Development of Non-finite forms of the Verb in the English language

The verb system in OE was represented by two sets of forms: the finitive of the verb and the non-finitive forms of the verb. Those two types of forms differed more than they do today from the point of view of their respective grammatical categories, as the verbals at that historical period were not conjugated like the verb proper, but were declined like nouns or adjectives. Thus the infinitive could have two case-forms, which may conventionally be called the “Common” case and the “Dative” case.

The Non-finite forms are: the Infinitive and the two Participles.

1. The Infinitive. There are two infinitive forms: one of them is called the dative Infinitive(the Indo-European infinitive had been a declinable noun). This infinitive is preceded by to and has the ending –anne; it is used in independent syntactic positions, mainly as adverbial modifier of purpose, but also as subject and predicative. The infinitive with the ending –an functions, as a rule, in combination with preterite-present verbs and in other verbal collocations.

2. Participle I. Has the ending –ende and is declined as a weak adjective. It is used attributively (in pre- and post-position) and predicative.

3. Participle II. Has the ending –n or –ed, -od, accordin g to the type of verb (strong or weak). It is declined as adjective (according both to the strong and the weak pattern) and is used mainly as attribute and predicative.

 

A comparison of the verbals in OE and in Middle and New English shows that the number of verbals in OE was less than that in Middle English and New. At the end of the ME period a new verbal developed – the GERUND. In addition to the Infinitive and the Participle. The Gerund appeared as a result of a blend between the OE Present Participle ending in “-ende” and the OE Verbal noun ending in “-ing”. From the Verbal noun the Gerund acquired the form, but under the influence of the Participle it became more “verbal” in meaning. In the course of history the Infinitive (already at the end of the OE period) and the Participle (in Middle English) lost their declension. And at the end of the ME and in New English they acquired elements of conjugation – the grammatical categories of order and voice. The OE preposition to preceding the dative case of the infinitive loses its independent meaning and functions simply as a grammatical particle showing that the Verbal is an Infinitive.

 

Grammatical categories of the Noun in OE.

The OE noun paradigm was composed by the following grammatical categories: gender, number, case.

The category of gender was formed by the opposition of 3 gender-forms: masculine, feminine, neuter. All nouns. All nouns no matter whether they denoted living beings, inanimate things or abstract notions belonged to one of the 3 genders. The subdivision of OE nouns in accordance with their grammatical gender is traditional, the correspondence between the meaning of the word and its grammaticla gender being hard to trace.

Some nouns denoting animals were also treated as neuter, such as cicen (chicken), hors (horse)

The grammatical gender did not always coincide with the natural gender of the person and sometimes even contradicted it (for instance, the noun wifman was declined as masculine).

Number

The grammatical category of number was formed by the opposition of two category forms: singular and plural.

Case

In the course of the development the original paradigm had undergone great changes due to the fusion of the origin suffix and the origin gram ending into the element which from the point of view of OE is to e regarded as a gram ending. As a result of that fusion nouns that are known to have had different stem-suffixes originally in OE acquired materially different endings in the same case. The original stem suffixes were formed both by vowel and consonants. Thus there were two respective principal groups of declensions in OE: the vowels declension (strong – comprises four principal paradigms: a-stem, o-stem, u-stem i-stem) and the consonant declension (weak – it comprises nouns with the stem originally ending in – n, -r, -s and some other consonants). In rare cases the new forms is constructed by adding the ending directly to the root – so-called root-stem declension.

 

 

58. Development of perfect forms in English

 

The pronoun in OE

There were the following classes of pronouns in OE: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite. The system of declension was not the same for all the classes. It has at least two subsystems that should be singled out: the declension of personal pronouns on the one hand and the declension of other pronouns. Although the grammatical categories of each subsystem were the same (gender, number, case, the number of the categorial forms composing those categories was different.)

The personal pronouns

Gender

3 genders could be distinguished in the prominal paradigm: masculine, feminine, neuter, but different forms for different gender were found only in the 3^rd person sing, the rest of the forms being indifferent to gender.

Number

The category of number differs from that of the noun as in the1st and 2^nd person we find 3 categories forms: sing, dual, plural.

Ic (I) wit (two of us) we (we)

Case

The category of case is built up by the opposition of four categorial forms: Niminative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative.

 

Other pronouns

All OE pronounbs with exception of personal pronouns were declined almost aloke. They expresse the grammatical categories of gender (3 forms), number (2 forms) and case, which was built up by 5 categorial forms: the Niminative, the Accusative, The Dative, the Genitive and the Instrumental, dufferent from the Dative only in the Sing.

 

60. Development of continious aspect in English

The adjective in OE

The paradigm of the adjective is similar to that of the noun and the pronoun. The grammatical category of case was built up by 5 forms: the Nominative, the Accusative, the Dative, the Genitive and the Instrumental.

There were 2 was of declining Adjectives – the Definite and the Indefinite declension. The adjective followed the Definite declension mainly if the noun if modified had another attribute – a demonstrative pronoun, and they were declined as Indefinite otherwise. The gram suffixed – forms of cases mainly coincided with those of nouns with the stem originally ending in a vowel or –n, yet in some cases we find pronominal suffixes.

Degrees of comparison

The Adjective in OE changed its forms not only to show the relation of the given adjective to other words in the sentence which was expressed by the gender; number and case of the adjective, but also to show the degree of the quality denoted by the adjective. The degrees of comparison were expressed, the same as all gram notions:

- by means of suffixation

- by mean of vowel gradation +suffixation

- by means of suppletive forms.

Both suffixation and the use of suppletive forms in the formation of the degrees of comparison are origin means that can be traced back to Common Germanic. But the used of vowel interchanged is a feature which is typical of the English language only and was acquired by the language in the prehistoric period of its development.

