OLD ENGLISH SYNTAX

Word order and case

-Nominative: ϸæt wīf

-Dative: ϸǣm menn

-Accusative: ϸā bōc

The wife gave the man the book.

OE nominal inflections

 NOMINATIVE: usually the sign of the subject:

• Hroðgar maϸelode (Hrothgar spoke.)

• Bēowulf is min nama.

 ACCUSATIVE: usually the sign of the Direct Object, but also adverbials and
complements of certain prepositions:
• And him Bryttas sealdan and geafan eardungstowe. (and to them the Britons
granted and gave a dwellingplace)
• Wunundon ϸær ealne ϸone winter. (They lived there all the winter.) “ealne
zone winter”
• Gewat ϸa ofer wægholm. (Went then over the sea. “da over”

 GENITIVE: usually the sign of possession or partitive:

• Cynewulf benam Sigebryht his rices. (Cynewulf took from Sigebryht his
kingdom.)
• Ān heora (one of them)

• This inflection is still preserved in PDE, but in the form of a clitic: the Saxon genitive ‘s.
• In OE the –s genitive is an inflection: (genitive takes the apostrophe and the “s”)

• Chaucer: The Wyfes Tale of Bath

• In PDE we have group genitives: the ‘s is attached to the last word in the NP, be it the
head noun or not:
• [The Wife of Bath]’s Tale (we put the apostrophe in the end of the noun
phrase)
• [the Queen of England]’s robe

• [the dentist who lives around the corner]’s car

-Genitive: other time of relationships between the nouns. The apostrophe is not an inflection
any longer in PDE.

 DATIVE: usually the sign of the Indirect Object & most prepositions:
• Crīst wæs on rode. (Christ was on the cross). Rode: dative sing

• Se king (nominative) ϸa geaf gryð(accusative) Olafe. (The King then gave a

truce to Olaf.)

• Ic him ϸenode deoran sweorde. (I him served with a sword.)

Concord
 OE nouns agree with determiners, adjectives & pronouns in person, number and
gender:
• Swȳðe micel sǣ [FEM] up in on lande, sēo [FEM] is brādre ϸonne ǣnig mann
ofer sēon mæge.
• A very large sea inland, she is wider than any man can see over.

 When there is disagreement between grammatical and natural gender, pronouns

often show natural rather than grammatical gender:

• Sum wīf [NEU] hātte Sintice, sēo [FEM] wæs blind

• A certain woman called Syntyche, she was blind.

-Grammatical gender, “wife” is neutral.

-Because we know “she” is a female gender, is feminine, because we know it.

The Verb Phrase in Old English

 As a Germanic language, OE expressed time distinctions by means of just two

morphological tenses plus adverbials and context:

• Present tense:
• Present events and states

• Future time (often plus adverbs like sōna):

• Ic arīse and ic fare tō mīn fæder (I shall arise and go to my father)

• Neither willan/sceal are employed to convey future meaning,

but modality (Will and shall existed, but not for modality)

• Past tense:
• Simple past, present perfect

• Past perfect:
• Often with adverbs like ǣr, ǣrest
Aspect in Old English
 PERFECT ASPECT: (have + past participle) (but only because there is a DO)

1. habban + past participle (transitive verbs)

• Maria hæfð gecoren ϸæt betste dǣl (Maria has chose the best deal)

2. wesan/bēon + past participle (intransitive verbs)

• Hīe wǣron cumen Lēoniðan tō fultume (They had come to help
Leonidas)
 PROGRESSIVE ASPECT: (be + present participle)

1. bēon + present participle

• Eall middangeard bið ϸonne on dæg byrnende (all the earth is then by
day burning)
Mood in Old English

 INDICATIVE: default mood

 SUBJUNCTIVE:

1. subordinate clauses (esp. conditionals, concessives, reported speech, etc.)

• Sēc, gif ϸū dyrre! (Seek if you dare!)

2. main clauses expressing wish, doubt, possibility…

• God ūre helpe! (God help us!)

 IMPERATIVE
• Utan faran tō Bethleem.

• Let’s travel to Bethlehem.

Two endings: one for singular and one for plural

Passive Voice
• Morphologically, the passive voice could only be expressed in two words: hatte /
hatton (was/were called) (passive meaning):
• Se munue hatte Abbo (The monk was called Abbo)

• Under twǣm consulum, Tita and Publia hātton (under 2 consuls, called Tita
and Publia)

• The passive voice was expressed periphrastically:

[Link] impersonal meanings: man (‘one’) + verb in 3rd p. sing.

