Strong masculine declension
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Activity 1. Students must choose a number from 1 to 10. Under each number is hidden a term associated with the Middle English period. The task of the students is to say what is related to the chosen term in this period. Strong masculine declension Weak masculine declension Norman conquest Foreign tongue About 1250 East and west Midlands Loss in Demonstratives Development of analytical forms Strong verbs Weak verbs Possible answers In early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive: the -s or -es from the strong masculine declension and the -en (as in oxen) from the weak In early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive: the -s or -es from the strong masculine declension and the -en (as in oxen) from the weak masculine declension The Middle English period was marked by momentous changes in the English language, changes more extensive and fundamental than those that have taken place at any time before or since. Some of them were the result of the Norman Conquest and the conditions which followed in the wake of that event. At the beginning of the ME period, English is a language that must be learned like a foreign tongue; at the end it is Modern English. By about 1250 the strong declension had distinctive forms for the singular and plural only in certain monosyllabic adjectives which ended in a consonant in Old English (sing. glad, plur. glade). The -e ending of the weak and plural forms was available for use in poetry in both the East and West Midlands until the end of the fourteenth century The loss was greatest in the demonstratives. Of the numerous forms of sē, sēo, þœt we have only the and that surviving through ME and continuing in use today. A plural tho (those) survived to Elizabethan times. All the other forms indicative of different gender, number, and case disappeared in most dialects early in the Middle English period. The most important feature of the history of the verb in ME was the development of analytical forms to express new grammatical meanings. Strong verbs, which form their past through modification of their stem vowel. Weak verbs, which can be identified by their past in -d- or -t-. Most Middle English verbs are weak. Activity 2. ! Students should select a card, read a statement and say is it True or False. Statements in cards are from the morphology of Middle English period.
Activity 3. Students should answer the following questions Generally what happened to inflectional endings of nouns in Middle English? What two methods of indicating the plural of nouns remained common in early Middle English? Which form of the adjective became the form for all cases by the close of the Middle English period? What happened to the demonstratives sē, sēo, þœt in Middle English? Why were the losses not so great in the personal pronouns? What distinction did the personal pronouns lose? What is the most important feature of history of ME verb? What were the principal changes in the verb during the Middle English period? Name five strong verbs that were becoming weak during the thirteenth century. What accounts for the -e in Modern English "stone" the Old English form of which was stan in the nominative and accusative singular? What is the origin of the th- forms of the personal pronoun in the third personal plural? Possible answers The distinctive endings -a, -u, -e, -an, -um, etc. of Old English were reduced to OE ME Sing. Plur. Sing. Plur. N stan stan-as ston ston-es A stan stan-as ston ston-es G stan-es stan-a ston-es ston-es D stan-e stan-um ston ston-es In early Middle English only two methods of indicating the plural remained fairly distinctive: the -s or -es from the strong masculine declension and the -en (as in oxen) from the weak. The form of the nominative singular was early extended to all cases of the singular, and that of the nominative plural to all cases of the plural, both in the strong and the weak declensions.declensions Numerous forms of sē, sēo, þœt we have only the and that surviving through ME and continuing in use today. A plural tho (those) survived to Elizabethan times. All the other forms indicative of different gender, number, and case disappeared in most dialects early in the Middle English period. In the personal pronoun the losses were not so great. Most of the distinctions that existed in OE were retained. However the forms of the dative and accusative cases were early combined, generally under that of the dative (him, her, hem). In the neuter the form of the accusative (h)it became the general objective case, partly because it was like the nominative, and partly because the dative him would have been subject to confusion with the corresponding case of the masculine. One other general simplification is to be noted: the loss of the dual number The most important feature of the history of the verb in ME was the development of analytical forms to express new grammatical meanings. The syntactical combinations of OE sculan (E. shall) and willan (E. will) with the infinitive developed into analytical forms of the future tense. As a result, the grammatical category of tense came to be represented not by binary oppositions past present, but by ternary oppositions past present future. Combinations composed of different forms of OE habban (E. have) and participle II of some verb developed into a set of analytical forms known as the perfect forms.Word-combinations comprising different forms of OE bēon/wesan (E. to be) and the past participle of another verb developed into a set of analytical forms of the passive voice. bow, brew, burn, climb, and flee Inflectional endings of common noun declensions in OE were disturbed. The -e, which was organic in the dative singular and the genitive and dative plural, was extended by analogy to the nominative and accusative singular, so that forms like "stone" appear. The decay of inflections that brought about a simplification of the noun and the adjective made it necessary to depends less upon juxtapositoin, word order, and the use of prepositions to make clear the relation of word in a sentence. The th- form came to be used early in Middle English for all genders and cases of the singular, while the forms of the nominative plural were similarly extended to all cases of the plural, appearing in Modern English as those and these. Download 12.48 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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