Theme: Word order in Middle English

Of mannes wit and his discrecioun. (Chaucer)

(‘For drunkenness is the burying (lit. “sepulture”) of man’s wit and his discretion.’)

In ME and Early NE adjective patterns, as before, included a variety of dependent components. Adjectives were commonly modified by adverbs, e. g.:

• 
  He was a verray parfit gentil knyght. (Chaucer)
  

(‘He was a very perfect noble knight.’)

The main difference from the preceding ages lay in the ways of connection between the adjective and the nouns or noun-pronouns used as dependent components of the pattern. In OE an adjective could take an object in the Dat. or Gen. case (with or without prepositions); in ME these objects were replaced by the Comm. case usually preceded by a preposition, e. g.: ³

• 
  with face pale of hewe;
  
• 
  so harde of his herte;
  
• 
  amyable of port;
  
• 
  unlyk to my dede;..
  
• 
  discreet in alle his wordes and dedes;
  
• 
  so patient unto a man. (Chaucer) (‘with a pale face; hard-hearted; amiable in behaviour, unlike my deed; discreet in all his words and deeds; so patient to a man’).
  

Some adjectives, especially the most frequent ones, displayed great vacillation in the choice of prepositions. For instance, in the 14th c. fair and good occur with the prepositions of, in, to, at, by.

The adjective freely combined with the Infinitive since the earliest periods. Examples from Chaucer are: 

• 
  redy for to ryde ‘ready to ride’; 
  
• 
  I am free to wedde ‘I am free to marry’;
  
• 
   A manly man, to been an abbot able ‘a manly man, able to be an abbot’.
  

The use of adjectives with the -ing-form was more restricted; in later periods it increased steadily as the gerund and gerundial complexes began to replace the Infinitive in adjective phrases, e. g.;

• 
  measurable in looking and in berunge (Chaucer)
  

(‘moderate in appearance and behaviour’ (lit. “looking and bearing”)

But yet her portion is worth your taking notice, Master Aimwell. (Shirley, early 17thc.) The history of the verb pattern embraced a number of important changes and developments. In some respects verb patterns became more uniform. In OE the verb could take various objects and adverbial modifiers expressed by the oblique cases of nouns. In ME the oblique cases were replaced by the Comm. case (or the Obj. case of pronouns), with — or without prepositions. Even though the inflectional -‘s-Gen. survived, it was no longer used in verb patterns (it occurred in attributive function only). The use of prepositions in verb patterns grew, and so did the number of transitive verbs which took an object without a preposition. The following quotations from Chaucer’s poems show the replacement of the oblique cases: by the Comm. case of nouns and the Obj. case of pronouns:⁴

• 
  That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke
  (‘Who has helped them when they were ill’ — OE helpan took an object in the Dat. case)
  
• 
  And first to Cecilie, as I understonde, He yaf that one
  (‘And first he gave that one (rose) to Cecily’— the objects correspond to the OE Dat. and Ace. cases.) 
  
• 
  After her deeth ful ofte may she wayte. (‘She often waited for death’ the corresponding OE verb bidan governed the Gen. case.)
  
• 
  At nyght were come into that hostelrye
  

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye...
(‘At night came into that inn a company of twenty-nine’ the respective OE form was nihtes — the Gen. case in an adverbial function.)

• 
  In a tabard he rood upon a mere.
  

(‘He rode upon a mare in a long coat’ — OE mearum ridan ‘ride a horse’ with a noun in the Dat. case;)

Throughout ME and Early NE the use of prepositions displayed great fluctuation. Many verbs were used with a variety of prepositions until the age of prescriptive grammars and dictionaries, and some verbs

a long time after. During the NE period the size and complexity of verb patterns grew, as the verbs came to be extended by noun patterns of more complicated structure, by Infin. phrases and predicative constructions with diverse components. An important change took place in the patterns of numerous verbs termed “impersonal” or “quasi-impersonal”. These verbs indicated a state or feeling, e. g.

OE lician ‘please’ (NE like), OE lystan ‘desire’,

OE zescomian (NE shame),

Early ME wanien, semen (NE want, seem). 

Originally most of these verbs took two objects: one — to indicate the person who experienced the state or feeling, the other — to show its cause, e. g. OE him ne hlyste nUnes metes ‘he did not want any food’; the cause, or object of the feeling could sometimes be shown by the subject of the sentence — in the Nom. case: wife a word wet ticodon ‘those words pleased that woman well’.
In Late ME these “impersonal” constructions were transformed into “personal” in which the relationships were reversed: the subject indicated the person affected by the feeling or state, the object — the direction or cause of the feeling. The change can be described as the transition of the type me liketh into I like.
The following examples from Chaucer show the variation stage of the change — the parallel use of both types of construction with the same verb:⁵ so sore longeth me

• 
  To eten of the smale peres grene.
  

(‘So badly I long to eat some of these small green pears.’)

• 
  Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
  

(‘Then folks long to go on pilgrimages.’)

• 
  My God, me metie I was in swich mischief
  

(‘My God, I dreamed I was in such grief.’)

• 
  And eek I seyde, 1 mette of him al night
  

(‘And also I said I dreamt of him all night’.)

• 
  This man mette in his bed, ther as he lay...
  

(‘This man dreamt in his bed, where he lay.’)

The two parallel syntactic constructions—me longeth/I long, me mette/I were used in free variation as synonyms or syntactic variants. Eventually the second variant (the “personal” construction) prevailed with most of the verns. The selection of this variant and the obsolescence of the impersonal type was determined by morphological and syntactic factors. The loss of inflectional endings in nouns made it impossible to distinguish between the subject and object in such instances as this man(e) mette (the last example). Syntactic ambiguity stimulated the appearance of the I like type, for man was more readily associated with the Nom. case of pronouns than with the Obj. case. It must have been interpreted as the subject of the sentence not only owing to the lack of inflectional endings but also due to its position before the verb-predicate, which by that time was becom in the normal place of the subject. The type me likes fell into disuse, being replaced by the type man liketh and I like. Mod E meseems and met hinks are relics of the old construction. Some verb phrases merged into single grammatical or lexical units and in this sense were “simplified”. As shown in the preceding paragraphs verb phrases consisting of a finite and a non-finite verb turned into analytical forms, thus passing from the level of syntax to that of morphology. Verb phrases consisting of verbs and adverbs — which modified or specified the meaning of the verb — formed lexical units known as “composite verbs” or “verb-adverb combinations” (this process made up for the loss of many OE verb prefixes). Likewise, many verb phrases became inseparable “group-verbs” or phraseological units, e. g. mahen melodie (‘sing’) in Chaucer and have mind upon your health, have war, have business, etc. in Shakespeare.