CHANGES IN GRAMMAR151-158

PREPARATION AND PRESENTATION BY:

MOHAMMAD BIN HILAL

ALI KHATTAR

THE Reduction oF Inflection

as a result of the merging of unstressed vowel into a single sound the number of distinct inflectional ending in English was drastically reduced. In the adjective for instance, the old English weak forms (those used after the demonstratives ) the ending -a (masculine nominative) and -e (neuter nominative- accusative and feminine nominative)

Middle English the Ǭlde man corresponds to Old English se ealda man , the ending of the adjective being identical with that used for the Ǭlde tāle . (OE feminine sēo ealda talu). and the Ǭlde sword (OE neuter peat ealda swurd ) the Old English weak adjective endings -an and -um had already fallen together as -en and with the less of final -n. they also came to have only -e . the Old English genitive plural forms of the weak adjective in -ena and -ra , after first becoming -ene and -re , were made to conform to the predominant weak adjective form in -e though there are very few late survivals of the Old English genitive plural in -ra as Middle English -er notably in aller (OE ealra) and related forms .thus the five singular and plural forms of the Old English weak adjective declension (a,e,-an,-ena, and -um) are reduced to a single form ending in -e with gender as well as number distinctions completely obliterated

THE LOSS OF GRAMMATICAL GENDER

one of the important results of the leveling of unstressed vowel was the loss of grammatical gender. we have seen how this occurred with the adjective. we have also seen that grammatical gender for psychological reasons .

in Old English gender was readily distinguishable in most nouns. masculine nominative accusative plural typically ended in -as feminines in -a and short stemmed neuters in -u in Middle English on the other hand all but handful of nouns acquired the same plural ending

THE INFLECTION OF NOUNS The structure of English was profoundly affected by the leveling of unstressed vowel. among the nouns to cite some further

instances the Old English distinctive feminine nominative singular from in -u fell together with the nominative plural from in -a that is singular denu valley and plural dena valleys became for a white Middle English dene. it was similar with neuter nominative accusative plural in -u and the genitive plurals in -a. all came to have the same -e ending.

Old English genitive singular speres and nominative plural speru became Middle English spḝres Modern English spear’s,spears ; Old English genitive singular tale and nominative plural tala became Middle English tāles Modern English tale‘s, tales

A few s- less genitives feminine nouns and the family relationship nouns ending in -r.

the few nouns that did not conform to the pattern of forming the plural by suffixing -es nevertheless followed the pattern of using the nominative accusative plural as a general plural form. they include those that lack -s plurals today for example oxen deer and feet there were also in Middle English a number of survivals of weak declension plural in -(e) n that have subsequently disappeared for example eyen ’eyes’ and fǪǪn ‘foes’, the-(e) n was even extended to a few nouns that belonged to the a -stem strong declension in Old English for example shoon ‘shoes’ (OE scŌs) a few long syllabled words that had been neuters in Old English occurred with unchanged , plural forms especially animal names like sheep deer and hors however the most enduring of these alternative plural are those with mutation: men ,feet , geese ,teeth, lice, and mice.

During the Middle English period , then practically all nouns were reduced to two forms just as in Modern English one without -s used as a general no genitive singular form and one with -s used as a genitive singular and general plural form. The English language thus acquired a device for indicating plurality without consideration of case namely the -s

Pronouns:

Personal Pronouns

Only the pronouns retained, and still do retain,

a considerable degree of the complexity that

characterized them in Old English. (Preserved

distinctive subject and object case forms).

The Dual number of the personal pronouns

virtually disappeared in Middle English.

The dialects of Middle English differed in the

forms they used for the pronouns.

Except neuter pronouns (h)it, that, this, and what.

Such a phrase as git būtū ‘you two both; occurring in

late Old English, indicates that even the form git had

lost much of its idea of twoness and needed the

reinforcement of būtū ‘both’.

For example, ik was a Northern from corresponding

to ich or I elsewhere.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Old English se, þæt, sēo, and plural þā were ultimately reduced to the, that and plural thǬ.

ThǬ gave way to thǬs (ModE those), from Old English þās.

The other Old English demonstrative was þes, þis, þēos . By the thirteenth century; when

gender distinction and some traces of inflection that had survived up to that time were lost.

This was used for all singular functions, and a new plural form, thise or these appeared.

These developments have resulted in Modern English that-those and this-these.

Interrogative and Relative

pronouns

The Old English masculine-feminine interrogative pronoun hwā became in Middle English

‘who’.

The neuter for hwæt became ‘what’.

In Middle English who was customarily used as an interrogative pronoun or an indefinite

relative meaning ’whoever’. (a usage occurs first in the thirteenth century).

The simple relative use of ‘who’ was not really widespread until the (16xx)

The oblique forms ‘whŎs’ and ‘whom’, however, were used as relatives in late Middle English

at the same time that another interrogative pronoun, ‘Which’ also began to be so used.

The most frequently used relative pronoun in Middle English is indeclinable ‘that’

That’s All and

Thank you