Linguistic characteristics of the German and English languages

In the perf.form from the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restrictions.

By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perf.forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories.

29. OE noun, its grammatical categories. Weak declension

Nouns in OE had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a gram. Category in a strict sense of the word, for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender; but case and number had a set of endings. Nouns used to denote males are normally masculine - mann, ѓжder (man, father). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor (mother, sister).

There are two numbers - sing. and pl., and 4 cases - nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. The number proved to be a stable category, relevant for rendering the meanings and expressing the true state of things in reality. Case is supplanted by other means to express the relations between words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.

All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes. These stem-forming suffixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns.

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

This class of nouns consists of a rather numerous group of nouns originally having - n-stems; the suffix is well-preserved in declension of nouns in OE, but disappeared in the nom. Case n-stem nouns may be of all three genders. But actually no difference in declension of nouns of different genders can be found.

e.g.: masculine: wita (wise man), steorra (star),

neuter: cofa (chamber);

feminine: heorte (heart), sunne (sun).

Root stems. This group comprises the nouns that never had a stem suffix.

e.g.: wimman (woman), tфр (tooth), mыs (mouse).

The nouns belonging to r-stems were of masculine and feminine gender, the group is a closed system. It included only the terms of kinship. The endings here are scarce, a distinctive feature is that the dative case sing. had a mutated vowel.

e.g.: dohtor (daughter), sweostor (sister).

Less numerous and less significant for the development of the present-day nominal system are the nouns that had other consonants as a stem-forming suffix. S-stems had this suffix in older times, they changed it into occasional appearance of r-sound in indirect cases. They are all neuter.

e.g. lamb (lamb), cealf (calf), cild (child).

-nd-stems are all masculine and their declension combines the peculiarities of the declension of a-stems and, to some extent, r-stems as they all denote persons.

e.g. frзond (friend), fзond (accuser).

30. Growth of the interrogative and negative forms with “do” in the English language

The early NE period witnessed the development of a new set of analytical forms which entered the paradigms of the present and past tense of the indicative mood: interrogative and negative forms with the auxiliary verb do.

It first the do - periphrasis was more frequent in poetry, which may be attributed to the requirements of the rhythm. Then it spread to all kinds of texts. In the 16^th and 17^th c. the periphrasis with do was used in all types of sentences - negative, affirmative and interrogative.

The growth of new interrogative and negative forms with do be accounted for by syntactic conditions. By that time the word order in the sentence had become fixed: the predicate of the sentence normally followed the subject. The use of do made it possible to adhere to this order in questions, for at least the notional part of the predicate could thus preserve its position after the subject.

Likewise, the place of negative particle not in negative sentences with modal phrases and analytical forms set up a pattern for the similar use of not with the do-periphrasis.

In the 18^th c. the periphrasis with the do as an equivalent for the simple form in affirmative statements fall into disuse.

31. OE noun. Strong declension

The strong declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix.

a-stems may be either masculine (earm - arm, biscop - bishop, hвm - home) or neuter (dфr - door, bearn - child, hыs - house).

There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally -j- or -w- in the stem (they are called -ja- and -wa- stems);they may preserve this sound in declension; but otherwise the differences are minor. Also, some nouns might have become still clumsier when an inflection was added. So we may see the omission of such sound (the second root vowel in such words as heafod - heafdes (head)).

e.g. of -ja-stems are: fiscere (fisherman), net (net),

-wa-stems: trзo (tree), cnзo (knee).

Nouns belonging to ф-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nom. case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending -u; if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all.

e.g. caru (care), scamu (shame), lufu (love).

In this group of nouns the suffix -ф- may also be accompanied by additional i and w, that is -jф- and -wф-stems will give variants of declension: hild (battle), sceadu (shade).

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

e.g. masc.: mere (sea), mete (food)

neuter: sife (sieve), mynster (monastery)

feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide).

Nouns belonging to u-stems may be of masculine (wudu - wood, medu - honey) or feminine gender (nosu - nose, flфr - floor).

32. The OE NOUN

The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories :number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category.The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural.The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. The ,most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborate system of declensions, which was a sort of morphological classification. The total number of declensions, including both the major and minor types, exceeded twenty-five. The OE system of declensions was based on a number of distinctions: the stem-suffix, the gender of nouns, the phonetic structure of the word, phonetic changes in the final syllables.

The morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most ancient (IE) grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes.

The morphological classification OE nouns rested upon the most ancient grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Some groups jf nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a “zero-suffix”; they are usually termed “root-stems” and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e.g. OE man, boc (NE man, book).These substantives seem to represent the oldest type, stemmingfrom the period when there were no stem-forming suffixes and the root was used as a stem without addition of any special stem-forming element.

This type of stem is represented in various Indo-European languages. Thus in Latin we find substantives of the 3rd declension rex 'king', gen. sing, reg-is, etc. In Gothic we find a clear example of a root stem in the substantive baurgs 'borough', whose declension is only complicated by the adoption of the -im ending in the dative plural on the analogy of i-stems (baurgim).

In OE there are a number of substantives of all three genders which wholly or partly belong to the root-stem declension.

The fact that the case endings were joined on immediately to the root in words of this type led to a change in the root vowel. Consequences of this change make themselves felt in several English substantives down to the present time.

The masculine substantives hselep 'hero' (cp. German Held) and monap 'month' are close to this type in so far as they often have in the nominative and accusative plural forms without endings: haslep, tnonap.

Feminine root stems with a short syllable in the nominative singular has the ending -u; those with a long root syllable have no ending at all in this case.

The substantive wifman, wimman 'woman' is declined in the same way as mann. Other examples of root stems are: feminine ac 'oak', sat 'goat'.

The OE root stems correspond to Latin 3rd declension substantives, as pes, pedis 'foot'; pax, pads 'peace'.

33. Historical grammar

OE was a synthetic or inflected type of lang.; it showed the relations between words and expressed other gram. Meanings mainly with the help of simple gram. Forms. In building garm.forms OE employed gram.endings, sound interchanges in the root, gram prefixes and suppletive formation.

Gram.endings were certainly the principal form-building means used:they were found in all the parts of speech that could change their form. Sound interchanges were employed on a more limited scale and were often combined with other form-building means, especially endings.

The use of prefixes in gram.forms was rare & was confined to verbs.

The parts of speech: nouns, adject., pronouns, numerals, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections. Inflected parts of speech possessed certain gram. Categories, which are usually subdivided into nominal categories(found in nominal parts of speech) & verbal categories(found chiefly in the finite verbs). There were 5 nominal gram.categories : number, case, gender, degrees of comparison & the category of definiteness\indefiniteness.

34. OE personal pronouns

OE personal pronouns had 3 persons, 3 numbers(sing, dual, plural) in the 1^st and 2^nd persons; 3 genders(masculine, feminine, neutral) in the 3^rd person. The pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd had suppletive forms; the pronouns of the 3^rd person had many affinities with the demonstrative pronouns.

In OE personal pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: the forms of the Dat. Case were frequently used instead of the Acc.: in fact the fusion of these 2 cases in the plural was completed in the West Saxon dialect already in Early OE: Acc. зowic & ыsic were replaced by Dat. зow & ыs. In the singular, usage was variable but variant forms revealed the same tendency to generalize the form of the Dat. for both cases.

The Gen. Case of personal pronouns had 2 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.: e.g. sunu mоn, NE my son; his fжder(his father). The grammatical characteristics of the forms of the Gen.case, that were employed as possessive pronouns, were not homogeneous. The forms of the 1^st and 2^nd persons: mоn, ыre and others - were declined like adjectives to show agreement with the nouns they modified, while the forms of the 3^rd person behaved like nouns: they remained uninflected and didn't agree with the nouns they modified.

1^st pers. Case sing dual plural

Nom. Ic wit wз

Gen. Mоn uncer ыre, ыser

Dat. mз unc ыs

Acc. Mec, mз uncit ыsic, ыs

2^nd pers. Case sing dual plural

Nom ђы zit zз

Gen ђоn incer зower

Dat ђз inc зow

Acc ђзc, ђз incit, inc зowic, зow

3^rd pers. Case sing plural

M F N all genders

Nom hз hзo, hоo hit hоe, hо, h?, hзo

Gen his hire, hiere his hira, heora, hiera

Dat him hire, hiere him him, heom

Acc hine hы, hо, h? hit hы, hо, h?

35. (Old English Phonetics) Historical Phonetics

OEis no far removed from ME that one may take it for an entirely different language, this is largely due to the peculiarities of its pronunciation.

