THE PRONOUN 1 страница

§ 173. OE pronouns fell roughly 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. The grammatical categories of the pro­nouns were either similar to those of nouns (in " noun-pronouns") or corresponded to those of adjectives (in " adjective pronouns"). Some fea­tures of pronouns were peculiar to them alone.

Personal Pronouns

§ 174. As shown in Table 5 below, OE personal pronouns had three persons, three numbers in the 1st and 2nd p. (two numbers — in the 3rd) and three genders in the 3rd p. The pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p, had suppletive forms like their parallels in other IE languages (see§ 62). The pronouns of the 3rd p., having originated from demonstrative pro­nouns, had many affinities with the latter (cf. the forms in Table 6).

§ 175. 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 1st and 2nd p. were fre­quently used instead of the Acc.; in fact the fusion of these two cases in the pi was completed in the WS dialect already in Early OE: Acc. eowic and tisic were replaced by Dat. eow, lis; in the sg usage was variable, but variant forms revealed the same tendency to generalise the form of the Dat. for both cases. This is seen in the following quotation: Se pe me leh& lde, se cwasd to me 'He who healed me, he said to me' — the first me, though Dat. in form, serves as an Acc. (direct object); the sec­ond me is a real Dat.

§ 176. 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 min, his fsder (NE my son, his father). Though forms of the Gen. case were em­ployed as possessive pronouns, they cannot be regarded as possessive pronouns proper (that is, as a separate class of pronouns). The grammati­cal characteristics of these forms were not homogeneous. The forms of the 1st and 2nd p. — min, ure and others — were declined like adjectives to show agreement with the nouns they modified, while the forms of the 3rd p. behaved like nouns: they remained uninflected and did not agree with the nouns they modified.

Cf.:.

Nim pin zesceoi... and ptnne bo$an 'take thy (thine) implements for shoot­ing and thy bow' (pin and pinne show agreement with the nouns —Acc. sg, Neut. and Masc.)

He... sealde hit hy& m'der 'he gave it to his mother'.

heo befeold his handa 'she covered his hands' (Ai'j does not change its form though mfder is Dat. sg, handa —Acc. pi).

§ 177. The oblique cases of personal pronouns in combination with the adjective self could also serve as reflexive pronouns, e. g.:

3if hwa hwaet lytles жшзез biwistes him selfum 3earcode... 'If any one provided himself with some small portion of food..."

Demonstrative Pronouns

§ 178. 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 pi. (see Table 6) and the prototype of this with the same subdivisions: pes Masc., peos Fem., pis Neut. and pas Pi- They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. (the latter having a special form only ш the Masc. and Neut. sg).

Declension of $6, sCo, pat

As seen from the table, the paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun se contained many homonymous forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. -m — Dat. Masc. and Neut. sg and Dat. pi; the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pi. These case endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often re­ferred to as " pronominal" endings (-m, -r-, -f).

§ 179. Demonstrative pronouns are of special importance for a stu­dent of OE for they were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, gender and case. The forms of the pronouns may help to define the forms of the nouns in am­biguous instances, e. g. in the phrases on p£ m lande, to psre heorde 'on that land, to that herd' the forms of the pronouns help to differenti­ate gender: pSm is Neut. or Masc., paere is Fem.; both nouns are in the Dat. sg and happen to have identical endings: -e. In the following sen­tences the forms jbxt and pa help to distinguish between numbers: Uton... 3eseon p& t word (sg) 'let us see that event* Mani3e comen to bycjenne pa ping (pi) 'many came to buy those things'

(The nouns are Neut. a-stems with homonymous sg and pi forms.)

Other Classes of Pronouns

§ ISO. Interrogative pronouns —hwa, Masc. and Fem., and hwast, Neut., — had a four-case paradigm (NE who, what). The Instr. case of hwsei was used as a separate interrogative word hwy (NE why). Some interrogative pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e. g. hwelc, hwwper.

§ 181. Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: an and its deriva­tive (NEon«, any)', nan, made up of an and the negative particle ne (NE none); nanpin$. made up of the preceding and the noun Ping (NE nothing); nawihtlndmihtlndht ('nothing', NE not), hwsei-hmu^u 'some­thing' and many others.

182. Pronouns of different classes —personal and demonstrative could be used in a relative function, as connectives. The demonstra­tive se in its various forms and the personal pronoun he, either alone or together with a special relative particle pe could join attributive clauses,

e. S--

Se pe me jehzelde se cwaeO to me 'he who healed me, he said to me' (For more details and examples see OE syntax, § 220 ff.)

THE ADJECTIVE Grammatical Categories

§ 183. As stated before, the adjective in OE could change for num­ber, gender and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject of the sentence — if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the ad­jective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning — e. g.:

lytle werede 'with (the help of) a small troop'.

Weak and Strong Declension

§ 184. As in other OG languages, most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declen­sion. The formal differences between the declensions, as well as their origin, were similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic а-, о-, u- and t- and consonantal nAccordingly, there developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of o-stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc. and Neut. and of d-stems — in the Fem., with some differences between long- and short-stemmed adjectives, variants with /- and w-, monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives and some remnants of other stems. Some ^endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: -am for Dat. sg, -ne for Acc. sgMasc., [r] in some Fem. and pi endings. Therefore the strong declension of adjectives is sometimes called the " pronomi­nal" declension. As for the weak declension, it uses the same markers as /i-stems of nouns except that in the Gen. pi the pronominal ending 'jo is often used instead of the weak -ena (see the paradigms in Table

The relations between the declensions of nouns, adjectives and pro­nouns are shown in the following chart:

§ 185. The difference between the strong and the weak declen­sion of adjectives was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjec­tives could be declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the ad­jective, the degree of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners, e. g.: ря menn sindon $ode 'the men are good' mid hnescre beddinje 'with soft bedding' The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a de­monstrative pronoun or the Gen, case of personal pronouns, e. g.:

Table 7

p®t wiste land 'that uninhabited land' py bet stem, leope 'with the best song'; and afso when the adjective formed a part of a direct address: pu leofa drihten 'thou dear Lord'.

Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules: a few adjectives were always declined strong, e. g. eall, mani$, брег (NE ail, many, other), while several others were always weak: adjectives in the superlative and comparative degrees, ordinal numerals, the adjective ilea 'same'. Despite these instances of fixed, unmotivated usage, there existed a certain semantic contrast between the strong and weak forms: the strong forms were associated with the meaning of indefiniteness (rough­ly corresponding to the meaning of the modern indefinite article), the weak forms — with the meaning of " definiteness" (corresponding to the meaning of the definite article). Therefore the weak forms were regular­ly used together with demonstrative pronouns. The formal and semantic opposition between the two declensions of adjectives is regarded by some historians as a grammatical category which can be named " the category of definiteness/indefiniteness" (A. I. Smirnitsky).

§ 189. It follows that potentially OE adjectives could distinguish up to sixty forms. In reality they distinguished only eleven. Homonymy of forms in the adjec­tive paradigms was three tijnes as high as in the noun. It affected the grammatical categories of the adjective to a varying degree.

Neutralisation of formal oppositions reached the highest level in the category ot gender: gender distinctions were practically non-existent in the pi, they were lost in most cases of the weak declension in the sg; in the strong declension Neut. and Masc. forms of adjectives were almost alike.

Formal distinction of number, case and the strong and weak forms was more consistent. As • seen from Table 7, number and case were well distinguished in the strong declension, with only a few instances of neutralisation; the distinction of number was lost only in the Dat. case, Masc. and Neut. Cf.: after feawum da3um — Dat. pi 'after a few days' and

he folsode anum burSsittendum menn — Dat, sg 'he followed a town-dwelling man'.

The forms in the weak declension were less distinctive, as thirteen forms out of twenty ended in -on.

The formal difference between strong and weak forms was shown in ell cases and both numbers, the only homonymous forms being Dat. pi and Oen. pi, —if it took the ending -m.

In later OE the distinction of forms in the adjective paradigm became even more blurred. The Instr. case fell together with the Dat. Numerous variant forms with phonetically reduced endings or with markers borrowed from other forms through analogy impaired the distinction of categorial forms.

Degrees of Comparison

§ 187. Like adjectives in other languages, most OE adjectives dis­tinguished between three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the superlative from the positive were the suffixes -ra and-esHost. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an interchange of the root- vowel (see Table 8).

