The history of English

The classes of strong verbs - like the morphological classes of nouns - differed in the number of verbs and, consequently, in their role and weight in the language. Classes 1 and 3 were the most numerous of all: about 60 and 80 verbs, respectively; within Class 3 the first group - with a nasal or nasal plus a plosive in the root (findan, rinnan - NE find, run) included almost 40 verbs, which was about as much as the number of verbs in Class 2; the rest of the classes had from 10 to 15 verbs each. In view of the subsequent interinfluence and mixture of classes it is also noteworthy that some classes in OE had similar forms; thus Classes 4 and 5 differed in one form only - the stems of P II; Classes 2, 3b and c and Class 4 had identical vowels in the stem of P II.

The history of the strong verbs traced back through Early OE to PG will reveal the origins of the sound interchanges and of the division into classes; it will also show some features which may help to identify the classes.

The gradation series used in Class 1 through 5 go back to the PIE qualitative ablaut [e-o] and some instances of quantitative ablaut. The grades [e-o] reflected in Germanic as [e/i-a] were used in the first and second stems; they represented the normal grade (a short vowel) and were contrasted to the zero-grade (loss of the gradation vowel) or to the prolonged grade (a long vowel) in the third and fourth stem. The original gradation series split into several series because the gradation vowel was inserted in the root and was combined there with the sounds of the root. Together with them, it was then subjected to regular phonetic changes. Each class of verbs offered a peculiar phonetic environment for the gradation vowels and accordingly transformed the original series into a new gradation series.

In Classes 1 and 2 the root of the verb originally contained [i] and [u] (hence the names i-class and u-class); combination of the gradation vowels with these sounds produced long vowels and diphthongs in the first and second stems. Classes 3, 4 and 5 had no vowels, consequently the first and second forms contain the gradation vowels descending directly from the short [e] and [o]; Class 3 split into subclasses as some of the vowels could be diphthongised under the Early OE breaking. In the third and fourth stems we find the zero-grade or the prolonged grade of ablaut; therefore Class 1 - i-class - has [i]. Class 2-- [u] or [o]; in Classes 4 and 5 the Past pl stem has a long vowel [?]. Class 5 (b) contained [j] following the root in the Inf.; hence the mutated vowel [i] and the lengthening of the consonant: sittan.

In the verbs of Class 6 the original IE gradation was purely quantitative; in PG it was transformed into a quantitative-qualitative series.

Class 7 had acquired its vowel interchange from a different source: originally this was a class of reduplicating verbs, which built their past tense by repeating the root. In OE the roots in the Past tense stems had been contracted and appeared as a single morpheme with a long vowel. The vowels were different with different verbs, as they resulted from the fusion of various root-morphemes, so that Class 7 had no single series of vowel interchanges.

Direct traces of reduplication in OE are rare; they are sometimes found in the Anglian dialects and in poetry as extra consonants appearing in the Past tense forms: Past tense ofhatan -- heht alongside het ('call'). Past tense of ondr?dan - ondred and ondreord (NE dread).

To account for the interchanges of consonants in the strong verbs one should recall the voicing by Verner's Law and some subsequent changes of voiced and voiceless fricatives. The interchange [s-z] which arose under Verner's Law was transformed into [s-r] due to rhotacism and acquired another interchange [s-z] after the Early OE voicing of fricatives. Consequently, the verbs whose root ended in [s] or [z] could have the following interchange:

ceosan [z] ceos [s] curon[r] coren [r] (NE choose)

Verbs with an interdental fricative have similar variant with voiced and voiceless [0, ?] and the consonant [d], which had developed from [?] in the process of hardening:

sni?an [?] sna? [0] snidon sniden (NE cut) Class 1

Verbs with the root ending in [f/v] displayed the usual OE interchange of the voiced and voiceless positional variants of fricatives:

ceorfan [v] cearf [f] curfon [v] corfen [v] (NE carve) Class 3

Verbs with consonant interchanges could belong to any class, provided that they contained a fricative consonant. That does not mean, however, that every verb with a fricative used consonant interchange, for instance risan, a strong verb of Class 1, alternated [s] with [z] but not with [r]: risan - ras - rison - risen (NE rise). Towards the end of the OE period the consonant interchanges disappeared.

Weak Verbs

The number of weak verbs in OE by far exceeded that of strong verbs. In fact, all the verbs, with the exception of the strong verbs and the minor groups (which make a total of about 320 verbs) were weak. Their number was constantly growing since all new verbs derived from other stems were conjugated weak (except derivatives of strong verbs with prefixes). Among the weak verbs there were many derivatives of OE noun and adjective stems and also derivatives of strong verbs built from one of their stems (usually the second stem -- Past sg)

talu n - tellan v (NE tale, tell) full adj - fyllan v (NE full, fill)

Weak verbs formed their Past and Participle II by means of the dental suffix -d- or -t- (a specifically Germanic trait). In OE the weak verbs are subdivided into three classes differing in the ending of the Infinitive, the sonority of the suffix, and the sounds preceding the suffix. The main differences between the classes were as follows: in Class I the Infinitive ended in -an, seldom -ian (-ian occurs after [r]); the Past form had -de, -ede or -te; Participle II was marked by -d, -ed or -t. Some verbs of Class I had a double consonant in the Infinitive, others had a vowel interchange in the root, used together with suffixation.

Class II had no subdivisions. In Class II the Infinitive ended in -ian and the Past tense stem and P II had [o] before the dental suffix. This was the most numerous and regular of all the classes.

The verbs of Class III had an Infinitive in -an and no vowel before the dental suffix; it included only four verbs with a full conjugation and a few isolated forms of other verbs. Genetically, the division into classes goes back to the differences between the derivational stem-suffixes used to build the verbs or the nominal stems from which they were derived, and all the persons of the sg Subj. (cf. restan--reste, wendan-- wende, (NE rest, wend).

Participle II of most verbs preserved -e- before the dental suffix, though in some groups it was lost.

Minor Groups of Verbs

Several minor groups of verbs can be referred neither to strong nor to weak verbs. The most important group of these verbs were the so-called "preterite-presents" or "past-present" verbs. Originally the Present tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms (or, more precisely, IE perfect forms, denoting past actions relevant for the "present). Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past Tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and Infinitives; most verbs did not have a full paradigm and were in this sense "defective".

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. sg were identical and had no ending - yet, unlike strong verbs, they had the same root-vowel in all the persons; the pl had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs (which had two distinct stems for the Past: sg and pl). In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dental suffix plus the endings -e, -est, -e. The new Infinitives sculan, cunnan were derived from the pl form. The interchanges of root-vowels in the sg and pl of the Present tense of preterite-present verbs can be traced to the same gradation series as were used in the strong verbs. Before the shift of meaning and time-reference the would-be preterite-presents were strong verbs. The prototype of can may be referred to Class 3 (with the grades [a-u] in the two Past tense stems); the prototype of sculan -- to Class 4, magan -- to Class 5, witan, wat 'know' - to Class 1.

In OE there were twelve preterite-present verbs. Six of them have survived in Mod E: OE ag; cunnan, cann; dear(r), sculan, sceal; magan, m?g, mot (NE owe, ought; can; dare; shall; may; must). Most of the preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action denoted by another verb, an Infinitive, which followed the preterite-present. In other words, they were used like modal verbs, and eventually developed into modem modal verbs. (In OE some of them could also be used as notional verbs:

?e him aht sceoldon 'what they owed him'.)

Among the verbs of the minor groups there were several anomalous verbs with irregular forms. OE willan was an irregular verb with the meaning of volition and desire; it resembled the preterite-presents in meaning and function, as it indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an Infinitive.

?a ?e willa? mines forsi?es f?gnian 'those who wish to rejoice in my death'

hyt moten habban eall 'all could have it'.

Willan had a Past tense form wolde, built like sceolde, the Past tense of the preterite-present sculan, sceal. Eventually willan became a modal verb, like the surviving preterite-presents, and, together with sculan developed into an auxiliary (NE shall, will, should, would).

Some verbs combined the features of weak and strong verbs. OE don formed a weak Past tense with a vowel interchange: and a Participle in -n: don -- dyde - gedon (NE do). OE buan 'live' had a weak Past - bude and P II, ending in -n, gebun like a strong verb.

Two OE verbs were suppletive. OE gan, whose Past tense was built from a different root gan - eode - gegan (NE go); and beon (NE be).

Beon is an ancient (IE) suppletive verb. In many languages - Germanic and non-Germanic - its paradigm is made up of several roots. In OE the Present tense forms were different modifications of the roots *wes- and *bhu-, 1st p. sg eom, beo, 2nd p. eart, bist. The Past tense was built from the root *wes-on the pattern of strong verbs of Class 5. Though the Infinitive and Participle II do not occur in the texts, the set of forms can be reconstructed as: *wesan -- w?s -- w?ron -- *weren.

OE syntax

The syntactic structure of OE was determined by two major conditions: the nature of OE morphology and the relations between the spoken and the written forms of the language,

OE was largely a synthetic language; it possessed a system of grammatical forms, which could indicate the connection between words; consequently, the functional load of syntactic ways of word connection was relatively small. It was primarily a spoken language, therefore the written forms of the language resembled oral speech - unless the texts were literal translations from Latin or poems with stereotyped constructions. Consequently, the syntax of the sentence was relatively simple; coordination of clauses prevailed over subordination; complicated syntactical constructions were rare.

The syntactic structure of a language can be described at the level of the phrase and at the level of the sentence. In OE texts we find a variety of word phrases (also: word groups or patterns). OE noun patterns, adjective patterns and verb patterns had certain specific features, which are important to note in view of their later changes.

A noun pattern consisted of a noun as the head-word and pronouns, adjectives (including verbal adjectives, or participles), numerals and other nouns as determiners and attributes. Most noun modifiers agreed with the noun in gender, number and case:

on ??m o?rum ?rim dagum ... 'in those other three days' - Dat. pl Masc.

Ohthere s?de his hlaforde, ?lfrede cyninge 'Ohthere said to his lord, king Alfred' - the noun in apposition is in the Dat. sg like the head noun.

Nouns, which served as attributes to other nouns, usually had the form of the Gen. case: hwales ban, deora fell 'whale's bone, deer's fell'.

Some numerals governed the nouns they modified so that formally the relations were reversed: tamra deora ... syx hund 'six hundred tame deer'; twentig sceapa 'twenty sheep' (deora, sceapa - Gen. pl).

The following examples show the structure of the simple sentence in OE, its principal and secondary parts:

So?lice sum mann h?fde twegen suna (mann - subject, h?fde - Simple Predicate) 'truly a certain man had two sons'. Predicates could also be compound: modal, verbal and nominal:

Hw??re ?u meaht singan 'nevertheless you can sing'.

He was swy?e spedig mann 'he was a very rich man'. The secondary parts of the sentence are seen in the same examples: twegen suna 'two sons' - Direct Object with an attribute, spedig 'rich' - attribute. In the examples of verb and noun patterns above we can find other secondary parts of the sentence: indirect and prepositional objects, adverbial modifiers and appositions: hys meder 'to his mother' (Indirect Object), to his suna 'to his son' (Prep. Object), his hlaforde, ?lfrede cyninge 'his lord king Alfred' (apposition). The structure of the OE sentence can be described in terms of Mod E syntactic analysis, for the sentence was made up of the same parts, except that those parts were usually simpler. Attributive groups were short and among the parts of the sentence there were very few-predicative constructions ("syntactical complexes"). Absolute constructions with the noun in the Dat. case were sometimes used in translations from Latin in imitation of the Latin Dativus Absolutus. The objective predicative construction "Accusative with the Infinitive" occurred in original OE texts:

... ?a li?ende land gesawon, brimclifu blican, beorgas steape (BEOWULF)

'the travellers saw land, the cliffs shine, steep mountains'. Predicative constructions after habban (NE have) contained a Past Participle.

The connection between the parts of the sentence was shown by the form of the words as they had formal markers for gender, case, number and person. As compared with later periods agreement and government played an important role in the word phrase and in the sentence. Accordingly the place of the word in relation to other words was of secondary importance and the order of words was relatively free.

The presence of formal markers made it possible to miss out some parts of the sentence which would be obligatory in an English sentence now. In the following instance the subject is not repeated but the form of the predicate shows that the action is performed by the same person as the preceding action:

?a com he on morgenne to ??m tungerefan se ?e his ealdorman w?s; s?gde him, hwylce gife he onfeng 'then in the morning he came to the town-sheriff the one that was his alderman; (he) said to him what gift he had received'.

The formal subject was lacking in many impersonal sentences (though it was present in others): Nor?an snywde 'it snowed in the North'; him ?uhte 'it seemed to him', Hit hagolade stвnum 'it hailed with stones'.

One of the conspicuous features of OE syntax was multiple negation within a single sentence or clause. The most common negative particle was he, which was placed before the verb; it was often accompanied by other negative words, mostly naht or noht (which had developed from ne plus awiht 'no thing'). These words reinforced the meaning of negation'.

Ne con ic noht singan... ic noht singan ne cu?e 'I cannot sing' (lit. "cannot sing nothing"), 'I could not sing' (noht was later shortened to not, a new negative particle).

Another peculiarity of OE negation was that the particle ne could be attached to some verbs, pronouns and adverbs to form single words: he ne mihtenan ?ing geseon 'he could not see anything' (nan from ne an 'not one'), hit na buton gewinne n?s 'it was never without war' (n?s from ne w?s 'no was'; NE none, never, neither are traces of such forms).

Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of coordination and subordination and a large inventory of subordinate clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses adverbial clauses. And yet many constructions, especially in early original prose, look clumsy, loosely connected, disorderly and wanting precision, which is natural in a language whose written form had only begun to grow.

Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunction of a most general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic relations. The A-S CHRONICLES abound in successions of clauses or sentences all beginning with and, e.g.:

And ?a ongeat se cyning, ??t ond he, on ?a duru eode, and ?a unbeanlice hine werede, o? he on ?one ??eling locude, and ?a ut r?sde on hine, and hine miclum gewundode; and hie alle on ?one cyning w?ron feohtende, o? ??t hie hine ofsl?genne h?fdon, 'and then the king saw that, and he went to the door, and then bravely defended himself, until he saw that noble, and then out rushed on him, and wounded him severely, and they were all fighting against that king until they had him slain' (from the earliest part of the CHRONICLES A.D. 755).

