ІСТОРІЯ АНГЛІЙСЬКОЇ МОВИ

1. Фонетичні закони, їх особливості: закон Гріма, закон Вернера, великий пересув

голосних. Наведіть приклад з давньоанглійського тесту.

Grimm’s law, description of the regular correspondences in Indo-European languages formulated by Jacob
Grimm in his Deutsche Grammatik (“Germanic Grammar”); it pointed out prominent correlations between the
Germanic and other Indo-European languages of Europe and western Asia. The law was a systematic
and coherent formulation, well supported by examples, of patterns recognized as early as 1814 by the Danish
philologist Rasmus Kristian Rask. It is important for historical linguistics because it clearly demonstrates the
principle that sound change is a regular phenomenon and not a random process affecting only some words, as had
been thought previously.
Grimm described two consonant shifts involving essentially nine consonants. One shift (probably a few
centuries before the Christian era) affected the Indo-European consonants and is evident in English, Dutch, other
Low German languages, and Old Norse. The other shift (about the 6th century CE) was less radical in scope and
affected the Germanic consonants, resulting in the consonant system evident in Old High German and its
descendants, Middle High German and Modern High German (standard German).
According to the law, the ancient unvoiced p, t, k became the English unvoiced f, th, h and the Old High
German f, d, h, producing such correlations as that between the initial consonants of Greek pod-, English fod, and
Old High German fuo. The law further stated that the ancient voiced b, d, g became the English
unvoiced p, t, k and the Old High German spirant stops f, ts, kh—hence the correlation between Latin duo, English
“two,” and modern German zwei (pronounced “tsvai”). Also, the originally voiced bh, dh, gh became the English
voiced b, d, g and the Old High German p, t, k; compare Sanskrit bhárati, English “bear,” and the Upper
German dialects of Old High German ki-peran (later standard German ge-bären). The Old High German examples
show the second shift in addition to the first, which is seen in English.
Verner’s law, linguistic explanation of the apparent exceptions to Grimm’s law (q.v.), which first demonstrated the
significant role that accent (stress) played in linguistic change in the Germanic languages. It provided further
evidence for the important claim of 19th-century linguists that phonetic laws have no exceptions and proved to be a
decisive influence in establishing the direction taken by the Neogrammarian (q.v.) school of historical linguistics.
Grimm’s law stated that the Indo-European p, t, and k sounds changed into f, th or d, and h in the Germanic
languages. Verner noticed that Grimm’s law was valid whenever the accent fell on the root syllable of the Sanskrit
cognate, but, when the accent fell on another syllable, the Germanic equivalents became b, d, and g. This was also
the case with s and r.

The Great Vowel Shift was a series of sound changes the English language experienced, beginning around the
time Henry V made English rather than French the language of government in England and ending about the time
of the Restoration of the British monarchy under Charles II. Within that time frame, however, most of the Great
Vowel Shift occurred between the time of Caxton and the time of Shakespeare.
The Great Vowel Shift was a “chain shift” in which the sound of one vowel changes and the sounds of other
vowels are pulled along as people adjust their pronunciations in order to maintain phonemic distinctions. In general
the Great Vowel Shift involved both moving vowels forward in the mouth and replacing long vowels with
diphthongs. Thus, SEE came to be pronounced “see” instead of the Middle English “sai” and HOUSE came to be
pronounced “howss” instead of the Middle English “hooss.” This sometimes affected different dialects of English
differently, depending on what were originally subtle differences in pronunciation. Thus, DEAF may be
pronounced “deef” instead of “deff” by some Northwest English speakers, because Middle English used a long
vowel (not a diphthong, but a vowel that was sounded for a slightly longer period of time) in Northern dialects but
a short vowel (affected differently by the Great Vowel Shift) in the South. As a result, the Great Vowel Shift
affected DEAF significantly in some dialects but only a little in others.

2. Давньоанглійський період. Морфологічна характеристика дієслова. Наведіть приклад з

давньоанглійського тесту.
The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these
two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference
between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The
strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was
 accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the
Past Tense – one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other – for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the
weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of
the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was
accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of
them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others
were suppletive or altogether anomalous.

Strong Verbs
The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes
back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound
changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the
root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange.
The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no
ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.
Weak Verbs
The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs.
The verbs of Class I usually were i-stems, originally contained the element [-i/-j] between the root and the endings.
The verbs of Class II were built with the help of the stem-suffix -ō, or -ōj and are known as ō-stems. Class III was
made up of a few survivals of the PG third and fourth classes of weak verbs, mostly -ǽj-stems.
Minor groups of Verbs
The most important group of these verbs were the so-called “preterite-presents” or “past-present” verbs. Originally
the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but
preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms built with the help
of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives. In OE there
were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE āз; cunnan; cann; dear(r), sculan,
sceal; maзan, mæз; mōt (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most preterite-presents did not indicate
actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive which followed the
preterite-present. In other words they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modern modal
verbs.

3. Походження та періодизація англійської мови. Коротка характеристика кожного з

періодів. Наведіть приклад з давньоанглійського тесту.

The English language belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The
closest to English language are Scots and Frisian. Frisian is a language spoken by approximately half a million
people in the Dutch province of Friesland, in nearby areas of Germany, and on a few islands in the North Sea.

The English language history has three main periods: Old English (450-1100 AD), Middle English
(1100-circa 1500 AD) and Modern English (since 1500). Over the centuries, the English language has been
influenced by many other languages.

Old English (450 - 1100 AD): During the 5th Century AD, from various parts of what today is northern
Germany and Denmark, three Germanic tribes - Angles, Saxons, and Jutes crossed the North Sea and came to the
British Isles. These three tribes pushed out most of the Britons, Celtic-speaking inhabitants from England into
Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. One group of them moved to the Brittany Coast of France where today their
descendants still speak the Celtic Language of Breton.
Through the years, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes mixed their different Germanic dialects. This group of
dialects forms what linguists refer to as Old English or Anglo-Saxon. The word "English" was in Old English
"Englisc", and that derives from the name of the Angles. The Angles were named from Englaland, their land of
origin, from which is the word "England".
Before the envasion of the Germanic tribes, the language spoken in what is now England was a mixture of
Latin and various Celtic languages which were spoken before the Romans came to Britain (54-5BC). Celtic tribes
lived there in the Iron Age for more than 500 years until the arrival of the Romans. The Romans brought Latin to
Britain, which was part of the Roman Empire for over 400 years. Many of the words passed on from this era are
those coined by Roman merchants and soldiers. These include win (wine), candel (candle), belt (belt), weall
(wall).
The influence of Celtic upon Old English was slight. In fact, very few Celtic words have lived on in the
English language. But many of place and river names have Celtic origins: Kent, York, Dover, Cumberland,
Thames, Avon, Trent, Severn.
Around 878 AD Danes and Norsemen, also called Vikings, invaded the country and English got many Norse
words into the language, particularly in the north of England. The Vikings, being Scandinavian, spoke a language
(Old Norse) which, in origin at least, was just as Germanic as Old English.
Words derived from Norse include: sky, egg, cake, skin, leg, window (wind eye), husband, fellow, skill,
anger, flat, odd, ugly, get, give, take, raise, call, die, they, their, them.
From the Old English period several written works have come to us. The most famous is a heroic epic poem
called "Beowulf" but the name of the person who wrote it is unknown. "Beowulf" is the oldest known English
poem and it is remarkable for its length - 3,183 lines.

Middle English (1100-circa 1500 AD): In 1066 AD William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy,
invaded and conquered England with his armies and became king. The French became the language of the rulling
class. The Old French took over as the language of the administration, court, and culture. Latin was mostly used for
written language, especially that of the Church.
By about 1200, England and France had split. English changed a lot, because it was mostly being spoken
instead of written for about 300 years. The use of Old English came back, but with many French words added. This
language is called Middle English. Most of the words embedded in the English vocabulary are words of power,
such as crown, castle, court, parliament, army, mansion, gown, beauty, banquet, art, poet, romance, duke, servant,
peasant, traitor and governor. ("Language Timeline", The British Library Board)
Because the English underclass cooked for the Norman upper class, the words for most domestic animals are
English (ox, cow, calf, sheep, swine, deer) while the words for the meats derived from them are French (beef, veal,
mutton, pork, bacon, venison).
The Middle English is also characterized for the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift. It was a massive sound
change affecting the long vowels of English. Basically, the long vowels shifted upwards; that is, a vowel that used
to be pronounced in one place in the mouth would be pronounced in a different place, higher up in the mouth. The
Great Vowel Shift occurred during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries.
Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales" is an emblematic example of Middle English. It is a collection of stories
about a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury, England. The Tales give us information of
what life was like in fourteenth century England.

Modern English (1500 to the present): In 1476, William Caxton, an English diplomat, and writer set up the
England's first-ever press in The Almonry area of Westminster. The first book known to have been printed there
was Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Caxton became the first English retailer of printed books. At that time the
Bible and some other valuable manuscripts were printed. The invention of the printing press helps books to be
available to more people. The books became cheaper and more people learned to read.
Shakespeare wrote during the period now known as Early Modern English (1500–1700). Shakespeare
invented over 1700 of English common words such as dawn, moonbeam, elbow, green-eyed, etc. Robert
Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall was the first dictionary and in it he listed and defined just 3000 words. The
dictionary was published in 1604.
At the time of the English Renaissance many words from Greek and Latin entered English. This period in
English cultural history (early 16th century to the early 17th century) is sometimes referred to as "the age of
Shakespeare" or "the Elizabethan era". During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, considered by many historians to be
the golden age in English History, there was flourishing of the culture - support of art, poetry, music, literature, and
theatre, popularization of the printing press, as well as massive amounts of sea travel.
During the Industrial Revolution in England (which began early in the eighteenth century) new technical
words entered the English language as inventors created various products and machinery. They were named after
the inventor or given the name of their choice: train, engine, reservoir, pulley, hydraulic, condenser, electricity,
telephone, telegraph, camera, etc. (See more words)
Between the 18th and 20th centuries, for 200 years Britain was an Empire. English language continued to
change as the British Empire reached to all corners of the world: the North America, Australia, New Zealand, India,
some other countries in Asia, and Africa. While people who settled and lived there interacted with natives, new
words were added to the English vocabulary. For example, 'kangaroo' and 'boomerang' are native Australian
Aborigine words, 'juggernaut' and 'turban' came from India. (See more borrowings from different languages.)
English continues to change and develop, with hundreds of new words arriving every year. But even with all
the borrowings from many other languages the heart of the English language remains the Anglo-Saxon of Old
English. The grammar of English is also distinctly Germanic - three genders (he, she and it) and a simple set of
verb tenses.

4. Морфологія іменних частин мови давньоанглійського періоду. Наведіть приклад з

давньоанглійського тесту.

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a grammatical
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, fæder, abbod (man,
father, abbot). Those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor, abbudissa (mother,sister,
abbess). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as mæʒden (maid), wīf (wife) are neuter (compare in
Ukrainian хлоп’я, дівча). And wīfman (woman) is masculine, because the second element of the compound is
masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated. The same form may have two different meanings
distinguished by gender, for example lēod masc. “man”, but lēod (fem.), «people».
There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases - nominative, genitive, dative and
accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that 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 the words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.
In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming
suffixes, which were hardly visible even in Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by
centuries. The remnants of these suffixes are even more vague in Old English. Still, these stem-forming suffixes
determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. Though lost in Old English they still worked in the way the
case and number forms were made.
Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in
the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns. Why goose -pl. geese, but moose -pl. moose, foot - feet
but boot — boots, sheep — pl. sheep, but sheet – sheet.
12) 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 very paradigms of these groups of nouns were already splitting .
-a-stems
They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the
nominative.
Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel might give an unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being
an exception from the general rule of formation the plural form goes back to the Old English period.
Examples of Old English а-stems are:
 masculine: earrn (arm), eorl (earl), , biscop (bishop), heofon (heaven) etc.
 neuter: word (word), bearn (child), feoh (cattle),hūs (house).
There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally -j- or -w- in the stem (they are
called -ja-stems and -wa-stems); they may preserve this sound in declension; but otherwise the differences are
minor.
Examples of -ja- stems are: hyse (young warrior), fiscere (fisherman), net (net), bedd (bed).
The nouns belonging to ō -stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative 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:
The nouns of this group: caru (care), scamu (shame).
 In this group of nouns the suffix - ō - may also be accompanied by additional і and w, that is -jō - and -wō -
stems will give variants of declension.
In Ukrainian similar additional sound і gives such formations as стаття, копія.
The nouns formerly having -i-sufix, 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 masculine and neuter
nouns of the -a- stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems.
The nouns of this group are: masculine: mere (sea), mete (food); neuter: sife (sieve), hilt
(hilt); feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide), woruld (world, age).
Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender:
The nouns of this group are:masculine: wudu (wood), medu (honey); feminine: nosu (nose), hand (hand).
-o- and -u- stems in Old English had only three distinctive endings both for the singular and the plural and
that was sufficient for proper communication. -i- stems, on the other hand, illustrate the tendency to dissolution of
the former classes of nouns and a certain tendency for regrouping the declensions according to the gender of the
noun.
Weak Declension
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 Old English, but disappeared in the nominative case. -n- stem nouns may
be of all three genders.
Examples:masculine: wita (wise man), steorra (star), flota (ship, fleet), neuter: cofa (chamber,
repositary). feminine: heorte (heart), sunne (sun), hearpe (harp).
Root Stems. This group comprises the nouns that never had a stem suffix.The group was not numerous, but
the words belonging to it were characterised by high frequency of use.
The nouns of this class are:all compound nouns containing the morpheme man: wimman (woman), ealdorman
(nobleman, leader),and also f ōt (foot), mūs (mouse). The nouns belonging to -r-stems were of masculine and
feminine gender, the group is a closed system. Ex. are 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 had this suffix in older times, in Old English due to
rhotacism they changed it into occasional appearance of -r- sound in indirect cases. They are all neuter.
+Comparatively new for Old English are several substantivated participles forming a separate group of -nd-
stems. They 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 (they may form their plural form without any ending). Here
belong such words as wealdend (ruler), scyppend (creator) etc.

