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rTNTT 4 CHANGES IN G U M M A R

Structure

Objectives
Introduction
Changes in old English
4.2.1 The Noun
4.2.2 Adjectives in old English
4.2.3 The Verb
4.2.4 Grammatical Gender
4.2.5 Articles and Delnonstratives
4.2.6 Interrogatives
4.2.7 The Indefiniteq - Pronouns
4.2.8 TheAdverb
Graininatical Changes in Middle English
4.3.1 Dccay of l~lfleciionalElldings
4.3.2 The Pronoun
4.3.3 Participles
4.3.4 The Loss olGranunatica1 Gender
Word-order
Granlmatical Changes in Modern English
4.5.1 The Noun
4.5.2 Adjectives and Adverbs
4.5.3 The Pronoun
4.5.4 Verbs
4.5.5 The Importance of Prepositio~ls
4.5.6 Sllall and Will
Major Eighteenth Century Granlinarians
Let Us Sun1 Up
Key Words
Questiolls

4.0 OBJECTIVES

In the previous unit, we had becn priil~nrilyconcerned with the word as an isolated
- unit. Now, we shall undertake the study of the sentence - that is syntax, which
cxamines the ways in which words nlay be combined, and the relationships that exist
between the words in combination.

Again, we wish to infoim you, that you need to be aware of the broad changes; the
details that we have given you are merely examples. You don't have to learn these
examples.

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4.1 INTRODUCTION

Changes in grammar have not proceeded as dramatically as changes in sound and

spelling. Though fairly extensive changes have taken place, a core system of
grammatical rules and $nciples hqve remained unchanged though the centuries, It
will be our attempt in this section to trace the changes in the English graminar which
have happened sinde Old English times.
 A History of English Changes in English grammar have prcceedcd mainly in two ways through addition
Language of new elements and through the loss of existiizg elements. Since the latter is more
extensive than the former we will deal with it first.

It is interesting to note the Old English was an inflectio~zallanguage. Inflectional

languages fall into two classes: synthetic and analytic. A synthetic language 1s one
that indicates the relation of words in a sentence largely by means of inflections. In
the case of Indo-European languages these inosl commonly took the form of endings
on nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs. The Latin sentence 'Nero interficit
Agrippinain (Nero Killed Agrippina) would still mean the same if the words are
arranged in any other order (Agrippinam interfcit Nero) because here Nero is the
form of the nominative and the -am ending of Agrippinam marlts the noun as
accusative no matter where it stands. 11-1Modem English, however, we do not have
distinctive forms for the subject and object, except in the possessive case and
pronouns. Instead we make use o f f xed word order. It makes a great deal of
difference i n Modem English whether we say Nero Killed Agvippi~zaor Agrbpina
Killed Nero. Languages that make extensive use of prepositions and auxiliary verbs
and depend upon word order to show relationship are known as analytic languages.
Thus while Modem English is an analytic language, Old English was a synthetic
language.

Based on the analytic - synthetic distinction, the major difference between Old
English and Modem English is the absence of inflections from nouns, pronouns,
adjectives and verbs. Their disappearance from the language will henceforth be
shown chronologically.

4.2 CHANGES IN OLD ENGLIlSH

4.2.1 The Noun

i The inflections of Old ~ n g l i s hnouns show distinctions of number and case. Old
I

English has four cases. The endings of the cases vary with different nouns, but they
i fall into certain broad categories or declensions. Thcre is a vowel declension and a
1 consonant declension, also called the strong and weak declension, according to

1 whether the stem ended (in Germanic) in a vowel or a consonant. The stems of nouns '

belonging to the voweI declension ended in one of the four vowels: a, o, i or u. The
nature of inflectioils in Old English a can be gathered from two examples of strong
I declension and one of weak declension: stiilz (stone), a masculine a-stem; gieju
(gift), a feminine-- o-stern; and lzunta (hunter), a masculine consonant-stern. Forms
i are given for the four cases - nominative, genitive, dative and accusative:
I
I

:
I
[
'
Singular NOM.
GEN.
DAT.
A CC.
Sta'rr
st&-es
st&-e
sttin
gief - u
gief-e
gief-e
gief-e
hunt-a
hzint-an
hunt-an
hunt-an

[ Plural NOM. stdn-as gief-a hunt-an

I

/ GEN
DAT.
stZn-a
st&-zlm
giefla
gief-um
hzuzt-ena
hunt-um
I

ACC. sta'n-as gief-n hunt-an .

: 1

j*j
?: Number in Old English was also indi~atedthrough inflections. Case endings (like .
our 's for possessive) were very common. The Modem English word earl meaning
1. 1
'i
1L 42 nzan in Old English was spelled eorl and had the following folms. I
$1
I
 -S Plurals
Singular Plural Changes in
N (subject) eorl eorlas Grammar
G (possessive) eorles eorla
D (indirect object) edrle eurlum
A (direct object) eorl eorlas

The various vowels in the inflectional endings changed to e [a] in Middle English
and completely disappeared in Modern English. Thus the plural eorlas (two
syllables) became, eorles (two syllables) in Middle English and earls in Modern
English. Similarly eorles provided the model for our earl's. The other endings (e, a,
urn) just disappeared.

-en plurals

The plural form oxen is allnost the sole survivor of a large class of nouns that had the
following forms in Old English.

Singular Plural
N oxa - uxan
G oxan oxena
D uxan oxum
A oxan oxan

oxan changed to oxen in Middle English and has remained unchanged ever since. It
has clzildren, brethren to keep it company.

Plurals with zero endings

Another group of nouns in Modern English add nothing at all in the plural:

one deer two deer

one sheep two sheep

The plural deer and sheep came directly from Old English:

Singular Plural
.N dZor &or
G dEores dgora
D de'ore cle'orum
A de'or cEor

Plural with Vowel Change

Another group of nouns in Modem English includes those with a changed vowel
within the word, rather than an inflectional ending:

tooth-teeth mouse-mice
goose-geese man-men
joo t-jeet louse-lice

In Old English such words followed this pattern

Singular Plural
N f5t fe't
G fztes fo'ta 43
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 Plurals ending in-ves

The change of f to v in words like wolf- wol~~es/ wulf-wulvz goes back to Old
English. In Old English writing the letter v was not used hut the sound [vj existed. In
Old English 8remained fl at the beginning or end of a word - Cflod-flood, wulf-
~013. But when it came inside a word and there were voiced soullds on both sides of
it like [I] and [a] as in wulfas, it became voiced to [v].The letter v came into use only
in the Middle English period. Words like knife, thief.' loaffunction like wag,' ~ ~ ( f c ,
1euJI halJl shelf and had both the [v] and ff] sounds but they picked up the - es [z
]
ending later.

4.2.2 Adjective in Old English

An important feature of Old English is a two-fold declension of the adjective: one a

strong declension (used with nouns when not accolnpanied by a definite article or
similar word such as a demonstrative or possessive pronoun) and a weak cleclcnsion,
used when the noun is preceded by such a word. Thus we have in Old Ellglish goil
rnann (good man) but se gzda mann (the good man). The forms given below are
those of the nominative singular in the strong and weak declension:

Singular
Strong Declension Weak Declension
Masc. Fem. Neut. Mac. F&n. Neut.
N god g6d g6d gSd-a gZd-e g'bd-e
G g6d-es gad-re giid-es g5d-an g8d-an gad-e
D gEd-urn g'od-re gBd-um gSd-an g6d-an g'od-an
A g6d-ne g5d-e gzd g8d-an g'od-an g'od-e
I g6d-e gad-e

Plural
N g5d-e g8d-a gzd g5d-an
G g5d-ra gSd-ra gi3d-ra g6d-ena/g'od-ra
D g6d-urn g8d-urn g5d-urn giid-um
A g5d-e g5d-a gtid gSd-an

This elaborated pattern of inflexions in Old English adjectives is strikingly absei~l

from Modem English and its elimination has served to make the English language
more simplified and accessible.

The conlparatives of adjectives was foimed by suffixing -ra as in lzeard~*n(harder)

and the superlatives by suffixing -ost as in heardost (hardest). A few adjectives had a
modified -iru, -ist in the comparative and -est in the superlative-e.g. ald (old), eldl*n
(elder), yldest (eldest). A few others had conlparatives and superlatives from a
different root f r ~ m
that of the positive- god (good) betra (better) betst (best).
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4.2.3 The Verb

Old English distinguished only two simple tenses by inflection- a present and a past
tense . St recognised the indicative, subjunctive and imperative modes and had the
usual two numbers and three persons.

