The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 2 part 3 ppsx

Roger Lass (b) Old English already showed a tendency towards dative/accusative syncretism, normally in favour of the dative form. In Middle English this trend continues in the masculine and feminine third-person singular. The collapse of bine and him in a general object-case him begins early, though bine remains as an alternative in southern texts into the fourteenth century (Dan Michel has me bine anhongep 'one hangs him' alongside and him halt 'and holds him'). This is a classic instance of the distortion of history produced by the standardisation of a language: from literary texts alone we would be justified in assuming that bine 'vanished' in the fourteenth century (and indeed this is true of the literary standard). But a reflex of bine (in the form /an/, distinct from him) survives even now in the south-west of England, though it is not strictly differentiated as an accusative (see Wakelin 1972a: 113). Feminine ace. sg. hi(e) and related forms survive in the south until the late thirteenth century, but yield to hir{e) / her(e) afterwards. The dative/ accusative distinction is, however, maintained for neuters during most of Middle English, and it is only later that him is dropped in the standard for neuter indirect objects (in many non-standard dialects, especially in the south-west, it still remains). (c) The origin of she is one of the great unsolved puzzles of the history of English. One early view is that it descends from the feminine nominative singular article se'o, via syllabicity shift and palatalisation: i.e. [seo] > [seo] > [sjo:] > [Jo:]. This would give the N scho and similar forms, but not s(c)he: here the vowel would have to come from somewhere else, presumably an analogical transfer from he. One problem is that se'o appears to have died out rather earlier than one would like, which makes it too archaic to accord with the surfacing of she. A more likely account is what is sometimes called the ' Shetland Theory', since it assumes a development parallel to that of Shetland < OScand. Hjaltland, Shapinsay < Hjalpandisej, etc. The starting point is the morphologically and chronologically preferable bed. Once again we have syllabicity shift and vowel reduction, giving [heo] > [heo] > [hjo:]. Then [hj-] > [c-], and [c-] > [/-], giving final [Jo:]. The 'syllabicity shift' (or at least the development /eo/ > /o:/) is attested elsewhere (ce'osan > choose, not expected **cheese: see 2.2.1); and [hj-] > [5-] is also reasonable, as in many modern dialects that have [cu:-] in hue, human. Indeed Orm's fern. 3 sg. nom. %ho may well represent either [hjo:] or [50:]. There are, however, a few snags: first, chronological problems having to do with the /eo/ > /jo:/ develop- ment in Scandinavian, which is supposed to have influenced the 118 Phonology and morphology English development. Second, while [hj] > [c] is reasonable, the further putative development to [J] is only attested in a few (non- English) place names. In addition, the simplest phonological solution, a normal develop- ment of the nucleus of he'o or se'o to /e:/, would make it impossible to get the right initial consonant; for [h] to give [5 > J] requires a following [j], and this can only come from the aberrant development to /o:/, since it requires reduction of a desyllabified initial [e] in the diphthong. So any solution that gets [J] from /eo/ also needs to 'correct' the resultant /o:/ (outside the north) to /e:/. This means an analogical transfer of (probably) the /e:/ of he. All this in just one word. So none of the available stories is satisfactory. The only certainty is (a) that the northern scho type could have come easily from se'o, and less easily from he'o; (b) that all existing accounts, whatever the phonology, also require some morphological assistance to get the right vowel in she; and (c) that a form probably in the ancestral line of she occurs in the east midlands as early as the 1150s, i.e. the Peterborough Chronicle's sex. For most of the Middle English period scho is restricted to the north, and sche to the east midlands, while the south keeps the old heo or its descendants, e.g. ho, hue, hi. Shoo /Ju:/, the natural descendant of scho, remains even today in rural dialects in a small part of West Yorkshire, and hoo /(h)u:/ < he'o in the northwest midlands, particularly parts of Lancashire, southwest Yorkshire, and scattered through Cheshire, Derbyshire and northwest Staffordshire (Duncan 1972: 188f.). (d) During the course of Middle English the genitives of the personal pronouns were syntactically 'detached' from the pronoun paradigm, and came to function rather as adjectives than as true case forms. They could no longer occur as objects of verbs (as in OYifanda min 'try me'), or as partitives {an hiora ' one of them') - the necessary translations illustrate what has happened (cf. **try my, **one their(s)). Eventually the genitives became exclusively noun attributes, i.e. 