2. Old English Syntax.

The syntactic structure of a language is usually closely connected with its morphology. In a highly inflected language a word mostly carries with it indications of its class, of its function in the sentence, of its relations to other words. It depends but little on its position in the sentence, and it may do without special function words. With the loss of inflections the dependence of the word grows. Much of the difference between the Old English and the Modern English syntax is of that nature.

The order of words in a sentence was comparatively free in OE as contrasted with the rigid word order of Modern English.

The comparative freedom of word order was felt not only in the predicative word combination but in other combinations of words, too. It is by no means rare to find modifiers following their nouns instead of preceding them. Prepositions, which usually preceded the nouns or pronouns they governed, often followed them, sometimes at a considerable distance.

In OE the inflections played a much greater role in the indication of syntactical relation between words in a sentence or group than in Modern English.

Grammatical agreement and government were of much greater importance in OE than in Modern English.

The subject of a sentence or clause was frequently unexpressed in OE.

In OE usage of multiple negation was perfectly normal.

The OE interrogative pronouns hwœt ‘what’, hwilc ‘which’, hwa ‘who’ etc. were not used as relative pronouns. Relative clauses were usually introduced by the invariable þe, alone or with a demonstrative pronoun.

OE complex sentences often involved correlation. There were many sets of correlative elements in OE; among the commonest were þa (…þa) … þa, þonne… þonne, swa … swa.

The subjunctive mood was an additional means of indicating subordination in OE complex sentences. It is mostly found in clauses of condition, concession, cause, result, purpose, in indirect questions, though it was by no means rare in independent sentences or principal clauses.

In OE texts we often come across certain verbal phrases which have proved of great importance in the development of the grammatical structure of English. The analytical forms of the verb, so typical of Modern English, derive from those Old English verbal phrases, so that the latter might be called analytical form in embryo.

3. Middle English Syntax

In Middle English the word order was less pliable than in OE, but not so rigid as in Modern English. The number of sentences with direct word order was growing at the expense of those with inverted or synthetic word order.

The weakening and loss of inflections resulted in the weakening and loss of agreement and government. The tendency grew to place the modifiers as closely as possible to the words which they modified.

The widespread use of prepositions in Middle English was another remarkable development in the language. In OE most prepositions had governed the dative case. With the disappearance of the dative case prepositions came to be used freely with the common case of nouns.

The Old English system of relative and correlative elements (þe, þa, etc.) was replaced by new relatives developed from OE interrogative and demonstrative pronouns: who, what, which, that, etc.

The single negative began to be used in the 14^th century, particularly in the north, though the cumulative negation was still widely spread.