An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press
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æs mannes the cause;
this is a two-place impersonal. It is also possible to obtain one-place impersonals: (53) Longa e hine [ ] hearde he longs grieviously The general rule for all impersonal constructions is that the experiencer is in either the accusative or the dative case, whilst the cause, if a noun phrase, is in the genitive case. Clearly, as noun morphology began, if not to disappear, at least to lose some of its crucial case distinctions, then examples such as (51) would begin, also, to look strange, for the norm would be for something which had both the morphological properties of a subject and the positional place of a subject to have the normal case of a subject, namely the nomi- native. Thus alongside (51) we find both the following types: (54) T a¯ ofhre¯ow e a¯m munece [ ] t æs hreoflian mæ¯g . enle¯ast [ ] Then pitied the monk the leper’s feebleness (55) Se mæssepre¯ost [ ] t æs mannes [ ] ofhre¯ow The priest for the man felt pity These variations, however, demonstrate that the use of impersonal CLAUSES 99 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 99 constructions can highlight semantic differences which have to be handled by very different constructions in present-day English. In both (54) and (55) we would be most likely to use the phrasal construction feel pity, as in: (56) The leper’s feebleness caused the monk to feel pity (for him) (57) The priest felt pity for the man I am conscious that the above account scarcely scratches the surface of the subject, but perhaps there is sufficient here for you to see that impersonals are not only quite unlike any structure in present-day English, but that there is much work to be done to explain the develop- ments which eventually bring us to the situation today. And as a final aside it may be noted that there are still a very few idiomatic and plainly archaic forms around, notably methinks for I think. Exercise So far I have presented texts from both the time of Alfred and the time of Ælfric and Wulfstan. In this exercise I have taken an extract from just before the Norman Conquest. There are two reasons for this choice: one historical, one linguistic. Historically I have chosen an extract from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles which outlines some of the internal fighting that occurred during the reign of Edward the Confessor, and therefore serves as a brief insight into the kinds of issue which were to lead to the disappearance of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. Linguistically, although undoubtedly little has been lost from the classical forms of Old English, there are a few signs in this extract of the changes which begin to occur after the Norman Conquest. You should, therefore, pay special attention to forms which show developments which reflect the way in which the language is already beginning to change. In addition, since in this chapter we have mostly been concerned with word order, you should examine each clause and the word order used there. This passage is written in a relatively non-literary style and consists of quite short clauses, so there is a considerable amount of material to examine. And co¯m t a¯ Eustatius fram g . eondan sæ¯ so¯na æfter t a¯m bisc . op and g . ewende to¯ e a¯m cynge, and spæc wi e hine t æt t æt he¯ t a¯ wolde and g . ewende t a¯ ha¯mweard. E a¯ he¯ co¯m to¯ Cantwarbyrig . e¯ast, t a¯ snædde he¯ t æ¯r, and his menn, and to¯ Dofran g . ewende. T a¯ he¯ wæs sume mı¯la o ee e ma¯re beheonan Dofran, t a¯ dyde he¯ on his byrnan and his g . efe¯ran ealle, and fo¯ran to¯ Dofran. 100 AN INTRODUCTION TO OLD ENGLISH 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 100 T a¯ hı¯ t ider co¯mon, t a¯ woldon hı¯ innian hı¯ t æ¯r heom sylfan g . elı¯code. T a¯ co¯m a¯n his manna and wolde wı¯cian æt a¯nes bundan hu¯se his un e ances, and g . ewundode t one hu¯sbu¯ndon, and se hu¯sbu¯nda ofslo¯h t one o¯ e erne. E a¯ wear e Eustatius uppon his horse, and his g . efe¯ran upon heora, and fe¯rdon to¯ t a¯m hu¯sbu¯ndon and ofslo¯gon hine binnan his a¯g . enan heor e e, and wendon him t a¯ up to¯ t æ¯re burg . e weard, and ofslo¯gon æ¯g . e er g . e wi e innan g . ewi e u¯tan ma¯ t anne xx manna. And t a¯ burhmenn ofslo¯gon xix menn on o¯ e re healfe and g . ewundoden t æt hı¯ nystan hu¯ fela. CLAUSES 101 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 101 8 Vocabulary 8.1 The sources of vocabulary If we examine almost any random sample of present-day English, what we shall find is a mixture of linguistic sources. The following, for example, is from the beginning of Graham Greene’s Stamboul Train (Heinemann, 1932): The purser took the last landing-card in his hand and watched the passengers cross the grey wet quay, over a wilderness of points and rails, round the corners of abandoned trucks. The italicised words are of French origin, whilst took is from Scandinavian and trucks from Latin. Perhaps about thirty per cent of present-day vocabulary is of French origin, and there are significantly large proportions of our vocabulary from other languages. In particular, there are exceptionally important words of Scandinavian origin, even although they are not nearly as numerous as the French words. Thus core grammatical items such as they, are and she are all Scandinavian as are the body-part nouns leg and neck and the kinship term sister. The picture presented above, which ignores many of the words in the present-day language whose origin lies in other languages, for example Dutch sketch, but often from even more distant languages, such as shampoo from Hindi or wigwam from the North American language Ojibwa, is in stark contrast to the situation in Old English. For there the over- whelming majority of words are of native, Germanic, origin; none of the words I have mentioned above formed part of Old English vocabulary, not even the Scandinavian grammatical items. Those terms replaced the Old English words hı ¯ , synd and he¯o during the Middle English period. As I shall show later, there are words of non-native origin in Old English, the vast majority of which are from Latin. It has been estimated only about 3 per cent of Old English vocabulary is taken from non-native sources and it is clear that the strong preference in Old English was to 02 pages 001-166 29/1/03 16:09 Page 102 use its native resources in order to create new vocabulary. In this respect, therefore, and as elsewhere, Old English is typically Germanic. We can classify Old English vocabulary into the following four types. Firstly, native core vocabulary; secondly, affixation, the process by which a native affix is attached to an existing word to create a new word, as in present-day English brightness from bright plus the suffix -ness; thirdly, compounding, the process by which two independent words are joined together to create a new third word, as in present-day railway, created from the two dependent words rail and way; fourthly, borrow- Download 1.93 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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