The subject of the history of the English

DECLENSION OF ADJECTIVE IN ME:

Number	ME		NE
	Strong	Weak
Singular	Good	goode	good
Plural	Goode	goode

 

 

         The least stable of the grammatical categories oCu1e adjective were gender and case: they had disappeared already by the end of the 12th century.

The distinctions between the singular and plural forms and also the weak and strong forms were lost in the 15th century.

 

                                                Degrees of Comparison

        The formal means employed to build up the· forms of the degrees of comparison have considerably altered.

        In OE the forms of the comparative and the superlative degree were synthetic: they were built by adding the suffixes - -ra and est/-ost to the form of the positive degree. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an alternation of the root vowel; q few adjectives had suppletive forms.

In ME the suffixes had been weakened to -er, and -est, and the 'alternation of the root-vowel became far less frequent than before and gradually fell into disuse.

        The most important innovation in the adjective system in the ME period was the growth of analytical forms of the degrees of comparison.   In ME, when the phrases with more and most became more and more common, they were preferred with monosyllabic. or disyllabic adjectives (contrary to the modem usage). The synthetic and analytical forms of the degrees of comparison were used indiscriminately until the 17th and 18th centuries when the modem standard usage established itself and was recommended as correct.

                                                                  The Verb

                                             Changes in the Verb Conjugation

        Unlike the morphology of the nouns and adjectives which in the course of history has become much simpler, the morphology of the verb on the whole has been greatly enriched. In some respects, however, the verb conjugation has become regular and uniform. In ME the inflections were reduced or levelled out by analogy and in N'E many of them were dropped.

In the ME paradigm, just like in the OE one the verb bad different forms of the two numbers both in the present and past of the indicative and subjunctive moods.

In Early NE the inflection -en (ME loken, NE look) was dropped both in the plural indicative and plural subjunctive (as well as in the infinitive).

         The plural forms fell together with the singular forms in the past tense and in the present tense (except the 3rd person of the indicative mood).

        The differences in. the forms of person were maintained but had become less varied in ME. The OE ending -aō of the 3rd person singular used in class 2 of the weak verbs, in ME was reduced to -eth. All the verbs now added -eth, -th irrespective of class. The second ending of the 3rd person -es was a new marker, first recorded in the Northern dialects. In the 18th century there arose a stylistic difference between the endings -es and -eth; the former was more colloquial. The mark -est of the 2nd person singular in the past and in the present was ultimately lost. The formal difference between moods was also greatly obscured: many forms of the indicative and subjunctive moods became homonymous.

 

Strong Verbs

        All types of verbs existing in OE - strong, weak, preterite - present, and irregular were preserved in ME. However, some verbs changed from the strong conjugation to the weak, and some others from tbe weak to the strong. In ME the number of the strong verbs was greatly reduced.

The changes in the strong verbs which occurred since the OE period are these:

1. Both the infinitive ending -an and the past plural ending -on were weakened to -en(n).

2. The OE prefix 3e- was reduced to y-. In most dialects, however, the prefix has disappeared by the 14th century.

3. In ME more and more verbs lost the differences in the root-vowels between the four stems, e.g. the verb chēsen in class II.

4. The number of sterns was reduced from four to three during the transition to New English: the two past tense stems were replaced by one. In ME risen the past tense singular rose was generalised as the past tense stem, while risen, the past plural, was lost (NE rise, rose).

Weak Verbs

        In ME weak verbs displayed a strong tendency towards regularity and system. The two classes of weak verbs could still be distinguished. As for Class III it was not numerous and was easily influenced by other classes: the verbs of class III either joined the other classes of weak verbs (e.g. ME liven (Class I), NE live), or became irregular (e.g. ME haven, NE have).

 

CLASSES OF WEAK VERBS IN ME

Infinitive	Past Singular	Past Plural	Participle II
Class I
Dēmem	deemde	demed	deem
Class II
Looken	lookede	looked	look

 

        The verbs of the OE Class II with a long syllable and without a vowel before the dental suffix in the past like de man retained this peculiarity in ME: they added -de in the past tense without the intermediate "e" and had -ed in Participle lI.

        The verbs of Class II marked by the endings -ode, -od in OE, weakened them to -ede, -ed in ME. The differences between the classes in ME were very slight. The vowel [ə] in final syllables became unstable and was soon lost. This reduced the number of principal forms in the weak verbs from three to two.

         Several groups of modern non-standard verbs have developed from the weak verbs of Class I: ME tellen, tolde - NE tell, told. Another group of verbs became irregular due to the phonetic changes (mainly Great Vowel shift). This group has attracted a number of verbs from others classes - sleep, weep (formerly strong verbs of Class VII).

 

                         The Simplification of the Infinitive and the Participles

        The general trend of the evolution of the Infinitive and the participles in ME can be defined as gradual loss of nominal features and acquisition of verbal features.

The infinitive had lost its inflected form by the ME period: OE wrītan and tō writanne > ME writen > NE write.

