THE MORPHOLOGY

The blurring of boundary morphology/syntax, grammatical functions defined primarily by syntax; loss of 2nd person singular pronouns (pu and thou); loss of 2nd person singular indicative endings of verbs

Nouns: only two cases (common and possessive), two numbers (singular and plural), no grammatical gender; some mutated plurals, a few -n plurals (shoes/shoon, housen, eyen), some unmarked plurals (month, year, horse, fish); some unmarked genitives (mother tongue, lady slipper); -s of genitives sometimes omitted when word ended in sibilant (s-like sound) or following word started with one (peace sake); misinterpretation of genitive ending -s as 'his' (e.g. John Browne his meaddow, Ann Harris her lot).Adjectives: adjectives had lost all inflections except comparative (-er) and superlative (-est) by the end of ME; use of more and most as intensifiers, mixing and combination of more/most with endings -er/-est.

Pronouns: most heavily inflected word class; development of separate possessive adjectives and pronouns (my/mine, etc); possessive of it: his > it > its sometimes spelled it's; 2nd person singular forms thou and thee disappeared in 17th c, the plural forms (ye/you) prevailed for both singular and plural; subject ye became you; demonstrative form tho used instead of those.

Verbs: development of verb phrases; transformation of strong verbs into weak; further reduction of verbal inflections; decline in use of subjunctive; strong verbs were becoming weak, disappearing or losing separate forms for past and past participle (cling/clung/clung), perhaps following pattern of some irregular weak verbs which featured vowel changes but identical past and past participle forms (hear/heard/heard); regular and irregular verbs; survival of some strong past participles as adjectives (molten, sodden); weak verbs became regular verbs; infinitive -n ending disappeared; present indicative plural endings -n or -th disappeared; -ing became universal present participle ending; -s and -th were 3rd person singular present indicative endings, eventually just -s; many changes in modal auxiliaries, instability, loss of all non-finite forms, can/could, mote/must, may/might, will/would as modal, dare as regular verb, need as modal in some contexts; two-part verbs very common (shorten up, wear out, cut off). Uninflected word classes: loss of some prepositions (maugre, sans, betwixt, fro), development of new phrasal prepositions (by means of, in spite of, because of); ac > but; new compound subordinating conjunctions (provided that, insofar as); adverbs formed by adding -ly to adjectives, also plain adverbs (absolute dead, exceeding worn); intensifying adverbs: very, pretty; interjections: excuse me, please (if it please you), hollo, hay, what, God's name in euphemistic distortions (sblood, zounds, egad)

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 929