Old English grammar
The structure of the Old English clearly shows the relationship with the other West Germanic languages and therefore even more closely resembles that of the Germans than the modern English spoken today. Five case ( cases) and with verbs were distinguished three persons ( in the singular). The word order was freer than it is still in English even today. A fifth case ( instrumental ) is preserved in ruins: So is the modern English word why " why " (OE hwy ) an old instrumental of the word "what".
- 3.1 The strong declension - a- and ō -declension 3.1.1 Nouns with change of vowel æ to a
- 3.1.2 Nouns with nominative singular -final at -h
- 3.1.3 two-syllable nouns
- 3.1.4 Nouns with -w or - ġ before the ending
- 3.3.1 athematic Nouns
- 3.3.2 u -declension
- 3.3.3 Nouns of relationship
- 3.3.4 Neutra -r - in the plural
- 5.1 Strong Verbs 5.1.1 Ablautreihen
- 8.1 References and footnotes
The case
The Old English has five case, even if the instrumental exists only in remnants as a custom shape. The use of the case has many parallels to the Germans, even if the uses are diverse.
Nominative
The nominative is used as in English to describe the subject of a sentence, an addressee (eg, "Look, my king! " ) Or a Prädikativums (eg, " He is a teacher ").
Genitive
The genitive in Old English has three functions:
1 possessive
2 partitive
3 property
Dative
1 indirect object / indirect object
2 owned
3 comparison
Fourth means, fashion
Accusative
In the accusative is (as in German ) the direct object of transitive verbs.
Instrumental
First means, fashion
2 accompaniment
3rd time expressions
Syllable length
In the Old English grammar, the syllable length plays an important role, since they account for a number of inflectional endings after long stem syllables. Thereby syllables containing a long vowel or diphthong, or indeed contain a short vowel or diphthong, but auslauten at least a consonant ( in the nominative singular of nouns and adjectives two consonants, as the second in the flexion portion of the extension shall be considered as long and is no longer part of the root syllable is ).
Nouns
The nouns of Old English are divided into the historical grammar in several declension. A rough distinction is made between the strong and the weak declension, but can still be divided more finely. These two added yet small residue classes, such as kinship terms.
In case knew the Old English four to five. The fifth case, the instrumental was clearly separated only at the beginning of the Old English period from the dative, as he later formally with this coincided. The remaining four cases were - as in English - nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. In modern English the nominative - accusative singular only are (OE stan, ne. Stone), the nominative - accusative plural ( stānas, today stones ) and have been preserved in some nouns, the genitive singular. It is of a class division, goose - geese, ox- oxen, received nothing remained except for a few exceptions such as child -children.
On grammatical genders were three distinguished, the masculine, the feminine and the neuter. Numbers were differentiated in the two noun, the singular and the plural. In the pronominal but there was also a two- speed ( eg iċ 1 pers. Singular wit 1 pers. Thou. " We both ", we first pers. Pl ).
The strong declension - a- and ō -declension
The a -declension includes masculine and Neutra and is comparable to the Latin o -declension (eg Latin dominus "lord" ). The ō -declension feminines, however, includes and is known by the Latin ā- declension comparable (eg Latin domina ' mistress ' ). a- and ō -declension are more finely divided into a yes - and wa -declension, or a jo - and where -declension. However, these are treated separately below.
The typical endings for the a- and ō -declension in the West Saxon dialect of Old English are the following:
Nouns with vowel change æ to a
Some nouns of the a- declension undergo a change in vocalism between singular and plural. These words have a vowel in the singular a æ, located in the plural (or before a, o, u) converts to a.
Nouns with nominative singular -final at -h
Nouns in the nominative singular auslauten on -h, this loose before a suffix that begins with vowel. If the vowel of the root syllable it short so it comes under the circumstances to elongation ( cf. nominative singular: mearh → Sg gene Meares. ). In addition it comes to contractions of vowels, if the -h immediately precedes a vowel, so that the genitive singular to SCOH "shoe" not * scōes, but SCO is.
Two-syllable nouns
Nouns with -w or - ġ before the ending
The weak declension
More declension
Athematic Nouns
This class includes further (specify in each case the nominative singular and plural):
Masculine: Toth, Teth tooth; man, menn man; frēond, Friendster friend; FEOND, Fiend enemy
Feminine: studu, styde post; hnitu, hnite; AC, ǣc oak; Gat, gǣt goat ( nbock ); Broc, BREC; gos, goose GES; burg, byrg city; tion, ding prison; turf, lawn tyrf; Grut, gr ȳ t; lus, l ȳ s louse; MUS, m ȳ s mouse; neaht, niht night
Feminine with loss of -h in some forms: furh, fyrh furrow; sulh, sylh plow; þrūh, Thr ȳ h; wlōh, Wleh
Feminine with compression of endings: Cu, c ȳ cow
U -declension
Nouns of relationship
Neutra -r - in the plural
Pronoun
Most pronouns are inflected according to case, number and gender; in the plural, most pronouns have only one form for all genders. In addition, many Old English pronouns have preserved the dual ( this refers specifically to groups of two persons or things, for example, " we two ", " you two " or " both "). Although he was fairly uncommon, however, remained.
