Diacrony and Typology of English Language Text - Maria Del Carmen

María del Carmen Guarddon AneloProfesora Titular de Filología

Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Diachrony and Typology of the English Language

through the Texts

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© María del Carmen Guarddon Anelo

© Ediciones Académicas, S.A. Bascuñuelos, 13-P. 28021 – Madrid

ISBN: 978-84-0000000-00-0Depósito legal: M-00000-2011

Impreso por: Campillo Nevado, S.A. Antonio González Porras, 35-37 28019 MADRID

Impreso en España / Printed in Spain

Contents

The Author ........................................................................................ 15

Introduction and Objetives ...................................................... 17

Contextualization and justification of the contents ..................................... 18Contents, design and organization of this book ......................................... 19Student’s background knowledge .............................................................. 21Study guidelines ........................................................................................ 21Learning results ......................................................................................... 22Course schedule ....................................................................................... 22Abbreviations ............................................................................................ 23

OLD ENGLISH TEXTS ................................................................ 25

TEXT 1 - Wuld and Eadwacer .................................................. 27

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 291. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 312. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 343. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 404. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 425. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 476. Key Translation ................................................................................... 49

TEXT 2 - The Egyptian Days ..................................................... 51

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 531. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 552. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 563. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 614. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 625. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 626. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 667. Key Translation ................................................................................... 68

8 DIACHRONY AND TYPOLOGY

TEXT 3 - The Whale ....................................................................... 69

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 711. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 732. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 753. Function Words and Adverbs .............................................................. 794. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 805. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 836. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 867. Key Translation ................................................................................... 89

TEXT 4 - Jesus and the Tax Gatherer Luke 19: 1 – 11 West-Saxon gospels .................................... 91

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 931. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 952. Morphology Nominal Group ................................................................ 973. Function Words and Adverbs .............................................................. 984. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 995. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 1006. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 1037. Key Translation ................................................................................... 105

TEXT 5 - The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle .................................. 107


MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS ........................................................ 127

TEXT 1 - The Anarchy - The Peterborough chronicle . 129

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 1311. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 1332. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 1393. Function Words and Adverbs .............................................................. 145

9CONTENTS

4. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 1485. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 1506. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 1567. Key Translation ................................................................................... 159

TEXT 2 - The Temptation of Eve - Ancrene Wisse .......... 161


TEXT 3 - The Magnificence of Arthur’s Court ................ 179


TEXT 4 - The Owl and the Nightingale ............................... 199


TEXT 5 - Jesus Calms the Storm ........................................... 217

Historical Context ...................................................................................... 2191. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 2222. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 224


3. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 2274. Syntax at Phrase Level ....................................................................... 2285. Syntax at Clause Level ....................................................................... 2286. Glossed Text ....................................................................................... 2317. Key Translation ................................................................................... 236

SELF-EVALUATION ..................................................................... 239

Guide to the use of the Self-evaluation Section ........... 241

OLD ENGLISH TEXTS .................................................................. 243

Text 1 - Wulf and Eadwacer .............................................................. 244

Translate .................................................................................................... 245Answer ...................................................................................................... 246Suggested Translation ............................................................................... 247Key answers .............................................................................................. 248About the text ........................................................................................... 249About the questions .................................................................................. 249

Text 2 - The Egyptian Days ............................................................... 250


Text 3 - The Whale ............................................................................. 256


Text 4 - Jesus and the Tax Gatherer-Luke 19: 1 – 11 ................. 262

Translate .................................................................................................... 263Answer ...................................................................................................... 264

11CONTENTS

Suggested Translation ............................................................................... 265Key answers .............................................................................................. 266About the text ........................................................................................... 267About the questions .................................................................................. 267

Text 5 - The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ............................................... 268


MIDDLE ENGLISH TEXTS .......................................................... 275

Text 1 - The Anarchy .......................................................................... 276


Text 2 - The Temptation of Eve ........................................................ 282


Text 3 - The Magnificence of Arthur’s Court ................................. 288



Text 4 - The Owl and the Nightingale .............................................. 294


Text 5 - Jesus Calms the Storm ...................................................... 300


SUPPLEMENTAry ACTIVITIES

OLD ENGLISH ....................................................................................... 309

Text 1 - The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan ............................ 311

EXERCISES ............................................................................................... 3111. Translate ............................................................................................. 311GLOSSARY .............................................................................................. 3111. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 3112. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 3123. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 313

Question ............................................................................................. 313

Text 2 - Beowulf .................................................................................. 315


Question ............................................................................................. 316

13CONTENTS

Text 3 - The Killing of Holofernes by Judith ................................... 317

EXERCISES ............................................................................................... 317GLOSSARY .............................................................................................. 3171. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 3172. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 3183. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 318

Question ............................................................................................. 319

MIDDLE ENGLISH ................................................................................ 321

Text 1 - When þe Nyhtegale Singes ............................................... 323


Question ............................................................................................. 325

Text 2 - De Clerico et Puella ............................................................. 327

EXERCISES ............................................................................................... 3271. Translate the following text with the help of the glossary provided ...... 327GLOSSARY .............................................................................................. 3271. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 3272. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 3283. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 328

Question ............................................................................................. 328

Text 3 - Sir Orfeo ................................................................................ 329

EXERCISES ............................................................................................... 3291. Translate the following text with the help of the glossary provided ...... 329GLOSSARY .............................................................................................. 3291. Verbal Morphology ............................................................................. 3292. Morphology of the Nominal Group ...................................................... 3303. Adverbs and Function Words .............................................................. 330

Question ............................................................................................. 331


KEy ANSWErS – OLD ENGLISH ...................................................... 333

Text 1 - The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan ............................ 335

Suggested translation ................................................................................ 335Key to the question ................................................................................... 335

Text 2 - Beowulf .................................................................................. 336


Text 3 - The Killing of Holofernes by Judith ................................... 337


KEy ANSWErS – MIDDLE ENGLISH ............................................... 339

Text 1 - When þe Nyhtegale Singes ............................................... 341


Text 2 - De Clerico et Puella ............................................................. 342


Text 3 - Sir Orfeo ................................................................................ 343


rECOMMENDED rEADINGS ................................................. 345

SUPPLEMENTAry bIbLIOGrAPHy

OLD ENGLISH ...................................................................................... 351

MIDDLE ENGLISH ............................................................................... 361

SELECTED UrLS ........................................................................... 371

GLOSSAry ...................................................................................... 375

Anexo I ................................................................................................ 383

Anexo II ............................................................................................... 393

The Author

María del Carmen Guarddon Anelo has a doctorate in Historical Linguistics. She worked in the Institut für Anglistik II at the Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hochschule in Aachen (Germany) where she profited from the advice of Professor Lilo Moessner in the elaboration of this book. Dr. Guarddon has published other books aimed at the understanding of the morphosyntactic structures and the organization of the lexical stock of Old and Middle English. She is the author of a considerable number of papers and chapters of books on the typology of Old English.

María del Carmen Guarddon Anelo has done research work in the field of Cognitive Linguistics in the Universities of California at Berkeley, University of London (UK) and University of Texas at Austin. This solid background permits her to approach the teaching of the complex structures of Old and Middle English using didactic strategies that guarantee the student’s assimilation of the characteristics of the language.

Finally, this book is also the result of Guarddon Anelo’s experience in the teaching of the History of the English Language in a distant university such as the UNED, where she has been coordinator of the course Historia de la Lengua Inglesa (5th year of the Licenciatura Filología Inglesa) for 10 years.

