Grammatical categories of the Noun in OE

The OE had 2 grammatical or morphological categories: number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders (but that is classifying feature, not a gr.cat.)

Number: singular and plural.

Cases:Nominative(the case of active agent, mainly was used with verbs denoting activity, could also indicate the subject characterized by a certain quality or state, coul serve as a predicative and as the case of address(He was a very rich man.- predicative)), Genitive(for nouns serving as attributes to other nouns,the meaning was subjective –associated with the possessive meaning and the meaning of origin(hiora scipu-their ships) and objective – associated with partitive meaning(sum hund scipa-a hundred of ships)), Dative (chief case used with prepositions,could convey an instrumental meaning, indicating the means or manner of an action(from pem here – from the army)) and Accusative(indicated a relationship to a verb, being a direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings, could be used in some adverbial meanings to indicate time or distance(hine nanes pinges ne lyste-nothing pleased him))

There was considerable fluctuation in the use of cases in OE. One and the same verb could be construed with different cases without any noticeable change of meaning.

Development of Perfect forms in English

Like other analytical forms of the verb, the Perfect forms have developed from OE verb phrases. The main source of the Perf.form was the OE «possessive» construction, consisting of the verb «habban» (NE «have»), a direct object and the Participle II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.

The meaning of the construction was: a person (subject) possessed a thing (object), which was characterized by a certain state resulting from the previous action (the participle).

Towards ME it turned into analytical forms and made up a single set of forms termed «perfect».

In the Perfect form the auxiliary «have» had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs.

By the time of the Literary Renaissance the perfect forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories.

In the beginning the main function of the Perfect forms was to indicate a completed action, to express «perfectivity» rather than priority of one action to another.

The Pronoun in OE

· The Pronoun

· OE pronouns fell under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. As for the other groups – relative, possessive and reflexive – they were as yet not fully developed and were not always distinctly separated from the four main classes.

· Personal pronouns

· In OE, while nouns consistently distinguished between four cases, personal pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: the forms of the Dat. case of the pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd p. were frequently used instead of the Acc. It is important to note that the Gen. case of personal pronouns had two main applications: like other oblique cases of noun-pronouns it could be an object, but far more frequently it was used as an attribute or a noun determiner, like a possessive pronoun, e.g. sunu mīn.

· Demonstrative pronouns

· 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 pl. and the prototype of this. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. Demonstrative pronouns were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun indicated its number, gender and case.

· Other classes of pronouns

· Interrogative pronouns – hwā, Masc. and Fem., and hwæt, Neut., - had a four-case paradigm (NE who, what). The Instr. case of hwæt was used as a separate interrogative word hwў (NE why). Some interrogative pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e.g. hwelc.

· Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: ān and its derivative ǽniз (NE one, any); nān, made up of ān and the negative particle ne (NE none); nānþinз, made up of the preceding and the noun þinз (NE nothing).

The system of declension of the pronoun was not the same for all the classes. It has at least two subsystems that should be singled out: the declension of personal pronouns on the one hand and the declension of other pronouns. Although the grammatical categories of each subsystem were the same, i. e. gender, number,

case, the number of the categorial forms composing those categories was different.

3.1. The personal pronoun

The Old English personal pronoun similar to the Old English noun had the grammatical categories of gender, number and case.

Gender

Three genders could be distinguished in the pronominal paradigm: masculine, feminine and neuter, but different forms for different genders were found only in the third person singular, the rest of the forms being indifferent to gender.

The category of number differs from that of the noun as in the first and second person we find three categorial forms:singular, dual and plural,

Case

The category of case is built up by the opposition of four categorial forms, similar to those of the noun: Nominative,Genitive, Dative, Accusative.

Unlike the Old English noun, the paradigm of which was composed of forms that mainly differed in the ending, the paradigm of the Old English personal pronouns is built up by suppletive forms and the homonymity of pronominal forms is not

great. We find it only in the Dative and the Accusative cases.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 3007