@hwatting & @vec. I'll include them in future sound change posts, and will go back at some point and add them into the post above, but not right now.
Also, I forgot to include a sound change that should have occurred. I will update the above post to reflect it shortly, but now, onto the grammar changes! There isn't too much happening now, but the Middle West Saxon Period will be pretty big. I'm looking forward to and also kind of dreading writing it.
Okay, now that we've got the sound changes that occurred, it's time to cover the grammatical changes which happened during the Old West Saxon Period. Thes articles describing the grammar changes will be broken up into five sections.
The first of these will be Nominal/Adjectival Changes. Into this section will go any changes affecting nouns and adjectives. These will cover morphological changes, but also changes in case usage, changes to the gender system, and nominal/adjectival derivational developments.
The next section will be Pronominal/Demonstrative/Prepositional Changes. Here will go all the changes to the "little" words. The most common of these will be changes to pronouns, demonstratives, and prepositions, but it will also cover the development of the number system, the evolution of the articles, and the use of particles and even adverbs.
Next comes Verbal Changes. These will cover morphological changes to the verb system, but also changes in derivation, in tense usage, and in the development of periphrastic tenses, and even common verbal constructions as they arise.
After that comes Word Order Changes. West Saxon's sentence structure goes through a number of significant developments during its history, and this section will document each period's steps on the road to Contemporary West Saxon's word order. This will cover primarily clause structure, but also developments in the order of the noun, verb, and adjective phrases. Next to last is Orthographic Developments, a section on general trends (if they exist) in the orthography
The final portion (in this post at least) Incipient Changes. These are changes that are first seen late in the period, but only sporadically noted during the time period, and are not "standard" before the period's end. Think of them as a preview of coming attractions.
In the following posts, I'll also have a section called Relics, which will cover the last few instances of forms that were already all but dead in the previous period, but still occurred occasionally in a few later documents, or occurs to give a marked, archaic character. An example from modern English could be the use of the verb ending "-eth", rather than "-s" for 3rd person singular.
Grammatical Changes During the Old West Saxon Period (850-1150)
Compared with the Middle West Saxon Period, the Old West Saxon period was relatively stable, as it was the last period before the (almost) complete leveling of inflectional vowels to schwa. It didn't experience the significant nominal simplification the Nominal/Adjectival would experience in Early Middle West Saxon. Nor did it experience anything like the innovations of the Late Middle West Saxon Period (though admittedly many of those changes first appeared late in the Early Middle period). That being said, a few important trends began during this time, which would affect the
Nominal/Adjectival Changes
Spread of the -ina Genitive
With the collapse of back inflectional vowels [a o u], the plural forms of the nominative/accusative and genitive cases for feminine strong nouns and neuter strong nouns which ended in a "light" syllable were identical. Once this happened, it became increasingly common for the weak genitive plural ending "-ina" (from earlier "-ena") to be used as the genitive plural marker for these nouns.
Masculine strong nouns, as well as neuter strong nouns which ended in a "heavy" syllable, and thus had a null nominative/accusative plural ending, typically retained the genitive plural ending "-a" (but see Incipient Changes below).
Umlaut Plural Leveling
In nouns which show vowel change in the plural, the vowels are leveled between the different case forms, with all forms of the plural taking the vowel of the nominative/accusative plural, and all forms of the singular taking the vowel of the nominative/accusative singular. Therefore, in words like "fot" (foot), the dative singular at the end of the period is "fote", rather than earlier "fet", and the plural dative is "fetan" (compared with earlier "fotum").
This change occurred somewhat late in the period, and many believe that it was driven by the influence of the so-called "e/a" nouns. These are nouns which had [ɛ] (earlier [æ]) all through the singular, but [a] all through the plural. These are not the results of I-umlaut, but rather [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Fris ... estoration]A-Restoration[/a]. In English sound changes would leave these two vowels identical, but in West Saxon, nouns that showed the sound change proved somewhat frequent, and even predictable (for a time at least).
Decline of bare Dative as Instrumental
The use of a bare dative case as an instrumental died out by the end of the period, replaced by prepositional constructions.
Cg# becomes Ca# in Nouns/Adjectives.
