- •Subject and Aims of the History of English. Its Ties with Other Disciplines. Germanic Language in the System of Indo-European Family of Languages
- •1. History of English in the systemic conception of English
- •1.1. The aims and the purpose of the study of the subject
- •1.2. Connection of the subject with other disciplines
- •2. Sources of Language History
- •2.1. Writings in early English
- •3. General notes on the language study
- •3.1 The definition of the language
- •3.2 The functions of the language
- •3.3 The structure of the language
- •3.4 The language classification principles
- •3.5 Synchrony and diachrony in the language study
- •4. The comparative-historical method
- •4.1 The stages of the comparative-historical method
- •4.2 The principles of the comparative-historical method
- •4.3 The drawbacks of the comparative-historical method
- •5. The Germanic group of languages
- •The Formation of the English National Language. Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Territorial dialects of the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion
- •2. The dialects of the period of the Norman Conquest
- •3. The development of the dialect of London into a national language
- •Periods in the History of the English Language
- •1. Henry Sweet and his division of the history of English
- •2. Historical periodization as offered by b. Khaimovich
- •3. T. Rastorguyeva’s periodization of the English language
- •4. The division of the history of English as suggested by V. Arakin
- •5. The periods of the development of English as offered by a. Markman and e. Steinberg
- •6. David Burnley’s periodization of the history of English
- •Common Linguistic Features of Germanic Languages
- •1. Phonetic peculiarities of the Germanic languages
- •1.1. The First Consonant Shift
- •1.2. Vowels
- •1.3. The doubling of consonants
- •1.4. Rhotacism
- •1.5. Germanic fracture (or breaking)
- •1.6. The second consonant shift
- •2. Some common grammatical features of Germanic languages
- •2.1. Form-building Means
- •2.1.1. Ablaut
- •2.1.2. Word-structure
- •2.1.3. Types of Stems
- •2.1.4. Strong and Weak Verbs
- •3. Germanic Vocabulary
- •Phonetic Changes in the Old English Period
- •The Main Features of Old, Middle, and Modern English
- •2. Old English Phonetics
- •2.1. Oe Consonants
- •2.2. Vowels
- •2.2.1. Changes of stressed vowels
- •2.2.2. Changes of unstressed vowels
- •Changes in the Middle English Orthography and Phonology
- •1. Changes in the Orthographic System
- •2. Major Changes in the Sound System
- •2.1. The Consonants
- •2.2. Consonant Changes from Old to Middle English
- •2.3. Vowels in Stressed Syllables
- •2.4. Vowels in Unstressed Syllables
- •2.5. The Formation of Middle English Diphthongs
- •The Old English Morphology
- •1. The Old English Noun.
- •2. The Old English Pronoun
- •3. The Old English Adjective
- •4. The Old English Adverb
- •5. The Numeral in Old English
- •6. The Old English Verb.
- •The Middle English Morphology
- •1. Middle English as a Period of Great Change.
- •2. The Middle English Noun.
- •3. Articles.
- •4. The me Adjective.
- •5. The me Adverb
- •6. The me Pronoun
- •7. The me Verb
- •7.1. Strong and weak verbs
- •The New English Morphology and Changes in the System of English Syntax
- •1. New English Morphology
- •2. Old English Syntax.
- •3. Middle English Syntax
- •4. New English Syntax
7. The me Verb
The verb retained nearly all grammatical categories it had possessed in OE: tense, mood, person, number. Only the category of aspect was lost. The most important feature of the history of the verb in ME was the development of analytical forms to express new grammatical meanings.
The syntactical combinations of OE sculan (E. shall) and willan (E. will) with the infinitive developed into analytical forms of the future tense. As a result, the grammatical category of tense came to be represented not by binary oppositions ‘past – present’, but by ternary oppositions ‘past – present – future’.
Combinations composed of different forms of OE habban (E. have) and participle II of some verb developed into a set of analytical forms known as the perfect forms.
Word-combinations comprising different forms of OE bēon/wesan (E. to be) and the past participle of another verb developed into a set of analytical forms of the passive voice.
7.1. Strong and weak verbs
The two morphological types of verbs – strong and weak – were, on the whole, well preserved in ME. Only the number of weak verbs was constantly increasing at the expense of the newly borrowed and the newly created verbs, whereas the number of strong verbs was diminishing. Some of them became obsolete, others became weak.
Sometimes the distinctions between different classes of verbs were obliterated. For instance, the suffix –ode of the weak second class was reduced to –ede and coincided with the –ede suffix of the first class.
The suffixes of the infinitive (OE –an), the past tense plural (OE –on) and the past participle of strong verbs (OE –en) became homonymous (ME –en). Therefore the forms of the past tense plural and the past participle of the strong verbs often coincided.
E.g. OE writon, writen.
ME written, writen.
7.2. The Non-finite Forms of the Verb
The two forms of the infinitive (OE wrītan and (tō) wrītenne) gradually coincided (ME wrīten). The preposition tō came to be used not only with infinitive of purpose but in other cases as well. By degrees it lost its lexical meaning and became a mere sign of the infinitive. It did not penetrate only into certain word-combinations, such as the combination of a modal verb and the infinitive, where the infinitive never expressed purpose.
The ending of participle I (OE wrītende) was different in various dialects. In the north it became –ande (perhaps under Scandinavian influence). In the central regions it was –ende. In the south it narrowed to –inde. It was in the south that the suffix –ing was first used as the ending of the present participle. Later it spread to other regions as well.
Lecture 8
The New English Morphology and Changes in the System of English Syntax
1. New English Morphology
The range of the possessive case of nouns has been narrowed. It has come to be used almost exclusively with nouns denoting living beings. As a spelling device the apostrophe was introduced in the 18th century.
The personal pronoun of the second person plural (ye, you) and the corresponding possessive pronoun (your) have gradually ousted the corresponding singular pronouns (thou, thee, thine) from everyday usage. The form of the objective case (you) has ousted the nominative case form (ye).
The possessive pronouns my, mine, which were originally but phonetic variants have acquired different combinability and consequently different functions. This distinction has become relevant and has spread to other possessive pronouns to which the suffix –s has been added. Hence the forms her and hers, our and ours, your and yours, their and theirs.
The pronoun hit has lost its initial h, the form its was introduced in the 17th century.
The adjective has lost all its inflexions but those of the degrees of comparison. The current distribution of synthetic and analytic forms of comparison has been established.
The verb has lost the ending of the infinitive and all the inflexions of the present tense but that of the third person singular. The latter has acquired the form -(e)s (from the northern dialects) instead of the southern -(e)th. The form of the second person singular (e.g. speakest) has been lost or become archaic.
The four basic forms of the strong verbs have been reduced to three, most verbs (except to be) losing the distinction between the past tense singular and the past tense plural.
The so-called ‘continuous’ and ‘perfect continuous’ forms of the verb have developed from former syntactical combinations of the verb to be and participle I of some notional verb.
The infinitive, gerund and participle have developed analytical ‘perfect’ and ‘passive’ forms. The infinitive has also developed ‘continuous’ forms.