Lecture 8: Syntax, Part 1

Key Takeaways

so as promised you got um longer and Fuller uh accounts of some of the um some of the syntactic principles especially and and word order um stuff that we that we got the kind of simplified a somewhat simplified version of um in Baker um last time um I'm gonna hit my own what I consider the kind of high points of um Mitchel and Robinson's account of um syntax through the pages um uh that we read for today um and uh but I but I'm happy to take uh questions you know sort of um throughout um so so starting really with um one thing I will say at the top of page 63 because I had to look this up um it the use of a single verb form where Modern English would use a resolved tense or mood um so a a resolved tense um simply means um one where you use a form of the verb to be um uh at least in this case so is going or was going um uh I think I mentioned before like the um for our phrase in in Modern English we would say we would tend to say like the sun is shining right um Old English would much would be much likelier to Simply to use um the conjugated form of that verb um say um sheth um shineth right in its cognate um rather than is sh um which it could theoretically say um but it would sound quite unidiomatic um in Old English um so in terms of uh their uh Mitchell and Robinson's that is um account of word order which starts on um page 63 um I want to highlight that uh paragraph 145 um on the next page on page 64 um this s dot dot dot v um word order is most common in subordinate clauses um we got I I kind of previewed and we talked a little bit about that last time um that when you're dealing with a subordinate a complex sentence in Old English that is to say one with a main clause and and one or more subordinate clauses be very much on the lookout for the verb to come at the end of that subordinate clause Um this can be tricky especially if you're dealing with the past tense of a strong verb that may not have an ending um so make sure that you're um when you're looking for the verbs um that you're looking at the end of the at the end of the Clause um in particular um and then the next bit that I wanted to note uh the top of page 65 um another a context in which you get the verb subject what they're calling the verb subject word order um is in principal Clauses introduced by certain adverbs so they give the example then came the dawn um which sounds sort of AR archaic poetic whatever you want to call it um in Old English it would not sound it would just sound totally normal um and we've seen gazillions of examples I think already in our in our relatively brief time reading of thaw verb subject right right um and we're going to see um still more this um this is not an absolute rule um as the as paragraph 147 um go explains in some detail um so there's a they they write at the sort of 2/3 maybe 34s of the way down that long paragraph they write that the old preference for vs that is to say verb subject word order after an adverb um as in modern German is at times conquered by the new preference that is to say new in Old English um for a subject verb word order so it's not a hard and fast rule as at least in my memory of studying German it is um that the verb has to be um the verb has to be second um but it is a it is a strong it is still a strong preference um all right any questions about their account of their their more their more detailed account of um word order I think Mitchell and Robinson do quite a nice um job of explaining uh both recapitulation and anticipation we saw examples of um of anticipation um last time recapitulation is sort of the the flip side of that um right and I like I like their um I like their their account their comparison of this to a a modern politician who has the desire but not the ability to be an orator um and they call it the device of pausing in mids sentence and starting aresh with a pronoun or some group of words which sums up what has gone before um so they give the simple example from Alfred's um prefence to the translation of of uh the Pastoral cure Kura past pastorales Alfred writes um um our ancestors who previously occupied these places so he's got uh a relatively long and it's not even that long but um he's got a subject and then a dependent clause right so our ancestors who pre L occupied these places Thon um and then he sort of as Mitchell and robins and say pauses as it were for thought and then goes on he Lon wisom um so that he might look like and indeed it could be um an object but in this case it's a recapitulative um nominative that looks back to um the uh the subject or E drawn um and that ambiguity gets resolved by the fact that wiom um which is the the actual direct object um there's sort of nothing for wisdom to do there um if it's not the direct object and in fact Ladon um has a plural uh verb ending so we know that um that hea has to be the subject um this is not wildly common the recapitulation it's certainly less common than anticip Pati um but it is something uh to be aware of because it it sounds yeah it's I mean as Mitchell and Robinson say it it sound it looks like the kind of thing it feels like the kind of thing that happens from oral delivery when you're sort of not sure how the sentence is going to end and you get partway through and you're like oh God what was I doing um and yet here in Old English we often see it in in written sources when presumably they had time to go back and edit but for whatever reason um didn't feel that it was necessary to do so um anticipation um so if you take a look at the second paragraph in uh in section or S I mean I think that's well whatever that sigil is um in 148 on page uh 66 the common use of a pronoun to anticipate a noun clause may be compared with that uh or with this so the simple example that they give um is yolon so literally they write or they translate when the Kinsmen of ARA Oran May um first learned that thing so arist onund that the that the first that namely that the second that the leader would not tolerate cowardice literally um the the the noble the the Earl um the noble did not desire to um suffer um cowardice um those two thats um are a very good example of um of anticipation so when you see that that first that um you have to basically keep your mind flexible and say all right I don't quite know what this that is doing there keep reading and then when you see um the verb onund which is going to require a direct object and in this case the direct object is going to be a noun clause right he found out he found something out what did he find out he found out that it's sort of um that discovery that onund is going to be um a is a is a transitive verb that needs a direct object and that the direct object is going to be a clause that's what um kind of retroactively as it were uh clarifies that the first that is anticipation um so as I said last time you don't have to translate that first that um you just have to be able to parse it correctly and understand what it's doing um any questions on um any questions on that hit as a is as a is a is a perfectly viable although less common alternative um to that as a um as a as an uh anticipatory pronoun um the other thing to be aware of is however like even though that and hit are by far the most common because they are the you know they're the accusative um when you have verbs and which Old English has quite a number of as we've discussed when you have verbs that take a different case from the accusative you will see the anticipatory pronoun um or or demonstrative um in whatever the case is of that um of that ver uh that that verb takes um so for example wayon um the verb to uh to believe which takes the genitive um what would the what form would would that that take instead fast exactly exactly very good yeah all right any questions on um on anticipation so the splitting of heavy groups on page 67 um paragraph or section 149 um this is an example this is basically uh the splitting of compounds um compound subjects and compound objects that we talked about um last time um so you can have they just go into more um they just go into more detail um and I don't think there's anything substantively different that we need to dwell on but if I'm wrong let me know um and then next on page 68 we have correlation um again this is most review um of of things that we talked about last time um I would highlight the bottom of page 68 in um section 151 um the they note that word order this is really just recapitulating H see what I did there uh recapitulating stuff that we saw in Baker word order is an even more useful and reliable guide than context for it may be taken as a pretty safe rule for Pros that when one of two correlative thaw Clauses has the word order verb subject it's the principal clause and Tha must mean then the temporal Clause introduced by Tha and really that's the subordinate clause introduced by thaw when may have the sub the word order s do dot Dov or simply SV um so in that case we see that the subordinate clause most commonly I would say does have that s dot dot dotv where the um the inflected form of the verb in the subordinate clause gets kind of shunted to the end of the Clause um as we as we've discussed earlier um but again not a hard and fast rule um and this is true even though they give the they specify that this is in the case of specifically with Tha it's equally the case um as they go on to clarify um with th th th th um th th and Tha thaw um in section 152 um any questions on that so noun Clauses on page 70 this is where um we most typically get uh in instances of anticipation with that or hit um and they refer you back to paragraph 148 um for all of for all of that um they mostly my my reading of these pages is really that they're mostly concerned with um assuaging our fears about um the indicative versus the subjunctive um so the upshot of all of this there's a lot of um detail and a lot of and many examples on pages 71 and the top of 72 I would say that the upshot takes place um in the second full paragraph of page 72 we may say that while the rule set out above often Works fluctuation between the subjunctive and the indicative in Old English noun Clauses is often of little significance so what this means for you practically is you really don't need to worry about um translating about how you translate um the uh how you translate those um that mood um whether it's indicative or subjunctive simply simply use whichever seems most um idiomatic um or more or most natural in Modern English um and if if if I want to test you on what the what the ending is I'll ask specific L I won't like I won't I won't be judging you based on the on your translation of an ambiguous um indicative or or um subjunctive okay um the next bit that is um actually quite interesting because they um because Mitchell and Robinson sort of read the same text differently in two different places in their book um comes in paragraph or or section 159 on page 73 um they get very exercised and in my in my understanding not I well I don't entirely understand why they get so exercised um about the question of whether um an interrogative uh pronoun can whether you can subst whether you can use interrogative words also as relative pronouns in Old English um as we talked about last time Modern English finds this completely normal um right we say who is there who being interrogative and also I know who is there where who um is a relative pronoun um from my for my money Old English actually does this quite a lot as well and we see one example um in a very cool phrase uh from The Wanderer um this is uh this is uh the the quoted bit in 159 um on hand th W winter char um so the main verb here is if I can find the chalk there's profusion but so the main verb here is s by the way notice where where is the itch notice how far how far that initial it is separated from its verb you have it he on W winter CH over you have to wait all the way past that almost a line and a half to get to um the the main verb so they are saying that this is a main verb that has as objects both a noun and a clause containing a dependent question um and what they mean by that here is that s has one object one direct object which is just the noun Hall I sought a hall um and then the second direct object is that whole Clause ah I sought a hall and I also although that's all implied there's no Andi also I sought a hall dot dot dot thought where I I.E looked for the place where I far or near might find um uh one who in the me Hall might know etc etc etc um now what's interesting about this take a look at note one at the bottom of the page the first object of s um is cus Briton in our text where the attractive compound CAD sad for a hall is accepted um so basically what they're saying here is that in one if you flip to let's see page yeah on page 279 where you actually have um the text of The Wanderer um in uh in Old English they print these lines 23 through 27 yeah they they print them completely different well completely differently they um they pull together sadig um into a single compound so this is a good example of how ambiguous um Old English poetry can be the very same editors in the very same edition of their own textbook are in one case reading sa as the accused object or as one of the accusative objects one accusative object of the verb s and in the second where it's um uh cell draig um here Cella becomes part of a compound that's modifying the speaker of the sentence and they read uh br cus Britton um a dispenser of um treasure as the object of course you can do that because the the the weak noun ending of Britton is so ambiguous