1  

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

Государственное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования

УЛЬЯНОВСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ

Т. Г. Пятышина, Ю. А. Ламзина

Практикум по истории языка

(древнеанглийский период)

Учебное пособие

Ульяновск 2010

2  

УДК 802.0-22 (075) ББК 81.2 (Англ)я7

П 99

Рецензенты:

зав. кафедрой иностранных языков УлГПУ, канд. филол. наук, доцент Г. А. Калмыкова; канд. филол. наук, доцент кафедры английского языка УлГПУ Т. А. Золотарева.

Утверждено редакционно-издательским советом университета в качестве учебного пособия.

Пятышина, Т. Г. Практикум по истории языка (древнеанглийский период):

учебное пособие / Т. Г. Пятышина, Ю. А. Ламзина. – Ульяновск : УлГТУ, 2010. – 76 с.

ISBN 978-5-9795-0704-0

Учебное пособие «Практикум по истории языка (древнеанглийский период)»

составлено в соответствии с требованиями стандарта высшего профессионального образования. Тексты, заимствованные из оригинальных источников, а также в результате переписки с носителями языка, знакомят как студентов-лингвистов, так и аспирантов, изучающих проблемы истории английского языка, с особенностями древнеанглийского периода.

Упражнения с ключами способствуют формированию умений и навыков чтения и перевода основных грамматических конструкций не только древнеанглийских, но и ранне-новоанглийских текстов, необходимых при изучении истории языка.

Работа подготовлена на кафедре лингвистики УлГТУ. Печатается в авторской редакции.

УДК 802.0-22 (075)

ББК 81.2 (Англ)я7

Пятышина Т. Г., Ламзина Ю. А., 2010

ISBN 978-5-9795-0704-0 Оформление. УлГТУ, 2010

П 99

3  

UNIT I. OLD ENGLISH ORIGIN AND PRONUNCIATION

 INTRODUCTION

It has been our principal aim in writing this booklet to suggest analyzing some of the ways, in which the study of History of the English Language could be of interest for you, future postgraduates.

Aristotle and experience agree that MAN is an inquisitive animal, and most inquisitive, perhaps, about his own relation to the world he inhabits – about his own status and how he got that way... We are almost by natural compulsion, then, interested in how our fathers spoke and wrote and how differently they spoke and wrote from what and how we speak and write. This idea is so well expressed by Pr. Brook, the author of "English dialects", 1972. He writes with admirable clarity, that "he never forgets that language is a part of life" [3].

Almost every native speaker of English as well as our English speaking student, is quite well aware of the fact that his knowledge of "Old English" leaves much to be desired, though an average Englishman has, very probably, had enough schooling to have read a little of the "Canterbury Tales" and realizes that Chaucer’s English is more different from Shakespeare’s than theirs from his own.

Old English means English from the time of the earliest extant records a little before A.D. 700 till the 11th century, not till the time of Shakespeare, or even till the time of Chaucer. The period from c.1100 till c.1450 is called Middle English, and that from c.1450 till c.1650 is called Early Modern English. These days are all very approximate and more or less arbitrary. The origin of a standard English goes back to the 14th century. The existence of a literary distinct from the dialects, based on the language of London, can be considered as generally recognized from 1500. The unification, first of all, affected the written language. The colloquial language long continued to be dependent on the dialects, as direct evidence from the 16th and 17th cc. shows.

The English language originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects, which made part of the West Germanic language group. The Germanic tribes, which conquered Britain in the 5th c., belonged, as ancient historians say, to three tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes.

4  

The Angles lived in Southern Sleswick, north of the Schlei river; the Saxons lived south of the Angles. The Jutes lived north of the Angles. Closely connected with these tribes were the Frisians, who occupied the coast of the German ocean between the Rhine and the Ems now part of the Netherlands, and the Hauks, who lived between the Ems and the Elbe.

The earliest mention of the British Isles is in the 4th c. B.C., when the Greek explorer Pytheas, sailing round Europe, landed in Kent. (The students can easily see now, the meaning of the word "northeastlang" in the text "The Description of Britain").

In 55 B.C. the Romans under Julius Caesar first landed in Britain. In the year 54 Caesar landed in Britain for a second time, but as far as we can judge, it was his third invasion: "Heora thridde gefeoht wæs neah thære ie the mon hæt Temes..." The Romans ruled Britain for almost 400 years, up to the early 5th c. [7] It was about mid-5th c., that Britain was conquered by the Germanic tribes. The Britons fought against the enemies for about a century and a half, till about the year 600. It is to this epoch that the legendary figure of the British king Arthur belongs. We will analyze the text about the king in the works of Caxton or Tennyson and other Arthurian writers who introduced “the spirit, the romantic spirit of chivalry and courtly manners, into European literature and king became the embodiment of the ideal Christian Knight". (Evans I.H. London 1970, p.50).

The Germanic tribes, which conquered Britain, formed 7 kingdoms: Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. During 4 centuries they struggled with one another.

In 828 the struggle came to an end and since then kings of Wessex became kings of England, and the capital of Wessex, Winchester, became the capital of England (it is some 100 km south-west of' London) and became the center of English culture during the reign of King Alfred (849-899): learning and literature made much progress here.

The text "Pastoral Care" tells us much about King Alfred, "who bids great bishop Waerferth with his words lovingly and with friendship; and "I let it be known to thee that it has often come to my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both of sacred and secular orders, and how happy times there were then throughout England; and how the kings who had power over the nation in those days, obeyed God and his ministers; and they preserved peace, morality and order at home, and at the same time enlarged their territory abroad, and how they prospered both

5  

with war and with wisdom and also the sacred orders, how zealous they were both in teaching and learning, and in all the services they owed to God". [4]

By the way, the name "Alfred's scholars" was given to the group of learned men which Alfred the Great gathered around him in his "devoted efforts to revive learning in Essex". Chief among them were the Mercian clerics Plegmund, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, Werferð, Bishop of Worchester, Werwulð and Athelstan; Grimbald of t. Omer, John, a continental Saxon; and Asser, priest of St. David's. These names are mentioned in the text "Cura Pastoralis" – a striking document on the cultural history of England.

Beowulf is the oldest extant epic poem in any Germanic language. Its author is unknown. The subject of the poem has nothing to do with England, the scene is laid in various parts of Scandinavia. In the first part (we are going to translate) Beowulf, a nephew to Higelac, king of the Geates, comes to the court of Hrothgar, king of the Danes: (1386) "Beowulf, the king of Ecgtheow: "Don't sorrow, wise man. It is better one should avenge his friend than mourn for him long. Each of us must abide life's end in this world. Let him that may win fame ere death that shall be best there after for a warrior, when life is no more" [12].

It has been no part of our aim to make a survey of OE dialects as they have been undertaken by hands more competent than ours.

The study of the dialects, spoken in England during the OE period, i.e before the end of the 11th c., is rendered difficult by the scarcity of surviving texts. Four main OE dialects can be distinguished: Northumbrian, Mercian, West Saxon and Kentish. Very approximately we may say that Northumbrian included the dialects, spoken North of the river Humber; Mercian was spoken in the Midlands between the Humber and the Tames; West Saxon was spoken South of the Tames in the ancient kingdom of Wessex; and Kentish was spoken in the South-East over an area, rather larger than covered by the modern county of Kent.

Since most of the OE manuscripts are written in the West Saxon dialect, West Saxon forms are those with which students of OE are more familiar. It is, however, important to remember that the standard English of today is derived not from the variety of the of Mercian, although a few isolated words have been borrowed from other dialects.

6  

We may not discuss with some hope of understanding, how OE sounded, but we may still confront some difficulties. In the first place, how confidently can we make even the most general statements?

The answer, at least in the case of Early English, is "pretty confidently" so long as "pretty generally". [6]. It is true that King Alfred, would find the modern students' pronunciation of his Pastoral care uncouth but it is also true that he would understand it, whereas he quite certainly would not understand a pronunciation interpreting OE spelling according to the usual "values" of the letters in NE.

It has been our experience as well as Hamer's that many students find the existing accounts of the development of OE pronunciation either too difficult or too simplified. For many students the first contact with the detailed study of the development of the English language comes when they start to learn OE, and if they fail to understand the principles, involved at this point, it is likely that they will later avoid any study of the subsequent developments.  

PRONUNCIATION

Any OE manuscript will show that the letters used by Anglo-Saxons scribes were sometimes very like and sometimes very unlike those used today, both in shape and function. Printers of Anglo-Saxon texts generally use the modern letter form. Hence the sounds [f] and [v] are both represented by f, and the sounds [s] and [z] by s because this is the usage of the scribes, the sounds [θ] and [ð] by th or þ, etc.

The following symbols are not in use today: æ "ash", which represents the vowel in Mod E "hat", þ "thorn" and ð "that", both of which represent Mod E th as in "cloth" and in "clothes", capital þ is written Ð.

The stress usually falls on the first syllable, as in ModE, e.g. morgen "morning". The prefix ge- is always unaccented: hence ʒedon "done".

1. Prepositional prefixes, e.g. for-, ofer- can be either stressed as a rule, in nouns or adjectives, e.g. forwyrd "ruin" or unstressed in verbs, e.g. forwiernan "refuse". However, by the time of written OE ge- never carried the stress, be- and for- rarely; un- however, always did. Some verbs, derived from nouns with prefixes, continued to be stressed on the prefix. E.g. andswarian "to answer" based on the noun andswaru, as did some verbs whose prefix retained its full adverbial meaning, e.g. utgan "to go out".

7  

Syllable length was important in the metrical system of OE verse, a syllable was long if it contained a long vowel or if it ended in two consonants, such as hand "hand". All other syllables were short.

2. Compound words in which both elements retain their full meaning, e.g. sæ-weall "see-wall", have a secondary stress on the root syllable of the second element. There is some dispute about three-syllabled words with a long first syllable, e.g. bindende "binding", but not everyone agrees that such words have a pattern like ModE "archangles". 

As far as Rhyme is concerned, we can learn almost nothing about it in OE. Alliteration rather than rhyme is the structural principle of OE verse. Take, for instance, some lines from Beowulf: “feron folk-togan feoran and neahan geond wid-wegas wundor sceawian laрes lastas”…   VOWELS

All OE vowels, including monophthongs and diphthongs, can be either short or long.

I. MONOPHTHONGS: short & long: a, æ, e, i, o, u, y II. DIPHTHONGS: long & short ā, æ, ē, ī, ō, ū, ŷ

ā as the first vowel in "aha" a as the second vowel in "aha" as in "mat" as in "has" (If you experiment, you will notice the vowel in "has" is longer than that in "mat") e as in "bet" ē as in "hate", or German "see", or better in OE deman "judge" i as in "pin" ī as in "seen" o as in "saw", or German "so", or OE "word" ō as in "hot" u as in "pull" ū as in "cool" y as in French tu, or as i, with lips in a whistling position, as in "fuel" ŷ as in German "fullen" in Russian "тюль".

I. If you are not sure of the distinction between vowels and diphthongs, you should consult a simple manual of phonetics. It is but important to realize that OE words, such as heall, heold, hielt, which

8  

contain diphthongs are just as much as monosyllables in ModE "meat" and "base", which contain but diphthongs. The diphthongs with approximate pronunciations are: 1. [ea], 2. [eo], 3. [ie].

But please remember that like the ModE word "I", they are diphthongs, not two distinct vowels such as we get in the "sea".

In general, writers of OE gave to the Roman letters the values attached to them in Latin. This was true even with sound which in the 7th c. Latin no longer, indeed, represented something like [ie], as it had in classical times but, on the other hand, had not yet become confused in Latin with e [e] as it did later, but meant something very like [i:].

Y is not a "native" Latin letter, but a borrowing from Greek. The Modern English use of y for [j] seems to have begun in the 13th c. (See the New Oxford English Dictionary, where the English name wye comes from no one knows). [4].

SHORTENING BEFORE A SINGLE FINAL CONSONANT

This phenomenon occurs chiefly in the period following the loss of unstressed e, in the late ME and Mod E periods .

The shortening is widely attested by the earliest grammarians. Spellings, indicating shortening, are frequent in the 16th c. and earlier. Simultaneously with the vowel – shortening there occurred lengthening of the final consonant.

We must remember that ai was shortened again in the word "again" [e], probably influenced by "against", and in said [e], says [e], probably through lack of stress. (It is a typical mistake with both pupils and students, mind you!)

LONG VOWELS BEFORE A CONSONANT GROUP

The OE vowels before lengthening groups such as ld, mb, nd, r+C

(C=consonant) insofar as they were not shortened in ME, were mostly preserved in derivatives and compound regular shortening before consonant groups and often took place, while the simplex kept the long vowel.

9  

GRADATION

The original Germanic gradation system has been obscured even in OE texts, owing to a number of phonetic changes: risan-ras-rison-risen.

Gradation is also occasionally found as a means of word-building. E.g. belifan "remain", lāf "remainder", faran "go" or "travel", ridan "ride", verb – rād "ride", noun.  

FRACTURE OR BREAKING

OE fracture means diphthongization of short vowels before certain consonant clusters. It is the vowels a and e that undergo fracture: ea before r+l, h+C (С = a consonant): arm – earm, ald – eald, ahta – eahta, e – eo before r+C, lc, l+C, h+C and h final: herte – heorte, melkan –meolkan.

Fracture is most consistently carried out in the West Saxon dialect. In other dialects, such as Mercian, there is no fracture in many cases: arm, ald, ahta.

