38
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 a 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.
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: