The history of English 
p align="left">In ME the Present Participle and the verbal noun became identical: they both ended in -ing. This led to the confusion of some of their features: verbal nouns began to take direct objects, like participles and infinitives. This verbal feature, a direct object, as well as the frequent absence of article before the -ing-form functioning as a noun transformed the verbal noun into a Gerund in the modern understanding of the term. The disappearance of the inflected infinitive contributed to the change, as some of its functions were taken over by the Gerund.The earliest instances of a verbal noun resembling a Gerund date from the 12th c. Chaucer uses the -ing-form in substantival functions in both ways: with a prepositional object like a verbal noun and with a direct object, e.g. in getynge on your richesse and the usinge hem 'in getting your riches and using them'. In Early NE the -ing-form in the function of a noun is commonly used with an adverbial modifier and with a direct object -- in case of transitive verbs, e.g.: Tis pity... That wishing well had not a body in't Which might be felt. (Sh) Drink, being poured out of a cup into a glass, by filling the one, doth empty the other. Those were the verbal features of the Gerund. The nominal features, retained from the verbal noun, were its syntactic functions and the ability to be modified by a possessive pronoun or a noun in the Gen. case: And why should we proclaim it in an hour before his' entering? In the course of time the sphere of the usage of the Gerund grew: it replaced the Infinitive and the Participle in many adverbial functions; its great advantage was that it could be used with various prepositions, e.g.: And now lie fainted and cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind. Shall we clap into 't roundly without hawking, or spitting, or saying we are hoarse… The historical changes in the ways of building the principal forms of the verb ("stems") transformed the morphological classification of the verbs. The OE division into classes of weak and strong verbs was completely re-arranged and broken up. Most verbs have adopted the way of form-building employed by the weak verbs; the dental suffix. The strict classification of the strong verbs, with their regular system of form-building, degenerated. In the long run all these changes led to increased regularity and uniformity and to the development of a more consistent and simple system of building the principal forms of the verb. Strong Verbs The seven classes of OE strong verbs underwent multiple grammatical and phonetic changes. In ME the final syllables of the stems, like all final syllables, were weakened, in Early NE most of them were lost. Thus the OE endings -an, -on, and -en (of the 1st, 3rd and 4th principal forms) were all reduced to ME -en, consequently in Classes 6 and 7, where the infinitive and the participle had the same gradation vowel, these forms fell together; in Classes 1 and 3a it led to the coincidence of the 3rd and 4th principal forms. In the ensuing period, the final -n was lost in the infinitive and the past tense plural, but was sometimes preserved in Participle II. probably to distinguish the participle from other forms. Thus, despite phonetic reduction, -n was sometimes retained to show an essential grammatical distinction, cf. NE stole stolen, spoke spoken, but bound bound In ME, Early NE the root-vowels in the principal forms of all the classes of strong verbs underwent the regular changes of stressed vowels. Due to phonetic changes vowel gradation in Early ME was considerably modified. Lengthening of vowels before some consonant sequences split the verbs of Class 3 into two subgroups: verbs like findan had now long root-vowels in all the forms; while in verbs like drinken the root-vowel remained short. Thus ME writen and finden (Classes 1 and 3) had the same vowel in the infinitive but different vowels in the Past and Participle II. Participle II of Classes 2, 4 and 6 acquired long root-vowels [o:] and [a:] due to lengthening in open syllables, while in the Participle with Class 1 the vowel remained short. These phonetic changes made the interchange less consistent and justified than before, for instance, verbs with long [i:] in the first stem (writen, finden) would, for no apparent reason, use different interchanges to form the other stems. At the same time there was a strong tendency to make the system of forms more regular. The strong verbs were easily influenced by analogy. It was due to analogy that they lost practically all consonant interchanges in ME and Early NE. The interchange [z~r] in was were was retained. Classes which had many similar forms were often confused: OE sprecan Class 5 began to build the Past Participle spoken, like verbs of Class 4 (also NE weave and tread). The most important change in the system of strong verbs was the reduction in the number of stems from four to three, by removing the distinction between the two past tense stems. In OE these stems had the same gradation vowels only in Classes 6 and 7, but we should recall that the vast majority of English verbs which were weak had a single stem for all the past forms. These circumstances facilitated analogical leveling, which occurred largely in Late ME. Its direction depended on the dialect, and on the class of the verb. In the Northern dialects