1.The first Germanic consonant shift. Grimm's Law.

2.Verner's Law. The shift of stress.

There exists a sufficient number of Old English texts to form an opinion about what really the
English language was in the times of Alfred and his successors. The language of the period bears
a lot of traces in common with other inflected Indo-European languages, Ukrainian and Russian
including.
The nominal parts of speech were declined, the infinitive of the verb likewise had a distinct
infinitival suffix, the structure of the sentence had a subject, a predicate and secondary parts. Just
like in our Slavic languages word order was free, and the nominal parts of speech had cases,
there was agreement between the subject and the predicate, double negation was not prohibited.
Impersonal sentences had no subject. And a considerable number of words of the language had
parallels in other known Indo European languages (brodor 6paт: duru .двepi). Some of
sounds are found in all languages that we know, some are now known as phonetic symbols, and
they are specifically English sounds. But some sounds which are found elsewhere, may not stand
in the English words of Indo European origin in the same places. Sunu-sunus- cин; but duo -два
twа.
By carefully studying present-day English words and comparing them with the words of our
language we can related words in the languages: (flame Rus. пламя; Ukr. полум’я).
In the process of its development a great number of words were taken into English from other
languages (mainly Latin or Greek):
first – primary; two – double; eight – octopus; eye – binoculars; tooth - dentist
In some others the changes are so significant, that we cannot see common features without
knowing the major shifts in sound system.
The first fundamental change in the consonant system of Germanic languages dates back
to times far removed from today. Jakob Ludwig Grimm (1785-1863), a German philologist and
a folklorist (generally known together with his brother Wilhelm for their Grimm's Fairy Tales
(1812-22) studied and systematized these correlations in his Deutsche Grammatik (1819-37). His
conclusions are formulated (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.
bh dh gh —> b d g Sanskrit bhrata —> Goth brodar, Old English brodor (brother);

b d g -> p t k Lith. bala, Ukr. болото -> Old English pol;

Lat. granum —* Goth. kaurn. Old English corn;

p t k -> f 6 h Lat. pater —> Goth fadar. Old English fasder

Aspirated plosives are now lost almost in all European languages, and we take for comparison
words from Sanskrit. Present-day Hindi has it, and we may find them in well-known place-
names in India
There are some exceptions to Grimm's law: p t k did not change into f 0 h, if they were
preceded by s (tres - dreo, but sto - standan). Another exception was formulated by a Danish
linguist Karl Adolph Verner (1846— 96) in 1877: if an Indo-European voiceless stop was
preceded by an unstressed vowel, the voiceless fricative which developed from it in accordance
with Grimm's law became voiced, and later this voiced fricative became a voiced plosive (stop).
That is:
p t k —> b d g. Greek pater has a Germanic correspondence fadar; feder because the stress
in the word was on the second syllable, and so voiceless plosive was preceded by an unstressed
vowel.
Verner's law explains why some verbs in Old English changed their root consonant in the past
tense and in the Participle II - originally, these grammatical forms had the stress on the second
syllable. Hence the basic forms of such verbs as snidan (cut) and weordan (10 become) were sni
dan — sndd - snidon - sniden; weordan - weard - wurdon - worden.
So, in present-day English we may find the words and morphemes of common Indo-European
origin that differ in sound form from their counterparts in other languages, but Grimm's law will
show their similarity to the words of Indo-European languages.
3.The Great vowel shift.
A vowel shift is a systematic sound change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of
a language.
The Great Vowel Shift was a major change in the pronunciation of the English language that
took place in England between 1350 and 1700. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto
Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.
The main difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English is in the
value of the long vowels, described as the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels of Middle English had
"continental" values much like those remaining in Spanish and liturgical Latin. However, during
the Great Vowel Shift, the two highest long vowels became diphthongs, and the other five
underwent an increase in tongue height with one of them coming to the front ([uː]).
---Middle English [aː] (ā) fronted to [æː] and then raised to [ɛː], [eː] and in many dialects
diphthongized in Modern English to [eɪ] (as in make; the [aː] in the Middle English words in
question had arisen earlier from lengthening of short a in open syllables and from French loan
words, rather than from original Old English ā, because the latter had in the meantime been
raised to Middle English [ɔː].)
---Middle English [ɛː] raised to [eː] and then to modern English [iː] (as in beak).
---Middle English [eː] raised to Modern English [iː] (as in feet).
---Middle English [iː] diphthongized to [ɪi], which was most likely followed by [əɪ] and finally
---Modern English [aɪ] (as in mice).
---Middle English [ɔː] raised to [oː], and in the 18th century this became Modern
English [oʊ] or [əʊ] (as in boat).
---Middle English [oː] raised to Modern English [uː] (as in boot).
---Middle English [uː] was diphthongized in most environments to [ʊu], and this was followed
by [əʊ], and then Modern English [aʊ] (as in mouse) in the 18th century. Beforelabial
consonants, this shift did not occur, and [uː] remains as in soup and room (its Middle English
spelling was roum).
This means that the vowel in the English word same was in Middle English
pronounced [aː] (similar to modern psalm); the vowel in feet was [eː] (similar to modern fate);
the vowel in wipe was [iː] (similar to modern weep); the vowel in boot was [oː] (similar to
modern boat); and the vowel in mouse was [uː] (similar to modern moose).
The effects of the shift were not entirely uniform, and differences in degree of vowel shifting
can sometimes be detected in regional dialects both in written and in spoken English. In
Northern English, the long back vowels remained unaffected, the long front vowels having
undergone an earlier shift. In Scotland, Scots differed in its input to the Great Vowel Shift, the
long vowels [iː], [eː] and [aː] shifted to [ei], [iː] and [eː] by the Middle Scots period, [oː] had
shifted to [øː] in Early Scots and [uː] remained unaffected.
The effect of the Great Vowel Shift may be seen very clearly in the English names of many of
the letters of the alphabet. A, B, C and D are pronounced /eɪ, biː, siː, diː/ in today's English, but
in contemporary French they are /a, be, se, de/. The French names (from which the English
names are derived) preserve the qualities of the English vowels from before the Great Vowel
Shift.