it could be um it could be the it could be accusative so it could be I dreary for a hall I.E you know really in search of a hall um sought a dispenser of treasure or it could be as in the fir as in on page 73 I sought sad meaning you know so Dre draig is going to become Modern English dreary um but it really it really means sad in Old English um I sought the Hall of a dispenser of treasure so in on page 73 Britton has to be genitive and as they're construing it on page 279 in the actual text um it's accusative um so this is a great example of and and honestly both are possible um so it's a great example of how the ambiguity of endings in Old English creates ambiguity in the literature itself um so the the grammatical sort of characteristics or texture of the language inflect literally and metaphorically um the sort of poetic potential of the language um and you can see um if you if you have your the whole text and you and you can turn to page um 279 you can see uh the fact simile of the opening page of The Wanderer from the exiter book um and you'll you'll you can see how different um the uh the script looks and how in Old English there is actually quite a bit of um of word separation um but they don't they don't give us they don't take us all the way down oh yeah so if you take a look at um it's a little it's sort of opposite line it's about opposite line 26 and 27 um if you look at the left hand side you can see a long s it sort of looks like uh so and then I see a word I see a pretty clear word separation between Cella and Drear rig um right after that um so I think the Scribe at least seems to have construed it as um as this option if you look up above though like in the first couple lines where it's like really clear there's also word separation like like between all sorts of other things yes which like presumably are being interpreted as compounds by m& yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly so like every everyone that looks like to me a compound word is has word separation the old yeah yeah so that that's it's a very good point and it's it's it's quite un um so you're right it's quite unreliable and even into the middle English period one often has um noticeable quote unquote word separation between um even prefixes of verbs um so they're there all of these scribes are seem to be sort of figuring out making it up as they go along um in many cases um so so you're quite right Alyssa that the um the fact that there looks like uh that there is some kind of separation between Cella and drri does not necessarily mean um that it it has to be construed that way so the way they write W's is so cursed they look they look like pe's yes a lot of the variations in here I've seen before like long s's their RS are little Jank that and W I I don't know I don't know how I feel about that so that's the that's the yeah the old English W's it's super interesting so that's the win um that's um that's the win and for whatever reason um we haven't so take a look at SW is the easiest one to find well where do you see that in theth line which yes good um so excellent uh swah and then quath you can see that nice C win um and then the AE ligature for the Ash and then the e oh by the way I think I've been using e and Thorn interchangeably um and haven't maybe ever actually given the the full explanation um so e and thorn thorn e um these are absolutely interchangeable in Old English um they there's no difference in pronunciation or meaning or anything like that um so thorn God I can't even write today and e um in Old Norse and modern Icelandic this is the unvoiced and this is the voiced um so th versus um but there's no difference in in in Old English um to your point Alysa about the weirdness of the of the win I think that the reason that we haven't that that everybody for what everybody uh transliterates the win to W is because the wi and the thorn look so similar um in MO in in Old English like if you can see I mean there is a difference so the thorn um take a look at line five um rra you can see there's a win R kind of blurring into the A and then the thorn there's a there's a marked Ascender above above the line so that that's the difference between the wind and the thorn is that the wi kind of looks like a thorn if you got rid of the of the top Ascender um wait but then how would you like write a p in oldish or like in this in this specific script that's a great question p is quite an unusual letter in Old English um so only occur in like PR which yeah so we saw it in Playo um the the alfri thinks it's very plich or dangerous to translate Genesis um let me if you can find a p real quick right after SW yes is a market yeah it looks like a little bit of a serf so they've they've they've accentuated um this so there's a p and then a win is more like a also in many scripts the the um the the Chamber of the in is quite a lot bigger than the Chamber of the P I can't this this scribe doesn't seem to observe that unfortunately but um but yeah it's a great question I think the short answer probably Tara is um uh context I mean if you know a p as so often is the case in Old English have you gotten used to this yet um how do you tell the difference between X and Y context um so yeah sorry where like line right oh okay oh okay this was all a very entertaining digression from um the bottom of page 73 no it's good I mean there isn't actually a lot of grammar to get through today so this is this is perfect and now it's up on the now it'll be up on the interwebs for um for those who had to miss today um let's take a look at the top of page 74 um so this is um you know they're they're they say quna is strictly an interrogative introducing a noun clause and the literal sense is etc etc it is easy to see how such a just ju AOS of noun and interrogative would lead to the use of the interrogative as a relative but this stage has not been has not been reached in Old English um for our purposes you don't need to worry about this like you just translate it as it's written and you'll you'll be and you'll be fine okay uh well not as it's written in the sort of word for word sense but just translate the words in the word order that they have to be um all right and that's actually oh no there's one little one more little bit on page um 75 the accusative and the and the infinitive um we've talked about this as well um the fact that um Old English because it doesn't have an in a a passive infinitive form um often uses um well I shouldn't say often can use um the infinitive as a sort of um implied uh passive infinitive um as Mitchell and Robinson note toward the bottom of uh section 161 any questions on that all right I think that's all of the grammar that you had to uh go through for today so it's a it's a quick day for uh for our recording friend thank you very much