Theoretical Grammar The subject-matter of theoretical grammar. Its relation to practical grammar

История английского языка

1. 
   Old Enlgish lexical system
   

Native Words Most Old English words are native. They are of three types:

1. 
   Words of common Indo-European stock (origin):
   

1. 
   nouns: faeder (father), modor (mother, мати), nama (name, ім”я), tun3e (tongue), fot (foot), niht (night, ніч), heorte (heart)
   
2. 
   adjectives: neowe (new, новий), 3eon3 (young, юнак), riht (right), lon3 (long)
   
3. 
   verbs: sittan (sit, сидіти), lic3an (lie, лежати), beran (bear), teran (tear)
   

2. 
   Words of common Germanic stock (origin). They can be met in Germanic languages only:
   

1. 
   nouns: eorpe (earth), land (land), sae (sea), heall (hall), sand (sand), earm (arm)
   
2. 
   adjectives: earm (poor), eald (old), ceald (cold)
   
3. 
   verbs: bindan (bind), findan (find), sin3an (sing), steorfan (die), slaepan (sleep)
   

3. 
   Words which can be met in English only. On Old English such words were not numerous:OE clipian –MnE to call; MnE lady, lord.
   

Ways of Word-Building
In Old English there were such ways of word-building.

1. 
   Morphological
   

1. 
   affixation
   
2. 
   compounding
   

2. 
   Syntactical (the development of new words from syntactic complexes)
   
3. 
   Semantic (the use of old words with a different meaning) Borrowings in Old English were scarce. The main sources of them were Latin and Celtic languages.
   

2.Phonetic processes in Middle English (system of consonants)

English consonants were on the whole far more stable than vowels. A large number of consonants have probably remained unchanged through all historical periods. Thus we can assume that the sonorants [m, n, l], plosives [p, b, t, d] and also [k, g] in most positions have not been subjected to any noticeable changes. The most important developments in the history of English consonants were the growth of new sets of sounds, - affricates and sibilants.