the vowel of the Past sg tended to replace that of the Past pi; in the South and in the Midlands the distinction between the stems was preserved longer than in the North In the South and South-West the vowel of the Past sg was often replaced by that of the Past pt or of the Past Participle, especially if the 3rd and 4th sterns had the same root-vowel. Some classes of verbs showed preference for one or another of these ways. Different directions of leveling can be exemplified by forms which were standardised in literary English: wrote, rose, rode are Past sg forms by origin (Class 1); bound, found are Past pl (Class 3a), spoke, got, bore (Classes 5, 4) took their root-vowel from Participle II. Since the 15th c a single stem was used as a base for all the forms of the Past Tense of the Indicative and Subjunctive Moods. 479. The tendency to reduce the number of stems continued in Early NE. At this stage it affected the distinction between the new Past tense stem and Participle II. Identical forms of these stems are found not only in the literary texts and private letters but even M books on English grammar: thus B.Jonson (1640) recommends beat and broke as correct forms of Participle II; Shakespeare uses sang and spoke both as Past tense forms and Participle II. One of the most important events in the history of the strong verbs was their transition into weak. In ME, Early NE many strong verbs began to form their Past and Participle II with the help of the dental suffix instead of vowel gradation. Therefore the number of strong verbs decreased. In OE there were about three hundred strong verbs. Some of them dropped out of use owing to changes in the vocabulary, while most of the remaining verbs became weak. Out of 195 OE strong verbs, preserved in the language, only 67 have retained strong forms with root-vowel interchange roughly corresponding to the OE gradation series. By that time the weak verbs had lost all distinctions between the forms of the Past tense. The model of weak verbs with two 'basic forms, may have influenced the strong verbs. The changes in the formation of principal parts of strong verbs extended over a long period. Weak verbsSome weak verbs preserved the root-vowel interchange, though some of the vowels were altered due to regular quantitative and qualitative vowel changes: ME sellen -- solde (OE salde > Early ME ['sa:lde] > Late ME ['so:lde] > NE sold [sould]), techen--taughte; NE sell--sold, teach -- taught.Another group of weak verbs became irregular in Early ME as a result of quantitative vowel changes. In verbs like OE cepan, fedan, metan the long vowel in the root was shortened before two consonants in the Past and Participle II; OE cepte > ME kepte ['kepte]. The long vowel in the Present tense stem was preserved and was altered during the Great Vowel Shift, hence the interchange [i: > e], NE keep -- kept, feed--fed. This group of verbs attracted several verbs from other classes -- NE sleep, weep, read, which formerly belonged to Class 7 of strong verbs. Some verbs of this group--NE mean, feel--have a voiceless [t]Verbs like OE settan, with the root ending in a dental consonant, added the dental suffix without the intervening vowel [e] OE sette. When the inflections were reduced and dropped, the three stems of the verbs Present, Past and Participle II fell together: NE set--se--set; put--put--put: cast--cast--cast. etc. The final -t of the root had absorbed the dental suffix. (Wherever possible the distinctions were preserved or even introduced: thus OE sendan, restan, which had the same forms sende, reste for the Past, Present appear in ME as senden - sente, resten - rested(e).It must be noted that although the number of non-standard verbs in Mod E is not large about 200 items they constitute an important feature of the language. Most of them belong to the basic layer of the vocabulary, have a high frequency of occurrence and are widely used in word-formation and phraseological units. Their significance for the grammatical system lies in the fact that many of these verbs have preserved the distinction between three principal forms, which makes modern grammarians recognise three stems in all English verbs despite the formal identity of the Past and Participle II.ME ben (NE be) inherited its suppletive forms from the OE and more remote periods of history. It owes its variety of forms not only to suppletion but also to the dialectal divergence in OE and ME and to the inclusion of various dialectal traits in literary English. The Past tense forms were fairly homogeneous in all the dialects. The forms of the Pres. tense were derived from different roots and displayed considerable dialectal differences. ME am, are(n) came from the Midland dialects and replaced the West Saxon зom, sint / sindon. In OE the forms with the initial b- from bзon were synonymous and interchangeable with the other forms but in Late ME and NE they acquired a new function: they were used as forms of the Subj. and the Imper. moods or in reference to the future and were thus opposed to the forms of the Pres. Ind.Hang be the heavens with black, yield day to night! (Sh) Forms with the initial b- were also retained or built in ME as the forms of verbals: ME being/ beande Part. I, ben, y-ben the newly formed Part. II (in OE the verb had no Past Part.); the Inf. ben (NE being, been, be).The redistribution of suppletive