The vocalization of [ɣ] to [w] made a number of nouns ending in Cg look like -wa/-wo stems in all cases but the nominative and accusative singular (for feminines, only the nominative singulars). Therefore, I'm having those feminines move over to the -wo stem declension completely, and having their nominative singulars now end in -a, matching the other nouns therein. For instance, earlier "beorg" (meaning "hill/mountain") became beora (with a stem of beorw- for the inflected forms).
Pronominal/Demonstrative/Prepositional Changes
Strong/Weak Pronoun Distinction Begins Appearing
Pronouns and demonstratives had both strong forms (which were stressed) and weak forms (which were unstressed). The weak demonstratives would also go onto be used as articles later, while the importance of the strong/weak distinction for pronouns would be seen in word order, where the weak forms were considered syntactically "invisible" for the purposes of V2 word order, while strong (emphatic) forms behaved like nouns.
Verbal Changes
Standardization of the "Contracted" 2nd/3rd Person Singular
The 2nd and 3rd person singular forms of strong verbs and Class 1 weak verbs show a contraction of the endings "-est" and "-eþ" to "-st" and "-t/-þ" when followed by a singular consonant (when that consonant isn't a sibilant). The distinction between "-t" and "-þ" is based on the consonant it is adjacent to (see the sound change post for clarification). This often triggered shortening of the stem vowel if it was long, which reinforced the umlaut of stem vowels in 2nd/3rd person singular of some strong and irregular vowels. Class 2 verbs sometimes show this reduction as well, but it was still uncommon at the period's end.
Generalization of ʒe-/ʒi- as Marker of the Past Participles
The prefix ʒi- (or occasionally still ʒe-) came to be more and more used solely as a marker of the past participle with verbs. Like in German, it wasn't used when the verb had an inseparable prefix, but by the end of the period it was otherwise mandatory for past participle.
Development of Periphrastic Verb Forms
Periphrastic verb forms become more common during this period. The biggest developments were the development of perfect forms (typically with the verb "habban" (to have) for transitive verbs, and "beon" (to be) for intransitive verbs combined with the past participle of the verb. At this point, the meaning was still somewhat semantic, i.e. "I have eaten the meal" meant "I have a meal that is eaten (by me)" or "I am run" meant "I am in a state of having run". This is show somewhat by word order, and by the fact that the past participle still inflects to agree with the object (in transitive sentences) or the subject (in intransitive ones) of the sentence. This was not the only periphrastic form to develop, however.
The verb "beon" was used present participle (still inflected for agreement with the subject) to give something of a habitual tense, or to express a tendency towards something. When the when used with the "b" forms of "beon" (beo/bist/biþ/beoþ), it gave a gnomic sense.
Additionally, a number of ways of forming a future tense began to grow more common. Of these, the two most common were the use of the verbs willan and sculan with the infinitive. However, the "b" forms of "beon" were used by themselves a a future tense of "to be" with increasing frequency, and by the end of the period the "b" forms plus an infinitive start showing up as well. However, while this construction was becoming less uncommon, it was still not as frequent as ones with willan or sculan.
Occasionally, a form of "worþan" plus an infinitive appears with future meaning, but this is very uncommon.
It should be noted that, even with these methods of future construction, the most common future was the present tense + context, or with some adverb denoting futurity.
Word Order Changes
Standardization of V2 SOV word order
During the period, the only real significant development in word order was a gradual settling on an SOV clause structure, subject to a V2 constraint. This put West Saxon on the trajectory to having a word order much like the other West Germanic languages, like German, Dutch, and Frisian. The only major difference between West Saxon and those other languages is that a weak pronoun was not subject to the V2 constraint, meaning that if an object or adverb was fronted before a vowel, a weak pronoun did not seem to be taking up a syntactic slot, as it were, and was not moved behind the verb as it would be in, say, German. A strong pronoun would be moved, but being stressed it was typically considered emphatic itself. More and more commonly, when both a strong pronoun and an emphasized object or adverb appeared in a sentence, the object or adverb would be backed (see below). An example of such a sentence might be "I want to go to the store" (rather than Joe, who wants to go to the movies.)
