1 English Syntax (From Old to Early Modern English) Historia de la Lengua Inglesa 3º 2012-13 1. Genitive (from nominal inflexion to phrase marker) GROUP GENITIVE: When the NP to which the genitive is attached is complex, the -s ending is attached to the last member of the group in PdE: The wife of Bath’s tale (group genitive) SPLIT GENITIVE: At earlier stages of English (OE and ME) the genitive was regularly attached to the head of the complex group: the wifes tale of Bath, the Duke’s brother of Normandy, þe kinges suster of Frances The group genitive occurs in Chaucer’s poetry: the grete god of Loves name, but the split genitive is still far more common. By Shakespeare’s time we find the reverse: the group genitive has come to be used regularly in prose, while the split construction occurs occasionally and then in poetry: The Archbishop’s Grace of York. The split construction illustrates (as do the split relative and the split coordination) the preference in Earlier English for grouping and splitting complex constructions according to their length rather than according to their syntactic unity. Another way of surface representation of the genitive: - Uninflected personal noun and third personal pronoun marked for genitive: The child (h)is gwnys (the child’s gowns) My mother (h)is sake God hys heste ‘God’s commandment’ (Trevissa) In eModE attempts were made to mark gender: Juno hir bedde.
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The pronoun dropped partly because of antipathy of stylists from the 16th c. on to pleonastic or repetitive pronouns, but also because in spoken language unstressed his (usually with loss of [h] sounded identical with the genitive -es. As late as the mid 18th c. when the construction was virtually lost, Dr. Johnson still criticizes “the opinion long received’ that the’s is a contraction of his, as in the soldier’s valour, from the soldier his valour (Traugott 1972: 125). Adverbial use of the genitive (most common in expressions of time): -
be nihtes and daeies (cf. PdE He works nights, where nights is a relic of the genitive)
-
winteres and sumeres
-
nanes weis (in no way, not at all)
Inflectional genitive vs. the analytic construction with ‘of’ The inflectional genitive was used: 1. To express possessive relationship: the kinges sonne 2. To express an underlying subject-verb relation (subjective genitive): be the kynges raed (the king is the subject he gives advice) 3. To express underlying verb-object relation (objective genitive): for thes biscopes luuen… (the bishop is the object of love). In OE the position of the inflectional genitive was not fixed: it could appear before or after the modified noun: þæs halƷan Oswaldes heafod or þæt heafod þæs halƷan Oswaldes. In ME the occurrence of the genitive after the modified noun decreases rapidly and by 1250 it had almost given way to an analytic construction which consisted of a NP (without any case markers) preceded by of (‘post nominal of phrase’). The analytic construction came to be used for the expression of almost all the relations also expressible by means of the inflectional genitive: 1. In the name of the father 2. they shal haue the curse of God (subjective genitive)
3 3. for lufe of God (objective genitive) 4. he reade the tretyse of the doctor (origin or authorship) 5. In the space of a day (also: a days space) (temporal measure) In the course of ME there was a tendency for nouns referring to objects to be constructed with of. However, this did not result in complete restriction of inanimate nouns to the analytic construction. Today there is still considerable overlap and even a growing tendency to the use of the synthetic construction: ‘the meeting of the board’ / ‘the board’s meeting’. The ‘of’ construction is being replaced by: adjective (substantival adjunct) + principal noun
The value of the house The house value The keys of the car The car keys. -Loss of the partitive genitive construction: it is replaced by the analytic (of) construction: one of his men, instead of an his manna. - The analytic construction also superseded the inflectional genitive on another of its functions: descriptive genitive: on Maies nonthe/ of the monthe of Mai. 2. Personal pronouns: thou vs. ye Although the plural of the first person had been used in OE for the “authorial we” (we used for I by an author), based on a Latin model, it did not come to be used for the “plural of majesty” until ME (Alfred writes in the first person singular, Henry II in his royal proclamation of 1258 speaks of himself as we). This use of ‘majestic we’ seems to have originated in Byzantine Greek at the Imperial Court and to have spread all over Europe via late courtly Latin of the 4th c. It is a product of feudal thinking (king seen as the embodiment/representation of the whole community).
4 Also new in ME is the use of “you” (plural) for the singular: extension from the majestic we; if the king speaks in the plural, his subjects will address him in the plural too. The construction is modelled on French practice: - “thou” is used between equals and to inferiors - “ye” is used in representations of polite speech and to address to a superior. Case forms of the pronouns 1. With you and I, between you and I. 2. Is she as tall as me? (Shak. Antony and Cleopatra). 3. That's me I warrant you ... I knew 't was I (Shak. Twelfth Night). 4. Consider who the king your father sends/ To whom he sends (Shak. LLL). 5. Eternity so spent in worship paid to whom we hate (Milton Paradise Lost) 6. [she would] make proselytes of who she but bid follow (Shak. The Winter’s Tale) 7. Whom in constancie you thinke stands so safe (Shak. Cymbeline) 8. I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong:/ who (you all know) are Honourable men (Shak. Julius Caesar)
3. Relative pronouns: - The relative pronouns in ME are: that, which, who, etc. The PDE distinction between human (who) and non human (which) is not made in ME: this yongeste, which went to the town. The relative which can be inflected to indicate plurality. ‘whiche they weren’. The whiche is used with singular reference. - The most frequently used relative pronoun in ME is indeclinable that. It occurs in all contexts, whether restrictive or non-restrictive relatives, whether the antecedent is a pronominal or nominal, a proper noun or not, and whether the function of the relative is adverbial or not: and common nouns, etc.: How can you like him that all women mislikes
5 - Origin of that: from se-seo-þæt. But there are functional differences that does not allow preposed preposition whereas se-seo- þæt did. This suggest that the ME relative that could have originated in some other structure or results from the conflation of the demonstrative þæt and the subordinator þæt: ‘I know that he is coming’. In ME this subordinator was generalized to all subordinate structures and came to be used with any other subordinator: who that, whether that, if that (like þe in OE). - that was regularly used without the referent, an indefinite relative, corresponding to PDE: what. - that can be deleted even when it is a subject in ME: ‘I have a brother Ø is condemned to die’. The relative deletion clearly has its origin in OE. This construction may have been strengthened by contact with Scandinavian languages in the later OE period: the contact situation probably favoured the generalization of an already existing rule. - During ME a series of ‘wh- relatives’ came into being. They come from OE indefinites hwilc, hwaet, hwa. A very important influence was Latin qui, quae, quod and the French que. These relatives came to be used when French and Latin influence was very strong (ca. 1200). Who did not come to be used extensively until the late 15th c., whereas which and what were used from early ME on. The reason for the late introduction of who may be that there was no model for this form (it had little similarity to any Latin form), whereas qui and quod supported which and what. These relatives gained wide currency due to the fact that that was too general (it signalled any kind of subordination). - Which was used for restrictive and non-restrictive relatives, with animate and inanimate referents (even in the 16th c. there are examples of which with human antecedents). It occurs with a preposition. It suggests that these ‘wh-’ relatives have their origin in a desire to achieve fuller surface subordination that that allowed. - whose and whom are used mainly with animate antecedents until the 16th c. They are favoured over that in constructions with a preposition.
