Evolution of the grammatical system from the 11th to 18th c.

Plan:

1. Means of form-building.

2. The noun.

3. The pronoun.

4. The adjective.

5. The verb.

6. Syntax.

1. Between the 10^th and the 16^th c. that is from Late O.E. to Early N.E. the ways of building up grammatical forms underwent considerable changes. In O.E. all the forms were synthetic. In M.E. and Early N.E. grammatical forms could also be built in the analytical way.

In the synthetic forms of the M.E. and Early N.E. periods, the means of form-building were the same as before: inflections, sound interchanges and suppletion (!).

(Suppletive form-building, as before, was confined to a few words; mostly surviving from O.E. Sound interchanges were not productive, though they did not die out: they still occurred in many verbs, some adjectives and nouns. Inflections – or grammatical suffixes and endings – continued to be used in all the inflected (changeable) parts of speech.)

The analytical way of form-building was a new device, which developed in Late O.E. and M.E. Analytical forms developed from free word groups (phrases and synthetically constructions). The first component of these phrases weakened or lost its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker, while the second component retained its lexical meaning and got new grammatical value. 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 period between 1000 and 1300 has been called an “age of great changes”, for the decline and transformation of the nominal morphological system. Some nominal categories were lost – Gender and Case in adjectives, Gender in nouns, the number of forms and noun-pronouns and number in personal pronouns.

2. The O.E. noun had the grammatical categories of Number and Case, but the simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways. The O.E. Gender disappeared together with other distinctive features on the noun declension. Semantically gender was associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore the formal grouping into genders was smoothly and replaced by a semantic division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further subdivision into males and females.

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent some changes in Early M.E. The number of cases in the noun was reduced from four to two.

Old English	Early Middle English	Late Middle English and Modern English
Nominative} Accusative}	Common} Dative}	Common
Dative; Genitive	Genitive	Genitive

The Genitive case was kept separate from the other forms. In the 14^th c. the ending –“es” of the Genitive singular had become universal. The Genitive plural was not distinguished from the Common case as the ending –“(e) s. In the 17^th and 18^th c. a new graphic marker of the Genitive case was used: the apostrophe. E.g. man’s, girl’s.

The reduction in the number of cases linked with a change in the meaning and functions of forms. The Common case got the functions of the former Nominative, Accusative and Dative cases and some functions of the Genitive case.

The replacement of the Dative by prepositional phrases had been well prepared by its wide use in O.E. as a case commonly governed by prepositions.

The other grammatical category of the noun - the Number. The number preserved the formal distinction of two numbers through all historical periods. In Late M.E. the ending –“es” was the marker of nouns in the plural. The M.E. ending –“en”, used as a variant with some nouns, lost its former productivity, so that in Standard Modern English it is found only in oxen, brethren, children.

So, the English nouns have preserved the number in the Common case, lost these distinctions in the Genitive case, and the category of number in nouns has become more explicit and precise.

3. In Early M.E. the O.E. Feminine pronoun of the 3^rd person singular “heo” was replaced by a group of variants – “he, ho, sce, sho, she”: one of them “she” finally prevailed over the others.

At the same time another important lexical replacement took place: the O.E. pronoun of the 3^rd person plural “hie” was replaced by the Scandinavian word “they” [θei]. Like the pronoun “she”, it was adopted by the London dialect.

At the beginning of the 15^th c. the plural forms of the 2^nd person “ye, you, your” were applied more and more generally to individuals. In Shakespeare’s time the plural forms of the 2^nd person were used as equivalents of “thou, thee, thine”. Later “thou” became absolute in Standard English.

The category of Number was brought into conformity with the corresponding categories of nouns and verbs. In O.E. the Genitive case of personal pronouns was used in the attributive function. In M.E. the pronouns lost their forms of agreement. They can be regarded as a separate class of pronouns termed “possessive”. M.E. possessive pronouns appeared in literary texts only at the late 14^th and 15^th c.

Some possessive pronouns had two variants in M.E.: “myne\my, our (e)\ours”. They could be used in free variation, but the variants with –“n” were preferred before nouns which began with a vowel. E.g. accepte my bileve – accept my belief. Be myn advocate – be my advocate.

Demonstrative pronouns were adjective-pronouns. In O.E. they agreed with the noun in case, number and gender. In Early M.E. the O.E. demonstrative pronouns “se, seo, þǽt, þes, þeos, þis” lost most of their inflected forms. The M.E. descendants of these pronouns are “that” and “this”.

The other classes of O.E. interrogative pronouns were subjected to the changes. The paradigm of the O.E. interrogative pronoun “hwa” was reduced to two forms “who” and “whom”.

4. The adjective lost all its grammatical categories with the exception of the degrees of comparison. In O.E. the adjective was declined to show the gender, case and number of the noun it modified; it had five cases and two types of declension. By the end of the O.E. period the agreement of the adjective with the noun had become looser and in Early M.E. was practically lost. The number of cases was reduced: the Instrumental case had mixed with the Dative case by the end of O.E.

Degrees of comparison.

The degree of comparison is the only set of forms which the adjective has preserved through all historical periods. In O.E. the forms of the comparative and the superlative degree were synthetic: they were built by adding the suffixes: -ra^, -est\ost^, to the form of the positive degree.

In M.E. the degrees of comparison could be built in the same way, only with the suffixes had been weakened to –er^, -est^ and the interchange of the root-vowel. E.g. M.E. long – lenger – longest, Mod.E. long – longer – longest.

The most important innovation in the adjective system in the M.E. period was the growth of analytical forms of the degrees of comparison. The new system of comparison emerged in M.E., but the ground for it had already been prepared by use of the O.E. adverbs: ma, bet, betst, swipor – “more, better, to a great degree” with adjectives and participles. Another curious peculiarity is the use of so-called “double comparatives” and “double superlatives” E.g. waxed more fresher.

5. The morphology of the verb displayed two distinct tendencies of development: it underwent the changes in the synthetic forms and became more complicated, gained the analytical forms. The Number distinction became more consistent and regular. In the 13^th and 14^th c. the ending –“en” turned into universal marker of the plural forms of the verb: it was used in both tenses of the indicative and the subjunctive moods. E.g. finde (sing.) – finden (plur.) – to find. In the 15^th c. this ending was dropped.

The difference in the forms of Person was maintained in the M.E. The variant ending of the 3^rd person plural –“es” was firstly recorded in the Northern dialects. It was believed that –“s” was borrowed from the plural forms which commonly ended in –“es” in the North; it spread to singular and began to be used as a variant in the 2^nd and 3^rd person, but later it was restricted to the 3^rd. E.g. He rideth out of halle. – He rids out of the hall.

The distinction of Tenses was preserved through all historical periods. Previously, the Past tense was shown with the help of the dental suffix in the weak verbs, and with the help of root-vowel interchange in the strong verbs. E.g. O.E. cumin – cuom – common. M.E. come – came. The exception was the small group of verbs which cam from the O.E. weak verbs, where the dental suffix fused with the last consonant of the root [t] and after the loss of the endings the three principal forms coincided. E.g. settan – sette - setted. M.E. seten – sette – set. Mod.E. set – set – set.

In the O.E. there was no Future tense. The category of tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. But there existed other ways of presenting the future action: modal phrases, consisting the verbs “sculan, willan, cunnan, maan” and the Infinitive of the notional verb. (M.E. shall, will, can, may). In the M.E. the usage of the verb “shall” became rather common. The future action was commonly used with the help of the verb “willen” in the Late M.E. Later it became popular in colloquial speech.

In the 17^th c. “will” was used in a shortened form “–‘ll”. E.g. I’ll see you again. In 1653 John Wallis for the first time formulated the rule about regular interchange of “shall” and “will” depending on the person. The employment of these verbs was supported by the use of their Past tense forms – “should” and “would”. They indicated the future action viewed from the past. The rules concerning “shall” and “will”, introduced by J. Wallis, were repeated in many grammar books in the 18^th and 19^th c. “Shall” used for the 1^st person, “will” for the 2^nd and 3^rd, it became a mark of the British Standard. With other persons “shall” was used in more official forms of speech, in religion writings, in poetry and in documents. “Will” removed “shall” completely in American English.

6. The evolution of English syntax was tied up with profound changes in morphology; the decline of the inflectional system was accompanied by the growth of the functional load of syntactic means of word connection. The most obvious difference between OE syntax and the syntax of the ME and NE periods is that the word order became more strict and the use of prepositions more extensive. The growth of the literary forms of the language, the literary flourishing in Late ME and especially in the age of the Renaissance, the differentiation of literary styles and the efforts made by 18th c. scholars to develop a logical, elegant style — all contributed to the improvement and perfection of English syntax. The structure of the sentence and the word phrase, on the one hand, became more complicated, on the other hand — were stabilized and standardized.

The Sentence

No material change can be found in the structure of the simple sentence in Early ME as compared with ME. The means of expressing the subject, the object, and other parts of the sentence remain basically the same. The freedom of word order became gradually still more restricted than it had already been in ME. However, structures remain possible which were eventually preserved from normal Late ME literary style. E.g. “Hamlet”: Mother, you have my father much offended, where the direct object my father comes in between the two components of the predicate verb: its auxiliary have and the second participle. Such sentence structure is no longer possible in present-day English.

The Simple Sentence

In the course of history the structure of the simple sentence became more orderly and more uniform. Yet, at the same time it grew complicated as the sentence came to include more extended and complex parts: longer attributive groups, diverse subjects and predicates and numerous predicative constructions (syntactic complexes).

In ME and Early NE, with most of the inflectional endings leveled or dropped, the relationships between the parts of the sentence were shown by their relative position, environment, semantic ties, and prepositions.

Every place in the sentence came to be associated with a certain syntactic function: in the new structure of the sentence syntactic functions were determined by position. For instance, in OE the formal subject, expressed by the pronoun “hit”, was used only in some types of impersonal sentences to indicate weather phenomena. In ME the subject “it” appears in all types of impersonal sentences. E.g. For it reynyd almoste euery othir day. (Brut) - For it rained almost every other day.

As compared with OE the subject of the sentence became more varied in meaning, as well as in the forms of expression. Due to the growth of new verb forms the subject could now denote not only the agent or a thing characterized by a certain property, but also the recipient of an action or the "passive" subject of a state and feeling.

The predicate had become more varied in form and meaning. The simple predicate could be expressed by compound forms which indicated multiple new meanings and subtle semantic distinctions, or expressed formerly by contextual means.

One of the peculiar features of the OE sentence was multiple negations. The use of several negative particles and forms continued throughout the ME period. E.g.: Ne bryng nat every man into thyn hous. (Chaucer) - 'Don't bring every man into your house.' (-ne- is a negative particle used with verbs, nat — another negative particle.)

Gradually double negation went out of use. In the age of Correctness — the normalizing 18th c. — when the scholars tried to improve and perfect the language, multiple negation was considered as illogical: it was believed that one negation eliminated the other like two minuses in mathematics and the resulting meaning would be affirmative. These logical restrictions on the use of negations became a strict rule of English grammar.

Word Order

In ME and Early NE the order of words in the sentence has become fixed and direct: subject plus predicate plus object (S+P+0) or subject plus the notional part of the predicate (the latter type was used mainly in questions).

. The fixation of the word order proceeded together with reduction and loss of inflectional endings. The practice of placing the verb-predicate at the end of a subordinate clause had been abandoned, so was the type of word order with the object placed between the Subject and the Predicate. The place before the Predicate belonged to the Subject.

In the 17th and 18th c. the order of words in the sentence was generally determined by the same rules as operate in English today. The fixed, direct word order prevailed in statements, unless inversion was required for communicative purposes or for emphasis. In questions the word order was partially inverted — unless the question referred to the subject group. E.g. ... Who comes here? ... Lady, will you walk about with your friend?

Compound and Complex Sentences

The growth of the written forms of English, and the advance of literature in Late ME and Early NE manifested the development of the compound and complex sentence. The diversity of sentence structures in Late ME and Early NE reveals considerable freedom in the nature and use of clauses.

Many new conjunctions and other connective words appeared during the ME period: “both...and”, a coordinating conjunction, was made up of a borrowed Scandinavian dual (!) adjective “bath” and the native “and”; “be- cause”, English preposition by and a borrowed Latin noun, cause (by+cause 'for the reason'); numerous connectives developed from adverbs and pronouns — “who, what, which, where, whose, how, why”.

  In the 16th-17th c. the structure of the sentence became more complicated, due to the flourishing literature. But in the 18^th and 19^th c. the structure of the sentence was further perfected. As before, most conspicuous was the frequent use of and, a conjunction of a most general meaning; other conjunctions widened their meanings and new connectives arose from various sources to express the subtle semantic relationships between clauses and sentences. E.g. “in consequence, in fact, to conclude, neither...nor”.

The development of English syntax at this stage of history was to a considerable extent determined by the formation and differentiation of styles.

• The distinction between “who” and “which” recommended by 18th c. grammarians has been established as a standard of "good", educated-English; the recommendations concerning “whose” and “whom” have not been fully observed: “whose” is still used instead of “of which” and “who” interchanges with “whom” when used as an object.

The changes at the syntactic level can be attributed to the same factors which operated in the evolution of English morphology. Syntactic changes were linked up with simplifying changes in morphology and made a part of a single historical process. The other major trend of syntactic changes can be defined as growing complexity of the word phrase and of the sentence. The extension of word phrases, the growth of predicative constructions, and the development of the complex and compound sentences made a part of the formation of the literary English language, and particularly its Written Standard and multiple functional styles.

Lecture 15