Voicing of consonants (16th.)

if they were preceded by an unstressed vowel and followed by a stressed one.

ME possessen > NE possess

fishes, doores, takes [z]

The endings took no accent but could be followed by other words beginning with an accented syllable. Thus the consonants in form-words, even initial became voiced: this, the, of, was, is, his, thay, with, that, these, there, ending –es.

Many exceptions: assemble, assess.

s/z, θ/z became phonemes.

Loss of consonants

Positional changes:

1. vocalisation of j, r

2. h was lost when followed by a sonorant OE hlæne > ME leene > NE lean

hlystan > listen > listen (t was dropped between s and n)

3. the aspirate h was lost initially before vowels – but not in all words: honour, it.

4. kn, gn > n knowen > know, gnat > nat

5. mb > b dumb, climb

History of word-formation (15^th – 17^th c.)

Word formation falls into 2 types: word derivation and word composition.

Word derivation. Prefixes

During the ME period prefixes were used in derivation less frequently than before because OE prefixes were added to verbs which differed slightly and were synonyms. Instead of pairs of verbs ME retained only the simple verb.

OE brēcan, tō-brecan – ME breken – NE break

The growing use of verb phrases with adverbs (so called composite verbs) ousted verb prefixes: go away, look up etc under the Scandinavian influence (North Germanic made wider use of verb-adverb phrases).

In ENE the productivity of prefixation grew again but it never assumed such proportions as in OE.

Native prefixes preserved: be- beseech, mis-, un- misjudge, mislead, unload, unreal, ūt- > out outcome, outlook, ofer- > over- overlook, under- undermine.

Native prefixes dropped out: a-, tō-, on-, of-, ge-, or-.

Borrowed prefixes: Fr re- reopen, re-live, Fr/Lat de-, dis- destructive, disconnect, en- / in- entrust, in-/ im-/ il-/ ir- impossible, non- non-Germanic

17^th c.: Lat. / Greek words pertaining to science, literature, philosophy: anti-, co-, ex-, extra-, post-, pre-, semi-.

Suffixes

Lost: OE -end, -en, -estre became inseparable parts of the stem: friend, spinster.

OE –ere developed into the most productive suffix of agent nouns – gradually the meaning of the suffix extended, it began to indicate a person coming from a certain locality: Londoner. In ENE – nouns denoting instruments and things: knocker.

Suffixes of abstract nouns –aþ, -þ, -þ – lost, supplanted by –ness, -ing.

Retained: -ship, -hood, dom but less productive.

A new suffix –man in ME. But it status is debatable since it could serve as a root-morpheme.

Suffixes of Adj. remained productive ME –ish, -y (< OE –ig, -lic, -ly), -less, -ful.

Verb suffixes were never productive: ME –en was used to derive verbs from adj. gladden, weaken.

Borrowed suffixes: French in ME, classical – ENE (Lecture 11).

Conversion

Conversion was a new method of word derivation which arose in late ME and grew into a most productive, specifically English way of creating new words.

Conversion is effected through a change in the meaning, the grammatical paradigm and the syntactic use of the word in the sentence. The word is transformed into another part of speech with an identical initial form: house – to house.

The growth of conversion is accounted for by grammatical and lexical changes during the ME period: reduction of endings and suffixes and the simplification of the morphological structure of the word. After the loss of endings and suffixes a large number of verbs and nouns became identical in form:

OE lufu n – lufian v > ME love – love.

In ENE the words in each pair became homonymous: but they differed in their grammatical forms (paradigms) and syntactic function. The possibility of using identical words as different parts of speech set up a new pattern of word-building. Conversion was particularly productive in the ENE, in Shakespeare’s plays: you shall nose him as you go up to the stairs.

Word composition

Many compound words in OE went out of use in ME. Numerous compound nouns used in OE poetry died out together with the genre. In ME word composition was less productive than in OE but in ENE its productivity grew. Compounding was more characteristic of nouns and adjectives than of verbs.

Patterns:

productive

N+N –godson, godfather, football, workshop.

ME gerund + N working-day, dwelling-house (a new pattern)

less productive

A + N stronghold, shorthand

Adv. + N – rare forefather

V + N telltale, lay-day

A new pattern arose in NE – consisting of a verb-stem and an adverb, origin: verb phrases with adverbs and prepositions, composite verbs: break-down < break down. This kind of formation of nouns from verbs can be treated as an instance of conversion.

Compound adjectives: the most productive type – derivational compounds, appeared in late OE. Consisted of an adj. stem, a noun stem and the suffix –ed (< OE -ede): grey-hared, long-legged, absent-minded.

Borrowings from classical and contemporary languages in NE

Lecture 20. New English Morphology and Syntax.

Contents:

1. Development of the NE morphology. Causes of grammatical changes.

2. Development of the NE Syntax.

Development of the NE morphology

Noun

Pl forms: The process of eliminating survival pl forms went on in the 15^th-16^th c. Forms like eyen, fōn which were still used by Chaucer, were now superseded by the regular forms eyes, foes.

A few nouns preserved their pl forms due to the weak declension or to mutation: oxen, children, men, feet.

Another type of pl preserved in the forms sheep, deer, swine, trout, salmon.

Development of the NE Syntax

Causes of grammatical changes.

In the course of time English has become an analytical language. The problem of transition from a synthetic to a more analytical grammatical type gave rise to many theories.

1. The “phonetic” theory.

In the 19^th c. the simplification of English morphology was explained by the Neogrammarians – K.Brugman, E. Sievers – as due to the effect of phonetic changes. The “phonetic” theory regarded sound changes as the primary cause of grammatical changes. They assumed that as the stress was fixed on the root-syllable the final syllables were reduced and dropped it became difficult to distinguish between cases, genders, numbers, persons. New means of showing grammatical relations developed: prepositions and a fixed word order.

Critics: prepositional phrases were used in OE, the position of words in a sentence was not altogether free, there couldn’t be the only direction of changes – from phonetics to grammar, the changes are determined not only by internal linguistic factors, but also by external conditions.

2. The “functional” theory advanced by W. Horn, M. Lehnert, supported by Л.С.Бархударов. The endings lost their grammatical functions and were dropped as unnecessary. The changes started at the grammatical level. E.g. the grammatical inflections of nouns became unnecessary after their functions were taken over by prepositions.

3. The theory of the “least effort” introduced by H.Bradley, S. Robinson. The speakers are always in need of more expressive linguistic means, but man’s inertia or his strive for the least effort in achieving the same aims, prevents the language from numerous expressive forms. That’s why the analytical forms grow while the existing means – simple verb forms – gradually lose their expressive force.

A one-sided theory, ignoring the specific conditions of the development of English at different historical periods.

4. a) Many scholars believe that the simplification of the English morphology can be explained by external factors – contacts with other tongues. The period between the 10^th and 13^th c. was the time of the Scandinavian settlement and the Norman Conquest. In the areas populated by the Scandinavians the two Germanic languages - English and Scandinavian intermixed. The distinct pronunciation of the roots was more essential than the endings which were different in two languages and could be dropped: sunu – sunr. The direction of changes – from the North to the South – seems to support the hypothesis.

b) OFrench influenced English. OFr had a more analytical structure than English and favored the tendency to greater analyticism.

Critics: a) some simplifying changes started in the South and spread north- the grammatical changes in personal pronouns, the phonetic and syntactical developments began a long time before the Scandinavian invasions.

b) at the time of strongest French influence – 13-14^th c. – English acquired many analytical features.

5. “Theory of progress” by O. Jespersen. The history of the EL is not a grammatical decay. He shows the advantages of the analytical type of language over the synthetic type. The history of English is the only way to progress and a superior kind of language. The general tendency of all languages was towards shorter grammatical forms. English reached a more advanced stage than other languages. It underlines a superior level of thinking of English-speaking nations.

Critics: racial implications, the state of inflections cannot determine the level of development of language. The trend towards analyticism is not the only way of evolution and progress (in French and Russian some analytical forms merged into synthetic ones).

All the theories are correct but partly, each factor played a certain role in grammatical changes. Grammatical changes as well as others are caused by many intra- and extralinguistic factors.