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- who occurs sporadically until the 15th c. and is established as a regular relative in the 16th c. - The restriction of who to animate and which to inanimate antecedents introduced complexity in the grammar. - All three relatives occur with the subordinate that. In fact whom that, whose that were more common that whom and whose in the early period, probably because the whforms were not felt to be ‘full-fledged’ subordinators. -
The which: modelled on French lequel. It is likely that French reinforced the construction rather than brought it into being, since it is most common in non restrictive relatives when the antecedent is a whole sentence, a condition in which anaphoric marking is particularly necessary to show the connection between the two parts of the sentence
We porpose to send hym in to certaine places for to execute oure commaundement, for the whiche he ne may be attendant (be on duty) to be in our countees. (1450)
4. The development of periphrastic constructions. - OE only had verbal inflectional forms to distinguish two tenses: past and nonpast (mostly called ‘present) and three moods (indicative, subjunctive and imperative). Of these the inflectional contrast distinguishing the subjunctive from the indicative mood became largely obscured in post-OE times, so that the synthetically marked subjunctive was almost lost, except in the third person singular of the present tense for most verbs other than be. There was no synthetic future or perfect, or passive as we know it from classical Latin. - To express what other languages express by verbal inflections, other means had to be made of creation of ‘compound verbal forms’ (also called periphrastic
7 constructions): development of the auxiliary constituent of the VP. The development of periphrastic forms started in OE and it’s a gradual process. 4.1. The Periphrastic future In OE future time was expressed by means of the simple present (non past), sometimes accompanied by an adverbial designating future time: ga ge on mine wingeard and ic selle eow þæt riht bīþ. OE depended largely on the context for disambiguation of the functional value of the simple present tense form. The simple present is still found in this function in post-OE times, but it becomes less and less common in ME. Instead shall and will came to be the regular realizations of predictions (Mustanoja (1960: 490) claims that in earlier ME will occurs mainly in the south and in “popular works” like songs, shall mainly in formal prose). - Already in OE willan and sculan were used as potential future markers in conjunction with a main verb in the infinitive. So far they had been used as lexical verbs, expressing volition (wish or intention) and obligation (necessity) respectively (Compound verbal forms with willan are occasionally used in the 10th c. Northumbrian glosses to render Latin future tense forms.) - Remember that ‘volition’ implies futurity, so the extension of this construction to indicate future was always a potential development. - In the course of ME, the periphrastic forms develop more and more. Most authors prefer shall to will for all persons, perhaps due to the strong volitional quality of will. Chaucer seems to have been the first one to use shall for the first person and will for the rest. Examples: 1. Prithee let him alone, we shall have more anon (Shak. Henry IV )
8 2. The virtue of this jest will be the incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us (Shak. Henry IV) 3. Expanded future: That done, I will be walking on the works, repaire there to me (Shak. Othello)
4.2. The Progressive construction: The development of ‘be’ + pres. part. began as early as OE: ‘beon’/’wesan’ + present part. -ende. - Possible development under Latin influence for the purpose of rendering Latin constructions: docens erat (he waes laerende). Others state that the construction is a native development (Latin played a secondary role): - copulative beon/wesan + agentive ‘-end’: 1. he waes sprecend 2. hie waeron feohtende (‘fighters’) Dialect variants of the present participle: Northern: -ande Southern: -inde Midlands: -ende Origin of progressive -ing: It may have derived from the gerund construction: he was on hunting > he was a hunting. ‘While it seems likely that this construction reinforced the progressive -ing construction, many scholars feel that it’s doubtful whether it actually gave rise to it, since the gerund construction is used frequently only rather later than the progressive with -ing. The problem with claiming that the -ing progressive developed independently of this construction is that we are then forced to claim that -ing replaced -ende without a model; this is rather unlikely in view of the fact that speakers tend to use existing
9 surface structures rather than to invent totally new ones, especially when no need for a new structure is apparent (-ende was not ambiguous, it was not phonologically weakened). Despite all the work that has been done on the replacement of -ende by -ing, this is still one of the mysteries of the history of English (Traugott 1972: 143-44). Remember that in ME and also eModE the progressive construction was more limited than in PdE.: Examples: 1. What do you read my Lord? (Shak. Hamlet) 2. To whom do you speak this? Whereon do you look? (Shak. Hamlet) 3. While meate was bringing in (= “was being brought in”). 4. The church was in building / the church was a-building 5. The church was being built by X.