4.The noun in OE, its grammatical categories. Consonantal stems.

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a
grammatical category in a strict sense of the word, 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, feder, brodor, (man, father,
brother). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor (mother,
sister). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as wif (wife) is neuter (compare in
Ukrainian хлоп’я, дівча). And wifman (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 — cmen (чол.),
вікно (cep.) вода (жін.). In Old English there 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 leod masc. "man", but leod (fem.), "people”.
There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases-nominative, genitive, dative and
accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that number proved to be a stable
category, relevant for rendering the meanings and expressing the true state of things in reality.
All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. The nouns are divided
into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes, which were hardly visible even in
Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by centuries. These stem-forming
ullixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. Though lost in Old English they
still worked in the way the case and number forms were made (we may compare it with some
Russian nouns - without knowing the history of declensions, for instance, it is difficult to explain
why in Russian the plural of cmoл — cmольі, but that of cmyл is not cmyльі but cmyлья, very
similar nouns noчь and дочь are not so similar in the plural: НОЧИ but дочери not дочи. In
Ukrainian the nouns ім’я and хлопя look alike but the plural of the first is імена and of the
second not xnonena but xлоon'яma.
Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the
exceptions in the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns too. Why foot-feet but
boot-boots?
The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix.
Former suffixes (a.o.i.u) are no longei found in Old English, moreover, even the very paradigms
of these groups of nouns were already splitting (we can see considerable difference in declension
of nouns of different genders within the class of nouns originally having the same stem-forming
suffix.) Yet the traditional classification will look like this.
-a-stems
They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen
only in the nominative
So, we can see that Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel 1111 ghl give an
unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being an exception Irom the general rule of formation of
the plural form goes back to the Old English period.
If there was a mutated vowel in the stem, this sound might be preserved only in the singular.
This group of nouns is of the same origin as that of Ukrainian nouns стіл, день, вікно, дно.
The Ukrainian (and Russian.) 2nd declension of nouns (masculine and neuter) originates from
the same Indo-European group of nouns (Germanic short o proceeds from Indo-European a).
Examples of Old English a-stems are: masculine: earm (arm), eorl (earl), helm (helmet;
protection), biscop (bishop), ham (home), heofon (heaven) etc.;
neuter: dor (door), hof (hoof), word (word), deor (wild animal), hus (house).
The nouns of this class were very numerous and were characterized by high frequency of use
in Old English.
Nouns belonging to o-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic
nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u (taly (tale)); if there are two and more
syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all (for (journey)). Other nouns of this
group are: caru (care), lufu (love), swefn (dream), scir (district) etc.
The nouns formerly having –i-suffix, now called –i-stems might belong to all the three
genders, and the case endings are different for different genders – masculine and neuter have the
same endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the -a-stems, and feminine noun endings
repeated the endings of the -o-stems. For.ex. hyllas (hill), speru (spear), cwene (woman);
Other nouns of this group are: masculine: mere(sea), mete(food) etc; neuter: sife(sieve),
hilt(hilt); feminine: hyde(hide), woruld(world) etc.
In Ukrainian the sound i caused the palatalization of the previous consonant and was lost: тесть,
гість.
Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender: sunu(son), duru(door).
Other nouns of this group are: Masculine: wudu(wood), medu(honey), feld(field) etc. Feminine:
nosu(nose), hand(hand) etc.

