The evolution of the nominal system in the Middle English and New English.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 564.

ME. In the 11^th-13^th centuries the tendencies of the reduction of declensions added by the Scandinavian influence, developed very intensively. Weakening of inflections is also connected with leveling of unstressed endings. This process is accompanied by series of phonological formation. In OE the category of number was interwoven with the category of case. The expression of number is separated from expression of case. Homogeneous forms in OE noun paradigms neutralized sound of grammatical opposition. Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to varying degree. Due to the loss of inflections the Nom. and Acc. fall together in early ME and for what now is called the common case. 3 cases in ME: Common, Genitive, Dative. First the form of the Dative case is marked by ‘-e' but then the form without any ending prevails. -/ 3 classes fall together. In late ME only 2 classes: common, genitive. In OE numerous inflections were used to express the Genitive case: -es, -e, -ra, -an. In the ME all the inflections are reduced except -es which becomes the principal inflection. In the 14^th century the –es of the Gen. case becomes almost universal. In the plural the Gen, has no special markers. The formal distinction between cases is lost except in the nouns which have never taken the -es in the plural. In the 13^th century appears a new way of expression of possession – with the help of pronouns ‘his, her, their' following the nouns in the common case. The reduction in the number of cases is linked up with the change of meanings. In ME common case has a very general meaning. In ME the zero inflection and umlaut have been preserved for forming plural of nouns. Inflections –es and –en became popular. The ending -es as the uniform marker of plural has spread by analogy to different morphological classes of nouns very quickly. The –en is used only as a variant marker of plural and it has lost its formal productivity. In ModE few words e.g.: ox-oxen; child-children. The loss of grammatical gender is explained as a result of a decay of inflections. Phenomenon which promoted the processes: 1) The loss of gender of demonstrative pronouns which formerly were used often with nouns. OE se, seo, thaet – ME the, that. 2) Scandinavian invasion. Some words of the same root are of different genders in Scandinavian dialects and in OE. e.g.: OSc stjarna (f.) – OE steorna (m.) nouns referred to he/she if they denote human beings. It – inhuman things, animals. NE. The category of number. In NE the inflection –es spread more widely as it turned out to be more stable. The inflection –en had a tendency to drop and it was replaced by –es. e.g.: ME horsen (pl) – NE horses (pl.). The number of nouns with vowel interchange was greatly reduced. e.g.: OE boc (s.) – bec (pl) – ME bookes – NE books. The process of eliminating survival pl. forms went on in 15-16 centuries. e.g.: ME fon, eyen – accepted variants, but regular pl. forms – foes, eyes. In several nouns with [f]/[th] at the end alternation of voiceless fricatives was eliminated. e.g.: roof – roofs; death – deaths. But in other nouns it was preserved. e.g.: wife-wives, path-paths. A few nouns have preserved their plural forms due to the weak declension or mutation. e.g.: child-children, man-men. Another type – the noun added zero ending. e.g.: deer-deer, fish-fish.