PALATILIZATION

OE vowels a, æ, e, o could change under the influence of the consonants, c and the cluster sc. As a result of palatalization the vowels are diphthongized: a – ea scacan – sceacan "shake" o – eo scort – sceort "short" Alongside sceacan, sceort, the variants scacan, scort also occur.

MUTATION OR UMLAUT

In OE i-mutation affects practically all vowels, except e and i: By mutation we mean a change of vowel, caused by partial assimilation to the following vowel.

A complete list of mutation processes in OE is the following: 1. Monophthongs: a – e, æ – e, o – e, o – e, a – æ, u – y, u – y:

sandian – sendan "send" tælian – tellan "tell" ofstian – efstan "hurry"

10  

domian – deman "judge" fullian – fyllan "fill" ontunian – ontynan "open" 2. Diphthongs: ea – ie, ea – ie, eo – ie:

hleahian-hliehhan "laugh". This ie often became i, ӯ: hlihhan, //////////////////////////////////////hlyhhan,

hearian-hieran "hear". This ie often became i, ӯ: hiran, hӯran. afeorrian-afierran "remove", or affiran, afyrran etreowi-etriewe "true", or etriwe, etrywe.

BACK OR VELAR MUTATION A different kind of mutation was caused by a back vowel /a, o, u/ of

the following syllable before liquids /r, l/ and labial consonants /p, b, f, m/, thus developing front vowels into diphthongs: i – io hira-hiora "their", sifon-siofon "seven", limu-liomu "limbs". e – eo hefen-heofon "heaven". a – ea saru-searu "armour".

An example of Mutation before h is to be found in the word "night":

we come across the 4 variants in OE texts: neaht, nieht, niht, nyht.  

CONTRACTION If in OE words two vowels met, they were usually contracted into

one long vowel. The main types of contraction are as follows: ah – eah, as in slahan – sleahan – slean "slay" or "kill". eh – ēo: sehan – seohan – sēon "see". oh – ō: fōhan – fōn "catch"

11  

CONSONANTS

In OE words all consonants must be pronounced, e.g. c in cnapa, g in gnæt, h in hlaf, r in Þær, w in writan. Double consonants must also be pronounced, e.g. biddan ≠ biden as well as ModE bidden ≠ "bad debt".

Most of the consonants are pronounced in the same way as in ModE. The main exceptions are set out below: the letters s, f, Þ, ð, are voiced in the intervocal position: rīsan, lufian, cyðan. In other positions (in the initial and final) they are voiceless. Initially h is also pronounced /h/, as in the Russian word "хина".

NB. Before a, o, u, y, c is pronounced [k]: cū "cow", g – as in "good". But before i and e the letter c is pronounced like ch in ModE "child". Between back vowels, g is pronounced [ɤ] like the Ukrainian first letter in the word "garna". The combinations sc and cg are usually pronounced like ModE sh and dge respectively. Thus, ship and edge are pronounced the same in both OE and ModE [9, 13].

Some other historians say, that the letter ʒ is of Irish origin and had 4 variants of pronunciation: [g], [g'], [j] and [ɤ] – e.g. God, given, je (Williams, 1975, p.315), the combination cg was pronounced as long g /gg/, e.g. in brycg, i.e. not the same as in Mod E bridge [dʒ]. Professor Mezenin S.M. is of the same opinion [9]. Professor Clark W. [5] says, that sc had come, at least by the 11th c., to stand for [ʤ] e.g. hedge /hesc/, besides, g not y [j] was in the words life gyldan [gyldan] not [jyldan], for the sound y and ý had developed, "under special conditions, out of vowel sounds...originally back" [3, 61]. He also points out, that c was pronounced like [k], not like [ʧ] as they read in the words cild, cēlan, etc.

GENERAL TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT

OF CONSONANTS

At first sight Germanic consonants are likely to be similar to those of other Indo-European languages. Yet comparison of Germanic and non-Germanic words shows that Germanic consonants do not correspond to the same consonants in other languages. Thus, whenever we have the sound [p] in Latin, e. g. pater, we find in its place the sound [f] in parallel words in Germanic languages, e.g. father and so on.

12  

It has been found that during the Common Germanic period all the consonants were altered as compared to the original Indo-European state. 

The most important of these changes is commonly known as the Common Germanic or FIRST CONSONANT SHIFT. These changes were first formulated in terms of a phonetic law by Jacob Grimm, a German linguist of the 19th c. and therefore are often referred to as "Grimm's Law".

When we compare words of Germanic origin with the corresponding words of other I.-E. languages (mainly Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Russian) we find correspondences between them, which may be grouped under 3 categories:

1. Voiceless stops correspond to voiceless fricatives; 2. Voiced stops correspond to voiceless stops; 3. Aspirated stops correspond to voiced stops. It should be noted that not all correspondences, stated in Grimm's

Law, are equally clear: we could not find convincing examples to illustrate the correspondences IE b – Germanic p. For some reason, the consonant p is very rare in native Germanic words. Still all correspondences can be represented in the following table:

Tаble 1. GRIMM’S LAW

SOUNDS EXAMPLES

IE Germc. Indo-European words Germanic words p t k

f θ h

Lat. pater "father" Lat. tres "tree" Greek nykta "night"

Gothic fadar English tree Germ. Nacht

b d g

p t k

Russian "boloto" – "moor" Lat. duo "two" Lat. iugum "yoke"

English pool English two English yoke

bh dh gh

b d g

Sanscr. bhratar "brother" Sanscr. madhyas "middle" Lat. hostis "enemy" NB: In this case we do not find correspondences in Sanscrit.

English brother Gothic midjis Gothic gasts

13  

It was noted long ago that in some words of Germanic languages we find some consonants which do not "fit" into Grimm's Law. This phenomenon was analysed by another famous linguist, Verner, and was termed Verner’s law. It is important to understand that at the time of this change the stress pattern of the language was still moveable, so Verner's Law may be summarized thus: if the preceding vowel did not carry the main stress of the word certain consonants changed, according to the following list: s − z, f − v, Þ − ð , h − g, hw – gw: s – z (the initial sound of ModE "zoo",) which later developed to r: cēosan – cēas – curon – coren, this phenomenon was and still is called "Rhotacism". f – v (which, however, was spelt f in OE) lufu – lufian. "to love" θ – ð (the initial sound of ModE "this" which later developed to d). weoÞan – wearp – wurdon – wurden "to become". hw – gw seon – sawon, sewen. "to see" h – g In examples of this change the h has been lost in the infinitive owing to loss of h, but it can be observed in verbs of the Past Simple:

leōn – lah – ligon, ligen – "to grant" fleōn – fleah – flugon – flogen. "to flee"

In the Germc. infinitive sehwan the w early disappeared and breaking, loss of h and lengthening took place. In the past plural and past participle Verner's Law gave gw, and then either the letter g or w disappeared.

METATHESIS

Two similar changes took place from time to time in no very regular manner. Certain consonant groups were sometimes reversed, so that one finds in OE both ascian and æcsian "to ask", for example. Also r was reversed. E.g. Gmc. brennan – brinnan became OE birnan "to burn".

14  

LOSS OF h AND COMPENSATORY LENGTHENING

If h came between two vowels, it disappeared and so did the following vowel. If the preceding vowel or diphthong had been short, it was lengthened.

E.g. feohes – feos (gen. sg. of feoh) "money". If rh or lh came between two vowels the h was lost, and if the

preceding vowel or diphthong had been short, it was lengthened.

E.g. feorhes – feores (gen. sg. of feorh) "life".

SMOOTHING

In Northumbrian and West Saxon dialects all diphthongs were monophthongs before the consonants c, g, h and the combinations r or 1, followed by c, g, or h. In these conditions ēa, ēo, īo (both long and short) became respectively ee, e, i later on æ, so developed, became ē. This change took place after Back Mutation but before Loss of h.

E.g. meaht, feorh, heāh in WS and mæht, ferh, hēh in Anglīan.  

15  

UNIT II. MORPHOLOGY

The Noun

In representing the system of OE substantive morphology, two approaches are possible. One is, to regard the Old English 1anguage as a stage in the historical development of Germanic languages. This is the traditional approach.

The other point of view takes the OE substantive forms as such purely synchronically and classifies them according to the facts, immediately visible in the OE texts. This modern point of view is to be found in An Old English Grammar by R. Quirk and C. L. Wren, London, 1955 [11].

According to the traditional view point, linguists distinguish "in the first place, between strong declension and weak declension of substantives" [4, 64]. The strong declension includes nouns (or substantives) with vocalic stems /-a, -ō, -i, -u / and the weak declension comprises n-stems only. There are some minor types, as root-stems and r-stems. The OE Noun was characterized by its inflexions.

Three grammatical categories are represented in the Old English substantives, just like in many other Germanic and I-E languages: gender, number and case.

The gender of OE nouns was grammatical, i.e. in keeping with their languages. Although most nouns naming male beings were masculine. E.g. mann "man", sunu "son", cyning "king", and most nouns, denoting female beings, were feminine. E.g. modor "mother", dohtor "daughter", cwēn "woman", but there were many exceptions such as wīf "woman" and mǣgden "maiden" – neuter, wifman "woman" – mascu1ine. Moreover, numerous things of abstract notions were not neuter as they are today, but masculine or feminine, e.g. Nm-fōt "foot", nāma "name", stān "stone", and Nf. – sunne "sun", tunge "tongue", wynn "joy". They are the first signs of the decline of grammatical gender.

In OE, as well as in Mod E, the noun had two numbers: singular and plural, e.g. stān "stone" – stānas "stones".

OE noun had four cases: nominative (Nom.), genitive (Gen.), dative (Dat.) and accusative (Acc.). The Nom.S. and the Acc.S. of Nn. often coincided, and so did sometimes the Nm. and the Acc. of Nm. and Nf. They always coincided in the Plural of all nouns (Nm., Nf., and Nn.).

16  

The Genitive had a wide range of meanings and functions and it was used both with nouns, denoting living beings and with those, denoting things. Besides, expressing possessions, the genitive had as adverbial function, in such cases it denoted place. E.g. in wendon Þā ēðres wa es hāmweard – "they went home by another way", or manner. E.g. in hī ricsodon næs Þēah mīnes ðonces – "however they didn't rule according to my will". Such genitives account for adverbs like "ānes" once, "nīhtes" at night.

In late OE texts we find of-phrases, expressing the same relations as the genitive, e.g. "ða nītenu of eallum cinne" (animals of all kinds). One may say that analytical genitive began to develop before the Middle English period.

The dative denoted the indirect object. E.g. in seʒe Þīnum lēodum miccle lāðre spell "tell your people a far more unpleasant piece of news". It could also denote time. E.g. in Heorot eardode...sweartum nihtum – "He visited Heorot on dark nights".

In certain cases the dative had a possessive meaning in Late OE. E.g. in Her Rōmane Leone Þæm pāpan his tunʒan forcurfon – "Then the Romans cut off to Pope Leo his tongue".

The accusative expressed the direct object, but it sometimes had the function of an adverbial modifier of time or place. E.g. in swā wē Þarinne andlanʒne day mode namon – "thus we there the whole day took what we needed" and e.g. hæfdon sum dæl weʒes ʒefaren – "they had travelled part of the way".

The main declensions were the vowel or strong declension and the consonant or weak declension. The criterion was whether the stem of the noun had ended in a vowel or a consonant in Common Germanic.

Thus, the strong declension includes nouns with vocalic stems: -a, -o, -i, -u and the weak declension comprises n-stems and root-stems and -r, -s, -nd stems. See table 2.

Table 2. The Morphological Structure of OE Nouns

Vocalic Stems Consonantal Stems Strong Declension

Weak declension

Root declension

-r- -s- -nd- -a- -o- -i- -u- -n- -

Nm. - Nn.

Nf. -

Nm. Nf. Nn.

Nm. Nf.

Nm. Nf. Nn.

Nm. Nf. -

Nm. Nf. Nn.

17  

Almost half of the names frequently used in OE were masculine and most of them were a-stems. A little fewer than one third of the commonly used nouns were feminine, most of them were ō-stems. About a quarter were neuter, most of them were a-stems.

Table 3. a-stem

Gender masculine neuter

Number Case

Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

fisc fisces fisce fisc

fiscas fisca fiscum fiscas

scip scipes scipe scip

scipu scipa scipum scipu

Examples of other nouns belonging to this group are: Nm. – ceorl "man", hund "dog", hlāf "loaf", weall "wall", Þeōf "thief"; Nn. – bearn "child", deōr "deer, animal", ʒear "year", sweord "sword", weorc "work", wīf "woman".

Table 4. ō-stem

Stems with a long vowel with a short vowel Number Case Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

wūnd wūnde wūnde wūnde

wūnde wūnda,-ena wūndum wūnda,-e

talu tale tale tale

tala tala, -ena talum tala, -e

Examples of other nouns belonging to the o-stems are: āru "journey", bōt "remedy", lād "way", racu "narative", reord "voice", rōd "cross", scolu "troop", weard "protection", wund "wound".

18  

Table 5. i-stem

Gender  masculine feminine neuter

Number Case

Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

hyll hylles hylle hyll

hyllas hylla hyllum hyllas

hyd hyde hyde hyd

hyde,-a hyda hydum hyde,-a

hilt hiltes hilte hilt

hilt hilta hiltum hilt

Examples of other nouns belonging to the i-stems are:

Nm. dæl "part", drenc "drink", hege "hedge", mete "meat", "food", stede "place", stride "stride",

strīðe "struggle".

