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Introducción a la diacronía del inglés.
Introduction.
- Old English. 5- mid 12th centuries (1150). German tribes arrive to England (Angles, Saxons, Jutes). The Celts also influenced English language. Then Romans came. Influence of Latin. Full inflections, with four cases: Nom., Acc., Gen., Dat.
- Middle English. 1150 - 1500. Battle of Hastings (1066). Death of Anglo - Saxons. Feudalism. Norman invasion. Three languages live together: English, French and Latin. In 1476 printing press is invented by William Caxton. Levelled inflections, full inflections gradually disappear.
- Early Modern English (1476 - 1756). Renaissance. Lost inflections, only a few endings survive. The grammar becomes far simpler. Different spelling live together for the same word. There are no authoritative dictionaries or voices.
Late modern English (1756 - nowadays). First authoritative dictionary of the English language, by Samuel Johnson, which provided spellings, sounds and ethimology. It was decided not to establish an Academy of English.
Importance of the English language.
A language lives only when it is spoken by anyone. Its importance depends on the importance or influence of the people who speak it. English is spoken by 340 million people as a mother tongue. It is the language of Western languages. Political, economical and scientific reasons are related to the importance of a language. But English is also very broadly spoken as second language (communication, commerce).
The growth of the Spanish language goes with the growth of Latin American countries.
It is also probable that pidgin and Creole varieties of English are more and more widespread spoken where English is not the first language.
Will English ever become the world language?
Many people are strongly opposed to an artificial language (like Esperanto). Perhaps the most representative languages in the world are spoken in united nations (English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Arabic). It is possible that speakers of these countries don't want to substitute their own languages for another one. Over a century ago, French was considered the educated classes language, a polite and elegant language. Along the 19th century, the importance of French declines due to the influence of a serious rival, German. Germany became influential in scientific research and scholar activity. But it has been replaced in 20th century by English in the same fields and also in commerce. If we add to this the importance of mass media, we obtain a great expansion of English all over the world.
Functions of English today.
It is spoken by several hundred million people as mother tongue, as second language, as a vehicle of education, in science, in business… in a word, as lingua franca. It has become a symbol of social mobility, of people who wants to climb up in the social scale.
English has lots of influences depending on the areas where it is spoken. It may vary enormously. Many colonies obtained their independence in the 20th century. Their new governments had to choose a national language in order to be different to their neighbours. The choice was often a problem. Today, many problems are still unresolved (not enough education, superpower politics, etc). Many times a local language has been chosen, but if there are many local languages, the problem remains unresolved. Other
governments have chosen a language spoken for all. In many former colonies, for reasons of commerce and development, the language chosen has been English. E.g. the official language in India is Hindi, but English works as a very important second language in schools, TV, newspapers… Children have to learn English, Hindi and the local language, and even more. In Africa, English is used extensively (160 million people). Many nations have chosen English, as Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, etc. Pros and cons of English. English present a very mixed vocabulary. It is a Germanic language, but it has borrowed many words from Latin. More than a half of its vocabulary is Latin, directly or through Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese). It presents also inflectional simplicity. English has gone further than other European languages in this aspect. Noun inflections have been reduced. The -s remains as plural mark, though other plural forms exist. The different cases have also disappeared, remaining the Saxon Genitive only (`s). The verb has been also simplified; it has lost most of its endings. The subjunctive mood is also about to disappear. Another advantage of English is that it has natural gender. All nouns referring to living creatures are masculine or feminine, depending on their sex. All other nouns are neuter. But the great handicap of English is the absolute lack of correlation between spelling and pronunciation. Pidgins and Creoles. The origin of pidgin languages is the coincidence of groups of people without a common language, usually for business' sake. The vocabulary and syntax is basic. A pidgin is nobody's natal language, but a Creole arises when there is a community that learns a pidgin language as natal tongue. This situation is more complex, because this people have to use this language in a more complex way, for daily life and to express all circumstances of human existence. For this reason, syntax and vocabulary become more and more complex. The study of pidgins started in the 60's; until that time it was considered to be spoken by non-intelligent people. Tok Pisin. Pronoun system:
ENGLISH TOK PISIN
SINGULAR I
You He/she/it
Mi Yu Em PLURAL We You they
Mipella Yupella Ol DUAL ø yumi
This reduction of grammar use to take problems of misunderstanding. The English language lost dual number much time ago, but in Tok Pisin still survives.
