The verb Simplifying changes in the verb conjugation
General review
Inthe course of ME and early NE the grammatical system of the language underwent profound alteration. English has been transformed into a language of "analytical type".Analytical forms developed from free word groups (phrases, syntactical constructions). The first component of these phrases gradually weakened or even lost its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker, while the second component retained its lexical meaning and acquired a new grammatical value in the compound form. Analytical form-building was not equally productive in all the parts of speech: it has transformed the morphology of the verb but has not affected the noun.
The division of words into parts of speech has proved to be one of the most permanent characteristics of the language. The only new part of speech was the articlewhich split from the pronouns in early ME.
The OE period of history is called the period of "full endings", ME - the period of "levelled endings", and NE - the period of "lost endings".
The main direction of development for the nominal parts of speech in all the periods of history can be defined as morphological simplification. Some nominal categories were lost - Gender and case in adjectives, gender in nouns. The number of forms in the surviving categories was reduced - cases in nouns, number in personal pronouns. Morphological division into types of declension practically disappeared. In late ME the adjective lost the distinction of number and the distinction of weak and strong forms.
The evolution of the verb system was a far more complicated process. The decay of inflectional endings affected the verb system. The OE morphological classification of verbs was practically broken up. But the paradigm of the verb grew as new grammatical forms came into being. The verb acquired the categories of Voice, Time Correlation and Aspect. Within the category of Tense there developed a new form - the Future Tense; in the category of Mood - new forms of the Subjunctive. The infinitive and the participle having lost many nominal features, developed verbal features.
The main changes at the syntactical level were: the rise of new syntactic patterns of the word phrase and the sentence; the growth of predicative constructions; the development of the complex sentences and of diverse means of connecting clauses.
Noun
. Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun.
• The OE genderdisappeared.
• The number ofcases in the noun paradigm was reduced from 4 to 2 in late ME.
OE Early ME Late ME and NE
Nominative «•:
} Common
Accosative } Common
Dative Dative
Genitive Genitive Genitive
The Common case resulted from the fusion of three Old English cases and assumed all the functions of the former Nom., Ace, and Dat., and also some functions of the Gen.
The ME Comm. Case had a very general meaning, which was made specific by the context: prepositions, the meaning of the predicate, the word order.
In ME the Gen. case is used only attributively, to modify a noun, but prepositional phrases, especially with the preposition -of, are also in use. Going back to OE, of-phrases grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th cnt.
As to the category of number, in late ME the ending -es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the pl. The pi. ending -en lost its former productivity, so that in Standard Mod. E it is found only in oxen, brethren, and children.
The pronoun
The OE Fern, pronoun of the 3d person sg. heo was replaced by ME she - a good example of linguistic change. The OE pronoun of the 3d person pl. hie was replaced by the Scan, loan-word they [8ei]. In OE there were derivatives of the pronominal root with the initial [h]: he, heo, hit,hie. The late ME pronouns of the 3d person are separate words with no genetic ties: he, she, it, they.
Beginning with the 15th cnt. the pi. forms of the 2nd person - ye, you, your - were applied more and more generally to individuals. In the 17th and 18th cnt. they replaced the old equivalents thou, thee, thine.
The forms of the dual number of the Ist and 2nd person went into disuse.
Two cases, Dat. and Ace. fell together into what may be called the Obj.case. In Late ME the paradigm of personal pronouns consisted of two cases: Nominativeand Objective.
The OE Gen. case also turned into a new class of pronouns - possessive.
The OE oblique case-forms of personal pronouns and the ME possessive pronouns gave rise to a new type - reflexivepronouns. The developed from the combination of some forms of personal pronouns with the adjective self.
In early ME the OE demonstrative pronouns se, seo, peat and pes, peos, pis - lost most of their inflected forms. The ME descendents of these pronouns are thatand this.Each pronoun had a respective pi. form. The othe direction of the development of the demonstrative pronouns se, seo, paet led to the formation of the definite article.
The other classes of OE pronouns - interrogative and indefinite - were subjected to the same simplifying changes. The paradigm of the OE interrogative pronoun hwa was reduced to two forms - who, the Nom. Case, and whom, the Obj. case. The Gen. case of OE hwa, hwaet developed into whose.
OE demonstrative and interrogative pronouns became a source of a new type of pronouns - relative.
Adjective
InME period adjectives underwent greater simplifying changes than any other part of speech. It lost all its grammatical categories with the exception of the degrees of comparison.
The first category to disappear was Gender.To the end of the 13lh cnt., all Casedistinctions were lost.
In ME the degrees of comparison could be built in the same way as in OE, only the suffixes had been weakened to -er, estand the interchange of the root-vowels was less common than before. Since most adjectives with the sound alternation had parallel forms without it, the forms with an interchange soon fell into disuse: ME long, lenger, longest and long, longer, longest.
The most important innovation in the adjective system in ME was the growth of analytical forms of the degrees of comparison. The phrases with more and most became more common, they were used with all kinds of adjectives regardless of the number of syllables. The synthetic and analytical forms were used in free variation until the 17 and 18th cnt, when the modern standard usage was established.
Another curious peculiarity observed in early NE texts is the use of the so-called "double comparatives" and "double superlatives": more fressher, most unkindest. In the "Age of Correctness"(18th cnt.) double comparatives were banned as illogical and incorrect.
5. Development of nominal grammaticalcategories.
| Grammatical categories | |||||
| Gender | Case | Number | Definiteness indefiniteness | Comparison | |
| OE late ME | OE late ME | OE late ME | OE late ME | OE late ME | |
| Noun | 42 | 2 2 | - | - | |
| Adjective | 3 3 | ||||
| Personal prom 1st and 2nd p. 3rt p. | 3 3 | 4 2 4 2 | 3 2 2 2 | - | - |
| Demonstrative pronouns | 2 2 | - | - |
The verb Simplifying changes in the verb conjugation
• Finite forms
Many markers of the grammatical forms of the verb were reduced, levelled and lost in ME and Early NE. Early NE had simplified conjugation of verbs.
• Number
Number distinctions became more consistent and regular in ME. However, in the 15th c. they were neutralized.
• Person
The OE endings of the 3rd person singular - p, ep, iap - merged into a single ending -(e)th. In Chaucer's works we still find the old ending -eth. Shakespeare uses both forms, but forms in -s begin to prevail.
• Mood
In OE only a few forms of the Indicative and Subjunctive mood were homonymous (1st p. sg of the Present Tense and the Ist and the 3rd p. sg of the past). In ME the homonymy of the mood forms grew. The Indicative
and Subjunctive moods could no longer be distinguished in the plural form, when -en became the dominant flection of the Indicative pi in the Present and Past. The reduction and loss of this ending in Early NE took place in all the forms irrespective of mood.
In the Past Tense of strong verbs the difference between the moods in the sg could be shown by means of a root-vowel interchange, for the Subjunctive mood was derived from Past pi, while the Indicative mood was derived from the Past sg. In the 15th c. the two Past Tense stems of the strong verbs merged, all the forms of the moods in the Past tense fell together with the exception of the verb to be, which retained a distinct form of the Subjunctive in the Past sg - were as opposed to was.
• Tense
The Past tense, as before, was shown with the help of the dental suffix in the weak verbs and with the help of the root-vowel interchange - in the strong verbs. The only exception was a small group of verbs which came from OE weak verbs: in those verbs the dental suffix fused with the last consonant of the root [t] and after the loss of endings the three principal forms coincided: OE settan - sette - je-set; ME seten - sette - set; NE set - set - set