Nn. – flæsc "flesh", fleos "fleece", etc. NB. It is interesting to notice that Nm. and Nn. of a-stem and those

of i-stem have homogenious endings, while Nf. of a-stem have the same endinga as Nf. of o-stem. When these inflexions were levelled, the decline of grammatical case was accelerated.

Table 6. u-stem

Gender masculine feminine

Number Case

Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

feld felda felda feld

felda felda feldum felda

hand handa handa hand

handa handa handum handa

Examples of other nouns belonging to the u-stem are as follows:

Nm. – medu "mead", sidu "custom", wudu "wood". Nf. – nosu "nose", cweorn "hand-nill", flōr "floor". See Table 7. 

19  

Table 7. i-stem

Gender masculine feminine neuter

Number Case

Singular Plural Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

nāma nāman nāman nāman

nāman nāmena nāmum nāman

cwēne cwēnan cwēnan cwēnan

cwēnan cwēnena cwēnum cwēnan

ēare ēaran ēaran ēare

ēaran ēarena ēarum ēaran

Examples of other nouns belonging to the weak declension are:

Nm. – bera "bear", flote "sailor", lida "sailor", mōna "moon", steorra "star", wita "prophet". Nf. – burne "stream", cirice "church", folde "earth", hearpe "harp", sunne "sun", wulle "wool".

Table 8. Root-stems

Gender Masculine Feminine Number

Case Singular Plural Singular Plural

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

man mannes men man

men manna mannum men

boc boce, bec bec boc

bec boca bocum bec

In Germanic languages there existed a category of nouns that were

different from the other ones owing to their morphological structure, i.e. they had no stem-forming suffix and the case inflexions were simply added to the root. They were obsolete, coming from the epoch when there had been no classification based on stems. In OE there were some nouns belonging to this root-stem group.

20  

Table 9. r-stems

Stems r-stems s-stems Gender Case

musculine feminine neuter

SINGULAR Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

fæder fæder, -er fæder fæder

modor modor moder modor

cild cildes cilde cild

PLURAL Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

fæderas fædera fæderum fæderas

modru, -a modra modrum modru,-a

cild, cildi cild/r/a cildum cild, cildru

If we compare the various OE declensions to one another, we will find that there was one, namely the strong declension of masculine nouns which formed its genitive singular in -es and its nominative and accusative plural in –as. There were other declensions having -a, -an, -e as endings for the genitive singular and -a, -an, -e, -u for the nominative plural. In some declensions the genitive singular or the nominative plural, or both, were like the nominative singular or different from it only in the vowel or the root syllable.

Therefore -es was the only ending that never indicated anything but a nominative and accusative singular, and -as was the only one that never indicated anything but a nominative and accusative plural. Moreover, the number of masculine strong nouns was very large.

These are the reasons for which, with the exception of a few irregular plurals, ModE nouns are declined with the inflexions which came from the Old English -es, and -as. In all declensions the genitive plural ended in -a and the dative plural in -um. There are only few "traces" left by OE nouns, feminine, gen. without -s. E.g. in Lady chapel, Lady day, lady-bird apart from those for genitive singular and nominative accusative plural. In Old English the categories of case and number were closely linked together, they could not be expressed separately. Thus, it was not before the Middle English period that the plural nominative and accusative -es eliminated the other case forms of the plural.

21  

THE ADJECTIVE

The adjective was fully declined in OE, having 3 genders, 2 numbers, and 4 cases (sometimes also a fifth case – the instrumental). There were 2 declensions of adjectives: the strong and the weak one. The former was used with nouns, not accompanied by a definite article or a demonstrative or possessive adjective. The latter was resorted to when the noun was preceded by such a word. Thus we find in OE texts ʒōd mann "good man" but se ʒōda mann "the good man".

Most strong adjectives are declined like nouns in the a-stem, the weak adjectives are declined like nouns of weak declension.

NB. Adjectives were freely substantivized in OE.

Table 10. Strong Declension blæc (black)

Number Singular Plural Gender

Case m. f. n. m. f. n.

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

blæc blaces blacum blæce

blacu blæcre blæcre blace

blæcblaces blacum blæce

blaceblacra blacum blace

blaca blacra blacum blaca

blacublacra blacum blacu

NB.: Instr. blace – blace – – -

Table 11. Weak Declension (only 4 cases)

Number Singular Plural Gender

Case m. f. n. All

genders

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

blacablacan blacan blacan

blaceblacan blacan blacan

blaceblacan blacan blace

blacan blacra blacum blacan

 

Table 12. Degrees of Comparison (three forms)

Positive Comparative Superlative blæc " black" lytel "little" micel "much"

blæcra "blacker"læssa "less" māra "more"

blacost "blackest" læst "the least" mæst "the most"

22  

THE VERB

The system of verb-forms in OE was characterized by many peculiar features. Although, the verb had numerous person and number endings, it had fewer grammatical categories that in Modern English.

OE verbs had four categories (2 grammatical and 2 verbal): person, number, mood and tense.

We will analyze all the verb-predicates in OE texts later on. The category of PERSON was made up by the opposition of 3

forms: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person; two members: singular and plural; the finite forms were distinguished only in the Singular of the Present Tense, Indicative Mood.

The category of TENSE consisted of 2 forms: Present & Past. Both in the Indicative and in the Subjective moods the Past tens referred the action to the past without differentiating between prior and non-prior actions. The Present tense reffered the action to the Present Future.

The category of MOOD was constituted by the Indicative, the Imperative and Subjunctive moods, which were regularly distinguished in paradigm (only in some forms of the past tense the difference was lost).

There were 2 non-finite-forms in the system of OE verbs: the Infinitive and the Participle. It is necessary to underline that the Infinitive had no verbal categories, being a verbal noun, it had a sort of case system or rather some isolated case-forms corresponding to the Nom. and Dat. case of nouns.

The Participle, as a verbal adjective, was characterized both by verbal and nominal categories. P. I was present and active, P. II denoted a state, resulting from a completed past action and was passive in meaning when built from transitive verbs. P. II from transitive verbs had an active meaning.

NB.

1. In strong verbs the Past tense was formed by vowel-gradation, while in weak verbs it was formed by adding the dental suffix -de, -te, -ede, -ode. 2. The Past Participle of strong verbs was formed by adding -en, and that of weak verbs by adding -ed, -od, -d, or -t. (See Tables 13, 14, 15). There are some verbs, belonging to one class or another, which suffered different changes owing to mutation or fracture palatalization.

23  

Table 13. Supplementary Reference Table of Verb Endings

STRONG VERBS WEAK VERBS Forms built from present tense forms

Infinitive -an -an, -ian

Participle I -ende

-ende

Indicative, Singular 1st -t 2nd -st, -est 3rd -ð, -að Plural -að

-e, -ie

-st, -est, -ast -eð, -að -að, -iað

Subjunctive, Singular -e Plural -en

-e, -ie -en, -ien

Imperative – –, -a

Forms built from past tense forms

Indicative, Singular 1st – 2nd -e 3rd – Plural -on

de, -te, -ede, -ode

-dest, -test, -edest, -odest -de, -te, -ede, -ode

-don, -ton, -edon, -odon

Subjunctive, Singular -e Plural -en

-de, -te, -ede, -ode -den, -ten, -eden, -oden

Participle II

 ʒe- -en ʒe-, -d, -t, -ed, -od   NB.

The endings of the weak verbs in the Past and P. II are given together with the dental suffix -d, -t to stress identification.

24  

STRONG VERBS

Strong verbs are subdivided into 7 classes. Each of these classes except the 7th, is characterized by the gradation of four vowels: the first vowel is in the infinitive and the Present Indicative, the 2nd in the 1st and the 3rd persons of the Past Indicative, the 3rd – in the 2nd persons plural of the Past, and the 4th – in the Past Participle. In some verbs, besides vowel-gradation, there occurs the so-called grammatical change or alteration of consonants, by Verner's Law; the consonant of the infinitive and of the Past tense singular is not the same, as that of the past tense plural and the past participle.

Table 14. Strong verbs

Forms Classes

Infinitive Past Singular

Past Plural

Participle II

NE

I II III IV V VI VII

drīfan ceosan 1 drincan 2 helpan 3 feohtan beran sprecan standan cnāwan

drāf ceas dranc healp feaht bær spraec stōd cnēow

drifon curon druncon hulpon fuhton bæron spræcon stōdon cnēowon

drifen coren drunken hulpen fuhten boren sprecen standen cnēwen

to drive to choose to drink to help to fight to bear to speak to stand to know

 NB.

In EModE even in NE we find very few remnants of the 7 classes. Some strong verbs became weak or regular, others passed from one class into another or were replaced by loan-words.

25  

WEAK VERBS

There were 3 classes of weak verbs. They were characterized by 3 forms: the infinitive, the Past tense and the Past Participle. The plural of the past tense was formed by changing the vowel -e of the infinitive into -on. The stem of the past Participle was the same as that of the past tense. The regular class 1 verbs always had mutation, verbs with a short vowel, followed by a consonant other than r, lost the -i and their consonant was lengthened according to the West Germanic lengthening.

Table 15. Weak verbs

Forms Classes

Infinitive Past Tense Participle II NE

I

-an, -ian hīeran styrian cēpan

-de, -ede, -te hīerde styrede cēpte

-ed, -d, -t hīered styred cēped

to hear to stir to keep

II

-ian macian lufian

-ode macode lufode

-od macod lufod

to make to love

III -an habban libban

-de hævde lifde

-d hævd lifd

to have to live

NB. After a voiceless consonant, the suffix of the Past Tense -d became

-t, and the P. II had a form, ending in -t and -ed cept, ceped. When the stem of the verb ended in a consonant -d or -t, the P. II

had one form ending in -d, -t and the other one, ending in -ded or -ted. In OE the -o survived in the past tense and the past Participle -ode, -od and it became -a in some forms of the Present Tense.

26  

PRETERITE – PRESENT VERBS Besides the two great classes of strong and weak verbs, there were some secondary groups in OE, namely the preterite-present verbs and the irregular verbs. NB.

The characteristics of the preterite-present verbs are as following: their Present Tense form coincided with the Present Tense form of strong verbs and their Past Tense form was formed like the Past Tense of weak verbs. NB.

The preterite-present verbs which survive in ModE are: ought, can, dare, shall, may, must. Most preterite – present verbs could be subdivided according to the classes of strong verbs. In OE there were 12 preterite-present verbs. Let's conjugate cunnan "can".

Table 16. Preterite-present verbs

Categories Tense

Number Person MOOD

Indicative Subjunctive Present Singular

Plural

1st 2nd 3rd

can canst can cunnon

cunne cunnen

Past Singular Plural

1st 2nd 3rd

cūðe cūðest cūðe cūðon

cūðe cūðen

Infinitive P. II

cunnan cunnen, cūð

 NB.

Most ModE modal or defective verbs descended from preterite-present verbs. Their Present tense forms originally were Past tense forms, that's why they do not add -s in the 3rd person Singular. Their Past tense forms have a dental suffix: could, might, should.

27  

IRREGULAR VERBS

Among the four OE irregular verbs bēon, ʒān, dōn, willan, the first two (bēon, ʒān) were completely different from all the others because they were based on different roots. The 1st person Singular Present Indicative of bēon was eorm in West Saxon or am, eam in Anglian. The 2nd person was eart, the 3rd person was is, the plural was sint or sindon, but there also existed the Anglian forms aron and earon. The verb bēon was to survive in the infinitive, in the Subjunctive, in the Participle I and in the Participle II.

The Past tense belonged to the verb wesan. It was was in the 1st and 3rd person Singular, were in the 2nd person Singular and wǣron in the plural.

NB. The ModE forms was and were are the only survivals of the old

difference between the Singular and the Plural in the Past tense. The verb ʒān had its past tense ēode from another verb. In ModE it

was to be replaced by the past tense of OE wendan "to turn", which is went in Modern English.  

THE VERB "TO BE"

1. It is found with the present participle as the ancestor of the MnE continuous tenses. But here too the participle was originally adjectival rather than verbal. It should also be noted that the OE combination is not the exact equivalent of the modern usage. Often it means the same as the corresponding simple tense, e.g. Þa wæs se cyning openlice andettende þam bioscope "Then the king openly confessed to the bishop", though it may give greater vividness.

But sometimes it implies that an action continues for some time. E.g. ond hie þa … feohtende wæron "and then they kept on fighting"

and ða ða se apostol þas lare sprecende wæs "while the apostle was explaining this teaching". In these examples, it comes close to the modern use.

1. The verb to be is also found with the past participle forming the perfect and pluperfect of intransitive verbs.

28  

E.g. Swæ clæne hio [=lar] wæs oðfeallenu on Angelcynne "So complerely was learning fallen away in England" (where the participle is declined nom. sg. fem. strong, agreeing with the subject).

THE PASSIVE

Only one OE verb had a synthetic passive, viz. hātte "is called", "was called". E.g. se munuc hatte Abbo "the monk was called A.". Otherwise the idea was expressed by the impersonal man "one" with the active voice.

E.g. Her mon mæg giet gesion hiora swæð "Here one can still see their track", or by the verbs "to be" or "to become" with the past participle. E.g. to bysmore synd getawode þas earman landleoda "the miserable people of this land are shamefully ill-treated" and Ǽfter þæm þe Romeburg getimbred wæs "After Rome was (had been) built".

The difference between the forms with wesan and those with weorðan is not well-difined. The former sometimes seem to emphasize the state arising from the action. But this does not always hold. Such fluctuations are natural in a developing language. The fact that the weorðan form disappeared suggests that the language found other ways of making the distinction when it was necessary. [Mitchel 10, 110].

