Causes of Grammatical Changes 1 page

§ 547. The drastic transformation of the grammatical system in the history of English has attracted the interest of many historical linguists and has been the subject of much speculation and comment. The prob­lem of transition from a synthetic to a more analytical grammatical type has given rise to many theories.

In the 19th c. the simplification of English morphology was attrib­uted to the effect of phonetic changes, namely the weakening and loss of unaccented final syllables caused by the heavy Germanic word stress. (The views were promoted by the comparativists, especially by the Young grammarian school, — K. Brugmann, E. Sievers and others.) As the stress was fixed on the root-syllable or the first syllable of the word, the final syllables, i. e. inflectional endings, were reduced and dropped. As a re­sult of phonetic changes many forms fell together and it became diffi­cult to distinguish between cases, genders, numbers and persons. To make up for the losses, new means of showing grammatical relations and of connecting words in a sentence began to develop; prepositions and a fixed word order.

This theory, often called “phonetic”, regards sound changes as the primary cause of grammatical changes. It disregards the specifically grammatical trends of evolution and the relative chronology of develop­ments at different levels. And yet it is well known that prepositional phrases were used a long time before the inflections had been dropped and that the position of words in a sentence in relation to other words was not altogether free: thus the attribute was normally placed next to the noun, though their grammatical ties were shown by means of con­cord. It is true that the changes at different linguistic levels were inter­connected, but this does not mean that there could be only one direc­tion of influence — from the lower, phonetic level to the grammatical levels. The interaction of changes at different levels must have operated in different ways in various historical periods, and the changes were de­termined not only by internal linguistic factors but also by external conditions.

§ 548. The second popular theory, often referred to as “functional”, attributed the loss of inflectional endings and the growth of analytical means to functional causes: the endings lost their grammatical role or their functional load and were dropped as unnecessary and redundant for other means began to fulfil their functions. As compared to the pho­netic theory, the changes started at the opposite end: the grammatical inflections of nouns became unnecessary after their functions were taken over by prepositions; the endings of adjectives showing gender became meaningless when the Category of Gender in nouns had been lost and the markers of number in adjectives were redundant, since number was shown by the forms of nouns. Likewise the distinction between the weak and strong forms of adjectives could easily be dispensed with when the newly developed system of articles could express the same meanings with greater regularity and precision; and even certain verb endings could be dropped as useless when person and number were indicated analytically — with the help of an obligatory subject. The functional theory first advanced by W. Horn, M. Lehnert and other linguists, was supported by some recent views on language.[64]

A similar approach to the grammatical changes is found in the theo­ry of the “least effort” which claims that the structure of language is an unstable balance between the needs of more numerous expressive means and man’s inertia, or his strive for the least effort in achieving the same aims.[65] It is believed that the speakers are always in need of more expressive linguistic means, as the existing means gradually lose their expressive force; these needs, inherent in every living language, account for the use of prepositional phrases alongside case-forms and the growth of verb phrases and analytical forms in addition to simple verb forms.

Although these hypotheses take into account some important general properties of language, they ignore the specific conditions of the devel­opment of English at different historical periods and are therefore in some respects as one-sided as the phonetic theory.

§ 549. Many scholars ascribe the simplification of the English mor­phology and the general transformation of the grammatical type to cer­tain facts of external history, namely to contacts with other tongues. The age of great grammatical changes — between the 10th and 13th c. — was the time of heavy Scandinavian settlement in the North-East and of the Norman Conquest.

In the areas of Scandinavian settlement OE and O Scand intermixed. The two OG languages were not too far apart to allow of a good deal of mutual understanding; they had a large common vocabulary, with certain differences in pronunciation and inflectional endings. Probably distinct pronunciation of the roots was therefore more essential than the pronunciation of endings; consequently grammatical inflections could be missed out and dropped. (Cf. OE sunu, O Scand sunr; OE swan, O Scand svanr; OE fæder; O Scand faðir — NE son, swan, father)². The direction of the diffusion of the changes — from the North to the South — seems to support this hypothesis; the Northern dialects showed a high degree of levelling and simplification as early as the 10th c., when the other dialects still retained the OE inflectional system. Nevertheless, it should be recalled that some of the simplifying changes started in the South and spread north — those were, e. g. the grammatical changes in personal pronouns. It may be added that this theory leaves out of consideration the interdependence of changes at different linguistic levels and especially the phonetic and syntactic developments, which began a long time before the Scandinavian invasions.

