In order to study another important linguistic feature of Old Dutch, we need to look at a new text. The following fragment is taken from the Wachtendonck Psalms, (>link) based on a sixteenth-century transcription of a tenth-century original:
Old Dutch:
Singit gode al ertha, lof quethet namon sinin, gevet guolihheide lovi sinin.
Modern Dutch:
Zingt voor God, heel de aarde, looft Zijn naam, geeft heerlijkheid aan Zijn lof.
English translation:
Sing for God, the whole world, praise His name, give splendour to His praise.
In a language that uses a case system (>link), different endings are added to words to indicate their syntactic function in a sentence, that is: to clarify their grammatical relation to other words. Special endings are used to show that a specific word is, for instance, the *subject (nominative case) or *direct object (accusative case) in the sentence. Modern German, for instance, still has a case system.
'Singit gode': 'gode' is the dative case of 'god'; an -e is added to indicate that it is the *indirect object of the sentence. Just like English, modern Dutch relies on fixed word order and *prepositions instead: 'voor (sometimes 'aan') God'.
Question 7:
In the Old Dutch text we find the form 'ertha', which corresponds to modern Dutch 'aarde'. This is an example of which particular language change?
Check your answer (>link)
Click here (>link) to learn more about the Middle Dutch period.