THE ADVERB

There were 2 types of adverbs in OE: primary adverbs not derived from other parts of speech and secondary adverbs derived from other parts of speech. In the first group there were many adverbs which had a certain similarity with pronouns.

E.g. Þā "hen", Þonne "then", Þǣr "there", Þider "thither", hwone "when", hwǣr "where", hwider "whither", hwonan "whence", nū "now", hēr "here", hider "hither", heonan "hence". Here also belongs the adverbs sōna "soon", oft "often", eft "again", swā "so", etc. [5, 110]. The second group was more numerous, it comprised adverbs derived from nouns and adjectives. Thus, hwillum, N. abs., the dative, came from hwil "while, period of time", and the genitive -es gave birth to a number of adverbs such as ealles "entirely", elles "else", micles "mush", nides "needs", dæʒes "by day", nihtes "at night", ānes "once", hāmweardes "homewards".

29  

NB. In ModE we find the following formations, based on the genitive inflexion: "always", "backwards", "sideways".

And sometimes the corresponding prepositional phrase is used adverbially: "of course", "of late", "of old".

A great number of adverbs were derived from instrumental Singular of strong adjectives, and that is how -e (the inflection of this case) became a widely-used adverb-forming suffix.

E.g. deōpe "deeply", fæste "fast", hearde "hard", wīde "widely". NB. Adjectives ending in -e became adverbs without any change of

form. Thus, clǽne meant both "clean" and "cleanly". NB. The adjective-forming suffix -līc + the adverb-forming suffix -e

combined into another adverb-forming suffix -līce (in ModE -ly). E.g. bealdlīce "boldly", freondlīce "in a friendly way", luflīce "lovingly".

NB. In ModE the words "friendly, lovely, lonely, likely, unlikely" are but adjectives, not adverbs!!!  Other adverb-forming suffixes were -lunga, -linga, -mælun, surviving in adverbs like headlong, groveling, piecemeal.

The degrees of comparison of adverbs were formed by means of the suffixes -r and -st, preceded by the vowel -o.

E.g. holdlīce – holdlīcor – holdlīcost "graciously". Some adverbs formed their comparative and superlative degrees with the help of different words. E.g. well – betre – best; yfele – wyrs – wierst, wyrst; micelle – mare – mǽst; lýtle – lǽsse – lǽst; as in ModE good – better – the best; bad – worse – the worst; much – more – the most; little – less – the least.  

30  

UNIT III. OLD ENGLISH VOCABULARY  I. General characteristics

The OE dictionary contains about 20 000 words, of which only a few hundred are not Germanic. The others may be classified into 3 groups:

1. Words of I. – E. origin, e.g. fæder "father", nāma "name", fót foot, nīht "night", rīht "right", sittan "sit", beran "to bear", etc.;

2. Words of Germanic origin, e. g. eorþe "earth", earm "arm", eald "old", fīndan "find", sinʒan "to sing", slæpan "to sleep", etc.;

3. Specifically English words (not to be found in other languages), e.g. clipian "to call, to speak". They are very rare in number.

Old English vocabulary is almost purely germanic, but about 85%

of it has gone out of use: many of the OE words that have already disappeared belong to the highly poetic vocabulary.

Nowadays, although more than half of the words to be found in an English dictionary are of Romanic origin, the basic word stock of the language has remained mostly Germanic. Indeed, it is quite obvious that the names of the nearest family relations, of most parts of the body, of many common plants, animals, tools, weapons, colors, shapes, of the simplest moral qualities are of Germanic origin (see the examples above). It is well illustrated by the following analysis of the origin of the 1 000 most frequently used words in Modern English of:

Old English origin------------61.7% French---------------30.9% Latin-----------------2.9% Scandinavian-------1.7% Mixed---------------1.3% Dutch----------------0.3% Uncertain-----------1.3%

Although OE did not contain most of the numerous Romanic elements (they appeared only in ME period), it was far from being a poor language: on the one hand they were not necessary, for they named things and notions, which were to appear much later, on the other hand, one of the main characteristics of OE was its great resourcefulness.

31  

II. Means of Enriching the OE Vocabulary

The principal means of enriching the OE vocabulary were word building and borrowing. The two main types of building were affixation and composition. (The borrowings are so vividly shown by Professor Otto Jespersen in his book "Growth and Structure of the English Language", [8, pp. 106-108]).

All words in the OE vocabulary (wordstock) fall into two groups: 1) simple; 2) derivatives. The main means of word-formation from one root was affixation

subdivided into suffixation and prefixation. Among the most productive OE prefixes we can find the following:

a-, b-, for-, fore-, ʒe-, mis-, un- and of-, on-, to-, under-, wið. E.g. āwendan "to translate", "to turn"; becuman "to arrive", "to

reach"; ʒehāten "called", oferwunnen "won", ymbfangen "caught", "surrounded", forwyrd "to ruin", unlūcan "to open".

Noun-forming suffixes

Noun-forming suffixes are often closely linked with gender. Thus the most productive suffix -ere was generally used to form masculine nouns, denoting professions. E.g. fiscere "fisher", fuʒelere "fowler", writere "writer", hordere "treasurer" etc.

The suffix -estre was used for feminine nouns denoting professions. E.g. hearpestre "woman who plays the harp", spinnestre "woman who spins". The suffix -nd was added to the root of a verb to form nouns such as feōnd "enemy", from the verb feōn "to hate", freōnd "friend, relative, love" – from the verb freōn "to love", "to honour".

NB. The P. I was derived from the suffix -nd. The suffix -ing was often used for forming patronymics. E.g. æðeling "a nobleman", earming "a beggar". The suffix -ling is a variant used for building nouns from the roots of adjectives and verbs. E.g. dēorling "darling", ʒosling "gosling", etc. (Cp. scip – scipincel "ship, a little ship"). The suffix -en was used to form feminine nouns.

32  

E.g. God-Gyden "God-Goddess", fox-fyxen "he-fox – she-fox", but þeōd – þeōden is "the people-leader" and diminutive nouns: cycen "little chicken", gæten "little goat".   Abstract nouns were formed by means of 5 suffixes: -hād, -scipe, -ness or -nis, -dōm, -rǣden. E.g. cild-cildhād "child-childhood", freōnd-freōndscipe "friend-friendship"; gōd-godnis "good-goodness"; fǣmne-fæmnhād "virgin-virginity"; lufu-lufrǣden "love-love"; Þeow-Þeowdōm "slave-slavedom". The suffix -Þ was also used for forming Nabs. E.g. ʒeoguÞ "youth", huntoÞ "hunting".

The suffixes -ing, -ung were used in the same way. E.g. leornung "learning", rǣding "reading", cyping "marketing".

NB. In OE certain Independent words like hād, meaning "manner", "form", meaning "state", "degree"; dōm, meaning "judgment", "law"; ness, næs "promontary" [2, 707] and scipe coming from the verb "to create" was used even in OE as a suffix. Most of the derivatives were formed in OE by means of noun-stems, or Nº, the denominal nouns can be represented in the following way: Nºp. – nouns, denoting human beings, Nºcon. – denoting concrete things and Nºabs. – denoting abstract nouns. Thus, the derivative paradigm will be shown in Table 17.

Table 17. OE Substantivised Nouns

Np. (-ere, -ling, -ing, -en, -estre, -en¹, -incel, -en²) Nºp. Nabs. ( -dōm, -hād, -scipe, -ness, -rǣden ) Nºcon Nºobj. Nobj. (-el, -er, -ing, -en³, -full, -incel) Nabs. (-dōm, -hād, -scipe;-ness, -rǣden) Np. (-ere, -ing, -ling; -estre, -en¹) Nºabs.

Nabs. (-dōm, -hād, -scipe;-ness, -rǣden)

Nº 

33  

NB. 1. It is important to say that the majority of words were derived by

concrete noun-stems, Nºcon., and the most active in the production of Nºcon. were masculine nouns, -a-stems, then neuter and feminine noun-stems, noun-stems of strong declension were more active in forming denominal nouns, than those of the weak declension.

2. Adjective-forming suffixes were used to form adjectives both from nouns and adjectives, sometimes from verbs and adverbs.

Some independent words like ful "full", leās "devoid of" and līc "body" used to become suffixes in the OE period.

Most of the adjectives were formed by means of the following suffixes: -līc, -leās, -ig, -en, -ful, -iht(e), -fæst, -bære, -ed, -isc, -cund. Less productive were 5 suffixes: -sum, -ern, -el, -weard, -wende. Another derivative paradigm will show us how active the noun-stems of simple morphological structure were in the production of adjectives. 

Table 18. OE Substantivised Adjectives

Nºp.— Aden. (-līc, -leas, -en, -isc, -cund, -ig, -bære, -ful) Nºcon. Nºobj. — Aden. (-en, -līc, -ig, -iht, -leas, -ed, -fæst, -bære, -ful,

Nº -isc, -el, -ern, -weard) Nºabs. ———— Aden. (-līc, -leas, -ig, -ful, -fæst, -bære, -sum, -wend)

NB. Denominal adjectives were generally formed by Nº concrete than by Nºabs. These tables will help you analyze the derivatives in our texts. E.g. luflīc "lovely", freōndlīc "friendly", ʒodcund "divine", woruldcund "earthly", ʒesǣlig "happy", englisc "English", sarlīc "sorrowful".

Verb-forming suffixes are not very numerous: -sian, -læcan, -ettan, or better to say, by means of secondary

suffixes: -r, -l, -s, -n, -ett plus the ending of the infinitive –an, -ian. E.g. curm "noise" curman "to make noise", nest "nest" nestlian

"to make a nest", mist "mist" mistrian "to cover with mist", "food" metsian "to feed", lāð "loath" lāðettan "to hate", etc. 

34  

Most denominal verbs were formed according to the model of the verbs of Class 2. In our texts we may analyze the following verbs:

hātan "to call", "to order", grētan "to greet", cŷðan "to know", cumin "to come", wæron "were", is ymbfangen "is surrounded", was ʒetimbred "was built", sceolde winnan "should win", overwunnen hæfde "had won", fōr "went", awendan "to turn", "to translate", unlīcð "opens", becuman "reach", ferdon "went, carried" [7, 5].

Table 19. OE Substantivised Verbs

VI, VI‾ⁿ, VI‾ett

Nºp. – V den. VII, VIIⁿ Nºcon. VI, VI‾

ett

Nº Nºobj. – V den. VII, VII‾ⁿ, VII‾

r, VIIl, VII‾

s

VI, VI‾ⁿ, VI‾

ett

Nºab. – V den VII, VII‾ⁿ, VII‾

r, VIIl, VII‾

s

Table 20. Substantivised Adverbs

Nºp. – D den. (-lice, -inga, -er) Nºcon. Nºobj. – D den. (-linga, -en, -er, -weard) Nº Nºab. – D den. (-līce, -inga)  

Word-composition was extremely productive in OE, where it gave birth to a large number of nouns, adjectives and verbs. Compound nouns were generally formed of two nouns.

E.g. folcstede "people's place", westhealfe "western part", garsecge "ocean", Romeburg "Rome", burgware "citizens", stæfcræf "Grammar", lifʒedāl "fortune". Compound adjectives were generally formed of a noun + an adjective or vice versa, 2 adjectives, sometimes as the 1st word was in the Genitive case. E.g. Oxenaford "ford of oxen".

35  

UNIT IV. SYNTAX

Introduction

As far as syntax of Old English is concerned, even Otto Jespersen, the well-known author of "Growth and structure of the English language", noticed that "our want of adequate early texts in Scandinavia as well as in North England makes it impossible for us to state anything very definite; but the nature of those loans which we are able to verify, warrants the conclusions that the intimate fusion of the two languages must certainly have Influenced syntactical relations, and when we find in later times numerous striking correspondences between English and Danish, it seems probable that some of them date from the Viking settlements." [8] Syntax has been described as the study of "the traffic rules of language". If this is so, you are offered here only a simplified Anglo-Saxon highway code, designed to deal with constructions likely to worry the beginner. OE syntax is recognizably English; in some passages the word-order at least is almost without exception that of ME.

Another source of difficulty becomes apparent from a study of the major differences between OE and ME. It is sometimes said that OE is the period of full inflexions and ME is the period of leveled inflexions (all with the vowel e).

E.g. -e, -es, -en, as opposed to the endings of OE with their different vowels, ME depends on word-order and prepositions to make distinctions which in an inflected language are made by the case endings.

Word-order

As in ME, the word order S–V in OE can occur in principal and subordinate clauses.

E.g. he hæfde an swiþe ænlic wif "he had a most excellent wife" and þe getimbrode his hus ofer sand "who built his house on sand". The order S–V is most common in subordinate clauses.

E.g. se micla here, ϸe we gefyrn ymbe spræ "the great army which we spoke about" before and after ond "and" and ac "but".

E.g. Ac ic þa sona eft me selfum andwyrde "But again I immediately answered myself".

36  

E.g. Stephanus soþlice gebigedum cneowum Drihten bæd…"Stephen however on bended knees besought the Lord…".

Hence the order S–V. does not certify that a clause is subordinate. With this order, the verb need not have final position, but may be followed by an adverbial extension.

E.g. ær he acenned wæs of Marian…" before He was born of Mary".

Correlation

The third thing which makes us feel that OE is a foreign language is its marked fondness of correlation. But it later becomes a very important stylistic device which such an outstanding writer as Ælfric used widely. Consider the following sentence from his "Homely on the Passion of St.Stephen": þider đe Stephanus forestop, mid Saules stanum oftorfod, folgode Paulus, gefultumod þurh Stephanes gebedu "Where Stephen went in front, stoned by the stones of Saul, there Paul followed, helped by the prayers of Stephen".

