Seminar on Ohthere - Old English

1. In the glossary the words are presented in the zero form, find the inflected forms of
these words in the text and try to explain the inflection. Which of the inflections are
missing in modern English? How are they compensated?
Consequences of the demise of inflections
The morphological inflections of Old English indicated case and number with nouns and
tense, mood and person with verbs. When these inflections came to be lost the grammatical
categories which they indicated were then expressed by different means or indeed the
structures based on the presence of inflections disappeared. An instance where the expression
of categories was altered is seen in the change of basic declarative sentence word-order from
SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) in Old English to SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) later in the Middle
English period. This stands to reason: if the inflection for the object case is lost then it is
difficult to distinguish the subject from the object of a sentence. If subject and object are put
on opposites side of the verb then it is easy to distinguish them.
An instance where a structure disappeared with the loss of inflections is seen with impersonal
verbs. Consider Modern English It seems to me that.... Here the semantic subject of the
sentence is expressed by to me, i.e. preposition and verb. But if English had a special
inflected dative form of me then it could use this without the preposition. This is what one
finds in German, a language with a similar number of inflections to Old English, consider
Mir scheint es dass, ... (lit. ‘me.DATIVE seems it that’). Structures of this kind existed in Old
English but were lost in later Middle English, the last survival being Methinks (still found in
Shakespeare, for instance) for I think.
Inflection refers to a process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of
a word to express grammatical meanings. The word "inflection" comes from the
Latin inflectere, meaning "to bend."
Inflections in English grammar include the genitive 's; the plural -s; the third-person
singular -s; the past tense -d, -ed, or -t; the negative particle 'nt; -ing forms of verbs; the
comparative -er; and the superlative -est. While inflections take a variety of forms, they are
most often prefixes or suffixes. They are used to express different grammatical categories.
For example, the inflection -s at the end of “places” and “days” shows that the noun is plural.
The inflection -ed is often used to indicate the past tense, changing “turn” to “turned” and
“sail” to “sailed”. Another example “let” and “letting”.In this way, inflections are used to
show grammatical categories such as tense, person, and numbe

