Loss of inflections

Loss of grammatical gender

two noun cases: possessive and non-possessive

all adjective inflections lost, loss of weak/strong distinction

verbs: personal endings reduced, mood distinctions blurred

dual/plural distinction lost

change from synthetic to analytic language; reasons: interaction of different inflectional systems in English, French, and Scandinavian; reduction of unstressed final vowels; relative rigidity of word order; increasing use of prepositions and particles changes more visible in North of England.

14. Old English vocabulary in dynamics (Borrowings).

Modern estimates of the total OE vocabulary range from about 30.000-100.000 words. The OE vocab. was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words, inherited from Proto-Germanic or formed from native roots and affixes.

Native words can be subdivided into some etymological layers coming from different historical periods: 3 main layers in the native words: 1) common Indo-European words. They constitute the oldest part of the OE vocab. Among these words: natural phenomena, plants, animals, agricultural terms, verbs denoting men’s activities, names of parts of the human body, terms of kinship, etc.; this layer includes personal and demonstrative pronouns and most numerals.

Verbs belonging to this layer denote the basic activities of man; adjectives indicate the most essential qualities.

foeder – Vater; bropor – Bruder; modor – Mutter; dohtor – Tochter; sunu – Sohn;

mona – Mond; niht – Nacht; woeter – Wasser; fyr – Feuer;

2) common Germanic words; The common Germanic layer includes words which are shared by most Germanic languages. This layer is certainly smaller than the layer of common IE words. Semantically these words are connected with nature, with the sea and everyday life.

screap – sheep; macian – make; hus – house; drincan – drink; land – land; safe – sea; wisdom – wisdom;

3) specifically OE words. Specifically OE, that is words which do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few: OE clipian - call, OE brid – bird, wifman – woman and several others.

OE borrowings come from two sources: Celtic and Latin. There are very few Celtic loan-words in the OE vocabulary. Borrowing from Celtic is to be found only in place-names. The OE kingdoms Kent, Deira and Bernicia derive their names from the names of Celtic tribes. The name of York, the Downs and perhaps London have been traced to Celtic sources. Various Celtic designations of river and water were understood by the Germanic invaders as proper names: Ouse, Esk, Exe, Avon; Thames, Stour, Dover also come from Celtic. Many place-names with Celtic elements are hybrids; the Celtic component, combined with a Latin or a Germanic component, makes a compound place-name, e.g.: Celtic plus Latin: Man-chester, Win-chester, Lan-caster; Celtic plus Germanic: York-shire, Corn-wall, Devon-shire, Canter-bury.

Latin influence on the OE vocabulary.

Early OE borrowings from Latin belong to war, trade, agriculture, building and home life. Among the Latin loan-words adopted in Britain were some place-names made of Latin and Germanic components, e.g. Portsmouth, Greenport, Greenwich.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1090