It was fundamental for the establishment of an origin of the English language and the Indo-European language.
We find correspondences like:
Old English Germanic
bän bein
stän stein
When these correspondences were found, Scholars came to the conclusion that these words had to come from the same parent language. They saw that Old English (OE) ä corresponds to modern German ei.
English Latin
father pater
nephew nepos
So Latin t , p correspond to English th , ph. These different languages also seem to come from the same origin. Linguistic reconstruction was done also. It helped to get the earliest forms possible.
The proto-Germanic was the previous stage. In the case of Romance languages we have much more information than in the case of Germanic languages. We know that Latin is the origin of Romance languages.
Those languages (and others) were the same in older times. They would be only dialects of a Germanic language. Old High German is the proto-Germanic language spoken by the Germanic inhabitants of Austria, Switzerland and Central and Southern Germany. Old English could be said to be proto-Germanic as spoken in 8th - 11th century by Anglo-Saxons.
The normal process of linguistic change tends to splint up languages. When a group separate from the greater one becomes isolated, his language evolves independently, because in those times were no way to maintain constant contact with the great group.
In the lathe 18th century the family relationship of European and Western Asia had not been properly worked out. It was known that there were basic differences between English, Dutch and German. Also that there was some relationship between Hebrew and Arabic and also among Romance languages. Scholars had taken a lot of time to establish relationships between languages, but the concept of an Indo-European language had not been grasped out. What led to this conclusion was the discovery of Sanskrit by Western scholars. Sir William Jones learned Sanskrit and realised that there were resemblances between Sanskrit, Latin and Greek. In 1786 he said that these languages were dissembled from a common ancestor. He went further saying that there were Celtic and Germanic languages, which came from the same source.
English Gothic Old Norse German Latin
father fadar faðir Vater pater
English Dutch Greek German Sanskrit 0 0 0 3
0 0 0 3
0 0 0 3
0 0 0 3
0 0 0 3
0 0 brother broeder (^) 0 3Bouder Bräthär
Sanskrit, a language of Ancient India, was one of the group. India's literature reaches back much further than Latin and Greek. Sanskrit preserved features of a primary language than those of Greek and Latin. It also preserved a full system of declensions
and conjugations. It became clearer that the inflections of these languages could also be traced to a common origin.
Grimm's Law.
In making comparison among several languages that showed similarities, Rasmus Rask, a Dane, and Jacob Grimm, German, discovered in early 19th century the set of phonological correspondences now known as Grimm's Law. There was a regular system of parallel sound changes from all the European and West-Asiatic languages. The discovery of the pattern was made through the close examination of a number of words, basic vocabularies of Indo-European languages. The family of languages that Jones postulated came be known as Indo-European (IE).
1.
indo-european germanic Voiceless plosive Voiceless fricative */p/ */t/ */k/
/f/ ph 0 0 / (^) 0 3/ th /h/, [x] *
Latin English
pes foot
piscis fish */p/ /f/
plenus full
tres three 0 0 tennis thin */t/ / (^) 0 3/
centum hundred
caput head */k//h/
[x] no initial position
2.
indo-european germanic Voiced aspirated Voiced plosive */bh/ */dh/ */gh/
/b/ /d/ /g/
Sanskrit English
bhärati bear
bhräthär brother
mädhu mead
Latin
hostis guest
hortus garden
3.
ancestor of many nowadays languages, and the descendents make up the IE family. The members are very different, they show different degrees of similarity from one to another depending on their geographical distribution. All the languages fall into 10 branches:
Indian.
It seems that oldest literary texts preserved in any IE languages are the Vedas, the sacred books of India, about 1500 BC.
Iranian.
In the NW of India. It covers the great plateau of Iran. One group decided to settle there, while other continued to Russia and China, carrying its languages with them.
Albanian.
This is a small branch in the NW of Greece.
Armenian.
In the South Caucasus, Eastern end of the Black Sea.
Hellenic.
In Greece.
Italic
Italy. Here was Latin and the romance languages born.
Balto-Slavic.
A vast area in Eastern Europe. There were two great groups:
Baltic.
Slavic.
Their similarities are more important than their differences.
Celtic.
These languages form part of the most extensive languages at first time. In the beginning of the Christian era were found in Spain, the north of Italy, Great Britain and Gaul. The language of the Celts in Gaul which was conquered By Julius Caesar was called Gallic, but it was soon replaced by Latin. Nowadays we know very little about this language. Some scholars claim that the first Celts that come to Britain should have be driven to Ireland and from there to Scotland and the isle of Man by invaders. Their language has survived as Irish (Ireland), Scottish Gaelic Erse, Scotland), Manx (I. Of Man, extinguished in the 20th century).
A second group of Celts were called Cymbric or Britannic. They were driven westwards from what is now England by the Teutons (Anglo - Saxons, Jutes) in the 5th century BC. Some of them crossed to Britany, others stayed in Wales or went to the SW, to Cornwall. Cornish, spoken in Cornwall, was extinguished in 18th century. In Britany, their language was called Briton, and Welsh in Wales.
Germanic.
Germanic family has been subdivided into 3 different branches
North Germanic languages.
Scandinavia and Denmark. The earliest traces of these languages are in runic inscriptions from the 3rd century BC. In this earlier form, the common Scandinavian
language is called Old Norse. From 11th century, dialectal differences became more and more important, so they were divided into two groups:
Iceland was conquered by Norwegians in the 9th century. It has preserved an important body of literature: Elder or Poetic Edda (poems 10 - 11th century) and Younger or prose Eddas , and also 40 sagas.
East Germanic languages.
Gothic.
The main document in Gothic is a tranlation of part of the Bible, by bishop Uifilas, in standard Gothic of that time, in the 4th century. It is preserved in the Carolina Rediviva library, in Uppsala.
Burgundian and Vandalic.
Only a Few fragments are preserved
West Germanic languages.
This group is divides into two branches:
The languages of the High Germanic Branch suffered the 2nd sound shift about 600 AD. Old High German covers until 12th century, Middle High German until 14th Century and Modern until 16th century.
General features of English.
It is the fusion of three languages, corresponding to peoples who invaded England: Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Those languages were probably very similar. It shares some characteristics from other Teutonic languages:
Shifting of consonants (see Grimm's Law)
Weak and strong declensions in adjectives
Weak and strong conjugations of verbs. There are weak and strong verbs. Weak verbs presented de -ed ending, as today's regular verbs. Strong verbs present a change in the root vowel such as swim, swam swam.
Adoption of a strong stress on the root syllable of most words. This have been obscured later by Romance languages. English took a lot of words from French, and it surely made that the stress change.
Doubling of consonants due to phonetic languages, especially from the West Germanic branch.
English, together with the rest of the languages of the Low Germanic branch, did not suffer the 2nd sound shift.