Introduction and Objetives

The objective of this book is to be a guide in the acquisition of strategies for understanding texts in Old and Middle English. Therefore, it provides a general and global view of grammar in the two linguistic stages, especially as related to morphology and syntax. In this manner, it shows the changes that have been generated in relation to the most relevant constructions between these periods of the English language. It has been designed for those beginning to study Diachrony and Typology of the English Language (Grado en Estudios Ingleses, UNED). On that basis, the contents have been organized in such a way that the book can be used by readers working with a professor as well as those working on their own.

This book is by no means a substitute for a manual of Old or Middle English. It really intends to add a practical dimension to the theoretical knowledge gained from such manuals or courses. There exists a solid tradition of teaching dead languages through translation, a representative case being Latin. The finding of recurring syntactic and morphologic characteristics in the translation process leads to progressive assimilation, particularly because these structures are not directly presented to the reader, as is the case when learning theory. Instead, it is the reader’s job to try to identify them, which makes it necessary to review previously acquired knowledge, and to compare it with the linguistic evidence to obtain a reasonable version of the text contents. This allows for theory assimilation while minimizing the need for memorization. On the other hand, it constitutes a type of learning we call active, because it encourages the reader to create his own strategies. Further motivation comes from the activity itself as the texts are understandable without having to refer to other translations.

Thus, the objective of the translation is not aesthetic; rather it helps in the process of understanding the linguistic structures of the text. The reader should keep in mind that her principal goal is not to do a literary translation, but just to understand the content of the text. I also recommend that the translations provided be read after the texts have been worked with to avoid the reader developing any prejudices while studying the texts.


There are excellent literary translations of the passages included in this volume. They can be found in the Supplementary Bibliography so that any interested reader can have the opportunity to compare how the texts are translated in a different linguistic time period with an aesthetic intention.

CONTEXTUALIZATION AND JUSTIFICATION OF THE CONTENTS

The reason I think that translation is a basic exercise toward understanding these languages is because it constitutes a necessary step between theory acquisition and reading the texts. In the majority of cases this step is the only objective of those starting in this discipline. Many of the readers of this book are students of English Studies or Linguistics who are simply interested in being able to understand a text with the help of a glossary and have no intention of reaching a level which would allow them to read the texts directly, a competency that would require serious dedication. Nevertheless, most manuals include a “reader” after covering all the details of the given linguistic stage. The texts comprising these readers include annotation and give historical context on the text in question, or add to information about the plot or characters that appear in the passage. Also, on occasion, the notes give information on especially difficult grammatical patterns. The texts are accompanied by a corresponding glossary.

In any case, I think the step from studying the characteristics of the language to the reading of the texts with the help of a glossary constitutes a practically impossible jump for the reader. This is where this book comes in to help. I think that the study of the language helps the reader to distinguish its characteristics, but reading texts requires the development of a specific ability. Previous knowledge is necessary but not sufficient. With this in mind, this book stresses the steps which will help the reader in the process of understanding a text in Old or Middle English. This understanding process goes through text translation. This type of translation is extracting meaning. The reader’s knowledge of this material is normally not broad enough to understand through simply reading. Therefore I have tried to establish a systematic method which leads to the understanding of texts in Old and Middle English. This method is based on the correct interpretation of the linguistic structures composing the texts.

I am deeply indebted to the scholarly editions used in this volume. They provide punctuation and capitalization which prove to be very helpful for the modern reader working with the texts. I think it is necessary to point out that I have standardized just one feature of the orthographic conventions from the editions I have worked with. In

19 INTRODUCTION AND OBJETIVES

the texts, when I found <u> where in present-day English we would expect <v> or <w>, I have followed modern orthography. These graphic modernizations were made to make the identification of certain terms easier. I have also chosen to make this change because this convention has been used in several Middle English dictionaries. The scope of this book is the understanding of Old and Middle English texts by having a clearer perspective of the morphological and syntactic patterns of the language. I provide each passage as it was originally printed. I do not include further information about other manuscripts where the passage may have appeared. However, the reader who wants to pursue matters further can consult the Supplementary Bibliography at the end of this book. This section is organized into subsections corresponding to the works from which the passages selected for this volume have been extracted. Understanding this, I would like to make a general acknowledgement to all the editions from which I have extracted the texts included in this book.1

CONTENTS, DESIGN AND OrGANIZATION OF THIS bOOK

The first section of this book is divided in two parts. The first is dedicated to Old English and the second to the period known as Middle English. Both parts can work independently. In the second part, there are repeated references to the part dedicated to Old English given that I want the reader to have a diachronic perspective of the constructions. In any case, since exact references are used to indicate where a given phenomenon appears in the first part, the reader interested in such information can find it without having to study the complete text. This allows independent usage of both parts.

Each part consists of five texts. The first text in each section is organized differently from the other four. As an introduction for the reader they offer greater support and information, considering characteristics of the text and relating them to the general properties of the language for the corresponding time period, always supposing that the student has previous basic knowledge of Old and Middle English. All the texts have seven sections: 1) Verbal Morphology, 2) Morphology of the Nominal Group, 3) Adverbs and Function Words, 4) Syntax at Phrase Level, 5) Syntax at Clause Level, 6) Glossed Text and 7) Key Translation. The sections Verbal Morphology and Morphology of the Nominal Group in the texts that begin each of the sections are in the text format while those following are in the glossary format. The format of the entries is not uniform. At

1 Should any copyright holder want to discuss any matter with us, the publishers would be glad to make whatever suitable arrangement.


times one needs only basic information, however, when a term requires deeper explanation, this is added when considered necessary, while advancing through the texts, forms with which the reader should already be familiar are not included. For example, in relation to texts corresponding to late Middle English, certain vocabulary elements that have the same form and meaning as Modern English are not explained. The emphasis of the book is on morphologic and syntactic questions that I consider to be fundamental to the understanding of a written text. References to phonologic aspects are only made when necessary to understand a morphologic phenomenon or when it aids in the identification of a certain vocabulary element. Regarding the Middle English texts, I only make reference to dialectical matters when required to understand the text, for example, to explain a syntactic peculiarity that the reader may find in future texts.

I include boxes called Useful Tips, with comments especially relevant to working with the texts. These tips include commentary that could be about procedure, concrete grammatical characteristics of Old or Middle English, or grammar in general. Obviously, the explanation of basic grammar is beyond the objectives of this book, but sometimes the lack of knowledge of such basics is an obstacle that can make understanding the texts very difficult. For that reason I make a small clarification when considered necessary. Useful Tips are more common in the first texts. It is not recommended that readers skip over the tips unless they have a solid background in the language. Each of the texts is preceded by a brief introduction to the work explaining a bit of its theme and historical context. This information is brief and aims to provide some background for the reader in order not to confront the text “cold”, it offers some ideas that provide context to the reader. If a reader desires more information about a particular text, bibliographic information can be found in the references.

The second part is devoted to the students’ Self-Evaluation of their learning. This section includes the same texts without the explanations present in the former section, and which should have been assimilated by the student. The texts are accompanied by exercises aimed at checking whether the students have reached full understanding of the morpho-syntactic structures and the semantic content of the texts. This section also includes answers and feedback that encourages further learning through reflective dialogue and corrective advice.

The third part is Supplementary Activities. This section offers additional activities, the purpose of which is to consolidate the students’ learning results. They present the same structure as the Self-Evaluation section because this organization prioritizes improvement in the comprehension of the typological features of the linguistic periods of English studied.

Finally, the book includes a wide range of subsections aimed at facilitating the students’ learning process: Recommended Readings, Supplementary Bibliography, Selected URLS, and a Glossary of Linguistic Terms.


STUDENT’S bACKGrOUND KNOWLEDGE

All the materials for the course are written in English. The exams will be in English and the student will provide answers to the questions in English. Therefore, I presume the student that takes this course is proficient in the language.

Concerning technical knowledge, I assume the student be familiar with the tools of linguistic study used in phonetics, semantics and grammar, since at this stage of the degree the student has already taken courses in these fields. The command of these notions is of pivotal importance for an adequate understanding of the contents of this course. Without such knowledge, the course materials would have to be much longer and more repetitive, thus students are strongly encouraged to review these concepts if they think it necessary.

STUDy GUIDELINES

It is recommended to the reader that the first texts of each section be dealt with in the order they appear. This does not mean that there is insufficient emphasis on matters that appear to be dealt with previously. In fact, quite the opposite, I have persisted with plenty of aspects that assist in the identification of structures in each text, without having to refer to previous texts. In any case, the explanation of similar structures and their identification in different contexts will contribute to an assimilation of the structures of each time period.

The texts are as much prose as poetry. If it is true that understanding poetry presents more difficulty, it also trains the reader to work with the texts more effectively, having to confront more varied and complex patterns. Since the objective of this book is to make the reader able to understand texts from the epoch, eliminating poetry texts would not have been realistic. To make things easier in this sense, the necessary explanations are given when a certain phenomenon is more common in poetry texts and vice versa. In the section dedicated to Middle English, as is logical with material of this nature, the texts are in chronological order. The texts have been chosen for the appearance of morphologic and syntactic characteristics which define the different epochs. Some structures seemed relevant to me by being particularly common to the epoch, others by being particularly complex. I have also tried to have the texts reflect the continuity of these structures when this helps the reader to understand them better. In other words, linguistic interest took precedence over literary interest when making our selections. In any case, this has not prevented us from including beautiful texts like the poem Wulf and Eadwacer.

It is recommended that once the reader has finished the guided translation of the texts, he tries to translate each of them again, only looking up the meaning of words in the


brief glossaries at the beginning of each text. Each of the texts is accompanied by a literal translation that the reader can use to compare with her own. The translations provided do not have any literary intention, they adhere closely to the structure and content of the texts because I believe this is the most useful option for the purposes of this book.

LEArNING rESULTS

The student should be able to identify linguistic features in texts such as word order, presence of subordinate structures, case homogenisation, etc. The student should also make sense of short, not very complex texts with the help of a dictionary or a glossary. It is desirable that the student be capable of identifying the content in connection with a specific literary work or historic event.

COUrSE SCHEDULE

The virtual course will include a full course schedule, taking into consideration the calendar of the year in course.


AbbrEVIATIONS

acc. accusative

adj. adjective

adv. adverb; adverbial

dat. dative

fem. feminine

gen. genitive

indic. indicative

inf. infinitive

inst. instrumental

masc. masculine

NP noun phrase

neut. neuter

nom. nominative

Od direct object

OF old French

ON old Norse

PP prepositional phrase

pret. preterit

VP verb phrase

subj. subjunctive

Old English Texts

Wuld and Eadwacer

TEXT 1

OLD ENGLISH TEXT 1: Wuld and Eadwacer

Historical Context

At only 19 lines, Wulf and Eadwacer is a short poem, part of the Exeter Book. Despite its length, it is one of the most difficult Old English poems to translate correctly. It has been deduced that the speaker is female and thus this work has been classified as a ‘woman’s song’, a monologue of a woman lamenting being apart from her lover Wulf, possibly by the doings of the husband, Eadwacer. More generically this poem can be classified as an elegy. It should be noted that the term elegy, in Old English poetry, is used to refer to the poems that lament the loss of loved ones, belongings, or glory. Originally, this poem was thought to be the first in a series of riddles included in The Exeter Book. But as Lehnert explains: “Since Henry Bradley’s interpretation (Academy XXXIII, p. 197f., 1888) the elegy is regarded either as a lyric fragment of a longer poem, probably the Wolfdietrich B story, known in Middle High German literature […] or a dramatic lyrical monologue complete in itself (1960: 24).”1 As with most Old English poems, Wulf and Eadwacer cannot be dated with certainty. It is generally accepted that the works from The Exeter Book were written between the eighth and the eleventh centuries, most likely in the Midlands or the North of England. This poem can be used as a window to the ancient Germanic world, the recurrent themes connected with their poetry are heroic behaviour, warriors, murder and disgrace (sē beaducāfa bōgum ‘the bold warrior’ –line 11). The images in the poem show a hostile environment and unpleasant weather, reflecting the emotional state of the woman (þonne hit wæs rēniġ weder ond ič reotugu sæt ‘then it was rainy weather and I sat sad’ –line 10). Because of the early composition of this poem, its lexis is entirely Germanic. Finally, we would like to emphasise that this text is generally regarded as the most touching and emotive of Anglo Saxon poetry.

1 Lehnert, Martin. 1960. Poetry and Prose of the Anglo-Saxons. Halle: Niemeyer Verlag.

Wulf and Eadwacer

1 Leodum is minum swylče him mon lāc gife

2 willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð

3 Ungelic is ūs

4 Wulf is on iege ic on oþerre

5 fæst is þæt eglond, fenne beiworpen.

6 Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige

7 willað hy hine aþecgan gif he on þreat cymeð

8 Ungelīc is us

9 Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode

10 þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt

11 þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bileġde,

12 wæs me wyn to þon wæs me hwæþre eac lað

13 wulf, min wulf wena me þine

14 seoce gedydon þine seldcymas

15 murnende mōd nales meteliste

16 Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp

17 bireð wulf to wuda.

18 þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs

19 uncer giedd geador

W. S. Mackie. The Exeter Book. Part II: Poems IX-XXXII. 1934. London: EETS. p. 86


OLD ENGLISH TEXT 1: Wuld and Eadwacer 31

1 Verbal Morphology

In Old-English a clause with no subject may indicate that the clause contains a weather verb or an impersonal verb. This phenomenon is called as expletive pro-drop in the theoretical literature and relies on a rich verb inflexional system. This differentiates Old English from present-day English. Despite certain syncretism, Old English verbs give us more clues about the subject. Thus, in order to profit from these clues it is necessary to be able to identify what the verbal inflexion has to tell us about person and number. Furthermore, Old English verbal inflexion also indicates tense and mood.

Presented below is a line-by-line explanation of the linguistic structure of the poem to make the translation of the text easier and facilitate the recognition of the elements analysed. The relevant elements are shown in bold letters:

FIRST LINE: Lēodum is mīnum swylče him mon lāc gife,This verse includes an example of pro-drop as explained above. We can easily identify the

third singular person of the verb Bēon ‘to be’, is, which is identical to the present-day form, but there is no neighbouring nominative form to function as its subject. In a second verb, gife we find that the consonants in the verb stem indicate correspondence to the verb giefan ‘to give’. This is an example of an irregular verb in present-day English leading to a strong verb in Old English. Strong verbs show a change of vowel in the stressed syllable. This is known as gradation or ablaut which includes seven classes of strong verbs in Old English. The differences in the vowels determine the class that a certain verb belongs to.

Gife presents a dichotomy; the present subjunctive singular forms are the same as 1st singular present indicative. The immediate syntactic context does not include a first person pronoun (ič), thus we should reject the present indicative option. In the same verse we find two potential nominatives (mon ‘someone’ and lāc ‘gift’), hence we should consider gife 3rd singular present subjunctive.

SECOND LINE: willað hy hine aþecgān, gif hē on þreat cymeð.The second line is more simple. The ending of willað ‘to wish’ shows present indicative

plural: -að. This is consistent with the presence of a 3rd plural personal pronoun hy ‘they’, which contributes to disambiguate this verbal form. The ending of aþecgān ‘to capture’ shows that this is the infinitive that willað requires. It should be recognised that in Old English willan is still a lexical verb and not an auxiliary. Finally, the ending of cymeð clearly indicates that this form corresponds to the 3rd singular present indicative of the verb cuman ‘to come’.

There are many different positions that a verb can occupy in a clause. In section 5, we will focus on sentence word-order.


THIRD LINE: Ungelič is ūs.The third line presents the 3rd singular present indicative of Bēon, is.

FOURTH AND FIFTH LINES: Wulf is on īege, ič on ōþerre./ Fæst is þæt ēglond, fenne beiworpen.

The examples of the verb Bēon ‘to be’ in these verses are connected with a locative expression (on īġe ‘on an island’) and with a property respectively (Fæst ‘fast’). These are typical structures for linking verbs. The ending of beiworpen ‘placed’, ‘stuck’ signals that this form is a past participle. This verbal form can play an adjectival function, which seems to be the case here. Thus, fenne beiworpen ‘placed in the fens’ can be analysed as an appositive structure qualifying ēglond ‘island’. This type of construction is to be expected, particularly in poetry for aesthetic and descriptive purposes.

SIXTH LINE: Sindon wælrēowe weras þær on īġe;As you know, Bēon ‘to be’ has forms with different stems. Although a dictionary or

glossary will help you to identify Sindon as present indicative plural, you should be able to identify this form by yourself. The absence of 1st or 2nd plural personal pronoun show that Sindon can only be a 3rd plural form. The analysis of the noun phrase (NP) wælrēowe weras ‘bloodthirsty men’ corroborates this point.

NINTH LINE: Wulfes ič mīnes wīd-lastum wenum dogode;You are already acquainted with the fact that the regular past forms in present-day English

are formed by the addition of -d or -ed. This is from the Old English weak verbs. The presence of the suffix -de in a word in an Old English text may lead us to suspect that we are dealing with a past verb form. In the preterit of weak verbs a form without inflexion for person can be either 1st and 3rd singular preterit indicative or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd singular preterit subjunctive. In weak verbs these forms are identical. In principle, the absence of any factors that motivate the presence of a subjunctive form, such as a subordinating conjunction, should incline us to consider that we are dealing with an indicative form. Thus, dogode ‘grieved’ can be preterit indicative 1st or 3rd singular. The presence of ič constitutes a definite clue in this sense. Concerning the identification of the infinitive, in English there are three classes of weak verbs. The infinitive of dogode is dōgian, a Class II weak verb, which means ‘to suffer’.

TENTH AND ELEVENTH LINES: þonne hit wæs rēniġ weder ond ič reotugu sæt,/ þonne mēč sē beaducāfa bōgum bileġde,

These verses contain two verbal forms that can be easily recognised with our knowledge of present-day English. Wæs is clearly a 1st or 3rd singular of Bēon. Hit preceding wæs


points to the latter option. Sæt is the past form of sittan ‘to sit’. Sittan ‘to sit’ is a strong verb that belongs to Class 5. The neighbouring personal pronoun ič can function as the subject of sæt.

In the eleventh line, the dental suffix -de in bileġde again points to the past of a weak verb. Specifically, the -e- identifies this form as a weak verb of Class I, bilecgan ‘to lay’. This is one of the scarce cases where a weak verb has evolved into an irregular verb in present-day English. On this occasion, the presence of a correlation established by þonne.…þonne requires the presence of a principal and a subordinate clause. The presence of a subjunctive verb form may clarify this question. Concerning the subject, we have no 1st or 2nd singular personal pronoun. Instead, we find an article in nominative case preceding an adjective used substantively sē beaducāfa ‘the courageous (man)’. This NP can function as the subject of bileġde, thus this verb must be interpreted as a 3rd singular.

TWELFTH LINE: wæs mē wyn tō þon, wæs mē hwæþre ēac lāð.The next forms of Bēon that we encounter are easily identifiable, as related to present-

day English.

THIRTEENTH, FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH LINES: Wulf, mīn Wulf, wēna mē þīne/ sēoce ġedydon, þīne seld-cymas, / murnende mōd, nāles metelīste.

The next verb, we will focus our attention on is ġedydon ‘did’. This form offers two distinctive clues: the dental suffix is indicative of preterit; and the -on ending shows we are dealing with a preterit indicative plural of dōn ‘to do’, an anomalous verb. As we will see in the next section, the NPs in the clause should help us identify the exact person.

In line fifteenth, there is a verbal form that at first sight may go unnoticed since it is non-finite. We are referring to murnende ‘grieving’, the -ende inflexion is a clear marker of the present participle (-ing form).

SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH LINES: Gehyrest þū, Ēadwacer? Uncerne armne hwelp / bireð wulf tō wuda.

In the next verbal form Gehyrest, the -(e)st inflexion indicates that we are dealing with a 2nd singular present indicative or a 2nd singular preterit indicative of a weak verb gehyran ‘hear’. Considering that weak verbs present a dental suffix in their preterit forms, the only option we are left with is a present form. The personal pronoun þū ‘you’ leads us to the same conclusion as -(e)st. The ending of bireð ‘carries’, makes this form easily recognizable, -ð corresponds to the 3rd singular present indicative.


EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH LINES: Đæt mon ēaþe tōsliteð þætte næfre ġesomnad wæs,/ uncer ġiedd ġeador.

The last finite verbal form that we will analyse in this poem is tōsliteð ‘separates’. The reader should also be familiar with this ending, that points to a present indicative 3rd singular. The infinitive tōslītan. The final verbal form Ġesomnad ‘assembled’ is the past participle of samnian, thus, here it functions as an adjective.

useful Tips

The verb is the key to understanding the sentence structure and therefore, its meaning. Two tasks are fundamental in this respect:

1. To find out the meaning of the verb. Knowing the meaning of the verb will provide us with fundamental clues concerning its argument structure, for instance, whether you need a direct object, indirect object, or other complements.

2. To work out the person, number, tense and mood. This can be accomplished by identifying inflexions, such as -(e)ð; -(e)st or -að, which will contribute to narrowing the scope of your search and help you identify the subject of the clause.

2 Morphology of the Nominal Group

Old English nouns show a four-way case system with nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. In certain parts of the adjective and pronoun declensions an instrumental case occurs. As you already know, the fact that Old English does not have a fixed word- order (at least not as we know it in present-day English), makes the identification of the different cases quite necessary in order to know the function of each word in the clause. This requires us to understand the fundamental declensions. Of particular importance is the understanding of the main cases, such as the nominative which is associated with the syntactic subject, and the accusative, which is most typically associated with the direct object. Although the inflexional endings for the majority of noun classes were syncretized for the nominative and accusative, it is possible to identify them by means of demonstrative pronouns. Demonstrative pronouns, adjectives and nouns always agree in case, number and gender.


FIRST LINE: Lēodum is mīnum swylče him mon lāc gife;The first verse seems to show a clear agreement between two words: Lēodum ‘people’

and mīnum ‘my’. The -um ending points to dative case, which is consistent with the presence of the verb giefan ‘to give’. This is a ditransitive verb and frequently occurs with a human recipient, which is usually coded by a dative. The possessive adjectives are declined strong. In the strong declension of adjectives, -um can be dative masculine and neuter singular and also dative plural of the three genders. The noun modified by mīnum, Lēodum can give us a clue to solve this uncertainty. Lēod has two genders masculine and feminine, this grammatical difference brings about a difference in meaning as well. As a masculine noun, it means ‘man’, as a feminine noun, it means ‘people’ or ‘nation’. At any rate, the ending -um for the masculine and feminine noun declensions is always dative plural. According to the introduction to the poem presented above, it seems that the meaning of the feminine ‘my people’ is more adequate to the context than ‘my men’.

You should not be misled by the personal pronoun him, that in present-day English has been relegated to be the accusative/dative masculine singular pronoun. In Old English this form was dative in all genders in plural. In this verse one may be puzzled by the presence of two dative nouns and just one verb. However, a pronoun can be modified by an appositive NP that specifies or modifies it. Thus, we may conclude that Lēodum mīnum acts as an apposition to him. As regards the other two words remaining to be dealt with, mon and lāc, both can be either nominative or accusative. As you know, most Old English declensions did not distinguish between these two cases when they occur in the singular form, and they are identical in the plural. Accordingly, since giefan is a ditransitive verb we need a nominative, an accusative and a dative in order to actualise its thematic roles. The semantic content of these two words can help us. Mon does not need to be translated into ‘man’, because it is also an indefinite pronoun such as present-day English one. You may therefore translate it by any impersonal form such as one or they. This pronoun, which denotes a human being, seems to be a suitable candidate to the subject of gife, particularly taking into account that lāc means ‘offering’ or ‘gift’.

SECOND LINE: willað hy hine aþecgān, gif hē on þreat cymeð.Here we find three personal pronouns: hy, hine and hē. Personal pronouns distinguish

case, number and gender on most occasions, so you should not find any difficulties in categorising these words. From this point forward, we will not comment on personal pronouns unless there exist any special circumstance surrounding a specific pronoun. Although dictionaries and glossaries help to identify case, gender and number of pronouns, the reader should assimilate some basic pronoun forms so that she saves time with understanding the categorisation. The next noun is part of a prepositional phrase (PP), on þrēat ‘threatening’. The lack of an inflection at the end of the noun identifies it as a


nominative or an accusative, as nominatives cannot be governed by prepositions this must be an accusative. Its meaning offers some problems, it may mean ‘troop’ or ‘threat’, scholars do not agree on one or the other, thus we find a difference in the present-day English versions of this poem concerning this term.


In verse four, the words Wulf and ič are easily categorised. Īege ‘island’ is a strong feminine noun. Since the preposition on can govern either accusative or dative, it does not identify case with this noun. This should not bother us when trying to make sense of this phrase as it is a quite simple locative expression. However, in order to understand whether it is accusative or dative we can identify ōþerre ‘other’, as a pronoun referring anaphorically to īege. In the following line, the demonstrative þæt sheds some light on the case, gender and number of the noun that it precedes ēglond ‘island’. Þæt can be either nominative or accusative singular neuter of the article se, þæt, sēo ‘the’, ‘that’. Since we have a structure with a linking verb and an adjective it is easily concluded that the NP þæt ēglond is the subject, and thus both elements are nominative. The adjective Fæst ‘fast’ has the same gender and number as the noun that it qualifies, singular neuter. As it stands alone, the declension of the adjective is strong. Fenne ‘fen’ is a neuter noun and the ending in -e, corresponds to the dative singular. In this case, this dative has a locative value.

SIXTH LINE: Sindon wælrēowe weras þær on īġe;Wer ‘man’ is masculine. This word is declined exactly like stān ‘stone’ and therefore,

weras can be either nominative or accusative plural. As we need a subject for the linking verb Sindon in this clause, the first option seems to be the most feasible. Consistent with the case, gender and number of the noun it qualifies, the adjective wælrēowe ‘savage’, declined strong, is nominative plural masculine. Finally, in the same verse, the adverb þær has an appositive relationship with on īġe.

NINTH LINE: Wulfes ič mīnes wīd-lastum wenum dogode;When it comes to line nine, the personal pronoun ič very clearly stands as the sentence

subject. It is very easy to see, there are two agreements, Wulfes mīnes ‘my Wulf ’ in genitive case and wīd-lastum wenum ‘distant longings’ in dative case. Wenum is dative plural feminine. The strong declined adjective that qualifies it, wīd-lastum, agrees in gender, case and number as expected.



The NP rēniġ weder ‘rainy weather’ as its antecedent hit shows, can only be nominative or accusative neuter singular; the presence of bēon points to the first option. To identify reotugu, the dictionary gives us the adjective rēotig ‘mournful’, sad’. As the speaker is apparently a woman we can consider the -u ending to correspond to the nominative singular feminine of the strong declension of adjectives, and to refer to the personal pronoun ič.

By now the reader should be able to make a few clever guesses about the structure we have in verse eleventh. First, we have sē beaducāfa ‘the courageous (man)’, where an article precedes a word which should probably agree in case, gender and number. To begin, the dictionary tells us that beaducāfa is an adjective. As it appears following a demonstrative, we can conclude that we must be dealing with the weak form of the adjective, which presents an a for the nominative singular masculine. Therefore, we should conclude that we are dealing with an adjective used substantively. The reader should bear in mind that the used of substantivised adjectives is a frequent device in languages with a rich morphological system. Finally, we are left with bōgum, the dative plural form of the noun bōg ‘arm’. The verb bilecgan ‘to surround’ requires one internal argument: a thing to surround, mēč and, eventually, the entity used to do this action can be expressed as an adjunct in dative case: bōgum ‘with his arms’.

TWELFTH LINE: wæs mē wyn tō þon, wæs mē hwæþre ēac lāð.In the twelfth verse we have two parallel structures, which is a typical stylistic device in

poetry that eases the understanding of a text for the modern reader. In both constructions a person is presented experiencing a feeling. The person is coded by a dative, and the state by a nominative: wyn ‘delight’ and lāð ‘pain’, which are linked by bēon. The person is clearly the speaker as it is shown by the presence of mē. According to Hall (1996), the PP tō þon is equivalent to the present-day phrases to that extent, so that, or after that. The last words to identify here are the conjunction hwæþre ‘yet’ or ‘however’ and the adverb ēac ‘also’.


Wulf, mīn Wulf are vocatives, their inclusion here should come as no surprise as this poem is a lament from the absence of Wulf. The default case of all vocatives in Old English is the nominative. In the verse, we find the pronoun mē that the speaker uses to refer to herself. Wēna and þīne ‘your absence’ could be part of the same NP. Whenever we have a noun and a determiner the first step is to identify the gender, case and number of that determiner. This will prove extremely helpful in understanding the noun it accompanies.


As we have already mentioned above, possessive adjectives are declined strong. Our verb demands a plural subject, the adjective sēoce ‘ill’ cannot do that work because it is a singular form. Thus, we can assign that role to the NP under analysis, Wēna þīne, since we can safely affirm that it is nominative plural. Finally, the adjective sēoce in accusative elaborates the change of state undergone by mē and expressed by ġedydon. Then we have a series of three NPs þīne seld-cymas ‘you rare visits’, / murnende mōd ‘grieving spirit’, nāles metelīste ‘not the lack of food’. Their endings show that they can be in nominative or accusative case. The parallelism between þīne seld-cymas and the subject of ġedydon, the NP wēna þīne, offers us a clue, we can be dealing with a multiple subject conformed by these four noun phrases. The semantic content of these NPs will confirm our hypothesis. Thus, they must be in nominative case.

SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH LINES: Gehyrest þū, Ēadwacer? Uncerne ēarmne hwelp / bireð wulf tō wuda.

Now it is time to tackle our last stanza. The beginning of the first verse is quite straightforward, Ēadwacer is interpellated through the corresponding pronoun and name in a question. The next clause is constructed through the next two lines. The nominative wulf following the verb is a strong candidate to be the subject. Bireð ‘carries’ is a transitive verb thus it needs a direct object the three words in the line above, Uncerne ēarmne hwelp ‘our wrench whelp’, could fulfil this function. A glance at them enable us to affirm that they are in accusative case made up of the dual possessive uncerne ‘our’. We know this because of the ending -ne, which is present in the possessive, is characteristic of the strong declension of adjectives for the accusative singular masculine. This ending is also found in the adjective ēarmne ‘wretched’. Thus, the case number of gender of the noun hwelp is quite straightforward, as it must agree with the determiners that precede it. Finally, tō wuda ‘to the woods’ is the locative expression to be expected in collocation with a verb like beran ‘to carry’. This is a two-place predicate, we carry something somewhere. In Old English direction could have also been coded by the accusative case, but often we find the preposition to in this function. This is a construction that has survived to present-day English. Thus, when you encounter a verb like beran you must try to find either of the two structures.


Concerning the last two verses mon ‘someone’, which we commented on above, is without question the subject of tōsliteð ‘separate’. Even though mon is a singular word, it is very often rendered as plural, ‘men’ or ‘people’, in present-day English translations due to its


indefinite nature: ‘Men easily separate that which was never joined’. Tōsliteð is a transitive verb but we have not yet encountered a suitable candidate to be its direct object. Ēaþe ‘easily’ is an adverb. It should be noted that -e is characteristic of adverbs in Old English. If the reader pays attention she will also recognize the adverb næfre ‘never’ as our present-day never. Þætte, according to Hall (1996) functions as a pronoun that can be translated as a double relative pronoun that which: ‘men separate that which was never joined’. This can function as both, the direct object for the sentence verb tōsliteð ‘separate’ and the subject of the passive structure ġesomnad wæs ‘was joined’. Although this information is syntactic, it must be included here as it allows us to determine what slots must be filled in the clause and, therefore, the case of the words that remain to be analysed. This is particularly necessary considering the degree of syncretism that exists in Old English case endings. As the syntactic functions have already been fulfilled, the words in the last verse must be the referent of the relative pronoun Þætte. This referent should be the last three words uncer ġiedd ġeador ‘our song together’.

useful Tips

Working out the case of nouns will help us to understand or identify their function with respect to the verbs in the sentence. The easiest way to obtain this information is by examining the accompanying demonstrative or article, when one exists. If not, all elements forming the noun phrase can shed light on this task, for example adjectives. Remember that the subject must agree in number with the verb, thus do not assign to any nominative the subject function without first checking its number. When it comes to the direct and indirect objects this is not necessary. Finally, the meaning of a noun also gives you a clue so as to whether it can work as the subject or one of the objects of a verb. For example, if you have the verb lufian ‘to love’ in a text, it is not likely or impossible that a word such as nama ‘name’ can be its subject. This would constitute a case of semantic clash. Of course, in poetry, lexical items are more flexible when it comes to the selectional preferences that they impose on their neighbouring partners.


3 Syntax at Phrase Level

FIRST LINE: Lēodum is mīnum swylče him mon lāc gife;For NPs, the preferred situation is for all modifiers to precede the head noun. The

most frequent order closely resembles that of present-day English. However, the reader has probably realised that the first verse of our poem already violates this rule. The possessive follows the head of the NP. This is infrequent and usually only occurs in poetry. As you may remember, this NP stands in an appositive relation with him. The place occupied by appositions in relation with the nouns they describe shows great variation.

SECOND LINE: willað hy hine aþecgān, gif hē on þreat cymeð.In spite of not having a question mark, the word-order resembles a question. In present-

day questions the auxiliary precedes the lexical verb, as well, and they are separated by the sentence subject. However, in this verse the direct object also mediates the relationship between them: willað hy hine aþecgān ‘they wish to capture him’. This is due to the fact that when the object is a pronoun is often placed between S and V. Note that, like in present-day language, modals are combined with the infinitive without to (bare or plain infinitive).


In line four, there are two PPs on īege ‘on an isle’ and on ōþerre ‘on the other’, even though that is not the subject at issue, you should notice that some prepositions were used in a different way in Old English in contrast to the way they are used today. Prepositions may govern the accusative, dative or both. They may also govern the instrumental case, but it does not really differ from the phrases we find in the dative case. In some phrases the presence of one of the main cases, the accusative or dative, may highlight some semantic differences. For example, in locative expressions the accusative may indicate “direction towards”, while the dative emphasises the “extension” of the object denoted by the noun. Even though the two PPs under analysis resemble other present-day language PPs, you can find situations where the preposition follows its object in Old English. Therefore, when it appears that one preposition is present without an object, do not despair and look at the element preceding it. In verse five we have a NP, þæt ēglond ‘that island’, where a demonstrative precedes the head of the phrase: ‘That island is stuck fast in the fens’.

SIXTH LINE: Sindon wælrēowe weras þær on īġe;In wælrēowe weras ‘murderous people’ we see that the noun follows the adjective which

modifies it. This is the preferred order but the adjective could also be found in postposition.


NINTH LINE: Wulfes ič mīnes wīd-lastum wenum dogode;In the first verse of the next stanza we have another NP where the possessive follows the

noun, Wulfes mīnes. As mentioned above, this is particularly frequent in poetry. Instead, the following NP wīd-lastum wenum ‘distant longings’ shows the preferred order and the adjective precedes the noun.


In the thirteenth verse, we have two more cases of two NPs with a possessive. While the first mīn Wulf shows the typical situation, the second is more difficult because not only does the possessive follow the noun, but they are also separated by one word: wēna…þīne. Even though NPs in Old English can be discontinuous, that normally happens with long post-modifiers that we expect to occur at the end of the NP. The separation of modifiers directly connected with the head, such as a possessive, is more infrequent.

Again, in line fourteen, we find a prototypical combination of possessive and noun þīne seld-cymas ‘your rare visits’, and in the next verse a prototypical combination of adjective and noun murnende mōd ‘mourning mood’.


In the last stanza, we find a NP made up of three elements. Uncerne ēarmne hwelp ‘our wretched whelp’ shows the preferred situation, where all modifiers precede the head noun. In fact, this is the most frequent order, which closely resembles that of the present-day language: Possessive Adjective + Adjective + Head.


The NP present in the last verse, uncer ġiedd ‘our song’, also shows the expected arrangement Possessive + Head Noun.

useful Tips

When translating poetry you must be ready to find phrasal syntax arrangements which are not very easy to understand. Examine inflexions carefully so that you can spot agreements between words that at first sight, by their position in the sentence, may not seem connected.


4 Syntax at Clause Level

Before analysing the syntax of this text. We will provide a short comment on terminology. Specifically, we would like to make our position clear regarding the use of clause and sentence. When we have a simple structure either of these terms can be used (Greembaum 1988). However, when we have a case of parataxis or hypotaxis the word clause is preferred for the component elements, while sentence is used to refer to the global construction. We would say we have a compound sentence when dealing with a paratactic construction and a complex sentence is the name given to a hypotactic structure. On other occasions, the use of sentence versus clause is a matter of convention. Thus we would say we have a passive sentence but not a passive clause. In this book, we will stick to the term clause when referring to simple structures.

Much has been written about Old English syntax. Even though it has been traditionally accepted that Old English is SOV, experts have recently established that this is quite a partial picture of actual facts (Fisher, van Kemenade, Koopman and van der Wurff 2000; Mitchell and Robinson 1983). Moreover, scholars have long defended the idea that Old English syntax was rather chaotic and alien if compared with present-day English. But it turns out that there is more systematisation than initially thought. Poetry can make things harder for a beginner approaching Old English texts since poets always use the language more freely. However, the analysis of the syntax of this poem will show that analysing it is not so hard once a few principles are understood.

The first step is to be able to identify a full syntactic unit. By this we mean:

1. One complete sentence, if no subordinate clauses depend on it,2. A complex clause comprising a main clause with all its subordinate structures3. A compound sentence including two or more coordinate structures

We will outline a few basic concepts to help the reader. There are three basic types of subordinate clauses: relative, complement and adverbial.1 The problem with some conjunctions in Old English is that they have the same form as the corresponding adverbs; for example þā can mean both ‘when’ and ‘then’. But on the other hand, Old English helps us with clues such as word order and the subjunctive marking on the verb. While the frequent word-order SVO occurs in main clauses as well as in subordinate clauses, the tendency is for OV and S….V to occur in subordinate structures. However, you must take this as a regular pattern and not as a firm rule. To sum up, when trying to figure out whether we are in front of a subordinate clause, there are three factors we must take into account:

1 In this book, we will use indistinctively the terms complement and noun clause.


1. the presence of a subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun2. the mark of the subjunctive on the verb (note that there are subordinate clauses

where the indicative is used)3. the position of the object with respect to the verb of the potential subordinate

clause

FIRST LINE: Lēodum is mīnum swylče him mon lāc gife;When we deal with a useful edition, punctuation will help us to divide up the relevant

structures. Thus, in our poem, the first verse is separated from the rest of the poem by a semi-colon. This is quite a reliable clue, that we have a full syntactic unit before the semi-colon. The next step is to count the number of verbs that we have in this chunk. From the section on verbal morphology we know that there are two: is and gife. Two finite forms indicate that we have two clauses. Now, we have to decide whether they stand in a relation of subordination (hypotaxis) or they constitute a sequence of independent clauses (parataxis). The presence of swylče ‘as if ’ leads to subordination, nevertheless, swylče is one of those words that, as we pointed out earlier, it is ambiguous between a conjunction and an adverb. We are left then with two verbs and a potential subordinating conjunction. The next question is to identify the mood of both verbs, is is indicative; thus it is can be part of a main as well as of a subordinate clause, if there is one. But we have gife which is subjunctive, together with the presence of swylče, we have two factors strongly pointing to subordination. Furthermore, (lāc ‘gift’) the direct object of gife precedes the verb, signalling OV word-order. There are three factors converging in this clause that supports our guess that this is a subordinate clause. Thus, the verb in the main clause is the verb is. As we pointed out above, pro-drop is a frequent phenomenon in Old English, we therefore should not be surprised by the absence of the corresponding pronoun, viz. a dummy subject such as it.

SECOND LINE: willað hȳ hine aþecgān, gif hē on þreat cymeð.When it comes to the next sentence, the conditional conjunction gif ‘if ’ unmistakably

indicates that the clause it introduces is subordinate. We also find the verb at the end of the clause, so we cannot strictly speak of a OV word-order since cuman is intransitive and the PP on þreat ‘threatening’ has a basically adverbial value. But we still can identify here the S….V pattern, which is typically found in subordinate clauses. Regarding the first clause, willað hy hine aþecgān ‘will they capture him?’, as stated earlier given its semantic content we can tell this construction resembles a question, this could account for the subject-verb inversion. We have already pointed out that there is a tendency for the object to occur between the subject and the verb when it is a pronoun.


THIRD LINE: Ungelič is ūs.We have reached the end of the stanza and the third line, which is also part of the refrain.

This is an anomalous construction in the sense that it lacks a noun accompanying the nominative form of the adjective that functions as the subject. As the adjective Ungelič ‘unequal’ is in nominative case, we can assume the existence of an elliptic subject and Ungelič would act as its subject complement (Cs). The translation that Bosworth and Toller (1976) suggest for this construction is “our lots are different”. We can also find here a structure consisting of a linking verb and a noun in dative case that conveys the idea of possession, which can be found in Latin (est mihi domus ‘I have a house’) and it is still present in French. In this construction we have bēon and a dative referring to a human being that experiences some state. In fact, as you have already observed, there are further examples of this construction in this poem: 12 wæs mē wyn tō þon, wæs mē hwæþre ēac lāð: ‘it was joy to me yet it was also pain to me’.


The syntax of the fourth verse is not difficult to understand. First, we have a case of asyndetic parataxis Wulf is on īege, ič on ōþerre ‘Wulf is on an island, I am on another’. The word-order does not differ from what we would have in present-day English.2 In the second clause, the verb bēon has been omitted. This is also a frequent operation in the present-day language.

In the fifth line, we have a case of verb fronting motivated by the topicalization of the adjective Fæst, thus we have VS word order. The construction with the past participle of beweorpan: fenne beiworpen ‘set in the marsh’ can be assigned an appositive function elaborating the information we have about þæt ēglond ‘that island’.

SIXTH LINE: Sindon wælrēowe weras þær on īġe;We can interpret the presence of bēon in initial position as the introduction of an

interrogative structure, despite the absence of question mark in our edition. This question is purely rhetoric because the speaker already knows the answer: Sindon wælrēowe weras þær on īġe ‘are the people on that island cruel?’ This is consistent with the content of the refrain below. However, it could also be a statement and the placement of the verb in initial position can be a stylistic treatment. This should not surprise us being located in a work of poetry.

NINTH LINE: Wulfes ič mīnes wīd-lastum wenum dogode;In line nine, we also find this OV order even though this is not a subordinate clause.

This supports the view that generalisations about word-order in Old English should be taken as partial truths. As stated above, because the text is a poem we are more likely to

2 Asyndetic parataxis is characterised by the lack of conjunctions.


find abnormal word orders to suit the aesthetic intentions of the poet. In other words, what might be taken as a rule for prose may not work in poetry.


