Семінар № 4

S-1.

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Synthetical (synthetic) grammatical forms are built by means of the morphemic

composition of the word. This includes the morphemic means, which were
described in the previous unit: outer inflexion with the help of adding grammatical
suffixes to the stems of the words, e.g.: cat - cats; inner inflexion, or vowel
interchange inside the root, e.g.: goose - geese; and suppletivity, when different
roots are combined within the same paradigm, e.g.: go – went

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Analytical grammatical forms are built by the combination of the notional word
with auxiliary words, e.g.: come - have come. Analytical forms consist of two
words which together express one grammatical meaning; in other words, they are
grammatically idiomatic: the meaning of the grammatical form is not immediately
dependent on the meanings of its parts. Analytical grammatical forms are
intermediary between words and word-combinations. Some analytical forms are
closer to a word, because the two parts are inseparable in their grammatical
idiomatism; for example, the forms of the perfect aspect: come - have come. The
components of some other analytical forms are more independent semantically,
and they are less idiomatic grammatically; for example, the degrees of comparison:
beautiful - more beautiful – most beautiful

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Take a short text in English (around 50 words long). Analyse it from the
typological point of view. What kind of language is it according to its grammatical
structure? (Apply Quantitative Analyses by Greenberg)

A person can fall in love quickly. As British scientists confirm, it will take 8.2
seconds for a person to fall in love with someone. The scientists explain that
a look of 4 seconds is a right proof that a man is impressed and interested. But
there is an interesting thing that this rule doesn’t work for women. This look
means nothing for them. They can look at a man even much longer without falling
in love.

British scientists decided to study it and invite more than one hundred students for
an experiment. Then they hid cameras to observe the movements of the students’
eyes. Then students were asked to complete a form.
from typological point of view .The language contains dominant SVO order.
Consonants>vowels . Greenberg's diversity index is here 1,66 (M/W)(183/110)

Thus this is inflective (lexical and grammatical meanings are expressed by 2 or 3

grammatical units)/ analytic (alarticles, conversion, auxiliary verbs, conjunctions,
pronouns, word order )language.

S-2.

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Various theories of sound change, some of them proposed a century ago or earlier
were current in the [19]70s. There was a longstanding traditional view about sound
change being due to speakers modifying their pronunciation either to make it easier
—to expend less effort—or to make speech clearer for the sake of the listener.
Another one was espoused by Halle (1962) that language change, including sound
change, served to improve grammar by making it more cognitively simple to
compute. 

e №2

 OE noun had three categories:(Number;- Gender;- Case)

Number. Number was well expressed formally with all nouns. The typical plural
endings were -es, -en, -ru. By the end of the OE period these three endings came to
the overall conformity and accepted the form -es (s).

Gender. There were three genders: masculine ['mæskjulɪn], feminine ['femɪnɪn],

and neuter ['njutə]. Gender distinction was not grammatical, but semantic. It means
that it was not expressed formally. However a suffix could sometimes refer a noun
to a certain gender: -þu was a feminine suffix for abstract noun (lenʒþu - length,
hyhþu - height), -ere was a masculine suffix showing the doer of the action (fiscere
– NE fisher – learned man). But normally it was quite difficult to determine the
gender by formal features. Very often gender was controversial – the grammatical
gender did not always coincide with the natural gender of the person; Sometimes
grammatical gender even contradicted real gender: the noun wifman (wife) was
declined as masculine.

OE nouns had four cases: Nominative, Genetive, Dative, Accusative. In most cases
two or even three forms were homonymous 

Nominative case served as the subject, the predicate or the address.Genetive case
had two main meanings: the idea of origin and the idea of possession. Dative was
the chief case to be used with prepositions and it possessed instrumental meaning.
Accusative case represented the direct object or showed time and distance; its form
often fell together with the form of the Nominative case.

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The n-stem was the most important among all the consonant stem declensions.
This class of nouns was composed of common words. The group was very
extensive in Old English and like the a-stem declension it exhibited a tendency to
spread its forms over other declensions.