The survey of OE phonetics deals with word accention the systems of voweks and consonants and their origins. The OE sound system developed from the PG system. It underwent changes in the pre-written periods of history, especially in Early OE. The diachronic description of phonetics in those early perods will show the specifically English tendencies of development and the immediate source of the sounds in the age of writing.

The system of word accentuation inherited from PG underwent no changes in Early OE.

In OE a syllable was made pronominent by an increase in the force of articulation, in other words, a dynamic or a force stress was employed. In Disyllabic and polysyllabicwords the accent fell on the root - morpheme or on the first syllable. Word stress was fixed, it remained on the same syllable in defferent grammatical forms of the word and, as a rule,did not shift in word-building either.

Polysyllabic words, espacially compounds, may have had two stresses, chief and secondary, the chief stress being fixed on the first root- morpheme e, g, the compound noun Norрmonna fromsame extract, received the chief stress upon its first component and the secondary stress on the second component , the grammatical ending -a was unaccented. In words with prefixes the position of the stress varied^ verb prefixes were unaccented, while in nouns and adjectives the stress was commonly thrown on to the prefix

risan (NE arise )

to-weard ( NE toward)

If the words were deived from the same roor, word stress, together with other means, served tj distinguish the noun from verb

Forwyrd n - for-weorЂan v ( destruction,perish).

36. OE pronouns

OE pronouns fell roughly under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative, definite\indefinite.

Personal: OE pers. Pronouns had 3 persons, 3 numbers in the 1^st & 2^nd persons, 3 genders in the 3^rd p. The pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd p. had suppletive forms, the pronouns of the 3^rd p. had many affinities with the demonstrative pronouns. E.g. ic, wз, wit.

Demonstrative: There were 2 demonstr.pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE “That” which destinguished 3 genders in the sing. & ahd 1 form for all the genders in the plural & the prototype of “This” with the same subdivisions: ђes(masc.), ђзos( fem.), ђis(neutr.), & ђвs(plural). They were declined like adjectives accordimg to a 5-case system. Also, they were very important, as they were frequently used as a noun determiners & through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, gender & case: e.g. on ђжm lande(on that land), tф ђжre heorde (to that herd)-(to define the forms of the nouns).

Interrogative: hwв(masc, fem.) & hwжt(neutr) had a 4-case

Paradigm(NE who, what). The Instrumental case of hwжt was used as a separate interrogative word hw?(NE why). Some interr. Pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e.g. hwelc, hwжђer.

Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns & a large number of compounds: вn & its derivative жniz(NE one, any); nвn made up of вn & the negative particle ne(NE none); nвnђinz, made up of the preceding & the noun ђing(NE nothing); nвwiht\nфwiht\nфht(NE not); hwжt-hwuzu(something) etc.

37. Latin borrowings in the epoch of Renaissance

The mixed character of the English vocabulary facilitated an easy adoption of words from Latin. Many of these belong to certain derivational types. The most easily recognizable are the following:

verbs in -ate, derived from the past participle of Latin verbs of the 1st conjugation in -are: aggravate, irritate, abbreviate, narrate.

verbs in -ute, derived from the past participle of a group of Latin verbs of the 3rd conjugation in -uere: attribute, constitute, pollute, and from the Latin deponent verb sequi with various prefixes: persecute, execute, prosecute.

verbs derived from the past participle of other Latin verbs of the 3rd conjugation: dismiss, collect, affect, correct, collapse, contradict.

verbs derived from the infinitive of Latin verbs of the 3rd conjugation: permit, admit, compel, expel, produce, also introduce, reproduce, conclude, also include, exclude.

adjectives derived from Latin present participles in -ant and -ent. verbs of the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th conjugation: arrogant, evident, patient.

adjectives derived from the comparative degree of Latin adj. with the -ior suffix: superior, junior, minor.

It is often hard or even impossible to tell whether a word was adopted into English from Latin or from French. Thus, many substantives in -tion are doubtful in this respect.

38. Old English adjective, adverb, numeral

Adjectives

Forms of the OE adjective express the categories of gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), number (sing. and plur.), and case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and, partly, instrumental).

Every adjective can be declined according to the strong and to the weak declension. The strong declension of adjectives as a whole is a combination of substantival and pronominal forms. The pronominal forms are obviously element of the system.

The weak declension of adjectives does not differ from that of nouns, except in the genitive plural of all genders, which often takes the ending -ra. Blжcra.

The comparatives are declined as strong adjectives, the superlatives rarely take the forms of the strong declension and mostly follow the weak declension.

Earm (poor) earmra ear most

Several adjectives have suppletive forms of comparative and superlative:

Zod (good) betera bets

yfel (bad) wiersa wierest

Numerals cardinal

Numerals from 1 to 3 are declined. Numerals from 4 to 19 are usually invariable, if used as attributes to a substantive, but they are declined if used without a substantive. Numerals denoting tens have their genitive in -es or -a, -ra, their dative in -um. Numbers consisting of tens and units are denoting in the following way: 22 twa and twentiz, 48 eahta and feowertiz.

Ordinal

The ordinal numerals are declined as weak adjectives. Numerals containing both tens and units are axpressed in the following way: 22 twa and twentizoрa or фрer eac twentizum, 48^th-eahta and feortizoрa or eahtoрa eac feowertizum.

Adverb

Some OE adverbs are primary, that is, they have not been derived from any other part of speech, while others are secondary, derived from some other part of speech. Among the primary adverbs there are many pronominal words, such as hwonne (when), hwжк (where). Much more numerous are the secondary adverbs, derived from substantives or adjectives. Sometimes some case form of a substantive or an adjective becomes isolated from the declension system and becomes a separate word.

Degrees of comparison.

Adverbs whose meaning admits of degrees of comparison derive them by means of the same suffixes that are used as degrees of comparison of adjectives -r for the comparative, and -st for the superlative. These suffixes are preceded by the vowel -o: wide (widely) widor widost

Some adverbs derive their comparative without any suffix, by means of mutation of the root vowel: lonz (long) lenz, feorr (far) fierr.

39. French Loan-word

Loanwords are words adopted by the speakers of one language from a different language.

French. Law and government :attorney, bailiff, chancellor, chattel, country, court, crime,defendent, evidence, government, jail, judge, jury, larceny, noble,parliament, plaintiff, plea, prison, revenue, state, tax, verdict.Church :abbot, chaplain, chapter, clergy, friar, prayer, preach, priest,religion, sacrament, saint, sermon

Nobility: baron, baroness; count, countess; duke, duchess; marquis, marquess;prince, princess; viscount, viscountess; noble, royal

(contrast native words: king, queen, earl, lord, lady, knight, kingly,

queenly)Military:army, artillery, battle, captain, company, corporal,

defense,enemy,marine, navy, sergeant, soldier, volunteer

Cooking :beef, boil, broil, butcher, dine, fry, mutton, pork, poultry, roast,salmon, stew, veal.Culture and luxury goods:art, bracelet, claret, clarinet, dance, diamond, fashion, fur, jewel,oboe, painting, pendant, satin, ruby, sculpture.Other:adventure, change, charge, chart, courage, devout, dignity, enamor,feign, fruit, letter, literature, magic, male, female, mirror,pilgrimage, proud, question, regard, special.

Also Middle English French loans: a huge number of words in age, -ance/-ence, -ant/-ent, -ity, -ment, -tion, con-, de-, and pre-.

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether a given word came from French or whether it was taken straight from Latin. Words for which this difficulty occurs are those in which there were no special sound and/or spelling changes of the sort that distinguished French from Latin.

IV. Early Modern English Period (1500-1650)

The effects of the renaissance begin to be seriously felt in England. We see the beginnings of a huge influx of Latin, Greek French words, many of them learned words imported by scholars well versed in those languages. V. Modern English (1650-present).

Period of major colonial expansion, industrial/technological revolution, and American immigration.

Words from European languages.French: French continues to be the largest single source of new words outside of very specialized vocabulary domains (scientific/technical vocabulary, still dominated by classical borrowings).High culture :ballet, bouillabaise, cabernet, cachet, chaise longue, champagne,chic, cognac, corsage, faux pas, nom de plume, quiche, rouge, roulet,sachet, salon, saloon, sang froid, savoir faire.War and Military :bastion, brigade, battalion, cavalry, grenade, infantry, pallisade, rebuff, bayonetOther :bigot, chassis, clique, denim, garage, grotesque, jean(s), niche, shock.French Canadian: chowder

Louisiana French (Cajun) :jambalaya

40. OE vocabulary. Etymological survey

Modern estimates of the total OE vocabulary range from about 30.000-100.000 words. The last digit is probably too high, but it depends on the treatment of polysemy and homonymy. Word etymology throws light on the history of the speaking community. The OE vocab. was almost purely Germanic; except for a small number of borrowings, it consisted of native words, inherited from Proto-Germanic or formed from native roots and affixes.

