Theme morphology subject: the history of the english language plan

THEME 3. Morphology

SUBJECT: THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

PLAN:

Key words: 

Morphology, Indo-European language, Old English morphology, noun, noun classification, grammatical categories. 

Reliable evidence of the period is extremely scarce. The story of the invasion is told be Bede (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatian in 449 A.D. under the leadership of the Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa. The invaders came in multitude, with families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories like Celts before them. The Germanic invasion was different from the Roman military conquest, although it was by no means a peaceful affair.

Reliable evidence of the period is extremely scarce. The story of the invasion is told be Bede (673-735), a monastic scholar who wrote the first history of England. According to Bede the invaders came to Briatian in 449 A.D. under the leadership of the Germanic kings, Hengist and Horsa. The invaders came in multitude, with families and clans, to settle in the occupied territories like Celts before them. The Germanic invasion was different from the Roman military conquest, although it was by no means a peaceful affair.

Old English morphology was that of a typical inflected if somewhat simplified Indo-European language. 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. Nouns in Old English retained only four of the Indo-European 8 cases, adjectives, partly pronouns and numerals agreed with the nouns they modified in number, gender and case.

The nouns in Old English are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups. 

The nouns in Old English are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups. 

The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix. Former suffixes (a,o,i,u) are no longer found in Old English, moreover, even the very paradigms of these groups of nouns were already splitting (we can see considerable difference in declension of nouns of different genders within the class of nouns originally having the same stem-forming suffix.) Yet the traditional classification will look like this: -a-stems.

They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative: m n (short root vowel) n (long root vowel) 

They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative: m n (short root vowel) n (long root vowel) 

Singular 

Nom. stan scip sceap 

Gen. stänes scipes sceapes 

Dat. stäne scipe sceape 

Асc. stän scip sceap 

Plural 

Nom. stanas scipu sceap

Gen. stana scipa sceapa 

Dat. stänum scipum sceapum 

Асc. stänas scipu sceap stone ship sheep 

The nouns formerly having -i-sufix, now called -j-stemsmight belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders - masculine and neuter have the same endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the -a- stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems.

m n f 

m n f 

Singular 

Nom. hyll spere cweri 

Gen. hylles speres cwene 

Dat. hylle spere cwene 

Acc. hyll spere cwen 

Plural 

Nom. hyllas speru cwene/cwena 

Gen. hylla spera cwena 

Dat. hyllum sperum cwenum 

Acc. hyllas speru cwene/cwena hill spear woman

Glossary

1. A lingua franca, or common language - is often adopted for convenience of communication, particularly in countries where many languages are in force, such as in much of Africa, South-East Asia and in modern groupings such as the European Community.
2. Patois - A patois is any non-standard language. The term is not formally defined in linguistics and can therefore refer to pidgins, creoles and dialects, but in general it is held to refer to an unwritten (i.e. spoken and informal) dialect. 
3. Pidgin - A pidgin (sometimes called a contact language) is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. 

REFERENCES

1
1. Аракин В.Д. ―Очерки по истории английского языка‖ М.В.Ш 1992, (рус тилида)
2
2. Tikhonova A.P. A Concise History of the English language (Краткая история английского языка): Учебное пособие. - Майкоп: Изд-во АГУ, 2009. 
3
3. Смирницкий А.И. ―Древнеанлийский язык‖ 1956(рус тилида)
4
4. Смирницкий А.И. ―История английского языка‖ 1962 (рус тилида)
5
5. Ярцева В.Н. ―Историческая морфология английского языка ‖ М Наука 1963 (рус тилида)
6
6. Ярцева В.Н. ―Исторический синтаксис английского языка ‖ М. Наука 1961(рус тилида)
7
7. Ильиш.Б.А. ―История английского языка‖ СПб Виктори 1983 (инглиз тилида)

1. www.linguist.org 2. www.phililigy.ru 3. www.ewiki.info 4. www.womenglish.ru 5. http: //dissertation1.narod.ru