Participle Gerund
For now is gode Gawayn goande ry3t here For now is good Gawain going right here I am yn beldyng of a pore hous I am (in) building of a poor house
4.3. The perfect construction The perfect construction, made up of an auxiliary and the ppl. form of a main verb, existed in English from the earliest records. However, the simple past was very often used (alone or with the adverb aer). - Possible origin of this construction: reinterpretation of have (main verb) + ppl functioning as an inflected adjective have (aux) main verb in the ppl. (participial adjective as the main verb): hie haefdon hiera cynning aworpenne (tenían a su rey depuesto)
10 ‘aworpenne’ is the Co (object of the complement) reinterpreted as part of a compound verb form (in the ppl.). The ppl. is declined agreeing with the direct object in number, gender and case. When the inflexion of the ppl. is lost it is reinterpreted as part of the compound verb/the main verb. - The aux ‘be’ is also used in the perfect cons., in connection with intransitive verbs of motion and verbs denoting a change of state: arise, change, come, depart, etc. However in this period there is a change in favour of have as the perfect aux. The gradual change from be- to have- perfects is said to be related to the gradual loss of wurthen as a passive aux., and the subsequent increase of the functional load of be. When have remains as the only aux. for the perfect, be became the only passive aux. in English. Examples: 1. I saw not better sport these seven yeeres (Shak. Henry IV) 2. We have heard the chimes at midnight (Shak. Henry IV) 3. I never knew a woman so dote upon a man (Shak. The Merry wives) 4. I was not angry since I came to France (Shak. Henry V) 5. Thy Fathers Beard is turn’d white with the Newes (Shak.) 6. The Duke is strangely gone (Shak. Measure for measure) 7. I haue gone all night: 'Faith, I'll lye down and slepe (Shak. Cymbeline) 4.4. The Development of the do Auxiliary Do as an optional carrier of tense is a fairly recent innovation: absent from OE, peripheral in ME, and expanding but still optional in eModE. Do can be: (i) Full verb (lexical): to doe wrong, he did the work properly (ii) Pro-verb (substitutive), without semantic content: ondrædende þæt Læcedemonie ofer hie ricsian mehten swa hie ær dydon (‘dreading that the Laecedemonians might rule over them as they did [had done] before’) (iii) Causative verb: he ded do shewe to me ‘he had it shown to me’ (iv) Optional tense operator: does he not hold up his head?
11 Do as a meaningless tense carrier developed in ME. It was used extensively in poetry, but is not to be found frequently in prose until the end of the period. By eModE, however, do was used extensively in all types of writing; the difference between eModE and PdE is that today the insertion or omission of auxiliary do is strictly regulated, whereas in eModE its use was optional. (a) How do'st thou feel thy selfe? (The Loyal Lovers) (b) Wherefore do you come? (Shak. Richard III) (c) Why lookes your Grace so heauily to day? (Shak. Richard III) (d) How cam'st thou hither? (Skak. Romeo and Juliet) (e) O do not slander him (Shak. Richard III) (f) Beleue him not (Shak. Richard III) In the course of the period, the use of auxiliary do gradually became regulated: it became increasingly normal to insert do in negative and interrogative sentences, and to omit it from affirmative declarative ones (except when emphasis was required). The regulating process began in the middle of the 16th c., and was nearly complete by 1700. Different authors vary, however, in the extent to which they use do. There is also a good deal of variation between different constructions: (i) In questions, do spread more quickly with transitive verbs than with intransitive ones, (ii) Verbs that ‘resisted’ the use of do in negative sentences: care, come, doubt, know, mistake, speak, trow. (I know not, if I mistake not) (iii) Verbs that resisted the use of do in questions: come, dare, do, have, hear, mean, need, say, think. (Say you so?, What think you?). Origin of auxiliary do 1. Causative do: (i) He did them build a church 'He caused them to build a church' (ii) He did build a church 'He caused a church to be built' (iii) He built a church 2. Substitute-verb form do: available right through the history of English as a replacement for a verb already mentioned: I went to see Peter and so did he