English German
water Wasser
pound Pfund
gate Gasse
(OE) tunge>
tongue Zunge
Periods in history of English
The Romanization. Latin in Britain. There are many remnants of the Roman presence. The Romans built many roads, starting in London and to the NW and the SW. There are also a great number of houses, objects, buildings, etc. Latin soon became the official language, and new varieties of it were born then. It was used as lingua franca, carried by the soldiers, and presented influences from the natal tongue of every soldier. Celtic society was tribal and their language undeveloped. Under the Roman pressure, Celtic must have been a low language. Latin was more frequent in cities than in villages. In some areas a bilingual situation should have occurred. In the S and the E, Latin surely displaced Celtic. By the 5th century, both languages felt the barbaric invasions. There were 4 periods in the influence of Latin: The continental period. Borrowings from the tongue of the continent. The Germanic tribes were not used to use the long words of Latin. They only took the words they needed, and many were shortened, e.g. cupa > cup, discus > dish, vinum > wine. Many of these words represented new objects for Germanic peoples: caseus > cheese, molina > mill, coquina
kitchen, caupo > cheap, strata > street, vallum > wall. Only about 50 of these words could be traced from this period. Latin through the Celts. There were no direct contact between Germans and Romans, so the Latin influence was through Celts. Only a few words survived: castra > -ceaster (Manchester, Leicester, Winchester, etc). /k/ + /a/ North 0 0 /k/ + [ (^) 0 3 a 0 0 ] (1st stage) > [t (^) 0 3]Midlands, South
Another word was introduced, which still remains today: portus > port, vicus > wïc (`village') ( Greenwich, Norwich , etc).
The Latin influence is slighter: candela > candle, magister > mægester, psalmus > sealm (`psalm').
The Germanic conquest.
The Germanic invasion.
Around 449 AD the Germanic invasion started, and it lasted more than 100 years. Most of them were Dane settlers who migrated from their continental homes. They came from the region of Denmark and the Low Countries, and tried to establish in the south. They gradually extended this area, until they occupied all the island, except the Highlands and the West, where the Celts resisted. The old prose work written in any Germanic language is The Anglo - Saxon Chronicle. Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (771) is another source.
The Picts and the Scots had to be stopped. The Romans had to defend themselves from them but, when they left the island, the Celts had to do without the Romans. Then, the Celts asked for help to the Jutes, offering in exchange the isle of Thanet. The problem was solved, but the Jutes tried to conquest the rest of England. That soil was much more fertile, so they decided to stay, although they had to do it by force. The Celts were gradually put to the West and the North. The other continental tribes acted in a similar way, and the Saxons arrived in 477 in the SE coast. They established in an area called
Sussex (Saxons of the South'). Later, other bands of Saxons established themselves more to the West, in Wessex (Saxons of the West'). In the 6th century other Saxons established in the east coast, in Essex (`Saxons of the East').
The process of pushing the Celts to the `Celtic Fringe' wasn't easy. A Celtic leader, Artorius, resisted and set a peaceful period that lasted one generation.
The Anglo - Saxon Heptarchy.
The Angles settled 7 kingdoms in what is today England. For the Celts, All invaders were Saxons, but the term Angel and Anglia remained in the language. In 601 the king of Kent, Æthelbert was Rex Anglorum. A century later the people was known as Anglecynn (Angle - kin) and their language was called Englisc. In the beginning of the 11th century, that land was called Engaland.
In some areas, specially where the invaders were few, the inhabitants lived peacefully. Roman towns were destroyed, because town life was not attractive to them, and their occupations were based on agriculture. Words such as work , ox , sheep , plough belong to this field, and other referring to the celebration and parties ( merry , laughter ), although some of these words have changed their meaning today.
The Anglo- Saxon society was organised in clans. There were two levels in society eorls (aristocrats) and ceorls (freemen). Different tribes allied between them to obtain more power. Those groups were not stable, but some of them were the most important. The kingdom of Northumbria had the supremacy in the 7th century, culturally and politically. This importance passed through kingdoms: Mercia (8th century) and Wessex (9th century), under the leadership of Egbert. In 830 he was acknowledged as King of England and Wales. Other kings wanted the same title. In that century lived one of the most important kings Of England, Alfred The Great.
The christianisation of England.
