LECTURE

Early New English Grammar and Vocabulary

1. Evolution of the Early New English Grammar

2. Borrowings as means of enriching vocabulary in Early New English

1. Evolution of the Early New English Grammar

The Noun in Early New English .
The process of the simplification of the system of noun declension that was
manifest in Middle English continued at the beginning of the New English period.
Morphological classification of nouns
In Old English, we could speak of many types of consonant and vowel
declensions, the a-, n- and root-stem being principal among them. In Middle
English, we observe only these three declensions: a-stem, n-stem, root-stem. In
New English, we do not find different declensions, as the overwhelming majority
of nouns is declined in accordance with the original a-stem declension masculine,
the endings of the plural form -es and. the Possessive -s being traced to the endings
of the original a-stem declension masculine, i.e.:
Old English Middle English
Nominative & Accusative Common Plural
Plural ending -as ending -es
Genitive Singular Genitive Singular
ending -es ending -s
Of the original n-stem and root-stem declensions we have in New English
but isolated forms, generally referred to in modern grammar books as exceptions,
or irregular noun forms.
Origin of modern irregular noun forms
All modern irregular noun forms can be subdivided into several groups
according to their origin:
  nouns going back to the original a-stem declension, neuter gender,
which had no ending in the nominative and accusative plural even in Old English,
such as:
sheep — sheep (OE scēap — scēap)
deer — deer (OE dēor — dēor)
 some nouns of the n-stem declension preserving their plural form,
such as:
ox — oxen (OE oxa — oxan)
 the original s-stem declension word
child — children (Old English cild — cildra)
In Middle English, the final vowel was neutralised and the ending -n added
on analogy with the nouns of the original n-stem declension. This shows that the
power of the n-stem declension was at the time still relatively strong.
 remnants of the original root-stem declension, such as:
foot — feet (OE fōt — fēt)
tooth — teeth (OE tōð — tēð)
 "foreign plurals" — words borrowed in Early New English from
Latin. These words were borrowed by learned people from scientific books who
alone used them, trying to preserve their original form and not attempting to adapt
them to their native language. Among such words are:
datum — data, automaton — automata, axis — axes, etc.
It should be noted that when in the course of further history these words
entered the language of the whole people, they tended to a regular plural ending,
which gave rise to such doublets as:
Molecula — moleculae and moleculas,
formula — formulae and formulas,
antenna — antennae and antennas,
the irregular form being reserved for the scientific style.
 Grammatical categories
The category of gender is formal, traditional already in Old English; in
Middle English and New English nouns have no category of gender.
The category of number is preserved, manifesting the difference between
singular and plural forms.
The category of case, which underwent reduction from four to two forms in
ME, in New English contains the same number of case-forms as in Middle
English, but the difference is the number of the nouns used in the Genitive (or
Possessive) case – mainly living beings, and the meaning – mainly the quality or
the person who possesses something, e.g.
the boy's book; a women's magazine; a two miles' walk.
Inanimate nouns are not so common: the river's bank; the razor's edge.
In Modern English, however, we observe a gradual spreading of the ending -
s of the Possessive case to nouns denoting inanimate things, especially certain
geographical notions, such cases as England's prime minister being the norm,
especially in political style.
The adjective
In New English what remained of the declension in Middle English
disappeared completely and now we have the uninflected form for the adjective
used for all purposes for which in Old English there existed a complicated
adjectival paradigm with two number-forms, five case-forms, three gender-forms,
and two declensions.
All grammatical categories and declensions in New English disappeared.
The adjective acquired its present-day qualities.
The degrees of comparison of the adjective were formed by means of
the suffixes –er and –est, vowel mutation which was characteristic of some of them
was almost lost.
The forms elder/older, eldest/oldest and further/farther, furthest/farthest are
distinguished in use. So older forms elder, eldest are used to denote relations
within a family and further, furthest are used in relation to time whereas farther,
farthest to distance.
The tendency to the unification of the general norm sometimes brings to the
general rule even those adjectives the comparatives and superlatives of which were
traditionally in a suppletive way, e.g., the littlest doubts, worser.
The new way of forming the degrees of comparison that appeared in Middle
English – that is, analytically, by placing the adverb more and most before the
adjective comes into practice. The rule that this new form is to be used only with
polysyllabic and a limited number of bisyllabic adjectives was not yet established,
e.g., more deep, most sharp.
Double comparatives and superlatives – the instances when the adjective
with a suffix is preceded by more/most are also found, e.g. more wider, the most
unkindest.
The Pronoun
Changes in the system of pronouns are not very numerous, yet worth special
attention. Three changes in pronouns were involved: (1) the disuse of thou,
thy, thee; (2) the substitution of you for ye as a nominative case; (3) and the
introduction of its as the possessive of it.
(1) In the earliest period of English, the distinction between thou and ye was
simply one of number; thou was the singular and ye the plural form for the second
person pronoun. In time, however, a quite different distinction grew up. In the
thirteenth century, the singular forms (thou, thy, thee) were used among familiars
and in addressing children or persons of inferior rank, while the plural forms (ye,
your, you) began to be used as a mark of respect in addressing a superior.
By the sixteenth century the singular forms had disappeared and the plural
forms of the 2nd person – ye, you, your – were applied more and more generally to
individuals irrespective of rank or intimacy. (Nowadays thou is found only in
poetry, in religious discourse, and some dialects.)
 In Shakespeare’s time, the plural forms of the 2 nd person were widely
used as equivalents of thou, thee, thine, e.g., there was the free interchange of you
and thou in Shakespeare’s sonnets (thine image, your epitaph).
(2) In Early New English the syncretism of cases entered a new phase: the
Nominative case began to merge with the Objective case. Originally a clear
distinction was made between the nominative ye and the objective you. But
because both forms are so frequently unstressed, they were often pronounced alike
[jə] A tendency to confuse the nominative and the accusative forms can be
observed fairly early, and in the fourteenth century, you began to be used as a
nominative. By a similar substitution ye appears in the following century for the
objective case, and from this time on the two forms seem to have been used pretty
indiscriminately until ye finally disappeared.
(3) In some ways the most interesting development in the pronoun at this
time was the formation of new possessive neuter, its. As we have seen above, the
neuter pronoun in Old English was declined hit, his, him, hit, which by the merging
of the dative and accusative under hit in Middle English became hit, his, hit. In
unstressed positions hit weakened to it, and at the beginning of the modern period,
it was the usual form for the subject and object. His, however, remained the proper
form of the possessive. Although it was thus identical with the possessive case of
he, its occurrence where we should now use its is very common in written English
down to the middle of the seventeenth century.
With the loss of grammatical gender the personal pronouns of the third
person singular, he, she, it, had a distinctive form for each gender in the
nominative and objective cases, and a need seems to have been felt for some
distinctive form in the possessive case as well. So, its was built on the analogy of
the Gen. case of nouns. Though it was still rare in the age of Shakespeare.

