Phonological history of Old English Proto-Germanic phonology and Old English phonology. Proto-Germanic had two allophones each: stops and fricatives . The stops occurred: By West Germanic times, was pronounced as a stop in all positions. The fricative allophones are sometimes indicated in reconstructed forms to make it easier to understand the development of Old English consonants. Old English retained the allophony , which in case of palatalization (see below) became . Later, non-palatalized became word-initially. The allophony was broken when merged with , the voiced allophone of . A number of phonological processes affected Old English in the period before the earliest documentation. The processes
Old English grammar feminine nominative article "sēo", yielding "she"; whereas the "h" in plural forms such as "hīe" was replaced with "þ" under Norse influence as it evolved (a slower development that was not complete until well into the Middle English period), yielding "they, them, their". Prepositions (like Modern English words "by", "for", and "with") often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called "postpositions". Also, if the object of a preposition was marked in the dative case, a preposition may conceivably be located anywhere in the sentence. The following is a list of prepositions in the Old English