'possessive adjectives'; this amounts to a retention of only one of their Old English functions - the type min sunu 'my son'. Morphologically these were much like other adjectives (as indeed they were in Old English in their adjectival function): pi. min-e leov-e sustren ' my dear sisters' and the like. Beginning in the north and northwest midlands in the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, a new genitive type arose, with suffixed -(e)s, as in jour{e)s, her{e)s, our(e)s, etc. These spread gradually southwards, appearing in the southeast midlands in the later fourteenth century. The 119 Roger Lass new forms were used (as they still are) in constructions where the possessed noun did not directly follow the genitive of the possessor: e.g. Chaucer's myn hous or elks .jour-es, al this good is our-es. In the south and parts of the midlands, the second genitive was apparently formed on the model of possessives like min, pin, with -{e)n: 7,our-en, his-en - a type that still survives in some dialects both in England and the USA. New forms oimin, pin were also created by deletion of final -n, at first typically in sandhi before words beginning with a vowel or /h/ (cf. the modern distribution of a, an). This pattern is common but not obligatory; both the types mi/rend, min jrend occur. (e) The entire third-person plural system has been replaced in the standard by a Scandinavian paradigm; but the different case forms were not uniformly replaced except in the north. The eventual merger pattern is the same as for the singular: dative and accusative fall together, and what remains is formally the historical dative (them < OScand. pei-m; cf. hi-m). Northern Middle English dialects generally show a full Scandinavian paradigm from earliest times, with descendants of peir, peirra, peim (nom., gen., obi.). The other dialects show a gradual southward movement of the p- paradigm, the native h- type remaining longest in the conservative south. In the northeast midland Ormulum, the nominative is exclusively Pe^; the genitive is mostly pe^re, with a few /6-forms; the oblique is hemm, with a few instances of pe$$m. This is the basic pattern: nominative />-forms appear first, then the genitive, then the oblique. So pei appears in London in the fourteenth century, and Chaucer, typically for the period, has pei/her(e)/hem. London texts of the fifteenth century vary between her(e) and their, and towards the end of the century their begins to take over, and by Caxton's time is the only form in common use. Them is the last: Chaucer and the next-generation writers like Lydgate and Hoccleve use only hem, and Caxton has hem and them, with hem predominating. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the modern paradigm is fully established (Mustanoja 1960: 134f.; Wyld 1927: §§307, 312). In summary, the late southeast midlands dialects show fairly stable first-, second- and third-person singular paradigms: (61) singular I2O nom. gen. obi. 1 I ml(n) me 2 ]>u Masculine he his him 3 Feminine she } her(e) Neuter (h)it his (h)it Phonology and morphology 1 2 nom. we 36 Plural gen. our(es) 3our(es) obi. us 30U The third-person plural, on the other hand, has a gradual three-phase development through the fifteenth century: (62) I II III Nominative f>ei )?ei yei Genitive her(e) her(e) ~)?eir \?eir Oblique hem hem hem ~ f>em The only major changes in the pronoun system after this are the development of a new neuter genitive singular its, and a drastic remodelling of the second-person system (see vol. Ill, ch. 1). 2.9.1.4 Minor categories: interrogatives, indefinites, numerals A number of categories show either pronoun- or adjective-like behaviour (or both), but lack full independent paradigms, and have simpler morphological histories than the true pronouns or adjectives. These include interrogatives, numerals and so-called 'indefinite pro- nouns' (a traditional catch-all including chiefly quantifiers like all, any, each and the like). 1 Interrogatives. Old English had two main interrogatives, one of which (hwa/hwset 'who/what') was a true pronoun, while the other (bwilc 'which') was either pronoun or adjective, depending on syntax (see below). Hiva had two declensions, one primarily for reference to humans (hence conflating masculine and feminine), and one for non- humans (neuter). The paradigms and their Late Middle English descendants were: (63) Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative Instrumental Ok Human hwa hwaes 1 English Non-Human hwast — hwaim/hwam — •} hwone — hwaet I Oblique hwy 1 Middle Human who whos(e) whom English A Non-Human what — what 121 Roger Lass The old instrumental hwj, while pronominal in origin (= 'for what?'), is syntactically adverbial, and in Middle English is an indeclinable autonomous word. The others, with the expectable syncretism of dative/accusative under dative (cf. bine/him > him) form a coherent set parallel to the third-person singular masculine personal pronoun {he/his/him), and have a similar history. OE hwilc 'which' was declined like an adjective; in Early Middle English it retained the strong adjectival endings, especially in the south, but later, like other adjectives, developed a simple singular (0) vs plural (-«) declension (see 2.9.1.2). Thus (Gower CA IV.1212f.) which-e sorwes vs which prosperite. The same pattern holds for whether < OE hwaipere 'which (of two)'. The interrogatives in later times were used as relative pronouns as well, and form the basis of the modern system; but this is more appropriately treated along with the syntactic evolution of the relative clause. 2 Indefinite pronouns. The Old English quantifiers {e)all 'all', an 'one', eenig 'any', mznig 'many', xlc 'each', zgper 'either', etc. survived into Middle English, and evolved much like adjectives, losing their inflections early in the more advanced northern dialects, and retaining fragmentary inflection further south. All keeps its endings longest, with dative plural still distinguished in Kent in the fourteenth century {to all- en 'to all'), and even Chaucer showing relics of a genitive plural {at our all-er cost 'at the cost of all of us' < OE eal-ra). 3 Numerals. While ordinals {first, second, etc.) are simply adjectives, and were generally treated in Old English as such, the cardinals {one, two, etc.) were somewhat ambiguous, and the morphology was not uniform for the whole series. Only 'one' to 'three' were regularly inflected (e.g. twa 'two' had forms like twe'gen (masc. nom./acc), tweg{r)a (gen.), twsem (dat.), etc.) The higher ordinals were not usually inflected when prenominal {syx wintra 'six winters'), but could be when they stood alone {fif menn 'five men' vs ic seofif-e 'I see five': cf. Quirk & Wrenn 1957: 37). In Middle English the inflections began to vanish early, though in the south, especially in Kent, they remain to some extent into the fourteenth century {Ayenbite of Inwit has to on-en 'to one' < an-um masc. dat. sg.). Except for these sporadic retentions in conservative areas, the numerals are treated as indeclinable words in Middle English; possibly because for any numeral higher than 'one' there is no possibility of a singular/plural or definite/indefinite opposition. Hence 122 Phonology and morphology the commonest loci for adjective inflection are absent, and the numerals fall away from the adjective paradigm faster than quantifiers or ordinary adjectives. 2.9.2 The verb 2.9.2.1 Introduction: Old English conjugation The histories of the noun and adjective (2.9.1.1-4) suggest that English morphological evolution involves more than just simplification; there is a certain 'directedness', favouring particular categories at the expense of others. In the noun number expands or is retained at the expense of gender and case; in the adjective inflection is reduced to a sin- gular/plural opposition, and then lost. The verb shows a similar (if longer-term) dominance pattern: of the potential inflectional categories in Old English (tense, mood, person, number), it is tense that becomes the single typifying inflection. Today there are only marginal ex- ceptions : the present 3 sg. -{e)s on regular verbs, and a few recessive 'subjunctives', e.g. the was/were opposition (indicative if I was 'even though in fact I was' vs counterfactual /// were 'I am not, but if '), or unmarked third-person singular verbs in complements like I insist that he leave (now mainly US). The evolution in both noun phrase and verb shows a characteristic English (and to some extent Germanic - except for German and Icelandic) tendency: a move away from the multiparameter inflection typical of the older Indo-European languages to a restricted system with one exclusive or dominant parameter per part of speech. Old English marked two tenses (past vs present), three moods (indicative vs imperative vs subjunctive), and three persons (first, second, third). All traces of both dual and passive inflection had already been lost in Northwest Germanic (only Gothic shows these). This suggests an 'ideal' maximum of twenty-six distinct forms for each verb: six each for present and past indicative and subjunctive (3 persons X 2 numbers), plus imperative singular and plural (only for second person). In fact, the system is not that symmetrical: person is marked only in the indicative singular. The inflectional categories for the Old English verb, overall, are as shown in (64). 