5. Давні алфавіти (спільно германський футарк, англо-саксонських алфавіт). Значення

рун, їх функція. Наведіть приклад з давньоанглійського тесту.

Runes are letters in the runic alphabets of Germanic-speaking peoples, written and read most prominently
from at least c. 160 CE onwards in Scandinavia in the Elder Futhark script (until c. 700 CE) and the Younger
Futhark - which illuminated the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) - as well as in England and Frisia in the Anglo-
Saxon Futhorc (also known as Anglo-Frisian Futhorc) writing system. In England, runes were in use from the 5th
century CE until perhaps the turn of the 11th century CE, while in Scandinavia the use of runes extended well into
the Middle Ages and beyond.
Designed to be inscribed first into wood and metal, during the Viking Age large amounts of inscribed
runestones were erected predominantly throughout Scandinavia; these runestones, despite being tough to decipher,
are of absolutely critical value to us, as they are the only written source contemporary to this period. Germanic
Runes are found in areas with a history of Germanic-speaking peoples, from Iceland to Scandinavia, through
England, through Central Europe to Constantinople – basically places Germanic tribes on occasion called home
plus any place the Vikings touched.
Runes are generally made up of vertical lines – one or more – with 'branches' or 'twigs' jutting out diagonally
(and very occasionally horizontally) upwards, downwards or in a curve from them. They can be written both from
left to right and from right to left, with asymmetrical characters being flipped depending on the direction of writing.
Each rune, of which major and minor versions existed, represents a phoneme (speech sound) and had a name, made
up of a noun, that started (and in one case, ended) with the sound the rune was mainly associated with. Lots of
regional and temporal variation existed in the shapes of the letters.
 Elder Futhark (also Elder Fuþark – þ being the 'th' sound in English 'thin' – or older Fuþark/Futhark,
Germanic Futhark) is the earliest classified runic script and was used until c. 700 CE in the Germanic world.
Counting 24 characters and being surprisingly uniform, it is named after the first six characters in the alphabet (f-u-
þ (th)-a-r-k). The runes are grouped together in three rows of eight, each group being called an ætt (pl. ættir), and
each rune was named after things that start (or in one case, end) with that sound. Although preserved manuscripts
from the 9th and 10th centuries CE have given us the names of the Younger Futhark and Anglo-Saxon runes, no
such luxury is awarded us for Elder Futhark. However, based mostly on the Younger Futhark names supplemented
with Anglo-Saxon and even Gothic, the Elder Futhark rune-names have been reconstructed to the best of our
modern-day ability.
Elder Futhark was used to write Proto-Germanic, Proto-Norse, Proto-English, and Proto-High German –
thus, geographically quite widely spread – and survives today in just under 400 inscriptions (found so far), most of
which show substantial wear and tear and are only partly readable. It is likely this number only represents a fraction
of the real total; the rest must be lost in time and space. They are initially found on wood – which of course does
a poor job at standing the test of time – and metal in the form of names. Popular surfaces were military equipment,
coins, and jewellery such as bracteates, brooches or combs, and the typically Scandinavian runestones, some of
which were in Elder Futhark as opposed to the much more frequently represented later Younger Futhark. Although
Scandinavia, northern Germany and eastern Europe were the earliest homes to such items, after c. 400 CE England,
the Netherlands, and southern Germany joined the club. Because they focus mostly on ownership and show no
visible connection to society at any greater level, runic writing in societies up to c. 700 CE is assumed to not to
have had a central function.

Anglo-Saxon runes are runes used by the early Anglo-Saxons as an alphabet in their writing system. Anglo-
Saxons and Frisians agreed to disagree on some finer points of usage, though, and earlier and later Anglo-Saxon
runic use also varied.
The runes were used to write Old English and Old Frisian, with Frisian not using the final two runes of the
rune-row added for the Old English usage. Fewer than 200 inscriptions – mainly on personal items, weapons, stone
crosses, and coins – are known. From the 7th century through the 9th century CE, medieval runes pop up as coin
legends, hinting at a practical application of the script. In England, Christianity entered the stage in the 7th century
CE and proceeded to leave its mark on Futhorc, too, innovating and standardising away (mainly visible in the runes
ᚣ and ᛠ used for /y/ and /æe/) likely in a conscious reform. Except in manuscripts, Latin was used side by side with
runes. The Anglo-Saxon runes held strong until at least the end of the 10th century CE, after which their use seems
to grind to a halt.