Rise of the Article System in ME.

In the course of ME there arose an important formal difference be­tween the demonstrative pronoun and the definite article: as a demon­strative pronoun that preserved number distinctions whereas as a defi­nite article — usually in the weakened form the — it was unin­fected. The following examples show some transitional stages from the demonstrative pronoun to the definite article:

Demetrius the ferste brother was hate, and Perseus that other.

('The first brother was called Demetrius, the other Perseus.') With nouns in the pl, pl forms of the demonstrative pronoun were not infre­quently used in the meaning of the definite article:

among tha trees 'among the trees', bitwene tho two Noes children 'between the two children of Noah'.

In the 14th c. the article had lost all traces of inflection and became a short unaccented form-word.

The meaning and functions of the definite article became more spec­ific when it came to be opposed to the indefinite article, which had de­veloped from the OE numeral and indefinite pronoun an.

In OE there existed two words, an, a numeral, and sum, an indefinite pronoun, which were often used in functions approaching those of the modern indefinite article.

An seems to have been a more colloquial word, while sum tended to assume a literary character, particularly towards the end of the pe­riod, and soon fell into disuse in this function.

In Early ME the indefinite pronoun an which had a five-case declen­sion in OE lost its inflection. In the 12th c. the inflectional forms of an reveal a state of confusion; in the 13th c. the uninfected oon/one and their reduced forms an/a are firmly established in ail regions.

It is believed that the growth of articles in Early ME was caused, or favoured, by several internal linguistic factors. The develop­ment of the definite article is usually connected withthe changes in the declension of adjectives, namely with the loss of distinctions between the strong and weak forms. Originally the weak forms of adjectives had a certain demonstrative meaning resembling that of the modern defi­nite article. These forms were commonly used together with the demon­strative pronouns se, seo, paet. In contrast to weak forms, the "strong forms of adjectives conveyed the meaning of "indefiniteness" which was later transferred to an, a numeral and indefinite pronoun. In case the nouns were used without adjectives or the weak and strong forms coincided, the form-words an and pact turned but to be the only means of expressing these meanings. The decay of adjective declensions speeded up their transition into articles.

Another factor which may account for the more regular use of arti­cles was the changing function of the word order. Relative freedom in the position of words in the OE sentence made it possible to use word order for communicative purposes, e. g. to present a new thing or to re­fer to a familiar thing already known to the listener. After the loss of inflections, the word order assumed a grammatical function — it showed the grammatical relations between words in the sentence; now the parts of the sentence, e. g. the subject or the objects, had their own fixed places. Accordingly, the communicative functions passed to the articles and their use became more regular.

So Causes of rise of the article system in ME:1.loss of strong & weak declensions of adjectives - articles were employed to show definiteness & indefiniteness.2.word order: It is a book. The book is interesting.Definite articles -> mascul, singular "se"Indefinite article -> an (= one)(numeral). It had 5 case declension -> in.Middle English cases were lost, 13th century an > oon/one -> a/an

The growth of the articles is thus connected both with the changes in syntax and in morphology.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 2808