The subject of history of English

40. Early Modern English Syntax

The structure of the sentence in Early New English is conditioned by the previous development of its morphology. With the practical loss of endings by the nouns and adjectives, their position in the sentence becomes quite relevant to the meaning they render – so, the direct word order prevails, the subject precedes the predicate in non-emotional sentences, and the object is shifted to the position after the predicate.

Agreement as a means of grammatical connection of the words in the sentence is limited to the demonstrative pronouns that preserve their plural form. The predcate agrees with the subject when is it expressed by the verb to be or the passive form of the verb with this same auxiliary, and in the third person singular of the present tense.

Government is also restricted to some structures with personal pronouns and interrogative or relative who/whom, the role of prepositions grows. Some say that even the term prepositional government might be introduced to emphasize their growing role in connecting words.

As far as the general organization of the sentence is concerned, a new phenomenon arises – the structure of the sentence becomes nominative, that is a subject in the nominative case becomes a necessary part of it. The majority of sentences had it in Old and in Middle English. But at the same time impersonal sentences, where the doer of the action was indefinite had special structure without the subject, having the predicate and the object in the dative case, sometimes the object merged with the very verb. Such structures are still found in Shakespeare's plays:

But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air ( Hamlet)

And yet me thinks I see it in thy face,

What thou shouldst be ( The Tempest)

The tendency to the nominative structure finds its expression that such meaning either are expressed in sentences with personal pronouns (I think, I like etc.) or the formal subject it is introduced and becomes quite common in New English.