2. How many words descended from Old English? How many fell out of use? How many
are recognisable in their Old English version? Which words underwent the change in
meaning? What could be behind this change in meaning?
How many words descended from Old English?
Approximately 70% of the English vocabulary is borrowed words and only 30% are native
words. The Roman conquest, the introduction of Christianity, the Danish and Norman
conquests, the British colonial system played a major role in the development of the
vocabulary of the English language. Moreover, the grammar is largely Anglo-Saxon.
According to one study, the percentage of modern English words derived from each language
group are as follows:
 Latin (including words used only in scientific / medical / legal contexts): ~29%
 French (Latin): ~29%
 Germanic: ~26%
 Others: ~16%
Examples:
 preost - priest
 sawol - soul
 sweostor - sister
 wif - wife
 woruld - world
 bysig - busy
 eald - old
 oft - often
So, even 1000 years later, many elements of a language stay the same.
How many fell out of use?
Perhaps about 85% of Old English words are no longer used, but those that survive are the
main elements. Some words were forgotten while other near-synonyms in Old English
replaced them ('limb' remains in common use, but lið remains only dialectally as lith). Many
of these changes came with the introduction of Old Norse and Norman French words, while
others fell away due to natural evolution.
How many are recognisable in their Old English version?
Many of the Old English words came from the influence of the Romans and Greeks. These
words were borrowed by the Germanic conquerors and incorporated into Old English. For
example, the following words were adapted from the Romans, Greeks and from Latin:
• apostle - came from apostol
• chalk - came from cealc
• wine - came from win
• monk - came from munuc
While the spelling is different, the meanings all follow the original words and correspond to
the modern meanings.
Which words underwent the change in meaning?
Old English fæger ‘fit, suitable’, Modern English fair came to mean ‘pleasant, enjoyable’
then ‘beautiful’ and ‘pleasant in conduct’, from which the second modern meaning ‘just,
impartial’ derives. The first meaning continued to develop in the sense of ‘of light
complexion’ and a third one arose from ‘pleasant’ in a somewhat pejorative sense, meaning
‘average, mediocre’, e.g. He only got a fair result in his exam.
 Gentle was borrowed in Middle English in the sense of ‘born of a good-family, with a
higher social standing’. Later the sense ‘courteous’ and then ‘kind, mild in manners’
developed because these qualities were regarded as qualities of the upper classes.
Lewd (Old English læwede) originally meant ‘non-ecclesiastical, lay’, then came to mean
‘uneducated, unlearned’ from which it developed into ‘vulgar, lower-class’ and then through
‘bad-mannered, ignorant’, to ‘sexually insinuating’.
Sophisticated meant ‘unnatural, contaminated’ but now has the sense of ‘urbane,
discriminating’. The word sophistry (from Old French sophistrie) still has its original
meaning of ‘specious, fallacious reasoning’.
Artificial originally meant ‘man-made, artful, skillfully constructed’, compare artifice
‘man-made construction’. But by comparison with ‘natural’ the word came to acquire a
negative meaning because everything which is natural is regarded positively.
Nice (Latin nescius ‘not knowing') is recorded from the 13th century in the sense of
‘foolish’, then it shifted to ‘coy, shy’ and by the 16th century had the meaning ‘fastidious,
dainty, subtle’ from which by the 18th century the sense ‘agreeable, delightful’ developed.
Silly (Old English sēlig ‘happy, fortuitous') had by the 15th century the sense of ‘deserving
of pity’ and then developed to ‘ignorant, feeble-minded’ and later ‘foolish’.
Fast (OE fæste ‘firm') later developed the meaning ‘quick’. The original sense is still seen
in steadfast ‘firm in position’.
Which could be behind the meaning?
For example, nice did not always mean something good and pleasant, from the very
beginning it was formed from the Latin word "uneducated" - nescius and was used in relation
to foolish people. To this value were added other negative qualities - laziness, extravagance,
boastfulness, cowardice. In the Middle Ages, the meaning of the word began to take on more
neutral shades of shyness and modesty, and as these qualities were highly valued in the 18th
century, the word gradually came to be used for something good.
It's bad now if you are called bully, but in the 16th century this word was called nice, nice
people. In practice, it was a kind word applied to both sexes. But in the seventeenth century,
such people began to comment on those who boasted of their achievements, and then
everything was transformed into a term that means those who insult the weak.
Among other words that interestingly changed their meaning - pedant, who in the sixteenth
century was just a teacher, and nervous meant "full of nerves", and therefore strong and
enduring. Promiscuous originally meant an undecided person, and the term punk was used in
the sixteenth century to refer to women of loose morals.

3. Why is the story so repetitive? How is it different from modern organisation of

information? Find the repetitions in the text and edit them in a way that is acceptable in
modern English.
Many sound repetition techniques were first developed by scops, Old English poets, who
memorized lengthy stories and poems to pass down orally in an age when most people were
illiterate. Because repetition of sounds serves as a powerful mnemonic device, careful use
will help your readers remember your point more easily. The repetition of similar endings of
words or even of identical syllables (rime riche) constitutes rhyme, used generally to bind
lines together into larger units or to set up relationships within the same line (internal rhyme).
Such repetition, as a tour de force, may be the center of interest in a poem, as Southey's "The
Cataract of Lodore" and Belloc's "Tarantella," or may play a large part in establishing the
mood of a poem, as in Byron's Don Juan.

Front-rhyme, or alliteration the repetition of initial sounds of accented syllables frequently

supplements the use of other unifying devices, although in Old English poetry it formed the
basic structure of the line and is still so employed occasionally in modern poetry, as by
Gerard Manley Hopkins and in W. H. Auden's The Age of Anxiety. But this praise was not
only for the ancient world, and the Anglo-Saxons made use of the same poetic language,
symbols and motifs to memorialise contemporary victories – and defeats.

