The syntactic structure of OE was determined by two major conditions: the nature of OE morphology and the relations between the spoken and the written forms of the language. OE was largely a synthetic language; it possessed a system of grammatical forms which could indicate the connection between words. It was primarily a spoken language, consequently, the syntax of the sentence was relatively simple.
The syntactic structure of a language can be described at the level of the phrase and at the level of the sentence. OE noun patterns, adjective and verb patterns had certain specific features which are important to note in view of their later changes. Verb patterns included a great variety of dependant components: nouns and pronouns in oblique cases with or without prepositions, adverbs, infinitives and participles, e.g. brinз þā þīnз ‘bring those things’. The order of words in the OE sentence was relatively free. The position of words in the sentence was often determined by logical and stylistic factors rather than by grammatical constraints