123 Roger Lass (64) pre ind. subj. imp. ind. subj. imp. NUM. NUM. NUM. NUM. NUM. A A A A A A sg. pi. sg. pi. sg. pi. 1 2 3 sg. pi. sg. pi. sg. pi. PERSON A 1 2 3 (I am counting only the finite forms as part of the verb paradigm proper; for the infinitive, participles and gerund see 2.9.2.6.) This should give a total of sixteen forms for each verb; but the maximum is in fact only a little over 60 per cent of the expected yield: no more than eleven finite forms for any verb. This is due to the relative paucity of available inflectional material, which leads to massive homophony within the paradigm. To illustrate with one strong and one weak verb: (65) Strong: Class I drifan ' drive' drtf-e (pres. ind. 1 sg. pres. subj. 1-3 sg.); drif-st (pres. ind. 2 sg.); drif-6 (pres. ind. 3 sg.); drif-ad (pres. ind. 1-3 pi., imp. pi.); drif-en (pres. subj. 1-3 pi.); drtf (imp. sg.); draf (past ind. 1, 3 sg.); drif-e (past subj. 1—3 sg. past ind. 2 sg.); drif-on (past ind. 1—3 pi.); drif-en (past subj. 1-3 pi.) Weak: Class I deman 'judge' dem-e (pres. ind. 1 sg., pres. subj. 1-3 sg.); dem-est (pres. ind. 2 sg.); dem-ed (pres. ind. 3 sg.); dem-ad (pres. ind. 1-3 pi., imp. pi.); dem-en (pres. subj. 1-3 pi.); dem (imp. sg.); dem-d-e (past ind. 1, 3 sg., past subj. 1-3 sg.); dem-d-est (past ind. 2 sg.); dem-d-on (past ind. 1-3 pi.); dem-d-en (past subj. 1-3 pi.) 124 Phonology and morphology The inventory of inflectional material for the regular Old English verb then consists of: (a) the strong verb vowel alternations, which code tense/mood/number/person in an exceedingly complex way; (b) the weak tense suffix (here in the form -d-, but see the following section for allomorphy); and (c) zero termination plus the endings -e, -{e)d, -{e)st, -ad, -on, -en. This already shows a vast simplification of the original Germanic system: an archaic dialect like Gothic has twelve distinct person/number morphs just in the indicative and subjunctive singular and plural, compared to five in Old English. So Old English is already reduced from a Germanic point of view; and it is clear that even this eroded system, like that of the noun, was bound to be further reduced. The -en/'-on, -ed/-ad oppositions would collapse in -en, -ed with the levelling of unstressed vowels; loss of final /a/ would merge the present first-person singular with the imperative singular, and so on. The story of the verb during Middle English is enormously involved, and nearly impossible to tell coherently. The noun was bad enough, with only case and number (and marginally gender) to worry about; here we have not only tense, person, number and mood, but a plethora of distinct strong and weak classes with partially independent histories, and numerous odd but important verbs like be, do, can, must (see 2.9.2.5). These complications make a neat category-by-category nar- rative nearly impossible. Still, we have to start somewhere; and since the 'victory of tense' is the main theme of the story, this is a good place to begin. For obvious reasons we will treat the weak and strong verbs separately; when we come to person and number we will consider both together. 2.9.2.2 The weak verb: tense marking and class membership The strong verbs are largely an Indo-European inheritance in Ger- manic; their complex vowel alternations continue ancient Indo- European patterns. There have been far-reaching reorganisations: e.g. the distinct vowels in the past singular and plural reflect an Indo- European aspectual contrast, the singular vowel generally continuing an old perfect, and the plural vowel an aorist. But in principle they do not deviate as much from the Indo-European type as the weak verbs. Semantically (and in a rather opaque way in some aspects of their morphology) the weak verbs are also Indo-European in type: that is, they can be related to certain classes of' secondary' or' derived' verbs in the other Indo-European dialects. Thus the -o- in Gothic denominal Roger Lass weak class II verbs like fisk-o-n' to fish' is cognate to the -a- in Latin first- conjugation denominals likeplant-d-re 'to plant', etc. But in terms of tense marking (see below) they are uniquely Germanic. Most of the weak verbs, partly as a result of their historical background, differ from the strong verbs in being the outputs of productive word-formation processes. So, for instance, most class I weak verbs are either causatives {settan ' set' from umlaut of the past stem of class V sittan 'sit'), or 'factitives' (verbs indicating the coming into being of a state) formed from adjectives {trymman 'strengthen' < trum 'strong'). Since the morphology of the weak verbs was, compared to that of the strong, extremely simple, involving virtually nothing but suffixation, it was not only easy to make new ones, but also to borrow foreign roots and create still more weak verbs (e.g. OE declinian 'decline' < Lat. declin-dre). In addition to this ease of formation — and to some extent because of it - weak verbs were the numerically preponderant type. They therefore were the natural analogical target for restructuring of the verb system, much as the a-stem masculines (2.9.1.1) were for the noun. Only with the verb the regularisation was much slower, and is still incomplete (about sixty-odd of the more than 300 Old English strong verbs still survive in one form or another). In general, though, if verbs changed conjugation type at any time after Old English, they went from strong to weak (creopan 'creep', past sg. creap, past pple cropen > creep/crep-t). The opposite change, as in stick/stuck (OE weak stician/stic-o-de) is much rarer, as is the borrowing of foreign verbs into the strong conjugation {strive/strove/striven < OF estriver is one of the few examples). The conceptual basis of the weak conjugation is marking of the past by a suffix containing a 'dental' element, usually /t/ or /d/: OE weak dem-an' judge', past 1 sg. dem-d-e, past pple -dem-e-dvs drifan / draf/ -drifen. Many weak verbs, owing to various sound changes, showed secondary vowel and consonant alternations as well: sellan 'sell', past seal-d-e, secan 'seek', past soh-t-e, and so on. In Middle English there were also length changes that complicated the paradigms: OE cepan/cep-te 'keep', ME kepen/kep-te and the like. But the suffix principle remains characteristic and defines the class; it can still be seen even in 'irregular' weak verbs, as in keep I'kep-t, seek/' sough-1, bring/ brough-t. For our purposes the most important of the Old English weak verb classes are the following: Class I(a). Verbs with a historical */-jan/ suffix in the infinitive, and a heavy first syllable; either original {deman < 126 Phonology and morphology */do:m-jan/) or via West Germanic Gemination {sellan < */sal-jan/). The original thematic vowel /-i-/ connecting the stem and past suffix was lost in pre-Old English times after a heavy syllable (see 2.5.3): thus past 1 sg. dem-de < */do:m-i-da/. Class I(b). These have a light first syllable and no gemination, giving an infinitive in -ian and a retained thematic vowel -e- in the past: herian 'praise' < */xar-jan/, past 1 sg. her-e-de < */xar-i-da/. In both groups the past participle was formed the same way: (ge-)dem- ed, (ge-)her-ed (on the fate of the prefix ge- see 2.9.2.6). Class II. These had an original thematic */-o:-/ before the suffix, and could have had either light stems {lufian ' love' < */luf-o:-jan/) or heavy {locian 'look' < */lo:k-o:-jan/). Though the -ian infinitives look like class I(b), the rest of the conjugation shows major differences; in particular the theme vowel, which is retained in the past and past participle of both light and heavy stems, is -o-, not -e-: luf-o-de / (ge-)luf- od, loc-o-de/(ge-)loc-od. There was also a weak class III, including important verbs like habban 'have' (past 1, 3 sg. hsf-de); these tended to fall in with class I(a) in Middle English, except for libban 'live', which behaved more like I(b) or II. Obviously one of the first things to go in the Old to Middle English transition was the -o-d(e)/-e-d(e) distinction, due to levelling in /a/; the three types above collapse into two. We can call them new type I (athematic past) and type II (thematic past). Using examples cited above: (66) Type Type I II (athematic) (thematic) Infinitive deem-en seek-en her(i)en luv-(i)en Past 1-singular deem-d-e souj-t-e her-e-d(e) luv-e-d(e) Past participle (y-)deem-d (y-)sou 3 -t (y-)her-e-d (y-)lov-e-d The parenthesised (-/-) in type II is due to the retention of distinct endings for Old English classes I(b), II in some southern dialects; the thematic -/'- did not level-to -e-, and verbs like 'love' came down as luv- ien, later luv-i. This pattern was extended analogically to verbs of other classes as well. (These -/-forms never made it into the standard, but they I2 7 [...]... writing the letter), is a late development; for the distinction and history see Donner (1986) The Middle English developments include loss of the infinitive ending, so that the infinitive comes to be the same as the bare stem; merger of the original -ende present participle with the -ing noun; and loss of the ge- prefix All of these are virtually complete by about 1500 The story of the present participle... phonological implications, see Francis (19 62) 2. 2.1 The account of the Old English inputs here is fairly traditional; for details of the controversies surrounding the vowel system in particular see volume I of this history, ch 3 The traditional view that OE (and ME) / r / was an alveolar trill [r] is untenable; for the history of this view and some criticism see Lass (1977a) The claim in Lass & Anderson (1975)... Mertens-Fonck (1984) 2. 9 .2. 3 On the strong verb and its later history see Rettger (1 934 ), Long (1944) There is a useful reclassification of Middle English strong verbs according to the number of stem allomorphs in Fisiak (1968: 106-10), and good class-by-class coverage in Mosse (19 52) and Wyld (1 927 ) 2. 9 .2. 4 The present plural in -en is thoroughly discussed in Bryan (1 921 ) The development of .the -es present... areas further north; in the northeast midlands Robert of Brunne ( 130 3) uses both endings in the same line:' £>e holy man tellef> vs and seys' (Wyld 1 927 :25 5) The story of the spread of verbal -s in the southern standard belongs to the Early Modern period; but it was beginning to grow in the fifteenth century, and some writers use it quite frequently (e.g Lydgate), others hardly at all, even rather late... three ways: levelling under the vowel of the singular, under that of the plural, or under that of the past participle Only the first and last of these seem generally to have been taken up Levelling under the singular vowel grade (the 'Northern Preterite': Wyld 1 927 : 26 8) first appears in early northern texts, where the plural ending had already been lost: Cursor mundi (ca 130 0) has past plurals with... instance, the verb were to follow the noun pattern, reducing the number of distinct inflectional classes, we might get a rapprochement of the strong and weak conjugations Given the numerical superiority of the weak verbs, we could predict a reconstruction of the strong past on the weak model, with the addition of second- and third-person singular endings; on the other hand, given the simplicity of the strong... deal of scholarship; for surveys and discussion Stevick (1964), Duncan (19 72) , who cite the relevant earlier work Duncan is particularly worth reading, both for her general critical view of the literature, and her connection of the history with the modern rural dialect picture 2. 9 .2. 2 On the tense forms of the weak verb see any of the standard grammars; on class shifting and ambiguity in Old English, ... reached the south as well The paradigms in (68) and (69) give the basic material out of which the Middle English dialects formed their verb conjugations By around 130 0, the Old English system had been largely restructured everywhere; what with simplifications, and spread of parts of the northern system into other areas, the inherited material had been deployed as follows in the main regional dialects: 136 ... Lass (1976: ch 6; 1984b: §§8 .3. 1 -3) 2. 4 .2. 2 The account of /r/-metathesis is oversimplified; the process was apparently more widespread and less restricted than the handbook accounts (which I follow) suggest For data and discussion see the intriguing study by Robinson (1985) 2. 5.1 On quantity seethe theoretical introduction in Lass (1984b: §§10 .3. 1 -3) The characterisation of -VC rhymes as light is controversial,... 19 83; Blake & Jones 1984; Eaton et al 1985; Adamson eta/ 1990) 2. 1 .2 In addition to Malone's paper, there is a good discussion of the earliest 'transitional' changes in Moore (1 928 ) See also Strang (1970: chs IV-V) 2. 1 .3 On historical reconstruction and related matters see the notes to volume I of this history, chs 1 -3, and the discussion of reconstruction and written evidence in Bloomfield (1 933 : . quantifiers or ordinary adjectives. 2. 9 .2 The verb 2. 9 .2. 1 Introduction: Old English conjugation The histories of the noun and adjective (2. 9.1.1-4) suggest that English morphological evolution involves. pi. PERSON A 1 2 3 (I am counting only the finite forms as part of the verb paradigm proper; for the infinitive, participles and gerund see 2. 9 .2. 6.) This should give a total of sixteen forms. groups the past participle was formed the same way: (ge-)dem- ed, (ge-)her-ed (on the fate of the prefix ge- see 2. 9 .2. 6). Class II. These had an original thematic */-o:-/ before the suffix,