Nowadays people no longer want to spend a lot of time on reading. That’s why the
information has to be brief, accurate and well-structured. A large amount of repetitions will
probably bore the reader and prevent them from finishing the book/article or something else.

Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that he lived northernmost of all the Northmen. He said
that he lived in the land northwards opposite the Western Sea. He said (we can just skip “he
said” and get to the point) though that the land is a very long way north (this part is
completely unnecessary since this information was already mentioned in the first
sentence); but is all deserted, except for a few places here and there where the Finns camp,
hunting in winter and fishing in the sea in summer. He said that (one again we can omit “he
said”) he at times wanted to discover how much further the land extended northwards (to the
north is also posible), and whether any man to the north of the wastelands lived (we can just
say “whether anyone lived there”). So journeyed he northwards (it’s unnecessary to
mention the direction once again) by the land letting the wasteland to be on starboard (we
can just say “so that wasteland was on starboard” without repeating the word “land”),
and the open sea on the port side for three days. Then he was as far north as the whalers
furthest sail (instead of “furthest” we can say “ever”). Then he travelled still further
northwards (then he continued his voyage), as far as he could in another three days sailing
(the word “sailing” is extra). Then the land turned eastwards or the sea into the land, he
didn’t know which; but he knew that he waited there for a westerly wind and a little from the
north (the part “a little from the north” is not necessary), and then sailed due east along
the coast for four days. Then he had to wait for a wind directly from the north, because the
land turned southward there, or the sea into the land, he did not know which (this sentence
conveys almost the same information as the previous one. We could say that “he waited
for the northern wind which showed him the right way) . Then he sailed from there
southwards by the land as much as he could sail in five days. There extended one great river
up in on that land (the word “land” is unnecessary). Then turned he up in on that river,
because he didn’t dare forth by that river sail because of hostility; because the land (possible
“area”) was all inhabited on the other side of the river. He hadn’t previously encountered any
settled land (settlements) since leaving his own home (just “his home”); but all the way it
was wasteland to starboard, except for fishermen, fowlers and hunters, and they were all
Finns; and the open sea always to port. The Biarmians had their land very well inhabited: but
he didn’t dare come therein. But yet the land of the Terfinns (possible settlement) was
completely deserted, except for where the hunters, fishermen and fowlers (he completely
repeated this part from the previous sentence. We could just say “Finns”) camped.

4.  Given the historical timeline, borrowings from which languages can you find in the
text?
Lexical borrowings in Old English
Loan-words, or borrowings were not so frequent in Old English. They are: Celtic (taken
from the substratum languages) and Latin.
Celtic element is not very significant, and is mainly reduced to the the following: dim
(down), dun (dun), binn (bin). These may occur as separate words, but a great many are
found only as elements of place-names (amhuin - river: Avon, Evan, uisge water in names
beginning with Exe-, üsk-, Esk-, (later - whiskey); dun, dum (hill): Dumbarton, Dundee,
Dunstable, Dunfermline, Dunleary; inbher (mountain) - Inverness, Inverurfe, coil (forest)
Killbrook, Kiltiemore etc. Some common names of people are of Celtic origin, too - Arthur
(noble), Donald (proud chief), Kennedy (ugly head).
Besides, one can find some words that were taken from Celtic languages by other Germanic
languages, not necessarily on the Isles - wealas (alien) OHG wat(a)ha, Icel valir, eisarn -
isarn, isern - iron. Latin words in Old English are usually classified into two layers. Some
were taken into Germanic languages in pre-British period, during contacts of the Germanic
tribes through wars and trade; these words are found in many Germanic languages (we take
Present-day German for comparison), and are so assimilated now that only a specialist can
trace their origin. They are:

 cealc (chalk - Latxalcium)

 diese (cheese - Lat. caseus, Mn Germ Käse)
 win ( wine - Lat. vinum Mn Germ Wein),
 strait (street, road Lat. via strata, Mn Germ Strasse) and others

