3. Old English is a language that relies on marking its nouns, adjectives, and verbs but
that has relatively free word order. Such a language is called synthetic. Over time,
however, English becomes a language that relies more on prepositions, auxiliaries, and
articles, also known as grammatical words, and on word order than on case markings on
nouns and agreement on verbs. This kind of language is called analytic. The change from
synthetic to analytic might have been caused by the contact with speakers of Celtic,
Scandinavian, and other languages or due to language internal factors or to both.
MAJOR CHANGES IN THE SYNTAX OF ENGLISH
4. Compare the first lines of the Old English (Northumbrian) version of Caedmon’s Hymn
with its translation into a Modern English word‐by‐word gloss underneath and then its
free translation.
Apart from the fact that many of the words are different, the Modern English translation
has the grammatical words ‘we’, ‘the’ and, ‘of’ that the original doesn’t have, which
illustrates the change to an analytic language from a synthetic one.