A peculiar feature of the Germanic 1anguages.was the division of the verb in two-
-
classes the weak and the strong- also known in Modem English as regular and
 irregular verbs. The strong verbs are those which like sing-satzg-sung indicate a Changes in
change of tense by a modification of their root vowel. In weak verbs such as wall- Grammar
wallced-wallt.cl the change is affected by the addition of an extra (dental) syllable.
Lilte Germanic, Old English has seven classes of strong verbs. Within these classes
however a perfectly regular sequence can be observed in the changes of the root
vowel. Old English strong verbs have four forms: the infinitjve, the preterite singular
(first and third person), the preterite plural and the past participle. The variations
with each class nlay be illustrated thus:

I dryan drive driif drifon (ge) drqen

I1 cebsan choose cEas curon coren
I11 helpan help healp hulpon holpen
IV beran bear b h&on horen
V sprecan speak spm spr&-on sprecen
VI faran fare, go fir fo'rolz faren
VII feallan fall JZoll fe'ollan feallen
The origin of the dental suffixes by which weak yerbs form their past tense and past
participle is strongly debated. However it is sufficient to note that a large number of
verbs formed their past tense by adding -ede -ode or-de to the present stem and their
past participle by adding -ed -od or -d:

Preterite Past Participle

frerntnan (to perJbrm) fiemede \ gefremed
lufian (to love) lufi~de gelufod
libban (to live) lifde gelifd
It is to be noted, however, that the weak conjugation has become the dominant one in
Modern English. Many strong verbs have passed over to this conjunc1;ion and
practically all new verbs added to the language are inflected in accordance with it.

The Verb Be

, The English verb most obviously in a class by itself is be. It alone has a uniquely
distinctive form for the subject I-that is, l a m . It alone has prcsent-tense forms- am,
are, is- that are totally unlilce the simple form-be. It alone has two past-tense forms -
was and -were-that are distributed in accordance with the person and number oS the
subject. Yet this complexity is simpliciy itself compared to the multiplicity of forms
in Old English:
Infinitive
be:beon, wesalz

Indicative
I anz :
thou art:
he is: I ic eom, be'o
pi? eart, hist
he' is, bip

YOU
they
J are: sindon, sind, sint; bzop; wesa
'I
P
was: was
were:. w4e, G o n

The Verbs Do and Go

The verb do (I do) has the irregular past-tense form did and past participle done. The
conlparabie iol,lls in Old English were clon (ic dZ), dyde, dEn.
A Iiistoty of English The verb go (Igo) has the irregular past-tense form went and past particple gone.
Language The comparable forms in Old English were gun(ic gii), Fode, g2n. Modem English
went did not develop from %de; it is the past tense of wencl. About five hundred
years ago it replaced yede and yode, the Middle English development of Old English
;ode .

The Modal Auxuliaries

The lvords which we now call modal auxiliaries- can-could, shall-should, will-
would, may-might, must, as well as the closely related ought-were once full-fledged
verbs. As late as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, for example, we find sentences l ~ k e
these

Of wodecraft we1 kozide he a1 the usage.

(woodcraft) (could = knew)
He wolde the see were kept for any thylg.
(would =wished) (sea) (protected).

The final [dl o r [t] in could, should would, tmigh't, must, ozlght is an authentic past-
tense suffix. It has, however, lost most of its relation to past time. We say, "I
could/should/must study tomoi-row". Second, since the meanings involved in thcse
words are highly subjective, it is just about impossible to keep these meanings stable.
W e say, "We must see that movie". Here inzist means: "We want to see that movie".

4.2.4 Grammatical Gender

One major difference between Old and Modem English is the [act that Old English
nouns were differentiated on grounds of gender. But gender of Old English nouns
was not dependent upon considerations of sex. Nouns designating males are often .
masculine and those indicating females are often feminine but those indicating
neuter objects are not necessarily neuter. St& (stone) is masculine, mzna fi~zoon)is
masculine but sunne (sun) is feminine as in German. Often gender in Old English is
quite illogical. Words like rn gden (girl), wif(wife), bearn (child, son) which we
would expect to be masculine or feminine are in fact neuter, while wifemanil
(woman) is masculine because the second element of the compound is masculine.
The gradual loss of grammatical gender and the resulting simplicity has become
one of the assets of the modern version of thc language.

4.2.5 Articles and Demonstratives

Old English possessed a fully inflected definite article which can be seen froin the
following Ionns.

Singular Plnral
Masc. Fern. Neut. All Genders
N -. sE se'o %at S;
G %s @Ere SES %3ra
D 2 gin %%re 3 Em %&m 1
A doone '63 %at ?ig
I 67,%on B F,55n

While the regular meaning of sZ, sZo,%atis 'the', the word in Old English actually is
a demonstrative pronoun and survives in the Modem English demonstrative thaL Its
pronominal character is also apparent from its frequent use in Middle English as a
relative pronoun (who, which, that) and as a personal pronoun ( h i she. 2tj.
 The indefinite articles a and an developed froin Old English $2 [a:~?].
In an Cha,nges in
unstressed position [a:n] 211 becomes [Zn] and before consonants [a]- for example Grammar
an abbot, a knight. Th'e purely phonetic arrangement by which an occurs before
vowels and a before consonants contiilues into Modern English.

The word this is the direct development of Old English his or $is. In a very strange
reversal of meaning bas the plural ofbis developed into Modern English those, the
plur.al of that. A new form fhese developed as the plural of&.

4.2.6 Interrogatives
The present day interrogatives who, whose, whom, what and why stem from various
Old English interrogative pronouns:
Masculine Neuter
N hw; (>who) hwzt (>what)
G h w z s (>whose) hwzs
D hwZm, hwZm (whom) hwZm, hwZm
A hwone hwzt
I hwi, 1 1 (>why)
~ hwi, 1 1 q

Thus why origiilally meant 'bj)means of what '. The interrogative whiclz developed
from Old English hwlic and wlzether from hwaeper meaning 'which ' or 'who of two'?
I

4.2.7 The Indefinites - Pronouns

The wide ranging Old English interrogatives pronouns -hwZ, htuaet, hwlic, h w ~ p e r
were also used as indefinite pronouns, most frequently with prefixes or coinbining
forms. 111ese indefinites have now disappeared. Compounds were made in Old
English with thing (aizytlzi~.rg,
everything, sonzething, nothing) initially spelled as two
words; indefinites were also based on hwZ, h n w hwilc coiilpounds with b 0 4 ~and
one developed in Middle or late Modern English-- anj)one,anybody, eevelyone,
eveuybody..
We had mentioned that changes in language proceed through loss of existing
elements and addition of new items. I-Iaving discussed the losses in the language, we
can now proceed to change through addition. New elements in the grammatical
system were introduced in the Old English period and came ffom Scandinavian and /
Danish. Borrowings from Scandinavian were not limited to only nouns, adjectives
and verbs; elements such as pronouns, adverbs, prepositions and even a part of the
verb to be which are not usually transfe~i-edfrom one language to another, came into
Old English from Scandinavian.

Pronouns
The present-day first person pronoun has the following eight fonns:

Singular Plural
I We
My, Mine Our, Ours
Me Us

'old English cl&rly indicates where these farms came from:

Singular Du a1 Plural
N ic wit we'
G 7niiz zincer iiser, iire
D l4Z unc 21S
A I I Z ~~ I ~~ ZZ ~incif,unc usic, us
A History ofEnglislr Old English shows distinctive fomls for not only all genders, pronouns and cases, bul
Lnnglinge also in preserving in addition to the ordinary numbers, singular arld plural, a set of
fonns for two people or two things. This dzral number was disappearing from the
pronoun even in Old English. Mine developed from rninin:, my developed after i1z71rlost
its final [n] in Middle English. At first my was used only before consonants and I ~ G Z
before vowels much like a and an are used today. In Modern English this purely
phonetic distribution was lost.

The present day second-person pronoun has the following forms

Singular . Plural
. You you
your, yours your, yours
YOU YOU

In addition the following are also used, thanks mainly to poetry

thou
thy, thine
thee

The current forms originate from Old English

Singular Dual Plural

N lb; git [yit] g'. [ye:]
G j'in iizcer Eo we].
D
A
Pz
pec,p
inc
incit, inc
i5lT
ZOW
ZO-OM)~C,
The dual forms disappeared as did the accusatives>ec and Zo~vic,while the history
of the rest of.the forms parallels that of the first person, including the division of rhe
genitive)% into tlzy and thinc on the lines of my and n~ine.You originally was only
plural and only on object form. It was not used for one person nor as a subject as it 1s
used today. With appropriate sound changes the early Modem English h n n s were:

Singular Plural
thou Ye
thy, thine your, yours
thee Y4u
The third person forms in Modem English are :

Singular Plural
he she it they
his, herhers its their, theirs
him her it thenz
There are some differences between these fonns and their Old English counterparts:

Singular Plural
Masc. Fern. Neuter All Genders

N he' fie) , he'o, hi2 hit fit) hie, h: hFo

(she)
G his Iziere, hire, his hiera,heo7.n
, , D him ' hiere, hire him him, heonz
A hine hie, h i hit hTe, hl: he'o ,
 The masculine singular forms have survived almost intact with the loss of the Changes in
accusative form hine. Had the plural forms of Old English survived we would now Grammar
say he or high instead of their and him or him instead of thein. The th- forms are a
contribution of the Scandinavians who invaded England in Old English times.

The self pronouns include

myself ourselves
yourself yourselves
himself
herself themselves
itself

These pronouns and their present day use were pretty well established by Chaucer's
time. MyselJ yourselJ: ourselves, yourselves are formed with a possessive pronoun
plus what appears to be a noun- as in "my very own self" or "our vely own selves".
Himselfand themselves are formed with an object pronoun and a modification of self
or selves. This reflects the Old English situation in which a noun or pronoun could be
followed by selJ; which took appropriate adjective endings. For example:
Ic me selfunz andwyrde
( I answered myself).

4.2.8 The Adverb

Adverbs are another item borrowed from the Scandinavians, The commonest suffix
in Old English that turned an adjective into an adverb was e- for example wrpd
(angry), wrade (angrily). The final e was however lost by the fourteenth centuty in
the transition fiom Middle to Modem English, The adjective and adverb thus became
,, identical as in hard.

A bat is hard
He swung hard at the ball,
The commonest present day suffix distinguishing an adverb from an adjective is -ly:
deep - deeply wid0 - widely
loud - loudly clear - clearly
-ly however originated from the Old English suffix lic
lic luf + Ilc = lujic (lovely)
fre'ond + lie =fi&ndlic (friendly)
To such an adjective, the adverbial e could be added:
frenodlic + e = fre'ondlice (in a, friendly manner):
In time the double suffix lice was freely attached to adjeotive:
sl& + lice = slawlice (slowly)
eornost + lice = eornostlice (earnsatly).

With the loss of the final ,e, lic and lice became identical and developed into Modern
English adjectival farm -ly and adverbial +.
lovely, friendly, homely
slowly, keenly, bravely,

4.3 GRAMATICAL CHANGES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH

This extensive survey of the grammatical structures of Old English prepares the way
forFurther discussions on the grammar in Middle English. The Middle English
period (1150-1500) was marked by momentous changes in the English language,
.,
 A ~ ~ r n 6,unglish
r V changes more extensive and fundamental than had taken place at any time before or
Language since. Some were the result of the Norman Conquest while others were a
continuation and logical culmination of tendencies that had begun in the Old English
period, The changes of this period affected both the vocabulary and the grammar of
I
the English language. The changes in vocabulary have already been discussed. The
changes in grammar reduced English from a highly inflected language to an analytic
TI i
one. At the beginning of this period English was a language which had to be learned
' :
like a foreign tongue; at the end of this period English has stepped into modernity.
1 i Changes in this period progressed mainly thorough the loss of such eleinents which
I
had been an intrinsic part of the language in the Old English period.
I \

:I
1t 4.3.1 Decay of Inflectional Endings
I
The major change in English grammar was a general reduction of inflectional
endings on nouns, adjectives and verbs. Endings on nouns, verbs, and adjectives
marking distinctions of number and case and often gender were so altered in
pronutlciation as to lose their distinctive form and hence their usefulness. An
important and early change was the change of final -m to -n i.e. in the dative plural
of nouns and adjectives. Thus godum became godun. Later this -n along with other -n
inflectional endings were dropped. At the same time vowels a, o, u, e in inflectional'
endings were all obscured to -e. As a result a number of originally distinct endings
such as a, u, e, an, urn were reduced to a uniform -e, and such grammatical
distinctions as they formerly expressed were no longer conveyed.

A few examples of common nouns declension in Old English will show how
extensively inflectional endings were disturbed. For example, the eight forms of starz
(stone) in Chaucer's English were reduced to three -stan, -vtanes and stun. The only
distinctive termination was the -s of the possessive singular and nominative and
accusative plural. Because these two cases of the plural were those most frequently
used, the -s came to be thought of as a sign of the plural and was extended to all
plural fonns. In early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural
remained fairly distinctive: the -s and -es from the strong declension and the -en (as
in oxen) from the weak declension. Though the -en form remained popular in the
south until the thirteenth century, by the fourteenth century-s was accepted all over
I

England as the universal plural marker.

With regard to the adjective, the decay of inflections had an even greater effect. The
fornl of the nominative singular was extended to all cases of the singular and that of
the nominative plural to all cases of the plural, both in the strong and weak
declension. Thus the five singular and plural fomis of the Old English weak
adjective declension (a, e, an, ena and urn) were reduced to a single form ending -e
with gender and number distinctions completely obliterated.

In the general levelling to -e of ~~nstressed

vowels the Old English comparative . .
endings -ra became -re and later -er; the superlqtive suffixes -ost and -est fell
together as -est. If the root vowel of a word was long (swete) it was shortened before
these endings- swetter, s~vettest,though the analogy of the positive form as in the
example cited above, frequently caused the original length to be restored in the
comparative and superlative forms.

11,1 Among verbs apart from the decay of inflections and weakening of endings in
L
accordance with the general tendency, the principle change in the Middle English
period was a steady depletion in the number of strong verbs and a corresponding
increase in the number of weak verbs. Nearly one third of Old English strong verbs
died out in the Middle English period. About ninety have no written record after
50 1150 and about thirty became obsolete during the Middle English period. Today
more than half of the Old English strong verbs have disappeared completely from Changes in
standard language. Grammar

Some strong verbs became weak through the principle of analogy. At a time when
English was largely a language of the lower classes it was natural that many speakers
would apply the pattern of weak verbs to some which were historically strong. In the
thirteenth century this trend becomes clear in verbs like bow, brew, burn, climb, flee,
flow, help, mourn, row, step, walk, weep which were then undergoing change. By the
foul-teenth century no less than thirty two verbs apart from the ones mentioned above
show weak forms. By the fifteenth century this impulse had been checked. But in
some cases weak forms of strong verbs did not survive in standard speech (blowed
for blew, knowed for knew, teared for tore) while in the other cases both continued in
use (cleft-clove, crowed-crew, heaved-hot'?, sheared-shore).

But for some reason the past participle of strong verbs seems to have been more
tenacious than the past tense. In the verb beat, beaten has remained the standard
form while in a number of other verbs (cloven, hewn, laden, molten, nzown, sodden,
swollen) the strong participle is still used, especially as adjective.

When we subtract the verbs that have been lost completely and the eighty that have
become weak, there remain just sixty-eight of the Old English strong verbs in the
English language today. To these may be added the thirteen verbs (like strive, drive,
thrive, wear, spat) that are conjugated both ways or have kept one strong form.
Beside this considerable loss the number of new strong formations have been
negligible.

4.3.2 The Pronoun

The decay of inflectional endings and the simplification of the noun and adjective
made it less necessary to depend upon formal indications of gender, case and number
and to rely more upon juxtaposition, word order and preposition to make clear the
relation of words in a sentence. Among pronouns the loss was the greatest in the
demonstratives. Of the numerous forms se, s e o j a f the and that survived through
Middle to Modern English. All the other forms indicative of different gender,
number and case disappeared early in the Middle English period. The same was true
of the demonstrative)es, beos, )is (this). Everywhere (except the south) the neuter
formkis come to be used in early Middle English for all gender and cases of the
singular, while the forms of the nominative plural were similarly extended to all
cases of the plural appearing in Modem English as those and these.

In the personal pronoun the losses were not so great, I-Iere thew was greater need for
separate forms for different cases and genders and accordingly most of the
distinctions that existed in Old English were retained. However the dative and
accusative cases were combined under the dative (him, her (Ohenz). In the neuter the
form of the accusative (h)it became the general symbol.

One other general simplification is to be noted-- the loss of the dual number - wit,
git.

4.3.3 Participles

The endings of'the present participle varied from dialect to dialect- and(e) in the
North, .ende, ing(e) inthe Midlands, inde, ilzg(e) in the South. The -ing ending
which has prevailed in Modern English is from the Old English noun ending -ung as
in leornung ( learning), bodung ( re aching). Past participle might or might not have
<1
 A mlory of~wish the initial inflection i- [y] from Old English ge-. Though found in Chaucer, it was
Language later lost in may parts of England including the East Midland.

4.3.4 The Loss of Grammatical Gender

One of the consequences of the decay of inflections was the elimination of the
troublesome grammatical gender. The gender of Old English nouns was not always
determined by meaning. Sometimes it was in direct contradiction with meaning, eg.
woman was masculine while wife was neuter. But during the Middle English period
when all but a handful of nouns acquired the masculine nominative accusative plural
ending -es (-ps in Old English) coupled with the supplanting of se, bit$ and seo by
the, the support for grammatical gender was removed, Her,ceforth, the idea of sex
became the only factor determining the gender of English nouns.

4.4 WORD-ORDER

The I1fixi~g"of word-order is one of the most crucial developments in the History of
English Language. In Qld English, inflection dominated word-order, but today it
might be said without hesitation that word-order dominates inflection.

Of course, Qld English had word order ~ Q Q ,But because inflection still clearly
showed syntaotic relatianships, Old English word arder was able to fairly free and,
like Latin, words could be moved about for rhetorical purposes. This is not
impossibls today, but very difficult beoause what has always been the common order
of wgrds has now become regular and there is little room left for variation, 1
I

In Old Englieh, one could well h ~ v said

e se mann bohtepone hlaf: se mannpone hlaf
bohte or any such combination, the only difference lying in the emphasis conferred
on particular words by their being put in the front position, In Modern English we
say only what corresponds to the first of these sentences: The man bought the loaf:
because the subject must come before the verb, and object after it, in declarative
sentences, And if we wish to emphasize any particular ward, we usually have to
depend on spew of voi~e.Thus in Old Bnglish the syntactic relationships of subject
and object were expressad by inflection, and changes in the word order did not affect
them; today subject and abject are no longer shawn by inflection in nouns, and even
in pronouns though they have different farms for subject and object,

4,4 - G I E A M M G T I CC~HANGES IN MODERN ENGLISH

Gmmmatical changes in the Madern English period though important are less
spectacular than changes in the sound system, English grammar during the early
Modem period is marked mare by the survival of c~rtainfarms and usages, which
have since the* diqappeared, than by any fundamental developments. The most
important of these changes WB may review briefly,

4.5.1. The Noun

The only inflectional endings retained in the naun are those marking the plural and
. the possessive singulq. The -s plural has become so common that except for a few
nouns like sheep andfish or a few others like mice andfket, with mutated vowels, we
52 ' are scarcely conscious of any other form.
 4.5.2 Adjectives and Adverbs Changes in
Grammar
Because the adjective had already lost all its endings, the chief interest of this part ot
speech in the Modern Period is in the forms of the comparative and superlative
degrees. The two methods commonly used to form the comparative and superlative
are the endings -er and -est along with the adverbs more and most. Double
or superlative remained fairly common till early Modern English- more
fairer, most unkindest. The trend affecting the adjective in modem times has been
the gradual settling down of usage so that words with one syllable take -er and -est,
while most adjectives of two or more syllables take more and most- frt~gal,learned,
ci!l.<fill,farnous.

4.5.3 Tlie Pronoun

The sixteenth century saw the establishment of the personal pronoun in the form that
it has had since. In the attaining this f o ~ mthree changes were involved (a) the disuse
of thou, .thy, thee. In the thirteenth century thou, tlz-y,thee were used with familiar or
inferiors, while the plural forms ye, your, you were used as a mark of respect. By the
sixteenth century the singular forms had all but disappeared and ye, you, your
became the usual pronoun of direct address irrespective ofrank or intimacy. (b) the
substitution ofyou for ye as a nominative case. Originally a clear distinction was
maintained between the nominative ye and accusative.yotr. B ~ ibecause
t both forms
were so frequently unstressed they were often prono&ced Ije]. A tendency to
confuse the two appeared fairly early and from the fourteenth century onwards the
two f o ~ m were
s used quite indiscriminately until ye finally disappeared (c) the
introduction of its as the possessive it. The foimation of the new possessive neuter its
. was in some ways the most interesting development in the pronoun. The neuter
pronoun in Old English was kit, his, h i m hit which became hit, his, hit in Middle
English. In inst tressed positioil hit weakened to it at the beginning of the Modem
;period. It was the usual form for the subject and object. By the seventeenth century
its 11ad become the usual forin displacing his and it as a neuter possessive.

Finally inention has to be made of one more noteworthy development - the relative
and interrogative pronouns. Old English had no proper relative pronouns. It made
use of the definite articles (se, seo,.ju) which however had more de~nonstrative
force than relative. At the end of the Old English period the particlebe had become
the most usual relative pronoun, but in the early Middle English period its place was
taken by b a t (that). In the fifteenth century which begins to alternate with that. It
was not until the sixteenth century that the pronoun wlzo as a relative came into use
and remained in widespread use till the present day.

4.5.4 Verbs

Through Middle English the regular ending of the third person singular was -eth.
Chaucer for instance has telleth, giveth, saith, doth. In the fifteenth century, however,
folms with -s appear and by the end of the centu~yforms like tells, says, gives
predominate, though in some words the old usage remains h t h , hath. The -s ending
also appears in the third person plural by the end of the sixteenth c'entury in
expressions like Shakespeare's "troubled minds that wakes" flucrece) or "Whose
own hard dealing teaches rhe~nswpect the deed ofothms " in Merchant of Venice.

Many of the Middle Englisl.1 strong verbs were lost while many became weak. Those
that remained were subject to considerable alteration in the past tense and past
participle. Verbs like bids, crow, flay, dread, sprout, wade developed weak forms.
Conspicuous by their absence in early Modem English were progressive forms and 53
 ~h~~ of~ngliSh compound participle. The latter arose in the sixteenth century-- having spoken thw,
Language huving decided to make the attempt. An increase in the use of the progressive verb
forms is an important development of the eighteenth century. The forms to be and
I
the present participle are generally called progressive forms because their function is
to indicate an.action as being in progress at the time implied by the auxiliary- I sing,
1
i I do sing, I am singing. The wide extension in the use of the progressive forms is
i one of the most important development of the English verb in the Modern
i
! period. The expanded passive form, the so-called progressive passive was an even
1 later development, belonging to the very end of the eighteenth century- the house is
I being built, the man is being killed.