The number of Latin words, many of them derived from the Greek that were introduced
during the Old English period has been estimated at 140. Typical of these words are altar, 14
mass, priest, psalm, temple, kitchen, palm, and pear. A few were probably introduced through
the Celtic; others were brought to Britain by the Germanic invaders, who previously had
come into contact with Roman culture. By far the largest number of Latin words was
introduced as a result of the spread of Christianity. Such words included not only
ecclesiastical terms but many others of less specialized significance. About 40 Scandinavian
(Old Norse) words were introduced into Old English by the Norsemen, or Vikings, who
invaded Britain periodically from the late 8th century on. Introduced first were words
pertaining to the sea and battle, but shortly after the initial invasions other words used in the
Scandinavian social and administrative system—for example, the word law—entered the
language, as well as the verb form are and such widely used words as take, cut, both, ill, and
ugly.

5. How many compounds can you find in the text? How common do you think this
word-building device was in old Germanic languages? Is it as productive in modern
Germanic languages?

hwælhunta n. masculine whalehunter

steorbord noun neuter starboard
styccemælum adv. here and there
forþæm conj. because, for that

Composition
The essence of composition as syntactic word-building is in making a new word from two or
more stems. The number of compound words in Old English is significant, some of them
were periphrastic (перифрастичний) nominations for some common notions and form
special stylistic devices in epic poems (kennings)
Among the compound words there are a lot of poetic metaphoric circumlocutions
(іносказання) called kennings. Some notions, such as battle, warrior, had a great number of
such periphrastic nomination (synonymic group of warrior, for instance had 37 such
nomination only in "Beowulf). Other notions that had synonymous kennings are: human
body: bdn-cofa (bone chamber), bdn-hus (house of bones) bdn-toca (bone-enclosure)
Modern English borrows and assimilates the words from other languages, but Old English
had to deal with already existing resources, so it had to create new words from old ones,
particularly using compounds.
This tendency towards the formation of compounds seems to be charac- teristic of Germanic
languages, as it is present not only in Old English, but also in Modern German, for instance.
In any case, the use of compounds conferred the language a wide range of expression. In the
case of Old English, the language could testify and name the new objects, concepts and ideas
through native expressions, although the former were being introduced precisely as a result of
the contacts of the Anglo - Saxons with the peoples that successively came to inhabit the
island.
Another factor which contributed to the formation of compounds during the Old English
period was the synthetic character of the language, although the analytic tendencies of the use
of prepositions were already present. In any case, the abundance of inflections is con- sidered
definitory of the Old English Period, to the extent that it can also be known as the Period of
Full Inflections. In this sense, as it will be seen in the analysis of the corpus, some
compounds in Old English are formed precisely through the absence of prepositions.
Moreover, this tendency still continues in the present times, although instances of
constructions of Old English can be found, which are formed by N + N and which may be
expressed through prepositions later on.
Fernández (1982: 515) remarks that the composition of words is very frequent since the Old
English Period.

Composition is still very productive in modern Germanic languages.

6. How different is word order in Anglo-Saxon ( or Old English) and modern English?
What do you think accounts for it?

Old English had Latin influence.

Modern English developed as a language of its own as a developed version of the language

Sentence Structure:
Old English: The word order and the sentence structure were rather free.
Modern English: Modern English follows the subject-verb-object sentence structure.

Old English was a much more inflected language than Modern English. Inflections are
changes in words, usually at the ending, that indicate how the word is to be used. We have
just a few inflections left in Modern English. An example is our way of making possessives.
Changing “Bob” to “Bob’s” is an inflection. Old English went through a long process of
dropping inflections, but still used them for things like indicating if a noun was a subject,
direct object, or indirect object.
Modern English mostly uses word order to accomplish this. Subjects go before verbs,
adjectives and adverbs go before the words they modify, indirect objects can go before or
after a direct object, but if the direct object comes second we use a word like “to” to show it.
“The big yellow dog gave me a kiss.” “The big yellow dog gave a kiss to me.
Those are pretty much the only two ways that sentence will make sense. Try to change
to word order and the meaning becomes unclear fast. In Old English, you could have
changed the word order because the word endings told you which word was in which
role.