5.Preterit-present and anomalous verbs.

Preterite-present verbs occupy a specific place within the verbal system of Old English verbs.
They combine the qualities of the strong verbs as well as the weak ones. Their present tense is
formed according to the rules of formation of the past tense of the strong verbs, that is by
gradation (vowel interchange) whereas their past tense has all the peculiarities of the weak verbs,
e.g. witan - wat, but wisse, wiste; participle II meanwhile retains the suffix -en of the strong
verbs. It is just this peculiarity that makes them preterite (in form) - present (in the meaning).
The origin of these verbs will be clearer if we consider the peculiarity of their semantics. In
general, past tense has a strong tinge of result in its meaning; especially the verbs containing the
зe- prefix, though as already mentioned, some of the forms with resultative meaning had no such
prefix.
A certain group of verbs preserves this strong meaning of result, and it turns into their
dominant feature; they begin to render the present result of the past action. E.g. witan - wat;
cunnan - cann; munan- man - what I have got to know, I know; what I have learned to do I
know how to do it; if I have memorized your name, I remember it. So the past tense in structures
meant and was perceived as the present state of mind of the speaker, and in linguistic com-
petence of the speakers turned to be considered the present tense. However, there were situations
in which the past tense was still required. One might want to know that once there was a man
who knew the way, who could swim or who remembered that brother but he is dead, or gone,
and the form of the past tense no longer could refer that action to the present. By that time the
only productive pattern of making verb forms was that of weak verbs, the one with the dental
suffix. And it was naturally used in this case. Participle II, however, had the necessary meaning
of result, and some verbs preserved it. It was formed by gradation and the suffix -en, while with
some other the pattern of the weak verbs was used. The verbs of this group, with overburdened
system of forms, started losing certain parts of their paradigm (or, probably, some forms were
not necessary and therefore not used - at least in the texts that came down to our times).
Analogous development may be found in other languages; there are eral Latin verbs whose
past tense acquired present meaning – memini (
(1 have remembered —>I remember); novi (I have come to know —> 1 know); odi (I have come
to hate you —> I hate). The same is found in Greek, too: oida ( I came to know —» I know),
pepoitha (I have come to trust you —> I trust you).
Most preterite-present verbs are classified according to the classes of gradation to which their
present tense belongs. However, some of these do not fit into this system, as their vowels do not
correspond to the gradation system of strong verbs.
The table of the main forms of Preterite-Present verbs found in Old English texts is as follows:

Class Infinitive Present Present Past Participle II

Singular Plural

I witan wat witon wissen witen know

II duзan deaз duзоn - - be useful
III unnan ann unnon ude unnen pre’sent
IV sculan sceal sculon sceolde - shall
V maзan mxз maзon meahte - may
VI - mot moton moste - may

6.Strong verbs in OE.

