Processes in the system of consonants in English.

Changes in consonants. Voiceless fricatives (f, th) appeared in Germanic languages as a result of the first Consonant Shift . Their development continues in Old English.

1. Voicing of fricatives in intervocal position: f>v = ofer – over; s>z>r = maize – mara – more.

2. Palatalization[ˌpælətəlaɪˈzeɪʃ(ə)n]of the sounds k, sk, kg developed in assibilation, that is formation of a sibilant in places before front vowels: k>tch = cild – child; sk>ch; kg>dz

3. Assimilation before t. the sound t when it was preceded by a number of consonants changed the quality of a preceding sound.

4. Loss of consonants in certain positions. Besides h that was lost in intervocal position, the sound n and m were lost before h, entailing the lengthening of the preceding vowel…

5. Metathesis [mɪˈtæθəsɪs] of r (the following change of the position of consonants takes place…

6. West Germanic gemination of consonant. In the process of palatal mutation, when j was lost and the preceding vowel was short, the consonant after it was doubled (geminated): tell, sell, fill…

Parts of speech included noun, pronoun, adjective, numeral and verb; all of which formed their paradigmatic forms by inflections, suffixes, and sound interchange. There were no analytical formations. Free stress (accent) became recessive, and precise accent rules became dominant, with the first root syllable carrying the stress.

Old English Noun

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number(singular, plural), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and four cases ( nominative, genitive, dative and accusative). Gender is actually not a grammatical category in a strict sense of the word, for every noun with ll its forms belongs to only one gender. Page 39

All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes. These stem-forming suffixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. / 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 goose –pl. geese, but moose –pl. moose, foot – feet but boot – boots, sheep – seep but sheet – sheets? p. 40/

OE nouns have 2 types of declension – vocalic and consonantal.

Nouns with the vocalic stems (a,o,i,u –) are traditionally grouped into the strong declension. Nouns with the consonantal stem (n) are grouped into the weak declension.

Strong includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix: (a,o,i,u –stem). A-stem and its variation ja&wa – m,n. O-stem – jo&wo –f noun. I-stem – m,f,n. U-stem – m,f. j,w –appeare before inflexion. Weak declension consists of a numerous group of nouns originally having –n- stems. –n- stem nouns may be of all three genders. / the nouns belonging to –r- stems were of masculine and feminine gender/- es- stems they are all neuter/ room-stems(Root-stemm formed some cases not by an inflexional ending, but by the chance of the root vowel due to mutation)-no form suffixes. Sound of donation inner flexion. Mutation was used to define number and gender of noun. Primary compound (both parts in Nomcase) +adj+noun. Secondary comp.noun (the 2-nd part in Gen Case.)=noun+noun, verb+noun

Stem – part of the word comparasing(connected) root and stem.

Some may form their plural from without any ending

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1292