Christianity brought a huge vocabulary to England. The process started at the end of the 6th century. The impact is reported in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Here he talks about the linguistic collision between English and Latin, and the spread of Christianity. According to the tradition, this mission was inspired by a man who would become Pope, Gregory the Great. He had the idea of chtistianising England. He intended to lead an expedition himself, but later he wanted somebody to go for him. Saint Augustine stayed there for 50 weeks (?). They had to face the English, who resisted. 51 of them landed in Kent. It was a little Kingdom with a small Christian community. King Æthelbert married princess Bertha, who was Franc and also Christian. In 604 the kingdom of Kent was already Christian.
The Christianisation process was gradual and peaceful. The mission started in the south and a charismatic preacher, Aidan, founded in 635 the Celtic Church. He started the conversion of the north of England. Within 100 years of the landing of St. Augustine in Kent, all England was Christian.
With the coming of Christianity also came the building of monasteries, the cornerstones of Anglo - Saxon culture. They provided education in many subjects. Bede studied in Jarrow, and he wrote the chronicles that remained until today. Arithmetics, music or astronomy were taught. The new monasteries wrote in English.
English benefited in a very large extent. It was enriched and powered with new words. Christianity gave English the capacity to express subtle ideas and more abstract thoughts. At this time, words from Latin and Greek were introduced, such as angel , psalm , disciple , etc. These words allowed to express more complex things. Christianity affected English mainly in 2 ways:
After Alfred was the sovereign of the SW of England he centred on Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. The capital was Winchester. The problem was that King Alfred had no power over the Dane territories. He felt that he needed the support of people living in other countries in the Danelaw district. He had to retain control over territories which were not him. He appealed the feeling of “Englishness”, using the English language as means of creating a national identity. He restored his kingdom and rebuilt the churches and schools. He used English and not Latin as the basis for education. He learned Latin to take part in the translations of some important texts. He describes his English language campaign in the preface to Cura Pastoralis. After the treaty, Guthrum went back to his own religion. Besides that, there were more invasions.
Under the reign of Alfred's son, Edward the Elder, Danes were attacked and defeated (battle of Brunanburh). Most of the island was under English control. The next important battle was the battle of Maldon (991). The English lose their leader and the Danish forces marched again to England. In 1014 Svein and Knut drove the English king Æthelbert into exile. After that, he wae known as the Unready. The Danes got the throne. Eventually, Knut Became the king and England was controlled in the next years by Danish kings, Harald I and Hardicanute.
The consequences of the Danish reign were that 1400 place names presented Scandinavian names. More than 600 presented the -by ending ( -by: farm') _Grimsby, Whitley, Rugby, Derby_ , etc; 300 of them had _-thorpe_ (village'): Linthorpe, Scanthorpe; 300 had - thwaite (isolated place'): Satterthwaite; 100 presented _-toft_ (piece of ground'): Eastoft, Lowestoft. These names are not uniformly distributed. English names present the patronymic -son (Danish -sen , e.g. Nielsen): Stevenson, Richardson.
We must take into account that this civilization was very similar to the Anglo - Saxon culture. Apart from battles, they got on well most of the time. Both languages were much interlinked.
Words from Scandinavian: egg (OE æg), skin, sky, skull, skir, window, sister, fellowt ; sk- is typically Scandinavian. Adjectives: awkward, meek, odd, rotten, weak. Verbs: call, give, take, die, thrust.
The borrowing of words was not limited to the exchange of words, but it extended to pronouns, prepositions or conjunctions, what is unusual. Pronouns: they, them, their (OE him, he, hiera). Other words: same, both, at, to (+infinitive), seemly, aloft, hence, are (3rd p.pl. V. `to be').
Old English General features.
The English language has undergone a great change and we are not able to understand Old English if we don't have into account the knowledge of its structure in the old days.
Pronunciation.
OE today
bän bone
räp rope
hälig holy
föt foot
fÿr fire
hüs house
Most of the vocabulary of OE is Germanic. A huge part of it has disappeared, as a consequence of the Norman conquest. In many cases it was replaced by Latin or French words. 85% of OE words are no longer in use, and the words that survived are basic words such as prepositions, auxiliary verbs and pronouns, i.e. cïld, man(n), wïf, etan (`eat') drincan, etc.