We now turn to verses ten and eleven. We seem to have a correlative construction, which is a usual stylistic device in Old English literature. This structure presents a further complexity, the first sentence is composed of two coordinate clauses linked by ond. In the þonne…þonne correlation, one of these particles should be a subordinating conjunction ‘when’ and the other, an adverb part of the principal clause. The verbs can shed some light on this construction. The verbs in the two coordinated clauses introduced by the first þonne are indicative wæs ‘was’ and sæt ‘sat’. The verb introduced in the second clause is ambiguous between preterit indicative and subjunctive bileġde ‘surrounded’, thus, here we could have a subordinate clause: ‘when the warrior surrounded me with his arms’. As we have not obtained much information from the verbal forms, it is advisable to rely on word-order. In correlations, VS would show we are in front of a main clause, while S.…V is the preferred order for a subordinate clause. Again, we have to insist on the fact that this rule does not work so efficiently for poetry. This is shown in both verses, since by the look of the syntactic layout they both appear to be subordinate. It could also be the case that there is no correlation at all, and that we simply have two consecutive subordinate clauses, being the main clause is in the next verse (wæs mē wyn tō þon, wæs mē hwæþre ēac lāð ‘It was joy to me yet it was also pain to me’). However, if we pay attention to the semantic content of both clauses, it supports the syntactic hints that we obtain from this structure. It appears that the second þonne is a subordinating conjunction, and the first is part of the main clause. It turns out that bileġde is in the subjunctive mood, which has always been an option: ‘then it was raining and I sat sad, when the courageous man surrounded me with his arms’.

TWELFTH LINE: wæs mē wyn tō þon, wæs mē hwæþre ēac lāð.Here we have a compound sentence made up of two coordinate clauses linked by the

conjunction hwæþre ‘however’. As it usually corresponds to paratactic structures both verbs are in indicative mood. The word-order in these clauses can hinder you in the process of translation. Once the first clause is disentangled the second will be less problematic. As we have already seen in this text, mental states are expressed by a noun referring to the state, the verb bēon and the experiencer coded by a dative. This can be seen more clearly below:

1. Linking verb: wæs + Experiencer: mē + Mental State: wynIt was joy to me

2. Linking verb: wæs + Experiencer: mē + Mental State: lāðIt was pain to me


Even though you would have expected the conjunction hwæþre at the beginning of the second clause, consider that in present-day English in a poetic text this conjunction could be placed in any position. We recommend that you identify and ignore adverbs and function words (with the help of a glossary if necessary) and focus on the basic structure of the clause. Specially, in cases where the structure is not so obvious.


The next three verses of the following stanza are organised in a single clause as the presence of a single verb indicates: ġedydon ‘has done’. In the section on nominal morpholog y, we concluded that we have a multiple subject: ‘your absence, you rare comings, this mourning mood, not the lack of food’. The word-order in this clause may not be easily understood; the NP working as a subject is split by the verb and the subject complement sēoce.


In our last stanza, we have an independent question Gehyrest þū, Ēadwacer? We must point out that the inversion of pronominal subjects is only regular in questions and clauses beginning with negative adverbs. The next clause is bounded by a period. This time it presents the preferred order for main clauses VS when the direct object is topycalised.


In the following syntactic unit we find the only relative clause of the poem. First, focussing on the main clause we find OVS, even though demonstrative pronouns are not usually subject to topicalization. This stylistic strategy is used to catch the readers attention with the demonstrative ‘that’. The relative clause is introduced by þætte. Surely, you already know that the relative pronoun is the indeclinable þe. But for the sake of being able to cope with the diversity that you will find in Old English you must be aware that other elements can play the role of relative pronoun. For instance, se þe that combines a form of the demonstrative se with the indeclinable relative þe. The pronoun we are analysing has become frozen, the medial þ has become t due to the operation of very simple sound laws that the reader can figure out on her own. According to Bosworth and Toller (1976: 1033) one frequently finds this form “when it is in apposition to þæt or hit standing as object in the main clause,” which is precisely the case in this verse. The poet confers the tension to the readers and not until the end is the meaning of þæt revealed by a NP uncer ġiedd ‘our song’.


useful Tips

Even if Old English syntax is not that chaotic as has been traditionally claimed, still it is a challenge to translate. However, you should bear in mind, the basic word-order in Old English is SVO, which is also the basic order in present-day English. The syntactic force of this order is grounded on the syncretism that already existed in Old English between the nominative and the accusative endings. We also find SOV, particularly when the object is a pronoun. None of these orders are helpful when it comes to differentiating a subordinate from a principal clause. In this sense, only the S.…V order signals a subordinate sentence, although in very few cases it can also occur in main clauses. Finally, subject-verb inversion (VS) is a particularly distinctive feature of main clauses.

5 Glossed Text

Wulf and Eadwacer

1 Leodum is minum swylče him mon lāc gife

[people] [is] [my] [as if ] [him] [someone] [present] [give:subj]

2 willað hy hine aþecgan, gif he on þreat cymeð

[will] [they] [him] [capture] [if ] [he] [on] [threat] [comes]

3 Ungelic is ūs

[unequal] [is] [us]

4 Wulf is on iege ic on oþerre

[Wulf ] [is] [on] [island] [I] [on] [another]

5 fæst is þæt eglond, fenne beiworpen.

[fast] [is] [the] [island] [fens] [set]

6 Sindon wælreowe weras þær on ige

[are] [bloodthirsty] [men] [there] [on] [island]

7 willað hy hine aþecgan gif he on þreat cymeð

[will] [they] [him] [capture] [if ] [he] [on] [threat] [comes]


8 Ungelīc is us

[unequal] [is] [us]

9 Wulfes ic mines widlastum wenum dogode

[Wulf ] [I] [my] [distant] [longings] [suffered]

10 þonne hit wæs renig weder ond ic reotugu sæt

[then] [it] [was] [rainy] [weather] [and] [I] [sad] [sat]

11 þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde,

[then] [me] [the] [warrior] [arms] [laid]

12 wæs me wyn to þon wæs me hwæþre eac lað

[was] [me] [joy] [to that extent] [was] [me] [however] [also] [pain]

13 wulf, min wulf wena me þine

[Wulf ] [my] [Wulf ] [absence] [me] [your]

14 seoce gedydon þine seldcymas

[sad] [did] [your] [rare comings]

15 murnende mōd nales meteliste

[mourning] [mood] [not] [lack of food]

16 Gehyrest þu, Eadwacer? Uncerne earmne hwelp

[hear] [you] [Eadwacer] [our: dual] [wrenched] [whelp]

17 bireð wulf to wuda.

[carries] [Wulf ] [to] [woods]

18 þæt mon eaþe tosliteð þætte næfre gesomnad wæs

[that] [someone] [easily] [separate] [that which] [never] [joined] [was]

19 uncer giedd geador

[our: dual] [song] [together]


6 Key Translation

Wulf and Eadwacer

It is as if someone had given a present to my people.

They wish to capture him if he comes threatening.

It is unequal to us.

Wulf is on an island, I am on another.

The island, set in the fens, is fast.

Men are bloodthirsty there, on that island.

They wish to capture him if he comes threatening.

It is unequal to us.

I have suffered with distant longings for my Wulf.

Then it was rainy weather and I sat sad.

When the warrior surrounded me with his arms.

It was joy to me, to such extent, it was also pain to me, though.

Wulf, my Wulf, your absence, your rare comings have made me sad, this mourning mood, not the lack of food.

Do you hear, Eadwacer? A wolf shall carry our wrenched baby to the woods.

Men easily separate that which was never joined, our song together.

Diacrony and Typology of English Language Text - Maria Del Carmen

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