Many of the forms shown above have strong similarities with their modern English equivalents: So the genitive form was ēower to "your " ( your ) Ure to "our" (our ) and MIN to " mine" ( my ).
Verbs
The verbs are generally divided into two groups, the strong verbs and weak verbs. The strong verbs form the preterite tense and the past participle by changing the stem vowel ( ablaut sg ), the weak. Adding ' dental -containing element Within these groups, take additional breakdowns. For example, in seven classes, so-called Ablautreihen, divided, while the weak verbs are classified according to their derivational by three groups, the strong verbs.
The tenses is to say that the Old English, as well as the Old High German, yet knew no independent future tense; there existed only the past tense for the past and the present tense, which was used uniformly for the present and future.
Strong verbs
The strong verbs form their past tense and past participle past tense with the help of her inherited from the Indo-European Ablautes. There are four tribes are distinguished in the verbal area on which to base the respective tenses. The first strain is the formation of the present tense paradigm, as well as the infinitive and the Präsenspartizipes used (eg Ridan "ride" ). The second stem-form exclusively forms the 1st and 3rd person preterite indicative ( eg iċ wheel " I rode " ), while the third strain the remaining präteritalen forms a basis is (eg WE Ridon " we rode " ). The past participle is eventually formed by the fourth root form (eg ( GE ) riden " ridden ").
Also, the German knows this tense formation using four common forms, although at the New High German strong verbs usually only three lines are present, since the Präteritalformen were often compensated ( eg bind - I tied - we tied - tied ). However, the original four-division is yet to be in the verb to recognize: be - I was ( archaic for: I was ) - we were - become.
Ablautreihen
Depending on Vokalalternanz the strong verbs are divided into seven ablaut classes.
Below is a list of konsonatischen environment of changing the vowel.
- First class: 1 consonant follows the vowel
- Second Class: 1 consonant follows the vowel
- Third grade: The following consonants are differences: a: 2 consonants (. except Liquid ( l od r) and nasal cons ) followed by the vowel
- B: r or h consonant following the vowel
- C: l consonant follows the vowel
- D: Nasal consonant vowel follows the
- E: palatal consonant ( G, C, sc) precedes the vowel; Two consonants follow the vowel
But it can also occur exceptions to this list. So the shape Murnan is " mourn, lament " the third Ablautreihe attributable, although it has no eo in the first stem-form. Such exemptions are not considered here. In addition, it can be in the 2nd and 3rd person singular present indicative arrive at a Vokalalternanz due to umlaut ( eg helpan - Thu hilpst - see: German: help - you help ), but which is not a form of ablaut.
The conjugation of strong verbs are intended to illustrate the following example:
Notes:
- In forms such as ( Thu ) rītst, (he) rode (HE) Friest, (HE) hǣtt it comes to assimilation (eg,- dst - tst is; - STH will -st ,- tth is to - tt).
- In the 2nd and 3rd person singular present indicative i- umlaut occurs ( e> i, eo > IE, etc.).
- When verb frēosan " freeze " it comes to Grammatical change between 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 4th root form ( -s- unlike -r ).
Weak verbs
The following table shows the conjugation of the verbs Swebban ( to bring sleep ) ( class I), Hǣlan ( heal ) ( Class I) and Sidian ( travel ) ( Class II).
Präteritopräsentia
The Präteritopräsentia are a class of verbs that form their present tense forms in the manner of a strong past tense and the past tense like weak verbs. These verbs caused by the use of optatives Präteritumformen, which was related to the present or future. So comes witan ( to know ) from a verb " saw " which originally meant ( the Latin verb videre (to see) comes from the same root ). The present tense is formed as the original past tense. For this reason, the first person singular and the third person singular of the present are the same.
In Old English, there are few Präteritopräsentia, and not all are documented in all its forms.
Irregular Verbs
There is also another group of four irregular verbs "want", "do", "go" and "to be" that have their own conjugation, which differ greatly from those of the other classes. This is due to the fact that these verbs are the most commonly used.
'Doing' Don, Gan ' go ', and willan ' want ' are conjugated as follows:
'To be' The verb is from three different roots ( suppletive ) composed:
The present tense forms of wesan are almost never used. The beon forms are usually used for referring to the future. The modern English verb ' to be' takes its present tense forms of Seon and * eran, its past forms of wesan, its subjunctive form in the present tense of beon, in the past by wesan, infinitive, participle and imperative of beon.