"It is certain beyond all doubt that Ælfric was influenced by Latin prose style; I cannot see how it could have been otherwise. But is it equally important to realize that this powerful and moving sentence-parallel yet doubly chiastic and with the effective contrast between Saul and Paul – contains nothing which is not good Old English"[8].

It follows therefore that we must avoid the tendency to rush around slapping the label "Latinism" on anything from our formed in advance notions of the norms of ordinary speech.

Definite Adjective Clauses

Definite adjective clauses are those which refer to one particular antecedent. E.g. "This is the man who did it" as opposed to indefinite clauses whose antecedent is unspecified. E.g. "Whoever did it will be caught". As in Latin, relative pronoun agrees with its antecedent (expressed or implied) in number and gender, but takes its case from the adjective clauses. There are various ways of expressing it in OE.

1) The indeclinable particle þe is very common when the relative is the subject. E.g. Ic geseah þa englas þe eower gymdon "I say the angels who took care of you".

2) In these last two examples, however, the case of the relative

37  

pronoun is not immediately clear because þe is indeclinable. So the appropriate case of the third person pronoun was sometimes added. Thus there is no ambiguity in Eadig biđ se wer, þe his tohopa biđ to Drihtne "Blessed is the man whose hope is in the Lord".

3) The appropriate case of the demonstrative se, sēo, þæt is often used as a relative. E.g. se hearpere, đæs nama wæs Orfeus "the harper, whose name was Orpheus", eall þæt ic geman "all that I remember". Here there is no ambiguity about case and number, but we cannot always be sure whether the pronoun is demonstrative or relative.

4) But there is no ambiguity at all for us in sentences like þa com he on morgenne to þam tungerefan, se þe his ealdormon wæs "Then he came in the morning to the steward, who was his superior". This can be called the seþe relative (or the se þe relative: the elements are sometimes written together, sometimes separately, by the scribes).

5) In short, the OE relatives are the indeclinable particle þe, to which the personal pronoun can be added to remove ambiguities of case, and the demonstrative pronoun se, sēo, þæt in the case required by the adjective clauses, either alone or followed by the indeclinable particle þe to make clear that we have a relative and not a demonstrative pronoun.

Mood

The adjective clause usually has its verb in the indicative, even when it is in dependent speech. But the subjunctive may occur in the following situations:

1) When the principal clause contains an imperative or a subjunctive expressing a wish.

E.g. Matthew 5:42 syle þam đe þe bidde "give to him that asketh thee". However, the indicative is found in such circumstances:

E.g. Matthew 19:21 becyp eall þæt þu ahst Authrized Version "sell that thou hast" shows that the moon varies with the speaker’s attitude and not with any automatic "iaw of symmetry".

In the first example, there is uncertainty because the asker is as yet unknown and indeed may not exist, that’s why we could translate "Give to anyone who may ask".

2) When the principal clause contains a negative. But this again is no automatic rule. The subjective is found only when the content of the adjective clause is put forward as unreal.

3) When the principal clause contains a rhetorical question.

38  

E.g. Hwa is on eorđan nu unlærdra þe ne wundrige wolcna færeldes…? "Who is there in earth among the unlearned who does not wonder at the motion of the clouds…?"

The answer demanded is, of course, "No-one" 4) When a limiting adjective clause has as antecedent a genitive

depending on a superlative, e.g. Niwe flodas Noe oferlađ … þone deopestan drencefloda þara đe gewurde on woruldrice. Here the poet is saying that Noah "sailed over the deepest deluge that

could ever be or have been".

Adverb Clauses

The conventional classification will serve us here. It distinguishes eight types: place, time, purpose, result, cause, comparison, concession and condition. On the whole, you will find that these clauses are fundamentally very similar to their counterparts in MnE.

In OE, we can find comparable examples to these: E.g. Hæfde se cyning his fierd jn tu tonumen,swa þæt hie wæron

simle healfe æt ham, healfe ute "The king had divided his army into two,so that at any one time half were at home, half in the field".

E.g. Ic wat þæt nan nis þæs welig þæt he sumes eacan ne þyrfe "I know that there is no man so wealthy that he does not need more of something".

E.g. And ichyne nyste, as ic com and fullode on wætere, to þam þæt he wære geswutelod on Israhela folce "And I knew him not, but I came and baptized (him) in water, to the end that he might be manifested to the people of Israel".

Clauses of Place

The main conjunctions are: 1. þær "where", þider "whither", þanon "whence". These may introduce definite and indefinite clauses. 2. swæ hwær swæ "wherever", hwider swæ "wherever, whithersoever".

39  

The prevailing mood is the indicative. ga þær he wille, the subjunctive reflects the subjunctive in the

principal clause, the indefinites of the abverb clause, and probably also the fact that the whole expression means "no matter where he goes" and therefore has a concessive force.

Clauses of Time

1. Conjunctions whose primary meaning is "when" or "while" are: þonne, midþæm (þe), þæ hwile (þe), þenden, swæ lange swæ. 2. Conjunctions whose primary meaning is "after" are: siđđan, þææs þe. Æfter is not used alone as a conjunctions in OE. 3. ær "Before" is rendered by either alone or introducing a

prepositional formula. 4. Conjunctions whose primary meaning is "until" are: ođ, ođđe, ođ đæt and hwonne. All these conjunctions usually take the indicative with the exception

of ær which prefers the subjunctive and hwonne which always seems to take the subjunctive.

Clauses of Purpose and Result

Since a result is often a fulfilled purpose and purpose yet-to-be-completed result, these two have much in common. Both can be introduced by the following conjunctions: þæt, þætte, swæ þæt, and swæ…þæt, though the last two are rare in purpose clauses: þæs…þæt and tō þæs…þæt occasionally introduce result clauses more commonly in the poetry than in the prose. læs (e) "lest" is found only in negative clauses of purpose.It is generally agreed that purpose clauses take the subjunctive, result clauses – the indicative. This proposition cannot be proved, for it is only by classifying all clauses with the subjunctive as purpose and all clauses with the indicative as result that we can deduce the rule.

This is clearly a circular argument, but it seems likely enough when we think of Modern English usage.

40  

Causal Clauses

The main causal conjunctions are the for formulae, nù, and þæs (þe), þe and þe, are sometimes found.When the true cause is given, the causal clauses has an indicative verb. The subjunctive is regularly used for a rejected reason.

E.g. Ne cwæþ he þæt na for þon þe him wære anig gemynd þearfendra manna, ah he wæs gitsere…"He said that, not because he cared at all about needy men, but because he was a miser…"

Clauses of Comparison

I. Clauses of comparison, involving "that", are expressed in OE by þonne or occasionally and only after a negative principal clause there is a strong tendency for the þonne clause to have the subjunctive when the principal clause is positive. II. Comparisons involving "as" may be expressed by

1. swǣ "as" or swǣ …. swǣ "just as"; 2. swǣ … swǣ "so…as"; 3. swǣ + superlative; 4. swylce’ " as if"; 5. swylce…swǣ "such…as"; 6. þǣs (þe)

III. Clauses of comparison involving "the… the" are expressed by

þe…þe and the verbs are in the Indicative.

IV. Clauses of comparison, involving hypothesis, are expressed by swæ or swilce "as if" followed by the subjunctive. When the time reference is to the past, the preterite subjunctive is found in the "as if" clause. The preterit subjunctive is not used of the present as it is on OE type or MnE "He runs as if he were tired".

The Modern English equivalent of the OE idiom would be "He runs as if he be tired".

41  

UNIT V. OLD ENGLISH TEXTS

Let’s try to analyze some Old English texts of prose and poetry, using the glossary, given by our great professors, as well as the manuals, written by Clark J. W. and Mitchell Bruce plus our key answers to all the 25 exercises of the five texts recorded on CD-RW.

So our aim is to teach our students to analyze some texts both in Old English and Early Modern English by doing exercises on pronunciation, spelling and Grammar, using the Glossary, as well as the textbooks [5, 6, 10, 13].

It is easy to forget or even not to realize that language is originally and primarily speech, not writing: that it is something heard before it is something seen. And even when it becomes visible i.e. when it gets written, the tendency of speech to change, and the contrary tendency of writing (i.e., chiefly spelling) not to change always produce an increasing lack of correspondence between sound and symbol. Generally speaking, the longer a language has been written, the less exactly…the spelling reflects the speech; and the earlier the record we are trying to read, the more likely we are to misinterpret what the spelling was meant to tell us of the sounds [5, 39].

Word Stress

The stress usually falls on the first syllable, as in MnE, e.g. morgen "morning". The prefix Ʒe- is always unaccented; e.g. Ʒetimbred. Two main difficulties occur:

1. Prepositional prefixes, e.g. for-, ofer-, can be either accented (usually in nouns or adjectives, e.g. forwyrd "ruin") or unaccented (usually in verbs, e.g. forwiernan ‘refuse’).

2. Compound words in which both elements retain their full meaning, e.g. sæ-weall "sea-wall", have a secondary stress on the root syllable of the second element. [Mitchel Bruce, 10] 

42  

OLD ENGLISH TEXTS WITH KEYS

Text 1. The Description of Britain

Brittannia, þæt īgland, hit is norþeāstlang; and hīt is ēahta hund mīla lang, and twā hund mīla brād. Thōnne is be sūðan him, on oðre heālfe þæs sæs earmes is Gallia Bellica; and on westheālfe, on oðre heālfe þæs sǣs earmes, is Ibernia, þæt īgland; and on norþheālfe Orcadus, þæt igland, Igbernia, þæt we Scota land hātaþ, hīt is on ælce heālfe ymbfangen mid gārsecge…

Early Modern English Variant Britain, that island, extends a long way north-east; it is 800 miles long and 200 miles broad. Then on south of it on the other side of the arm of the sea is Gallia Bellica, and on the west part of the other side of the sea is the island Hibernia; and on the north part near the Orkney islands, Igbernia, which we called Scotland; it is on every side surrounded by the ocean…

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Analyze the compound nouns and translate them into Russian. 1. northēastlang (situated to the norþ-east) of Greece, 2. western part, 3. northern part.

Ex. 2. Spell the following Old English words in Modern English: īgland ēahta mīl twā brād oðre

Ex. 3. Derive all the 3 degrees of comparison of the following Old English adjectives and give their ModE equivalents: lang brād mycel lytel

43  

Ex. 4. Answer the following Modern English questions in Old English.

1. Is Great Britain 800 miles long? 2. Where was Gallia Bellica situated? 3. What is washed by the ocean?

Ex. 5. Put down all the predicates from the text in Modern English.

Ex. 6. Transcribe the letters þ, ð and f in the following words: 1) norþ, þonne, sūðan, ōðre, norþheālfe, hātað. 2) heālfe, westheālfe, norðheālfe, ymbfangen.

Ex. 7. Try to learn the text by heart.

Text 2. Cura Pastoralis – Pastoral Care

Cura Pastoralis is a didactic treatise, written by Pope Gregory in the nineties of the VI-th century. The dialect is West Saxon.

… Ælfred cyning hāteð grētan Wærferð biscep his wordum luflīce ond freōndlīce; ond þe cӯðan hāte me com swīðe oft on gemynd, hwelce wiotan iu wæron giond Angelcynn, ǣgðer ge godcundra hāda ge woruldcundra, ond hū ʒesǣliglīca tīda þa wæron giond Angelcynn…

Early Modern English variant

King Alfred commands me (his secretary) to greet Bishop Wærferth with his words lovingly and with friendship and I let it be known to thee that it has very often come into my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both of sacred and secular orders; and how happy times there were then throughout England.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Underline the suffixes in the following words: cynning, luflīce, freōndlīce, ʒesǣliglica, godcund, worudcundra. Ex. 2. Find all the 1) nouns and 2) verbs in the text and analyse them.

44  

Ex. 3. Transcribe the following words, taking into accont the two variants of the pronunciation of: 1) the letters þ, ð 2) three variants of the letter g. 1) hāteð, Wærferð, thē, cӯðan, swīðe, þā; 2) gemynd, giond, ǣgðer, ge, godcundra, gesǣliglīca.

Ex. 4. Find the equivalents of Old English words in the Early

Modern English variant. .

Text 3. ÆLFRIC'S GRAMMAR

The Anglo-Saxon scholar Ælfric (955–1020) translated into English the book Ars Grammatica, written by Donatus Aurelius in Latin in the middle of the IV-th century. In his preface he underlines the importance of studying Grammar.

Ic Ælfric wolde þās lytlan bōc āwendan to englīscum gereorde of þām stæfcræfte, þe is gehāten Grammatica, syððan ic þā twā bēc āwende on hundeahtatigum spellum, forðan þē stæfcræft is sēō cæg, þe þæra bōca andgit unlīcð; And ic þōhte, þæt þeos bēc mīhte fremjan jungum cildum to anginne þæs cræftes, oððæt hī to māran andgyte becumon. [Ivanova I. P., Belyaeva T.M., Chakhoyan L.P.].

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Transcribe the following words: þas, þam, þē, þā, forðan, unlīcþ, þohte, þæt, þeos, oððat. (In the initial and final positions the letter þ is voiceless, but in the intervocal position it was and still is voiced: e.g. bother). Compare the following words in Modern English: 1) [ð] this – these, that – those, there, then, though, 2) [þ] theatre, thin, thanks, thick, thoroughfare. Ex. 2. Try to find: 1) two predicates – in the Past Simple, 2) one predicate – in the Present Simple, 3) two modal predicates,

45  

4) two compound nominal predicates. Ex. 3. Underline the suffixes and prefixes in the following words:

awendan, englīscum, gereorde, gehāten, awende, eahtatigum, unlīcþ, anginne, becumon, andgyte, andgit (in the last two words and – is not a prefix, it is a preposition, attached to the verb stem). Ex. 4. Find the Old English equivalents of the following Modern English expressions:

1. …would like to translate, 2. …is called, 3. …is the key, 4. …might help.

Ex. 5. Render the following Old English sentences into Modern English.

1. Ic wolde þas lytlan bōc awendan. 2. Ic þōhte, þæt þeos bōc mīhte fremjan jungum cildum to anginne þæs

cræftes. 3. Đas bōc is gehāten Grammatica.

Text 4. JULIUS CAESAR

Æfter þæm þe Romeburg getimbred wæs, Romane gesealdon Gaiuse Iuliuse seofon legan, to þōn þæt he sceolde fīf winter winnan on Gallie.

Æfter þæm þe hē hiē oferwunnen hæfde, he fōr on Bretanie, þæt īglond, and wið þa Brettas gefeaht, and gefliēmed wearð on þǣm londe þe mon hæt Centlond. Raðe þæs he gefeaht wið þa Brettas on Centlonde, and hi wurdon gefliēmede. Heore þ r i d d e gefeoht wæs neah þǣre īe þe mon hǣt Temes, neh þǣm forda þe mon hæt Velengaford. Æfter þǣm gefeohte him eode on hond se cyning and þa burgware, þe wæron in Cirenceastre, and siððan ealle þe on þǣm iglonde wæron.

EXERCISES

Ex. 1. Transcribe the new words according to the rules of pronunciation: 1) æfter, seofon, gefeoht, fif, Velengaford; 2) legan, burgware, Romeburg, Gallie, iglond, gefliemede, Velengaford

46  

Ex. 2. Underline the prefixes in the following words and render them into Modern English: 1. getimbred, 2. gesealdon, 3. overwunnen, 4. gefeoht, 5. gefliemed, 6. gefeoht, 7. gefliemede.

Ex. 3. Analyze the following compound nouns: Romeburg, Centlond, Welengaford.

Ex. 4. Answer the following questions in Old English. 1) How many legions did the Romans give Gaiuse Iuliuse? 2) Where did he go after conquering Gallie? 3) Where was their third fight?

Most students find it pretty easy to translate OE texts into Modern English, especially after reading the ENE variant, but the exercises on all the aspects of the language are difficult for them to do without using the "keys".

If Old English prose was undeveloped, the poetic literature was rich and characteristic, "ranging from fights with mythical monsters to religious poems" [Jespersen Otto, 8, 47]. That is why, all the students of the Linguistics Department should read and translate at least one passage from the oldest epic poem "Beowulf".

Text 5. BEOWULF

þa wæs on morgen mine gefrǣge, ymb þa gif-healle gūþ-rink monig: ferdon fōlc-togan feorran ond neāhan geond wīd-wēgas wundor sceāwian, lāðes lāstas. No his līf-gedal sarlic þūhte secga ǣnegum, þara þe tir-leāse trode sceāwode, hū he wērig-mōd on wēg þanon, nīða ofercumen on nicera mere, fǣge ond geflӯmed feorh-lāstas bǣr.

47  

An Early Modern English Variant Then in the morning as I have heard tell Around the gift-hall many a warrior: The nation's chieftane came, from far and near Over distant ways the wonder to behold, the traces of the foe: his life-divorce did not seem painful to any warrior, Who the inglorious track beheld; How he in the spirit weary away thence In hostilities overcame in the nicker's mere, death-doomed and put to flight, death-traces bare…

EXERCISES Ex. 1. Please find the words that illustrate alliteration.

1. Ferdon fōlc-togan feorran…fǣge ond gef lӯmed feorh... 2. wīd-wēgas wundow sceāwian… 3. lāðes lāstas... 4. nīða overcumen on nicere mere... Ex. 2. Analyze the following Old English compound words:

1. gif-healle, 2. guþ-rinc, 3. folc-togan, 4. wid-wegas, 5. lif-gedal, 6. tir-leas, 7. werig-mod, 8. feorh-lastas. Ex. 3. Find the Past Simple of the given verb-stems: beran, cuman, ferian, sceawian, þincan.

48  

Ex. 4. Give the equivalents of the Old English word-combinations: 1. …was told, 2. …to show wonder, 3. …rather tired, 4. …inglorious tracks, 5. …to overcome the evil, 6. …doomed and running. Ex. 5. Read the following Early New English variant of the translation and compare the predicates in EME and OE texts: heard, came, did not seem painful, beheld, overcame, put to flight, bare.

All the students are to analyze the three ways of storing the "resources" [Jespersen, 8, 88] of the language:

1) forming of new words from the foreign loans by means of native affixes, 2) modifying the sense of existing English words 3) framing new words from native stems.

It seems logical that before analyzing this or that text, professors of

History of English should point out all the possible errors straight away. The result of this work is to find out the most difficult problems which are to be discussed at the next seminar.

Let’s get rid of our "inferiority complex of never doing quite enough" and enjoy studying the English language, which has undergone a lot of changes through the centuries.

We did and do appreciate our good friends’ support (books,

dictionaries, especially “An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary” by Bosworth-Toller as well as recordings of useful dialogues for our students and poems) sent to us by Dr. John G.F.& Ruth Hind (from Cambridge & Leeds), Ann W. Ritter (MO), & Scott Justesen (Utah) Pamela McDonald (CT) & Steve

49  

Shelton (Alabama), by Michael Read, a good specialist of dialects(TX), Michael F. Young & Cathie(VA), by our professor of American English – Marjorie Osborne Nicol ( Canada), by our great friends, famous designers from Oklahoma – Jason G.& Edwina Johnston and by the outstanding poet Fred D. & Cynthia MacLeod ,the Teacher of the Year from Portland, Oregon , by John Smuts( from Brighton) and Helen Warhurst from Nottingham.

We are hoping that all the texts and the exercises with our "keys" will

help students take their confidence in studying English in the next level.

50  

VI. SUPPLEMENTARY READING Task one: Read and translate the following texts in EModE, paying attention to all the predicates.

Text 1. OHTHERE’S ACCOUNT OF HIS FIRST VOYAGE

Ohthere told his king Arthur that he dwelt northmost of all Northmen. He said that he dwelt northward on the land by the West sea. He said however that the land is very long thence to the north; but it is wast (dessert) save that in a few places here & there Finns reside for hunting in winter & in summer for fishing in the sea.

He said that on a certain time he wished to find out how far the land lay right north; or whether any man dwelt to the north of the waste.

Then he went right north near the land; he left all the way, the waste land on the right and the wide sea on the left for three days.

Then was he as far north as Whale hunters ever go. He then went yet right north, as far as he could sail in the next three days. Then the land bent there right east, or the sea in on the land, he knew not whether; but he knew that he there waited for a western wind, or a little to the north, and sailed thence east near the land as far as he could sail in four days.Then he must wait there for a right north wind because the land bent there right south, or the sea in on the land, he knew not whether. Then he sailed thence, right south, near the land, as far as he could sail in five days. There lay then a great river up into the land; they turned up into the river, because they durst not sail beyond it, on account of hostility; for the land was all inhabited on the other side of the river. He had not before met with any inhabited land, since he came from his own home. The Biarmians told him many stories both about their own country and about the countries, which were around them, but he knew not what was true, because he did not see it himself. The Finns and the Biarmians, as it seemed to him, spoke nearly the same language. He chiefly went thither, in addition to the seeing of the country, on account of the horse-whales (walruses), because they have very good bone in their teeth; of these teeth they brought some to the king; and their hides.

51  

Text 2. OHTHERE’S ACCOUNT OF HIS FIRST VOYAGE

Ohthere told his lord, King Alfred, that he lived the furthest north of all Norwegians. He said that he lived in the north of Norway on the coast of the Atlantic. He also said that the land extends very far north beyond that point, but it is all uninhabited except for a few places, here and there, where the Finns have their camps, hunting in winter, and in summer fishing in the sea. He told how he once wished to find out how far the land extended due north, or whether anyone lived to the north of the unpopulated area. He went due north along the coast, keeping the uninhabited land to starboard and open sea to port continuously for three days. He was then as far north as far as he could reach in the second three days.

He was then as far north as the whale hunters go at their furthest. He then continued due north as far as he could reach in the second three days. There the land turned due east, or the sea penetrated the land he did not know which, but he knew that he waited there for a north-west wind, and then sailed east along the coast as far as he could sail in four days. There he had to wait for a due northern wind, because there wind turned due south, or the sea penetrated the land he did not know which.

Then from there he sailed due south along the coast as far as he could sail in five days. A great river went up into the land there. They turned up into the river, not daring to sail beyond it without permission, since the land on the far side of the river was fully settled. He had not previously come across any settled district since he left his own home.The Beormas told him many stories both about their own country and about the lands which surrounded them, but he did not know how much of it was true, because he had not seen it f or himself. It seemed to him that the Finnas and the Beormas spoke almost the same language. His main reason for going there apart from exploring the land, was for the walruses, because they have very fine ivory in their tusks they brought some of these rusks to the king and their hides.

52  

Text 3. "ALFRED: PREFACE TO GREGORY'S PASTORAL CARE"

King Arthur bids great bishop Waerferth with his words lovingly and with friendship; and "I let it be known to thee that it has come into my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both of sacred and secular orders; and how happy times there were then throughout England and how the kings who had power over the nation in those days, obeyed God and his ministers; and they preserved peace, morality, and order at home, at the same time enlarged their territory abroad; and how they prospered both with war and with wisdom; and also the sacred orders how zealous they were both in teaching and learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and how foreigners came to this land in search of wisdom and instruction, and how we should now have to get them from abroad if we were to have them.

So general was its decay in England that they were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English, or translate a letter from Latin into English; and I belIeve that they were not many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them that I can not remember a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne. Thanks be to God Almighty that we have any teachers among us now. And therefore I command you to do, as I belIeve thou art willing to disengage thyself from worldly matters as often as thou canst, that thou mayest apply the wisdom which God has given thee wherever thou canst.Consider, what punishments would come upon us on account of this world, if we neither loved it ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain it: we should love the name only of Christian and very few of the virtues.

When I considered all this, I remembered also how I saw, before it had been all ravaged and burnt (burned), how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a great multitude, but they had very little knowledge of the books, for they could not understand anything of them, because they were not written in their own language. As if they had said: "Our forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their tracks, but we cannot folow them, and therefore we have lost both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts after their example".

53  

When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly learnt all the books, did not wish to translate them into their own language. But again I soon answered myself and said: "They did not think, that men would ever be so careless, and that learning would so decay; through that desire they obtained from it, and they wished that the wisdom in this land might increase with our knowledge of languages". Then I remembered how law was first known in Hebrew, and again, when the Greeks had learnt it, they translated the whole of it into their language, and all other books besides. And again, the Romans, when they had learnt it, they translated the whole of it through learned interpreters into their own language. And also all other Christian nations translated a part of them into their own language. Therefore it seems better to me, if you think so, for us also to translate some books, which are most needful for all men to know, into the language we can all understand, and for you to do as we very easily can if we have tranquility enough, that is that all youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until that they are well able to read English writing: and let those be afterwards taught more in the Latin language who are to continue learning and be promoted to a higher rank.

When I remembered how the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin – "Pastoralis", and in English – "Shepherd’s Book", sometimes word by word and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from Plegmund, my arbishop and Asser, my bishop, and Grimbold, my mass-priest, and John, my mass-priest.

...And when I had learned it, as I could best understand it, and as I could most clearly interprete it into English, and I will send a copy to every bishopric in my kingdom, and on each there is a clasp worthy of 50 mancuses. And I command in God's name that no man cantake the clasp from the book, or the book from the minster. It is certain how long there may be such learned bishops as now, thanks be to God, there are nearly everywhere. Therefore I wish them always to remain in their place, unless the bishop wish to take them with him, or they be lent out anywhere, or any one make a copy from the books.[6]

54  

Task two: Render the text in EmodE into Modern English (an advanced level: the predicates are not underlined).

Text 4. HOW HROTGAR & BEOWULF WENT TO THE MERE IN WHICH THE MONSTER DWELT

1385. Beowulf spake, the son of Ecgtheow, "Sorrow not, man of wise mind! It is better one should avenge his friend than mourn for him long. Each of us must abide life's end in this world. Let him that may, win fame over death that shall be best thereafter for a warrior, when life is no more". 1390. "Arise, warden of the realm, let us go quickly to look upon the track of Grendel fellow. I promise thee, he shall not flee to shelter, not in earth's bosom or mountain forest, or ocean's bed, where he will". 1395. For this day have patience in thine every woe, as "I ween thou wilt". Then the old man sprang up and gave thanks to god, the mighty lord, for that the hero had spoken. A horse then, a steed with plaited mane, was bridled for Hrothgar. 1400. The wise king went in state, with him fared forth a foot-band of shield-bearers. The tracks were plain to see far along the forest- ways, the path she hath taken across the levels, straight went she over the murky moor. 1405. Bare away, with his soul gone from him, the best of Hrothgar's kindred that for him governed the homestead. Then over the steep stone-fells and narrow tracks, 1410 in close by paths an unknown way by beetling cliffs and many a nicker's lair, went the son of Athelings. With a few wise-minded men, he went before to see the place, till he found suddenly the mountain trees, the joyless wood leaning over the hoar rock. 1415. The water stood beneath, blood-stained and troubled. It was for all the Danes, for the friends of the Scyldings, a sorrow of soul to bear, grief to many a thane and every earl, when they came upon the head of Abschere on the sea-cliff.

55  

1420. The flood boiled, as the people gazed upon it, with blood and hot gore. The horn at times sang its stirring lay of battle. All the band sat them down. 1425. They saw in the water many of the dragon kind, strange sea-drakes, making trial of the surge, likewise on the jutting rocks the nickers lying, that oft at hour of dawn make foray grief-giving. 1430. on the sail-road and dragons and wild beasts beside. In bitter wrath and swollen with fury, these hasted away; they heard the call , the war horn singing. The prince of the gates severed the life from one with a bow,

1435. as it strove with the sea, so that the stout battle-shaft went home to its life. Slower was it then in swimming the deep, seeing death had gripped it… 1440 Then quickly was it hemmed in closely in the waves with boar-spears keen-barbed, assailed with shrewd thrusts and drawn on the headland the wondrous wave-lifter. The men gazed on the fearsome unfriendly thing. 1445. Then Beowulf put on him his earl's armor; in no wise had he misgivings for his life. His war-burnic hand-woven, broad and cunningly adorned, that could well shield his body, so battle-grip might not harm his breast or the foe's shrewd clasp his life, must needs make trial of the deeps. But his head the white helmet guarded, that must mingle with the sea-depths, 1450. seek, the coil of the surges, well-light as it was with treasure work, bound with lordly chains as the weapon- smith wrought it in far-off days, decked it with wonders, set it with swine-shapes, that thereafter brand nor-battle blade might bide it.

56  

Task three: Translate this passage in EModE into Russian.

HOW BEOWULF SOUGHT OUT AND FOUGHT WITH THE MONSTER

1475 Beowulf spake, the son of Ecgtheow: "Keep thou in mind, great son of Healfdene, wise prince, freehanded friend of men, now I am ready for my venture, that of which we already have spoken, that, should I for thy need be shorn of life, thou wouldst ever be to me, gone hence away, in the place of a father. Be thou a guardian to my thanes, my close comrades, if the strife take me likewise send the treasures thou gavest me, dear Hrothgar, to Hydelac, 1485 then may the lord of the Geats, the son of Hrethel know by the gold and see, when he looketh on the treasure, that I found a giver of rings goodly in manly virtues, had joy of him whilst I might. And do thou let Hunferth, warrior famed afar, have his precious war-sword with its tough edge, handed down from the old. 1490 I shall win fame for myself with Hrunting or death shall take me". After these words, the prince of the Weder- Geats hasted in his valor, would in no coil of the waters, laid hold of the warrior. 1495 it was a day's while ere he might see the bottom level. Soon she, that ravenous for food, grim and greedy, had held for half a hundred winters the stretches of the flood, found that some one of men was there from above searching out the home of beings, not man-like. 1500 She laid hold then upon him, seized him in her terrible claws. His hale body she hurt not thereby; his mail without shielded him round, so she might not, with her loathy fingers, reach through his war-coat, the linked battle-shark. The sea-wolf, when she came to the bottom, bare him then, the ring-giving prince, to her home. 1505 in such wise he might not, brave as he was, wield his weapons, though, because of it, many strange beings pressed him close in the deep, many a sea beast with its fighting tuskes brake his battle-shark, harried their troubler.

57  

1510 Then the earl was aware he was in, one knows not, fearsome hall, where no water might harm him aught or the quick grip of theflood touch him, because of the light of fire, a flashing flare brightly shining.

1515 The worthy one looked then on the she-wolf of the sea – bottom, the mighty water-wife. The full strength of onset he gave with his battle axe, his hand held not back from the stroke so that on her head the ring-decked blade sang out its greedy war song.

1520 The foe found then ,that the battle – glimmer should not bite, or harm her life, for its edge betrayed the prince in his need. Erstwhile had it gone through many a close encounter, cloven oft the helm and battle-mail of the doomed,

1525 for the first time then did the dear treasure lay down its glory. Still was the kinsman of Hygelac, mindful of proud deeds, of one thought, and in no wise lost courage.

1530 In wrath the warrior threw aside the chased sword, strong and steel-edged, set with jewels, that it lay on the earth; he trusted to his strength, to the might of his hand grip. So must a man do when he thinketh to reach in battle enduring fame, he careth naught for his life...

1535 Then the lord of the War-Geats he shrank not at all from the strife-seized Grendel's mother in battle, he hurled his life's foe, for that he was swollen with wrath, so she fell to the ground.

1540 Quickly she paid him back, his dues to his hand in savage clinching, and laid hold upon him. Spent in spirit, the fighter on foot, strongest of warriors tripped, so he fell. Then she threw herself on the stranger in her hall, and drew her dagger broad and bright-edged,

1545 She thought to avenge her son, her only child. His woven breast- mail lay on his shoulder; it shielded his life, withstood the in-thrust of point and blade. Then had the son of Ecgtheow, foremost fighter of the Geats,

1550 gone to his death beneath the broad deeps, had not his battle -burn, the stout battle-mesh, given him help & Holy God, the Wise God Lord, Ruler of the Heavens, held sway over his victory in battle, awarded it aright. Readily thereafter he found his feet". [12] 

58  

Unit VII. Отрывок из поэмы «БЕОВУЛЬФ»

Один корабль вперёд пошёл, Под ним всплеснули волны. И встал он рядом со скалой, Людьми в доспехах полный. Взметнул поток песок с волной, Залив был неспокоен: На палубе лежат горой Доспехи, что для боя. Корабль, загруженный добром, Толкнули прочь мужчины: В поход, желаемый давно, Он ветром шёл гонимый. Он плыл по пляшущим волнам, Подобный быстрой птице. Крутилась пена по бортам, Как чаек вереница. Был нос изогнут у ладьи Как шея у орла, Достигли воины земли Лишь только ночь прошла. Сквозь мрак белел крутой утёс, За ним росла гора. Корабль сюда их быстро нёс Сегодня и вчера.

Но дик был берег и суров: Скалистая земля. И лишь тропинка всех цветов Виднелась с корабля. Куда она их приведёт, Не знал из них никто. Кого судьба какая ждёт? Кого убьют? За что? Быть может, где-то есть дракон Палач из палачей, Но край утёса вдруг исчез, Тропинкой оттеснён. Открылся взору копий лес И листопад знамён. И был ужасен шлема вид, Кровав узор щита. То меч на солнце заблестит, И сталь его чиста. Устали воины в пути, Доспехи нелегки. Пришлось немало им пройти, Не сняв щиты с руки.

59  

И вот давно желанный зал, Дощатые скамьи. И с облегченьем воин клал На них щиты свои. Тяжёлый груз гремящих лат Нашёл себе приют: Он у стены улёгся в ряд, И копья встали тут. Их Бог войны с собой роднил, Вручая им булат. Бойцам железным Вотан был Родной отец и брат. И воевода стал седой, Отбросил прядь волос, Окинув взглядом копий строй, Он громко произнёс: «Я много видел удальцов Из чужеземных стран, Со всей земли, со всех концов, Любивших океан.

Но ваши, витязи, щиты Не ведомы всем нам. Где вашей родины черты? Как шли вы по волнам? Я знаю, доблестным мужам Отчизна дорога. Люблю я родину и сам, Я – Хротгаров слуга! Что вы решили здесь искать, Пожалуй, понял я С мечом в руке вы шли спасать Владыку короля». «Тяжелый холод золотых, Иль сладость славы строк, Не купят спутников моих, Не свалят храбрость с ног! Коль Хигелака смелый сын Желает встретить нас, То мы приветствием свои Почтим его сейчас.

We are thankful to Dr. R.V. Reznik, T.A. Sorokina and I.V.Reznik for their great textbook on History of English.

60  

Dear Students & Postgraduates! Now enjoy reading the dialogue between Olivia and Viola from "The Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare (Olivia -S.Sh.Nurulova, PhD, a former winner of the English Olympiad in Ufa, 1982, Viola -T.G.Pyatyshina PhD.):

Viola: Most sweet Lady… Olivia: A comfortable doctrine & much may be said of it. Where lies your text? Viola: In Orsino’s bosom. Olivia: In his bosom…In what chapter of his bosom? Viola: To answer by the method…In the first of his heart. Olivia: Oh, I’ve read it. It’s heresy. Have you no more to say? Viola: Good Madam, let me see your face. Olivia: Have you any commission from your Lord to negotiate with my face?

But we will draw the curtain & show you the picture. Now, look. Is it not well done?

Viola: Excellently done, if GOD did all. Olivia: Twill endure wind and weather! Viola: Now I see You what you are. You ARE too proud!... Olivia: Your Lord does know my mind: I cannot love him… Viola: If I did love you in my master’s flame with such a suffering, such a deadly

life , I in your denial I would find no sense! I wouldn’t understand it! Olivia: Why, what would You? Viola: Make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the

house! Hallow your name to the reverberate hills and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out "Olivia". Oh, you shouldn’t rest between the elements of air & earth but you should pity me.

Olivia: You might do much! What is your parentage? Viola: Above my fortune, yet my state is well: I am a gentleman! Olivia: Now, go to your Lord & let him send no more, unless perchance You

come to me again: to tell me how he takes it. Spend this for me… Viola: I’m no fee-post , Lady. Keep your purse! …Oh, make his heart of stone,

that you shall love, and let your favor like my Master’s be placed in contempt! Fare thee well, Fair Cruelty!

(By the way, I can’t help telling you how delighted we were to be introduced to some famous actors of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre who praised us, Russian amateur actors in the "Teacher’s house" in Leningrad after our performance. It was incredible! (we cherish their signatures of warm opinions, particularly that of Diana Rigg! And we did enjoy their "King Lear" & "Comedy of Errors").

61  

UNIT VIII. Comparison of Old English words with Modern English words and their Russian translation.

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

Ōhthēre

sæde

his

hlāforde

Ælfrēde

cyninʒe

Þæt

hē

eal

Norðmonna

norÞmest

būde

cwæð

Þæt

on

Þæm

lande

norÞweardum

wiÞ

Þā

Westsǣ

Þēah

īe

swīÞe

lanʒ

Ohthere (name)

said

(to) his

lord

Alfred

the King

that

he

all

Northmen

to the north

lived (or had lived)

said

that

on

the

land

to the North

of

that (the)

Atlantic Ocean

also

river

very

long

Ohthere (name)

сказал

его

хозяин

Альфред

король

что, то

он

все

живущие на севере

к северу

жили

сказал

что

на

та

земля

к северу

из, от

тот, та

Атлантический океан

также

река

очень

длинный

62  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

norī

Þonan

ac

hit

is

eal

wēste

būton

fēawum

stōwum

styccemōlum

wīciað

Finnas

on

huntoðe

wintra

and

sumera

fiscaÞe

be

Þære

sæ

æt

sumun

cirre

wolde

fandian

northern

from there

but

it

is

all

uninhabited (waste)

but

few

places

here and there

live

(the) Finns

on/by

hunting

winter

and

summer

fishing

by/from

that

sea

at/for

some

time

would/wished

to explore

северный

оттуда

но

это

есть

всё

незаселенный

но

мало

места

там и здесь

живут

Финны

на, посредством

охота

зима

и

лето

рыбная ловля

у, около

тот, та

море

в

некоторый

время

хотели, желали

исследовать

63  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

hū

norÞryhte

læʒe

oÞÞe

hwæðer

æniʒ mon

Þæm

Þā

fōr

be

lēt

him

ealne weʒ stēor–bord

wīd–sæ

bæc–bord

Þrīe

daʒas

wæs

swā…swā

feor

hwælhuntan

firrest

faraÞ

Þa ʒiet

meahte

how

right (straight) to

lay

or

whether

any

man

(of) that

then

went/sailed

along

let

him

always

star– board

wide sea

backboard (port side)

three

days

was

(so) as…as

far

whalemen

farthest

go/sail

yet

could

как

напрямую

лежать, простираться

или

ли

любой

человек

того

тогда

отправились

вдоль

разрешили

ему

всегда

известный корабль

широкое море

со стороны порта

три

дня

было

так же, как и

далеко

моряки,рыбаки

самый дальний

уйти в плавание

еще

могли

64  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

Þæm

oÞrum

Þrīm

daʒum

ʒesiʒlan

bēaʒ ēastryhte

sēo

in

nysse

wisse

ðær

westanwindes

hwōn

norÞan

ēast

be

swā–swā

fēower

daʒum

sceolde

for - ðæm

sūÞryhte

sēo

īonan

fif

læʒ

those

other

three

days

(to) sail

curved (bowed)

to the east

that (the)

in

did not know

knew

there

wind from the west

a little

from the north

to the east

by/along

so…as

four

days

shoult (had to)

as

to the south

that

from there

five

lay(was)