62. Development of future and passive in English

63. Nominal grammatical categories in OE and their historical development

64.

Changes within the verb system in Modern English

The subdivision of OE verbs into Strong and weak is preserved with modifications in Middle English.

STRONG VERBS.

Classes of the strong verbs: In New English the original regularity that was observed in the group of strong verbs in OE and partly in Middle English is no longer felt due to the following:

3) splitting of original classes in to subclasses;

4) some strong verbs of one class entering another class;

5) passing of some strong verbs into the group of weak verbs and vice versa.

6) But some weak verbs acquired only some features of the strong verbs, like the OE weak verb sceawian – Modern English show, shoed, but shown

The strong verbs in OE had four forms. In Middle English they exhibited a marked tendency to have the same vowel in both the forms of the past tense, thus gradually reducing the number of the principal forms to three. In New English we have only three principal forms in verbs originally belonging to the group of strong verbs: write – wrote – written.

WEAK VERBS

Weak verbs were becoming more and more numerous, as they not only preserved in Middle English and New English almost all the verbs that were typical of the group in OE, but also added to their group the majority of borrowed verbs and about seventy verbs originally strong, and also such verbs as:

To call

To want Scan borrowings

To guess

 

To pierce

To punish French

To finish

 

To contribute

To create Latin

To distribute

Alike strong verbs many weak verbs became irregular in the course of history, especially weak verbs of the 1^st class. This irregularity was mainly conditioned by qualitative and quantitative changes that many weak verbs underwent in Middle English and New English. The OE weak verbs of the 1^st class became irregular due to the quantitative change - shortening of the vowel in the second and third forms in Middle English. This quantitative interchange was followed by qualitative in New English after the Great Vowel Shift.

Classes of the weak verbs.

In OE there were two principal classes of the weak verbs. Later some verbs did not become irregular lost the class difference and we have but one class of verbs going back mainly to the weak verbs of the second class.

Forms of the weak verbs

In OE there were 3 principal forms of the weak verbs. In Early New English, with the loss of the final –e in the second form the second and the third form became homonymous, thus we speak of three principal forms of such verbs as to love or to keep mainly on analogy with original strong verbs, and also because of the existing tradition as no Modern English regular verb, originally belonging to the weak conjugation, shows any trace of difference between the second and third forms. In New English due to different phonetic processes and changes on analogy the two principal groups of verbs that existed in OE, strong and weak, gave us two principal groups of Modern verbs: regular and irregular, neither of which is directly derived from either of the OE groups of strong and weak verbs.

Origin of modern irregular verbs

In OE most verbs were regular, although there were a number of irregular ones. In Middle English not only the few OE irregular verbs were preserved, but also new irregular verbs appeared. This was due to the disappearance of the division of verbs into strong and weak (most strong verbs losing their regular pattern of conjugation and thus becoming irregular). Another source of irregular verbs was the 1^st class of weak verbs the irregularity of which was due to several reasons.

We can show three groups of verbs originally belonging to the 1^st class of weak verbs, which later became irregular:

a) verbs with a long root vowel, the root ending in –t, or –d; (OE metan – mette – mett = New E meet – met - met)

b) verbs with a long root vowel, the root ending in a consonant other than –t or –d; (cepan – cepte – cept = keep – kept – kept)

c) verbs with a short root vowel, the root ending in –t, or – d (settan – sette – sett = set – set - set).

 

Even in the 2^nd class of weak verbs examples of irregularity can be found. OE macian – macode – macod = New Engl make – made - made

The middle syllable of the 2^nd and 3^rd forms was lost, making the verb irregular. Still another source of irregular verbs may be found in some loan words borrowed into the language in Middle English and New English. Although most borrowed verbs formed their forms in accordance with the weak verbs of the 2^nd class, some of them are irregular.

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES OF THE ENGLISH VERB

In OE the verb had four categories: person, number, tense and mood.

In Middle and New English there gradually developed three more grammatical categories – order, voice and aspect. These gram categories used a new gram means for the formation, namely, analytical. These analytical forms developed from free word combinations of the OE verbs habban, / beaon/wesan + an infinitive. The way of the formation of those analytical forms was the following:

In the free word combination habban, / beaon/wesan + an infinitive the 1^st element was gradually losing its lexical meaning, and the 2^nd – its gram one, thus tending to become notinally and gram inseparable, idiomatic.

The category of order aws the oldest, formed already in Middle English from the OE free combination habban, / beaon/wesan + participle.

The same idea of order is sometimes still expressed with the help of the combination to be + participle.

The category of aspect was formed on the basis of the free combination of ben + present participle

The gram categories of tense and mood which existed in OE acquired new categorical forms.

The OE present and past tense forms were supplemented with a special form for the future tense which appeared in Middle English out of the free combination of the OE modal verbs sculan and willan with the infinitive. This free combination of words was split into two groups: in the 1^st, remaining free, the modal meaning is preserved:

You shall do it – necessity

I will do it – volition

In the second the independent meaning is lost and the fixed word combination is perceived as the future tense form: I shall go there / You will go there.

The category of mood in OE was represented by three mood forms, one for each of the moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative). The subjunctive in OE did not show whether the events were probably or contrary to fact, but it had two tense forms – past and present, which in the course of history developed into two subjunctive moods:

I be present – out of the OE present tense form of the subjunctive mood

I were present – our of the OE past tense form of the subjunctive mood.

The difference between these two subjunctive moods now is in the shade of probability, and not in the tense, the second one denoting events which are contrary to fact.

In addition to that at the end of Middle English two more subjunctive mood forms appeared making use of the analytical form building means: