Sound change and linguistic structure

A number of important changes leading to attested OE cluster in the Ingvaeonic/Anglo-Frisian periods, and the rather misty area the handbooks call ‘Primitive OE’, i.e. roughly from the fifth to the seventh centuries. Many of these have profound effects both on the shape of particular OE words or morphemes, and on the grammatical systems involving them. A knowledge of these changes and their interactions will help to explain why many OE forms look the way they do, and why the phonological material is deployed as it is in the morphology. This historical background provides answers to questions like:

1. (i) Why do certain verbs have double consonants in some parts of the paradigm, and singles elsewhere? E.g. trymann ‘strengthen’, pres 1 sg trymme, but pres 3 sg trymeð, pret 1 sg trymede.

2. (ii) Why do verbs like sellan ‘sell’, tellan ‘tell’ have preterites sealde, tealde rather than *sellede, *tellede?

3. (iii) Why do certain strong verbs which historically ought to have the same vocalism not do so? E.g. cl III singan ‘sing’, pret sg sang, but in the same class helpan ‘help’, pret sg healp, and weorpan ‘throw’, pret sg wearp?

4. (iv) Why do some nouns have an /æ/ ~ /α/ alternation, like nom/acc sg dæg, gen sg dæges but nom/acc pl dagas, dat pl dagum?

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