General Characteristics of Middle English Syntax:

– Word order changes to SVO

– Subject pronouns are needed

– Pleonastic (or dummy) subjects are introduced (= grammaticalization)

– Auxiliaries and articles are introduced (= grammaticalization)

– Embeddings increase (= grammaticalization)

– Multiple negatives occur

 

 

3. EARLY NEW ENGLISH SYNTAX

 

 

The transformation of English into an analytic language continues in the Early New English period. As mentioned earlier, in syntactic terms, this transformation leads to an increasingly fixed word order and the introduction of grammatical words. An example of a grammatical word being formed is the directional to becoming a Dative case marker. In Middle English, the number of prepositions and determiners increases as prepositions replace cases. Starting in the Early New English period, the grammatical words introduced are mainly auxiliaries. The trend towards more embedded sentences that started in Middle English also continues in Early New English.

The word order is fairly similar to that of New English, as shown in (1), addressed by Queen Elizabeth to her bishops:

1) Elizabeth I – 1599

Our realm and subjects have been long wanderers, walking astray, whilst they were under the tuition of Romish pastors, who advised them to own a wolf for their head (in lieu of a careful shepherd) whose inventions, heresies and schisms be so numerous, that the flock of Christ have fed on poisonous shrubs for want of wholesome pastures. And whereas you hit us and our subjects in the teeth that the Romish Church first planted the Catholic within our realm, the records and chronicles of our realm testify the contrary; and your own Romish idolatry maketh you liars.

Wh- questions are mostly as in New English, while some Yes/No questions continue to be formed as in (2):

2) Whether hadst thou rather be a Faulconbridge,...

‘Had you rather be a Faulconbridge?’

Subjects are only left out in a few cases (3) and (4):

3) Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, But with a crafty madness keeps aloof

4) This is my Son belov’d, in him am pleas’d

There are still some dative subjects, mostly in archaic expressions such as me thinks.

Auxiliaries are introduced or expanded, but neither simple auxiliaries nor sequences of auxiliaries are as elaborate as in New English. The expression of tense, mood, and aspect is perhaps still the most important difference between Early New and New English. For instance, New English would have the progressives am going and are saying in (5) and (6) and the present perfect form with have in (7), as shown in the gloss:

5) Whither go you?

6) What say you, Scarlet and John?)

7) I saw him not these many years – ‘I haven’t seen him for many years.’

As in French, German, Italian, and Dutch, there is still a difference in Early New English between have and be: I haue spoke but We are come to you (both from the same play). Have is used with transitive verbs and be with certain intransitive verbs (e.g. of motion). This difference continues up to the 19th century, but ceases to be relevant in New English.

The end of the Middle English period is also when auxiliaries start to be contracted, expected when they grammaticalize to auxiliaries (8):

8) and so myght Y a done syn I come vnto Calles.

‘and so might I have done since I came to Calais’

In questions and negative sentences, do is not obligatory. Shakespeare, for instance, uses both (9) and (10):

9) Do you not heare him?

10) A heauie heart beares not a humble tongue.

In Old and Middle English, negation can be expressed by one or two negatives. This is changing in Early New English where not or nothing typically appear alone in a clause. There are, however, a few cases where single negation is expressed using multiple negative words: nothing neither, as in (11):

11) Nor go neither:...and yet say nothing neither.

The use of relatives varies by author and Hope (1994) uses this to differentiate between the works of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Johnson, and others. Foster (1989) also uses relatives when trying to expand the Shakespeare canon. The main difference between Early New and New English is in the choice of relative pronouns. In (12) which is used for a person, and, in (13) who is used for a non-human. These are ungrammatical in Modern English, mainly due to prescriptive rules. In (14) that is used as a marker of a non-restrictive relative clause, something that is no longer ‘permitted’:

12) Shall I of surety bear a childe, which am old.

13) I met a Lyon, Who glaz’d vpon me.

14) Let {Fame}, that all hunt after in their liues.

Hope also shows that there is, in this period, a clear preference for the relative that over who and which, but that the latter spread in more formal writings. Shakespeare starts using the formal forms more in later works. We will see that this trend perseveres in present-day English.

Preposition stranding, which occurs when a preposition is left behind after its object moves in a question, as in (15), or a relative clause, is common in Early New English. When the object takes the preposition along, as in (16), we have a case of pied piping:

15) Who did you talk about?

16) About who(m) did you talk?

Punctuation and capitalization in Old and Early Middle English are fairly rare. They become more common in Late Middle English, but remain somewhat arbitrary, as the first paragraph in (17) from The Sceptical Chymist shows:

17) The Sceptical Chymist – 1661 – Robert Boyle

I am (sayes Carneades) so unwilling to deny Eleutheriu any thing, that though, before the rest of the Company I am resolv’d to make good the part I have undertaken of a Sceptick; yet I shall readily, since you will have it so, lay aside for a while the Person of an Adversary to the Peripateticks and Chymists; and before I acquaint you with my Objections, against their Opinions, acknowledge to you what may be (whether truly or not) tollerably enough added, in favour of a certain number of Principles of mixt Bodies, to that grans and known Argument from the Analysis of compound Bodies, which I may possibly hereafter be able to confute.

In the 17th century, syntactic punctuation is introduced, especially through the work of Ben Jonson. It is one of the changes modern editors make when editing Early New English texts for a present-day audience.

When the language gets a strict(er) word order, it is natural for writers to punctuate according to grammatical function, as in New English. In New English, the subject, verb, and object form a core and cannot be separated from each other as in the ungrammatical (18):

(18) Yesterday, she saw him, unfortunately.

Note that Modern English can have a word or words surrounded by commas such as however in the core.