the Germanic languages. The preterite-present verbs are an exception to this development, remaining as independent verbs. For example, the first-person present of ''witan'' ("to know") originally meant "I have seen", referring to the state of having seen, and by implication "I know". At some point well before Old English, these verbs were given their own past tenses by tacking on weak past endings, but without an intervening vowel. This lack of an intervening vowel then led to alternations in the consonants, and sometimes vowels as well.
There are only a dozen preterite-presents, but most are among the most frequent verbs in the language. They are ''magan'' ("can"), ''sċulan'' ("should/must/to owe"), ''mōtan'' ("may"), ''þurfan'' ("to need"), ''witan'' ("to know"), ''cunnan'' ("to know/know how"), ''ġemunan'' ("to remember"), ''durran'' ("to dare"), ''āgan'' ("to own"), ''dugan'' ("to be useful"), ''ġenugan'' ("to suffice"), and ''unnan'' ("to grant").
In spite of heavy irregularities, these can be grouped into four groups of similarly conjugated verbs:
# Āgan, durran, mōtan, and witan
# Cunnan, ġemunan (outside the past tense), and unnan
# Dugan, magan, and ġenugan
# Sċulan and þurfan
Anomalous verbs
Additionally, there is a further group of four verbs which are anomalous: "want", "do", "go" and "be". These four have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb. This is not especially unusual: "want", "do", "go", and "be" are the most commonly used verbs in the language, and are very important to the meaning of the sentences in which they are used. Idiosyncratic patterns of inflection are much more common with important items of vocabulary than with rarely used ones.
''Dōn'' 'to do' and ''gān'' 'to go' are conjugated alike; ''willan'' 'to want' is similar outside of the present tense.
The verb 'to be' is actually composed of three different stems: one beginning with w-, one beginning with b-, and one beginning with s-. These are traditionally thought of as forming two separate words: ''wesan'', comprising the forms beginning with w- and s-, and ''bēon'', comprising the forms beginning with b-.
In the present tense, ''wesan'' and ''bēon'' carried a difference in meaning. ''Wesan'' was used in most circumstances, whereas ''bēon'' was used for the future and for certain kinds of general statements.
Prepositions
Prepositions (like Modern English words ''by'', ''for'', and ''with'') sometimes follow the word which they govern (especially pronouns), in which case they are called ''
postposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
s''.
The following is a list of prepositions in the
Old English language
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th cen ...
.
Prepositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
may govern the
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
,
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
,
dative
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
or
instrumental
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instru ...
cases.
Syntax
Old English syntax was similar in many ways to that of Modern English. However, there were some important differences. Some were simply consequences of the greater level of nominal and verbal inflection, and word order was generally freer. There are also differences in the default word order and in the construction of negation, questions, relative clauses and subordinate clauses.
*The default
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
was
verb-second
In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent). ...
and more like
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
than Modern English.
*There was no
''do''-support in questions and negatives.
*Multiple negatives could stack up in a sentence and intensified each other (
negative concord
A double negative is a construction occurring when two forms of grammatical negation are used in the same sentence. Multiple negation is the more general term referring to the occurrence of more than one negative in a clause. In some languages, ...
).
*Sentences with subordinate clauses of the type "When X, Y" did not use a ''wh-''type word for the conjunction but used a ''th-''type
correlative conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
(e.g., ''þā X, þā Y'' instead of "When X, Y").
Word order
There was some flexibility in word order of Old English since the heavily inflected nature of nouns, adjectives, and verbs often indicated the relationships between clause arguments.
Scrambling
Scrambling is a mountaineering term for ascending steep terrain using one's hands to assist in holds and balance.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. It is also used to describe terrain that falls between hiking and rock climbing (as a “scramb ...
of
constituents was common. Even sometimes scrambling within a constituent occurred, as in ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'' line 708 ''wrāþum on andan'':
Something similar occurs in line 713 ''in sele þām hēan'' "in the high hall" (lit. "in hall the high").
Extraposition
Extraposition is a mechanism of syntax that alters word order in such a manner that a relatively "heavy" constituent appears to the right of its canonical position. Extraposing a constituent results in a discontinuity and in this regard, it is ...
of constituents out of larger constituents is common even in prose, as in the well-known tale of
Cynewulf and Cyneheard
Cynewulf was the King of Wessex from 757 until his death in 786. He ruled for about 29 years.
He was a direct male descendant of Cerdic. Cynewulf became king after his predecessor, Sigeberht, was deposed. He may have come to power under the inf ...
, which begins
:''Hēr Cynewulf benam Sigebryht his rīces ond westseaxna wiotan for unryhtum dǣdum, būton Hamtūnscīre; ...''
:(Literally) "Here Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of his kingdom
and West Saxons' counselors for unright deeds, except Hampshire"
:(translated) "Here Cynewulf and the West Saxon counselors deprived Sigebryht of his kingdom, other than Hampshire, for unjust actions"
The words ''ond westseaxna wiotan'' "and the West Saxon counselors" (lit. "and (the) counselors of (the) West Saxons") have been ''extraposed'' from (moved out of) the compound subject they belong in, in a way that would be impossible in modern English. In Old English, case inflection preserves the meaning: the verb ''beniman'' "to deprive" (appearing in this sentence in the form ''benam'', "
edeprived") needs a word in the genitive case to show what someone or something is deprived of, which in this sentence is ''rīces'' "of kingdom" (nominative ''rīce'', "kingdom"), whereas ''wiotan'' "counselors" is in the nominative case and therefore serves a different role entirely (the genitive of it would be ''wiotana'', "of counselors"); for this reason the interpretation that Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of the West Saxon counselors was not possible for speakers of Old English. The Old English sentence still isn't in theory perfectly unambiguous, as it contains one more word in the genitive: ''westseaxna'' ("of West Saxons", nominative ''westseaxan'' "West Saxons"), and the form ''wiotan'' "counselors" may also represent the accusative case in addition to the nominative, thus for example creating the grammatical possibility of the interpretation that Cynewulf also took the West Saxons away from the counselors, but this would have been difficult to conceive.
