The grammatical system of the English language has dramatically changed and simplified throughout history. Few Old English grammatical constructions have survived in Present Day English.
There are “two sub-fields [of grammar]: morphology and syntax” (Collins,P. & Hollo, C. (2010), p.3), morphology being the form of words and syntax being sentence formation. Many conventions from each of the English language periods have been reshaped throughout time in response to certain historical and cultural factors. A great amount of these grammatical features have been obsoleted, simplifying the language.
Grammar during the Old English period was very different to what it became in the later language periods. A strikingly different grammatical norm in Old English was that the auxiliary “do” was not used in questions or ‘negative sentences’. While today, we must say, “Why do you go?” in Old English”, they would say, “Why go ye?” When we would have to say, “I do not go”, Old English speakers would say, “I not go”. The grammatical system was more complicated, especially because Old English was a synthetic language, meaning the syntactical relationships between words were established by adding case endings or ‘inflexions’ (suffixes and prefixes). Unlike today, word order unimportant. A sentence like “the man killed the beast” could be phrased as “the beast killed the man” and still retain the same meaning as long as the words were given the correct case ending to mark the ‘man’ and ‘beast’ as either the subject or the object. This system used what is called “synthesis" (Leith, D. (1997), p.96).
The case ending to use for an old English noun was not fixed for each word but depended on its role within the sentence. Firstly, it must be one of the four case types: nominative (the subject), accusative (the direct object), genitive (possessive nouns marked with ’s or s’) or dative (indirect object). The inflection would also change depending on number (whether it was singular or plural), what gender the word is (masculine, feminine or neuter) and if it is strong or weak. Based on these factors, Old English nouns can be separated into 5 main groups called declensions: “(1) General Masculine Declension, (2) General Feminine Declension, (3) General Neuter Declension, (4) The –an Declension [ending with ‘n’], (5) Irregular Declensions.” (Smith, J. (1999), p.66)
Pronoun forms depend on number, case and also whether they are first, second or third person. The form of the determiners and adjectives within a sentence is modified to match the gender, case and number of the noun. Verbs were either strong or weak. Strong verbs incorporated an “inherited system from Germanic that was frequently characterised by vowel alternations within the root, known as Abault” (Fennell, B. (2001), p.68) in order to mark their tense. For example, ‘swim’ becomes ‘swam’. A weak verb adds an ending such as “-ed” in order to change tenses such as the word “watch” which becomes “watched”. During the Old English Period, the majority of verbs were weak however; there was a larger number of strong verbs in use than there is in the preceding language periods.
Grammar during the Middle English period altered dramatically from Old English. It became an ‘analytical language’ rather than a ‘synthetic language’, meaning that word order began to be used to determine relationships between words in a sentence rather than using inflexions. There was an “establishment of fixed patterns of word order” (Crystal, D. (1995), p.44) with a strong inclination towards the SVO (subject, verb, object) order that already had shown signs of increasing prominence in the Old English Period. A large number of inflections were obsoleted and grammar underwent the process of “regularisation…[meaning]…the gradual erosion of inflectional complexity.” (Culpeper, J. (2005), p.68)
Grammatical gender disappeared in favour of natural gender for example, in old English, ‘woman’ was a masculine term but it became feminine to match its ‘biological’ referent. The case system for nouns was reduced to two cases: nonpossessive and possessive instead of the four cases used in Old English. The five declensions that nouns had once been separated into were abandoned. Almost every noun was categorised as part of the “older strong masculine declension" (Pyles, T. (1964), p.169). Plural nouns including ‘pound’, ‘pair’, ‘fathom’ and ‘score’ without being pluralised with the suffix: s or ’s appeared often. (Millward, C.M. (1989)). Adjectives were no longer separated into strong and weak declensions. In addition, the difference between adverbs and adjectives disappeared. This is because the –e suffix that was added to adverbs to make them adjectives in Old English was dropped by the end of the Middle English Period.