§ 550. Another theory ascribes the simplification of the noun and adjective morphology to the mixture of English with O Fr, though this tongue was not closely related to English. According to this view the French language of the Norman rulers of Britain could have played a more decisive role in the grammatical changes than O Scand for the sim­ple reason that it had a far greater effect on the development of English as a whole (and particularly on its vocabulary). It is thought that any mixture with a foreign tongue leads to an unsettling of the inflectional system; mixture with O Fr could favour the tendency to greater analyticism because at that time French had a more analytical grammatical structure than English. This theory, however, is not confirmed by the chronology of the changes: at the time of strongest French influence — the 13th and 14th c. — English had already lost most of its inflections and had acquired many of its analytical features.

§ 551. We should also mention one more popular theory which at­tempted to explain the grammatical changes in English — the so-called “theory of progress” advanced by O. Jespersen. O. Jespersen protested against the interpretation of the history of all IE languages as grammati­cal degeneration and decay. He tried to show the advantages of the ana­lytical type of language over the synthetic type and presented the his­tory of English as the only way to progress and a superior kind of lan­guage. He believed that the general tendency of all languages was to­wards shorter grammatical forms, though languages differ much in the velocity with which they had been moving in this direction; on this way to an ideal grammatical structure English had reached a more ad­vanced stage than other languages, which testifies, according to O. Jes­persen,[66] to a superior level of thinking of English-speaking nations. The “theory of progress” was severely criticised for its racial impli­cation and for merely reversing the old argument of 19th c. comparativists that the IE parent-language was superior to modern languages be­cause it was highly inflected. The state of inflections and the nature of form-building means employed cannot determine the level of de­velopment of language, though they characterises its grammatical type. It has been observed that in some languages grammatical forms evolved in the opposite direction: analytical forms merged into synthetic ones or died out, giving way to synthetic forms (e. g. in French and in Rus­sian); this proves that the trend towards a more analytical type is not the only way of evolution and progress.

§ 552. With the exception of the theory of progress, all the other views outlined above are partly correct, since each factor played a cer­tain role in grammatical changes, though it was only one of their causes, and not the only cause. Like other changes, grammatical changes were brought about by numerous intra- and extralinguistic factors, such as the internal tendencies operating at different linguistic levels, the inter-action of these tendencies and the specific external conditions which determined the linguistic situation at different historical periods. Without going into details we can ascribe the main events in the history of English grammar to anumber of major causes and conditions.

§ 553. The simplification of the nominal paradigms and the replace­ment of synthetic means by analytical means of word connection — took place mainly in the Early ME period. We should recall that even in OE the nominal system was in some respects inconsistent and con­tradictory: there was little regularity in form-building and the meaning of many cases was vague; these conditions pre-determined possible changes. The main factors which brought about the changes can be described as tendencies of different levels.

The phonetic reduction of final unaccented syllables, originally caused by the Germanic word stress, made the grammatical endings jess dis­tinct; in Early ME many inflections were weakened and some of them were lost. The main trend in the morphological system was to preserve and to work out reliable formal markers for the most essential grammat­ical distinctions (in the first place, the distinction of number in nouns); this was achieved by means of analogical levelling — grammatical anal­ogy led to the regular use of the same markers for similar forms. The lexical and syntactic levels furnished diverse means, which could make the meaning and the use of forms more precise and differentiated, — such as prepositions which accompanied the forms of cases and differ­ent types of word order; the use of these reliable means favoured the indistinct pronunciation of the endings and their confusion in writing.

Those were the internal, or intralinguistic conditions of grammat­ical changes in Early ME.

There is no doubt that the extralinguistic conditions contributed to the changes. The linguistic situation in Early ME speeded up the gram­matical changes. The increased dialectal divergence of the feudal age, the two foreign influences, Scandinavian and French, and the break in the written tradition made for a wider range of variation, greater gram­matical instability and more intensive realisation of internal tenden­cies.

The transformation was on the whole completed in the 14th-15th c., when some of the co-existing forms and syntactic patterns used in free variation were selected and adopted by the language system and by the prevailing literary dialect — the dialect of London. The selection of forms was determined by the same internal tendencies and by the changed linguistic situation: the dialects had intermixed and their relations and inter-influence reflected the economic, social and demographic events of the time.

