Middle English

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 479.

Although the ME complex sentence preserved many features inherited from OE which illustrated incomplete subordination, at the same time it aquired new properties attesting to the gradual elaboration of subordinate clauses. The development of hypotaxis was largely predetermined by the emergence of the national language and the rise of the written standard.

Correlation in ME still occurs, but comparing with OE, it diminished, because it's nature appears to be different from what it used to be. The correlated elements in the main and the subordinate clauses often do not coincide in form: e.g. Auh forgif hit me nu, þet ich hit habbe itold te "forgive me it that I have told you about it".

Scholars presume that such a correlation was a step made towards its total abandonment as a means reinforcing the subordinative conjunction. In ModE correlation would appear redundant at all, except for its stylistic value: e.g. he wondered more whether she could see his eagerness to get back to that which she had brought him away from. He the emphasis is achieved by putting "that" in the main clause.

The system of connectives in ME and later on underwent a number of changes too. Some of OE conjunctions fell into disuse: e.g. oþ þa (до того як), mid þam (з тим, щоб). Some connectives became specialized as indicators of new relationships. For example, OE temporal conjunction "sith" (з тих пір) began to express causal relationships as well. And, finally, a great number of new connectives came into being: e.g. save, except, in case, because, till, before etc.

The appearance of relative pronouns from interrogatives “whō, what, whōs, whōm” (14^th century) and the differentiation of "that, who, which" in their functions by the 18^th century made it possible to indicate various kinds structural and semantic relationships in the complex sentence with subordinate attributive clauses.