The development of demonstrative pronouns in the history of English

Demonstrative pronouns:

OE adj possess 3 categories:

1. gender (m, f, n);

2. number (sg, pl);

3. case. In OE there were 5 cases: Nom, Dat, Gen, Acc, Instr.

Demonstrative pronouns belong to an ancient class of words that goes back to two Indo-European roots – se and to.

2 of them:

a. prototype of “that” (sē (m), þæt (n), sēo(f));

b. prototype of “this” (þes(m), þēos(n), þis(f));

4. were used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, case and gender. They can help to distinguish between gender: E.g.: þæm lande – n; þære heorde –f.

5. Dem. pron. became unchangeable. The only category that was left in the dem. Pronouns was the number (that – those).

Causes for Rise of Articles:

1. In OE the there were two declensions of adjectives – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite). At the end of the ME Period the declensions of the Adjective disappeared and there was a necessity to find another way to indicate the definiteness/ indefiniteness of a noun. Thus the articles appeared.

2. Word-order became fixed in ME. This meant that the first place in a sentence was usually occupied by the theme (information already known à marked with the definite article) and the second place – by the rheme (new information à marked with the indefinite article).

The ind. article developed from numeral ‘ān’ and often preserves traces of its meaning: Eg: a teaching time saves night.

In ME the OE demonst. pron. lost most of their inflected forms. Dem. Pron. sē, sēo, þæt led to the formation of the def. article.

Form-building means in the history of English

Form-building means	OE	ME	NE
Synthetic
inflections	Great variety	In inflected parts of speech (but less varied)	Non productive
-sound changes	Mostly in V, N, Adj	Less productive in weak V, some Adj & Verbals	Most of them disappeared Left: irregular V, Adj. & N (only a few words)
suppletion	Anomalous V, N & Adj. (bēo – wæs)	Number of words reduced. (good – better –the best)	Survived from OE
Analytical
analytical forms	-	Began to appear, developed from synthetic phrases	Continued to grow, V mostly
word order	Free	Less free to express gram. means	Fixed, it was the poison of a noun that pointed to its synthetic function (direct/indirect W O started to express gram. Means)
Special use of prepos.	Form of the Object (tō hire – Dat.c)	Used freely of any N.	Usage became specialized depending on the verb and on the meaning of a verb pattern

OE verbal system.

Finite

They had the following categories:

· Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);

· Mood – Indicative (finde);Infin.- findan, Imperative (find), Superlative (finde);

· Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;

· Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

· Conjugation – strong and weak.

Non-finite:

v Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:

· Case – Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to beren ne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

v Participles 1, 2 resembledthe Verb, the Noun and the Adjective and had the following categories:

· Tense – Present (Participle 1) and Past (Participle 2);

· Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

· Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);

· Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc);

· Voice – Active (Part. 1, 2) and Passive (Part 2).

In OE all verbs were divided into 4 morph. groups: 2 major (strong and weak verbs) & 2 minor (anomalous, preterite – present verbs).

Morphological types:

1. Strong verbs (purely of IE origin) form their Past tense by changing their root vowel (ablaut). R. – беру – брал.

OE – sittan – sæt.

Strong verbs represent an unproductive type.

2. Weak verbs form their tense with a help of –d/-t (dental suffix) → productive type; Germanic origin. OE – lician – licode.

3. Preterite - Present (12 of them). Their present forms were once past tense forms. They had features of both strong and weak verbs. In present tense had vowel gradation. Had modal meaning & denote not action but attitude to an action. Only 6 of them survived. Eg: dugan (avail), cunnan (can), magan (may).

4. Anomalous (irregular). Abnormality is connected with conjugation. They had suppletivity, some forms were built by changing the whole root. There were 4 of them (beōn – dōn – willan – зān)

20.Weak verbs in OE & their further development.

The weak verbs were formed with the help of the dental suffixes -t/-d:

(līcian (Infinitive) – līco d e (Past Indefinite) The division of weak verbs into classes was based on the original stem-building suffix of a verb. Had 3 principle forms:

- Inf. (macian)(make)

-Past Sg (macode)

- PartII (macod)

Germanic origin. Presented a productive type (because they were were not as complex as strong ones and had a greater regularity and simplicity). Had 3 classes. They differed in:

-the ending of the Inf.

-the sonority of the suf.

-the sound preceding the suf.

Class 1 (stem-suffix -j

most verbs – with front root-vowel

derived from nouns, adjectives)

Class 2 (stem-suffix –oja

most numerous class

most verbs – with back root-vowel)

were built with the help of o/oj

Class 3 (3 verbs only:

habban (to have), libban (to live), secζan (to say))

ME main changes: the 3rd class merged with class 1

NE: the development of the inflection-te(de)in early NE shows the origins of the Modern variant.

Re-arrangement:

The turning of weak verbs into strong was very rare and was mainly based on phonetic similarity between some strong and weak verbs (e.g. to wear was originally weak and became strong because of the mistaken analogy with to swear)