And early 17th centuries English grammar in the 18

English grammar in the 16^th and early 17^th centuries is marked more by the surv1val of certain forms and usages that have since disappeared than by any fundamental developments. The great changes that reduced the inflections of Old English to their modern proportions had already taken place. The only inflections in the noun were those marking the plural and the possessive singular. Since the adjective had already lost all its endings, so that it no loner expressed distinctions of gender, number, and case, the chief interest of this part of speech is the modern period is in the forms of the comparative and superlative degrees. In the 16 th century. these were not always precisely those now in use. For instance, а double comparative or superlative is fairly frequent in the work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: more larger, 'most boldest, or Mark Antony’s. “This was the most unkindest cut of all”. The chief development affecting the adjective in modern times has been the gradual settling down of usage so that monosyllables take -er and -est while most adjectives of two and more syllables take 'more and 'most'. The 16^th сentury. saw the establishment of the personal pronoun in the form which it has had. ever since In attaining the result three changes were involved: the disuse of 'thou, thy, thee'; the substitution of 'уоu' for 'уе' as а nominative case; and the introduction of 'its' as the possessive of 'it'. Another noteworthy development of the pronoun in the 16^th c. is the use of 'who' as а relative.
English grammar in the 18^th century is marked by the development of Continuous Tense Forms. It is а commonplace that English is distinctly more varied and flexible in some of its verbal expressions than other modern languages. Thus where German says "ich singe", English may say ""I sing, I do sing," or "I am singing"„ The do-forms are often called emphatic forms, and this they sometimes are; but their most important uses are in negative and interrogative sentences
(I don’t sing, do you sing?). The forms with 'to be common use is to indicate an action as in progress at the time implied by the auxiliary. The wide extension of the use of continuous forms one of the most important developments of the English verb in the modern period. The chief factor in their growth is the use of the participle as а noun governed by the preposition 'on' (he burst out on laughing) This weakened to 'he burst out а-laughing' and finally to 'he burst out laughing' In the same way 'he was on laughing' became 'he was а-laughing' and 'he was laughing'. Today such forms are freely used in all tenses (is laughing, was laughing, will be laughing, etc.).
Grammar
The extension of such forms to the passive (the house is being built) was an even later development. It belongs to the very end of the 18^th с. The construction 'the man is on laughing' was capable also of a passive significance under certain circumstances. Thus 'the house is on building' can only suggest that the house is in process of construction This use is found from the 14^th с. on, and its weakened form can be met today' In the last years of the 18^th с. we find the first traces of the modern expression 'the house is being built'. The combination of 'being' with participle II to form а participial phrase had been in use for some time. The history of the new continuous passive shows that its grammar is not fixed, that it will change in the future as it has changed in the past.
The gerund, which came into being in Middle English, developed further in Modern English; it was gradually more and more clearly separated. From the verbal noun in -ing. In Modern English analytical gerund forms appear: the perfect and, the passive gerund.
The mood. System developed in Modern English mainly towards creating more precise means of expressing modal meanings, and, in this connection, towards growth of analytical verb forms, Thus, in the sphere of the subjunctive, use of the pattern 'should/would plus infinitive' gradually grew in main clauses of а conditional sentence.
The category of aspect seems to have arisen only in the Modern English period. In Modern English a continuous aspect was gradually formed, ехрrеssed by a very obvious morphological pattern (be plus participle I). Verbal forms lacking this pattern became а system of common aspect. It is hard to state a definite point at which the category of aspect came into being, as the process developed slowly, and even as late as the 19^th c. it was still possible to use forms of the common aspect to denote an action as in progress at а definite moment.
The system of perfect forms, which had arisen in Old English and developed in Middle English, goes on spreading in the modern period. Thus in Shakespeare’s text there is а fully developed system of perfect forms. The perfect forms of the continuous aspect (has been writing, had been writing, will have bee writing) appeared only after the formation of the continuous aspect.