Development of the syntactic system in Middle English and Early New English.

Old English Syntax. Development of the syntactic system in Middle English and Early New English.

 

Literature:

Аракин В. Д. Очерки по истории английского языка. М., 1955.

Бруннер К. История английского языка. Пер. с нем. М.: Иностранная литература, т. I-II, 1955-1956.

Введение в германскую филологию/Арсеньева М. Г., Балашова С. П., Берков В. П., Соловьева Л. Н./-М., 1980.

Иванова И. П., Чахоян Л. П. История английского языка. М., 1976.

Смирницкий А. И. История английского языка (средний и новый период). Курс лекций. М., 1965.

Смирницкий А. И. Хрестоматия по истории английского языка. М., 1938, 1939, 1953.

Швейцер А. Д. Литературный английский язык в США и Англии. М., 1971.

Ярцева В. Н. Развитие национального литературного английского языка. М., 1969.

Barber Ch. Linguistic Change in Present-Day English. London, 1964.

Baugh A., Cable Th. A History of the English Language. New York, 1978.

Campbell A. Old English Grammar. Oxford, 1959.

Jespersen O. Growth and Structure of the English Language. Oxford, 1935.

Morton A. L. A People’s History of England. New York, 1968.

Mosse F. A Handbook of Middle English. Baltimore, 1952.

Schlauch M. The English Language in Modern Times (since 1400). Warszawa, 1964.

Serjeantson M. History of Foreign Words in English. London, 1935.

Williams J. M. Origins of the English Language, A Social and tory. New York, 1975.

Wyld H. C. A History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford, 1936.

1. Old English Syntax.

The syntactic structure of a language can be described at the level of the phrase and at the level of the sentence. In OE texts we find a variety of word phrases (also: word groups or patterns). OE noun patterns, adjective patterns and verb patterns had certain specific features which are important to note in view of their later changes.
A noun pattern consisted of a noun as the head word and pronouns, adjectives (including verbal adjectives, or participles), numerals and other nouns as determiners and attributes. Most noun modifiers agreed with the noun in gender, number and case, e.g.: on þæ m ōþrum þrim dazum... ‘in those other three days’ — Dat. p1 Masc.
Ōhthere sæde his hlāforde, ..‘Ælfrēde cynize ‘Ohthere said to his lord, king Alfred’ — the noun in apposition is in the Dat. sg like the head noun.
Nouns which served as attributes to other nouns usually had the form of the Gen. case: hwāles bān, dēora fell ‘whale’s bone, deer’s fell’. Some numerals governed the nouns they modified so that formally the relations were reversed: tamra dēora... syx hund ‘six hundred tame deer’; twentiz scēapa ‘twenty sheep’ (dēora, scēapa - Gen. p1).

An adjective pattern could include adverbs, nouns or pronouns in one of the oblique cases with or without prepositions, and infinitives, e. g.:
hu lāþ ēow selfum wæs tō zelæstene ēowre āþas ‘how loath it was for you to keep your oaths’ him wæs manna þearf ‘he was in need of men
hiora hỹd bið swīðe zōd tō scip-rāp,um ‘their hide is very good for ship ropes’.
Verb patterns included a great variety of dependant components: nouns and pronouns in oblique cases with or without prepositions, adverbs, infinitives and participles, e.g.:

brinz þā þinz ‘bring those things’ (Ace.)
Hē … sealde hit hys māder ‘he... gave it to his mother’ (Acc., Dat.)
hē ðær bæd westawindes ‘there he waited for the western wind’ (Gen.)
Isaac cwæð tō his suna ‘Isaac said to his son’ (preposition plus Dat.);
bī þære ēa sizlan ‘sail past that river’ (preposition plus Dat. in an adverbial meaning).
Hū mihtest þū hit swā hrædlice findan? ‘how could you find it so quickly’ (adverb)
Infinitives and participles were often used in verb phrases with verbs of incomplete predication (some of these phrases were later transformed into analytical forms): mihtest findan. ‘might find’ in the last example, hē wolde fandian ‘he wanted to find ‘out’, hīe onzunnon mā reþian. ‘they began to rage more’.
The Simple Sentence. The following examples show the structure of the simple sentence in OE, its principal and secondary parts:
Sōð1ice sum mann hæfde twēzen suna (mann — subject, hæfde — Simple Predicate) ‘truly a certain man had two sons’. Predicates could also be compound: modal, verbal and nominal:
Hwæðre þū meaht sinzan ‘nevertheless you can sing’.

