Morphological classification of verbs in ME and NE

During the Middle English period some dramatic changes in the structure of all morpho-syntactic categories took place, making the English from one thousand years ago show increasingly more resemblance to the English of today. As far as the verb is concerned, the two key changes which affected it when passing from Old English to Middle English were:1) the reduction of inflectional endings, and 2) the shift of strong verbs to the weak paradigm.

The Middle English verb in different syntactic contexts could take a finite (inflected) or a non-finite (uninflected) form. The finite forms were inflected by means of suffixation, ie. the addition of inflectional morphemes to the end of the stem of a word, for the following verbal subcategories: mood: indicative, subjunctive, imperative; tense: present, past; number: singular, present; person: first, second, third.

The non-finite forms, ie. the forms unmarked for tense, number and person, were: infinitive, past participle, present participle and gerund. From around Chaucer's time the last two obtained more or less regularly the same ending -ing and so started to be formally indistinguishable though functionally still different (Lass 1992: 144). Syntactically, the infinitive and gerund functioned as nouns and the participles as adjectives. On the basis of their inflections ME verbs are commonly classified into three groups: two major ones, traditionally referred to as strong and weak, and a third one comprising a number of highly irregular verbs (here referred to as MAD verbs, see below). The basic difference between the first two groups lies in the way they form their past tense and past participle. Strong verbs build them by means of a root vowel alternation (the so-called ablaut) and the past marker of weak verbs is a dental suffix (usually -t, -d or -ed) attached to the root, after which the inflectional endings marking the number/person are added.

The third of the aforementioned groups consists of verbs that display a high degree of irregularity and, according to Fisiak (1968: 99), may be further subdivided as follows: 1.Mixed, whose past inflections are partly strong and partly weak, represented by only one verb: d n 'do'.2. Anomalous, undergoing suppletion, that is the replacement of one stem with another one, when forming the past and, in some cases, the present tense forms, eg. g n 'go', b n 'be'. 3. Defective, whose chosen principal categories are lacking or extremely rare. None of them, for instance, has the present participle and many lack the infinitive. All of them, except for will, are the continuation of Old English preterite-presents. Can/con 'I can', dar 'I dare' can be quoted as the examples of such verbs.

OE Strong verbs

The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense – one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other – for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.

Strong Verbs The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange. The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.

Strong verb indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel. They are original(germ. Europ). Restrictive group of verb. Oe – over 300Sv. 1 class –i class, a. 2 class-u-classu+root=diphthong,. Root consonant changed(rotasism). 3,4 class- the gradation was caused by consonant.(breaking), 6- qualitative-quantities ablaut 7 class –reduplication of the root-morpheme. They use form of conjugation known as ablaut. And this form of conjugation the stem of the word change to indicate the tense.

24. Origin of Modern English irregural verbs.

Strong Verbs and their Development

As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.

The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.

The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:

Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:

In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection à -en.

In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.

In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2))à the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are relatively stronger than strong verbs. They reflect a later stage in the development of the Germ.languages. There were an open class in OE as new verbs that entered the language generally formed their forms on analogie with the weak verbs. Whereas, the strong verbs used vowel interchange as means of differentiation among the principal verb tense, the weak verbs used for that purpose suffixation(suffixes –t,-d) : cēpan, cepte, cept. The weak verbs had a stem-forming suffix, that followed the root & the grammatical endings. In accordance of the character of the stem-suffix the weak verbs are classified into 3 classes:

The stem suffix “i”, the class includes many words from other nouns, adjectives and verbs. All of them have a front- root vowel – the result of the palatal mutation due to the “i” element of the stem suffix.( dōn-deman; ful-fyllan). In the cause of time this palatal suffix was lost. It was preserved only in some participles in the form of “e”: dēman, demd, demed.

The stem-suffix “oi”.The “o” element of the suffix is preserved in the past tense & in the Participle II. The root vowel of this class remained unchanged because of the preceding ō (lufo-ian) in all forms.

Only 3 verbs: -habban –have;-libban-live; seezan-say.

26. Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth of the future tense and continuous forms in English language.

In the OE language there was no form of the future tense. The category of tense consisted of two members: past and present. The present tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases and the infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation and possibility.

In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall + inf. was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. One of the early instances of shall with a weakened modal meaning is found in the early ME poem ORMULUM.

In late ME texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a future tense auxiliary, though discrimination between them is not always possible. In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as the present tense of notional verbs occurred in free variation; they can express “pure” futurity and add different shades of modal meanings.

The development of aspect is linked up with the growth of the continuous forms. In the OE verb system there was no category of aspect; verbal prefixes especially зe-, which could express an aspective meaning of perfectivity in the opinion of most scholars, were primarily word-building prefixes. The growth of continuous forms was slow and uneven.

Verb phrases consisting of bēon (NE be) + Part.I are not infrequently found in OE prose. They denoted a quality, or a lasting state, characterizing the person or thing indicated by the subject of the sentence.

In early ME ben + Part.I fell into disuse; it occurs occasionally in some dialectal areas.

In the 15^th and 16^th c. be + Part.I was often confused with a synonymous phrase – be + the preposition on + a verbal noun.

It was not until the 18^th c. that the cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at the stage the cont. and non-cont. made up a new gram. category – aspect.

27. Minor groups of verbs in OE.

Among them the most important group:

1)Preterite – present verbs.

Originally the Present Tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and infinitives. Most verbs didn’t have a full paradigm and were in this sense “defective”.

The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1^st and 3^rd person sing. Unlike strong verbs had the same root-vowel in all the persons; the plural had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs. In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dentak suffix + the endings –e, -est,-e. In OE there were 12 preterite-present verbs. 6 of them have survived in modern E. (cunnun, sceal, mazan:ought, 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 preterit-present. They were used like modal verbs and eventually developed into modern modal verbs.

Among the verbs of the minor groups:

-anomalous verbs with irregular forms(willan – the meaning of volition and desire, indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an infinitive.

2 OE verbs were suppletive (OE zān, bēon=be)

28. Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth of the passive voice and perfect forms in English language.

In OE the finite verb had no category of voice.

The analytical passive forms developed from OE verb phrases consisting of OE bēon (NE be) and weorðan (become) and Part.II of transitive verbs.

OE bēon was used as a link-verb with a predicative expressed by Part.II to denote a state resulting from a preveous action, while the construction with OE weorðan “become” indicated the transition into the state expressed by the Part. The Part. in OE agreed with the subject in number and gender.

In ME ben + Past Part. developed into an analytical form. Now it could express not only a state but also an action.

The new passive forms had a regular means of indicating the doer of the action or the instrument with the help of which it was performed.

Late ME saw the appearance of new types of passive constructions. Passive forms began to be built from intransitive verbs associated with different kinds of objects. The passive voice continued to spread to new parts the verb paradigm: the gerund and the continuous forms.

The perfect forms have developed from OE verb phrases.

The main source of the perf. form was the OE “possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Part.II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object.

The Part. agreed with the noun-object in numver, gender, case.

Originally the verb habban was used only with Participles of transitive verbs; than it came to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival and prepositional objects and even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was developing into a kind of auxiliary.

Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of agreement with the noun. The Part. usually stood close to the verb have and was followed by the object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole – instead of being governed by have.

In the perf.form from the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restrictions.

By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perf.forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 2032