Non-finite:

• Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:

• Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to berenne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

• Participles 1, 2 resembled the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:

• Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);

• Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

• Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);

• Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);

• Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).

Finite and Non-finite Verbs will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

Preterite-Present Verbs

There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs. They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

Anomalous Verbs

They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do). They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 18.

The Development of the Syntactic System

OE

Old English was a synthetic language, i.e. there were a lot of inflections that showed the relations between the words in a sentence.

Syntactic Connections between the Words

1. Agreement – a correspondence between 2 or more words in Gender, Number, Case, Person:

   • relation – correspondence between the Subject and the Predicate in Number and Person;

   • correlation – agreement of an adjective, a demonstrative pronoun, a possessive pronoun, Participle 1, 2 with noun in Gender, Number, Case.

2. Government – a type of correspondence when one word (mainly a verb, less frequently – an adjective, a pronoun or a numeral) determines the Case of another word:

e.g.: OE niman (to take)  noun in Acc;

OE secζan (to say)  noun in Dat (to whom?), noun in Acc (what?);

OE hlusten (to listen)  noun in Gen.

Functions of Cases

Nominative:

• Subject of the sentence;

• Predicative;

• Direct Address.

Genitive:

• possessive meaning;

• partitive meaning;

• objective meaning;

• subjective meaning;

• qualitative meaning;

• adverbial meaning.

Dative:

• Indirect Object;

• Instrumental meaning;

• Passive Subject of the sentence (Me lycige).

Accusative:

• Direct Object;

• adverbial meaning denoting long periods of time (þone winter – той зимой).

Word Order

In OE the word order was free as far as there were a lot of inflections that showed the relations between the words in a sentence.

Most common word-order patterns were:

1. S + P + O(in non-dependent clauses);

2. S + O + P(when the Object was a pronoun, e.g. OE Ic þe secζe – literally “to you say”);

(in dependent clauses, e.g. OE þis wæs ζefohten siþþan hē of Ēāst Enþlum cōm – literally “This battle was held when he from eastern England came” – such word order was called “frame” – after a connective went the Subject, it was followed by all the other parts of the sentence and the last place was occupied by the Predicate which thus created a frame together with the Subject);

3. P + S + O(in questions, e.g. OE Hwat sceal ic sinζan – “What shall I sing?”);

(in sentences starting with adverbial modifier, e.g. OE Nū synt ζeþrēāde þeζnas mīne – literally “Now were threatened my servants”).

In ME and NE, due to the loss of the Cases and, as a result, loss of the inflections the distinction between the Subject and the Object of a sentence was lost. Thus the word order became fixed and direct (S + P + O – The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object).

Such word order led to the appearance of the formal Subject (formal it, there, e.g. It was winter; There is a book.) that took the place of the Subject if a sentence did not have one and thus preserved the direct word order.

Inversion was used only in questions and for emphasis.

Negation

In OE the common word for negation was ne (IE origin). It was simply placed before a word that was to be negated:

e.g. OE Ne can ic (“I don’t know”, or literally “Not know I”).

As a result of this position before a word the particle ne often fused with:

• a verb (e.g. OE nis ← ne is; næs ← ne wæs; næfde ← ne hæfde (had), etc);

• a numeral (e.g. OE nān ← ne an (none));

• a pronoun (e.g. OE nic ← ne ic (not me));

• an adverb (e.g. OE nēfre ← ne āfre (never)).

Multiple negation was perfectly normal:

e.g. OE Nis nān wisdom ne nān rēad naht onean God. – “There is no knowledge concerning God.”

Often the particle ne was strengthened by the particle naht.

In ME particle ne fell out of use and was replaced completely by the particle naht that later developed into not, stood manly after a verb (V + not) and negated it:

e.g. I fell to earth I knew not where.

In NE, during the Normalisation Period, no-double-negation rule appeared that prohibited more than one negative word in a sentence.

3.Grammatical categories of the Noun in Old, Middle and New English periods. The Development of the Noun

Old English

As it has been mentioned in Lecture 14, the Noun had the following categories in OE:

er – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).

Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).

Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N):

• Originally (in PG) it was a semantic division (he/she/it – associated with the lexical meaning of a noun), but in OE this principle did not work any more (e.g. wīf (wife) = Neuter);

• In OE the nouns started to grouped into genders according to the suffix:

  • -þu (F) – e.g. lenζþu (length);

  • -ere (M) – e.g. fiscere (fisher).

System of Declensions

Though the stem-suffixes merged with the root, declensions were still existent in OE and were based on the former IE stem-suffixes:

a-stem – the most numerous declension (M, N):

Case	Masculine		Neuter
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nom, Acc	fisc	fiscas	dēor	dēor!
Gen	fisces	fisca	dēores	dēora
Dat	fisce	fiscum	dēore	dēorum

Traces of a-stem in Modern English:

• -es (M, Sg, Gen)  ‘s (student’s book) – Possessive Case;

• -as (M, Pl, Nom)  -(e)s (watches, books) – plural ending for the majority of nouns;

• - (N, Pl, Nom)  zero ending (deer, sheep) – homogeneous Sg and Pl.

n-stem (M, N, F):

Case	Masculine
	Singular	Plural
Nom	nama	naman
Gen	naman	namena
Dat	naman	namum
Acc	naman	naman

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

• -an (M, Pl, Nom)  -en (oxen, children, brethren) – irregular plural ending.

root-stem – never had stem-suffix, words consisted of just a root (M, F):

Case	Masculine
	Singular	Plural
Nom, Acc	fōt	fēt
Gen	fotes	fōta
Dat	fēt	fōtum

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

• root-sound interchange (M, Pl, Nom)  root-sound interchange (men, geese, mice) – irregular Plural.

Middle English

Most changes occurred to the Noun in ME.

System of Declensions

In ME the declensions disappeared due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms of different declensions and there was no necessity any more to distinguish these declensions.

Gender

The Gender in OE was not supported semantically. It was only a classifying feature for the declensions and as far as the declensions disappeared there was no necessity to preserve the Gender. It disappeared by the 11^th – 12^th c.

Number

The quantity of the Number endings was also reduced as far as the declensions disappeared. The markers of the Plural became more uniform (-s, -en, root-sound interchange). The preference of the consonantal endings can be explained by the fact that the vowels were more apt to change and reduction then the consonants that in general proved to be more stable.

Case

The Case system was contracted in ME due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms and there was no necessity any more to distinguish 4 Cases:

Causes for Decay of Case System:

1. Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar.

2. Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections).

Consequences of Case System Decay:

1. The number of prepositions started to grow to help to replace the former Case forms.

2. As far as there was no distinctions between the Cases, the distinction between the Subject and the Object of a sentence was lost  fixed word order appeared (The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object).

4. Grammatical categories of the Verb in Old, Middle and New English periods. The Development of the Verb

Strong and Weak Verbs in Comparison

Strong Verbs and their Development

1. As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.

2. The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.

The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:

Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:

• In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection  -en.

• In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.

• In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2)) the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.

Weak Verbs and their Development

1. The division of weak verbs into classes was based on the original stem-building suffix of a verb that was already hard to distinguish even in OE:

2. Weak verbs were not as complex as strong ones and had a greater regularity and simplicity. That’s why they were productive, i.e. all borrowed verbs used weak model of form-building (suffix -t/-d) (e.g. Scand. to skate, Fr. to charm, Lat. to decorate, etc.) and, as it has already been mentioned above, many originally strong verbs turned into weak (e.g. to bake, to laugh, to help, to lie, etc.). The opposite process of turning of weak verbs into strong was very rare and was mainly based on phonetic similarity between some strong and weak verbs, i.e. was a result of mere confusion that later was accepted as a norm due to its persistent and regular character (e.g. to wear was originally weak and became strong because of the mistaken analogy with to swear, to ring (mistaken analogy with to sing), to hide (mistaken analogy with to ride)).

on-Finite Forms

Participle 1

The formation of the Participle 1 was as follows:

OE	ME	NE
berende	bering	bearing

In OE Participle 1 was considered Present Participle, had only the form of the Active Voice, possessed the categories of Number, Gender, Case. It was used predicatively and attributively (agreed with the noun in Number, Gender, Case).

In ME it lost its nominal and adjectival features together with the categories of Number, Gender, Case and became unchangeable.

Participle 2

As it has been mentioned in the table above, in OE Participle 2 was formed:

• in strong verbs – with the help of the suffix –en (+ sometimes root-vowel interchange) + often marked by prefix ζe-:

e.g. OE bindan (Infinitive) – ζebunden (Participle 2) (to bind)

In ME prefix ζe- was weakened to prefix i-/y- (e.g. ME y-runne (run, Part.2 from “to run”) and in NE it disappeared at all.

• in weak verbs – with the help of the suffix -t/-d:

e.g. OE cēpan (Infinitive) – cēped (Participle 2) (to keep)

Participle 2, unlike Participle 1, had two meanings of the category of Voice:

Thus in OE Participle 2 was considered Past Participle, had the forms of the Active and Passive Voice, possessed the categories of Number, Gender, Case. It was used predicatively and attributively (agreed with the noun in Number, Gender, Case).

In ME it lost the category of Voice and the categories of Number, Gender, Case and became unchangeable.

Infinitive

In OE the Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of Case (only two Cases – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)):

e.g. OE Nom writan (uninflected) – Dat to wrītanne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose).

In ME the Infinitive lost the Dative Case (the inflected form) and only one form was left:

e.g. ME (to) writen.

Particle to remained in NE as a formal sign of the infinitive with no meaning of direction or purpose:

e.g. NE (to) write.

Though sometimes the traces of these meanings are still visible:

e.g. He came to feed the horses (purpose).

Gerund

The Gerund appeared only in the 12^th c. Actually it presented a mixture of the OE Verbal Noun (with suffix -unζ/-inζ) and Participle 1 and its characteristics were:

• It took direct object (verbal feature) (e.g. buying a book);

• It could be preceded by an article or a possessive pronoun (noun feature) (e.g. the cleaning of my room, your coming late).

Preterite-Present Verbs

OE

The preterite-present verbs had the following characteristics:

• Their Present-Tense forms resembled Past-Tense forms (Germ. “Präteritum” = past tense, that’s why they were called so);

• Some of these verbs did not have a full paradigm and were called “defective”;

• These verbs expressed attitude and were followed by the Infinitive without “to” (NB! Most of these verbs are present-day modal verbs);

• Out of 12 preterite-present verbs only 6 survived in ModE:

āζ (ought), cunnan (can), dear (dare), sculan (shall), maζan (may), mōt (must).

E.g.:

ME

The following changes happened to the preterite-present verbs:

• They lost their Verbals (non-finite forms) (e.g. OE cunnen – Part 2 of cunnan);

• They lost the Number and Mood distinctions (e.g. OE cann (Indicative) – cunne (Subjunctive); OE cann (Sg) – cunnon (Pl)).

NE

The paradigm of the preterite-present verbs (that had already become modal verbs) was reduced to one or two forms (e.g. must (just one form), can, could (just two forms), etc.).

Anomalous Verbs

They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).

Willan:

• had the meaning of volition;

• resembled the preterite-present verbs in meaning (attitude) and in function (was followed by the Infinitive without “to”);

• eventually became a modal verb and also together with sculan developed into an auxiliary for the formation of the Future-Tense forms.

Dōn

This verb combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:

Infinitive	Past	Participle 2
	strong verb feature (root-sound interchange) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d)	strong verb feature (suffix -n and prefix ζe-)
dōn	dyde	ζedōn

ζan

This verb was suppletive and also combined the features of the weak and strong verbs:

Period	Infinitive	Past	Participle 2
OE	ζān	ēode (suppletivism + weak verb feature (dental suffix -d))	ζeζān (strong verb feature (suffix -n and prefix ζe-)
ME	goon	wente (suppletivism (from OE wendan) + weak verb feature (dental suffix -t)	goon (strong verb feature (suffix -n))

Bēon

This verb was highly suppletive and in OE employed two separate words/roots (Infinitives):

Analytical Forms

In OE there were no analytical forms. They appeared later:

• ME – Future Tense, Perfect, Passive and Subjunctive forms;

• NE – Continuous and Do-forms;

and had the following characteristics:

• They consisted of 2 elements:

  • a verb of broad semantics and high frequency (an auxiliary);

  • a non-finite form (Infinitive, Participle 1, 2).