те

другие

три

дня

проплыть

изогнутый,кривой

к востоку

те,тот

в

не знали

знали

там

ветер с запада

немного

с севера

на восток

вдоль

так же, как и

четыре

дня

пришлось

как

с юга

тот

оттуда

пять

было

65  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

ān

micel

ēa

up–in

cirdon

hīe

ne

dorston

forÞ

Þære

for

unfriÞe

wæs

eall

ōÞre

healfe

ne mētte

ær

nān

siÞÞan

from

his

āʒnum

hām

fela

spella

him

one

big

river

up in

turned

they

not

dared

forth (forward)

that

for (out of)

hostility

was

all

other

half

did not meet

till then

no (not one)

since

from

his

own

home

many

stories

him

один

большой

река

вверх по

повернули

они

не

решились

вперед

тот

из

враждебность

был

всё

другой

Половина

не встречалось

до тех пор

ни один

с тех пор

от

его

собственный

дом

много

истории

ему

66  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

sædon

Beormas

æʒÞer ʒe…ʒe

of

hiera

āʒnum

Þæm

ymb

hīe

ūtan

wæron

ac

nyste

hwæt

Þæs

sōÞes

wæs

for–Þæm

ʒeseah

spræcon

nēah

ān

ʒeÞēode

swīÞost

ðider

tō–ēacan

Þæs

said

Permians

either … or

of/about

their

own

those

about/around

them

on (from) the outside

were

but

did not know

what

that

truth

was

as

did (not) see

speak

nearly

one

language

mostly

there (to that place)

in addition (to)

that

рассказал

Пермы

или…

о

их

собственный

те

вокруг

их

извне

были

но

не знал

что

что

правда

был

как

не видел

говорить

почти

один

язык

почти

там

в дополнение

тот, что

67  

Old English  Modern English  Translation 

landes

scēawunʒe

for

Þæm

hors–hwælum

hīe

habbað

swīÞe

æpele

bān

hiora

tōÞum

Þā

tēð

brōhton

sume

Þæm

cyninʒe

hŷd 

land’s

survey/exploration

because of

those

walruses

they

have

very

excellent

bone

their

teeth

those

teeth

brought

some

(to) that

king

hide (skins) 

той земли

исследование

из-за

те

моржи

они

имеют

очень

отличный

кость

их

зубы

те

зубы

принесли

несколько

к тому

король

прятать 

68  

KEYS

Text 1. THE DESCRIPTION OF BRITAIN (s. p. 42)

Ex. 1. Norþ + east + lang west + healf norþ + healf

Ex. 2. island, eight, mile, two, broad, other. Ex. 3. lang – long – longer – the longest; brād – broad – broader – the broadest; mycel – much – more – the most; lytel – little – less – the least. Ex. 4.

1) Brittannia is ēahta hund mīla lang. 2) Gallia Bellica is be sūðan him. 3) Hit is ymbfangen mid garsecge

Ex. 5. 1) is lang "is long"; 2) is brād "is broad"; 3) is "is", 4) hātað "calls"; 5) is ymbfangen "is washed", surrounded. Ex.6.

1) norþ [þ ], þonne [þ ], suðan [ð], oðre [ð], norþhealfe [þ ], hātað [þ ].

2) hēalfe [ v ], westhēalfe [ v ], norðhēalfe [ v ], ymbfangen [f] .

69  

Text 2. CURA PASTORALIS – PASTORAL CARE (s. p. 43)

Ex. 1. –ing, ‐līce,‐lig, ‐līca, ‐cund, ‐cund. Ex. 2. 1) Ælfred, cynning, Wærferð, biscop, wordum, ʒemynd, wiotan, Angelcynn, hāda, tīda; 2) hāteð, grētan, cӯðan, com, wæron. Ex. 3.

1) [hateÞ], [werverÞ], [Þe], [ kŷðan], [swiðe], [Þa]. 2) [jemynd], [jiond], [æγðer], [je], [godkund], [γælig],[gretan].

Ex. 4. cynning "king", grētan "greet", biscop "bishop", wōrd "word", luflīc "lovely", freondlīc "friendly", mē "me", mynd "mind", wæron "were", hād "hood", tīda "tide".

Text 3. ÆLFRIC'S GRAMMAR (s. p. 44)

Ex. 1.

 [þas],  [þam], [ þē],  [þā],  [forðan],  [unlīkþ],  [þohte],  [þæt], [þeos],  [oððat].

Ex. 2. 1. a) Ic þā twā bēc awende,

b) Ic þōhte; 2. a) …þæra boca andgit unlīcþ,

3. a) Ic wolde awendan,

b) …boc mīhte fremjan; 4. a) … þe stæfcræft is sēō cæg, þe þæra boca andgit unlīcþ,

b) þe is gehāten… Ex. 3.

1) - līsc, -ig 2) a-, ge-, be-, un-, an-.

70  

Ex. 4. 1. wolde awendan, 2. is gehāten, 3. is sēō cæg, 4. mīhte fremjan. Ex. 5. 1. I would like to translate this little book. 2. I thought, that the book might help children understand… 3. This book is called Grammar.

Text 4. JULIUS CAESAR (s. p. 46) Ex.1.

1) [ f- v- f- f- f ]: [æfter], [seovon], [jefeoht], [fif], [ velengaford]. 2) [γ- g- g –g –g – j –g]: [leγan], [ burgware], romeburg], [ galie], [ iglond ], [ jeflimede], [ velengaford].

Ex. 2. ge- over : 1. “built”, 2. “sold”, 4. “put to flight”, 5. “ to fight”, 3. “won”, 6. “ fight”, 7.“cause to flee”.

Ex. 3. 1.The Burg of Rome; 2.The land of Cent; 3.The ford of Weleng. Ex.4. 1. Romane gesēaldon G.U. seofon lēgan. 2. He fōr on Bretanie, that īglond. 3. Heora þrīdde gefēoht wæs neah þære īe, þe mon hæt Temes, neh þæm forda, þe mon hæt Welengaford.

Text 5. BEOWULF (s. p. 47) Ex. 1.

 1.[f]

 2.[w]

 3.[l]

71  

 4.[n-m] 

Ex. 2.

1) – a hall where gifts were distributed 2) – a warrior 3) – the leader of the people 4) – wide ways, paths 5) – parting with life 6) – inglorious 7)  – sad 8) – steps taken to preserve one's life. 

Ex. 3. bær, com, ferdon, sceāwode, þūhte. Ex. 4. mīne gefrǣge, wundor sceāwian, wering-mōd, tir-leāses trode, nīða ofercumen, fǣge ond geflӯmed. Ex. 5.

ENE -------------------------------------------OE

have heard (hearsay [2, 393]) ʒefrǣge,

came (went [ 2, 282]) ferdon,

did not seem painful sarlic þūhte,

beheld (observe [2, 827]) trode sceāwode,

overcame ofercumen,

put to flight ( cause to flee [ 2,393]) ʒeflӯmed,

bare bǣr .

72  

CONCLUSION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Truly says the proverb old with the meaning vast: ''You won't be able to know the Future if you don't know the Past". This humble Handbook of Old English is intended to help students of the Linguistics Department and postgraduates studying History of English understand how the so-called ''Ugly Duckling'' (Old English) became "The Beautiful Swan" (Modern English).

The Booklet is based on thе information received at lectures and seminars on History of English, arranged by professors of Leningrad University Dr.I.P.Ivanova and Dr. T.M. Belyaeva, my great supervisor (1972-75) and owing to my best friends” books on History of English & the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by Joseph Bosworth-Toller, sent by Dr. John G.F. & Ruth Hind from Cambridge, and Leeds.

I can’t help recording my gratitude to our Beautiful Queen , our dear Tutor M.A. Kashcheeva, Phd, who taught us Good English after her coming back from London (in 1963). It was a great British English Epoch of 1962–1964 as we were taught by different Englishmen, good teachers from different parts of Great Britain: David Buckley from Oxford, John Hind from Cambridge & later on by Dr. Denis A.Ward, a great teacher of Phonetics from Edinburgh.

I am also thankful to my former top student Oleg A. Wahl, a great translator of Jim Rohn’s books on Business Philosophy, for his kind invitation to visit Jerusalem, a city of my dreams, where I did pray in ENE “Our Father” with American students Monica and Seon. It was awesome!

Now we are lucky to have a lot of former top students who were taught by ex- best students , our colleagues, the honourable teachers of English of the Russian Federation: O.A.Akatyeva, N.V.Pavlova, V.B.Sergeevich (Gymnazium 1)and G.G. Listarova (Lyceum 2). Among them there are G.A.Kalmyikova, T.A.Zolotaryova, J.A.Lamzina & E.V.Ermolayeva, A.A.Koslova and S.Sh. Nurulova..

I would like to record my gratitude to the Department of "Foreign Languages", headed by the great specialists of German and English: N.S.Sharafutdinova, PhD, T.A.Matrosova, PhD and our great secretary S.A.Madyisheva for the atmosphere of mutual understanding and interesting work side by side with my former top students, colleagues &

73  

devoted friends: T.I.Timofeeva, PhD, E.V.Aristova, J.A.Pluzhnikova, L.V.Korukhova N.N.Novoseltseva & N.A. Derbisheva.

We are thankful to E.P.Sosnina, PhD, head of the ''Linguistics Department'' of UlSTU, G.A. Kalmyikova, PhD, head of the Department of ''Foreign Languages'' and T.A.Zolotaryova, PhD. of the ''English Language'' department of the Pedagogical University for their proof reading and decision to publish the Handbook of Old English, corrected so well by M.V.Telenkova, the great technical editor of the UlSTU.

Like thousands of Vladimir Megre’s readers we would like to thank him heartily for the wonderful 1O books about the unique personality of the time: his bright and beautiful woman, a tender mother and a kind granddaughter Anastasiya, whose love of people and nature is great!

We deeply respect Dr. Sergei Sergeevich Konovalov, a well-known doctor and researcher of the Energy of Creation & his unique great 18 "Books that Heal", which are widely spread, carefully read & used all over the world!

To crown it all I‘d love to say that I’m proud of my beloved tender and nice daughter Olga Vladimirovna Dmitrieva, one of the best teachers of Modern English in my home town of Eisk of Krasnodar region, for her new methods of teaching the peculiarities of Good English and I am thankful to her for her kindness and generosity, for her brightness and honesty, for her Good English and, of course, for her good great sons, my beloved grandkids Nick & Vladimir, whom I adore for their good deeds & good ideas, for their sense of humor & for the recordings of AmE & BrE dialogs, which they made for my students in Ulyanovsk.

Good Luck to all of you, dear grown-ups and kids!

Remember the sacred motto: See Good, Do Good, Be Good!

Yours, "ever and anon",

T.G.Pyatyshina, PhD. & my co-author J.A.Lamzina, a brilliant lecturer on History of English of the UlSPU.                                                  

74  

LITERATURE

1. Bosworth Joseph, Toller. Essay to the Geography of king AElfred the Great / Bosworth, Toller. – London, 1855.

2. Bosworth Joseph, Toller. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary / Toller, Bosworth. – London, 1971.

3. Brook, J. English dialects /J. Brook. – London, 1972. 4. Campbell, A. Old English Gramma / A. Campbell. – Oxford. 1959. 5. Clark, J. W. Early English / J.W. Clark. – London, 1967. 6. Hamer, R.F.S. Old English Sound Changes / R.F.S. Hamer. –

Oxford, 1967. 7. Ivanova, I. P. A History of English. Text book. Reader. Glossary /

I.P. Ivanova, L.P. Chakhoyan, T.M. Belyaeva. – St. Petersburg,1999. 8. Jespersen, Otto. Growth and Structure of the English Language

/ Otto Jespersen. – UK., 1964. 9. Mezenin, S.M. A History of English / S.M. Mezenin. – M., 1988. 10. Mitchel, Bruce. A Guide to Old English / Bruce Mitchel. –

Oxford, 1967. 11. Quirk, R. An old English Grammar / R. Quirk, C.L.Wren. –

London, 1955. 12. Wyatt, A.J. BEOWULF / A.J. Wyatt. – London, 1911. 13. Reznik, R.V. A History of English / R.V. Reznik, T.A.Sorokina,

I.V.Reznik. – Moscow, 2009. 14. Pyatyshina T.G., Sosnina E.P. Some peculiarities of analyzing

Old English texts at the seminars on History of English at the Linquistics Department: Report, made at the 1st International conference on ''Linquistics: Theory & Practice'', arranged by the head of the Department of ''Foreign Languages'' (of UlSPU) G.A.Kalmyikova, PhD. – Ulyanovsk, 2007.

75  

CONTENTS

Unit I. Old English Origin and Pronunciation ...................................................... 3 Unit II. Old English Morphology ........................................................................... 15 Unit III. Old English Vocabulary ............................................................................ 30 Unit IV. Old English Syntax ................................................................................... 35 Unit V. Old English Texts and Tasks .................................................................... 41 Unit VI. Supplementary Reading .............................................................................. 50 Unit VII. The epic poem of Old English ''Beowulf'' (one short passage) ................. 58 W.Shakespeare ''The Twelfth Night '' (a dialogue between Olivia & Viola) ... 60 Unit VIII. Comparison of Old English words & their Modern English equivalents ..... 61 KEYS .......................................................................................................... 70 Conclusion & Acknowledgements .......................................................... 72 Literature ..................................................................................................... 74 

76  

              

Учебное издание

ПЯТЫШИНА Тамара Георгиевна ЛАМЗИНА Юлия Александровна

ПРАКТИКУМ ПО ИСТОРИИ ЯЗЫКА (ДРЕВНЕАНГЛИЙСКИЙ ПЕРИОД)

Учебное пособие

ЛР № 020640 от 22.10.97.

Подписано в печать 21.12.2010. Формат 60×84/16. Усл. печ. л. 4,42. Тираж 100 экз. Заказ 1426.

Ульяновский государственный технический университет

432027, г. Ульяновск, ул. Северный Венец, 32 Типография УлГТУ. 432027, г. Ульяновск, ул. Северный Венец, 32.