GORDILLO, Eugenia Guadalupe

OLD ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY OE nouns have only four cases: NOMINATIVE,

ACCUSATIVE, GENITIVE AND DATIVE. Because of the weakening and loss of sounds in

unstressed syllables in pre-historic OE, there were few distictive case-endings.

All nouns have the ending “um” for the dative plural

Must have the ending “a” for the genetive plural

Musculine nouns have genitive singular in “es”

Nominative and accusative plural in “as”

In the verbal system, OE inherited from Proto-Germanic a two-tense system (present and past), with different forms for indicative and subjunctive.

In the present tense, OE retained the person distinctions in the indicative.

Singular I help she/he/it helps

Plural (no present distinction)

you/we/they help

In the past tense, there was a distinctive form for the 2nd person singular as against the 1st and 3rd person singular

pu hulped (you helped)

Ic/hēo healp (I/she helped)

In the plural there was no distinction of persons (we/you/they helped)

Also, in OE we can see the beginnings of a new tense-system using auxiliaries, and especially the developments of forms for the perfect and for the passive like Modern English “I have helped” “ I am helped”. The perfect tenses existed in OE but were not used frequently.

The perfect tenses of transitive verbs were formed by the verb “habban” (to have) and the past participle of the verb. Originally, a sentence like “he had broken a leg” meant something like “he possesed a broken leg”.

The passive too was formed with the verb “to be” or “to become” and the past participle.

Example:

“An arrow there pierced Alexander”(Active voice)

“There was Alexander pierced by an arrow”(Passive Voice)

Since it is the Direct Object of the active sentence that becomes the suject of the passive voice, only transitive verbs can produce passives of this type.

OLD ENGLISH SYNTAX OE had greater freedom of word order than

Modern English because of its inflectional system.

There were three particular types of word order for the clauses: S-V-O; V-S-O; S-O-V. we can see it in this example.

(1) “When I then this all remembered”, (2) “then remembered I also” (3) “how I saw”, (4) “before it all ravaged was and burnt up”, (5) “how the churches throughout all England stood with treasures and books filled”.

(1) It is a subordinate clause and has the S-V-O order.

(2) It has V-S-O order. (the direct object being the reminder of the whole sentence); this order is common when the clause begins with an adverbial expression.

(3) It has the S-V-O order.

(4) It is a subordinate clause in the passive; the verb is in the subjunctive and is placed after the past participle “ravaged”.

(5) It has the order S-V, but the verb is intransitive, so there is no direct object; the nouns dependent on the past participle “filled(genitive plural) are placed before it.

The order V-S-O is normal in questions like:

Hwy didest pū pæt? (why did you that?)

Hæfst pū ænigne geferan?  (have you any companion?  

Negation is achieved by use of the particle “ne”

Fram ic ne wille (away I do not intend to go)

Neither in questions nor negative sentences does OE make use auxiliary “do”.

Where we say:

why do you go? Hwy gāþ gē?

I do not go. Ic ne gā.

Another big difference from ME is the system of demostratives. Today we have a threefold system.

the, this, that

But in OE there were only two demostratives

Sē the/that

Þes this

On the other hand, the ternary modern system comprises only five different forms (the, this, these, that, those) whereas each of the OE demosratives is declined through three genders, five cases and two numbers.