12 The loss of ‘Impersonal’ Constructions (See Denison, David. 2004. English Historical Syntax: verbal constructions. London: Longman). 1. þam wife þa peran licodon (Old English) Lit: ‘To the woman the pears were pleasing’ (the woman liked the pears) þam wife: object þa peran: subject licodon: verb In the course of the Middle English period this construction regularly developed into: 2. þe wif likeden þe peren 3. þe wif liked(e) þe peres 4. The wife liked pears Because of the loss of inflectional -n, the verb no longer 'agrees' in person and number with the original subject (þe peren), but gives the impression of 'agreeing' with the former object (þe wif), which has become identical in form with a subject NP. Thus, a learner confronted with the sentence The wife liked pears would tend to analyse it as SVO, which conforms the canonical word order pattern of the language. Evidence of a reinterpretation of the original object as the subject of the sentence: instances in which the original ‘impersonal verb’ co-occurs with a clearly ‘personal’ verb: 5. The kynge lyked and loued this lady wel (Malory, 1470-85) 6. We hungren, and thirsten, and ben nakid (Wyclif) 7. Sche dremede that sche had childed a wikked son (a1387) 8. Me dremed þat I was ledd to durham (?a1450) 5. Negation: The usual way of negation in OE was by placing the negative particle ne before the finite verb. This negative construction continues to occur in ME (27-31). For the strengthening of the negation ME made use of pre or post verbal na /no (in conjunction with the negative particle ne) or the post verbal negative negation supporter nowiht/ nawhit < ne-a-wiht : ‘not ever anything’, or contracted noht, later reduced to not. This latter construction, which was purely emphatic in OE is assumed to have lost more and
13 more its original emphatic force and have gradually become the norm in non-emphatic sentences (see example 31 on the handout). Loss of the emphatic force of noht/naht though frequent use, resulted in reduce forms (not/nat), but it also made the original unemphatic ne superfluous (if one believes in functional explanations ;-) Besides, ne was lightly stressed, as we can see from its elision with certain verbs: habban, wesan… Since the middle of the 14th c. we find negative cons with only nought/not/nat as the only negation marker. As not came to be used regularly for the nonemphatic marker, a new form (nothing), meaning much the same as nawiht, developed to replace the emphatic negative. In the course of the 16th c. a new rival pattern made its appearance in sentences where no aux. was available (‘be’ or ‘have’): the aux. do followed by the negative not. From the 17th c. the new pattern became increasingly common in negative sentences, although with some verbs (‘know’, ‘mistake’) do-less negatives remained for some time to come. 6. The development of modal verbs Despite the recessiveness of subjunctive inflexions, they are nevertheless found throughout the eModE period. They are observable only in the singular non past and in forms of the verb to be (be for all persons, past were for first, second and third persons singular). (i) -
The subjunctive of wishing:
Complements of the verb wish. Wishes about the future are normally expressed by should and would, as in I wish you would go.
-
In sentences with a suppressed wish-verb, subjunctive came to be retained in fossilized exclamations like: God bless you, Long live the king, and in prayers . God reward me for it (Shak. Henry IV) (ii)
The original subjunctive of exhortation: Then sit we down, and let us all consult (Shak. Titus)
(iii)
Right through eModE, traces remain of the old subjunctive in
complements of verbs of saying, reporting, thinking, hoping, wondering, and especially in negative contexts. Occasionally the subjunctive inflexion is used, more often the periphrastic construction, especially with should. The use of should meaning “was-said-
14 to” continues well into eModE, but is recessive by the 17thc. and virtually lost by the 18thc.: But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hang'd and carved upon these trees? (Shak. As you like it) (iv)
Use of the subjunctive in conditional and concessive clauses: What if it tempt you (Shak. Hamlet) Tho he be dead (Mulcaster)
(v) Use of the subjunctive in temporal clauses (till, before): Till one greater Man, restore us, and regain the blissful Seat (Milton Paradise Lost) The decline of the subjunctive caused an increase in the frequency of the modals in the 16thc. After mote was lost from eModE in the early 16thc., the system consisted of five pairs (can/could; dare/durst; may/might; shall/should; will/would) and three single forms (must, need, ought), plus poetical list 'desire', which quickly declined with the loss of the ‘impersonal’ construction. Mun, man is restricted to the north, and is anglicized as must. A semantic comparison shows that the modals have changed their meanings: (i) MAY: In OE mag ‘have the physical power to’ (cf. PdE might (noun) and mighty (adj.)) eModE the meaning ‘I hereby permit (remove any obstacles if there are any)’. This use of may, as in You may go ‘I permit you to go’ (deontic modality), did not gain wide currency until the 16thc.: You shall play it in a mask, and you may speak as small as you will (Shak. Midsummer) (ii) CAN: In OE it meant ‘to know’. In the 14th c. sense of ability, which became established in the 17th c. (ii)
MUST: mot / must was recessive in the sense of permission in ME (deontic modality), and came to be used first in the sense of obligation, and then (from the later 14th c.) also in the sense of inferred or ‘presumed certainty’ (epistemic modality), as in He must have done it. The latter use was not common until PdE.