Grammar.
Old English is a synthetic language, that is, it indicates the relation of words in the sentence by means of inflections. In modern English, the subject and the object have no case endings (analytic), but it happened in Old English.
The night killed the prince.
There are no case endings. The functions of the words are given by position, by word order. If we change this, the meaning is different:
The prince killed the night.
Prepositions were not much used in Old English. As case endings disappeared, prepositions and auxiliary verbs were more used.
Spelling.
We have to differentiate two types of spellings: the runes and the Roman symbols. The runes were brought to England by the Germanic tribes. The system is quite simple. Some of the Germanic tribes already had their own alphabet, and the runes were made to decorate in the earliest stages of Germanic languages. The first runes are from the 2nd century AD. They were not designed for writing, but to engrave or to inscribe. The earliest forms of reading or writing imply to interpret the incised runes. The first system was incised on wood, but they are also found in metal, stone or bone. The material on which the runes were inscribed determined their shape. They are formed, basically, for a vertical stroke and additional arms: .
The original Germanic rune row had 24 symbols, the futhark. We don't know the origin of these runes, but wherever they were created, in the 6th century they spread throughout many counties of Europe. The Germanic tribes may need the runes for commercial and political uses. Their social structure was so simple that they didn't need to send messages or doing things that required writing.
The runes were a ritual or magic set of characters (run = `mystery'). Runes had magical properties. The rune masters gave each rune a magical value, and they were used to predict the future, taking decisions, etc. Every rune had a name and represented a concept and a sound
Out of Scandinavia, runes disappeared quickly. In Britain the Roman alphabet replaced them about 11th century. In Scandinavia they were used even after the middle Ages.
The futhark was not the only rune row used in England, they used other similar system called futhork, which had 31 symbols.
The Dream of the Rood is a poem written in runes in the Northumbrian dialect. This poem was found in a cross, which seem to be the author of the poem and tells the story of a crucifixion from its point of view.
When runes were replaced by the Roman alphabet, they developed they own variation, the Roman Hand. It was a variation used until the Norman conquest. The Insular Hand was used in Irish Gaelic, and the modifications were done by the Irish.
Stress in Old English.
Consonants.
All consonants were pronounced. Nowadays this doesn't happen. In Old English there are no silent consonants, and even g and k before consonant are pronounced. Also the double consonants are pronounced as double consonants.
However, there are some exceptions:
The h has three different pronunciations:
- Initial : aspirated /h/.
- h + e, i : as ch in al. möchten.
- (^) h + a, o, u; + consonant; + diphthong: /x/.
Other variations affects to digraphs f , s and þ :
F, S, Þ /f/, /s/ / 0 00 3/ voiceless
Always in initial and final position and when in contact with a voiceless consonant. /v/, /z/, /ð/ Between voiced sounds. The doubling of a consonant implies a voiced sound.
C, G + a, o, u /k/, /g/
- (^) sc is pronounced as sh in should. Exception: the verb ascian, /'askjan/.
- cg is pronounced as dg in edge. Vocabulary in Old English. An average of 85% of the words found in Old English texts are no longer in use, they have disappeared for several reasons, although the most important was the Norman conquest, which brought a remarkable number of words. A small percentage of words is still present in Modern English but, after all, they are basic elements present in everyday English such as prepositions, conjunctions, etc. These words changed their sound, their spelling and in some cases, the meaning. This small percentage is much more used than 60% of words that came from Latin. Old English made an extensive use of compounds, whereas Modern English prefers borrowing words from foreign languages instead of creating new ones. In Old English the phenomenon of borrowing didn't exist so they built new words by joining two or three already existing.