Strong Verbs
There were about three hundred strong verbs in Old English. They were native verbs of
Protogermanic origin and usually have parallels in other Germanic languages. They are divided
into seven classes. Gradation in Old English develops from common Indo-European gradation
but the vowels differ due to numerous phonetic changes in Germanic languages and then in
English, so the vowels may be quite different, but the principle is the same.

Class I Gradation formula: i — a — i — i

writan - wrat — writon - writen (to write) Other verbs of this class are: drifan (to drive), bitan (to
bite), stridan (to stride), scinan (to shine) etc. As the third and the fourth forms originally had
stress on the final syllable, if the verbs had voiceless fricatives in the second syllable, these
turned into voiced stops (Verner's law): snidan — snad - snidon - sniden (to cut).
Class II Gradation formula: co - ea - u - o
The four basic form of the verbs of this class is: beodan - bead - budon - boden (to offer)
Other verbs of this class are: creopan (to creep), ceosan (to choose), fleotan (to fleet), dreosan
(to fall), freosan (to freeze).
The verbs that had s after the root vowel had the change of the consonant (according to Verner's
law this consonant changed into r):
freosan - freas - fruron - froren (to freeze)
Class III
The first and the second classes of strong verbs had a long root vowel or a diphthong) followed
by one consonant. In the third class of Germanic strong verbs a short vowel was followed by two
consonants. In Old English that was a position where short vowels were subjected to assimilative
processes, hence there are several variations of root vowels in this class of verbs.
a) if nasal sound + another consonant followed the root vowel the gradation formula was:
i - a(o) - u - u drincan - dranc - druncon - druncen (to drink); findan - fand - fiindon — fitnden
(to find). Here belong also such verbs as bindan (to bind), swindan (to vanish), windan (to wind),
spinnan (to spin), winnan (to work) etc.
b) if l + another consonant followed the root vowel, then this formula was
i/e - ea - u - o helpan - healp - hulpon - holpen (to help)
Other verbs having such sounds are: delfan (to delve), sweljan (to swallow), meltan (to melt),
sweltan (to die), bellan (to bark), swellan (to swell), melcan (to milk).
c) if r + consonant or h + consonant followed the root vowels then breaking in the first two
forms changed the formula into
eo - ea - u - o steorfan - stearf - sturfon - storfen (to die). Here also belong ceorfan (to carve),
weorpan (to throw), beorcan (to bark) etc.
Class IV The verbs of this class have only one consonant after the short root vowel, and it is
a sonorant - r or -l in rare cases - in or n -The scheme of gradation is
e - e; - e;- o
stelan - stxl - stxlon - stolen (to steal) Here also belong beran (to bear), cwelan (to die), helan (to
conceal) etc.
Class V These verbs also have a short root vowel followed by only one consonant other than
r, l, or n and here the basic vowels are:
e — x - x — e sprecan - sprec — spriecon - sprecen (to speak)
Other verbs that formed their past tense and the participle II without deviation from the original
scheme are metan (to measure), etan (to eat), wesan (to be) etc.
In the verbs where the first short sound had palatal mutation, the consonant after it in the
infinitive (originally one, as is common for this class of verbs) was doubled:
sittan - sxt - sxton - seten (to sit)
Classes VI and VII of the strong verbs are specifically Germanic (they have no counterparts in
other Indo-European languages), and are characterized by the fact that the vowel of the infinitive
was repeated in the form of the Participle II, and the vowel in the past tense forms was the same
for both the singular and the plural:
Class VI The formula of gradation here is
a-o-o-a faran - for — foron - faren (to go)
Here belong such verbs as wadan (to walk), bacan (to bake), wascan (to wash).
There are verbs of this class that have other vowels, which are conditioned by the same factors as
the variations in other classes:
if there was h sound in the middle of the word, it was dropped in the infinitive in the process of
contraction and voiced in the other forms, and the basic forms are:
slean - sloз - sloзon - slxзen (to beat); flean –floз -floзon - fleзen (to flay)
Class VII The most common are the following patterns:
a-e-e-a
x_ ei - e - x
a - eo - eo - a
ea - co - eo - ea
ea — co - eo — ea
hatan - het - heton - haten (to call);
Isetan - let - leton - lxten (to let), etc.
As a result of later developments, only a few remnants of the original seven classes of strong
verbs can be found in Modern English; verbs formerly belonging to classes I, IlI a, b, IV, VI
survive to some extent; others have changed beyond recognition. A significant number of the
verbs belonging to the seven classes of the strong conjugation have changed into the weak
conjugation: many others disappeared altogether and semantically have been replaced by other
verbs, borrowed from other languages (Latin or French).