Beginnings of Object/Modifier Backing
Even as the word order of West Saxon clauses was beginning to settle into its fairly conventional West Germanic word order, a complication was beginning to arise which would eventually rework the whole West Saxon clause structure. The back of a clause became a second "emphasis" point, along with the front of a clause. Objects were placed there more often than adverbs, but it wasn't for either to go there. By the end of the period, the back of the clause had supplanted the front and the point of emphasis for objects, while the front was more typically used for adverbs still. However, this structure was still quite marked, and the default V2 SOV word order was still the one most commonly found.
Orthographic Developments
Initial [j] is shown by [ʒ] before a front vowel, or |ʒi| before a back vowel. The combination [jo], when found word initially, is often written as |eo|, due to many instances of that sound combination arising from the development of initial short /eo/. This convention even extends to some instances of intitial /jo/ that don't derive from earlier /eo/. Thus, the spelling "eonʒ" for "young" (pronounced /jɔːŋg/). It should be noted that this is not conventional, and eventually fell out of favor. The more common spelling would be "ʒionʒ" at the end of the period.
To distinguish initial /ø/ from initial /jo/, the combination |eu| is used. Since instances of initial /ø/ are always long (as initial short /eo/ developed into /jo/), it became increasingly common for long /ø/ to be written with /eu/, regardless of whether or not it was word initial.
It should be noted that, right now, I'm using ʒ for /g/ and many of its reflexes. This is because ʒ and g will later split (much like g and yogh did in English), and ʒ will eventually be absorbed into j.
Also, distribution of þ/ð is becoming more fixed in the language, with ð being used mainly when the coda of a syllable, especially when word final, and þ being used elsewhere. By the end of the period, double . This is not a firm rule, but a general trend, showing ð's gradual reduction in use, portending it's eventual abandonment.
Incipient Changes
Article Developments
The use of the demonstratives, the number one, and the adjective "sum" with pretonic stress as distinct articles (rather than demonstratives or numerals) begins in this period. Their usage, however, was not settled. While later the language would settle into a three-way definite/specific/generic system, the Old West Saxon period shows a great deal of flux in the usage.
Leveling of Strong Verb Vowels
Though by and large the distinction in strong verbs between the first and second preterite vowels (occurring in the first/third person singluar, and everywhere else respectively), an increasing number of texts have the second preterite vowel leveled across all the preterite forms, starting around the year 1100. This would not be generalized until will into the Middle West Saxon period, however.
Genitive Adjective Endings Begin Sporadically Dropping
Occasionally, the genitive ending of adjectives are omitted or replaced with the nominative. This is somewhat most common in the feminine and plural forms (where the endings -re and -ra are replaced with the nominative endings -a), though it is seen occasionally in the masculine and neuter forms too. This change is only noted in the strong adjective inflection.
Beginnings of Object/Modifier Backing
Even as the word order of West Saxon clauses was beginning to settle into its fairly conventional West Germanic word order, a complication was beginning to arise.
Strong Masculine Nouns with -ina Genitive
Though it was never very widespread, it is not unheard of to see the genitive plural ending "-ina" on strong masculine nouns on occasion in texts from later in the period. Much work has been spent trying to find reasons behind the usage, but no real pattern has yet been found. It seems to be more pure analogy at this point, as the sound changes that would later help drive "-ina"'s later dominance do not seem to have occured in the documents which show this effect.
Collective Forms
Though more a feature of the Middle West Saxon Period, a number of texts show the prefix "ʒe-" or "ʒi-" used with the plural forms of nouns to denote a collective sense. During this period, these forms are most commonly found with kinship terms (which is also where this usage would linger longest).
Partly this was due to being sick and overworked last week, and partly due to my attempt at a grammar sketch getting less and less "sketchy". I'd tried to pare it back some, but then it felt much too superficial. Because of this, I've decided to modify how I'll be doing these grammar sketches. The plan now is to break them up into 5 chapters, covering (1) Phonology & Orthography (2) Nouns and Adjectives (3) Verbs (4) Pronouns, Numbers, Articles, & Particles (5) Word Order & Common Constructions. This means that it will take a bit longer to finish this up (BOO!), but it will allow me to go into somewhat greater depth on these posts that I might have otherwise (YAY!).
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