• Man mæg gīet gesīon hiora swæð

 (one could still see their track)
2.Bēon/weorϸan + past participle:

• Æfter ϸǣm ϸe Rōmeburg getrimbred wæs (after Rome had been built)
• ϸæt hūs wearð ðā forburnen (the house was then burnt down) (‘get’ in
PDE)

Types of infinitive

• PLAIN INFINITIVE: lufian, fremman

• INFLECTED TO-INFINITIVE: tō lufienne, tō fremmene

• Very frequent construction used to express:

• Necessity, purpose, completion

• Subject/complement of a clause
• ϸæt ϸe is riht tō habbene (that this is right to have)

OE Syntax

• OE nouns were inflected for case, i.e. the gramatical category of nouns was marked by
an inflection, so the constituents of a sentence are movable and the subject is not
always expressed.
• In general, the word order was mostly like Present-day German:

• Verb goes second in main clauses (subject and complements may alternate
before or after) (verb-second word order)

• Verb goes last in dependent clauses. (verb-final word order)

Common word orders

• 1. SVO
• Se cyning het hie feohtan (the King ordered them to fight)

• ϸa Deniscan ahton sige (the Danes gained victory)

• Oswald Þā arǣrde āne rōde (Oswald then erected a cross)

• [Link] (in dependent clauses)

• ϸæt hie ϸone Godes mann abitan scolden (so that they the man of God should
devour)
 • Þā hī eten hæfdon, hī wunedon ðǣr (When they eaten had, they stayed
there.)

• 3. OVS

• ϸa stowe habbaϸ giet his ierfenuman

that place have still his successors (his successors still have that place)

• [Link] (adverbial, verb, subject)

• Ða ongan ic (then began I)

Interrogatives

• No consistent use of the do-periphrasis.

• Subject-verb inversion.

• Hwæt segest ϸu, yrðling? (What say you, farmer?)

• Wære ϸu todæg on huntoðe? (Were you today hunting?)

• Hwæt eart Þū? (Who are you?)

-There are cases where we can find the “do”

Negation

• Negative particle ‘ne’ followed by the verb and the subject of the clause:

• Ne geseah ic næafre ϸa burg .

Not saw I ever that town.

• Ne cōm se here.
Not came the army.

Relative clauses

• No set of specific separate relative pronouns.

• Three ways of forming relative clauses:

1. Indeclinable relative particle þe alone

• Þā becōm hē tō Westseaxan, Þe wæs ðā gyt hǣÞen (Then he went to

Wessex, which was still then heathen)

2. Þe + se, sēo, þæt

3. se, sēo, þæt alone
• Hē hæfde ān swīðe ǣnlic wīf, sīho wæs hāten Eurudice (He had a very
excellent wife, who was called Eurydice.)

OLD ENGLISH LEXICON

Core vocabulary

• Elements regarded as central, essential,

• The most enduring elements

• Elements which form a common background and can be thus shared by the different
varieties of English.

• Core vocabulary includes :

• the basic areas of human experience (such as family relationships, counting…)

• and some grammatical words.

Word formation processes

• i-mutation

• Affixation
• Compounding

• Borrowing

1. i-mutation (no longer productive in subsequent periods of English)

• dēman (“deem”) // dōm (“doom”); ieldra (“elder”) // eald (“old”)

2. Affixation (By far the most frequent method for creating new vocabulary)
• Prefixation:

• Ge-: the most frequent prefix > past participle

• Suffixation:

• Even more frequent than prefixes

• Some remain in frequent use today: - ig: busig; -scipe:
freondscipe

3. Compounding: particularly frequent in poetry (patterns still in use in PDE) It was more
common in OE.

• Head: second element in the compound (determines class, gender…)

• First element: invariable (bears primary accent)

• Hāligdæg: ‘holy day’ > holiday

• dōmgeorn: ‘eager for glory’
Borrowing
• LATIN LOANS: Main source of borrowings in O.E.

• Three stages of borrowing:

[Link] period: Result of contact between the Germanic tribes and the
Roman Empire
• Quasi native words (strǣt, wīne) as OE inherited them from Common
Germanic, which borrowed them from Vulgar Latin
[Link] settlement in Britain: Fewer: ceaster (-chester) (Winchester)

3. Christianity:
• Earlier period: Political and organisational lexicon: abbod, mæsse

• Later period: Benedictine monastic revival (10th century); more

formal, highly educated lexicon (world of learning, foreign lands) from
Classical Latin: grammaticcræft.
• Semantic loans and loan translations: tunge (“a language”)

• Scandinavian loans:
• The vast majority of loans entered OE at the end of the period

• Consequence of close contact between speech communities:

• Grammatical words: are, they

• Everyday words: “egg”, “window”…

• Celtic loans: Very few; substratum

• Random samples of English texts from any period reveal a mixture of vocabulary from
many languages

• In OE there are fewer borrowings and foreign elements:

• It is a young language.

• OE: circa 24,000 versus PDE: 300,000 entries in OED 2005.

• Many activities, objects, situations… non-existent.

• Fewer opportunities to get in touch with different speech communities.

• Nature of the OE evidence:

• Reduced amount of preserved texts: 37 MB

• Very few texts types: religious, legal, medical, poetry…

• Random sample of English texts from any period:

• Mixture of vocabulary from many languages

• Not for Old English:

• Less borrowings and foreign elements
• “Younger” language:
• Less lexical items than in subsequent periods:

• OE: circa 24,000 versus PDE: 300,000 entries in OED

2005

• Many activities, objects, situations… non-existent

•  opportunities to get in touch with different speech
communities
• Nature of the OE evidence:

• Reduced amount of preserved texts: 37 MB

• Very few texts types:

• Religious, legal, medical, poetry…