        The preposition tō, which was placed in OE before the inflected infinitive to show 'the meaning of direction or purpose, lost its prepositional force and changed into the formal sign of the infinitive.

The two participles lost their case, gender arid number distinctions and also the weak and strong declensions in the same way as the adjective.

         The ME Participle I in-ing (sleeping/-e) coincided in form with the verbal noun, which was formed in OE with the help of the suffixes -ung and -ing; but ME had retained only one suffix: -ing (sleeping).

        The form of Participle n in ME was built differently by the weak a...d strong verbs. In the weak verbs the form of Participle II had a dental suffix and usually did not differ from the Past tense stem, e.g. ME bathed Past tense and Participle H. In the strong verbs it was marked by the ending -en and by a specific gradation vowel in each class. This ending was preserved by many verbs in Modem English: shaken, forgotten.

 

                                                          Lecture 10

Development of New Grammatical Forms and Categories of the Verb in Middle English.

                 Syntactical Changes in Middle English and Early New English.

Analytical Forms. In ME the verb system was greatly enriched by the development of analytical forms and new grammatical categories. The tendency to develop analytical forms manifested itself since an early period of history. However, the final establishment of analytical, verb-forms and their inclusion in the verb-system date from a later period ME and for some forms - early NE. We can regard them as part of the verb’s stem only when they have become regular sets opposed to other sets and used to express uniform grammatical meanings.

Numerous analytical forms were built on an analogy with the forms that arose from the free verb-groups.

                                                    The Future Tense

        In OE the category of tense consisted of two members, the present and the past. The present tense form could denote both a present and a future action. Alongside this device there existed another way of expressing future happenings namely periphrases with verbs of modal meaning (OE sculan > NE shall, OE ma3an > NE may, OE willan > NE will) followed by an infinitive.

        In ME the use of the phrases with shall and will became increasingly common: the modal meaning of these words grew weaker. Thus we may regard the periphrases with shall and will as a more or less standard .way of denoting future events in Late Middle English.

                                    New Forms of the Oblique Mood

        The analytical forms of the oblique mood go back to combinations of modal verbs with the infinitive. Already in OE the modal verbs sculan, willan and ma an (NE shall, will, may) were often used in the forms of the subjunctive mood sceolde, wolde, mihte - with a following infinitive. In ME many more phrases of similar character came into use. ME bid, deign, let, grant, have lever, ben lever with various infinitives.

                                The Interrogative and Negative Forms with "do"

        The Early New English period saw the establishment of new grammatical meanings: the interrogative and negative forms of the present and past tenses of the indicative mood built with the help of the auxiliary verb do.

        In ME the verb do was commonly used to express a causative meaning. In Early New English the causative meaning passed to the phrase with make, while do did not seem to affect the meaning of the sentence at all and occurred in negative, affirmative and interrogative sentences; it was particularly frequent in poetry. The use of do in poetry is to attributed to rhythm, while in prose and in the spoken language its use was explained by the fixed word order and the development of numerous analytical forms.

                       Development of New Grammatical Categories of the Finite Verb

                                                   The Category of Voice

        In OE the category of Voice could hardly be included in the list of verbal grammatical categories.

The passive form developed from the combination of OE verbs bēon (NE be) and weorŏan (NE become) with Participle II of transitive verbs. In Early NE the latter verb was less common than the verb been: soon weorŏen was replaced 'by numerous new link - verbs which had developed from notional verbs (ME becomen, geten, semen, etc., NE become, get, seem).

        In NE ben with Participle II of transitive verbs was transformed into an integral verb form capable of expressing an action (as well as a state) and used in different tense forms; furthermore be with Participle II is more regularly accompanied by a prepositional phrase denoting the doer of the action; the prepositions with and by gradually became the established norm.

From the present and past tenses the passive voice spread to other subsystems of the verb, including the newly formed perfect, the analytical forms of the oblique mood and the continuous forms.

                                The Category of Time-Correlation

        The ME period saw the development of the perfect forms. Like other analytical forms the perfect forms originally developed from free word-groups: the OE verb habban > ME haven> NE have, a direct object and Participle II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object; another source of the perfect forms was the phrase consisting of the link verb bēon with Participle II of a few intransitive OE verbs.

        By the ME time the participle in both these constructions had lost its forms of agreement with the noun and in the construction with have Participle II was moved closer to the finite verb.

Gradually the verb have came to be used not only with the participles of transitive verbs, but also with numerous intransitive verbs.

        For a long time the perfect forms were more or less synonymous with the simple past forms and denoted merely a past action. Gradually the perfect forms came to indicate prior actions, while the non-perfect forms did not imply the idea of priority and referred an event directly to a time period.

                                                       The Category of Aspect

        The development of the grammatical category of aspect in the English verb is linked up with the growth of the continuous forms. The continuous forms established themselves in the language later than any of the analytical forms described above.