Native words can be subdivided into some etymological layers coming from different historical periods: 3 main layers in the native words:1)common Indo-European words. They constitute the oldest part of the OE vocab. Among these words:natural phenomena, plants, animals, agricultural terms, verbs denoting men's activities, pronouns, numerals. E.g. ђжt, bзon, mфna, mфdor, ic.

2) Common Germanic words include words, which are shared by most Germanic languages, but do not occur outside the group. These words constitute an important distinctive mark of the Germanic lang. at the lexical level. Semantically these words are connected with nature, sea and everyday life. E.g. OE sand, OHG sant, O Icel sandr, NE sand. OE findan, OHG findan, GT finђan, O Icel finna, NE find.OE fox, OHG fuhs, GT -, O Icel -, NE fox.3) Specifically OE words do not occur in other Germanic or non-Germanic languages. These words are few, if we include here only the words whose roots have not been found outside English: OE clipian(“call”), brid(“bird”), swapian(“swathe”).But we can also put into consideration OE compounds and derived words formed from Germanic roots in England. E.g.hlвford, made of hlвf(NE loaf, R хлеб).O Icel deigja “knead” - lit. “bread-kneading”, NE lady.

41. Scandinavian influence

The greater part of lexical borrowings from O Scand were not recorded until the 13^th c. The presence of the Scandinavians in the English population is indicated by a large number of place-names in the northern and eastern areas: more frequent are with such components:thorp-<village> e.g.Woodthorp; toft <piece of land>e.g.Brimtoft; ness<cape>e.g.Inverness.

The total number of Scandinavian borrowings in E. is estimated at about 900 words. It is difficult to define the spheres of Scand. borrowings: they mostly pertain to everyday life and don't differ from native words.Only the earliest loan-words deal with military and legal matters: Late OE barda, cnearr,(different types if ships), cnif(NE knife), orrest(battle), lazu -law, hыsbonda-husband, the verb tacan - take. Everyday words: nouns: bag, band, cake, egg, seat, sky, window.adject.: happy, ill, odd, ugly, weak.verbs: call, die, hit, lift, take, want.

It is difficult to distinguish Scand. loans from native words, the only criteria-phonetic features: the consonant cluster [sk]:sky, skill; [k]&[g]: before front-vowels:kid, girth. But,still, these criteria are not always reliable. The intimate relations of the languages resulted also in phonetic modification of native words: give, gift.

42. OE vocabulary. Ways of word-formation

Modern estimates of the total OE vocabulary range from about 30.000-100.000 words. The last digit is probably too high, but it depends on the treatment of polysemy and homonymy.The bulk of the OE vocab. were native words. In the course of the OE period it grew;it was mainly replenished from native sources, by means of word-formation.According to their morphological structure OE words fell into 3 main types:1) simple words (“root-words”), containing a root-morpheme and no derivational affixes:e.g.land, sinzan, zфd.(NE land, sing, good).2) derived words consisting of one root-morpheme and one or more affixes:e.g. be-zinnan, un-scyld-iz(NE begin, innocent)3) compound words, whose stems were made up of more than one root-morpheme:e.g.mann-cynn, scir-ze-refa(NE mankind, sheriff).

The system of OE word-formation is quite similar to the Modern one. One of the most unusual examples of the OE w-f was the ability of a single root to be either among simple, derived and compound words. E.g. OE mфd(NE mood) produced about 50 words: derived: mфdiz(proud), compound: mфd-caru(care).

OE employed 2 ways of word-formation: derivation & word-composition.Derived words in OE were built with the help of affixes: prefixes & suffixes; but also words were distinguished with the help of sound interchanges and word stress.

Sound interchanges in the roots of related words were frequent, and nevertheless they were used more as an additional feature which helped to distinguish between words built from the same root. Sound interchanges were never used alone; they were combined with suffixation:

Vowel gradation was used in OE as a distinctive feature between verbs and nouns, between verbs derived from a single root:rоdan v - rвd n [i: - a:]- NE ride, raid.

