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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.

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ME verb system Its changes and development

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  1. ME verb systemIts changes and development

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. 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

  8. 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.

  9. 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”.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. Aspect • Gradually the verb “habban” started to be used with other verbs (intransitive), which shows that it was developing into an auxiliary.

  13. 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.

  14. Aspect • The phrase like “have something done” changed into “have done something” with the object following Participle II

  15. 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.

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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.)

  19. 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

  20. 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.

  21. Changes in non-finite forms of the verb • The main trend - gradual loss of most nominal features and growth of verbal features.

  22. 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.

  23. 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.

  24. 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.

  25. 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.

  26. 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.

  27. Questions on ME grammar (noun, adjective, pronoun) Variant 1 • Which grammatical categories did the ME adjective lose, which did it preserve? Variant 2 • How did the case system of the OE noun change in ME? Variant 3 • Which nouns preserved the means of building their plural form according to the OE declension types?

  28. Variant 1 • Which forms of personal pronouns were borrowed from Scandinavian during ME? Variant 2 • What was the new means of forming the degrees of comparison of adjectives? Variant 3 • From which parts of speech did the articles derive?

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