        The category of aspect became a part of the verb system much later than the first continuous forms appeared in the language, probably in ENE. It is believed that the continuous forms developed from the confusion of the following phrases: a) the verb be with a preposition and a verbal noun; b) the verb be + Participle I. The appearance of perfect and passive forms in the continuous aspect date from a still later period. (The perfect forms - in the 17th and i 9th centuries, the passive form - in the 19th century).

                               Development of Verbal Categories in the Non-Finite Forms

        In ME and ENE the system of verbals was transfom1ed due to the addition of analytical forms, the strengthening of verbal features and the growth of an entirely new non-finite form, the gerund. The gerund goes back to three sources: 1) the OE verbal noun, which had the suffix -un orin ; 2) Participle I; 3) the infinitive, which in OE was a kind of verbal noun.

The syntactical functions of the verbal noun, the infinitive and the participle overlapped, as they could all stand after a verb as part of a verb pattern. In addition, the verbal noun and Participle I in NE coincided in form. The formal confusion of the forms led to the use of the direct object with the verbal noun. This purely verbal feature - the direct object - as well as the subsequent loss of the article transformed the former verbal noun into the gerund in the modem meaning of the term. In ENE the gerund began to distinguish voice and tin1e correlation.

 

                                          Syntactical Changes in ME and ENE

        In OE which was a highly inflected language it was possible to show the connection between words in word groups and sentences by means of synthetic devices; analytical ways of word-connection were of less importance. Accordingly the word order in the sentence was relatively free. On the other hand the structure of the sentence was relatively simple. In the ENE period, while the nominal· system was undergoing its most important changes, many noticeable alterations occurred in the structure of word groups: noun patterns and verb patterns. Both kinds of patterns acquired greater stability based on syntactic or semantic connections. The sentence structure changed in the direction of greater uniformity; universal standard patterns replaced the earlier variety. The structure of the sentence became more complicated.

 

                               Changes in the Sentence Structure. Word Order.

        In OE the word order was relatively free. Owing to the relative freedom in the word order in statements, the formal difference between a question and a statement was obscured. The question was usually marked by full or partial inversion, while the statement could have an inverted word order too.

In ME and ENE, with the inflectional endings levelled and dropped, the relation of words to other words in the sentence was shown through other means: by position, environment and semantic connections. The place of a noun before and after a verb began to show that the given noun was the subject and an object; a preposition signalled that the noun was an adverbial modifier, an attribute or a prepositional object.

        Every position of the sentence had a certain functional significance: the sentence pattern developed into a fixed frame, where syntactical functions were determined by position. In this frame every position had to be filled. The fixation of word order was a slow process. Some features of the sentence structure were introduced consciously by the prescriptive grammars of the 17th and 18th centuries which attempted to establish a logical sentence.

 

                                                      Parts of the Sentence

        As compared to OE the subject of the sentence became more varied in meaning, as well as in the form of expression. The place of the subject was ·filled not only by a notional subject but also by the formal it. The subject began to denote not only the active doer of the action or a thing characterised by a certain property, but also the recipient of the action with the passive voice and the subject of a state or feeling with verbs like grieve, like. The types of predicates have on the whole become more numerous and varied: they include the group-verb predicates with stereotyped phrases and phraseological units, and an increased number of link-verbs.

                                                   Syntactical Complexes

        One of the most outstanding developments in Late ME and Early NE was the growth of what is now termed syntactical complexes or predicative constructions. Already in OE we find the earliest instances of the Accusative with the Infinitive used with verbs of physical perception. In Late ME and in New English the Accusative with the infinitive and the Accusative with the participle spread to an increasing number of verbs of various meaning, and new kinds of complexes arose: the for-phrase with the infinitive; the Nominative with the infinitive; the Nominative with the participle; the Nominative Absolute; the gerundial complexes and complexes consisting of two nominal elements following a verb with adjectives or nouns as the second component.

                                    The Development of the Complex Sentence

        A variety of complex sentences with different types of subordinate clauses are recorded in OE manuscripts although sequences of simple sentences are usually preferred and the borders between the compound and complex sentences are indistinct. The means of connecting clauses into a complex in OE lacked precision: there were no relative pronouns except the connective Þe which could join various types of clauses.

        In ME and in New English there arose many new conjunctions and other connective words (both co-ordinating and subordinating): both ... and, because, when, that. Of special importance was the rise of relative pronouns largely dating from the ME period: they split from demonstrative pronouns, e.g. that, and also from the interrogative ones: who, which, whose, (the spheres of application of these pronouns were differentiated as late as the 18th imd 19th centuries).

 

                                                                   Lecture 11

                                    The Vocabulary in Middle and New English

        Throughout the history of the English language - since the 5th century up to modem times - the English word-stock has been constantly changing. The changes in the vocabulary were due to the extra linguistic and linguistic causes. The changes in the English vocabulary resulted in its numerical growth, the development of the system of word formation and the semantic structure of the words.

         The replenishment of the English vocabulary was carried out by internal means (derivation, word composition and other less important processes) as well as by borrowing foreign words.