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Verbals in the history of English

In OE there were two non-finite forms of the verb: the Infini­tive and the Participle. In many respects they were closer to the nouns and adjectives than to the finite verb; their nominal features were far more obvious than their verbal features, especially at the morphological level. The verbal nature of the Infinitive and the Participle was revealed in some of their functions and in their syntactic "combinability": like finite forms they could take direct objects and be modified by ad­verbs.

The Infinitive had no verbal grammatical categories- Being a verbal noun by origin, it had a sort of reduced case-system: two forms which roughly corresponded to the Nom. and the Dat. cases of nouns Like the Dat. case of nouns the inflected Infinitive with the prepo­sition to could be used to indicate the direction or purpose of an action.

The Participle was a kind of verbal adjective which was characterized not only by nominal but also by certain verbal features. Par­ticiple 1 (Present Participle) was opposed to Participle II {Past Parti­ciple) through voice and tense distinctions: it was active and expressed present or simultaneous processes and qualities, while Participle II ex­pressed slates and qualities resulting from past action and was contrast­ed Jo Participle 1 as passive to active, if the verb was transitive. Parti­ciple II of intransitive verbs had an active meaning; it indicated a past action and was opposed to Participle I only through tense.

The forms of the two participles were strictly differentiated. Participle 1 was formed from the Present tense stem (the Infinitive without the endings -an, -ion) with the help of the suffix -ende. Participle II had a stem of Its own — in strong verbs it was marked by a certain grade of the root-vowel interchange and by the suffix -en; with weak verbs it ended in -dl-t Participle 11 was commonly marked by the prefix 3e-, though it could also occur without it, especially if the verb had other word-building prefixes.

Participles were employed predicalively and attributively like adjectives and shared their grammatical categories: they were de­clined as weak and strong and agreed with nouns in number, gender and case.

The main trends of their evolution in ME and NEcan be defined as gradual loss of most nominal features (except syntactical functions) and growth of verbal features. The simplifying changes in the verb par­adigm, and the decay of the OE inflectional system account for the first of these trends — loss of case distinctions in the infinitive and of forms of agreement in the Participles.

The Infinitive lost its inflected form (the so-called "Dat. case") in Early ME. The preposition to, which was placed to show direction or purpose, lost its prepositional force and changed into a formal sign of the Infinitive. In ME the Infinitive with to does not necessarily express purpose. In order to reinforce the meaning of purpose another preposition, for, was sometimes placed before the inf, but it was lost in early NE.



The distinctions be­tween the two participles were preserved in ME and NE: Par­ticiple I had an active mean­ing and expressed a process or quality simultaneous with the events described by the predicate of the sentence. Par­ticiple II had an active or passive meaning depending on the transitivity of the verb, and expressed a preceding ac­tion or its results in the sub­sequent situation. Participle I coincided with the verbal noun, which was formed in OE with the help of the suffixes -ung and -ing, but had preserved only one suffix, -ing, in ME. In OE Participle 1 was considered Present Participle, had only the form of the Active Voice, possessed the categories of Number, Gender, Case. It was used predicatively and attributively (agreed with the noun in Number, Gender, Case).

In ME it lost its nominal and adjectival features together with the categories of Number, Gender, Case and became unchangeable. In OE P1 had 1 form and in ME there were 4 forms.

Development of the Gerund

The Late ME (14-15c) period witnessed the growth of a new verbal known in modern grammars as the Gerund. The gerund can be traced to three sources; on the basis of verbal noun, but the article and the prepositions were lost and it gained some verbal features like a direct object -J. as well as the frequent absence of article before the ing-form functioning as a noun. Those were the verbal features of the Gerund. The nominal features, retained from the verbal noun, were its syntactic functions and the abil­ity to he modified by a possessive pronoun or a noun in the Gen. case

In the course of time the sphere cf the usage of the Gerund grew: it replaced the Infinitive and the Participle in many adverbial functions; its great advantage was that it could be used with various prepositions It took direct object (verbal feature) (e.g. buying a book); It could be preceded by an article or a possessive pronoun


Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1745


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The OE verb, its grammatical categories and morphological types. | The rise of analytical forms in verbal system in ME.
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