Development of Continious Aspect in English

As for the Continuous forms it should be said the following.

Verb phrases consisting of «beon» (NE «be») plus Participle I are not infrequently found in OE prose. They denoted a quality or a lasting state.

In Early ME «beon» plus Participle I fell into disuse. It occured occasionally in some dialectal areas.

In the 15^th and 16^th centuries «be» plus Participle I was often confused with a synonimous phrase – «be» plus the preposition «on» plus a verbal noun.

By that time the Present Participle and the verbal noun had lost their formal differences: the Participle I was built with the help of -ing, and the verbal noun had the word-building suffix — ing.

The prepositional phrase indicated a process taking place at a certain period of time. It is believed that the meaning of process or an action of limited duration — which the Continuous forms acquired in Early NE — may have come from the prepositional phrase.

The formal pattern of the Continuous as an analytical form was firmly established.

ADJECTIVES in OE

Adjectives in OE always agreed in case, number and gender with the nouns they modified

Adjectives normally belonged to 2 declensions: the assignment of declension in adjectives was syntactically determined

· Weak declension:

Always weak: adjectives in comparative or superlative degree, ordinal numerals, the adjective ilca

Strong declension

Weak and Strong declension

Most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-, ō-, ū- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc. and Neut. and of ō-stems – in the Fem., .Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: -um for Dat. sg., -ne for Acc. sg Masc., [r] in some Fem. and pl endings. The difference between the strong and weak declension of adjectives was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjectives could be declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective, the degree of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners. The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the Gen. case of personal pronouns. Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules: a few adjectives were always declined strong, e.g. eall, maniз, ōþer (NE all, many, other), while several others were always weak: adjectives in the superlative and comparative degrees, ordinal numerals, the adjective ilca ‘same’.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1099