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (termed "correlation") was common in complex sentences: ?a he ??r to gefaren w?s, ?a eodon hie to hiora scipum 'then (when) he came there, then they went to their ship.'

Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means of various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns. The main connective was the indeclinable particle Re employed, either alone or together with demonstrative and personal pronouns: and him cypdon'paet hiera maezas him mid waeron, pa pe him from noldon 'and told him that their kinsmen were with him, those that did not want (to go) from him'.

The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the particle ?e:

Hit gelamp gio ??tte an hearpere w?s on ??re ?iode ?e Dracia hatte, sio w?s on Creca rice; se hearpere w?s swi?e ungefr?glice god, ??s nama w?s Orfeus; he h?fde an swi?e ?nlic wif, sio w?s haten Eurydice 'It happened once that there was a harper among the people on the land that was called Thrace, that was in the kingdom of Crete; that harper was incredibly good; whose name (the name of that) was Orpheus; he had an excellent wife; that was called Eurydice'.

The pronoun and conjunction ??t was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: o? ??t 'until', ?r ??m ?e 'before', ??t 'so that' as in: Isaac ealdode and his eagan ?ystrodon, ??t he ne mihte nan ?ing geseon 'Then Isaac grew old and his eyes became blind so that he could not see anything'.

Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordinate and subordinate: they are joined asyndetically and their status is not clear: ?a w?s sum consul, Boethius w?s haten 'There was then a consul, Boethius was called' (perhaps attributive: '(who) was called Boethius' or co-ordinate '(he) was called Boethius').

Lecture 5. MIDDLE ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Evolution of the grammatical system

In the course of ME, Early NE the grammatical system of the language underwent profound alteration. Since the OE period the very grammatical type of the language has changed; from what can be defined as a synthetic or inflected language, with a well developed morphology English has been transformed into a language of the "analytical type", with analytical forms and ways of word connection prevailing over synthetic ones. This does not mean, however, that the grammatical changes were rapid or sudden; nor does it imply that all grammatical features were in a state of perpetual change. Like the development of other linguistic levels, the history of English grammar was a complex evolutionary process made up of stable and changeable constituents. Some grammatical characteristics remained absolutely or relatively stable; others were subjected to more or less extensive modification.

The division of words into parts of speech has proved to be one of the most permanent characteristics of the language. Through all the periods of history English preserved the distinctions between the following parts of speech; the noun, the adjective, the pronoun, the numeral, the verb, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection. The only new part of speech was the article which split from the pronouns in Early ME.

Between the 10th and the 16th c., that is from Late OE to Early NE the ways of building up grammatical forms underwent considerable changes. In OE all the forms which can be included into morphological paradigms were synthetic. In ME, Early NE, grammatical forms could also be built in the analytical way, with the help of auxiliary words. The proportion of synthetic forms in the language has become very small, for in the meantime many of the old synthetic forms have been lost and no new synthetic forms have developed.

In the synthetic forms of the ME, Early NE periods, few as those forms were, the means of form-building were the same as before: inflections, sound interchanges and suppletion; only prefixation, namely the prefix ge-, which was commonly used in OE to mark Participle II, went out of use in Late ME (instances of Participle II with the prefix ge- (from OE ge-) are still found in Chaucer's time. Suppletive form-building, as before, was confined to a few words, mostly surviving from OE and even earlier periods. Sound interchanges were not productive, though they did not die out: they still occurred in many verbs, some adjectives and nouns; moreover, a number of new interchanges arose in Early ME in some ups of weak verbs. Nevertheless, their application in the language, and their weight among other means was generally reduced.

Inflections - or grammatical suffixes and endings - continued to be used in all the inflected "changeable" parts of speech. It is notable, however, that as compared with the OE period they became less varied. As mentioned before the OE period of history has been described as a period of "full endings", ME - as a period of "leveled endings" and NE - as a period of "lost endings" (H. Sweet). In OE there existed a variety of distinct endings differing in consonants as well as in vowels. In ME all the vowels in the endings were reduced to the neutral [a] and many consonants were leveled under -n or dropped. The process of leveling besides phonetic weakening, implies replacement of inflections by analogy, e.g. -(e)s as a marker of pi forms of nouns displaced the endings -(e)n and -e. In the transition to NE most of the grammatical endings were dropped.

Nevertheless, these definitions of the state of inflections in the three main historical periods are not quite precise. It is known that the weakening and dropping of endings began a long time before - in Early OE and even in PG; on the other hand, some of the old grammatical endings have survived to this day.

The analytical way of form-building was a new device, which developed in Late OE and ME and came to occupy a most important place in the grammatical system. Analytical forms developed from free word groups (phrases, syntactical constructions). The first component of these phrases gradually weakened or even lost its lexical meaning and turned into a grammatical marker, while the second component retained its lexical meaning and acquired a new grammatical value in the compound form. Cf, e. g. the meaning and function of the verb to have in OE he h?fde ?a 'he had them (the prisoners)', Hie him ofsl?gene h?fdon 'they had him killed' or, perhaps, 'they had killed him'. Hie h?fdon ofergan Eastengle 'they had overspread East Anglian territory'. In the first sentence have denotes possession, in the second, the meaning of possession is weakened, in the third, it is probably lost and does not differ from the meaning of have in the translation of the sentence into ME. The auxiliary verb have and the form of Part. II are the grammatical markers of the Perfect; the lexical meaning is conveyed by the root-morpheme of the participle. The growth of analytical grammatical forms from free word phrases belongs partly to historical morphology and partly to syntax, for they are instances of transition from the syntactical to the morphological level.

Analytical form-building was not equally productive in all the parts of speech: it has transformed the morphology of the verb but has not affected the noun.

The main direction of development for the nominal parts of speech in all the periods of history can be defined as morphological simplification, Simplifying changes began in prehistoric, PG times. They continued at a slow rate during the OE period and were intensified in Early ME. The period between c. 1000 and 1300 has been called an "age of great changes" (A.Baugh), for it witnessed one of the greatest events in the history of English grammar: the decline and transformation of the nominal morphological system. Some nominal categories were lost Gender and Case in adjectives. Gender in nouns; the number of forms distinguished in the surviving categories was reduced - cases in nouns and noun-pronouns, numbers in personal pronouns. Morphological division into types of declension practically disappeared. In Late ME the adjective lost the last vestiges of the old paradigm: the distinction of number and the distinction of weak and strong forms. Already at the time of Chaucer, and certainly by the age of Caxton the English nominal system was very much like modern, not only in its general pattern but also in minor details. The evolution of the verb system was a far more complicated process-it cannot be described in terms of one general trend. On the one hand, the decay of inflectional endings affected the verb system, though to a lesser extent than the nominal system. The simplification and leveling of forms made the verb conjugation more regular and uniform; the OE morphological classification of verbs was practically broken up. On the other hand, the paradigm of the verb grew, as new grammatical forms and distinctions came into being. The number of verbal grammatical categories increased, as did the number of forms within the categories. The verb acquired the categories of Voice, Time Correlation or Phase and Aspect. Within the category of Tense there developed a new form - the Future Tense; in the category of Mood there arose new forms of the Subjunctive. These changes involved the non-finite forms too, for the infinitive and the participle, having lost many nominal features, developed verbal features: they acquired new analytical forms and new categories like the finite verb. It is noteworthy that, unlike the changes in the nominal system, the new developments in the verb system were not limited to a short span of two or three hundred years. They extended over a long period: from Late OE till Late NE. Even in the age of Shakespeare the verb system was in some respects different from that of ME and many changes were still underway.

Other important events in the history of English grammar were the changes in syntax, which were associated with the transformation of English morphology but at the same time displayed their own specific tendencies and directions. The main changes at the syntactical level were: the rise of new syntactic patterns of the word phrase and the sentence; the growth of predicative constructions; the development of the complex sentences and of diverse means of connecting clauses. Syntactic changes are mostly observable in Late ME and in NE, in periods of literary efflorescence.

The noun. Decay of Noun Declensions in Early Middle English

The OE noun had the grammatical categories of Number and Case which were formally distinguished in an elaborate system of declensions. However, homonymous forms in the OE noun paradigms neutralised some of the grammatical oppositions; similar endings employed in different declensions - as well as the influence of some types upon other types - disrupted the grouping of nouns into morphological classes.

Increased variation of the noun forms in the late 10th c. and especially in the 11th and 12th c. testifies to impending changes and to a strong tendency toward a re-arrangement and simplification of the declensions. The number of variants of grammatical forms in the 11th and 12th c. was twice as high as in the preceding centuries. Among the variant forms there were direct descendants of OE forms with phonetically weakened endings (the so-called "historical forms") and also numerous analogical forms taken over from other parts of the same paradigms and from more influential morphological classes. The new variants of grammatical forms obliterated the distinction between the forms within the paradigms and the differences between the declensions, e.g.. Early ME fisshes and bootes, direct descendants of the OE Nom. and Acc. pl of Masc. a-stems fiscas, batas were used, as before, in the position of these cases and could also be used as variant forms of other cases Gen. and Dat. pi alongside the historical forms fisshe, hoofs. (OE Gen. pl. fisca, bвta) and fischen, booten or fisshe, boots (OE Dat. pl fiscum, batum); (NE fish, boat). As long as all these variants co-existed, it was possible to mark a form more precisely by using a variant with a fuller ending, but when some of the variants went out of use and the non-distinctive, levelled variants prevailed, many forms fell together. Thus after passing through the "variation stage" many formal oppositions were lost. The most numerous OE morphological classes of nouns were a-stems, o-stems and n-stems. Even in Late OE the endings used in these types were added by analogy to other kinds of nouns, especially if they belonged to the same gender. That is how the noun declensions tended to be re-arranged on the basis of gender.

The decline of the OE declension system lasted over three hundred years and revealed considerable dialectal differences. It started in the North of England and gradually spread southwards. The decay of inflectional endings in the Northern dialects began as early as the 10th c. and was virtually completed in the 11th; in the Midlands the process extended over the 12th c., while in the Southern dialects it lasted till the end of the 13th (in the dialect of Kent, the old inflectional forms were partly preserved even in the 14th c.).

The dialects differed not only in the chronology but also in the nature of changes. The Southern dialects rearranged and simplified the noun declensions on the basis of stem and gender distinctions. In Early ME they employed only four markers -es, -en, -e, and the root-vowel interchange plus the bare stem (the "zero "-inflection) but distinguished, with the help of these devices, several paradigms. Masc. and Neut. nouns had two declensions, weak and strong, with certain differences between the genders in the latter: Masc. nouns took the ending -es in the Nom., Acc. pl, while Neut. nouns had variant forms: Masc. fishes Neut. land/lande/landes. Most Fem. nouns belonged to the weak declension and were declined like weak Masc. and Neut. nouns. The root-stem declension, as before, had mutated vowels in some forms' and many variant forms which showed that the vowel interchange was becoming a marker of number rather than case.

In the Midland and Northern dialects the system of declension was much simpler. In fact, there was only one major type of declension and a few traces of other types. The majority of nouns took the endings of OE Masc. a-stems: -(e)s in the Gen. sg (from OE -es), -(e)s in the pi irrespective of case (from OE -as: Nom. and Acc. sg, which had extended to other cases).

A small group of nouns, former root-stems, employed a root-vowel interchange to distinguish the forms of number. Survivals of other OE declensions were rare and should be treated rather as exceptions than as separate paradigms. Thus several former Neut. a-stems descending from long-stemmed nouns could build their plurals with or without the ending -(e)s; sg hors -- pl hors or horses, some nouns retained weak forms with the ending -en alongside new forms in -es; some former Fem. nouns and some names of relations occur in the Gen. case without -(e)s like OE Fem. nouns, e. g. my fader soule, 'my father's soul'; In hope to standen in his lady grace 'In the hope of standing in his lady's grace' (Chaucer) though the latter can be regarded as a set phrase.

In Late ME, when the Southern traits were replaced by Central and Northern traits in the dialect of London, this pattern of noun declensions prevailed in literary English. The declension of nouns in the age of Chaucer, in its main features, was the same as in ME. The simplification of noun morphology was on the whole completed. Most nouns distinguished two forms: the basic form (with the "zero" ending) and the form in -(e)s. The nouns originally descending from other types of declensions for the most part had joined this major type, which had developed from Masc. a-stems.

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree. The OE Gender, being a classifying feature (and not a grammatical category proper) disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. (Division into genders played a certain role in the decay of the OE declension system: in Late OE and Early ME nouns were grouped into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of stems.

In the 11th and 12th c. the gender of nouns was deprived of its main formal support the weakened and leveled endings of adjectives and adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender. Semantically gender was associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore: the formal grouping into genders was smoothly and naturally superseded by a semantic division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.

In Chaucer's time gender is a lexical category, like in ME: nouns are referred to as "he" and "she" if they denote human beings, e. g She wolde wepe, if that she saw a mous. Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde (Chaucer) "She" points here to a woman while "it" replaces the noun mous, which in OE was Fem. ('She would weep, if she saw a mouse caught in a trap, if it was dead or it bled.') (Sh.)

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes in Early ME. The number of cases in the noun paradigm was reduced from four (distinguished in OE) to two in Late ME. The syncretism of cases was a slow process which went on step by step. As shown above even in OE the forms of the Nom. and Ace. were not distinguished in the pi, and in some classes they coincided also in the sg. In Early ME they fell together in both numbers.

In the strong declension the Dat. was sometimes marked by -e in the Southern dialects, though not in the North or in the Midlands; the form without the ending soon prevailed in all areas, and three OE cases, Nom., Acc. and Dat. fell together. Henceforth they can be called the Common case, as in present-day English.

Only the Gen. case was kept separate from the other forms, with more explicit formal distinctions in the singular than in the pi. In the 14th c. the ending -es of the Gen. sg had become almost universal, there being only several exceptions nouns which were preferably used in the uninflected form (names of relationships terminating in -r, some proper names, and some nouns in stereotyped phrases). In the pl the Gen. case had no special marker it was not distinguished from the Comm. case as the ending -(e)s through analogy, had extended to the Gen. either from the Comm. case pi or, perhaps, from the Gen. sg. This ending was generalised in the Northern dialects and in the Midlands (a survival of the OE Gen. pl form in -ena, ME -en(e), was used in Early ME only in the Southern districts). The formal distinction between cases in the pi was lost, except in the nouns which did not take -(e)s in the pl. Several nouns with a weak plural form in -en or with a vowel interchange, such as oxen and men, added the marker of the Gen. case -es to these forms: oxenes, mennes. In the 17th and 18th c. a new graphic marker of the Gen. case came into use: the apostrophe e. g. man's, children's: this device could be employed only in writing; in oral speech the forms remained homonymous.

The reduction in the number of cases was linked up with a change in the meanings and functions of the surviving forms. The Comm. case, which resulted from the fusion of three OE cases assumed all the functions of the former Nom., Acc., Dat. and also some functions of the Gen. The ME Comm. case had a very general meaning, which was made more specific by the context: prepositions, the meaning of the verb-predicate, the word order. With the help of these means it could express various meanings formerly belonging to different cases. The following passages taken from three translations of the Bible give a general idea of the transition; they show how the OE Gen. Dat. cases were replaced in ME, Early NE by prepositional phrases with the noun in the Comm. case. OE translation of the Gospels (10th c.) Eadige synd ?a gastlican ?earfan, for?am hyra ys heofena rice. (Gen.) Wyclifs translation (late 14th c. Blessed be the pore in spirit, for the kingdom in heuenes is heren. King James' Bible (17th c. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The replacement of the Dat. by prepositional phrases had been well prepared by its wide use in OE as a case commonly governed by prepositions.

The main function of the Ace, case to present the direct object was fulfilled in ME by the Comm. case; the noun was placed next to the verb, or else its relations with the predicate were apparent from the meaning of the transitive verb and the noun, e. g. He knew the tavernes well in every town. For catel hadde they ynogh and rente (Chaucer) ('He knew well the taverns in every town for they had enough wealth and income'.)

The history of the Gen. case requires special consideration. Though it survived as a distinct form, its use became more limited: unlike OE it could not be employed in the function of an object to a verb or to an adjective. In ME the Gen. case is used only attributively, to modify a noun, but even in this function it has a rival prepositional phrases, above all the phrases with the preposition of. The practice to express genitival relations by the of-phrase goes back to OE. It is not uncommon in ?lfric's writings (10th c). but its regular use instead of the inflectional Gen. does not become established until the 12th c. The use of the of-phrase grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th c. In some texts there appears a certain differentiation between the synonyms: the inflectional Gen. is preferred with animate nouns, while the of-phrase is more widely used with inanimate ones. Usage varies, as can be seen from the following examples from Chaucer: Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre ('He was very worthy in his lord's campaigns')

He had maad ful many a mariage of yonge wommen ('He made many marriages of young women') And specially, from every shires ende, Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende.

('And especially from the end of every shire of England they went to Canterbury')

Various theories have been advanced to account for the restricted use of the Gen. case, particularly for the preference of the inflectional Gen. with "personal" nouns. It has been suggested that the tendency to use the inflectional Gen. with names of persons is a continuation of an old tradition pertaining to word order. It has been noticed that the original distinction between the use of the Gen. with different kind of nouns was not in form but in position. The Gen. of "personal" nouns was placed before the governing noun, while the Gen. of other nouns was placed after it. The post-positive Gen. was later replaced by the of-phrase with the result that the of-phrase came to be preferred with inanimate nouns and the inflectional Gen. with personal (animate) ones. Another theory attributes the wider use of the inflectional Gen. with animate nouns to the influence of a specific possessive construction containing a possessive pronoun: the painter'ys name, where 'ys is regarded as a shortened form of his "the painter his name". It is assumed that the frequent use of these phrases may have reinforced the inflectional Gen., which could take the ending -is, -ys alongside -es and thus resembled the phrase with the pronoun his, in which the initial [h] could be dropped.

It may be added that the semantic differentiation between the prepositional phrase and the s'-Gen. became more precise in the New period, each acquiring its own set of meanings, with only a few overlapping spheres. (It has been noticed, that in present-day English the frequency of the 's-Gen. is growing again at the expense of the of-phrase.)

The other grammatical category of the noun. Number proved to be the most stable of all the nominal categories. The noun preserved the formal distinction of two numbers through all the historical periods. Increased variation in Early ME did not obliterate number distinctions. On the contrary, it showed that more uniform markers of the pl spread by analogy to different morphological classes of nouns, and thus strengthened the formal differentiation of number. The pl forms in ME show obvious traces of numerous OE noun declensions. Some of these traces have survived in later periods. In Late ME the ending -es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the pl.

In Early NE it extended to, more nouns to the new words of the growing English vocabulary and to many words, which built their plural in a different way in ME or employed -es as one of the variant endings. The pi ending -es (as well as the ending -es of the Gen. case) underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables. The following examples show the development of the ME pl inflection -es in Early NE under different phonetic conditions.

The ME pl ending -en, used as a variant marker with some nouns (and as the main marker in the weak declension in the Southern dialects) lost its former productivity, so that in Standard ME it is found only in oxen, brethern, and children. (The two latter words originally did not belong to the weak declension: OE bro?or, a-stem, built its plural by means of a root-vowel interchange; OE cild, took the ending -ru: cild--cildru; -en was added to the old forms of the pl in ME; both words have two markers of the pl.). The small group of ME nouns with homonymous forms of number (ME deer, hors, thing,) has been further reduced to three "exceptions" in ME: deer, sheep and swine. The group of former root-stems has survived only as exceptions: man, tooth and the like. Not all irregular forms in ME are traces of OE declensions; forms like data, nuclei, antennae have come from other languages together with the borrowed words.

It follows that the majority of English nouns have preserved and even reinforced the formal distinction of Number in the Comm. case. Meanwhile they have practically lost these distinctions in the Gen. case, for Gen. has a distinct form in the pi. only with nouns whose pl ending is not -es.

Despite the regular neutralisation of number distinctions in the Gen, case we can say that differentiation of Number in nouns has become More explicit and more precise. The functional load and the frequency of occurrence of the Comm. case are certainly much higher than those of the Gen.; therefore the regular formal distinction of Number in the Comm. case is more important than its neutralisation in the Gen. case.

The pronoun. Personal and Possessive Pronouns

Since personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, it might have been expected that their evolution would repeat the evolution of nouns-in reality it was in many respects different. The development of the same grammatical categories in nouns and pronouns was not alike. It differed in the rate and extent of changes, in the dates and geographical directions, though the morphology of pronouns, like the morphology of nouns, was simplified.

In Early ME the OE Fern. pronoun of the 3rd p. sg heo (related to all the other pronouns of the 3rd p. he, hit, hie} was replaced by a group of variants he, ho, see, sho, she: one of them she finally prevailed over the others. The new Fern. pronoun. Late ME she, is believed to have developed from the OE demonstrative pronoun of the Fern. gender seo (OE se, seo, ??t, NE that). It was first recorded in the North Eastern regions and gradually extended to other areas.

The replacement of OE heo by ME she is a good illustration of the mechanism of linguistic change and of the interaction of intra- and extra linguistic factors. Increased dialectal divergence in Early ME supplied 'the "raw material" for the change in the shape of co-existing variants or parallels. Out of these variants the language preserved the unambiguous form she, probably to avoid an homonymy clash, since the descendant of OE heo ME he coincided with the Masc. pronoun he. The need to discriminate between the two pronouns was an internal factor which determined the selection. The choice could also be favored by external historical conditions, for in later ME many Northern and East Midland features were incorporated in the London dialect, which became the basis of literary English. It should be noted, however, that the replacement was not complete, as the other forms of OE heo were preserved: hire/her, used in ME as the Obj. case and as a Poss. pronoun is a form of OE heo but not of its new substitute she; hers was derived from the form hire/her.

About the same time in the course of ME another important lexical replacement took place: the OE pronoun of the 3rd p. pl hie was replaced by the Scand. loan-word they [?ei]. Like the pronoun she, it came from the North-Eastern areas and was adopted by the mixed London dialect. This time the replacement was more complete: they ousted the Nom. case, OE hie, while them and their (corning from the same Scand. loan) replaced the oblique case forms: OE hem and heora. The two sets of forms coming from they and hie occur side by side in Late ME texts, e. g.: That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. ('Who has helped them when they were sick.') It is noteworthy that these two replacements broke up the genetic ties between the pronouns of the 3rd p.: in OE they were all obvious derivatives of one pronominal root with the initial [h]: he, heo, hit, hie. The Late ME (as well as the NE) pronouns of the 3rd p. are separate words with no genetic ties whatever: he, she, it, they (it is a direct descendant of OE hit with [h] lost).

One more replacement was made in the set of personal pronouns at a later date in the 17th or 18th c. Beginning with the 15th c. the pi forms of the 2nd p. ye, you, your were applied more and more generally to individuals. In Shakespeare's time the pi. forms of the 2nd p. were widely used as equivalents of thou, thee, thine. Later thou became obsolete in Standard English. (Nowadays thou is found only in poetry, in religious discourse and in some dialects.) Cf. the free interchange of you and thou in Shakespeare's sonnets. But if thou live, remember'd not to be. Die single, and thine image dies with thee. Or I shall live your epitaph to make. Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.