Учебное пособие для специальностей «Переводческое дело» и«Иностранный язык: два иностранных языка»
UNIT 5. MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM IN OLD ENGLISH
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| UNIT 5. MORPHOLOGICAL SYSTEM IN OLD ENGLISH
§ 1. The verb The OE verb was characterized by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form-building means. In Old English the agreement of the subject with the verb predicate was expressed by two grammatical categories: Number and Person. Besides, the finite forms of the verb had the specifically verbal categories of Mood and Tense. Let us consider the finite forms of the Old English verb macian (to make): Tense Number Person Mood Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Present Singular 1 st 2nd 3 rd macie macast macað } macie } maca Plural maciað macian maciað Past Singular 1 st 2nd 3 rd macode macodes (t) macode } macode Plural macodon macoden As we see from the table, the category of number was represented by two forms: Singular and Plural. The category of Person was made up by the opposition of three forms: 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd persons, but they were consistently distinguished only in the Singular number, Present tense, Indicative mood. The category of Tense consisted of two forms: Present and Past; these forms were distinctly contrasted in two Moods. Both in the Indicative and in the Subjunctive Moods the Past Tense referred the action to the past without differentiating between prior and non-prior actions. The Present Tense referred the action to any period of time except past: that is, to the present or future. 23 The category of Mood consisted of the Imperative, Indicative and Subjunctive Moods. The Old English Subjunctive expressed a very general meaning of presenting events as unreal or probable. Besides, it was often used in indirect speech to describe events of which the speaker was not absolutely certain. E.g. Hē sǣde …, þæt þæt land sīe swīþe lanʒ … (Present Tense, Subj. Mood) “He said… that that land is (literally, be) very long”. The existence in OE of two specifically verbal categories Aspect and Voice is debatable. Until quite recently it was believed that Old English verbs with the prefix ʒe - had a perfective meaning (i.e. denoted completed actions) while the same verbs without the prefix had an imperfective meaning. These forms were supposed to make up the grammatical category of Aspect. However, this supposition is rejected now, as the contrast does not seem to be regular enough. Frequently, the verb with the prefix ʒe- had a completely different lexical meaning, e.g.: OE beran (to bear) and ʒeberan (to give birth to) denoted rather unrelated actions. On the other hand, a verb with ʒe- could sometimes denote a non-completed action, while the verb without the prefix could have a perfective meaning, e.g.: syðōan Wiðerʒyld læʒ „since Withergild fell‟ – completed action, no prefix; moniʒ oft ʒecwæð „many (people) often said‟ – non-completed action, prefix. Thus it is hardly possible to regard such forms as making up the grammatical category of Aspect. In Old English new analytical forms with a passive meaning began to develop from free combinations. Combinations of the OE bēon (be) and weorðan (become) with participle II of transitive verbs were used to denote a state resulting from a completed action. During the Old English period these combinations acquired the features of analytical forms but only in Middle English they began to be contrasted to active forms as forms of the passive voice. In the OE language, like in many other Old Germanic languages, verbs were divided into three morphological groups: жүктеу/скачать 1,38 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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