The root-vowel interchanges in long, eald, sized go back to different sources. The variation [a~ae! is a purely phonetic phenomenon; retrac­tion of [sel before the back vowel in the suffix -ost is not peculiar to the adjective (see § 163 for similar interchanges in nouns and § 117 for pertinent phonetic changes). The interchange in long and eald is of an entirely different nature: the narrowed or fronted root-vowel is regularly employed as a marker of the comparative and the superlative degrees, together with the suffixes. The mutation of the root-vowel was caused by i-umlaut in Early OE, At that stage the suffixes were either -ira, -ist or -ora, -ost. In the forms with -i- the root vowel was fronted and/or made narrower (see palatal mutation § 125 ff); later -i- was lost or weak­ened to -e- — but the mutated root-vowel survived as an additional for­mal marker of the comparative and superlative degrees.

Some adjectives had parallel sets of forms: with and without a vow­el interchange. These sets could arise if the adjective had originally employed both kinds of suffixes; or else the non-mutated vowel was re­stored on the analogy of the positive degree and other adjectives without sound interchanges.

§ 188. The adjective 3od had suppletive forms. Suppletion was a very old way of building the degrees of comparison (it can be illustrat­ed by the forms of adjectives in other IE languages: G gut, besser, beste, Fr mal_k pire, R хороший, лучше).

THE VERB

§ 189. The OE verb was characterised by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a _very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form-building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.

Grammatical Categories ol the Finite Verb

§ 190. The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two grammatical categories: number and person. Its specifically ver­bal categories were mood and tense. Thus in OE he bindep 'he binds' the verb is in the 3rd p. sg, Pres. Tense Ind. Mood; in the sentence Вг'тъар me hider pa. 'Bring me those {loaves)' brin$ap is in the Imper. Mood pi.

Finite forms regularly distinguished between two numbers: sg and pi. The homonymy of forms in the verb paradigm did not affect number distinctions: opposition through number was never neutralised (see the conjugations in Table 9).

The category of Person was made up of three forms: the 1st, the 2nd and the 3rd. Unlike number, person distinctions were neutralised in many positions. Person was consistently shown only in the Pres. Tense of the Ind. Mood sg. In the Past Tense sg of the Ind. Mood the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. coincided and only the 2nd p. had a distinct form. Per­son was not distinguished in the pi; nor was it shown in the Subj. Mood.

The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Impera­tive and Subjunctive. As can be seen from the paradigms in Table 9 there were a few homonymous forms which eliminated the distinction between the moods: Subj. did not differ from the Ind. in the 1st p. sg Pres. Tense — bere, deme — and in the 1st and 3rd p. in the Past. The coincidence of the Imper. and Ind. Moods is seen in the pi — lociap, demap.

The category of Tense in OE consisted of two categorial forms, Pres. and Past, The tenses were formally distinguished by all the verbs in the Ind. and Subj. Moods, there being practically no instances of neutrali­sation of the tense opposition.

§ 191. In order to understand the structure of the verb system one should get acquainted with the meanings and use of moods and tenses in OE.

The use of the Subj. Mood in OE was in many respects different from its use in later ages. Subj. forms conveyed a very general meaning of unreality or supposition. In addition to its use in conditional sen­tences and other volitional, conjectural and hypothetical contexts Subj. Was common in other types of construction: in clauses of time, clauses of result and in clauses presenting reported speech, e. g.:

pa 3iet he ascode hwaet heora cyninj haten wsre, and him man and- swarode and cwaeS paet h§ ЛШе haten wxre 'and yet he asked what their king was called, and they answered and said that he was called AZUe'. In presenting indirect speech usage was variable: Ind. forms occurred by the side of Subj.

§ 192. The meanings of the tense forms were also very general, as compared with later ages and with present-day English. The forms of the Pres. were used to indicate present and future actions. With verbs of perfective meaning or with adverbs of future time the Pres. acquired the meaning of futurity; Cf.:

ponne pti pa in brin^st, he ytt and bletsap pe — futurity — 'when you bring them, he will eat and bless you'

pB zesihst pet ic ealdiie 'you see that I am getting old' the Pres.

tense ealdi$c indicates a process in the present which is now expressed by the Continuous form. Future happenings could also be expressed by verb phrases with modal verbs:

forpsm з§ sculon... wepan 'therefore you shall weep' gif зё willap minum bebodum lehyrsumnian 'if you want to obey my orders' (those were the sources and prototypes of the modern Future

ten& e).

