Some Notes On The Leading Grammatical Characteristics Of The Principal Early English Dialects

Author : Wm. Teodor Patrick Sturzen-Becker
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9780428359553
Total Pages : 92 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (595 download)

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Download or read book Some Notes on the Leading Grammatical Characteristics of the Principal Early English Dialects (Classic Reprint) written by Wm. Teodor Patrick Sturzen-Becker and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2018-01-04 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Some Notes on the Leading Grammatical Characteristics of the Principal Early English Dialects If I were requested in a few words to mention the principal difference between Old English and Early Eng lish, this later period taken in its whole extent, it would suffice to say, that the Old English stage exhibits in its structure a language of inflection and a stock of words tolerably homogeneous, but in Early English a great deal of this inflection 'has gradually disappeared and a new vocabulary is making its way in the language. Again, if I had to point out the most noticeable changes in the old language, visible for instance in Lasamon's Brut at the beginning of the New Era, they would be as follows: The use of a or an (in the later text: on) as an article; the change of the Old English terminations -a and -an inte -e and -en, as well as the disregard of inflections and genders; the masculine forms given to neuter nouns in the plural; the neglect of the feminine terminations of adjectives and pronouns, and confusion between the definite and indefinite declensions; the ih troduction of the preposition 'to' before infinitives, and occasional use of weak preterites of verbs and' of weak participles instead of strong; the constant recurrence of -en for -ou in the plurals of verbs, and frequent elision of the final 43; together with uncertainty in the rule for the government of prepositions. Further, the free use of the preposition 'o f 'as a genitive sign; with the appearence of will and shall as marking the future tense. Finally the so called nunnation which I shall treat of more fully hereafter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.