The Verb
The categories of the Early New English verb remain basically the same:
tense, voice, aspect, mood. The categories of number and person are less distinct
and expressed in the personal ending of the 3 rd person singular in the present tense
active voice and the passive voice, as the verb to be retains its 1st person singular
and two number forms in the past.
The loss of endings greatly simplified the verbal paradigm. There were no
longer endings marking the 1st person singular, plural present indicative, and the
infinitival suffix –an → en → e was also lost. The personal ending of the 3rd person
singular in the present tense –th is replaced by –s, e.g., hath – has; thinketh –
thinks.
The category of aspect. The continuous aspect, the first instances of which
were used in Middle English is used in the texts of this period. However, it was not
until the 18th c. that the Cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own, that
of the incomplete concrete process of limited duration.
For many hundred years the Cont. forms were not used in the Passive Voice.
The Active form of the Cont. aspect was employed in the passive meaning until the
19th c. The new Passive form aroused the protest of many scholars. Even in the
19th c. it was claimed that the house is being built was a clumsy construction which
should be replaced by the house is building. But despite all these protests the
Passive Voice of the Cont. aspect continued to be used and eventually was
recognized as correct.
All forms of the perfect tenses are abundantly used in Early New English.
The auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds
of verbs, without restriction. Occasionally the perfect tenses of the intransitive
verbs were formed with the auxiliary to be, e.g. he is not yet arriv’d.
The category of voice. In Early New English the Passive Voice continued to
grow and to extend its application. Passive forms began to be built from
intransitive verbs associated with different kinds of objects: indirect objects and
prepositional objects. The wide use of various pass. constructions in the 18 th and
19th c. testifies to the high productivity of the Pass. Voice.
The category of mood. The moods of the Early New English period are the
same as they were in the Middle English – the Indicative, the Imperative, and the
Subjunctive. The newly arisen analytical forms of the Subjunctive have not yet the
present-day differentiation as to the rules of the structural limitation of their use –
we may find any combination of the moods in the sentences of unreal condition.
The traditional classification of strong and weak verbs gives way to division
into regular and irregular. Somewhat apart are treated modal verbs, formely
preterite-present, that are stripped of their paradigmatic forms and are later referred
to as defective.
Among New English regular verbs there are:
 native words (almost all Old English weak verbs of the 2nd class and
some Old English strong verbs having lost their irregularity and forming their
forms on analogy with the weak verbs of the 2nd class, such as to help, to bake,
etc.);
 borrowings (almost all loan verbs);
 the verbs that are derived from other parts of speech.
Irregular verbs include those former strong verbs that preserved the vowel
interchange in the root. Here belong both those that form their participle with the
help of the suffix –n, and those that lost the suffix altogether, e.g., write – wrote –
written; swim – swam – swum. Among irregular verbs, there are verbs with a long
root vowel and the root ending in -t or d.
Old English metan — mette — mett
Middle English meten — mette — mett
New English meet — met — met
In Middle English, the root vowel of the second and third forms is shortened
due to the rhythmic tendency of the language requiring the shortening of all vowels
if followed by two consonants. The vowel interchange in Middle English is
quantitative only.
In New English the long root vowel in the first form due to the great vowel
shift is changed qualitatively, so now we have both quantitative and qualitative
vowel interchange in the verb.
 Modal verbs. The changes in the preterite-present are significant. Some
verbs are lost altogether (dowen, munnen etc.) The rest lost the greater part of their
paradigms and turned into a group of modal (defective) verbs. Unlike the former
preterite-present verbs, these are no longer autonomous and cannot be used without
a complement. Now they are always used as modal auxiliaries with the infinitive
without the particle to.

2. Borrowings as means of enriching vocabulary

in Early New English

The English vocabulary of the New English period reflects as no other

aspect of the language the many changes in the history of the people and various
contacts which the English speakers had with many nations and countries. The
long and controversial history of the people is reflected in its vocabulary and
especially in the number of loanwords in it, different in origin and time of their
entering the language, and the circumstances under which the acquisition of the
foreign element took place.
Very many new words appear in New English due to borrowing.
Chronologically speaking, New English borrowings may be subdivided into
borrowings of the Early New English period – XV-XVII centuries, the period
preceding the establishment of the literary norm, and loanwords which entered the
language after the establishment of the literary norm – in the XVIII-XX centuries,
the period which is generally alluded to as late New English.

Early New English borrowings (XV-XVII centuries)

Borrowings into the English language in the XV-XVII centuries are
primarily due to political events and also to the cultural and trade relations between
the English people and peoples in other countries.
Latin borrowings
 In the 16th and 17th c. Latin was the main language of philosophy and
science, its use in the sphere of religion became more restricted after the
Reformation and the publication of the English versions of the Bible.
Latin borrowings were especially numerous. They belonged to the bookish
varieties of the language, to scientific prose and special terminology.
Taken mainly from written sources they have easily assimilated in the
language: they do not contain any foreign sounds and receive primary and
secondary stresses like other English words.
Latin loanwords can be identified by means of some suffixes and endings,
for instance:
 verbs, with the characteristic endings -ate, -ute:
aggravate, abbreviate, exaggerate, frustrate, separate, irritate, contribute,
constitute, persecute, prosecute, execute, etc.,
 adjectives ending in -ant, -ent, -ior, -al:
arrogant, reluctant, evident, obedient, superior, inferior, senior, junior,
dental, cordial, filial.
French borrowings
French borrowings are connected with diplomatic relations (e.g., attaché,
communiqué), social life, leisure and pastime (e.g., ball, café, hotel, picnic,
cricket, billiard), art (e.g., ballet, ensemble) fashion and food (e.g., blouse,
corsage, champagne soup, omelette).
The peculiarity of the French borrowings of the period is that they in many
cases preserve French phonetic shape – they have the stress on the final syllable,
often have mute consonants at the end and have French sounds (e.g., genre,
bourgeois).
Italian borrowings
Borrowing Italian words at this period is explained by the great influence of
Italy in certain spheres of life. Italian architecture, painting, and music excelled
in those times. As it is known, Italy was the birthplace of the Renaissance
movement and the revival of interest in art. Examples of musical terms adopted
in English are concerto, opera, solo, soprano, tenor, violin. Words relating to
architecture and painting are parapet, balcony, gallery, fresco.

Spanish borrowings
Borrowings from Spanish came as the result of contacts with Spain in the
military, commercial and political fields, due to the rivalry of England and Spain
in foreign trade and colonial expansion.
Spanish borrowings of this period are rather numerous and can be
subdivided into two groups:
 borrowings of the native Spanish words such as guitar, cigar,
armada, cargo, sombrero
 and those that were taken into Spanish from various American
Indian languages. These loan words indicated new objects and concepts
encountered in the colonies: tobacco, potato, tomato, banana, chocolate, canoe.
Dutch borrowings
The Dutch element comes into the English language in a considerable
number of words, reflecting the commercial ties between England and the
Netherlands. The Netherlands of the period was well-known for its school of
painting, its crafts, and a well-developed fleet. Hence the Dutch borrowings of the
Early New English period are easel, landscape, sketch, cruise, deck, dock, reef,
yacht.
Late New English borrowings (XVIII-XX centuries)
 German: kindergarten, waltz, wagon, boy, girl
 French: magazine, machine, garage, police, engine, nacelle, aileron
 Indian: bungalow, jungle, indigo
 Chinese: coolie, tea
 Arabic: caravan, divan, alcohol, algebra, coffee, bazaar, orange.
 Questions for self-control
1. What is the origin of modern irregular noun forms?
2. What caused the simplification of the verbal paradigm in New English?
3. What are traces of preterite-present verbs in modern English?
4. What is the difference in the vocabulary between Early modern and Late modern
English?
5. Why did the English language adopt words from different countries?