Middle English Morphology

LECTURE 9

The ME period is the period of «levelled endings» as Henry Sweet called it. In ME the morphological system of the language underwent simplification, it was the period when the inflections that existed in OE were gradually being superseded by prepositions and prepositional phrases. All parts of speech in ME underwent simplification.

Nouns. In OE nouns had the grammatical categories of case, number and gender. OE had a developed system of cases by means of which various syntactical functions of nouns in a sentence were marked. In OE there were 4 cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Dative, the Accusative, besides that the OE nouns had the strong and the weak declension systems. In ME two declension system of nouns underwent simplification. This process began earlier in the Northern and in the Midland dialects. In these dialects the difference between the grammatical genders as well as between the strong and the weak declensions of nouns had disappeared by the 12^th century and in ME in these dialects all the nouns had the following inflections: OE stãn > ME stõn - OE ã > õ ME.

Singular Plural

N. stõn stõnes

G. stõnes stõne, stõnes

D. stõn(e) stõnes

A. stõn stones

The weak declension of nouns lost its characteristic feature - the suffix «-n». In ME there remained only two cases -the Nominative and Accusative: singular plural

N. nãme nãmen

G. nãmes nãmen(e)

D. name nãmen

A. nãme nãmen

Only the suffix «-es» of the Genitive case of masculine nouns of the stõn -type and the ending «-es» of plural of Nominative and Accusative of masculine nouns didn’t undergo any changes. In the 12th century all the nouns belonging to strong or weak declension systems also gained this suffix in the Genitive singular and plural. Thus we see that the English language in the ME period lost most of the flexions that existed in OE. The OE case inflections were ousted by prepositions and prepositional phrases to express various relations between the words in a sentence. There appeared such prepositions as to, of, with.

Middle English adjectives. The declension system of adjectives in ME changed greatly. An adjective is a dependent part of speech. In OE adjectives were inflected for case, number and gender agreeing with the noun they modified. One and the same adjective could be either strong or weak depending on the noun which it modified and on the presence or absence of the definite article before it. In ME the simplification of the declension system of nouns led to the simplification of the declension of adjectives. The weak declension of adjectives lost its characteristic ending «-en» and the whole system of declension of adjectives looked in ME as the following:

strong weak

N, Gen., D., A. gõd gõde (singular)

N., Gen., D., A. gõde gõde (plural)

The degrees of comparison were formed by means of the suffix «-er», «-est» (instead of the OE «-ra», «-ost»): gret - gretter - grettest.

Some adjectives retain the OE i- umlaut, while forming the degrees of comparison: old - elder - eldest; strong - strenger - strengest. At the end of the ME period there appeared the analytical means of forming the degrees of comparison, that is, with the help of the words «more» and «most». Some of the adjectives formed the degrees of comparison of different roots: muchel - more - mõst, mēst; litel - lasse - lēst; evil - werse - werst; gõd - bettre - best.

Middle English adverbs. Adverbs were mostly formed from adjectives by adding the suffix «-e» or «-ly»: bright - brighte, clene - clene, special - specially, thrifty - thriftily. The degrees of comparison of adverbs were also formed by means of suffix «-er», «-est»: gretly gretter grettest.

In a few adverbs mutation is preserved:

longe lenger lengest

A few adverbs preserve suppletive degrees of comparison:

much mõ, more mõst

litel lasse lēst

In ME phrases of the type «more, most + adverb» appear.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-07