I The do-forms had important uses in interrogative (do you sing) and negative
sentences (Idon't sing). Most of the current contracted negative forms n 't appear in
I
I the seventeenth century. Won't came from wol(l) not, don't form do or does not, an 't
1 from am.(are, is) not. Contractions of auxiliary verbs occur somewhat earlier- it's

i
I
appears in the seventeenth century. Would becomes 'Id later becoming ' d which in
the eighteenth century came to be used for had also. Have was contracted to t e ,

Impersonal uses of the verb were common in early Modem English. Shakespearean
expressions like it dislikes (displeases) me; it yearns (grieves) me not illustrate the
i.
point.

4.5.5 The Importance of Prepositions

With the loss of all distinctive inflectional endings in the Middle English period
prepositions acquired an importance greater than they ever had in Old or Middle
English. They were needed to indicate precisely the grammatical relations which had
been served by inflections in earlier times.

4.5.6 ~ h a nand Will

In Old and Middle English will and shall expressed simple futurity though as a rule
they implied respectively obligation and volition. The present use of the words stems
from the rules of John Wallis who stated that simple hturity is expressed by shall in
the first person and by will in the second and third. Despite a century of vigorous
discussions the rules of distinction are not yet very clear. Charles Carpenter Frills
has pointed out that there.has been no change in the use of shall and will in the first
person from the Middle of the sixteenth century onwards, with will greatly I

predominating; with the second pwson the sixteenth century predominance of shall
has been reversed; similarly with the third person will has come to predominate over :
i
shall. I

1; 4.6 MAJOR EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GRAMMARIANS

A Survey of English grammar through the centuries will remain.incomplete without

the mention of the grammarians of the eighteenth century.'~hedesire to "refine".
c c f i ~"ascertain"
", the language had marked scholarLy efforts from the sixteenth
century onwards, Treatises on English grammar had appeared as early as the
sixteenth century and drew attention fiom authofs such as Ben Johnson and John
Milton. The eighteenth century grammarians set before themselves three tasks (a) to
codify the principles of the language and reduce it to rules (b) to settle disputed
- points and decide cases of divided usage (c) to point 'out common errors and thus
. 54 imprdvk the language. The considerations by which these questions were settled
were also three in number--reason, etymology and the example of Latin and Greek.

,. ..
Reason was commonly taken to mean consistency or as it was called analogy. The Changes in
third criteria--examples from classical languages-were not so commonly cited to Grammar
settle disputed points, because a feeling grew up during the eighteenth century that
there are more disadvantages than advantages in trying to fit English into the patterns
of Latin or Greek grammar.

4h.7 LET US SLIM UP

The introduction of new elements and the decay of existing ones in grammar, sound
and spelling as late as the eighteenth century shows that English is a living and
growing language. The overall movement is towards reducing items and also
standardizing them. For example, as one descends to modem English, inflection
loses syntactic scope and is reduced quantitatively. The language will continue to
change in the future, as it has in the past, albeit more slowly.

diphthongs a speech sound which is usually considered as one

distinctive vowel of a particular language but really involves
two vowels, with one gliding to the other e.g. my /mail

dialect a variety of a language spoken in one part of a counby

(regional dialect), or by people belonging to a particular
social class (social dialect), which is different in some
words, grammar and pronunciation fro& other forms of the
same language.

Inflecting language a language in which the form of a word changes to show a

change in meaning or grammatical function. Often there is
no clear distinction between the basic part of the word and
the part which shows a grammatical function such as tense. .

Analytic language a language in which word forms do not change, and in which
grammatical function are shown by word order and the use
of function words.

Synthetic language a language in which various affixes may be added to the

stem of a word to add to its meaning or to show its
grammatical function.

Declension a list of the case forms of a noun phrase in a particular

language.

Case,forms Nominative - that particular case form which is used to

mark the subject of a sentence. 4:

Genitive - the case which marks the possessor, such as Jon's

mother,

Dative - the case used to mark an indirect object

Accusative - the case used to mark the direct object, 55

A History of English Modal Auxiliary An auxiliary which expressed mood or modality. The
Language English modals are: can, could, must, will, might, etc.

4.9 QUESTIONS

1. Define Inflectional language and Synthetic language.

2. Write a summary of the unit in 200 words. Use one syntactic category as an
example to show the change from Old English onto Middle English and then
Modem English. /