Old English Syntax

New English Morphology

English Syntax

The New English Morphology and Changes in the System of

Lecture 8

The range of the possessive case of nouns has been narrowed. It has come to be used almost exclusively with nouns denoting living beings. As a spelling device the apostrophe was introduced in the 18^th century.

The personal pronoun of the second person plural (ye, you) and the corresponding possessive pronoun (your) have gradually ousted the corresponding singular pronouns (thou, thee, thine) from everyday usage. The form of the objective case (you) has ousted the nominative case form (ye).

The possessive pronouns my, mine, which were originally but phonetic variants have acquired different combinability and consequently different functions. This distinction has become relevant and has spread to other possessive pronouns to which the suffix –s has been added. Hence the forms her and hers, our and ours, your and yours, their and theirs.

The pronoun hit has lost its initial h, the form its was introduced in the 17^th century.

The adjective has lost all its inflexions but those of the degrees of comparison. The current distribution of synthetic and analytic forms of comparison has been established.

The verb has lost the ending of the infinitive and all the inflexions of the present tense but that of the third person singular. The latter has acquired the form -(e)s (from the northern dialects) instead of the southern -(e)th. The form of the second person singular (e.g. speakest) has been lost or become archaic.

The four basic forms of the strong verbs have been reduced to three, most verbs (except to be) losing the distinction between the past tense singular and the past tense plural.

The so-called ‘continuous’ and ‘perfect continuous’ forms of the verb have developed from former syntactical combinations of the verb to be and participle I of some notional verb.

The infinitive, gerund and participle have developed analytical ‘perfect’ and ‘passive’ forms. The infinitive has also developed ‘continuous’ forms.

The syntactic structure of a language is usually closely connected with its morphology. In a highly inflected language a word mostly carries with it indications of its class, of its function in the sentence, of its relations to other words. It depends but little on its position in the sentence, and it may do without special function words. With the loss of inflections the dependence of the word grows. Much of the difference between the Old English and the Modern English syntax is of that nature.

The order of words in a sentence was comparatively free in OE as contrasted with the rigid word order of Modern English.

The comparative freedom of word order was felt not only in the predicative word combination but in other combinations of words, too. It is by no means rare to find modifiers following their nouns instead of preceding them. Prepositions, which usually preceded the nouns or pronouns they governed, often followed them, sometimes at a considerable distance.

In OE the inflections played a much greater role in the indication of syntactical relation between words in a sentence or group than in Modern English.

Grammatical agreement and government were of much greater importance in OE than in Modern English.

The subject of a sentence or clause was frequently unexpressed in OE.

In OE usage of multiple negation was perfectly normal.

The OE interrogative pronouns hwœt ‘what’, hwilc ‘which’, hwa ‘who’ etc. were not used as relative pronouns. Relative clauses were usually introduced by the invariable þe, alone or with a demonstrative pronoun.

OE complex sentences often involved correlation. There were many sets of correlative elements in OE; among the commonest were þa (…þa) … þa, þonne… þonne, swa … swa.

The subjunctive mood was an additional means of indicating subordination in OE complex sentences. It is mostly found in clauses of condition, concession, cause, result, purpose, in indirect questions, though it was by no means rare in independent sentences or principal clauses.

In OE texts we often come across certain verbal phrases which have proved of great importance in the development of the grammatical structure of English. The analytical forms of the verb, so typical of Modern English, derive from those Old English verbal phrases, so that the latter might be called analytical form in embryo.

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