In order to make up for lost inflections from Old English, prepositional use increased significantly. New prepositions were also introduced by compounding existing and borrowed forms. An example of this is the Middle English phrase “to the shippes, [which uses]…a preposition and the common plural ending…[whereas in Old English there would be]…a dative ending on both the words for the and ship”. (Crystal, D. (1995), p.44) Verbs underwent the most modification in Middle English. More weak verbs were obsoleted rather than strong verbs however, since there were many more weak verbs to begin with and new words being borrowed from other languages entered as weak verbs, they remained the most abundant category. Although a large amount of inflexions were lost, the “system of tenses was built up by means of [newly introduced]…primary auxiliaries (be,have and later do) and the modal auxiliaries (shall, should, will, etc.)” (Barber, C. (2009), p.171) In Old English, only past and present tenses were applied to verbs. With these new words, the future tense was established in this period.
During the Early Modern English period, grammar continued to change and simplify. Nouns still had two cases being possessive and non possessive. Nouns were most often pluralised by ending the word with –(e)s.There were a limited number of words that were an exempt from this rule such as the irregular plurals women, men, oxen, children, sheep, mice and feet. Some irregular constructions like shoon (shoes) and eyen (eyes) were reformed to fit with this rule (T. Nevalainen, (2006), p. 74). In Early Modern English, -s became the only case ending. The Old English inflectional system marked whether the word is a genitive singular, genitive plural or a common-case plural. In Early Modern English however, there was no way to tell them apart for example, Emperor’s, Emperors’and Emperors would all appear as Emperors.
Few plurals in Early Modern English that were uninflected continued to be used for example, “all his waipon (“all his weapons)” (B. Fennell, (2001), p. 142). Some could be made using the –n suffix such as housen and shoen but these had obsoleted throughout the period. Intensifying adverbs with the suffix –ly increased for example, it could be added to words such as devilish and dreadful. “Pleonastic [a mid-16th century phenomena where one would “use more words than are necessary to convey meaning (e.g., see with one’s eyes), either as a fault of style or for emphasis”(Oxford University Press, (2014)) forms as oftenly and soonly” (Nevalainen, T. (2006), p. 74) had come into use but did not survive to the present day English period.
The use of do as an auxiliary to form questions, negative statements and declarative sentences was introduced during this period. Do can be regularly found performing these functions in Early English texts, including Shakespeare’s works. “Why does the world report that Kate doth limp?" (Shakespeare, W. (1992), Act 2 Scene 1, Line 242). However, there are still many cases where statements perform these functions without a do support. “How came he mad?” (Shakespeare, W. (1985), Act 5 Scene 1, Line 132). Both forms coexisted as “two syntactic systems to choose from" (Hope, J. (2003), p. 138).
Personal pronouns were greatly simplified. The second person pronouns ye/you/your and thou/thee/thine were still used (Freeborn, D. (1998), p. 317). They were eventually all reduced to just you. During the Old English period, thou was for addressing a singular person. Ye was used when addressing many people. Thouand ye marked the subject while thee and you were for the object. In Middle English, the distinction between addressing singular and multiple people disappeared. You/ye was a polite way of addressing a singular and thou/thee was more colloquial. In early modern English, this distinction between subject and object also vanished. Ye became restricted to formal use such as in legal and religious documents. The use of thouwas also reduced.
In the Present Day English period, grammar became far more prescriptive, meaning there were specific rules that the user must abide by in order to have ‘good’ English. Guides containing these rules such as “The King’s English (1919)” were written and distributed after the Early Modern English period (Knowles, G. (1997), p. 152). Grammatical structures now are far more basic then they were in the previous English language periods. Nouns are now proper (being names of people and places) or common. They can also be count (which are countable for example, pies “I’d like two pies”) or mass nouns (which you must measure rather than count for example, piein “I’d like some pie”). Adjectives, due to their inflectional loss can not be identified by themselves for example, round can refer to “ a round of golf (noun), They round the corner (verb), a round object (adjective), He came round to see us (adverb), They sat round the table (preposition).”(Quirk, R. (1972), p. 231) In the majority of cases, adjectives are only ever inflected in order to be comparative such as with “big, bigger and biggest”.
The –ly suffix that was introduced in Early Modern English is now regularly used. In regards to clause structure, the Subject, verb, object order continues to be the most common. Writers of modern texts however have the freedom to vary from this pattern for stylistic or semantic effect. Many grammatical patterns that began to arise in the Early Modern English period are now regularised. This includes the second person pronouns ye/you/your and thee/thou being reduced to only you/your. The uses of the auxiliarydo also are now fixed for four purposes: in negative sentences (for example, ‘He did not eat the rice.’), in interrogative sentences (for example ‘Did he eat the rice?’), for “code usage” so a lexical verb is not repeated (for example, ‘ He ate the rice and so did they.’) and for emphatic statements (for example, ‘He did eat the rice!’).
In Present Day English, the –est and –eth suffixes have vanished. –Est can only be used now as an intensifier for example, making the word new, newest. It can no longer form words like makest that appear in Early Modern texts: “…makest waste in niggarding”(W, Shakespeare, sonnet1 line 12). The –eth suffix forming words like droppeth disappeared. (Baugh, A. (2002), p. 241) A new suffix that is now a regulated grammatical feature is the be-ing construction or the progressive form of verbs. For example, “What do read my Lord? (Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 190) would today be replaced by “What are you reading?” (Beal, J. (2004), p. 78). Today, the lack of the progressive –ingsuffix suggests the question is of a habitual nature for instance, what do you read? would mean what kind of books do you usually read. In order refer to the simple present happening for instance, what are you reading at this very moment? the –ing suffix is necessary whereas before, it was not.
Therefore, the grammatical system of the English language has dramatically changed and simplified over the course of history. Very few grammatical constructions from the Old English period have survived in Present Day English. Many conventions from each of the English language periods have been reshaped throughout time in response to certain historical and cultural factors. A great amount of these grammatical features have been obsoleted all together, simplifying the language from its original form.
References
Books
Barber, C. (2009), The English Language: A Historical Introduction: Second Edition, Cambridge University Press
Baugh, A, (2002), A History of the English Language: 5thEdition, Upper Saddle River, NJ
Beal, J. (2004), English in Modern Times, Arnold: a member of the Hodder Headline Group, London
Brutt-Griffler, J. (2002), World English: A Study of its Development, Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Collins, P. & Hollo, C. (2010),English Grammar: An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan
Crystal, D. (1995), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press
Culpeper, J. (2005), History of English: Second edition, Routledge London and New York
Fennell, B, (2001), A History of English: A Sociolinguist Approach, Blackwell Publisher Ltd.
Freeborn, D. (1998), From Old English to Standard English: Second Edition, Macmillan Press Ltd.
Gorlach, M. (1997), The Linguistic History of English, Macmillan Press Ltd.
Graddol, D. & Leith, D. & Swann, J. (1996), English: History, Diversity and Change, Routledge London and New York
Gruber, L. (2000), Essays on Old, Middle, Modern English and Old Icelandic, The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd.
Horobin, S. & Smith, J. (2002), An Introduction to Middle English, Oxford University Press
Hope, J. (2003), Shakespeare’s Grammar, The Arden Shakespeare
Kastovsky, D. (1994), Studies in Early Modern English, Walter de Gruyter & Co.
Knowles, G. (1997), A Cultural History of the English Language, St Martin’s Press Inc.
Leith, D. (1997), A Social History of English: Second Edition, Routledge London and New York
Millward, C. (1988), A Biography of the English Language, The Dryden Press, Saunders College Publishing
Nevalainen, T. (2006), An Introduction to Early Modern English, Oxford University Press
Onions, C. (1971), Modern English Syntax, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London
Pyles, T. (1971), The Origins and Development of the English Language, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.
Quirk, R. (1972), A Grammar of Contemporary English, Longman Group Ltd.
Shakespeare, W. edited by Edwards, P. (1985), Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, Cambridge University Press
Shakespeare, W. edited by Fyne-Clinton, M. & Mills, P. (1992), The Taming of the Shrew, Cambridge University Press
Smith, J. (1999), Essentials of Early English, Routledge London and New York
Strang, B. (1970), A History of English, Methuen & Co. Ltd.
Websites
Oxford University Press, (2014) Pleonasm, <http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/pleonasm?q=pleonastic#pleonasm__6>, accessed October 21, 2014
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