Hē w as swỹðe spediz mann ‘he was a very rich man’.
The secondary parts of the sentence are seen in the same examples:
twezen suna ‘two sons’ Direct Object with an attribute, spediz ‘rich’
— attribute.

The structure of the OE sentence can be described in terms of Mod E syntactic analysis, for the sentence was made up of the same parts, except that those parts were usually simpler.

The connection between the parts of the sentence was shown by the form of the words as they had formal markers for gender, case, number and person. As compared with later periods agreement and government played an important role in the word phrase and in the sentence. Accordingly the place of the word in relation to other words was of secondary importance and the order of words was relatively free.
The presence of formal markers made it possible to miss out some parts of the sentence which would be obligatory in an English sentence now. In the following instance the subject is not repeated but the form of the predicate shows that the action is performed by the same person as the preceding action:
þa com hē on moreznne tō þæm – tūn-zerefan sē þe his ealdorman wæs; sæzde him, hwylce zife hē onfēnz ‘then in the morning he came to the town-sheriff the one that was his alderman; (he) said to him what gift he had received’.
The formal subject was lacking in many impersonal sentences (though it was present in others); cf.:
Noþran snỹwde ‘it snowed in the North’;
him þunte ‘it seemed to him’;
Hit hazolade stānum ‘it hailed with stones’.
One of the conspicuous features of OE syntax was multiple negation within a single sentence or clause. The most common negative particle was ne, which was placed before the verb; it was often accompanied by other negative words, mostly nāht or nōht (which had developed from ne plus ā-wiht ‘no thing’). These words reinforced the meaning of negation:
Ne con īc nōht sinzan... īc nāht sinzan ne cuðe ‘I cannot sing’ (lit. “cannot sing nothing”), ‘I could not sing’ (nōht was later shortened to not, a new negative particle).
Another peculiarity of OE negation was that the particle ne could be attached to some verbs, pronouns and adverbs to form single words:
...hē ne mihte nān þing zesēon ‘he could not see anything’ (nān from ne ān ‘not one’)
hit nā būton zewinne næs ‘it was never without war’ (ns from ne wa’s ‘no was’; NE none, never, neither are traces of such forms).

 

Compound and Complex Sentences. Connectives. Compound and complex sentences existed in the English language since the earliest times. Even in the oldest texts we find numerous instances of coordination and subordination and a large inventory of subordinate clauses, subject clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses adverbial clauses. And yet many constructions — especialh in early original prose — look clumsy, loosely connected, disorderly and wanting precision, which is natural in a language whose written form had only begun to grow.
Coordinate clauses were mostly joined by and, a conjunction of a most general meaning, which could connect statements with various semantic relations. The ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES abound in successions of clauses or sentences all beginning with and, e.g.: And þā onzeat sē cynin at ond he, on pa duru лode, and г unbйanlice hine werede, o he on Pone eling lOcude, and pa ьt rsde on hine, and hine miclum 3ewundode; and hie alle on pone cynin3 wron feohtende, o pt hie hine ofsl3enne hfdon, ‘and then the king saw that, and he went to the door, and then bravely defended himself, until he saw that noble, and then out rushed on him, and wounded him severely, and they were all fighting against that king until they had him slain’ (from the earliest part of the CHRONICLES A.D. 755).

Repetition of connectives at the head of each clause (termed “correlation”) was common in complex sentences: þā he þær tō 3efaren wæs, þā èodon hîe to hiora scipum ‘then (when) he came there, then they went to their ship.’

Attributive clauses were joined to the principal clauses by means of various connectives, there being no special class of relative pronouns. The main connective was the indeclinable particle þ e employed either alone or together with demonstrative and personal pronouns:

and him cỹþdon pæt hiera mæzạs him mid wæron, þ a þe him from noldon ‘and told him that their kinsmen were with him, those that did not want (to go) from him’.

The pronouns could also be used to join the clauses without the particle þ e:

Hit zelamp zīo þætte ān hearpere wæs on þære ðīode ð e Dracia hātte, sīo wæs on Crēca rice; se hearpere wæs swiðe un3efræ3līce 3ōd, ðæ s nama wæs Orfeus; hē hæfde ān swīðe ænlic wīf, sīo wæs hāten Eurydice ‘It happened once that there was a harper among the people on the land that was called Thrace, that was in the kingdom of Crete; that harper was incredibly good; whose name (the name of that) was Orpheus; he had an excellent wife; that was called Eurydice’.

