Lecture 7: Numerals, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Prepositions, Concord, and Word Order

Key Takeaways

alrighty um so quite a lot of uh reading for today and and and all almost all pretty important um the good news is that from uh after today well I guess it depends on on whether it I guess I guess it's up for discussion whether it's good news or not but um I think it's good news uh we are moving from uh Baker to Mitchell and Robinson for your gramar readings and most of what you're reading for um Wednesday and Monday is further detail and reinforcement um of what got introduced in Baker um so Mitchell and Robinson the the the chapter we're reading for our next two class sessions is um I think it's just called syntax um so um you'll get reinforcement of a lot of the things that got introduced hey FAS um that got introduced um somewhat briefly um for today um but we'll go through chapters 9 through 12 in order um starting with the extremely brief uh chapter nine about numerals um Cardinal and ordinal numbers um you don't have to worry too much about these to be perfectly honest um the most important thing to remember is that the numbers one 2 and three that is the cardinal numbers one two and three all get declined um in Old English um so one on this is on page 95 97 rather um the Cardinal on is usually declined as a strong noun when it is declined as weak Anna um it means alone so hey Anna Li he delay alone if it is um ambiguous the form whether it's strong or weak which of course it could be um then uh you will need to use context to help you um decide um the cardinal numbers two and three also have their own peculiar inflectional system shown Below in table 9.1 um the only real uh thing to note about this table is that um it's laid out somewhat conf confusingly um the genitive and dative forms um they list Bakers listed the forms just under the neuter but those apply to all um the G the genders so in other words it's TWA um or TWA uh in the genitive of two whether it's masculine neuter or feminine um of interest but not particular importance um is the top of 98 um namely the fact that starting with 70 Old English pre prefixes hunt which actually means 100 um to the numbers so uh H uh SE um um and so on these curious forms seem to reflect a number system common to all the earliest dramatic languages in which counting preceded by twelves and 60 was a significant number in much the same way that 100 is now um that's of of sort of you know cultural interest um but not something you're going to need to worry about um the number of times that you see numbers of this uh of this of this sort is very very small um any questions about numbers or rather numerals as they are properly entitled all right then let's move on on to um chapter 10 adverbs conjunctions and prepositions um the good news um which Baker trumpets in his opening sentence um is that these are all indeclinable um and so that is indeed good news I don't know that I would agree that on that for that reason they are relatively easy um that is one aspect of them that is easy um but in fact other aspects are challenging so we'll we'll go through those in order one of the things that's challenging about adverbs is in fact the way that it makes um that the adverbial form is made namely by adding an e um so to just make the regular plain old adverb um you add an e to the end why is this challenging because it is yet another thing um that the E ending uh can be um so you'll need you'll often need to use context in order to distinguish the adverbial E ending from an E ending that's a that's uh a a a form of the adjective um the o r and the OS endings are for the comparison of adjectives um on uh page 101 so a uh sorry um uh LOF Le layoff leor and layoff leost um from LOF Le is the example that they um that they given 12.2.1 okay so this is uh the regular comparative and the superlative forms um 10.2 switching back to uh switching back the page to page 100 um so the most common it it you get a you get a a brief paragraph at the top of the page on another way in which adverbs can be made namely by adding case endings to nouns um these are this is rare and it's mostly in um idiomatic expressions um some of which we've already seen before so Das and nus um the genitive that's a relic of the old genitive of Tom um unus unwillingly literally without thanks um and then datives so NE um literally by need um so that's a case of where you could actually translate it as the um noun that it is and it would have sort of adverbial effect um quum um literally at times um that that one is actually very common so whum often um in fact I would say usually is adverbial rather than um functions adverbially even though it's actually a noun um so be on the lookout for that one um common adverbs listed with a star in table 10.1 um I will draw attention even though it's not starred to thast in the right hand column sort of the the the lone unstarred word in the midst of a in a whole list of starred ones um afterwards as thas um that may strike you as strange because thas of course is what case um of SE genitive yes exactly genitive singular um masculine or neuter and yet here it seems to mean afterwards if you take a if you look up thas and I will do it for you um if you look up thas in baker's glossery then you will see see that it can mean also Accord so it can mean afterwards accordingly therefore to that extent um thas is a tricky word in that respect I'm not going to give you on an exam I'm not going to make thas behave um in such a way um but you should be on the lookout for it in your um in your translations all right um one thing to be um one thing to be aware of um is that the same word um and Baker uh Baker does say this um the same word can often function either as an adverb or as a subordinating conjunction um which we get to in 10.3 um so the difference between these is that an adverb like uh fourth so let's take the uh let's take forom as a good example um so as an adverb it means therefore so literally for this reason right um but it can also be if you take a look to take a quick look at 10.3 so we're going to flip back and forth between um page and 102 tables 10 10 10.1 and 10.3 um it can also mean because um so subordinating conjunction adverb ah all right so the difference is that this adverb stands alone right therefore whereas the subordinating conjunction introduces a subordinate clause that's going to need to have its own um its own subject and verb of the subordinating clause um often I would say in the pros usually and in the Poetry sometimes um they will give you a hint the PO the author will give you a hint as to which is which by adding this um by adding this indeclinable the introducing the Clause version the subordinating conjunction version um of the of the word or phrase um so this is how um this is something to be on the lookout for but it's also something you shouldn't necessarily always expect uh um we see this actually that a similar um a similar for those uh for those French speakers among you it's almost exactly the same formulation that gives us the French uh expression for because for the reason that in medieval French um but of course now it's just become sort of combined into a single um into a single expression reinforcing this point that the same word or words can serve either adverbial or uh um conjunctive functions um Modern English is much more comfortable with this ambiguity so at the bottom of page 100 Baker points out um that we use in Modern English interrogatives like where and when both to ask questions like where do you live and to intro introduced adverb Clauses like I know where you live or adjective Clauses on the street where you live um this is the same is rarely true for Old English so usually you're going to get um some indication and usually it's the this that or sometimes even the thum that does that um that does that so for example if you take a look at after um on table 10.1 there it's an adverb which we use we would probably say after words in Old in in Modern English so even in Modern English we tend we do sometimes make a distinction between the adverbial form of a word and the conjunctive form of a word um like it it sounds a little strange to say after comma he went to the store we would usually say after words he went to the store after he went to the store suggests that the after is serving as a subordinating conjunction introducing a whole clause in Old English by contrast after by itself is going to have the adverbial function comparable to afterward and if you take a look at 10.2 you see after th um our th for th um those uh those those indicate the subordinating um conjunctions after before and um because but as you can see it's not it's not uniform because with r for example it can either have the TH or not have the th depending so just be on the look for that um and especially if you see um a TH or and a th um look for a clause um along with it um these starred ones you don't have to memor well many of these are word word words so in that sense you do have to memorize them um you don't have to memorize them like they don't they're not like the predate present verbs that I that I said that you have to memorize so these are these will only show up on the exam if they've been um word hord words to that point in the class um top of page 102 um the little the little box with the exclamation point says explicitly what I've just been going on about um the am the ambiguity of some of these conjunctions with matching adverbs may optionally be resolved by adding the particle the which marks the word as a conjunction um sometimes um they get doubled uh to indicate um to indicate uh con conjunctives um so SWA can mean so or as but swas SWA always means as um in the sense of like in a conjunctive sense that is to say as introducing an entire um dependent clause like as the sun set versus as a horse or whatever right introducing a clause versus introducing a simile all right um take a look at the correlative conjunctions down at the bottom um these are uh sorry rather at the middle middle-ish of page 102 the end of 10.3 um correlative conjunctions um like Modern English both and are as follows um we we had ather yay um and in fact I think it was ather yay dot dot dot yay that meant both and um in the in the in the passage that Mike translated a while back um qua dot dot dot auor meaning whether or um not only but also neither nor and then th and th um that's a that's a um that's an expression a sort of adverbial use of the instrumental um that is actually one of the main uses of the increasingly um obsolete instrumental in Old English to have a th dot dot dot th to mean the blank the blank as in the more the merrier um or the less the better um something like that if you're talking about something you don't like um any questions about these adverbs and conjunctions all right so correlation um we got a brief introduction to it with just that list of correlative conjunctions above 10.4 um correlation is a construction in which an adverb at the beginning of an independent clause recapitulates or anticipates an adverb clause um this happens a lot in Old English it happens a little bit in Modern English and Baker gives you some examples um but the examples in Modern English are often either totally optional so for example the example uh if you were in Philadelphia then you must have seen Independence Hall like that then is totally optional we could just as easily and probably would more naturally say if you were in Philadelphia you must have seen Independence Hall um in Modern English these neither element of the coordinate of the coordination or sorry rather of the correlation neither element is optional um so you basically are just going to get used to seeing um both of these um uh both of these rather than just one um sometimes this causes difficulty when the conjunction and the adverb have the same form so for example take a look at page 104 top of the page these are very common and this explains by the way way back when in week one of this class when you were memorizing meanings of th and thaw um and so on um this explains how the same word could mean what can mean when and then specifically it mean Tha means when in the initial um that is to say subordinative subordinated uh part of the clause and then in the main Clause