Passive Forms. Category of Voice.

The category of voice in OE is another debatable issue.. The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of Participle 2 of transitive verbs used as pre­dicatives with the verbs bion (NE be) and weorftan 'become” During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the Passive voice.

In OE the finite verb had no category of Voice.

The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases con­sisting of OE beon (NE be) and weorthan ('become') and Part. II of tran­sitive verbs.

But in the 14^th c weorthan died out and passive with 1 aux verb be. In ME beon plus Past Part, developed into an analytical form. Now it could express not only a state but also an action.

ME Passive constructions included a variety of prepositions — from, mid, with, of, by — two were selected and generalised: by and with. Thus in ME the Pass, forms were regularly contrasted to the active forms throughout the paradigm, both formally and semantically. Therefore we can say that the verb had acquired a new grammatical category — the category of Voice.

In Early NE the Pass. Voice continued to grow and to extend its application.

The wide use of various pass, constructions in the 16th and 19th c. testifies to the high productivity of the Pass. Voice At the same time the Pass. Voice continued to spread to new parts of the verb paradigm: the Gerund and the Continuous forms

Perfect Forms. Category of Time-Correlation/

the Perf. 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 Part.2

Originally the verb habban was used only with participles of transi­tive verbs; then it came to be used with other verbs.

The other source of the Perf, forms was the OE phrase consisting of the link-verb beon and Part. 11 of intransitive verbs. Beon was used with intransitive verbs and habban with transitive. But in NE the aux verb to be began to disappear from perfrct forms and was replaced by have.

The Perf forms were synonymous with Past simple for many centuries.      

Continuous Forms. Category of aspect.

The Cont forms are the peculiarity of English among other Gmc lang.

be+Part 1. Isolated traces of such combination occurred in OE They denoted a quality, or a lasting state, characterising the person or thing indicated by the subject of the. sentence but they were not popular until NE period.

be + Participle 1 = be + on/in + Gerund (indicated a process of limited duration) In the I5th and 16th c. be plus Part. I was often con­fused with a synonymous phrase — be plus the preposition on (or its reduced form a) plus gerund. By that time the Pres. Part, and the verbal noun had lost their formal differences: the Part. I was built with the help of ing and the verbal noun had the word-building suffix -ing, Achasing the deer (=on chasing)

Only in the 19^th c Wordsworth introduced cont forms into literature. In the I8th c. that the Cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at that stage the Cont. and non-Cont. made up a new grammatical category — Aspect.

OE Vocabulary.

The history of words throws light on the history of the speaking community and its contacts with other people.

According to some rough counts OE vocabulary had between 23 000 and 24 000 lexical units. About only 15% of them survived in ModE.

In OE there were an extremely low percentage of borrowings from other languages (only 3% as compared to 70% in ModE). Thus OE from the point of view of its vocabulary was athoroughlyGermanic language.

Native OE words can be subdivided into 3 following layers:

1. Common IE words – the oldest and the largest part of the OE vocabulary that was inherited by the Proto-Germanic, and later by all the Germanic languages, from the Common Indo-European Language.

Semantic fields:

• family relations (father, mother, daughter, brother, etc. (except aunt, uncle – words of the Germanic origin));
• parts of human body (eye, nose, heart, arm, etc.);
• natural phenomena, plants, animals (tree, cow, water, sun, wind, etc.).

Parts of speech:

• nouns (eye, brother, etc.);
• verbs (basic activities of man)(to be, can, may, to know, to eat, to stand, to sit, etc.);
• adjectives (essential qualities)(new, full, red, right, young, long, etc.);
• pronouns (personal and demonstrative) (I, my, this, that, those, these, etc.);
• numerals (most of them) (1-10, 100, 1000, etc.);
• prepositions (for, at, of, to, etc.).

· Common Germanic words – the part of the vocabulary that was shared by most Germanic languages. These words never occurred outside the Germanic group of languages. This layer was smaller than the IE layer.

SEMANTIC FIELDS:

• nature, plants, animals (earth, fox, sheep, sand, etc.);
• sea (starve, sea, etc.);
• everyday life (hand, sing, find, make, etc.).

Parts of speech:

• nouns (horse, rain, ship, bridge, life, hunger, ground, death, winter, evil, etc. );
• verbs (to like, to drink, to bake, to buy, to find, to fall, to fly, to make, etc.);
• adjectives (broad, sick, true, dead, deaf, open, clean, bitter, etc.);
• pronouns (such, self, all, etc.);
• adverbs (often, again, forward, near, etc.).

· Specifically Old English words – native words that occur only in English and do not occur in other Germanic and non-Germanic languages. They are very few and are mainlyderivatives and compounds (e.g. fisher, understand, woman, etc.).

· Borrowed words – this part of OE vocabulary, as it has already been mentioned above, was a small portion of words that remained on the periphery of OE vocabulary. The words were mainly borrowed from:

· Latin (around 500 words only) (abbat, anthem, alms, etc. );

· Celtic dialects:

· common nouns (bin, cross, cradle, etc.) – most of them died out, some survived only in dialects;

· place names and names of waterways:

o Kent, London, York, etc.;

o Ouse, Avon, Evan, Thames, Dover – all with the meaning “water”;

o -comb (“deep valley”) – Duncombe, Winchcombe, etc.;

o -torr (“high rock”) – Torr, Torcross, etc.;

o -llan (“church”) – Llandoff, Llanelly, etc.;

o -pill (“creek”) – Pylle, Huntspill, etc.

• hybrids:-------------------------------→