Боргуль Н. М. Пособие по основам теории изучаемого языка, печать
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| § 3. The verb
Unlike the morphology of the noun and adjective, which has become much simpler in the course of history, the morphology of the verb displayed two distinct tendencies of development: it underwent considerable simplifying changes which affected the synthetic forms and became far more complicated owing to the growth of new, analytical forms and new grammatical categories. All types of verbs existing in OE – strong, weak preterite-present – were preserved in ME. However, due to certain linguistic factors a number of OE strong verbs weakened in ME and vice versa: some of the weak verbs became strong. In each of these verb types we find numerous changes. The OE prefix Ʒ e- was reduced to y- . This prefix is mostly found in the second participle in the Southern dialects. In most dialects, however, the prefix has disappeared by the 14 th c. Conjugation underwent considerable changes in the ME period. As a result of leveling of unstressed vowels the difference between the endings – an, -on, -en was lost, which had played a prominent part in OE. The final –n, which characterized many verb forms, was lost. It proved to be stable only in some second participles, where it has been preserved down to MnE period. Furthermore, differences between the 2 nd and 3 rd persons singular present indicative and the other present tense forms, due to mutation, disappear in ME. Perfect forms, which arose in OE, are widely used in ME. In Chaucer‘s works, for example, there are many sentences with the Present Perfect and the Past Perfect. In ME appeared first instances of a continuous aspect, consisting of the verb be(n) and the first participle. They were very rare. Thus, in Chaucer‘s works only six examples of such forms have been found. Here is one of them: syngynge he was, or floytinge, al the day ‗ he was singing, or playing the flute, all day long‘. Perfect Continuous forms are quite rare in ME. A special future form which started in late OE, becomes in ME a regular part of the tense system; Chaucer uses this future form in many cases. The auxiliaries shal and wil are usually deprived of their original modal meaning, but occasionally, they may still have a modal tinge (traces of this are seen in the modal meaning of MnE auxiliaries shall, will ). 31 The passive voice was very widely developed in ME. As the OE verb weor ƥ an disappeared the only auxiliary for the passive was the verb bēn. The system of verbals (non-finite forms) of the verb also underwent considerable changes in ME. The system of verbals in OE consisted of the Infinitive and two Participles. The main trend of their evolution in ME is the loss of case distinctions in the infinitive and of forms of agreement in the Participles. The Infinitive lost its inflected form (the so-called ‗ Dative case‘) in Early ME. OE wrītan and ME tō wrītanne appear in ME as (to) written and in MnE as (to) write. The preposition tō, which was placed in OE before the inflected infinitive to show direction or purpose, lost its prepositional force and changed into a formal sign of the Infinitive. The form of Participle I in Early ME is of special interest, as it displayed considerable dialectal differences. The Southern and Midland forms were derived from the present tense stem with the help of –ing(e), while other dialects had forms in – inde, -ende, -ande. The first of these variants ‗ -ing(e)‘ became the dominant form in the literary language. Participle I coincided with the verbal noun, which was formed in OE with the help of the suffixes –ung and –ing, -ing, but had preserved only one suffix, -ing, in ME. The fusion of the Participle with the verbal noun was an important factor of the growth of a new verbal, the Gerund, and played a certain role in the development of the Continuous forms. жүктеу/скачать 0,78 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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