7.Evolution of the Grammatical Systems in ME and NE

The noun paradigm looks very much the same as we have it today. Having lost the category of
gender and much of its case forms it has the genitive case as opposed to nominative. The number
of nouns taking it is reduced mainly to those denoting living beings. In fact, we may call it
possessive, because it is used now mainly in the function of attribute denoting possession.
However, some nouns other than those denoting persons may still take it in the 17th century.
At the same time the unification of plural endings takes place, and former relics of -en
disappear, giving way to -es. So, the general rule of formation of the plural of the noun is
enriched by archaic forms (like geese, feet, children etc.) - we call them grammatical archaisms;
some words borrowed from Latin and used mainly in scientific texts retain their Latin plurals and
may be called grammatical barbarisms datum - data (1640-50), radius - radii (1590-1600),
formula -formulae (1575-85), axis - axes (1540-50). Some of these, however tend to comply with
the general rule, and forms like radiuses, formulas very soon become quite common.
Various scholars note, that an interesting variation appears in the treatment of abstract nouns,
which in Modern English have no plural, except by way of personification. In Shakespeare's time
such nouns were regularly used in a distributive sense. Whereas the apostrophe as a sign
denoting the possessive case of a noun appeared only about 1680, and its use to mark the
possessive case in plural in 1789, the nouns in the genitive case and in the plural have
homonymic endings, and only the context resolves ambiguity. We may note numerous instances
of the use of apostrophe in Shakespeare's plays, but there they show only the omission of e or
some other sounds - that is purely a phonetic sign. So, for instance in the case of sentences like
— The trumpets sounds (Hamlet) which may be perceived differently. The form trumpets may
be simple plural, possesive singular and possessive plural. The context shows that this is a
nominative sentence, trumpets is the attribute, and the trumpet is the only musical instrument in
the situation. Hence, we may say that it is the genitive singular form of the noun.
Of-phrase (the noun with the preposition of) replaces the former genitive case, but in
Shakespeare's plays they may go together.
The adjective in Early New English lost the form of plural and weak forms and acquired
its present-day qualities. The degrees of comparison are formed by means of the suffixes -er and
-est, vowel mutation which was characteristic of some of them was almost lost. The forms
elder/older, eldest/oldest and further/farther, furthest/farthest are distinguished in use. So older
forms elder, eldest are used to denote relations within a family.
VERB: The loss of endings greatly simplified the verbal paradigm. There were no longer
endings marking the 1st person singular, plural present indicative, and the infinitival suffix -an -
en—>e was also lost. Personal ending of the third person singular in the present tense -th is
replaced by -s; hath —> has; thinketh —> thinks.

8.Changes in the system of the adjectives in ME and NE.

