Middle English and Early New English minor groups of verbs.
The verbs included in the minor groups underwent multiple changes in ME and Early NE: phonetic and analogical changes, which affected their forms, and semantic changes which affected their functions. Several preterite-present verbs died out. The surviving verbs lost some of their old forms and grammatical distinctions but retained many specific peculiarities. They lost the forms of the verbals which had sprung up in OE and the distinctions between the forms of number and mood in the Present tense. In NE their paradigms have been reduced to two forms or even to one.
ME can was used not only in the sg but also in the pl by the side of cunnen, the descendant of OE pl cunnon; the latter, as well as the Subj. forms cunnen, cunne died out by the end of the ME period. The Past tense Ind. and Subj. appears in ME in two variants: couth(e) and coud(e). Couth became obsolete in NE, but coud was preserved. In ME the verb can, and especially its Past Participle is still used in the original meaning 'know'.
ME may was used as the main form of the Present tense, alongside mowen/mowe, and as the only form of the Present in Early NE. Its Infinitive and Participle I went out of use; its Past tense might was retained as the Past form, Indicative and Subjunctive. As compared with OE, may has narrowed its meaning, for some of its functions, namely indication of physical and mental ability, have passed to the verb can.
ME shall has lost many of its old forms: the pl forms, the forms of Pres. Subj., the Inf., and has retained only two forms shall and should.
A similar shift of time-reference is observed in the history of must and ought. Moste, mostest, mosten were Past forms of the OE preterite-present mot 'can'. The Pres. tense forms have been lost while must has acquired the meaning of obligation and is now treated as a Pres. tense form. The OE verb willan, though not a preterite-present by origin, has acquired many features typical of the group, probably due to semantic and functional affinities . In ME it was commonly used as a modal verb expressing volition. In the course of time it formed a system with shall, as both verbs, shall and will. ME ben (NE be) inherited its suppletive forms from the OE and more remote periods of history. 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.
The growth of the significance of syntax in the course of the history of English.
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Randolph Quirk states that there are open and closed clsaaes of words in Modern English. He calls nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs open classes because they are indefinitely extendable. By contrast, form words are called closed classes because they are not extended with new members. They display a tendency to preserve their individuality. They pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs. As for the change in the nature of parts of speech, it mostly concerns open classes. If one depicts the relationship and borderlines among the open classes diagrammatically, one can see that such word-forms as (to) look and (a) look should be placed in the overlapping areas between the classes of verbs and nouns and nouns – adjectives, respectively. The number and size of the overlapping areas in parts of speech largely depend on the structural type of the language. Lang. of synthetic inflecting type have clear-cut borders betw parts of speech: the overlapping areas are usually very small. Words in such languages belong to parts of speech and can be classified as such in accordance with morphological, semantic and fuctional criteria. All these criteria are applicable, morphological being and leading one. Each part of speech has its own afiixational word-changing and word –building paradigms. A cgange in a word’s affix is associated with a change of the general grammatical meaning of the word.
Strengthening of form words
There can be observed a gradual but stable growth of the significance of form words under the new conditions of constantly increasing analiticism. Plotkin has noticed that this process implies strengthening individuality of thr already existing classes on the one hand. On the other hand emergence of new groups of form words originating from the open classes. Some English form words had to strengthen their individuality to cope with the constantly growing functional load. The process was ongoing in M/ and EN Eng. Concerning the aspect of the problem – the emergence of new foerm words – we must note that some verbs came to be used in formative functions. Be, have, do, get and some others are most common form words in ME. Such units have been growing in number. Each of these verbs brings in its own connotation when an analytical construction is coined: he was (got) tired. Fall (be) ill. Diachronically these verbs have been pursuing pursue a strategy in their sense development, which is especially typical of isolating languages. The tendency extension of meaning, the widening of a word’s signification until it covers much more than the idea originally conveyed.
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Extensive crowth of analytical constructions:
Grammatical analyticism suggests involvement of analytical constructions into word-changing paradigms. Suffice it to mention, that 30 finite forms in ME are analytical. They express continousity, perfectivity, futurity. Lexical analyticism implies the emergence of analytical constructions in word-building paradigms. Analytical constructions consist of two or more elements regarded as words (primary lexems) do you know? Have you translated the manuscript?. The syntactic relations between the elements are based on strong juxtaposition (placing lexems side by side) I have done it. I done have it. The fuctional load is distributed between the elements. Sometimes one of the elements is lexically more important, the other one is leading gramaticcaly. In some constructions both the elements are equally loaded(take out). The elements of the construction merge to form a single semantic and functional unit. If the construction is coined to convey a new grammatical meaning, it becomes a pattern for analytical word-changing technique (is smiling, has done. If it is coined to convey a new lexical meaning, it becomes a pattern for lexical derivation (be ill, fall ill, get going)
Predominance of syntactic methods of linking words in a sentence
Formal concord and government as purely synthetic methods of linking words were common in OE to engliscum gereorde the noun gereorde is in the dative case, neuter, singular. The dependent word engliscum has the inflection –um to express the same grammatical meanings – dative, singular, neuter. This is formal concord: scipu utbrengan . the verb utbrengan a noun in the accusative case. This is formal government. The decay of inflections has seriously diminished the extent of formal concord and government in English. Whereas Old English subjects agreed with the predicates in number and person, in ME the form of the predicate ofthen depends on the semantic content of the subject. This is notional concord. Under the new conditions the role of juxtaposition became especially great. Both the side and force of juxtaposition are very important in ME as indicators of close connection between words.
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