so when you go outside then you will see the sun today at least um and similarly thaa thaa th th where and there yeah are there any obvious differences like semantically or syntactically between the use of thaw and thund um I would say thaw is just much more common yeah so the more ambiguous word is the more common word unfortunately um other clity yeah exactly concision over Clarity um are there other semantic differences thaa thaa no not that I can think of good question others 10.5 on prepositions um the two things I want to reinforce here one um we previewed very slightly last time namely um the distinction between the dative and the accusative case in uh prep with prepositions that can take either typically um and this is at the the very last uh in the very last part of the chapter on page 105 typically the dative is associated with location or stability while the accusative is associated with movement towards this isn't a sort of 100% rule but I would say it's 90 to 95 um% the other thing that I want to emphasize about prepositions we've also seen a number of times and that is name that is how many things individual prepositions can mean which is to say many more things than the cognate preposition in Modern English um so for example um toe uh with can mean two towards at four uh um for before in front of because of in place of for the sake of um Mid with as well as by means of um one thing I want the other thing I I would I would draw attention to is the difference between um Mid which is the typical Old English word for with cognate with German MIT um and with which is where we get our preposition with but more often in Old English means against um or opposite um sometimes towards um sometimes in exchange for um so think withstand withhold right the the kind of oppositional sense of the prefix in those verbs as opposed to like with you um any questions about uh prepositions or indeed anything in chapter 10 so far all right Concord um so Concord all this really means chapter 11 um is the agreement in gender case and number um between different words that share a reference so this basically just means um that parts of the sentence that are grammatically related um have have to sort of have the same uh case so the preposition uh sorry not the preposition the um the adjective the demonstrative pronoun that go with a given noun are going to match that noun um in gender case and number with the very rare exceptions that um that we've discussed um like uh second person genitives uh or second person possessive adjectives so your um your ring we talked a little bit about that that goes back to chapter five um the first and second person um agree with the no yeah that's first exactly sorry it's the third person that's the yeah so that that exception is covered on the bottom of uh on page 43 5.1.2 um but other than that that is um that is that is one of the very few exceptions um the reason that this is helpful is because um especially in the Poetry is that old English word order is much more flexible than Modern English we've seen this before um so bottom of page 107 uh Baker gives you a passage a short passage from bolf um about uh the coming of grindle umon um so that hosta that hia looks initially like it's the subject um of the dependent clause it could be um and yet we're going to find out that so two things should give us pause one is the is the E ending of the verb which has to be singular the other thing that's even more unambiguous is the SE in the next line say um we know that that um has to be the subject um so very often in AA in um in translating in fact I think almost always you should be thinking about translating clause for clause or sentence for sentence um rather than word by word um because the words themselves are going to have um a more flexible order than they do in Modern English um turning the page to 108 um sometimes in situations where Modern English uses a pronoun subject so like he they she um the old English finite verb can sometimes Express the subject all by itself um and then there are three examples there um that uh of that very of that very phenomenon um namely of namely having an unexpressed subject that's contained within or rather implied within the verb itself um this rarely happens I would say quite rarely happens in Pros um and I will not give you a version of this on any of the exams um but especially as we move into the Poetry um for our own translations in class um you'll want to be uh keep an eye out for this possibility bottom of the page uh or rather bottom half of page 108 compound subjects may be split in Old English one part divided from the others by the verb or some other sentence fragment so we basically I think never do this in Modern English so a compound subject right is like um he and his friends went to the movies um we would never say he went to the movies and his friends because because without the benefit of case endings that makes it sound like we have not a compound subject but rather a comp compound object he went somehow in some sense to the movies and also went to his friends um in Old English because of the presence of case endings however ambiguous they sometimes are um Old English is prepared to split up a compound subject um sometimes quite dramatically um when it does so and this is uh this is worth highlighting when it when this happens um so the paragraph beginning compound subjects may be split in Old English next sentence when this happens the verb will typically agree with the first part of the subject so in the case that I gave you of he um if we separated this um and so it such that it were um let's see he to the movies went and his friends um what with this verb What form would this verb take singular or plural singular exactly what would the verb be by the way what is the third singular of went anyone got it ready to hand aoda very good excellent um if by contrast we simply reversed them his friends to the movies went and he then it would be aod daon right good it sounds so it sounds what because we still have case endings for our pronouns in English the the reverse of this sounds so much more cursed like to attempt to say in Modern English his friends went to movies and he is just oh cursed in like you mean in the sense of awkward yeah okay I thought it you meant it like literally sounded like a curse in the in the Casual slaying sense oh I'm so glad to learn the Casual slang sense of cursed this is how I learn things um how the youth speak in today's vernacular um no that's very that that is interesting um and you're right cursed uh all right good excellent um impersonal verbs um we've talked a little bit about this um in uh in the context of Thon um so Thon taking an impersonal subject so uh where was that it was in um oh be according to what it seemed to her namely Eve that fruit of the tree seemed good to eat right um the only thing really to know um about this is that old English has more significantly more impersonal verbs um than Modern English in fact many many languages have more impersonal verbs um than modern than modern learn English um to dream to to to be hungry um these are some examples to long for at the top of page 110 bottom line here is just um feel free to translate um colloquially into into into how we would actually express it um in Modern English and not be um don't be too tethered um to the to to the to the um to a literal translation of the grammar um pronouns and antecedents um we've already seen a good example of where you have to translate a masculine or a feminine pronoun as the neuter simply because of how Modern English uses grammatical gender which is to say barely at all um so remember in the miracle of St Benedict um SE um Sean we did a lot of talking about the stone that is the masculine Stone um so when when we subsequently refer to the stone in um using a pronoun um we had to use hey um because the stone itself is masculine grammatically um but you would go ahead and translate it as it because we would never talk about a stone as well I shouldn't say never people talk about a lot of things we would most typically not talk about a stone as being masculine um and then um nouns and modifiers uh a noun and all its modifiers must agree in gender case and number um this sounds straightforward and indeed it is straightforward um but the reason that it's important to remember is that if you turn the page to the top of 112 the adjective is frequently separated from its noun um even in Pro pros and especially in poetry um when this happens the rules of Concord will help you match up the adjective when it's now with its noun and there's an example here from the old English poem uh Judith it's talking about uh the the wavy-haired one um Judith is this is when she's about to chop off hr's head um and well she's she's she cuts his head halfway off um then the wavy-haired ones struck the hostile minded enemy with a decorated sword so that she's cut through half of his neck um and if you take a look up to the Old English there's a good data example of a dative of um dative of instrumentality and it's also a good example f um why is fog um why doesn't fum look like MAA even though they go together singular excellent fum is a dative singular masculine strong adjective um so uh so is that the decorated sword yes that's the decorated sword exactly um and then but um there the THL and the halna um uh go together and thus have the same ending despite being separated um in the sentence all right um when participles are inflected so take a look at the very bottom of that um just above 11.5 that last paragraph um past and present participles are often inflected as adjectives even when they form paraphrastic verb forms um so in other words um basically all this means is that participles well participles often get declined in Old English in a way that they do not get declined um in Modern English um one thing to note when they are inflected the ending e is added to the nominative and accusative plural of all genders um and may occasionally be omitted um so just keep a slightly flexible eye out um for participial forms um but again not something I'm going to test you on on an exam all right um and then bad grammar 11.5 um all that really means all that all that Baker's really going into um is that sometimes um when the sentences get especially complicated or often the author gets especially heated or especially excited about something um they lose track of their case endings um and that's fine uh don't worry too much about it um all right let's quickly go through 12 point uh chapter 12 um so you're going to get a lot more on word order if you thought that the treatment was rather cursory um it it is um you're going to get more on word order when we dive into syntax um next time um for Mitchell and Robinson um but the Quick Start um is that uh most often um Modern English has an SVO subject verb object word order just like Modern English um that's handy and about two-thirds of the way down page 116 if the Clause has both a a direct and an indirect object and one of them is a pronoun the pronoun comes first um this is just like in Modern English um so here you may hear that he that if he that he gives us the power us is the indirect object it's a pronoun so it comes first power is the direct object um and so it comes second um all right 12.3 this is where it gets starts to get trickier um so verb subject word order is common in independent clauses introduced by the adverbs thought Thon th and the negative adverb and the conjunctions and on and a um this is uh we've had a preview of this um before and I've mentioned it as well um this is related to the fact that old English in independent clauses very much wants um has a has a preference for the conjugated verb to be the second element of the sentence um so if that first first element is taken by the subject alls well and good um the verb naturally takes the second position if by contrast um it's introduced by an adverb um then more often the verb is going to be second and you'll get the subject again most often the subject will be the third uh will be the third element as in the examples below very occasionally the word order this word order this V word order also appears in independent clauses not introduced by an adverb so whereon he acts the Dr drun um Etc that's quite unusual so it can happen but typically it's going to happen for um for the uh for the other reasons um 12.4 um do subject dot dot do verb this is commonly found in subordinate clauses um and clauses introduced by and uh on or o um this is sort of related to um well I shouldn't say with confidence that it's related to it's parallel to and seems likely related um to the fact that it that German also um tends to put the conjugated verb at the end of a at at at the end of a dependent clause um so we see examples uh yeah bottom of bottom of 119 if you find you're having difficulty locating the end of a clause and the word order appears to be subject dot dot dot verb consider the possibility that the finite verb marks the end of the Clause my memory from my dim dim memories of having studied German is that that's a pretty hard and fast rule in modern German it's also like there's a unifying linguistic theoretical treatment of why it's like subject verb or something verb in um nons subordinate clauses and at the end in a subordinate clause if you look up V2 syntax V2 syntax makes sense okay excellent and by the way I'm this was something that I wanted to kind of run by um folks um often I get asked kind of uh technical or even sometimes not very technical linguistic questions that I just don't know the answer to um I'm totally I would love to come up with a um some sort of system of I don't know extra credit or something um where those of you who have an interest in these questions um that I can't answer I think somebody I think it was you Alyssa said oh I think there's there's research out there we we could find the answer if you all want to find the answers to some to some of these questions I don't remember what the question was it was um yeah exactly I think it was I think it was something you asked Lambert about the the the the word order of of of negatives um yeah just just let me know if you wanted if anyone wants to do a deep or even sort of shallow dive on that um I would love to get a a kind of um uh folder of of answers to questions that I get asked so that future students will have the the benefits of of your wisdom and I promise to give credit where credit is due um where was I go with this oh right um it's less of a rule in Modern English or in sorry in Old English um but it is a it is a marked tendency um and this is something that I will um expect you to be um have some comfort level with um in the in the site translation on the um on the exam but don't worry too much about it just yet we're going to get more detail on word order um when we turn to Mitchell and Robinson's treatment of Syntax for Wednesday and next Monday um all right when a subord bottom of uh 12 sorry bottom of 119 12.5 correlation when a subordinate clause and an independent clause are correlated and are introduced by an ambiguous conjunction adverb pair um especially tha tha th th and th th um you can usually tell the subordinate clause from the independent clause by looking at the word order in this situation the tendency of the independent clause is to have the vs word order um and the subordinate clause is more likely to have SV or S do dot Dov word order so there are some good um good examples in the little boxed section at the bottom of 120 um that you can that you can take a take a look at um unfortunately this rule does not work in poetry in Pros it will work most of the time but you cannot count on it absolutely so um be aware of the tendency but don't expect it to be a hard and fast rule um the last part of chapter 12 um which is actually fairly well you I guess you all can decide how tricky it is but it is quite common is something called anticip a um so the the the technical explanation is as follows when a noun clause functions as a subject or an object um it must follow the verb but often a pronoun usually that but sometimes hit appears before the verb anticipating the coming Clause hence the hence the um hence the term um this pronoun Ure occurs in the position that a pronoun subject or object would normally take um so the examples here uh are are helpful so y mean Ward um so hold fast to my words and don't tell them to any other man that should y sorry y witha so if that should occur or should happen notice the use of the um subjunctive Y for the potential um if it should happen that you speak with him now that's a case where the um anticipation actually sort of works translates pretty well into Modern English we would say um or at least we could say something pretty similar um the next example is much less readily translated literally so hey drion that on y so he um the Lord perceived that that's the first independent clause and so that first italicized that is basically a dummy word that alerts us to the fact alerts the reader to the fact that there's going to be this um this long uh dependent um Clause uh which is actually a noun clause it's the object of the verb saw the object of the verb yes all right um this is pretty this is actually very very common um we're going to see examples in the pros and also in the Poetry so you'll learn to get comfortable with this um kind of by you'll you'll learn by doing um which is kind of the light motif of this class um but in those cases um you do not have to translate the um introductory kind of dummy that all right and then paraphrastic verbs um Modern English all uh generally keeps the auxiliary and the verbals um together um although we sometimes separate them with an adverbial element um so like I will come quickly um we could say and often do I will quickly come but that's about the extent of it that's about as far as Modern English is willing to tolerate a separation of the auxiliary and the verbal Old English by contrast and you can see some examples on page 122 is perfectly happy to have quite a distance um between the two parts of the verb um so just make um just keep an eye out for that um so you have examples of all three of the word orders um that we've discussed subject verb verb subject and subject dot dot dot verb um but uh but other than that that's about that's about it for word order for today but like I said we're going to get more for Wednesday um any questions on any of this alrighty