Download Diapositiva 1 - UNIDAD4

GORDILLO, Eugenia Guadalupe
OLD ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
OE nouns have only four cases: NOMINATIVE,
ACCUSATIVE, GENITIVE AND DATIVE.
 Because of the weakening and loss of sounds in
unstressed syllables in pre-historic OE, there were
few distictive case-endings.
All nouns have the ending “um” for the dative
plural
Must have the ending “a” for the genetive plural
Musculine nouns have genitive singular in “es”
Nominative and accusative plural in “as”

In the verbal system, OE inherited from ProtoGermanic a two-tense system (present and
past), with different forms for indicative and
subjunctive.
In the present tense, OE retained the person
distinctions in the indicative.
Singular I help
she/he/it help
Plural (no present distinction)
you/we/they help
In the past tense, there was a distinctive form
for the 2nd person singular as against the 1st
and 3rd person singular

pu hulped (you helped)
Ic/hēo healp (I/she helped)
In the plural there was no distinction of
persons but the one of form “hulpon”
(we/you/they helped)
Also, in OE we can see the beginnings of a
new tense-system using auxiliaries, and
especially the developments of forms for the
perfect and for the passive like Modern
English “I have helped” “ I am helped”. The
perfect tenses existed in OE but were not
used frequently.
The perfect tenses of transitive verbs were
formed by the verb “habban” (to have) and the
past participle of the verb. Originally, a sentence
like “he had broken a leg” meant something like
“he possesed a broken leg”.
The passive too was formed with the verb “to be” or
“to become” and the past participle.
Example:
“An arrow there pierced Alexander”(Active voice)
“There was Alexander pierced by an arrow”(Passive
Voice)
Since it is the Direct Object of the active sentence
that becomes the suject of the passive voice, only
transitive verbs can produce passives of this type.
OLD ENGLISH SYNTAX
OE had greater freedom of word order than
Modern English because of its inflectional system.
There were three particular types of word orderfor
the clauses: S-V-O; V-S-O; S-O-V. we can see it
in this example.
(1) “When I then this all remembered”, (2) “then
remembered I also” (3) “how I saw”, (4) “before it
all ravaged was and burnt up”, (5) “how the
churches throughout all England stood with
treasures and books filled”.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
It is a subordinate clause and has the S-V-O order.
It has V-S-O order. (the direct object being the
reminder of the whole sentence); this order is
common when the clause begins with an adverbial
expression.
It has the S-V-O order.
It is a subordinate clause in the passive; the verb is
in the subjunctive and is placed after the past
participle “ravaged”.
It has the order S-V, but the verb is intransitive, so
there is no direct object; the nouns dependent on the
past participle “filled(genitive plural) are placed
before it.
The order V-S-O is normal in questions like:
Hwy didest pū pæt? (why did you that?)
Hæfst pū ænigne geferan? (have you any
companion?
Negation is achieved by use of the particle “ne”
Fram ic ne wille (away I do not intend to go)
Neither in questions nor negative sentences
does OE make use auxiliary “do”.
Where we say:
why do you go?
Hwy gāþ gē?
I do not go.
Ic ne gā.
Another big difference from ME is the system of
demostratives. Today we have a threefold system.
the, this, that
But in OE there were only two demostratives
Sē
the/that
Þes
this
On the other hand, the ternary modern system
comprises only five different forms (the, this,
these, that, those) whereas each of the OE
demosratives is declined through three genders,
five cases and two numbers.