Конспект лекций по дисциплине «История языка (англ.)» для студентов специальности «Иностранная филология»

In OE there existed a variety of distinct endings that is why OE was called a period of “full endings” (Henry Sweet). In ME all the vowel endings were reduced to the neutral [ə] and many consonants were leveled under –n or dropped. ME was called a period of “leveled endings”(H. Sweet).

In Early ME some nominal categories were lost (as Gender and Case in adjectives; Gender in nouns). Morphological division into types of declension practically disappeared. In Late ME the adjective lost the distinction of number and the distinction of weak and strong forms. The number of verbal grammatical categories increased. The verb acquired the categories of Voice, Time Correlation and Aspect. The category of Tense developed a new form – The Future Tense. In the category of Mood there arose new forms of the Subjunctive. The non-finite forms of the verb had lost many nominal features, and developed verbal features.

The main changes at the syntactical level were: the rise of new syntactic patterns of the word phrase and the sentence, the growth of predicative constructions; the development of the complex sentences.

In ME simplification affected the grammatical categories of the noun.

The OE Gender disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. Early ME nouns were grouped into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of stems.

The endings of adjectives and adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender.

The number of cases in the noun was reduced from 4 to 2 in Late ME. The forms of the Nominative and Accusative + Dative fell together in both numbers. Only the Genitive case was kept separate from the other forms.

The gradual reduction of the case.

The common case assumed all the functions of the Nominative, Accusative, Dative and also some functions of the Genitive.

The ME Common case had a very general meaning, which was made more specific by the context. In ME the Genitive case is used only attributively, to modify a noun with the prepositional phrases. The use of the of- phrase grew rapidly in the 13-th-14^th centuries.

The category of number is the most stable of all the nominal categories. The noun preserved the formal distinction of two numbers through all historical periods. In Late Middle English the ending –es was the marker of nouns in the plural. The plural ending -es underwent phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables.

The development of the ME plural inflection –es

stones [‘sto:nəs] → [stounəz]→[stounz] (after a vowel)

bookes [‘bo:kəs]→ [bu:ks] →[buks] ( after voiceless consonant)

dishes [‘diςəs]→[‘diςiz] ( after sibilant)

The plural ending -en used as a main marker in the weak declension in the Southern dialects lost its productivity and in Standard Mod. English is found in oxen, children.