Future-Tense Forms

In OE there was no Future Tense. Future actions were expressed by Present-Tense forms and modal phrases with sculan (shall), willan (will), maζan (may), cunnan (can), etc.

1. Formation

sculan/willan + Infinitive

Willan had more strong modal meaning (volition) that was later weakened and almost lost.

2. 13^th – 14^th c. – these forms were very common and sculan (shall) and willan (will) were completely interchangeable.

3. 17^th c. – John Wallis introduced the rule “shall – 1^st person, will – 2^nd and 3^rd person”.

4. In ModE there is a tendency to use will + 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd person without any distinction (earlier will + 1^st person had the modal meaning of volition).

Perfect Forms

1. Formation

habban/bēon + Participle 2

↓ ↓

with transitive with intransitive (this distinction is still left in German)

verbs verbs

2. In ME and NE only the auxiliary habban was left while bēon ceased to be used in the Perfect forms not to confuse them with the Passive forms (though some of these forms are still left, e.g. He is gone).

Passive Forms

1. Formation

bēon/werthen + Participle 2

2. Werthen died out in late ME.

3. Passive constructions were often marked with prepositions “by/with” (to show the doer of the action or the instrument of the action).

Subjunctive-Mood Forms

1. These forms were not always analytical in OE but were widely used in:

• independent clauses – to express wish, command, hypothetical condition, concession, purpose (e.g. Sīēn hira ēāζan āþistrode. – Be their eyes darkened!);

• dependent clauses – temporal clauses (related to future) (e.g. Bring me þæt ic ēte. – Bring me that, I would eat), etc.;

• impersonal sentences (e.g. Methinks – I think (мне думается), me lycige – I like (мне нравится)) – went out of use in NE.

2. In ME and NE analytical forms of the Subjunctive Mood appeared.

Formation:

biden (bid)/leten (let)/neden (need)/sholde (should)/wolde (would) + Infinitive

These were the modal phrases that were used to express problematic or imaginary actions. The forms with sholde/wolde outnumbered all other forms, soon they weakened their modal meaning and became auxiliaries: should – 1^st person, would – 2^nd, 3^rd person.

3. Meaning of the Subjunctive forms:

   • in the Past – present or future imaginary or unreal actions (e.g. He thought he would cope with the task);

   • in the Present – future probable or problematic actions (e.g. She thinks he would still come).

4. Peculiarities:

• should/would + Infinitive  simultaneous actions (e.g. If I was young I would be the happiest person in the world);

• should/would + Perfect Infinitive  past or preceding actions (e.g. If I had known all this I would have left that house immediately).

Continuous Forms

Sometimes they were found in OE:

1. Formation

bēon + Participle 1

2. In OE it denoted a “quality” or a “lasting state” and was characterising a person or a thing indicated by the Subject of the sentence. The continuance was not limited in time (as it is in the ModE Continuous forms) and resembled more present-day Indefinite Tense forms, e.g.:

Sēō eorðe is berende missenlīcra fuζela – This land bears many birds.

3. In ME Continuous forms fell into disuse.

4. In NE these forms reappeared together with a synonymous form:

be + Participle 1 = be + on/in + Gerund (indicated a process of limited duration)

e.g.:

He was on huntinge – He was hunting (literally, He was on hunting).

5. 18^th c. – Continuous forms became well-established.

6. 19^th c. – Continuous forms in the Passive were accepted as a norm (e.g. The house is being built – previously such forms were considered clumsy and non-grammatical).

Do-Forms

1. In NE “do-periphrasis” was used in the Past and Present of the Indicative Mood.

2. 16^th c. – “Do” was used in negative, affirmative and interrogative sentences and was freely interchangeable with the simple forms (without “do”), e.g.:

Heard you all this? = Did you hear all this?

I know not why he cries. = I don’t know why he cries.

He knew it. = He did know it (without any meaning of emphasis).

3. 17^th c. – “do” was left only in negative and interrogative sentences to keep the word-order S + P + O (e.g. I (S) pity (P) him (O). Do you (S) pity (P) him (O)?). In affirmative sentences “do” acquired an emphatic meaning (e.g. Did you really see him? – I did see him, I swear!).