The pronoun and conjunction þæt was used to introduce object clauses and adverbial clauses, alone or with other form-words: oð ðæt ‘until’, ær, þæm þe ‘before’, þæt ‘so that’ as in:

Isaac ealdode and his èa5an þỹstrodon, þæ t hē ne mihte nān ping 5esēon ‘Then Isaac grew old and his eyes became blind so that he could not see anything’.

Some clauses are regarded as intermediate between coordinate and subordinate: they are joined asyndetically and their status is not clear:
þā wæs sum consul, Boethius was hгten ‘There was then a consul, Boethius was called’ (perhaps attributive: ‘(who) was called Boethius’ or co-ordinate ‘(he) was called Boethius’).

In the course of OE the structure of the complex sentence was considerably improved. iElfric, the greatest writer of the late 10th— early 11th c., employed a variety of corinectives indicating the relations between the clauses with greater clarity and precision. Word Order

Word Order. The order of words in the OE sentence was relatively free. The position of words in the sentence was often determined by logical and stylistic factors rather than by grammatical constraints. In the following sentences the word order depends on the order of presentation and emphasis laid by the author on different parts of the communication:

þā Finnas, him puhte, and þāBeormas spræcon neah ān 3eþēode ‘the Finns, it seemed to him, and the Permians spoke almost the same language’ direct word order

Fela spella him sædon þā Beormas æzper ze of hiera āznum lande ze of þāem landum þe ymb hīe ūtan wæron ‘many stories told him (lit. “him told”) the Permians either about their own land or about the lands that were around them’ — the objects spella, him are placed at the beginning; the order of the subject and predicate is inverted and the attention is focussed on the part of the sentence which describes the content of the stories.

Nevertheless the freedom of word order and its seeming independence of grammar should not be overestimated. The order of words could depend on the communicative type of the sentence — question versus statement, on the type of clause, on the presence and place of some secondary parts of the sentence.
Inversion was used for grammatical purposes in questions; full inversion with simple predicates and partial — with compound pred icates, containing link-verbs and modal verbs:

Hwanon ferizeaþ ze fætte scyldas? ‘From where do you bring (lit. “bring you”) ornamented shields?’

Eart þu Ēsau, mīn sunu? ‘Are you Esau, my son?’

Hwæt sceal īc sin3an? ‘What shall I sing?’

If the sentence began with an adverbial modifier, the word order was usually inverted; cf. some common beginnings of yearly entries in the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES:
Hē r on þyssum 3ēare for sē here … ‘In this year came that army to Reading’.

Her on fyssum 3лare for sл micla here... ‘in this year went that big army’ with a relatively rare instance of direct word order after hēr:

hēr Cynewuif benarn Si3ebryht his rices ond Westseaxna wiotan for unryhtum ddum, bflton HгmtQnscire ‘In this year Cynewulf and the councillors of Wessex deprived Sigebrvht of his kingdom for his wicked deeds, except Hampshire (note also the separation of the two coordinate subjects Cynewuif and rviotan).

A peculiar type of word order is found in many subordinate and in some coordinate clauses: the clause begins with the subject fol lowin the connective, and ends with the predicate or its finite part, all the secondary parts being enclosed between them. Recall the quotation:

Ōhthere sæde his hlæforde, Ǽlfrēde cynin3e pæt hē ealra Norðmonna norþmest būde (see the translation in § 113.) But the very next sentence in the text shows that in a similar clause the predicate could be placed next to the subject:

Hecwæþ þæt he būde on þæm lande, nor þweardum wiþ þā Westsæ ‘He said that he lived on the land to the North of the Atlantic ocean’.

In the following passage the predicate is placed in final position both in the subordinate and coordinate clauses:

Ǽfter þæm þe hē hīe oferwunnen hæfde, he fōr on Bretanie þæt i3lond, and wið þa Brettas 3efeaht, and 3efliemed wearð ‘After he had overcome them, he went to Britain, that island, and against those Britons fought and was put to flight’. (Note also the place of the object hīe — objects were often placed before the predicate or between two parts of the predicate.)

Those were the main tendencies in OE word order. They cannot be regarded as rigid rules, for there was much variability in syntactic patterns. The quotations given above show that different types of word order could be used in similar syntactical conditions. It appears that in many respects OE syntax was characterised by a wide range of variation and by the co-existence of various, sometimes even opposing, tendencies.