7. Which linguistic process accomodated the following blends: nysse, nan?

 Blending is the word formation process in which parts of two or more words combine to
create a new word whose meaning is often a combination of the original words.
The following blends "nysse" and "nan" had (probably) undergone the linguistic process of
fusion.
Fusion is the merging of adjacent sounds or syllables or words. Fusion means the
exponence of two or more meanings in one morpheme.
It can manifest itself in two ways:
a) Affixal fusion: an affix morpheme represents two or more meanings.
b) Radical fusion: a root morpheme represents two or more meanings.
1. Nysse = ne + wisse
"Ne" is a negative particle and "wisse" is past from "witan" (to know).
Translation of nysse: did not know
Here the whole root "nysse" represents past time, 3rd person (he nysse), singular form and
negation.

Example from Ohthere: "he nysse hwæðer;" - "he didn't know which;"
2. Nan = ne + an
"Ne" is a negative particle and "an" means "one".
Translation of nan: none, any
As for this blend, it is a negative pronoun and according to the book of Verba L. H. :'negative
pronouns are formed by fusion of a negative particle "ne'' with indefinite pronoun "æniz" and
numeral "an" in its pronomial function. "Nan" and "næniz" are declined like corresponding
words without the particle "ne".'

8. How does grammatical gender correspond to the biological gender in Old English?
Old English had a system of grammatical gender with three genders: masculine, feminine,
neuter. So, different words referring to the same object can have different genders, as shown
in the Old English pair: the nouns “wifman” or “wif” (both for ‘woman’) are masculine and
neuter respectively. However, its grammatical gender was remarkably incomprehensible, that
is, one often could not know the gender of a noun by its meaning or by the form of the word;
this was especially true for nouns referring to inanimate objects. Learners would have had to
simply memorize which word goes with which gender. Though nouns referring to human
males were generally masculine and for the most part the masculine went with human males
and the feminine went with human females.
The Old English formal system was based not on the sound-form of the noun, but on its
morphological structure. In other words, the gender of a noun is dependent on the presence of
derivational suffixes or on the declensional type. Thus, suffixes such as -lac or -et mark
neuter gender (boclac ‘decree’, þeowet ‘slavery’), -ung, -īn, -jō, -nes, -estre and -wist belong
to the feminine gender (strengu ‘strength’, lærestre ‘teacher’), and -dom, -end, -els, -ere, -had,
-scipe masculine (fiscoþ ‘fishing’, cildhad ‘childhood’). Some thematic classes determine the
gender of the nouns following their inflectional patterns: strong declension in -o- or in -a-
only comprise nouns of masculine/neuter and feminine nouns respectively (giefu-giefe pl.
giefa-e ‘gift’ an -o-stem noun).
In the change from Old English to Middle English, grammatical gender was replaced by
natural gender, and this in turn meant that gender is determined by the gender of the referent.
Thus feminine nouns such as justice, police and nation that were imported from France
dropped their grammatical gender and adopted a neuter gender in the case of justice as
abstract constructs do not have a gender, or common gender in the case of police and nation
as both nouns refer to both men and women. In the case of wisdom and wiseness, wisdom
was masculine and wiseness was feminine in Old English, although with the advent of the
natural gendered system they should both now be in the neuter gender.
For every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender (the other nominal parts of
speech have gender forms); but case and number had a set of endings. Nouns used to denote
males are normally masculine - mann, fæeder, brōdor, abbod (man, father, brother, abbot).
Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor, cwēne (mother,
sister, queen). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as mæzden (maid), wīf (wife) are
neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп'я, дівча). And wīfman (woman) is masculine, because the
second element of the compound is masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated,
the same as in Ukrainian. Still in Ukrainian nouns have endings that can indicate the gender
of the noun - степ (чол.), вікно (сер.), вода (жін.). In Old English there are no such endings,
and words very similar in form may be of different genders. The same form may have two
different meanings distinguished by gender, for example lēod (masc) "man", but lēod (fem.),
"people", secz (masc) - man, but secz (fem) - "sword".
Although grammatical gender was a fully productive inflectional category in Old English,
Modern English has a much less pervasive gender system, primarily based on natural gender
and reflected essentially in pronouns only.

9. What is the origin of the ‘ea’ sound in the following words: ealra, healfe, norþweardum,
meahte, healfe, ealne?
ealra - adjective; genitive plural masculine of <eall> all
healfe - noun, feminine; dative singular of <healf> half, part, side
norþweardum – northwards
meahte, mæg - modal (preterit-present) verb, class V; 1st person singular present indicative
of <magan, mæg, magon, meahte> may, be able to
ealne - adjective; accusative singular masculine of <eall> all

10. How can you explain the sound changes in the following examples: Þrim – three,
triangle; cyninge – king, gene; fiscaþe – fish, piscine; fugeleras – fowl, poultry?
In the process of its development a great number of words were taken into English from
other languages. Some of them had counterparts in English, but with the sounds that were
already only vaguely reminding of the original Indo-European source. So, now we can find
many pairs of words in present-day English in which we find similar stems which are evident
only to a person with some linguistic knowledge, one of them native, and the other taken
from some other language (mainly Latin or Greek):
Jakob Ludwig Grimm studied and systematized correlations of sounds in his Deutsche
Grammatik. His conclusions are called Grimm’s law or the First Consonant shift.
The essence of Grimm’s law is that the quality of some sounds (namely plosives) changed
in all Germanic languages while the place of their formation remained unchanged. Thus,
voiced aspirated plosives (stops) lost their aspiration and changed into pure voiced plosives,
voiced plosives became voiceless plosives and voiceless plosives turned into voiceless
fricatives.
That's why Latin tres or Greek treis became Þrim (thrim) in Old English and three in Modern
English, but triangle (A plane figure with three straight sides) or tripod (A three-legged stand
for supporting a camera) remained the same as in Latin and Greek.
Also Latin piscis became fiscaþe in Old English and fish in Modern English, but we still have
piscine /ˈpaɪsin/(Of or concerning fish) related to fish.
We can notice changes also in Old English fugeleras and Modern English fowl /faʊl/ in
comparison with Latin polteria, still we have in English poultry - birds such as chickens and
ducks.
King in Modern English and cyninge in Old English derive from Greek genea "generation,
race", where king is someone who descended from noble birth. In English we have a word
related to birth - gene.

11. what mood manifests in the following verbs and what accounts for its
use
bude – lived (indicative)
Sie – is (indicative)
Wolde – wanted (indicative)

Læge – extended (indicative)

Meahte – could (indicative)

Verb moods are classifications that indicate the attitude of the speaker. Verbs
have three moods—indicative, imperative, and subjunctive.
The indicative and the imperative moods are fairly common. You use the
indicative mood in most statements and questions.
We use the imperative in requests and commands.
If something is hypothetical, or contrary to fact, use the subjunctive.

12. How did the strong and weak verbs evolve in terms of categories and inflections?
Give several examples to illustrate your point.
Modern English makes a distinction between regular and irregular verbs. This distinction
goes back to the Old English system of strong and weak verbs. Strong verbs use the
Germanic form of conjugation (known as Ablaut). In this form of conjugation, the stem of the
word changes to indicate the tense. Verbs like this persist in modern English, for example
"sing, sang, sung" is a strong verb, as are swim/swam/swum and choose/chose/chosen. The
root portion of the word changes rather than its ending. In Old English, there were seven
major classes of strong verb; each class has its own pattern of stem changes.
Strong Verbs are one of the most complex elements of Old English grammar as they are so
heavily altered by sound changes that happened as Old English evolved from the earliest
forms of the language. The most important thing to remember about Strong Verbs is that they
form their past tense by changing the root vowel of the verb. So 'ic bite - I bite' becomes 'ic
bat - I bit' and 'ic write - I write' becomes 'ic wrat - I wrote'.
There are no endings for first and third past (so we have 'ic/heo wrat - I/she wrote') but there
are endings added to second person singular past ('ðu write - you wrote') and plural past ('we
writon - we wrote').
Many modern English verbs still form their past tense in this way. However, many verbs
which are strong in Old English have weakened in modern English and form their past by
adding 'ed', so do not rely on modern verbs to figure out which are strong in Old English. For
example, examine the sentences below: 'Wyrmas his lichaman ceowað - Worms chew his
body' and 'Wyrmas his lichaman cuwon - Worms chewed his body'. The Old English
'ceowan' is strong, and its modern English descendant 'chew' is weak.
The terms strong and weak verbs were proposed by J. Grimm; he called the verbs strong
because they had preserved the richness of form since the age of the parent-language and in
this sense could be contrasted to weak verbs lacking such variety of form. From the verbs the
terms were extended to noun and adjective declensions. The difference between these groups
lies in the means of building the principal forms: the Present tense, The Past tense and
Participle II. The strong verbs built their principal forms with the help of root vowel
interchanges plus certain grammatical endings.
The weak verbs are specifically Germanic innovation, for the device used in building their
principal forms is not found outside the Germanic group. They built the Past tense and
Participle II by inserting a special suffix between the root and the ending. Strong verbs were
divided into seven main classes while weak verbs were divided into five main classes.
Proto-Germanic verbs have three moods: indicative, subjunctive and imperative. Indicative
and subjunctive moods are fully conjugated throughout the present and past, while the
imperative mood existed only in the present tense and lacked first-person forms. Proto-
Germanic verbs have two voices, active and passive. Despite this difference, strong and weak
verbs in Old English had several features in common: Both distinguished two numbers
(singular and plural); three persons; two tenses (present and preterite); indicative, subjunctive
and imperative and only one voice (active). The Old English present indicative singular of
verbs typically had the personal endings [- e], [- st] and [- d]. All persons of the present
indicative plural ended in [- a d].

13. What is the function of the nouns in dative case?

In the case of the dative case, the expression of the function of the addressee is connected.
This meaning is formed by the noun - a secondary member, which is in the postposition, less
preposition, in relation to the verb-predicate. The lexical filling of case forms provides for the
obligatory nomination of persons in whose interests the action takes place. Departure from
the nomination of persons is possible only under the condition of metaphorization,
personification of concepts.
The dative case reproduces the function of the addressee in the so-called semantic
complexes, where around the verb - predicate are grouped subject, which through the object
acts on the person-addressee, eg: "They sold velvet coats or silver cups база" -Levytsky);
"Maxim gave Chipka the Trojan of good horses" (Panas Mirnyi); "She cried, went on her
way, rested in Brovary And bought honey for her son" (T. Shevchenko).

The verbs involved in the expression of the addressee are grouped together on the basis of a
common invariant seven of giving, eg: give, transfer, give, pay, sell, borrow, hand, offer,
send, carry, buy, and so on. There is no clear distinction between the lexical potential of
verbs, but it is mandatory to have a one-way direct concrete action of a transitive verb, in
which the necessary noun in the form of a possessive direct object, except the dative
addressee, therefore, the verb must be a two-object valence : “… His mother sent him money
to Moscow…” (B. Antonenko-Davidovich); “… And bought a dressing gown for my son for
three kopecks” (T. Shevchenko); “… He is paid money for it…” (O. Honchar); "Yesterday,
Ms. Bang took the gasoline and" New Word "to Rudenka" (Lesya Ukrainka); "Hetman
solemnly handed Bohun a colonel's pirnach" (J. Kachura).

Sometimes the address sema can be formed depending on the context. The verbs to carry,
read, write, reap, carry, press, work, impose, leave, etc. are not characterized by "giving
direction", but its absence cannot be completely denied, because "every action or state, as
they are regulated by consciousness, can be addressed to someone."
The carrier of the state, expressed by the dative - a person passive, verbal sign, which is
directed to him, does not reach it , due to the structural organization of the sentence. On the
one hand, the function of the subject is fixed by the subject position of the predicate-
dependent noun, which nominates the person-subject and is used in the form of the dative.
Comparing the Anglo-Saxon and modern texts, what replaced the case forms in the present-
Old English (originally Ænglisc /'æŋ.glɪʃ/, Anglisc, Englisc) is an ancient form of English
that was not spoken by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in present-day England,
south and east of Scotland from the mid-5th to the mid-12th centuries. Also often called the
Anglo-Saxon language. Closer to modern German and Icelandic than to modern English.
It had a grammatical mark - five differences (nominal, significant, generic, giving and
instrumental), three grammatical numbers (one, double and many) and three grammatical
parents (male, female, middle). Duality is inherent only in the first and second person and
interacting groups of two.
Adjectives, pronouns and other verbs agree with the noun in the distinctive, number and
gender. Personal verbs are consistent with the subject for personality and number. Nouns
have a clear declension (similar to Latin, ancient Greek or Sanskrit).
Verbs have nine main conjugations (seed and two weak), each with numerous subtypes, and
many require incorrect verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European
languages, especially Latin, is only two types of grammatical tense (compared to the six tense
aspects of Latin forms) and the absence of a synthetic passive state (if present in the Gothic
language).
Native nouns were purely grammatical, in contrast to the natural genus in modern English.
The grammatical gender did not necessarily coincide with the gender of the person when it
came to people. For example, sēo sunne (sun) belongs to the feminine, se mna (moon) - to
the masculine, and þat wīf (woman) - the middle (comparison with the German counterparts
die Sonne, der Mond, das Weib).day English?

14. Comment on the morphemic structure of the following words: hlaforde, cyninge,
norþmest, styccemælum, huntoðe, fiscaþe, norþryhte, steorbord, bæcbord,
hwælhuntan, unfriþe, fiscerum, fugelerum, huntum, widsæ, norþweardum.

Comment on the morphemic structure of the following words:

Hlaforde –lord, root hlaford+e suffix
Cyninge – root cyning+ suffix e noun masculine king
Norþmest - northernmost Norþ+mest compound adverb that consists of 2 roots
Styccemælum - styccemælum adv. here and there styċċe + -mǣlum.
Huntoðe – hunting, root huntoð + e suffix Dativ
Fiscaþe – fishing, root fiscaþ + suffix e
Norþryhte – northwards, Norþ+ryhte compound adverb
Steorbord – starboard, steor+bord complex noun with 2 roots
Bæcbord – port bæc + bord complex noun with 2 roots
Hwælhuntan - whalehunter , hwæl+hunt+an plural suffix. hwæl (“whale”) + hunta (“hunter”)
Unfriþe - absence of of peace, hostility, affix un- + root friþ + suffix -e Dativ
Fiscerum - fisherman, fiscere Nominativ, root stem fiscer+ suffix –um Dativ
Fugelerum – fowler, fugelere Nom., root fugeler+ suffix –um plural
Huntum - hunter, hunta Nom., hunt+ suffix um plural
Widsæ - the open sea, wid+sæ compound noun with 2 roots
Norþweardum – northwards norð-weard, 2 roots norð+weard+ suffix -um Dativ

The old language is highly inflected; not only verbs but also nouns, adjectives and pronouns
are inflected.
The changes in morphology are closely related to changes in the sound system. As the
inflections in all parts of speech were placed at the end of the word, they invariably were
pronounced in a reduced form and disappeared altogether. So the paradigms of all parts of
speech were to great extent simplified, and many forms were lost altogether.