Open round | 15 points | 69.93% | Problem statement | Official solution | Tags: SyntaxPuzzle
Most words here are identical or very close, so word matching is easy.
a. "Archbishop" is in sentence 3: arcebisceop.
b. From 12, we know that "King Alfred" = "Alfred cyning"; from 13, we know that "Edward" = "Eadweard", so combine these two to get "King Edward" = "Eadweard cyning".
c. "menn" is from sentence 1; "þas menn" = "these men".
d. "weras" is from sentence 8; "þas weras" = "these men".
Next we want to understand a bit about Old English syntax, or at least the ways in which it differs from Modern English.
Therefore, we observed three main differences: in simple and wh questions, the verb is lifted without any do-support; in normal sentences with a pronoun object, the pronoun comes before the verb (like French "je le mange"); in sentences starting with negation "ne" or adverb "þa", the verb is in the second position, lifted before the subject. These suggest that Old English has V-to-T movement as well as V2 word order (no need to worry what these terms mean).
It may be helpful to list out all the pronouns:
And all the verbs:
There's rich inflection: at least three variants per word. "-on" is always used for "we/they" past tense: "gesawon", "gretton", "hierdon", "ridon"; while "-est" for "you" past tense: "hierdest", "fremest". "We heard" has two forms: "hierde" and "hierdon". Similarly "we saw" can be either "gesawe" or "gesawon". Which one to choose? Note that "hierde" is used when it comes before "we" and "hierdon" when it's after. Similarly, "gesawe", "hiere", "fremede", and "cweþe" are all used when the verb comes before the subject "we". So the suffix is just "-e" when the verb comes before the "we" and inflected normally otherwise. However, this rule doesn't apply to "hi" pronoun, which still uses "gesawon hi" instead of "gesawe hi". We don't have to figure out the inflection 100%: just enough to get us through the translations.
e. Ne hierde ge hi. = No heard you them. = You did not hear them.
f. Ne gesawon hi þe. = No saw they you. = They did not see you.
g. Hi hit fremedon. = They it performed. = They performed it.
h. Ne nerede we þe. = No saved we you. = We did not save you.
In A2, we just find out which parts are missing.
a. them = hi
b. saves = nereþ
c. (you) it heard = hit hierdest
d. heard they us = hierdon hi us
In A3, based on how the problem is set up, we need to focus on the two pronouns: "we" and "you". "We" can be either "we" or "wit", and "you" can be either "eow", "inc", or "þe". Because all these sentences have the same structure, the selection is not a syntactic choice, but a semantic one. Look at the right hand side. The distinction is based on what the pronouns refer to. Look for commonalities in the referents of "we" and "you":
So it has to do with the number of people, and we just need to find sentences that tell us the number of people.
Therefore:
i. Wit-eow = F
ii. Wit-inc = D
iii. We-eow = A
iv. We-inc = E
v. We-þe = C
vi. Wit-þe = B
Finally in A4, we do the same thing: find the referent of "you" and count the number of people. However, here we also need to be careful with subject/object: eow/inc/þe are object pronouns, while the subjects, as previously analyzed, are ge/git/þu. "git" is 2-people per 32; "þu" is singular per 11.
a. Paul (subject) = þu
b. Alfred & Edmund (subject) = git
c. Athelwine & Wulfstan (object) = inc
d. Crowd (subject) = ge
e. Paul (object) = þe
f. Alfred, Athelwine, and Paul (object) = eow