The original stem-suffix –n may be observed in the majority of case forms, but
very often the grammatical ending had been dropped in the pre-written period; this
phenomenon gave rise to a well-marked homonymity of the noun forms of the
declension. Five case forms of the masculine and the feminine genders – all the
Singular with the exception of the Nominative and the Nominative and the
Accusative plural are homonymous, in case of neuter nouns only four forms are
homonymous, as the Accusative case of neuter nouns is homonymous to the
Nominative.

Gender oppositions in this declension are also not distinct, the masculine nouns
being different from the feminine only in the Nominative and the Accusative
Singular.

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Decline the following OE nouns (both in Singular and Plural):

Masculine a-stem: stan-stan-as ( stone)

Neuter a-stem; deor-deer

N-stem: hunta; hunta-nuntan (hunter)

O-stem: giefu; giefu-giefa -e

Root-stem: fot=fot

S-3.

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Adjective in Old English had five grammatical categories: three dependent
grammatical categories, i.e forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it
modified – number, gender and case; definiteness – indefiniteness and degrees of
comparison. Adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case
in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns
they had one more case, Instrumental. It was used when the adjective served as an
attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning

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Most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to
the strong declension. The formal differences between the declensions, as well as
their origin, were similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak
declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-,
o-, u- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there developed sets of endings of
the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of a-stems of nouns for
adjectives in the Masc. and Neut. and of o-stems – in the Fem.

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Strong Declension of Adjectives in OE        STRONG FORM

  Masc Neut Fem

N Zōd Zōd Zōd

Sing G Zōdes Zōdes Zōdre

D Zōdum Zōdum Zōdre

A Zōdne Zōd Zode

Inst Zōde Zōde Zōde

PL N Zōde Zōd Zōd a

G Zōdra Zōdra Zōdra

D Zōdum Zōdum Zōdum

A Zōde Zōd Zōda

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Weak Declension of Adjectives in OE
 Masc Neut Fem

sing N Zōda Zōde Zōde

G Zōdan Zōdan Zōdan

D Zōdan Zōdan Zōdan

A Zōdan Zōde Zōdan

Pl N Zōdan

G Zōdra

D Zōdum

A Zōdan

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Most OE adjectives distinguished between three degrees of comparison:

positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used
to form the comparative and the superlative from the positive were the suffixes -ra
and -est/ost.

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positive : earm ; eald ; yfel

comporative : earm-ra ; ield-ra ; wiersa

superlative: earm-ost –ast –est ; ield-est ; wierest

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The Old English verb for 'be,' like its Modern English counterpart, combined forms

of what were originally four different verbs (seen in the present-day forms be, am,
are, was). Paradigms that thus combine historically unrelated forms are
called suppletive

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Decline the following phrases:

Strong good woman/women:

sg pl

N god ides; goda idesа

G godre idesre godra idesra

 D godre idese godrum idesum

A gode ides goda idesa

Inst god ides god ides

Weak the good woman/women:

Sg pl

N seo gode ides; pa godan ideas

Gseo godan ides pa godra idesa

Dseo godan ides pa gorum idesa

Aseo godan ides pa godan idesa

Inst seo godan ides pa godan idesa

Strong good child/children:

S-4
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Singular Plural
Nominative iċ (I) wē (we)
Accusative mē, mec (me) ūs (us)
Genitive mīn (my) ūre (our)
Dative mē (me) ūs (us)
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The possessive pronouns are derived from the genitive case of the personal pronouns. The
1stand 2d person possessive pronouns are declined like adjectives to show the agreement with
the noun, the 3d person possessive pronouns (his, hire, hiera) are unchanged.

Second person

Case Singular Dual Plural

Nom. Þū git gē

Gen. Þīn incer ēower

Dat. Þē inc ēow

Acc. Þēc, Þē incit, inc ēowic, ēow

Third person

Masc. Fem. Neuter Plural

Nom. hē hēo, hīo hit hīe, hī, hú, hēo

Gen. his hire, hiere his hira, heora, hiera,

hyra

Dat. him hire, hiere him him, heom

Acc. hine hīe, hī, hú hit hīe, hī, hú, hēo

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There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that, which
distinguished three genders in the sg and had one form for all the genders in the pi.
and the prototype of this with the same
subdivisions: ðes Masc., ðeos Fem., ðis Neut. and ðas pl.

The paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun se contained many homonymous

forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. –m – Dat.
Masc. and Neut. and Dat. pl;

the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pl. These case
endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often referred to as
"pronominal" endings (-m, -r-, -t).

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Interrogative pronouns are pronouns used to ask questions of identity, such as

Modern English "who" and "what" as in "Who are you?" and "What is that
animal?" The following are Old English interrogative pronouns:

"Hwā" - "who" (for both Sing. and Plural).

Nom. hwāAcc. hwoneGen. hwæsDat. hwǣm, hwām "Hwæt" - "what" (for both

Sing. and Plural).Nom. hwætAcc. hwætGen. hwæsDat. hwǣm, hwām
Instrum. hwȳ

e5

Indefinite pronouns are pronouns which don't refer to anything specific. They can

have the sense of "any" or "every". They also include negative
pronouns - pronouns that mean "nothing" or "nobody". Ġehƿā - "anybody" or
"everybody"; declined just like the interrogative pronoun hƿā.

S-5

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they exist and the distinction between a weak verb and a strong verb is based on
how the past tense of the verb is formed. Weak verbs (more commonly
called regular verbs) form the past tense by adding -ed, -d, or -t to the base form—
or present tense—of the verb, such as call, called and walk, walked.

Strong verbs (usually called irregular verbs) form the past tense or the past
participle (or both) in various ways but most often by changing the vowel of the
present tense form, such as to give, gave and stick, stuck.

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Historically, Preterite-Present Verbs are strong

PP Verbs are verbs in which Past Sg is reconsidered as Present and the new Past
form is built with the help of the dental suffix

These verbs show many irregularities, and tend to be old words. They are
sometimes called "basic" verbs, because they are fundamental components of the
language. Some of them are historically a blend of two or more different Germanic
verbs.
There are only five: bēon, wesan, dōn, gān and willan.
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verb to go was always suppletive, having the past tense ēode in Old English (this is
believed to represent the original Proto-Germanic situation *gāną "to go" ~ *ijjǭ "I
went", *ijjēdum "we went"). In the 15th century, however, this was replaced by a
new irregular past tense went. In fact went is originally the past tense of the verb to
wend (compare wend~went with send~sent); today wend has the regular past
tense wended. In most other modern Germanic languages the verb "go" takes its
preterite from the Proto-Germanic verb *ganganą "to walk" (e.g.
German gehen, ging; Dutch gaan, ging; Swedish gå, gick).

S-6.

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-Where are the possessive –’s and plural –s of modern English descended from?

The 's' at the end of a word indicating possession ("The king's fashion sense")
probably comes from the Old English custom of adding '-es' to singular genitive
masculine nouns (in modern English, "The kinges fashion sense"). In this theory,
the apostrophe stands in for the missing 'e'

the Modern English plural suffix -s developed out of

the Old English nominative plural ending -as, which was originally limited to the
(very frequent) masculine a-stems, corresponding to the masculine o-stems of
Latin (whose nominative singular ends in -us)

- Why do we have today such forms for Plural as oxen, children and feet?

my best guess (this is a shot from the hip) is that the words with changeless plurals
are basic English, carried down from Old English whereas the words with +s
plurals derive from Greek, Latin, or French. An interesting example of an oddly
formed plural is "children." The suffix -er for plural was once fairly common. I
have heard old country folk say "childer" as a plural. The _en plural suffix is an old
one that has gradually died out ("oxen" is the only survivor). But "children"
somehow uses both plurals.

Foot and feet in French comes out as pied, pieds. In German foot and feet are
presented as Fuß Füße. That sounds a little like foose, foos-ah. Both languages add
on to make a plural. French uses an “s,” often. German changes the sound of the
word and often adds an “e.”

- Why are the comparatives declined as strong adjectives and the superlatives as
weak today?

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 ora 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,In
later OE the distinction of forms in the adjective paradigm became even more
blurred. The Instr. case fell together with the Dat. Numerous variant forms with
phonetically reduced endings or with markers borrowed from other forms through
analogy impaired the distinction of categorial forms.