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This
activity will be more useful if Topic Origins:Beowulf
has been worked through first.
Verbs:
Some verbs in the poem have final inflections that have
since changed (Middle English) and then partly or completely
disappeared.
| standeđ
>
standeth > (he she or it) stands |
| hongiađ
> hangeth >
(he, she or it) hangs |
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Only
the 's' at the end of 'stands' and 'hangs' shows that
it is third person singular (he, she or it stands).
All the other forms of the verb in the present have
no inflections (I stand, you stand, we stand, they stand..).
'Come'
is similar; it has a final 's' today in the third person
('it comes') but 'you come' (second person) has none.
'Cymest' changed into you (or thou) comest, and then
into 'you come'.
| cymest.
> (you/thou comest) > (you) come … > |
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More
information
Nouns:
It was not only the verbs that had inflections in Old
English. The nouns changed endings too, in ways depending
on whether they were masculine, feminine or neuter nouns,
and according to the job they were doing. They could
be
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the
subject (nominative case) or |
|
the
object (accusative) of the sentence, or |
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have
some ownership (genitive) or |
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be
indirect objects (dative/ instrumental)… |
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'Bearn'
(child) is written bearna in the Beowulf passage and
'guma' (man) is written gumena because they are both
in the possessive (genitive) plural case. Together 'gumena
bearna' means of the children of men in two words
only.
Word
Order: So Old English was more compact, needing
fewer smaller, supporting words. Because of these inflections,
or inflected endings, words could go in different places
in the sentence and still be perfectly clear.
Look
at this example of what can happen when we change word
order today:
| Gillian
gave the woman a coin. |
(This is clear.) |
| The
woman gave Gillian a coin. |
(Same words: different meaning) |
| Gillian
the woman a coin gave |
(Gillian - who was a woman - gave a
coin but not to anyone in particular.) |
| A
coin the woman Gillian gave. |
(Perhaps:
It was a coin the woman called Gillian gave
- not a bean. An awkward and unclear sentence.) |
| Gillian
a coin the woman gave… The woman a coin
gave Gillian… |
The
sentence becomes more and more confusing.
|
|
This
could not happen in the same way in Old English (as
it can not in Latin) because of the inflected endings
of words which show what job the word is doing in the
sentence.
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List any examples you can find of inflections in
modern English nouns and verbs |
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Invent a sentence of your own and experiment with
the word order. How many meanings could it have? |
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