Subject and Aims of the History of English. Its Ties with Other Disciplines. Germanic Language in the System of Indo-European Family of Languages

9) <cg> was pronounced as [ ] in medial or final position: brycg `bridge'.

10) OE had phonemically long consonants so that bed `prayer' contrasts with bedd `bed'.

11) OE had a number of consonant clusters that are no longer in the language. As well as /h/ clusters discussed above, there were /kn/ and /gn/, which are no longer pronounced as [kn] and [gn], but whose origin remains visible in the modern spellings knee and gnaw.

2.2 Vowels

The symbols representing vowels in classical Old English were usually monofunctional, i.e. each letter corresponded to a certain sound. Vowel-length was often (but not always) denoted by a slanting stroke (a), but we shall use the traditional sign (a).

Monophthongs: short

long

Diphthongs: short

Long

2.2.1 Changes of stressed vowels

a) Palatal Mutation

This is the name given to a kind of regressive assimilation caused by the sounds [i] and [j] in the 6th century. Under the influence of [i] or [j] the vowels of the preceding syllable moved to a higher front position.

E.g. [в] > [ї] OE

[ж] > [e] Gt. badi || (corresponds to) OE. bedd

[ф] > [з] Gt. dфmjan || OE. dфm, dзman (E. doom, to deem)

[ы] > [y] OHG. kuning || OE. cyning

зa

> оe OE. eald but ieldra (E. old - elder)

зo

The palatal mutation has left many traces in Modern English. The ensuing vowel interchange serves now to distinguish:

1) different parts of speech: doom - to deem, food - to feed, blood - to bleed, full - to fill, Angles - English, long - length;

2) different forms of a word: tooth - teeth, foot - feet, mouse - mice, old - elder.

b) Velar Mutation

This is another regressive assimilation called forth by the velar vowels [u, o, a]. It took place in the 7th - 8th centuries and was of comparatively small importance for the further development of the English language. Under the influence of [u, o, a] the front vowels [i, e, ж] of a preceding syllable were usually diphthongized.

As we see, the assimilation was partial, since only part of the front vowels became velar. But after the sound [w] full assimilation occurred.

E.g. OE. widu > wudu (E. wood)

OE. werold > worold (E. world)

c) The Diphthongization of Vowels after Palatal Consonants

After the palatal consonants [j] (written ) and [k`] (written c) most vowels were diphthongized into [ie, io, eo, ea]. It was a long process which continued up to the 9th century, but it did not take place in some of the Old English dialects. Later on these diphthongs were usually monophthongized again.

E.g.

d) The Lengthening of Short Vowels before Certain Consonant Combinations

Before the combinations (ld, nd, mb), i.e. a sonorous consonants plus a homorganic voiced plosive, not followed by a third consonant, short vowels were lengthened, apparently in the 9th century, though graphically it was often marked much later.

E.g.

2.2.2 Changes of unstressed vowels

a. Unstressed long vowels were gradually shortened in all the Germanic languages. In English this process was completed during the earliest part of the Old English period. All the long vowels became short, and all the diphthongs were monophthongized in an unstressed position.

b. Unstressed vowels often fluctuated, which is seen from their representation in spelling.

Comp. OE. woruld, worold;

c. The weakening of unstressed vowels took shape of changes such as the change of [ ] to [e], [u] to [o], etc.

d. Very often the weakening resulted in the loss of the unstressed vowel. After long syllables it occurred earlier and much more often than after short ones.

e. Sometimes new unstressed vowels developed, especially before r, l, n.

In spite of the long process of weakening, the OE final unstressed syllables contain various vowels - a, o, u, e, i.

In comparison with the later stages of its development, Old English strikes one as a language with developed endings, which justifies the name given it by the well-known English philologist H.Sweet - `the period of full endings'.

Lecture 5. Changes in the Middle English Orthography and Phonology

During the Middle English period a number of very significant changes became more and more visible in the English language. The major changes from Old to Middle English are the loss of inflections, and with it the development of more fixed word order. As in the Old English period, language contact led to borrowing, but its scale was far greater during this period than it had been before.