Old English was a self-sufficient language just because of this fact, but some borrowings were needed. In the 11th century there were loans from Latin, Greek (through Latin), Scandinavian, French (before the Norman conquest) and Celtic. In any case, Old English preferred its own words. It had two main ways of building words: New words by joining previous ones. We find compounds of nouns and of adjectives. There were different formulae for building compounds:
COMPOUNDS OF NOUNS
N+N=N
Adj+N=N
Adv+N=N
sciprap heahgerefa widså årdåg
ship rape chief officer wide sea (`early day') dawn
COMPOUNDS OF ADJECTIVES
N+Adj=Adj
Adj+Adj=Adj
Adv+Adj=Adj
Adj+N=Adj
ålmesgeorn heahþungen forþgeorn bliþemöd
(alms eager') generous high rank (social scale) (forth eager') intentious benevolent
In the compounds, the case ending goes at the end of the second element. Sometimes there can be found a compound of three elements. In this case, the case ending is present in the last element of the compound. We often find in Modern English a compound in which the elements of the compound are borrowings from Latin or Greek, such as microphone or television. This kind of words is usually linked to Medicine, Biology or Chemistry. This is a different kind of English called English for Science and Technology -EST-. Here, most of the words are formed by non-English terms, but by Latin or Greek ones. A compound contains a metaphor or an image. Old English is very rich in metaphors and images. E.g.: båþ - weg (bath way', instead ofsea') Affixing. Prefixing. The adding of elements before the original word is a very useful resource, particularly in the formation of new verbs. Some common prefixes:
- wiþ - : its meaning depends on the context. It has two main meanings:
against' oraway'. wiþceösan: to choose against' (cëosan:to choose'): reject. wiþsprecan: `to speak against' (sprecan: to speak): contradict. - åg- : Attached to a pronoun or an adverb., it generalizes the meaning of the word. Its meaning is
every': æghwä:everybody' (hwä: now') æghwår:everywhere' (hwår: `what')
sëo möna, se cynedöm, se gebeorscipe
- Adult female humans or animals use to be feminine:
Sëo mödor, sëo cü
- -u
- (^) -ung
- -nes(s)
- -en(n)
- -ett
- -estre
- -rædem
sëo byrþenn
- Young livings are neuter:
þæt cild, þæt cycen (chicken)
þæt wïtelac (punishment), þæt mægden (maiden)
Case.
Nominative.
It works as subject, Subject complement (atributo) and in direct speech (vocative).
Cynewulf benan Sygebriht his rices
Subj (nom) V Oi Genit.
He is ordfrume and ende
Sub. V Cs (Nomin)
(Nom)
Accusative.
As Direct Object, object of preposition, adverbial of time and subject of infinitive.
And wunodon þår ealne þone winter
Adv Adv (acc)
…And stayed there all the winter.
Genitive.
Possesion, adverbials of time, partitive genitive, number + gen. pl.
Be his hläfordes håse
Gen
…by his Lord's _____
XXX scilinga
Gen. p.
30 schellings
Some verbs have Od in genitive (rigen genitivo):
- beniman (deprive)
- brücan (enjoy)
- neösian (visit)
- (^) þurfan
- wënan (expect)
Dative.
It indicates the instrumental function, the means by which an action is performed. Is also object of the preposition.
Tïdum
At times
Some adjectives require the dative case:
- õeliç (similar)
- hold (loyal)
- (^) lëof (dear)
- nëah (near)
and also some verbs:
- andswarian (answer)
- õelifan (believe)
- helpan (help)
- hiersumian (obey)
- lïcian (please)
- þyncan (think)
The dative of possession is used sometimes when expecting genitive.
The noun.
Its inflections distinguish between singular and plural. The case system ia far more simple than eg. Greek or Latin (no Ablative, no Locative, no Vocative, no Instrumental).
There are two groups of declensions: vowel declensions or strong , whose stem ends in vowel, and consonant declensions, or weak , whose stem ends in consonant.
Strong declensions.
A-stem (temas en -a).
Masculine hund-