The use of consonant interchanges was far more restricted. They arose due to phonetic changes:rhotacism, Verner;s Law..

e.g.Talu-tellan (NE tale, tell) - gemination of the consonants.

The shifting of word stress also helped to differentiate between ;parts of speech. The verb had unaccented prefixes while the corresponding nouns had stressed prefixes: e.g. ond-`swarian v - `ond-swaru n.

Prefixation was a productive way of building new words. They were used widely with verbs;e.g. zвn - go; в-zвn - go away.

The most productive: в-, be-, for-, ze-, ofer-, un-.

Suffixation-the most productive. Suffixes not only modified the lexical meaning of the word, but could refer it to another part of speech. Mostly applied in forming nouns, adjectives, rarely with verbs: zфd-nis (NE goodness), zrжd-iz(NE greedy).

Word composition: nouns, adjectives: e.g. hвm-cyme(NE home-coming).

43. Borrowings from contemporary lang. in NE

The influx of French words reached new peaks in the late 15^th and 17^th c. They mainly pertain to diplomatic relations, social life, art, fashions:e.g. attachй, dossier; hotel, restaurant, cortege; ballet, genre; manoeuvre, police, brigade; cravat, menu, soup, blouse; detail, machine, ticket, progress. Most of them have not been completely assimilated and have retained a foreign appearance to the present day. Besides Greek, Latin, French, English speakers of the NE period borrowed freely from no less than 50 foreign tongues:

1. Italian (art, music, literature):14^th c. ducato, million, florin, pistol, cartridge, aria, bass, cello, concerto, duet, piano, sonata, violin.Some retained their Italian appearance, others assumed a French shape:intrigue, campaign.2 Spanish came as a result of contacts with Spain in the military, commercial and polit. fields.: armada, barricade, cannibal, embargo, cargo.Many loan-words indicated new objects and concepts encountered in the colonies: banana, canoe, colibri, potato, tobacco, mosquito.

3. Dutch made abundant contribution to E., particularly in the 15^th, 16^th c., when the commercial relations between England and the Netherlands were at their peak. Trade, wool-weaving: pack, spool, stripe, tub. Nautical terminology: cruise, deck, keel, skipper.

4. German loan-words reflect the scientific and cultural achievements of Germany. Mineralogical terms: cobalt, nickel. Philosophical: dynamics, transcendental. More; kindergarten, halt, stroll, plunder. The most peculiar feature of German influence is the creation of translation-loans on German models from native English components: superman was naturalized by B.Shaw as a translation of Nietzsche's Ыbermensch; masterpiece from Meisterstьck.

5. Russian. The earliest entered in the 16^th c., when the English trade company established the 1^st trade relations with Russia. They indicate articles of trade and specific features of life in Russia: beluga, muzhik, samovar, tsar, vodka. After 1917: komsomol, Bolshevik

44. Historycal background of ME

The Scandinavian Conquest of England was a great military and political event, which also influenced the English language. Scandinavian inroads into England had began as early as the 8^th century. The Anglo-Saxons offered the invaders a stubborn resistance, which is seen in the narrations of Chronicle. In the late 9^th century the Scandinavian had occupied the whole of English territory north of Thames. In 878 king Alfred made peace with the invaders. The territory occupied by the Scandinavian was to remain in their power. The northern and eastern parts of England were most thickly settled by Scandinavians. In the late 10^th century war in England was resumed, and in 1013 the whole country fell to the invaders. England became part of a vast Scandinavian empire in Northern Europe. The Scandinavian conquest had far-reaching consequences for the English language. The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders belonged to the North Germanic languages and their phonetic and grammatical structure was similar to that of OE. They had the same morphological categories, strong and weak declension of substantives, of adjectives, of verbes. Close relationship between English and Scandinavian dialects made mutual understanding without translation quite possible.

The Norman conquest of England began in 1066. It proved to be the turning-point in English history and had a considerable influence on the English language. The Normans were by origin a Scandinavian tribe. In 9^th century they began inroads on the northern coast of France and occupied the territory on both shores of the Seine estuary. Mixing with the local population and adopting the French language and in the mid-11 century, in spite of their Scandinavian origin, they were bearers of French feudal culture and of the French language. In 1066 king Edward the Confessor died. William, Duke of Normandy, who had long claimed the English throne, assembled an army with the help of Norman barons, landed in England, and rooted the English troops. William confiscated the estates of the Anglo-Saxon nobility and distributed them among the Norman barons. All posts in the church, from abbots upwards, were giving to persons of French culture. Frenchmen arrived in England in great numbers. During the reign of William the Conqueror about 200 000 Frenchmen settled in England.

During several centuries the ruling language in England was French. It was the language of the court, the Government, the courts of laws, the English language was reduced to a lower social sphere. The relation between French and English was different from that between Scandinavian and English: French was the language of the ruling class. Under the circumstances, with two languages spoken in the country, they were bound to struggle with each other, and also influenced each other. This process lasted for three centuries the 12^th - 14^th. Its results were twofold: the struggle for supremacy between French and English ended in favour of English, but its vocabulary was enriched by a great number of French words.

45. History of word-formation, 15^th-17^th c

The growth of the E. vocabulary from internal sources - through word-formation and semantic change - can be observed in all periods of history. In the 15-17^th c. its role became more important though the influx of borrowings from other languages continued. Word formation fell into 2 types:

Word derivation and word composition.

The means of derivation used in OE continued to be employed in later periods: Suffixation, the most productive way: most of the OE product. Suffixes have survived, many - added from internal and external sources.

Prefixation was less productive in ME, but later, in Early NE its productivity grew again.

Many OE prefixes dropped out of use: a-,tф-,on-,of-,ze-,or-. In some words the prefix fused with the root:OE on-zinna > ME ginnen > NE begin. The negative prefixes mis- & un- produced a great number of new words:ME mislayen, misdemen(NE mislay, misjudge). OE un- was mainly used with nouns and adjectives: Early NE: unhook, unload.

Also, foreign prefixes were adopted by the English lang. as component parts of loan-words:re-, de-, dis-. Sound interchanges and the shifting of word stress were mainly employed as a means of word differentiation, rather than as a word-building means.

46. Spelling changes in ME and NE. Rules of reading

german language english verb vowel

The most conspicuous feature of Late ME texts in comparison with OE texts is the difference in spelling. The written forms in ME resemble modern forms, though the pronunciation was different.

- In ME the runic letters passed out of use. Thorn “ђ” and the crossed d: “р” were replaced by the digraph -th-, which retained the same sound value: [?] & [р]; the rune “wynn” was displaced by “double u”: -w-;the ligatures ж & њ fell into disuse.

- Many innovations reveal an influence of the French scribal tradition. The digraphs ou, ie & ch were adopted as new ways of indicating the sounds [u:], [e:] & [t?] : e.g. OE ыt, ME out [u:t]; O Fr double, ME double [duble].

- The letters j,k,v,q were first used in imitation of French manuscripts.

- The two-fold use of -g- & -c- owes its origin to French: these letters usually stood for [dz] & [s] before front vowels & for [g]&[k] before back vowels: ME gentil [dzen'til], mercy [mer'si] & good[go:d].

- A wider use of digraphs: -sh- is introduced to indicate the new sibilant [?]: ME ship(from OE scip); -dz- to indicate [dz]: ME edge [`edze], joye [`dzoi?]; the digraph -wh- replaced -hw-: OE hwжt, ME what [hwat].

- Long sounds were shown by double letters: ME book [bo:k]

- The introduction of the digraph -gh- for [x]& [x']: ME knight [knix't] & ME he [he:].

- Some replacements were made to avoid confusion of resembling letters: “o” was employed to indicate “u”: OE munuc > ME monk; lufu > love. The letter “y” - an equivalent og “i” : very, my [mi:].

47. Development of the syntactic system in ME and early NE

The evolution of English syntax was tied up with profound changes in morphology: the decline of the inflectional system was accompanied by the growth of the functional load of syntactic means of word connection. The most obvious difference between OE syntax and the syntax of ME and NE periods is that the word order became more strict and the use of prepositions more extensive. The growth of the literary forms of the language, the literary flourishing in Late ME and especially in the age of the Renaissance the differentiation of literary styles and the efforts made by 18^th c. scholars to develop a logical, elegant style - all contributed to the improvement and perfection of English syntax. The structure of the sentence and word phrase, on the one hand, became more complicated , on the other hand- were stabilized and standardized.

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