Grammar of Old English

304 Pages·22.145 MB·English (Old)-English

by  Sievers Eduard.

EVERS COOK
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OL
ENGLISH
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GINN & COMPANY

OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR
BY
EDUARD
SIEVERS, PH.D.,
PROFESSOR OF GERMANIC PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HALLE.
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
ALBERT S. COOK, PH.D. (JENA),
PROFESSOROFTHEENGLISHLANGUAGEAND LITERATURE IN THB
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED.
BOSTON, U.S.A.:
.
PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY.
Entered,accordingtoActofCongress,intheyear1885,by
ALBERT 8. COOK,
IntheOfficeof the Librarian ofCongress,atWashington.
Entered,accordingtoActofCongress,intheyear1887,by
ALBERT 8. COOK,
totheOfficeoftheLibrarian of Congress, atWashington.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
JUN 1 :<M958
TYPOGRAPHY BYJ. 8. COSHING & Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.
FRETWORK BY GlNN &Co., BOSTON, U.S.A.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
ABOUT a year ago the publisher of the " Series of Brief
Grammars of the Germanic Dialects" invited me to prepare
the Old English member of the series. At that time the
pressure of other duties did not justify me in promising him
more than a revision of an earlier set of lectures on Old
English grammar, adapted to conform to the general plan.
The brief sketch which follows, therefore, makes no preten-
sion to be anything more than such a revision, although
much has been added in the process of re-copying which was
foreign to the original draft.
Hitherto, Old English grammars have virtually been
founded Upon the language of the poetical texts. This is
to be deplored, especially when we consider that the manu-
scripts in which they are contained are uniformly late ; that
the texts themselves were composed at an earlier period, and
frequently in another dialect; and that in our present ver-
sions ancient forms are almost hopelessly jumbled with more,
modern ones, and specimens of the most widely separated
dialects are occasionally united in the same composition.
._
In the present treatise, on the other hand, the language
of the older prose writings has, to a greater extent than
heretofore, been chosen as the basis of grammatical inves-
tigation, since it is safe to assume that they represent in
some measure a single dialect. Besides the characterization
of theWest Saxon,whichis everywheremadethe most prom-
inent, an attempt has also been made to give, though in the
most concise terms, the chief variations of the other dialects.
Moreover, the method followed has been the historical that
;
iv AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
is, I have endeavored to discriminate between early and late
forms in a somewhat more critical manner than has been
customary, at least in Germany. In this respect, particu-
larlv. inv work will need to be supplemented and corrected.
Just here, however, I desire to anticipate oneobjection which
inav be brought against my statements. When a sound or
"
a, form is said to be "earlier" or later," these terms are to
be understood as designating the relative age of two corre-
sponding sounds or forms, or the great preponderance of the
one or the other in documents of an earlier or later date,
and must not beconstrued asdenying the isolatedoccurrence
of "later" forms in earlier texts, or the reverse. In the
present state of our knowledge of Old English, it is not
possible to proceed with any nearer approach to accuracy;
as regards the exact chronology of Old English sounds and
forms, almost everything is 3-et to be done.
The citations are not usually intended to be exhaustive,
since this was precluded by the very plan of the series.
Many details, which appear to be confined exclusively to the
language of poetry, have been intentionally omitted, because
I believed that the beginner should first acquaint himself
with the normal or typical forms of the language; it should
be observed, however, that what is lacking in the paragraphs
treating of West Saxon will frequently be found under the
lic:i<l of the other dialects. On the other hand, I regret that
my account of heterogeneous and heteroclitic nouns is not
more full and explicit.
In the phonology, and especially in that of the vowels, it
was impossible to avoid touching upon the theories of com-
p:ir:itive philology. Here, again, the utmost attainable
bn-vity has been aimed at. In general, an elementary
knowledge of Gothic has been presupposed Old High Ger-
man and Old Saxon forms have been int;roduced only in
exceptional instances, and thenonlywhen they were required
to elucidate some
difficulty.
AUTHOR S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. V
The first effectual stimulus to a historical study of Old
English, and the first outlines of Old English dialectology,
we owe to Hemy Sweet. In the introduction to his edition
of the Cura Pastoralis the peculiarities of Early West Saxon
were pointed out for the first time ; and his paper entitled
" Dialects and Prehistoric Forms of English" (Transactions
ofthe Philological Society, 1875-76, p. 453 ff.) first directed
attention to the earliest documents, and briefly characterized
the principal dialects. Of prime importance are likewise his
investigations into the quantity of Old English vowels (120.
note) ; these were intended to prepare the way for a new
edition of his History of English Sounds, London, 1874, a
work which leans rather to a theoretical treatment of Old
English phonology. Besides, the grammatical introduction
to Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader (now in its third edition,
Oxford, 1881, though I have been able to consult only the
second) contains many valuable and, what is deserving of
special recognition in this department of research, trust-
worthy particulars.
ThehistoryofcertainpartsoftheOldEnglishvowel-system
has been, for the first time, illustrated in the researches of
H. Paul into the Germanic vowel-system (Beitriige zur Ge-
schichtederDeutschen Sprache und LiteraturIV. 315 ff., and
VI. 1 ff.). To these should be added the articles by Ten
Brink (Zeitschrift fiir Deutsches Alterthum, XIX. 211 ff.,
Anglia, I. 512 ff.), and by J. Zupitza (Anzeiger fur Deut-
sches Alterthum, II. 1 ff.). Ofmonographs on special points
but few have been published. Zupitza has fully discussed
the language of the important Kentish Glosses (Zeitschrift
XD.
fiir Deutsches Alterthum, 1 ff.) ; while, besides Sweet,
P. J. Cosijn has shed light upon Early West Saxon by his
admirable studies of the Cura Pastoralis and the Old Eng-
lish Chronicle (Taalkundige Bijdragen, Haarlem, 1877 ff.,
II. 115 ff., 240 ff.), as well as by his Kurzgefasste Altwest-
stichsische Grammatik (I. Theil, DieVocale der Stammsilben,
vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Leiden, 1881). The northern dialects, moreover, which had
been almost overlooked since the labors of K. W. Bouterwek
(Introduction to his edition of the Four Gospels in the Old
Northumbrian Language, Gutersloh, 1857; the edition is
totally useless so far as the text is concerned) and of M.
Heyne (Kurze Grammatik der Altgermanischen Dialecte),
have recently been made theobjectsof study. The language
of the Psalter (Appendix, p. 222) has been very critically
elucidated by R. Zeuner (Die Sprache des Kentischen Psal-
ters, Halle, 1881), and compared with that of the oldest
Kentish texts; the author, relying upon an earlier opinion
of Sweefs, regarded the Psalter as Kentish, but this view is
shown to be untenable by his own statements in the treatise
referred to. Finally, a similar comprehensive investigation
of the Northumbrian documents is soon to be expected from
Professor Albert S. Cook.
To what extent I am indebted to these and other prede-
cessors for opinions or material can be easily determined by
comparison. To assure every one his due is rendered im-
possible by the compass and plan of this sketch.
To my friend W. Braune I owe grateful acknowledgments
for his aid in the correction of proof-sheets, and for many
valuable suggestious with regard to the text itself.
E. SIEVERS.
JENA, February1, 1882.