María Fernanda Salazar Santacruz 1925793

1. Old English
They had different dialects of Old English
 Northumbrian
 Mercian
 West Saxon
 Kentish
Some characteristics of Old English is
 The pronunciation of Old English word that commonly differs from that of their
modern equivalents
 Difference of spelling
 The vocabulary of Old English is almost purely Germanic
 The Old English is a synthetic language.

-Grammatical Gender-
The gender of Old English nouns is not dependent upon considerations of sex. Although
nouns designating males are often masculine and those indicating females feminine, those
indicating neuter objects aren’t necessarily neuter.

-The adjective-
An important feature of the Germanic languages is the development of a twofold
declension, and the other, the weak declension, used when the noun is preceded by such a
word.

-The definite article-

Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article

-The verb-
Old English distinguished only two simple tenses by inflection, a present and a past, and,
except for one word, it had no inflectional forms for the passive as in Latin or Greek. It
recognized the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods and had the usual two
numbers and three persons.

-Self-explaining compounds-
 María Fernanda Salazar Santacruz 1925793

A compound word is two or more words linked together to produce a word with a new
meaning
There are about a dozen prefixes that occur with great frequency. With the help of such as
be-, for-, fore, ge-, mis-, of-, ofer-, on-, un-, under-, and whip-, Old English could make out
of a simple verb like settan (to set) new verbs like besettan ´appoint´, forsettan ´place
before´, gesettan ´people´, ´garrison´, ofsettan ´afflict´.
-Old English Syntax-
More inflected. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fully inflected, with four
grammatical cases, and a vestigial instrumental, two grammatical numerbs and three
grammatical genders.
 Hypotactic: The high proportion of long sentences with subordination
 Paratactic: Shorter sentences and a higher proportion of principal clauses
-Old English literature-
Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in medieval
England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period
often termed Anglo-Saxon England
Sermons and saints´ lives; biblical translation; translated Latin works of the early Church
Fathers; chronicles and narrative history works; laws, wills and other legal works; practical
works on grammar, medicine, and geography; and poetry.