In OE the vocabulary mainly grew by means of word-formation. 3 main types: 1) -simple words (=root-words) – words consisting of a root-morpheme with no suffixes (god, land) 2)- derived words (a root-morpheme + 1 or more affixes): be-ginnan 3)- compound words (more than 1 root-morpheme): feower-tiene (fourteen), mann-cynn (mankind)
1. sound interchange: -i-mutation verbs from nouns:(food-feed), verbs from adj: full – fill, nouns from adj.: long – length
-consonantal interchanges: death – dead
2. word stress (not frequent) to differ-te between parts of speech
3. prefixation (- IE prefix (OE neg. un-), - Germ. Pref-s (OE mis-, ofer-), - to modify lexical meaning)
4. suffixation (-dom, -nes, -lic, ful-, scipe-)
The rise of analytical forms in verbal system in NE: NE: -continuous; -do-forms; -future tense; -Perfect; -Passive; -Subjunctive
-1- Future – 17th c. John Wallis – the rule: shall – 1st p, will – 2,3rd p
-2- Perfect – only the auxiliary habban was left while beon ceased to be used in the Perf. Forms not to confuse them with Passive forms (though some of the forms are still left)
-3- Subj. Mood – analytical forms appeared: leten (let), neden (need).sholde/ wolde soon weakened their modal meaning and became auxiliaries.
Pecularities: sh/w + Inf – simult act; sh/w + Perf Inf – preced. act.
-4- Cont-s – 18th c. Cont forms became well-established
18th c. Cont forns in Passive were accepted as a norm (but clumsy and non grammatical)
-5- Do-forms – in the 16th c. in negative, affirm, interr.
17th c. only in negat. And interr. To keep word order S+P+O in affirm. Sent. Do acquired an emphatic meaning.
The grammatical forms of the words were built by means of: Suppletion (inherited from Indo-European) – the usage of 2 or more different roots as forms of one and the same word: Inflections (inherited from Indo-European) – though in the Germanic languages inflections were simpler and shorter than in other Indo-European languages.
Let’s take the system of declensions as an example.In PG it was well-developed but in the Old Germanic languages, due to the stress that was fixed on the root and the weakening of the end of a word as a result, the declensions started to disappear. While the nouns and adjectives still preserved stem-suffixes, they had declensions but once the stem suffixes started to weaken and disappear, the declensions were lost as well and the endings were simplified and got fewer: Sound Interchange – the usage of interchange of vowels and consonants for the purpose of word- and form-building (e.g.: English: b ea r – b i rth, buil d – buil t, t oo th – t ee th; German: geb ä ren – Geb u rt)
Ablaut/Vowel Gradation – an independent vowel interchange, unconnected with any phonetic conditions (phonetic environment/surrounding) used to differentiate between grammatical forms of one and the same word. The Germanic ablaut was consistently used in building the principle forms of strong verbs. Jacob Grimm has subdivided all the verbs into two groups according to the way they build their principle forms:
Suffixation dental suffixes in weak verbs