forms in the paradigm of be made it possible to preserve some of the grammatical distinctions which were practically lost in other verbs, namely the distinction of number, person and mood.New Grammatical Forms and Categories of the VerbThe evolution of the verb system in the course of history was not confined to the simplification of the conjugation and to growing regularity in building the forms of the verb. In ME and NE the verb paradigm expanded, owing to the addition of new grammatical forms and to the formation of new grammatical categories. The extent of these changes can be seen from a simple comparison of the number of categories and categorial forms in Early OE with their number today. Leaving out of consideration Number and Person as categories of concord with the Subject we can say that OE finite verbs had two verbal grammatical categories proper: Mood and Tense. According to Mod E grammars the finite verb has five categories Mood, Tense, Aspect, Time-Correlation and Voice. All the new forms which have been included in the verb paradigm are analytical forms; all the synthetic forms are direct descendants of OE forms, for no new synthetic categorial forms have developed since the OE period.The growth of analytical forms of the verb is a common Germanic tendency, though it manifested itself a long time after PG split into separate languages. The beginnings of these changes are dated in Late OE and in ME. The growth of compound forms from free verb phrases was a long and complicated process which extended over many hundred years and included several kinds of changes.A genuine analytical verb form must have a stable structural pattern different from the patterns of verb phrases; it must consist of several component parts: an auxiliary verb, sometimes two or three auxiliary verbs, e.g. NE would have been taken which serve as a grammatical marker, and a non-finite form Inf. or Part., which serves as a grammatical marker and expresses the lexical meaning of the form. The analytical form should be idiomatic: its meaning is not equivalent to the sum of meanings of the component parts.The development of these properties is known as the process of "grammatisation". Some verb phrases have been completely grammatised e.g. the Perfect forms. Some of them have not been fully grammatised to this day and are not regarded as ideal analytical forms in modern grammars (for instance, the Future tense).In order to become a member of a grammatical category and a part of the verb paradigm the new form had to acquire another important quality: a specific meaning of its own which would be contrasted to the meaning of its opposite member within the grammatical category (in the same way as e. g. Past is opposed to Pres. or pl is opposed to sg). It was only at the later stages of development that such semantic oppositions were formed. Originally the verb phrases and the new compound forms were used as synonyms (or "near synonyms") of the old synthetic forms; gradually the semantic differences between the forms grew: the new forms acquired a specific meaning while the application of the old forms was narrowed. It was also essential that the new analytical forms should be used unrestrictedly in different varieties of the language and should embrace verbs of different lexical meanings.The establishment of an analytical form in the verb system is confirmed by the spread of its formal pattern in the verb paradigm. Compound forms did not spring up simultaneously in all the parts of the verb system: an analytical form appeared in some part of the system and from there its pattern extended to other parts. Thus the perfect forms first arose in the Past and Pres. tense of the Ind. Mood in the Active Voice and from there spread to the Subj. Mood, the Passive Voice, the non-finite verb.Those were the main kinds of changes which constitute the growth of new grammatical forms and new verbal categories. They are to be found in the history of all the forms, with certain deviations and individual peculiarities. The dating of these developments is uncertain; therefore the order of their description below does not claim to be chronological.The Future TenseIn the OE language there was no form of the Future tense. The category of Tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. The Pres. tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases, consisting of the verbs sculan, willan, magan, cunnan and others (NE shall, will, may, can) and the Infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation, possibility.In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall plus Inf. was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. (We may recall that the Pres. tense had to be accompanied by special time indicators in order to refer an action to the future.) Shall could retain its modal meaning of necessity, but often weakened it to such an extent that the phrase denoted "pure" futurity. (The meaning of futurity is often combined with that of modality, as a future action is a planned, potential action, which has not yet taken place.) One of the early instances of shall with a weakened modal meaning is found in the Early ME poem Ormilum (1200); the phrase is also interesting as it contains willen as a notional verb: And whase wile/in shall ?iss boc efft o?errsipe written.
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
|
|