7. Reflexive verbs
15 After verbs of motion and of feeling (come, go, return, run; despair, doubt, fear, repent, wonder): (i) I complain me (ii) how dost thou feel thyself now? (iii) I doubt me (iv) I repent me (v) Give me leave to retire myself. 8- Word order WO in the noun phrase: Adjectives 1. A thyng excusable (Thomas More). 2. A rare younge man and a wise (Queen Elisabeth)
SVO had become the normal word order in affirmative statements by 1500. A few types of deviant structure had, however, not been fully adapted to the dominant pattern: (i) VSO continued to be used with certain negative adverbs like scarcely and with adverbs of time and place: Now comes in the sweetest morsel of the night (Shak. Henry IV) The Man said, No. Then said the other... (Bunyan) (ii) VSO was also used in conditional or concessive clauses without a conjunction: Were I Brutus (Shak. Julius Caesar) (i)
Object pronouns not functioning as Experiencer sometimes still precede the verb as they did in OE and ME: There is virtue in that Falstaff; him keep with, the rest banish (Shak. Henry IV)
(iv) Fronting of objects (OSV, more rarely OVS): Tis obvious that we have admitted many: some of which we wanted (Dryden) (v) Certain rules still operate to prevent pronouns from occurring in final position in some structures: I know him not, but I know not your cousin. Also with
16 certain verb-particle constructions like I looked up my friend: I looked my friend up, *I looked up her: I looked her up. 9. Prepositions Prepositions acquired a greater importance in English syntax as a result of the loss of distinctive inflectional endings for nouns in ME. New prepositions came from: a) Former participles, derived from Latinized absolute constructions: according to, concernynge, touching, respecting, regarding, including, excluding, owing to. b) Phrases with the structure: preposition + noun + preposition: in spite of, in/with regard to, in consideration of, in place of, in/with reference to, on account of, in front of, etc.
Examples of changes in the uses of prepositions: 1. And what delight shall she have to looke on [at] the divell? (Shak. Othello) 2. He came of [on] an errand to me (Shak. Merry Wives) 3. But thou wilt be aveng'd on [for] my misdeeds (Shak. Richard III) 4. 'Twas from [against] the Cannon (Shak. Coriolanus) 5. Then speake the truth by [of] her (Shak. Two Gentlemen) 6. We are such stuffe / As dreames are made on [of] (Shak. Tempest)
MIDDLE ENGLISH (EXAMPLES) I. Genitive 1. OE. ... nam þe kinges suster of Frances to wife (Chron.) 2. The grete god of Loves name (Chaucer) 3. God hys heste (Trevisa) 4. My moder ys sake (Paston Letters) 5. nihtes 'at night' 6. nanes weis 'in no way, not at all' II. Relatives 7. now þat London is nevenyd 'what is now called London' 8. for hym þe boght 'for him who redeemed you' 9. to speken bifore folk to which his speche anoyeth (Chaucer) 10. ... a doghter which that called was Sophie (Chaucer) 11. ye han broght with yow to youre conseil ire, coveitise, and hastifnesse, the which thre thinges been contrariouse to every conseil honest and profitable (Chaucer) III. Reflexives 12. yif ich me loki 'if I guard myself' 13. Johas hym yede 'Jonah went'
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IV. Tense 14. 15.
þe adder was aboute þe child to sting (c 1330) A neu liuelad gan he bigin (Cursor Mundi)
V. Aspect 16 17.
18 19. 20. 21. 22.
OE. he wæs huntiende ME. he was huntand/huntend(e)/huntind(e) OE. he wæs on huntunge ME. he was on hunting he was hunting (of a hare) he was hunting (a hare) euery day his compeny was encresing (c1410) the chirches encreseden in noumbre eche dai (a 1425) OE. We wæron gecumene/we_wæron gecumen thus seyde I nevere or now (Chaucer) three enemys been entred into thyn house and han ywounded thy doghtor (Chaucer) þat folc hafden alle... arisen from heore seten
VI. Negation 23. 24. 25. 26.
OE. ne seah ic ... ic ne cunne singe (c 1250) I ne dide it noƷt, broþer (c 1350) yee knau noght me (a 1325)
