The Origins of Old English Morphology

The proper understanding of language always implies the understanding of its past and the circumstances that lead to its present state. This makes historical linguistics a field that is worth studying, and it shows that in its methods it is on an equal level with contemporary automatic analysis of natural language.

This paper deals with the origins of Old English morphology. It tries to situate Old English within the frame of the Germanic and Indo-European language family.

This paper is intended for readers who are familiar with the basic concepts and terms of phonetics, phonology and morphology.