The Past tense was used in a most general sense to indicate various events in the past (including those which are nowadays expressed by the forms of the Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Present Perfect and other analytical forms). Additional shades of meaning could be attached to it in different contexts, e. g.:

Ond pass ofer Eastron 3efor yEpered суптз; ond he ricsode fif sear 'and then after Easter died King Aethered, and he had reigned five years' (the Past Tense ricsode indicates a completed action which pre­ceded another past action — in the modern translation it is rendered by had reigned).

§ 193. The existence of the four grammatical categories described above is confirmed by consistent opposition of form and meaning. In addition to these categories we must mention two debatable categories: Aspect and Voice.

Until recently it was believed that in OE — as well as in other OG languages — the category of aspect was expressed by the regular con­trast of verbs with and without the prefix se-; verbs with the prefix had a perfective meaning while the same verbs without the prefix in dicated a non-completed action, e. g. OE feohtan — iefeohtan 'fight'- — 'gain by fighting', lician — $elician 'like' — 'come to like' (cf. R: нравится — понравится). In some recent explorations, however, it has been shown that the prefix ge- in OE can hardly be regarded as a marker of aspect, it could change the aspective meaning of the verb by making it perfective, but it could also change its lexical meaning, cf. OE sittan — зesiitan 'sit' — " occupy', beran — ieberan 'carry' — 'bear a child'. It has also been noticed that verbs without a prefix could sometimes have a perfective meaning: sippan Widely Id 1аез 'since Withergild fell¹, while verbs with se- would indicate a non-completed repeated action: maniz oft зеда^б 'many (people) often said'. It follows that the prefix зе- should rather be regarded as an element of word- building, a derivational prefix of vague general meaning, though its ties with certain shades of aspective meaning are obvious.

It is important to note that in OE texts there were also other means of expressing aspective meanings: — verb phrases made up of the verbs habban, beon, weordan (NE have, be, 'become') and the Past or Present Participle. The phrases with Participle I were used to describe a pro­longed state or action, the phrases with Participle II indicated a state resulting from a previous, completed action, e. g.:

ржг wsron sume of бгёт bocerum sittende 'there were some of those •earned men sitting'

hie hzefdon pa heora stefn 3esetenne — 'they had finished that term' (lit. 'they had that term finished').

These phrases did not form regular oppositions with the simple forms of the verb and cannot be treated as members of grammatical categories. They belonged to the periphery of the verb system and provided a sup- ply of phrases which was later used for further extension of the system, § 194. The category of voice in OE is another debatable issue. In OE texts we find a few isolated relics of synthetic Mediopassive forms (which may have existed in PG and were well developed in Gothic), Cf. the old Mediopassive in рйёа ре hatte Araxis 'the river that is called Arax' with the active use of the same verb: pa deor hie ha tap hranas 'those deer they called reindeer'. The passive meaning was frequently indicated with the help of Participle II of transitive verbs used as pre­dicatives with the verbs Ьёоп (NE be) and weorSan 'become':

paet hus weard pa forburnen 'that house was (got) then burned down' hie w£ ron micle swipor tfbrocode on ргёт prim зёагит 'they were badly afflicted in these three years'.

During the OE period these constructions were gradually transformed into the analytical forms of the Passive voice.

Grammatical Categories of the Verbals

§ 195. In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: the Infini­tive and the Participle. In many respects they were closer to the nouns and adjectives than to the finite verb; their nominal features were far more obvious than their verbal features, especially at the morphological level. The verbal nature of the Infinitive and the Participle was revealed in some of their functions and in their syntactic " combinability": like finite forms they could take direct objects and be modified by ad­verbs.

§ 196. The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories. Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two forms which roughly corresponded to the Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns — beran — uninflected Infinitive (" Nom." case) to berenne or to beranne — inflected Infinitive (" Dat." case) Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the prepo­sition to could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action, e.g.:

Manije сбтеп to byc$enne pa pinj 'many (people) came to buy those things'

pset weorc is swipe pleolic me... to underbesinenne 'that work is very difficult for me to undertake'.

The uninflected Infinitive was used in verb phrases with modal verbs or other verbs of incomplete predication, e. g.; hie woldon hine jorbsrnan 'they wanted to burn him' рй meaht sin^an 'you can sin3' (lit. " thou may sing") pa опзоп he sona sin$an 'then began he soon to sing'. § 197. The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was char­acterised not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Par­ticiple I (Present Participle) was opposed to Participle II (Past Parti­ciple) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed