Negation

SYNTAX

The Preposition

The Verb

Important changes occurred in conjugation.

The ending –e was lost on the 1^st person singular, the plural present, and the infinitive. The ending –eth in the 3^rd person present was replaced by –s, which in the ME verb was a characteristic form of the Northern dialect. In the 15^th century the ending –s gradually penetrated into the literary language. In the 17^th century the ending –eth was finally superseded by the ending –s. The 2^nd person form in –st, connected with the pronoun thou disappeared together with the pronoun itself.

OE	ME	MnE
singular	plural	singular	plural	singular	plural
L o cie	l o ciaD	Looke	looke	Look	look
l o cast	Lookest	--------
l o caD	looketh	looks

The Categories.

Tenses and aspect. The system of perfect forms, which had appeared in OE and developed in ME is freely used in MnE.

In MnE the continuous aspect was gradually formed. Verbal forms lacking then pattern be+participle I became a system of common aspect. Continuous forms are found in Shakespeare’s works but they are not numerous.

In the 19^th century the continuous forms are used more widely. But in the early 19^th century they were considered a feature of colloquial style and were not admitted in poetry. William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) was the first to use continuous forms in poetry:

The cock is crowing.

The stream is flowing.

The cattle are grazing,

Their heads never raising

Small clouds are sailing,

Blue sky prevailing.

The rain is over and gone!

At that time the use of continuous forms in poetry seemed almost vulgar. But eventually these forms penetrated into all styles of the language.

In ME the Gerund was not so clearly separated from the Verbal Noun. In MnE the Gerund developed further and occupied a distinctive place among the Non-Finite forms. In MnE analytical forms of the Gerund arise: the perfect and the passive gerund appear.

The use of prepositions goes on increasing.

As the pattern noun in the Genitive + noun has a very limited use, the pattern noun+noun arises, the first element acting as attribute.

Word order became still more restricted. For example, in “Hamlet” we find: Mother, you have my father much offended, where the object my father comes in between the two components of the predicate verb. Such sentence structure is no longer possible in present-day English.

In Shakespeare’s time do could be used in all types of sentences: interrogative, negative and affirmative ones. In the 18^th century it was already used only in interrogative and negative sentences as an auxiliary verb.

In Early MnE several negative words could be used within one predicate group:

… that cannot be so neither …(Shakespeare)

Since about the middle of the 17^th century double negative began to decline. Now it is a feature of non-literary language.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11