And early 17th centuries English grammar in the 18

Lecture 11
The grammatical structure of Middle English
General Information
Phonology
English grammar in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries
English grammar in the 18^th century
Grammar
Borrowings
The changes in English grammar may be described as general reduction of inflections. Thus in early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive the -s or -es from the strong declension and the -en (as in ox- en) from the weak. In the adjective the reducing of forms had even greater consequences. Partly as а result of the sound-changes, partly through the extensive working of analogy, except for а few archaic forms, the adjective had become an uninflected word by the close of the Middle English period. The decay of inflections which brought about such а simplication of the noun and the adjective made it necessary to depend less upon formal indications of gender, case, and (in adjectives) number, and to rely more upon word order and the use of prepositions to make clear the relation of words in а sentence.
Phonology
Apart from some leveling of inflections and weakening of endings with the general tendency (for example), the -an of the OЕ infinitive became -en and later -е: OE drifan - МЕ driven - drive), the principal changes in the verb during the Middle English period were serious losses suffered by the strong conjugation. This conjugation, although including some of the most important verbs in the language, was relatively small as compared with the large and steadily growing body of weak verbs. Today more than half of the OE strong verbs have disappeared completely from the standard language. When we subtract the verbs that have been lost completely and the eighty-one that have become weak, there remain just 68 the OE strong verbs in the language today. To this number may be added 13 verbs, which are conjugated in both ways or have kept one strong form. These figures indicate how extensive has been the loss of strong verbs in the language.
One of the consequences of the decay of inflections was the elimination of grammatical gender. With the disappearance of grammatical gender the idea of sex became the only factor in determining the gender of English nouns.
It should be pointed out that by making English the language mainly of uneducated people the Norman Conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked. Beyond this it is not to be considered а factor in them, towards the close of the Middle English period the language had undergone much simplification of its inflections, but its grammar was still English.