1. Changes in the Orthographic System

One of the consequences of the Norman Conquest was the French influence on English spelling. Those letters which the French did not employ gradually went out of use. They were the letter ж, р, ю, з.

New letters were introduced such as g, j, k, q, v.

Many digraphs and combinations of letters came into use, such as th, sh, ch, gh, ph, dg, ck, gu, qu, ou, or ow.

E.g. OE. wiю - ME with; OE. fisc - ME fish; OE niht - ME night.

It became usual to mark the length of a vowel by doubling it, especially in closed syllables.

Thus ee and oo were used to denote [з] and [ф].

E.g. OE swзt - ME sweet; OE зфd - ME good.

Sometimes the sound [з], chiefly in French borrowings, was denoted by the digraphs ie or ei.

Many letters changed their signification.

The letter u, for instance, which had denoted only one sound in OE, [u], was employed after the French fashion to denote also the labial front vowel [ь] formerly expressed by y. E.g. bysiз, ME busy.

The letter c began to signify not only the sound [k] as in OE cфc, but also, in accordance with French usage, [s] before the letters i, e, y. So, OE cзpan, could no longer be written with the letter c, for it would be read [sзp?n]. It became necessary to employ the letter k in similar cases. E.g. keepen, king.

The letter k was not unfrequently substituted for c in other cases. E.g. OE bфc - ME book. Sometimes after short consonants the sound [k] was denoted by the digraph ck. E.g. OE bжc, ME back.

The letter o came to be used not only for the sound [o], but also for the sound [u].

All these spelling changes wakened the more or less phonetic character of the OE, orthography. They gave rise to fluctuations in the graphic presentations of sounds and words. In OE the sound [e:], for instance, had only one graphic equivalent, the letter з. In ME [e:] could be represented by e, ee, ei, ie. In OE, the word fisc had only one spelling. In ME, it could be written fish, fysh, fish, fisch, fyssh, fysch.

2. Major Changes in the Sound System

2.1 The Consonants

Consonantal changes in the system are slight during this period, which is a characteristic feature of English. Certain voiced consonants became voiceless and other voiceless consonants became voiced; consonants could occasionally also be lost completely. Thus, /w/ was lost before a following /o/ if it came after another consonant: OE swa > ME so (so); OE hwa > ME ho (who). In addition, ME lost consonant clusters beginning with /h/, so that hring became ring and hrof became rof (> roof). Significantly, both of these consonants were glides among which change was limited to the feature of voice.

2.2 Consonant Changes from Old to Middle English

In the following table the first group of examples represents forms which lost initial h- preceding a resonant (l, n and r); the second set shows the loss of a final consonant; the third shows the simplification of the cluster /sw/, while the last pair reflects the voicing of voiceless consonants in some dialects:

Old English Middle English Meaning

2.3 Vowels in Stressed Syllables

There was also little change in the vowels in stressed or accented syllables. Most of the short vowels, unless lengthened, passed unchanged into ME. But short ж was lowered to [a] and y was unrounded to i (OE crжft > ME craft; OE brycg > brigge, bridge). The other short vowels a, e, i, o, u remained unchanged, as in OE catte > cat; bedde > bed; scip > ship; folc > folk; full > ful.

Amongst the long vowels, the most important change was the raising and rounding of long a > o: OE ban > ME bon (`bone'), bat > bot (`boat'). [y:] was unrounded to [i:]: OE bryd > bride, fyr > fir (`fire').

Long e in ME represented two sounds:

(1) Long e (long a in West Germanic) appears as long e in ME, unchanged from OE (except in West Saxon): slepan > slepen.

(2) In many words ж was a sound resulting from the i-umlaut of a. This was a more open vowel, appearing in ME as e (OE clжne > clene, dжlen > delen (`deal').

Other OE vowels preserved their quality in ME: medu > mede (`mead'); fif > fif (`five'); bok > bok (`book'); hus > hus (`house').

OE diphthongs were all simplified and all the diphthongs of ME are new formations resulting chiefly from the combination of a simple vowel with the following consonant ([j] or [w]), which vocalized. Though the quality did not change in ME, the quantity of OE vowels underwent considerable change. OE long vowels were shortened late in the OE period or early in ME when followed by a double consonant or by most combinations of consonants. The changes are not noticeable in spelling, but they are very significant, since they determine the development of these vowels in later stages.

2.4 Vowels in Unstressed Syllables

The general obscuring of unstressed syllables in ME is a most significant sound change, since it is one of the fundamental causes of the loss of inflection. Before the end of OE, every unstressed /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ tended to become an <e> in spelling, presumably pronounced as /?/ (schwa): OE oxa > ME oxe; OE foda > ME fode. Unstressed /i/, on the other hand, remained unchanged. When /?/ was final in ME it was eventually lost, hence the modern forms ox, food; often the <e> was retained in spelling, though it was not pronounced. Certain endings in which /?/ was followed by a consonant, especially the possessive and plural -es and preterite -ed, regularly syncopated, so that here, too, /?/ is lost (e.g. botes > boats). Exceptions are sounds ending in a sibilant, e.g. busses, vases, etc., or verbs ending in an alveolar sound (wedded, wetted), where [?] or [i] is still encountered in modern forms.

2.5 The Formation of Middle English Diphthongs

This phenomenon involves changes in the consonants as well, as the glides [w] and [j] and the voiced velar fricative develop into the second member of the new diphthongs.

Source New OE ME Meaning

Lecture 6. The Old English Morphology

1. The Old English Noun

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender, and case.

Gender in OE is grammatical, not logical or natural. This means that nouns and pronouns followed different patterns of declension as a function of linguistic characteristics of the words. Thus wif `wife' is a neuter noun and mann `man' is a masculine noun, and wifmann `woman' is therefore masculine also, as dictated by the second element of the compound. The switch to logical gender occurred partly because of the attrition of the system of inflections, though it actually began in the OE period and was complete by the end of Middle English. It has been suggested on the basis of recent work in corpus linguistics that feminine nouns kept their gender longer than masculine or neuter nouns, and this is perhaps the reason why in Modern English `she' is occasionally still used to refer to inanimate nouns such as names of countries, ships and the like.

There are two numbers: singular and plural.

There are four cases in the noun systems depending on the grammatical function of the noun. The nominative case was used primarily for subjects, the accusative case for direct objects, the genitive case for possessives; and the dative case was used primarily for indirect objects, but had other functions as well.

Nouns in OE are divided into either vocalic or consonantal stems, depending on the element in which the noun-stem originally ended. There are four vocalic stem -a, -o, -u and -i, though the vowel itself was often lost in OE, the declension being actually inherited from an earlier form of Germanic. The i-stems, e.g., wine `friend', for the most part joined the masculine a-nouns and the two are therefore treated together below. The largest group of consonantal stems was marked by the presence of n in Indo-European; other minor groups of nouns included r- and nd- stems. Among vocalic stems, masculines consist of a-stems (and old i-stems), neuters of a-stems and feminines of o-stems, while u-stems were either masculine or feminine. Consonant stems could be any of the three genders.

2. The Old English Pronoun

There are several types of pronouns in OE: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, definite, indefinite, negative, and relative.

In OE, as in Gothic, there are besides singular and plural personal pronouns, also dual pronouns for the 1st and 2nd persons, which are used to refer to a pair of people, e.g. a married couple. All three persons and genders are preserved in the singular. OE has also four cases in the pronouns, still distinguishing the dative and accusative forms, which fell together by Middle English, producing what is in Modern English often referred to as the `objective case'.

As for possessive pronouns, these are derived from the genitive case of the personal pronouns of all persons and numbers. The possessive pronouns min, юin, uncer, incer, ure, eower are declined in the same way as strong adjectives. The possessive pronouns his, hire, and hiera are unchanged. Besides, there is the reflexive possessive pronoun sin, which is also declined in the way of strong adjectives.

There are two demonstrative pronouns in OE: se `that' and юes `this'. The meaning of this pronoun is often weakened, so that it approaches the status of an article, e.g. se mann `the man', seo sж `the sea', южt lond `the land'.

The interrogative pronouns hwa `who' and hwжt `what' have only singular forms. The interrogative pronoun hwilc `which' is declined as a strong adjective.

As for definite pronouns, here we find the pronouns gehwa `every', gehwilc `each', жgюer `either', жlc `each', swilc `such' and se ilca `the same'.

The negative pronouns nan and nжnig, both meaning `no', `none', are also declined as strong adjectives.

3. The Old English Adjective

The OE adjective is especially interesting for a variety of reasons. First, there are two sets of forms, termed `strong' and `weak': the strong endings are used when the adjective is not accompanied by a marker of definiteness - in this case an article or a demonstrative or possessive pronoun; the weak endings occur when the adjective is preceded by a determiner.

Second, the cases of the adjective preserve a greater degree of formal differentiation than do the cases of the noun; this is especially true of the strong adjective, in both numbers. In addition, the adjective preserves five distinct cases (i.e., preserving a separate instrumental, something that is no longer obvious in the noun).

The so-called qualitative adjectives were inflected for the degrees of comparison. The ending of the comparative degree was usually -ra, of the superlative -ost.

E.g. heard - heardra - heardost.

A few adjectives had comparative and superlative forms from a different oot from that of the positive (suppletivity).

E.g. god - betera - betst

yfel - wyrsa - wyrst

mycel - mara - mжst

lytel - lжssa - lжst

4. The Old English Adverb

The adverb in Old English was inflected only for comparison. The comparative was regularly formed with -or and the superlative with -ost.

E.g. hearde `severely' - heardor - heardost

The most productive adverb-forming suffix was -e. By origin it was the ending of the instrumental case, neuter of the strong declension of adjectives. The adverbialization of this case form produced many adverbs of adjectival nature.

E.g. deop - deope, lang - lange

OE adjectives formed from nouns with the help of the suffix -lic (E.g. freondlic `friendly', crжftlic `skillful') could further form adverbs by adding -e (freondlice, crжftlice).

Gradually a great number of adverbs in -lice were formed, and -lice was regarded as an adverbial suffix which could be used beside or instead of -e. E.g. hearde and heardlice. Later -lice developed into -ly.

5. The Numeral in Old English

Old English had a system of numerals of common Indo-European origin. Derived numerals have suffixes that, in phonetically modified form, are found in present-day English, the numerals twa and рrie had three genders, cardinal numerals from 1 to 4 might be declined and numerals from 20 to 100 were formed by placing units first and then tens.

6. The Old English Verb

The inflection of the verb in the Germanic languages is much simpler than it was in Indo-European times. A comparison of the Old English verb with the verbal inflection of Greek or Latin will show how much has been lost. Old English distinguished only two simple tenses by inflection, a present and a past, and except for one word, it had no inflectional forms for the passive as in Latin or Greek. It recognized the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods and had the usual two numbers and three persons.

A peculiar feature of the Germanic languages was the division of the verb into two great classes, the weak and the strong, often known in Modern English as regular and irregular verbs. These terms, which are so commonly employed in modern grammars, are rather unfortunate because they suggest an irregularity in the strong verbs that is more apparent than real. The strong verbs, like sing, sang, sung, which represent the basic Indo-European type, are so called because they have the power of indicating change of tense by a modification of their root vowel. In the weak verbs, such as walk, walked, walked, this change is effected by the addition of a “dental”, sometimes of an extra syllable.

The apparent irregularity of the strong verbs is due to the fact that verbs of this type are much less numerous than weak verbs. In Old English, if we exclude compounds, there were only a few over 300 of them, and even this small number falls into several classes. Within these classes, however, a perfectly regular sequence can be observed in the vowel changes of the root. Nowadays these verbs, generally speaking, have different vowels in the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle. In some verbs the vowels of the past tense and past participle are identical, as in break, broke, broken, and in some all three forms have become alike in modern times (bid, bid, bid). In Old English the vowel of the past tense often differs in the singular and the plural; or, to be more accurate, the first and third person singular have one vowel while the second person singular and all persons of the plural have another. In the principle parts of Old English strong verbs, therefore, we have four forms: the infinitive, the preterite singular (first and third person), the preterite plural, and the past participle. In Old English the strong verbs can be grouped in seven general classes. While there are variations within each class, they may be illustrated by the following seven verbs:

The origin of the dental suffixes by which weak verbs form their past tense and past participle is strongly debated. It was formerly customary to explain these as part of the verb do, as though I worked was originally I work - did (i.e., I did work). More recently an attempt has been made to trace these forms to a type of verb that formed its stem by adding -to- to the root. Here it is sufficient to note that a large and important group of verbs in Old English form their past tense by adding -ede, -ode, or -de to the present stem, and their past participles by adding -ed, -od, or -d. Thus fremman (to perform) has a preterite fremede and a past participle gefremed; lufian (to love) has lufode and gelufod. It is to be noted, however, that the weak conjugation has come to be the dominant one in the English language. Many strong verbs have passed over to this conjugation, and practically all new verbs added to English are inflected in accordance with it.

Lecture 7. The Middle English Morphology

1. Middle English as a Period of Great Change

The Middle English period was marked by momentous changes in the English language, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that have taken place at any time before or since. Some of them were the result of the Norman Conquest and the conditions which followed in the wake of that event. Others were a continuation of tendencies that had begun to manifest themselves in Old English. These would have gone on even without the Conquest, but they took place more rapidly because the Norman invasion removed from English those conservative influences that are always felt when a language is extensively used in books and is spoken by an influential educated class. The changes of this period affected English in both its grammar and its vocabulary. They were so extensive in each department that it is difficult to say which group is more significant. Those in the grammar reduced English from a highly inflected language to an extremely analytic one. Those in the vocabulary involved the loss of a large part of the Old English word-stock and the addition of thousands of words from French and Latin. At the beginning of the period, English is a language that must be learned like a foreign tongue; at the end it is Modern English.

2. The Middle English Noun

The distinctive endings -a, -u, -e, -an, -um, etc. of Old English were reduced to <e>/[?] by the end of the twelfth century. In the noun there is one inflectional relic left in the singular, the genitive -es, while one form serves for all in the plural:

OE ME

Sing. Plur. Sing. Plur.

N stan stan-as ston ston-es

A stan stan-as ston ston-es

G stan-es stan-a ston-es ston-es

D stan-e stan-um ston ston-es

But it should be mentioned that in early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive: the -s or -es from the strong masculine declension and the -en (as in oxen) from the weak. And for a time, at least in southern England, it would have been difficult to predict that the -s would become the almost universal sign of the plural that it has become. Until the thirteenth century the -en plural enjoyed great favor in the south, being often added to nouns which had not belonged to the weak declension in Old English. But in the rest of England the -s plural (and genitive singular) of the old first declension (masculine) was apparently felt to be so distinctive that it spread rapidly. Its extension took place most quickly in the north.

3. Articles

Although the articles are closely connected with nouns, they are separate words with particular lexical meanings and grammatical properties.

It was during the Middle English period that the articles were isolated from other classes of words and became a class of words by themselves.

The definite article is an outgrowth of the OE demonstrative pronoun sз. The suppletivity observed in Old English was lost. The sound [s] of the OE nominative case, singular, masculine (sз) and feminine (sзo) was replaced by the sound [и] on the analogy of the oblique cases (южs, южm, юone, etc.). With the development of зo > з, the forms юз and юзo fell together as юз, later spelt the.

The neuter form южt, ME that, retained its full demonstrative force, while the was weakened both in meaning and form. Gradually they became two different words.

The lost all gender, case and number distinctions, and became entirely uninflected.

The indefinite article has developed from the OE numeral вn (`one'), whose meaning sometimes weakened to “one of many”, “some” even in OE. The weakening of the meaning was accompanied by the weakening of the stress. The long [в] was shortened in the unstressed вn, so that вn > an. Later the unstressed [a] was reduced in pronunciation to [?]. The consonant [n] was usually lost before consonants but retained before vowels.

4. The ME Adjective

In the adjective the leveling of forms had even greater consequences. Partly as a result of the sound-changes, partly through the extensive working of analogy, the form of the nominative singular was early extended to all cases of the singular, and that of the nominative plural to all cases of the plural, both in the strong and the weak declensions. The result was that in the weak declension there was no longer any distinction between the singular and the plural: both ended in -e (blinda > blinde and blindan > blinde). This was also true of those adjectives under the strong declension whose singular ended in -e. By about 1250 the strong declension had distinctive forms for the singular and plural only in certain monosyllabic adjectives which ended in a consonant in Old English (sing. glad, plur. glade). Under the circumstances the only ending which remained to the adjective was often without distinctive grammatical meaning and its use was not governed by any strong sense of adjectival inflection. Although it is clear that the -e ending of the weak and plural forms was available for use in poetry in both the East and West Midlands until the end of the fourteenth century, it is impossible to know the most usual status of the form in the spoken language.

5. The ME Adverb

Adverbs in the ME period are changed phonetically, like all other parts of speech, yet there were some other changes.

All primary adverbs existed in their slightly modified form - theer (there), then, ofte (often) etc.

Secondary adverbs, formerly made from the adjectives by means of adding the suffix -e were also in use, but with the gradual loss of the final -e in ME the distinction between adjective and adverb was lost, and a new phenomenon appeared - it started the so-called adverbial use of adjectives.

At the same time there appears a new and very productive way of forming adverbs - adding the suffix -ly. The very suffix was not quite new. It goes back to Old English suffix -lice, but earlier it was limited in use. Now quite distinct adverbs were made this way. Native adjectives as well as borrowed took it freely, and such formations very soon become prevalent in the language.

6. The ME Pronoun

All pronouns in ME with the exception of the personal ones lose the categories of gender and case, some lose their number - that is, agreeing with nouns they simplified their paradigm according to the changes in the system of the noun.

The loss was greatest in the demonstratives. Of the numerous forms of sз, sзo, юњt we have only the and that surviving through ME and continuing in use today. A plural tho (those) survived to Elizabethan times. All the other forms indicative of different gender, number, and case disappeared in most dialects early in the Middle English period.

In the personal pronoun the losses were not so great. Most of the distinctions that existed in OE were retained. However the forms of the dative and accusative cases were early combined, generally under that of the dative (him, her, hem). In the neuter the form of the accusative (h)it became the general objective case, partly because it was like the nominative, and partly because the dative him would have been subject to confusion with the corresponding case of the masculine. One other general simplification is to be noted: the loss of the dual number.

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.

1. 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'.

2. 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.

3. Word-combinations comprising different forms of OE bзon/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 wrоtan and (tф) wrоtenne) gradually coincided (ME wrоten). The preposition tф 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 wrоtende) 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.

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 hwњt `what', hwilc `which', hwa `who' etc. were not used as relative pronouns. Relative clauses were usually introduced by the invariable юe, 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 юa (…юa) … юa, юonne… юonne, 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 (юe, юa, 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 14th century, particularly in the north, though the cumulative negation was still widely spread.

4. New English Syntax

The order “subject - predicate - indirect object - direct object” has been established. As a result, the position of a noun shows whether it is the subject or the object, and in the latter case whether it is direct or indirect.

In most questions inversion has become the rule, i.e. the verb is placed before the subject. Owing to the abundance of analytical forms of the verb and of compound predicates this inversion usually does not break the established word-order since only a part of the predicate (the auxiliary, modal, or linking verb) is moved, the notional part of the predicate remaining in its fixed position after the subject.

In order to carry through the above principles of word order it was necessary to find means of splitting the few synthetic forms of the verb that still remained in the language, such as write, writes and wrote. This has been done with the help of special auxiliaries do, does, did.

One of the characteristic features of the New English period has been the development of structural substitutes (there, it, one, do and others), as in There is a man there (structural subject).

The development and extensive use of infinitival, gerundial and participial complexes is another remarkable feature of New English syntax.

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