Ana Georgieva Faculty No. 860145 Mrs.

Kovatcheva History of English 30th June, 2007

Term Paper
5:4 OE a he sprecan geswac he cw to simone; Teoh hit on dypan and lta eowre nett on one fiscwer; taking ME soli as he cesede to speken, he seide to simon, led ou in to hei, and slake ee oure netis in to

morphological & syntactic changes: OE >ME morphological: The OE a is a conjunction then/at that time, which in ME turns into the conjunction soli then. The nominative singular masculine 3rd person pronoun he in OE, remains the same in ME. Reduction of unstressed vowels in ME causes leveling of OE inflections. In every case, the vowel in the final syllable becomes e, which we assume was pronounced []. In the OE sprecan > ME speken the unstressed vowel could be reduced. Cw is the past singular of the strong verb class 5, cwean, and develops into the past tense seide in ME. In the OE personal pronoun Simone the final vowel e is omitted ME Simon. OE toh is a strong verb, class 2, imperative of ton, which in ME becomes led, not much different from todays form lead. OE hit, a 3rd person singular neuter accusative pronoun, i t, which grew dominant during the Middle English Period, is replaced by another lexeme, that is, another pronoun ou you. The OE preposition on undergoes lexical change and becomes in to in ME. The 1st class weak, infinitive, OE verb dypan is reduced and turned into an adjective, hei. OE lta is a strong verb, class 7, imperative form, replaced by another lexeme in ME, slake.

The plural pronoun ee is used due to the imperative construction in ME and is a form of address. The personal (possessive) pronoun in r, eowre becomes oure in ME. In OE the plural, neuter, accusative noun nett develops into the plural ME noun netis. ME taking is a gerund which functions as a verbal noun and corresponds to the OE masculine, accusative, singular noun fiscwer. syntactic: The word order in Middle English is more fixed than that of Old English. In the ME construction: slake ee oure netis, (VSO), the verb precedes the subject and doesnt follow it. Middle English imperative sentences begin with a verb, as they did in Old English: ME led ou in to hei; ME slake ee oure netis in to taking and OE teoh hit on dypan; OE lta eowre nett on one fiscwer. The second-person nominative is still preserved in the imperative construction, in ME it was obligatory for it to be there, though in the OE variant of the verse it might have been omitted. ME soli as he cesede to speken, he seide to simon, led ou in to hei, and slake ee oure netis in to taking EModE Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.

morphological & syntactic changes: ME > EModE morphological: The inflectional endings of verbs in Early Modern English are the development of the endings found in Middle English with dialect variants eliminated. In the present tense, the e of the first-person singular was lost before the end of the ME period. ME ending -e > EModE zero ending: ME slake > EModE let, with a different lexeme. In early Modern English, the for-to-infinitive was lost, the plain infinitive was gradually restricted to a few contexts: EModE let and EModE launch. There is a change from ME cesede to speken > EModE had left speaking which is an example of the perfect progressive tense. ME led > EModE launch out. syntactic: SVO word order was established in both main and subordinate clauses in the Early Middle English period: he said unto Simon.

Amazingly enough, the second-person pronoun from the imperative construction is retained in EModE, though this is a very close stage to ModE.

EModE Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.

ModE When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.

morphological & syntactic changes: EModE > ModE morphological: The verb form left changes into the ModE form finished, which is its synonym. The phrasal verb launch out in EModE becomes another synonym, put out. The EModE noun the deep corresponds to the noun phrase deep water. EModE possessive pronoun your goes into a definite article the. The final word draught is replaced by the synonym catch. There is a change in the punctuation, that is, the introduction of inverted commas. syntactic: The SVO word order is much reinforced in ModE. There is considerable fluctuation in both morphology and syntax and some important developments in them. Like German, Old English possessed a complex inflexional grammar. There were four cases and three genders. As inflexions in Middle English became less important in indicating the syntactical function of nouns, the role of prepositions increased and word order became more fixed within clauses. The change between Middle English and Early Modern English sees the rise of new grammatical constructions and new means of marking grammatical distinctions.