43031 (The history of English), страница 9

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, mæg, 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:

þe 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.

þa ðe willað mines forsiðes fægnian '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 — wæs — wæron — *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 þæm oþrum þrim dagum ... 'in those other three days' – Dat. pl Masc.

Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede 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:

Soðlice sum mann hæfde twegen suna (mann – subject, hæfde – Simple Predicate) 'truly a certain man had two sons'. Predicates could also be compound: modal, verbal and nominal:

Hwæðre þu meaht singan 'nevertheless you can sing'.

He was swyðe 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, Ælfrede 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:

... ða liðende 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:

þa com he on morgenne to þæm tungerefan se þe his ealdorman wæs; sægde 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): Norþan snywde 'it snowed in the North'; him þuhte 'it seemed to him', Hit hagolade stānum '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 cuðe '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 þing geseon 'he could not see anything' (nan from ne an 'not one'), hit na buton gewinne næs 'it was never without war' (næs from ne wæs '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 þa ongeat se cyning, þæt ond he, on þa duru eode, and þa unbeanlice hine werede, oþ he on þone æþeling locude, and þa ut ræsde on hine, and hine miclum gewundode; and hie alle on þone cyning wæron feohtende, oþ þæt hie hine ofslægenne hæfdon, '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: þa he þær to gefaren wæs, þa 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 þe:

Hit gelamp gio þætte an hearpere wæs on þære ðiode þe Dracia hatte, sio wæs on Creca rice; se hearpere wæs swiðe ungefræglice god, ðæs nama wæs Orfeus; he hæfde an swiðe ænlic wif, sio wæs 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 þæt was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: oð ðæt 'until', ær þæm þe 'before', þæt 'so that' as in: Isaac ealdode and his eagan þystrodon, þæt he ne mihte nan þing 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: þa wæs sum consul, Boethius wæs 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 hæfde þa 'he had them (the prisoners)', Hie him ofslægene hæfdon 'they had him killed' or, perhaps, 'they had killed him'. Hie hæfdon 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.