Phonology
What did the i-mutation involve?
It involved back vowels becoming fronted and front vowels becoming raised. Eg: Man-Men, Full-Fill
Explain Nominative case and Accusative case.
Nominative - Subject
Accusative - Object
Give three examples of Word Building?
Compounding, Affixation, Invasion, Conversion, Backformation, Borrowing, Commonisation, Abbreviation, Acronyms, Initialism, Word Play, Blends, Shortening
What is broadening. Give examples.
Broadening is the expansion of the context in which a word is used, so they mean more than they did before. Eg: Esky, Superglue, Jetski, Velcro,
How was grammatical gender changed?
Grammatical gender of nouns (masculine, feminine, neuter) was replace by biological gender.
Eg: His book, Her book
Give example of I-umlats that explain irregular forms.
Foot-Feet
Long - Length
How has strong verbs changed from Old English to Modern English?
In OE strong verbs were the most common and they were conjugated in a number of ways to indicate grammatical information. Eg: Sing, Sang, Sung.
In Modern English, these are the minority and are called 'irregular verbs' or 'weak verbs' as the form has weakened.
What is Obsolescence?
A word being loss due to it being out of date, archaic or old fashioned. Eg:Chastity
explain what shift is...
A word comes to mean something completely different from it once meant.
How did Old Norse influence English syntax?
Old Norse influence English by restructuring it away from German. It made English drop inflections and become reliant on word order and prepositions.
Explain Grimms Law and the founder.
Grimms Law by Jacob Grimm stated the existence of a consistent set of consonant sound shifts.
What were dual person pronouns?
They are 1st and 2nd person plural pronouns that disappeared in 1300.
Eg: We two or You two
What are the two types of Abbreviations. Explain and give examples of each.
Acronyms - ANZAC
Initialism - R.S.V.P
Shortenings - Pram for perambulators
when did the word " stink" come in?
1000
What is a Synthetic language?
A synthetic language shows syntactic relations within sentences through inflections. Eg: AN to show plurals.
What is an I-umlat?
I-umlat involves raising and fronting of a root vowel in anticipation of 'i'/'y' in a suffix. It had an impact on plural nouns and can explain some irregular forms.
Define Case.
Case is changes to nouns and their modifying words to mark the relationships of these to each other and to the verb of the clause
How many words did Old English had?
About 25 000 words but more could created with compounds.
What is the difference between Elevation and Deterioration. Give Examples.
Elevation is when unpleasant meanings change and is used in a positive sense. Eg: Awfully, Terribly, Frightfully now means 'very', Politician used to mean crafty, cunning, scheming and now means one engaged in a political life.
Deterioration is when words take on a negative connotations.
Eg: Smell vs Stink
What is an Analytic Language?
An analytic language shows syntactic relations through word order, function words (auxiliary verbs) and prepositions.
What did OE sound like?
We are not sure what it sounded like, just like we don't know what Latin sounded like. But linguists make informed guesses.
We do know that it originated from German.
Name the five different cases.
Gender, Possession(genative), Subject(nominative), Object(accusative), Indirect Object(dative)
Give 5 words that English has borrowed from other languages.
Boomerang, Apartheid,Sushi, Pesto, Cartoon, Cookie
Explain narrowing. give examples.
Refers to the reduction in the contexts in which a word can appear. The word only means part of what it originally meant.
Eg: Seduce, intercourse are now applied most in a sexual sense.
Explain the modification to third person plural pronouns.
Hi, Hem, Hir were replaced by Norse 'they, them, their'