Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/535

ANGLO-SAXONS (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) 503 An ending -e is found in Chaucer to indicate sometimes the plural, sometimes the definite declension. Comparison in Anglo-Saxon was by endings, -r, -st; not by more and most. THE PERSONAL PKONOUHB. SlNGTTLAB. PLUBAL. DUAL. Nom. le, /. we, we. wit, we two. Gen. min, mine, of me. user, tire, our. uncer, of us two. Dat m6, to or for me. us, us. unc, to us two. Ace. mec, m6, me. usic, us, us. unclt, unc, us too. Nom. thu, thou. ye, y. git, ye <*>. Gen. thm,<Ain, ofthee. eower, your. facer, of you two. Dat thS, to or/or tftee. e6w, yow. Inc, <o you two. Ace. thec, the, thee. edwic, eow, yow. incit, Inc, you two. SINGULAB. Masc. Fern. Neut. PLUBAL, all genders. Nom. he. heo, she. hit, it. hi, they. Gen. his. hire, her. his, i&. hlra, weir. Dat. him. hire, Aer. him, it. him, <Aem. Ace. hine. hed, her. hit, if. hi, them. The English A<?, they, their, them, are from the Anglo-Saxon demonstrative se, seo, that ; its is a modern growth, not found in the first edition of our English Bible. The arti- cles are both in use, and the demonstratives thcet, that, and thes, this, plural thds, those; the personals are used as reflexives ; hwd, who, is an interrogative; other English pronouns are from Anglo-Saxon originals. So are the numerals except second, A. S. other. There are two great classes of verbs : 1, the ancient or strong class, which formed their past tense by reduplication, repetition of their root; 2, the modern or weak class, which formed their past tense by composition with dide, did. In the first class there are five conjugations, dis- tinguished by the vowel of the past tense. 1. The original root is a, unchanged in the past : swimman, swam, swummen, swim, swam, swum. 2. The root is i, changed to A in the past: ridan, rdd, riden, ride, rode, ridden. 3. The root is u, changed to eo, o, past ed: cleofan, cledf, elofen, cleave, clove, cloven. 4. The root was d, changed to a, past 6 : waean, woe, wacen, wake, woke, waken. 5. The root a diphthong or long vowel changed to eo, e: feallan, feol, feallen, fall, fell, fallen. The weak verbs make another conjugation : 6. The past a compound with dide, -de : Iwfian, lufode, lufod, love, loved, loved. The umlaut and breaking referred to in the first part of this ar- ticle introduce variations of vowel in different parts of the same verb, and different variations for different verbs, so that to a superficial view there may appear to be many conjugations, or no regularity at all. The following paradigms show the inflection endings : INDICATIVE MODE. Present and future tense. Past, strong. Past, weak. 1, nime, take. nam, took. lufode, loved. 2, nimest, takest. name, tookest. lufodest, lovedst. 8, nimeth, taketh. nam, took. lufikle, loved. 1, 2, 8, nimath, take. numon, took. Iuf6don, loved. SUBJUNCTIVE MODE. Present. Past. Singular, 1, 2, 8, nime. name. Plural, 1, 2, 8, nlmen. namen. Imperative. Infinitive. Singular, nlm. niman. Plural, nimath. Gerund, to niuienp PABTICIPLES. Present, nimende, taking. Passive, numen, taken; geluffid, loved. The -th of the indicative 3d singular and the plural appears as - in the northern dialect of Anglo-Saxon. There are said to be 168 plu- rals in -s and 46 in -th in the Shakespearian folio of 1623. (Prof. T. K. Lounsberry, "On Cer- tain Forms of the English Verb," in " Transac- tions of the American Philological Associa- tion," 1869-'70.) The subjunctive is used for our potential and imperative, as in the English expressions, "it were a sin," "belt so"; but a periphrastic potential in may, can, might, &c., is in use. The gerund in -enne changed to -ende and then to -ing ; and in the English we have in the ending -ing a verbal noun, present participle, and gerund mixed. The form given above as the present tense may be used for any modification of both present and future act, the other form to express every shade of past act ; but auxiliaries are also used. A perfect in hcsbbe, have, and a pluperfect in hcefde, had, are in full use, though the participle of the principal verb is often in the accusative case' agreeing with the object of hmbbe : he hcefth mon geworhtne, he has man wrought. A few intransitives use eom (am) and wees (was) for perfect signs: M is gecumen, he is come; M WCBS dgdn, he was (=had) gone. Sceal, shall, and wille, will, are common for future signs, though they generally have some meaning of duty, power, promise, resolve, in addition to that of future time. A progressive form 'is common in the active : is feohtende, is fight- ing, continues fighting ; but not in the passive. The emphatic form in do hardly occurs. The adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other particles are many of them common to other Indo-European tongues, and many of the more obscure may be traced to pronouns. Compo- sition is more freely used in Anglo-Saxon than in English, and many of the suifixes and pre- fixes are there found as separate words. A body of rules almost as great as those used in Latin grammar is needed to state the uses of the different cases. Some verbs govern a gen- itive, some a dative or instrumental, some the accusative, some two or three different cases. The uses of the subjunctive mode are various and obscure. The arrangement of the parts of a sentence is often intricate. The syntax is that of a highly inflected language. Most of the difficulties of English idiom are to be traced to Anglo-Saxon combinations, and they are often easily understood by the help of the- old meanings of the words, or the old inflection forms. For the study of the language may be used Bosworth, "Anglo-Saxon Dictionary" (London, 1848); Marsh, "English Language and its Early Literature" (New York, 1862); Hadley, "Brief History of the English Lan- guage," in Webster's Dictionary (1865) ; Kask'a grammar, translated by Thorpe (London, 1865); Shute, "Manual of Anglo-Saxon for Begin- ners" (New York, 1867); March, "Compara-