- •19. Ways of expressing syntactic relations.
- •20. Analytical and synthetic devices: from oe to ModE.
- •21. Me literary documents.
- •22. The Scandinavian Conquest and Scandinavian linguistic influence.
- •23. The Norman Conquest and French linguistic influence.
- •29. Major Periods of Borrowing in the History of English
- •30. The Great Vowel Shift
- •31. Phonetic Changes in the Modern English
- •35.Declension in the History of English.
- •36.Conjugation in the History of English
- •37.Renaissance in England and the Language of Shakespeare
35.Declension in the History of English.
The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to modern German or Icelandic. Old English distinguished between the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and instrumental cases. Declension fell into disuse during the Middle English period, when accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun. Modern English no longer uses declension, except for remnants of the former system in a few pronouns.
"Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative vs. accusative and also of nominative vs. dative. In other words, "whom" serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "who". In Old English (and in modern German, Icelandic, etc.), these cases had distinct pronouns. The word "whom" itself began falling into widespread disuse in the 20th century, and is being replaced by merely "who".
This collapse of the separate case pronouns into the same word is one of the reasons grammarians consider the dative and accusative cases to be extinct in English — neither is an ideal term for the role played by "whom". Instead, the term objective is often used; that is, "whom" is a generic objective pronoun which can describe either a direct or an indirect object. The nominative case, "who", is called simply the subjective. The information formerly conveyed by having distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order.
Modern English morphologically distinguishes only one case, the possessive case — which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information). With only a few pronominal exceptions, the objective and subjective always have the same form.
36.Conjugation in the History of English
The decay of OE inflections, which transformed the nominal system, is also apparent in the conjugation of the verb — though to a lesser extent. Many markers of the grammatical forms of the verb were reduced, levelled and lost in ME and Early NE; the reduction, levelling and loss of endings resulted in the increased neutralisation of formal oppositions and the growth of homonymy.
The changes in the verb conjugation since the OE period can be seen from comparing the paradigms of the verbs find and look. ME forms of the verb are represented by numerous variants, which reflect dialectal differences and tendencies of potential changes. The intermixture of dialectal features in the speech of London and in the literary language of the Renaissance played an important role in the formation of the verb paradigm.
ME forms of the verb are represented by numerous variants, which reflect dialectal differences and tendencies of potential changes. The intermixture of dialectal features in the speech of London and in the literary language of the Renaissance played an important role in the formation of the verb paradigm.
Conjugation of verbs in Middle English and Early New English
|
strong |
weak |
||
ME |
Early NE |
ME |
Early NE |
|
Infinitive
Present tense Indicative 1st 2nd
3rd
Pl
Subjunctive Sg Pl Imperative
Participle I
Past tense Indicative
Sg 1st 2nd
3rd Pl Subjunctive Sg Pl
ParticipleII
|
Finde(n)
Finde Findest/finds
Findeth/finds
finde(n)/findeth /findes
finde Finde(n) Find(e) Findeth/finde
Finding(e)/-ende /findind(e) /findand(e)
Fand Fande/fand/fandes
Fand Founde(n)
Founde Founde(n)
founden |
Find
Find Findest
Finds
Find
Find
Finding
Found
Found
found
|
Looke(n)
Looke Lookest
Looketh
looke(n) / looketh/looks
Looke Looke(n) Look(e) Looketh/looke
Looking(e) /-ende/-ind(e) /-ande
Looked(e) Lookedest
Looked(e) Looked(en)
Looked(e) Looked(en)
looked |
Look
Look Lookest
Looks
Look
Look
Looking
Looked
looked |
By the end of the 15th cent. the two stems of the past tense of strong verbs fell together: fand and founde(n) was replaced by found.