Main clauses in Old English tend to have a
verb-second
In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent). ...
(V2) order, where the finite verb is the second constituent in a sentence, regardless of what comes first. There are echoes of this in modern English: "Hardly did he arrive when ...", "Never can it be said that ...", "Over went the boat", "Ever onward marched the weary soldiers ...", "Then came a loud sound from the sky above". In Old English, however, it was much more extensive, like the word order in modern Germanic languages other than modern English. If the subject appears first, there is an SVO order, but it can also yield orders such as OVS and others. In questions VSO was common, see below.
In
subordinate clauses, however, the word order is markedly different, with verb-final constructions the norm, again as in Dutch and German. Furthermore, in poetry, all the rules were frequently broken. In Beowulf, for example, main clauses frequently have verb-initial or verb-final order, and subordinate clauses often have verb-second order. (However, in clauses introduced by ''þā'', which can mean either "when" or "then", and where word order is crucial for telling the difference, the normal word order is nearly always followed.)
Those linguists who work within the
Chomskyan transformational grammar
In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combin ...
paradigm often believe that it is more accurate to describe Old English (and other
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
with the same word-order patterns like modern German) as having underlying subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering. According to this theory, all sentences are initially generated using this order, but in main clauses, the verb is moved back to the V2 position (technically, the verb undergoes ''V-to-T raising''). That is said to explain the fact that Old English allows inversion of subject and verb as a general strategy for forming questions, while modern English uses this strategy almost only with
auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a p ...
s and the main verb "to be", requiring
''do''-support in other cases.
Questions
Most of the time the word order of Old English changed when asking a question, from SVO to
VSO. While many purport that Old English had free word order, this is not quite true, as there were conventions for the positioning of subject, object and verb in clause.
:"I am..." becomes "Am I..."
:''"Ic eom..."'' becomes ''"Eom ic..."
Relative and subordinate clauses
Old English did not use forms equivalent to "who, when, where" in relative clauses (as in "The man whom I saw") or subordinate clauses ("When I got home, I went to sleep").
Instead,
relative clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
s used one of the following:
#An invariable complementizer ''þe''
#The
demonstrative pronoun
Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...
''se, sēo, þæt''
#The combination of the two, as in ''se þe''
Subordinate clauses tended to use
correlative conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
s, e.g.
:''Þā ic hām ēode, þā slēp ic.''
:(word-for-word) "Then I home went, then slept I."
:(translated) "When I went home, I slept."
The word order usually distinguished the subordinate clause (with verb-final order) from the main clause (with
verb-second
In syntax, verb-second (V2) word order is a sentence structure in which the finite verb of a sentence or a clause is placed in the clause's second position, so that the verb is preceded by a single word or group of words (a single constituent). ...
word order).
The equivalents of "who, when, where" were used only as
interrogative pronoun
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
s and
indefinite pronoun
An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns.
Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related for ...
s, as in
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
and
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
.
Besides ''þā ... þā ...'', other
correlative conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction (abbreviated or ) is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions. That definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech and so what constitutes a ...
s occurred, often in pairs of identical words, e.g.:
*''þǣr X, þǣr Y'': "Where X, Y"
*''þanon X, þanon Y'': "Whence (from where/wherefrom) X, Y"
*''þider X, þider Y'': "Whither (to where/whereto) X, Y"
*''þēah (þe) X, þēah Y'': "Although X, Y"
*''þenden X, þenden Y'': "While X, Y"
*''þonne X, þonne Y'': "Whenever X, Y"
*''þæs X, þæs Y'': "As/after/since X, Y"
*''þȳ X, þȳ Y'': "The more X, the more Y"
Phonology
The
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
of Old English is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved purely as a
written language
A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will pick up spoken language or sign language by exposure even i ...
. Nevertheless, there is a very large
corpus
Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to:
Linguistics
* Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts
* Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files
* Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics
Music
* ...
of Old English, and the written language apparently indicates phonological
alternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature of
Old English phonology
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternation ...
.
See also
*
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
*
Old English phonology
Old English phonology is necessarily somewhat speculative since Old English is preserved only as a written language. Nevertheless, there is a very large corpus of the language, and the orthography apparently indicates phonological alternation ...
Notes
References
Sources
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The Magic Sheet one page color
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
summarizing Old English declension, from
Peter S. Baker
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
, inspired by Moore and Marckwardt's 1951 ''Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections''
J. Bosworth & T.N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary: Germanic Lexicon Project
Further reading
* Brunner, Karl (1965). ''Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet)'' (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
* Campbell, A. (1959). ''Old English Grammar''. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
* Mitchell, Bruce & Robinson, Fred (2001) ''A Guide to Old English''; 6th ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
*Quirk, Randolph; & Wrenn, C. L. (1957). ''An Old English Grammar'' (2nd ed.) London: Methuen.
{{Language grammars
Grammar
In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...