Changes in syntax in the Middle English and New English.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 1201.

Some significant changes occurred in ME period and primary these changes were connected with the morphology. The decline of the inflectional system led to the growth, to the functional significance of syntactic means of word-connection. In ME the word order becomes more strict than that of OE; the use of prepositions turns to be more extensive. The structure of a word phrase and the sentence becomes more complicated and stabilized. And in the NE only few changes can be pointed out in the morphology also: decline of the inflectional system, which led to the growth of syntactical means of connection of words. Word order became even more strict; the use of prepositions became more extended; the structure of the sentence became more complicated. Syntactic connections. 1) Agreement: In ME it decreased, in NE it goes on decreasing. Very few cases of agreement have survived. The loss of adjective inflections has made agreement of adjectives with nouns impossible. Only the 2 pronouns ‘this' and ‘that' still agree in number with the head-word. 2) Government: In ME it has not undergone any considerable changes. But in the NE period little has remained of it. Only the personal pronouns, the interrogative and relative pronouns are governed. 3) As agreement and government decline, the role of joining, naturally, grows during both ME and NE periods. 4) Closure is typical of NE. it plays a considerable part in NE. practically any word or phrase enclosed between article and noun becomes an attribute to the noun. Sentence. There are no considerable changes in the structure of the sentence in transition from OE to ME. The same types of sentences, the same parts of it. The simple sentence in ME has become more orderly and uniform. In NE no material change can be found in simple sentence, though the order of words underwent noticeable changes: it become fixed and direct. The synthetic word order and framed constructions went out of use in NE. Due to direct word order impersonal constructions transferred into personal. In ME the subject of the sentence is primarily expressed by a noun or a pronoun. In ME the types of the predicate are the same as in OE, but they become more various in form and meaning. One of the most important developments in late ME and early NE was the growth of Predicative constructions (predicative constructions with infinitive/participle came to be used with different verbs of various meaning). In late ME and early NE periods several negative words can be used within 1 predicative group (e.g.: that cannot be neither). But in the 17^th century double negation become to decline and gradually it becomes a feature of dialect and non-literary style.