The paradigm of the adjective in Middle English is simplified drastically. The endings become
scarce. The category of gender is lost, for the nouns no longer have it. The adjective no longer
agrees with the noun in case, the only remaining endings being- the plural form having the
ending -e and the remains of the weak declension, the weak form (the one preceded by an article)
-e:
young knihit / the younge kniht
younge knihtes / the younge knihtes
But some of the adjectives had the very ending -e as a result of levelling of the vowels at the
end, and so such adjectives as grene were already unchangeable; in the plural the .strong and the
weak forms also coincided.
The forms of the suffixes of the degrees of comparison were reduced lo -er, -est
glad - gladder – gladdest; greet - gretter - grettest
Some adjectives retained a mutated vowel they had had in Old English:
old - elder - eldest
long - lenger - lengest
strong - stregner -strengest
Some preserve former suppletivity, and their degrees of comparison look like this:
good - bettre - best
evil (bad) - werse - werst
muchel - more — most, mest
litel - lasse — lest
Some adjectives, especially of foreign origin, are found in a form that came into wider usage
only later, that is, they may be associated with the adverb moore/most
Phonetic Changes in the Early New English Period
The changes in the sound system of the period were significant. The process of the levelling of
endings continued, there were positional and assimilative changes of short vowels, and a
significant change in the whole system of long vowels, called the Great Vowel Shift. During the
period the process of simplification of consonant clusters and loss of consonants in certain
positions continued. The changes were as follows:
Lass of unstressed e. The process of levelling of endings led to total disappearance of the neutral
sound 9 marked by letter e in the endings (it was preserved and even pronounced more distinctly
like [i] only when two identical consonants were found in the root and in the endings), though in
spelling the letter might be preserved: no vowel is found in kept, slept, crossed, played; walls,
pens, bones, stones - but it is preserved in stresses, dresses^ wanted, parted; watches, judges;
wicked and crooked.
The sound e before r changed into a:. This change in many cases (but not always) was
reflected in spelling: ME -> NE
sterre — star
herte — heart
bern – barn
sterven – starve
kerven - carve
clerc - clerk
Some place-names changed the pronunciation, though this change is not reflected in their
spelling.
It is due to this change that the alphabetic reading of the letter r [er] began to be pronounced as
[ar].
Long Vowels. Beginning in the 15 th century, all long vowels that existed in Middle English
change their quality. This change was a fundamental one, changing the entire vocalic system,
and the essence of it is as follows. All long vowels narrowed, and the narrowest of them turned
into diphthongs. The shift resulted in the following changes:
i: —> ai time, like, rise, side
e: —> i: meet, see, keen, deep', in borrowed words chief, receive, seize
з: (e: open) —> into e: closed, then -» i: east, clean, speak, sea
a: —> ei (through the stage x, xi) take, make, name, grave, pave, sane
o (o: open, from Old English a) —> ou stone, bone, home, oak, go, moan
o: closed (from Old and Middle English d in native words as well in the borrowings)—> u: tool,
moon, stool, do, root, room
u: —>au house, mouse, out, noun, down, how
The changes were gradual, of course, and in Shakespearean times the vowels were
somewhere halfway to its present-day stage. This explains why the rhyme in some sonnets is not
exact in present-day system of reading.
The Great Vowel Shift affected all long vowels in native as well as borrowed before it
words; table and chamber, doubt and fine, appeal and tone developed in full accordance with the
development of the English sound system. Some borrowed words preserve [i:] or [u:] in the open
syllable if they were borrowed from French in the later period: some other, though taken during
this process still resisted the change and remain phonetically only partially assimilated: police
1520-30, machine 1540-50 etc. Latin borrowings that were taken from written sources, however,
usually have a vowel that was changed in the course of the shift.

9.OE vocabulary. Word formation.

The full extent of the Old English vocabulary is not known to present day scholars. There is no
doubt that there existed more words in it. Surely, some Old English words were lost altogether
with the texts that perished; some might not have been used in written texts as they belonged to
some I spheres of human life which were not of great interest (some colloquial words, for
instance).
Modern estimates of the total vocabulary (recorded and preserved in written documents) range
from 30 000 words (some even say 100 000 -Smirnitsky, Pei).
It is mainly homogeneous. Loan words are fairly insignificant, and are grouped around some
specific spheres of life.
Native words, in their turn can be subdivided into: Common Indo-European words, which
were inherited from the common Indo-European language. They belong to the oldest layer and
denote the names of natural phenomena, plants and animals, agricultural terms, names of parts of
the human body, terms of kinship; verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of Old
English man, adjectives indicate the basic qualities; personal and demonstrative pronouns and
most numerals are of this origin too.
For.ex: -fxder (father), modor (mother), sweostor (sister); etan (to eat), sittan (to sit), slepan (to
sleep), beran (to bear), cnawan (to know), ceald (cold), dor (door), stan (stone), wxter (water),
fot (foot), heorte (heart) etc. Some contained more stable sounds and in common Germanic were
closer to their Indo-European counterparts. They changed only in the course of the Old English
assimilative changes: sunu (son), swine (sun), earm (arm) etc.
These words belong to the sphere of everyday life, and denote vital objects, qualities, and
actions. Other words of common Indo-European origin are fisc (fish), foda (food; Lat. panis -
bread), freond (friend; comp. Ukr. npиятель), fyr (fire; Greek pyr; in Ukr. nipomexitiкa), jeoc
(yoke), heorte (heart), noma (name), sittan (sit), standan (stand), weorcan (work), willan (will);
heard (hard), mere (sea), lippa (lip; Lat. labium, Rus. yльібкa), treow (tree).
The majority of pronouns and numerals also spring mainly from the same source: two (two),
dreo (three), fif (five), tien (ten);
Common Germanic words are the words than can be found in all Giermanic languages, old and
new, eastern, western and northern. Here belong such words, for instance, as
eorde (earth - Goth, airda, OHG erda, OSax ertha, Olcel jord, Mn Germ. Erde);
heall (hall), hors (horse), hand (hand), hleapan (leap), sand (sand), wicu (week)
Some linguists tend to treat common West-Germanic words separately, but mainly they are not
so numerous.
Finally, hypothelically there are specifically Old English words, that is the words not found in
any of the known old texts. These are to be taken for granted - no one knows what other texts
might have been lost and the words might have existed in some other language. But we can still
say that bridda (bird), terorian (to tire, to be tired etc) so far are treated as specifically English.
Lord, Lady may be used in other meanings in other variants of the language, and have different
metaphorically extended meanings: warlords, first lady) but everyone feels that it belongs to
English culture. The parts of these compounds are not specifically English, but such
combinations of morphemes are.
Old English vocabulary consisted also from loan-words, or borrowings which were not so
frequent in Old English. They are: Celtic and Latin.
Apart from taking words from other languages, there were internal ways of enriching the
vocabulary – word-building techniques:
Morphological - morphological word- building is the way of adding morphemes to make words,
know as affixation. Here we distinguish two major groups of affixes – prefixes and suffixes,
infixes being non-characteristic for the English language.
Syntactic – building new words from syntactic groups;
Semantic – developing new meanings of the existing words.

10.Spelling changes in ME.

French graphic habits were introduced, and marking the sounds became more European in form,
no alien letters hampered reading because all the letters were exclusively Latin. Specifically
English sounds, earlier marked by letters specific only for the English language were replaced by
digraphs. з, d and wynn were replaced by Latin letters.
3-g (зod – god)
3-y (зreз – grey; зear — year)
(In some cases phonetic changes led to the use of other letters, the folзian -folwen is due to
sound, and not purely spelling change; the same is true of the letter - x— it fell into disuse
because the very sound developed into some other sounds).
The sound dз marked by сз was also rendered by g or dg - singe, bridge. In French borrowings
the same sound was marked according to the French tradition by j - judge, June.
The letter v was introduced to mark voiced fricative (it was its allograph u first, hence the name
of the letter w).
The letter q always accompanied by u is introduced to denote either the consonant k or the
cluster kw - quarter, queen.
Spelling habits affected unambiguous cases.
Long u was replaced by digraph ou, in the French tradition: hus - hous, mus - mous, ut - out; it
was found in French words: trouble, couch; in final position, and occasionally in medial it was
ow: hu- how; cu- cow, dun - down.
In some cases the sound u came to be represented by o, especially when it stood neighboring the
letters with many vertical lines lufu - loue; cumen - comen etc.
Long sound o is now rendered by oo: fot, --> foot.
Long Old English e was marked either by a digraph ee or by simple e, and mute e was added at
the end of the word: metan - mete, meete (to meet) or turned into ie; feld – field.
The consonant d gave way to digraph th —» doet, du, dreo —» that, thou, three;
The sibilant [tf] formerly rendered by c before or after front vowels was replaced by a digraph
ch: cild, hwilc —> child which
The sound [d3] of various origin is marked by the letters j, g, dg -courage, joy, bridge.
The sound [s], formerly rendered by sc is rendered by the combinations sh and sch: scip, fisc,—
> ship, fish.
The sound [k] formerly c before consonants is rendered by k -cnawan - knowen; cniht - knight.