Transcript ME verb system, its changes and development

ME verb system
Its changes and
development
Finite forms. Number, Person,
Mood and Tense

Number
 in the 13-14th c. the ending –en - the main
marker of the plural forms of the verb (past
tense),
 strong verbs in the Past had also root vowel
interchange to distinguish between Sg. and Pl.
But both these markers became unstable in the
late 14th c.:
 the ending –en was often missed out in the 14th
c. and was dropped completely in the 15th c
 Pl. and Sg. Past forms merged into one
Person
 For
the 3rd Pr. Sg. different OE endings (þ, -eþ, -iaþ) merged into a single ending –
(e)th .
 Then the ending -(e)s becomes a new
marker which came from the North (more
widely used in the NE period).
 The distinction of the 2nd person Sg.
existed as long as the pronoun thou (OE
þū) was used
 Beginning
with the 15th c. the plural forms
of the 2nd person – ye/you, your – were
applied more and more often to
individuals.
 In Shakespeare’s time the plural forms of
the 2nd person were widely used as
equivalents of thou, thee, thine. Later
thou became obsolete in Standard
English.
Mood
Synthetic forms are still used for the
Subjunctive Mood (although there was a
growth of homonymy between the
Subjunctive and the Indicative forms)
 There appear new, analytical forms
consisting of: the modal verbs ‘should’ and
‘might’, which lost their lexical meaning,
and the infinitive

Tense
 As
before there were two means of
building Past forms:
 1) root vowel interchange for strong
verbs.
 2) dental suffix –ed, which was used by
weak verbs
Tense
 The
only exception was a small group of
verbs (weak verbs cl.1)
 The dental suffix fused with the last
consonant of the root /t/, and after the loss
of endings, three principal forms
coincided: OE settan – sette – geset(ed),
ME seten –sette – set, NE set – set – set
Tense
A
new grammatical tense appears in ME
 It is caused by the development of
analytical forms of the verb.
 The Future: a) “shall”+ Infinitive, b)
“willen” + Infinitive.
 a)
was a principal means of indicating
future action in any context, but at the
same time “shall” remained a modal verb
with the meaning of necessity. Sometimes
its meaning was weakened. In Late ME
“shall” was used both as a modal verb and
as a Future auxiliary.
 In b) the modal meaning of volition in
“willen” was more obvious than the modal
meaning of “shall”.
Voice
 In
the OE period the finite verb had no
category of Voice.
 It appeared in ME and developed from OE
verb phrase consisting of OE “beon” and
“weordan” + Participle II of transitive verbs.
It expressed not only states, but also
actions.
Aspect
 Perfect
Forms
 The main source of these forms was the
OE “possessive” construction (have
something done) with the verb “habban” +
a direct object + Participle II of a transitive
verb.
Aspect
 Gradually
the verb “habban” started to be
used with other verbs (intransitive), which
shows that it was developing into an
auxiliary.
Aspect
 The
other source of the Perfect forms
 the OE phrase: link verb “beon” +
Participle II of an intransitive verb.
 In ME the two verb phrases turned into
analytical forms of “perfect”, where
Participle II did not agree with the subject.
Aspect
phrase like “have something done”
changed into “have done something” with
the object following Participle II
 The
Aspect
 The
verb phrase “beon + Participle I” was
used in OE prose to denote a quality, or a
lasting state characterizing the subject.
 In early ME this phrase stopped to be
used with the exception of some dialects
in Kent and in the North.
 In Late ME it extended to other dialects
and its frequency grew again.
Changes in the morphological
classes of verbs
Rearrangement of classes
 the OE endings were all reduced to ME
–en
 the root-vowel interchange became less
consistent
 The
most important change in the strong
verb system - the reduction of stems from
4 to 3
 Another important event of that period was
the transition of some strong verbs into
weak ones

Out of 195 OE strong verbs preserved in the
language, only 67 remained strong. 128 strong
verbs acquired weak forms. (e.g.: grip – from
class 1; lock - from class 2; climb, help – from
class 3).
 The number of new verbs which joined the
strong verbs was very small: a) several former
weak verbs (wear, dig, stick); b) three
borrowings (take, thrive – Scandinavian; strive –
O.Fr.)
The development of WEAK
VERBS

In ME there were 2 classes of weak verbs (from
OE three classes):
 Class 1 used -de for the Past and –ed for
Participle II
 Class
2: -ede for the Past and
–ed for Participle II
(which are the weakened forms for –ode,-od
in OE) .
 In Late ME the final /ǝ / in –(e)de became
unstable and gradually was lost, which
made the forms of Past and Participle II
homonymous.
Changes in non-finite forms of
the verb
 The
main trend - gradual loss of most
nominal features and growth of verbal
features.
Participle I

The form of Participle I in Early ME 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, and –ande.
 The first of these variants became the dominant
form in the literary language.
Participle I
 Participle
I coincided with the verbal noun,
which was formed in OE with the help of
the suffixes –ung and –ing, but preserved
only one suffix, -ing, in ME.
 The fusion of Participle I with the verbal
noun was an important factor of the growth
of a new verbid, the Gerund.
Gerund
 The
Late ME period witnessed the growth
of the gerund.
 The gerund can be traced to three
sources: 1) the OE verbal noun in –ung
and –ing, 2) the Present participle and 3)
the Infinitive.
Gerund
 In
OE the syntactic functions of the verbal
noun, the infinitive and the participle partly
overlapped.
 In ME the Present Participle and the
verbal noun became identical: they both
ended in –ing.

This led to the confusion of some of their
features: verbal nouns began to take the direct
objects, like participles and infinitives
 This verbal feature – a direct object – as well
as the frequent absence of article before
the –ing-form functioning as a noun transformed
the verbal noun into a gerund in the modern
understanding of the term.
Questions on ME grammar
(noun, adjective, pronoun)
Variant 1
1. Which grammatical categories did the ME
adjective lose, which did it preserve?
Variant 2
1. How did the case system of the OE noun
change in ME?
Variant 3
1. Which nouns preserved the means of building
their plural form according to the OE declension
types?
Variant 1
2. Which forms of personal pronouns were
borrowed from Scandinavian during ME?
Variant 2
2. What was the new means of forming the
degrees of comparison of adjectives?
Variant 3
2. From which parts of speech did the
articles derive?