The Adjective

The Pronoun

The Noun

LECTURE 11. MnE GRAMMAR

General survey of grammar changes in Middle English

Consonants

Changes in phonetic system in Middle English

Questions for seminar10

External means of enriching vocabulary

Internal means of enriching vocabulary

Vocabulary

Morphological classification of verbs

Mood

Finite and non-finite forms of the verb

Questions for seminar 9

German, French, Indian, Chinese, Arabic, Australian, Russian, Greek and Latin

Late New English borrowings

External means of enriching vocabulary

Internal means of enriching vocabulary

4 Early New English borrowings (XV – XVII)

Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, Latin, American, French

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Speak on

-Vowels in the unstressed position

-Vowels under stress(Qualitative changes/ Quantitative changes)

4 Grammatical categories (Number/ Case)

5 Vocabulary /General characteristics

- Scandinavian Borrowings

-French borrowings

Plan

I. Morphology.

1) The Noun

2) The Pronoun

3) The Adjective

4) The Verb and its categories.

5) The Preposition.

II. Syntax.

1) The sentence structure.

2) Negation.

The plural forms. The general rule of forming the plural form is –s (eye – eyes). In several nouns final fricative has alteration of [f] or [v]: wolf – wolves. A few nouns have preserved their plural forms due to the weak declension or mutation: ox – oxen, child – children, and man – men, mouse – mice. Alongside with the forms brothers and cows there exist the weak declension forms brethren and kine. Another kind of plural has been preserved in the words sheep – sheep, deer – deer, swine – swine, fish – fish, trout – trout, etc. This peculiarity appears to be due to the fact that they denote the animals as a mass: a flock of sheep, a herd of swine, a shoal of fish and so on.

The case system. The two–case system which was typical of Chaucer’s language, has been preserved in MnE. The sphere of the Genitive case has been restricted to nouns denoting living beings and also some time notions (a day’s wait, a two months’ period). In other cases the combination of+noun is used.

The ME personal pronouns underwent little change in MnE. The tendency to use ye in addressing one person arose in ME already. Shakespeare uses both ye and thou, but later thou disappears completely from ordinary literary language to remain only in elevated and religious style. In the 16^th century the distinction between ye (the Nominative case) and you (the Objective case) began to vanish and in the 17^th century ye finally became archaic.

Degrees of comparison. OE mutation is eliminated: lonZ – lenZra – lenZest are replaces by long – longer – longest. (The only remnant of mutation: old – elder – eldest has a limited usage).

In Shakespeare’s works we often find formations of the type “ more better ” or “ most heaviest ” which means that in Early MnE combinations of this type were not yet analytical forms of degrees of comparison.

In ME the ending –e denoted the plural and the weak declension in adjective. In MnE it has lost the ending, thus, the adjective no longer agrees with the noun. This fact is significant for the syntactical structure of the Language.

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