Lecture 8

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Lecture 8
English Morphology in Diachrony. The Middle English Morphology.

The Early New English Period
1. General characteristics of the Middle English grammatical system

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>/[ə] 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:
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
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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 sē. The
suppletivity observed in Old English was lost. The sound [s] of the OE nominative
case, singular, masculine (sē) and feminine (sēo) was replaced by the sound [θ] on the
analogy of the oblique cases (þæs, þæm, þone, etc.). With the development of ēo > ē,
the forms þē and þēo fell together as þē, later spelt the.
The neuter form þæt, 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 ān (‘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 [ā] was
shortened in the unstressed ān, so that ān > an. Later the unstressed [a] was reduced
in pronunciation to [ə]. The consonant [n] was usually lost before consonants but
retained before vowels.
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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
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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 sē, sēo,
þœt 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’.
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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 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.
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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.
8. 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 superseded 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.
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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.

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1

English Morphology in Diachrony. The Middle English Morphology.

1. General characteristics of the Middle English grammatical system

2. The Middle English Noun

7.1. Strong and weak verbs

7.2. The Non-finite Forms of the Verb

8. New English Morphology

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