§ 554. The growth of analytical forms in the verb system and the formation of new grammatical categories were also to a certain extent pre-determined by the state of the verb system in OE: the paradigm of the verb was relatively poor and, in addition to categorial forms of the verb system, the language made wide use of verb phrases and verb-prefixes to express a variety of meanings connected with the main meanings of the verb forms — temporal, modal and aspective. The main changes of the ensuing period consisted in the enrichment of the verb system which came to include new forms in the paradigm and to develop new oppositions and categories. The verb system has expanded and has become more symmetrical. These alterations were primarily conditioned by internal factors of language evolution, such as the shift of some ab­stract meanings from the lexical to the grammatical level (e. g. the modal and temporal meanings), and the strive for a balanced regular arrangement of grammatical oppositions. The developments in the verb system, un­like those in the nominal system, were not confined to Early ME; they extended over many hundred years and were associated with different kind of external conditions and new stimuli of development: the growth of culture and the written forms of the language, the formation of the national literary language — with its functional and stylistic differen­tiation — and the need for more precise and subtle means of expression.

§ 555. The changes at the syntactic level can, on the whole, be attributed to the same factors which operated in the evolution of English morphology. The predominance of syntactic ways of word connection, the strict word order, the wide use of prepositional phrases were a part of the general transition of English from the synthetic to the analyt­ical type. Syntactic changes were linked up with simplifying changes in morphology and made a part of a single historical process (see § 553).

The other major trend of syntactic changes can be defined as grow­ing complexity of the word phrase and of the sentence. The extension of word phrases, the growth of predicative constructions, and the devel­opment of the complex and compound sentences made a part of the formation of the literary English language, and particularly its Written Standard and multiple functional styles.

QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

1. Compare the historical productivity of different form-building means: synthetic (inflections, sound interchanges), analytical, sup­pletive.

2. Which part of speech has lost the greatest number of grammatical categories? Which part of speech has acquired new categories?

3. Describe the sources of the modern pl forms of nouns and the spread of the ending - (e) s.

4. Compare the development of case and number in nouns, adjec­tives and pronouns.

5. Illustrate the process of replacement by tracing the history of the pronouns she, they, their, him, you, its.

6. Comment on the forms of pronouns in the following quotations:

'tis better thee without than he within; Between who?; Nay, you need not fear for us; Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye. (Shake­speare)

7. What is the connection between the growth of articles, the history of pronouns and the decline of adjectival declensions?

8. Comment on the following statement made by S. Johnson in his DICTIONARY: “He shall seldom err who remembers that when a verb has a participle distinct from its preterite as write, wrote, written, that distinct participle is more proper and elegant, as the book is written is better than the book is wrote though wrote may be used in poetry...” What events called forth this remark?

9. Make a list of verb inflections in Mod E and trace their origin (show their grammatical and dialectal sources).

10. Why would it be incorrect to apply the terms “strong” and “weak” to Mod E standard and non-standard verbs?

11. Describe the development of the principal forms of the follow­ing verbs: OE fēdan w. I, wēpan str. 7, āscian w. II, sincan, windan str. 3.

12. Point out traces of OE pret.-pres. verbs in modern modal verbs.

13. Have all the phrases consisting of have plus Part. II, be plus Part. I and shall/will plus Inf. become grammatical forms? Describe their histories as instances of splitting.

14. Use the following quotations to describe the history of the Con­tinuous forms:

It was not for nothing that my nose fell a-bleeding on Black Mon­day. (Shakespeare)

The clock struck ten white the trunks were carrying down... (J. Au­sten, late 18th c.)

15. What developments in English syntax can be illustrated by the following quotations:

“Madam, my interpreter, what says she? Whereupon do you look?” “Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck. And yet methinks I have astronomy...”

“How likes you this play, my lord?” (Shakespeare)

16. Recall some instances of grammatical changes which involve several linguistic levels: morphological, syntactic, phonetic, lexical.

17. In his “theory of progress” O. Jespersen asserted that English, being an analytical language, was more advanced than other languages. Consider and criticise some of his arguments:

(1) The forms are generally shorter, thus involving less muscular exer­tion and requiring less time for enunciation.

(2) There are not so many of them to burden the memory.

(3) Their formation is much more regular.

(4) Their syntactic use also presents fewer irregularities.

(5) The clumsy repetitions known under the name of concord have be­come superfluous.

(6) A clear and unambiguous understanding is secured through a regular word order.

Chapter XVI
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY FROM THE 12TH TO 19TH C. (§ 556-626)

Preliminary Remarks. Types and Sources of Changes (§ 556-560)

§ 556. According to the estimates made by modern philologists, in the course of the thousand years — from OE to modern times — the English vocabulary has multiplied tenfold. Perhaps, if it were possible to count all the meanings expressed by lexical items in different his­torical periods, the figure would be much higher.

Among the changes in the vocabulary we can distinguish losses of words or their meanings, replacements and additions.

§ 557. Like many other lexical changes losses were connected with events in external history: with the changing conditions of life and the obsolescence of many medieval concepts and customs.

Some regulations and institutions of OE kingdoms were cancelled or forgotten in the ME period. OE witenaʒemōt ‘assembly of the elders’ ceased to exist under the Norman rule; OE Daneʒeld, the tax paid to the Scandinavians, was not collected after the collapse of the Danish Empire — both words have survived only as historical terms. OE werʒeld was a fine paid by the murderer to the family of the murdered man; the word became obsolete together with the custom.

Some rituals of the heathen religion were abandoned — after the introduction of Christianity — and their names dropped out of use, e.g. OE tiber, blōt which meant ‘sacrifice’.

In OE there were many groups of synonyms whose differentiation became irrelevant in ME; therefore some of the synonyms fell out of use. For instance, OE here, fierd, werod indicated an armed force, an army (here must have had a negative connotation as it was used only in reference to a hostile army, the Danes). The distinction between the synonyms was lost when they were all replaced by the ME borrowings from French army, troop.

The English vocabulary suffered considerable losses when a whole stylistic stratum of words, the specific OE poetic vocabulary, went out of use together with the genre of OE poetry; those were numerous poetic synonyms of ordinary, neutral words, stock metaphors and traditional “kennings”.

Many words current in ME fell out of use and became obsolete in NE, e.g.: ME chapman ‘pedlar’, ME romare ‘pilgrim to Rome’, ME outridere ‘rider visiting the manors of a monastery’, ME gypoun ‘short jacket’.

Losses could also affect the plane of content, Though the word sur­vived, some of its meanings became obsolete. Thus OE ʒift had the meaning ‘price of a wife’ connected with one of the early meanings of the verb ʒyfan (NE give) ‘give in marriage’; OE sellan lost the mean­ing ‘give’ which it could express in OE alongside ‘sell’; OE talu meant ‘number, series’ and ‘story, narrative’, while its ME and NE descend­ant tale retained only the latter meanings.

Though losses proper can be illustrated by numerous examples in all periods, they played a less important role in the development of the vocabulary than replacements and additions.

§ 558. It has been calculated that from 80 to 85% of the OE words went out of use in the succeeding periods. Most of these words were not simply lost; they were replaced by other words of the same or similar meanings. The replacement came as a result of the co-existence and rivalry of synonyms and the ultimate selection of one of the rivals. Thus OE clipian came to be replaced by ME callen, NE call; OE niman was ousted by ME taken, NE take-, the pronouns hie and hēo were substituted for by they and she-, OE morðan was replaced by become; NE river took the place of OE ēa; NE table — the place of OE bord and so on and so forth.

Replacements could also occur in the sphere of content: the word was retained but its meaning was changed or was replaced by a new meaning. Thus OE drēam meant ‘joy’ but acquired an entirely different meaning, formerly rendered by OE swefn; OE cnihf ‘boy, servant’ changed its meaning to ME and NE knight; OE clerec ‘clergyman’ developed into ME clerk ‘student, scholar’ and NE ‘secretary in an office’. Some­times the meanings of the word changed when its referent (the thing it denoted) underwent some kind of changes, for instance, ME carre ‘wheeled vehicle’ now indicates a motor car or part of a train (sleeping car), NE car, Early ME carriage; coche denoted an old form of carriage pulled by four horses, while its descendant, NE coach, has acquired the mean­ing of ‘car, carriage’ in a train.

The “one-to-one” replacements illustrated by the examples above did not increase the number of words in the vocabulary. Most replace­ments however belonged to the “split”-type: one item was replaced by two or more, or one meaning differentiated into several meanings. These changes should be classified as additions to the vocabulary.

§ 559. Additions embrace a large number of vocabulary changes. The sum total of this type of change far offsets the process of obsolescence and decay. Among additions we can find pure innovations, that is en­tirely new words which did not take the place of any other items but were created to name new things, new ideas and new qualities, e.g. ME citee ‘town with a cathedral’, duke, duchesse, prynce — new ranks and titles; NE bourgeois, potato, nylon.

Many additions to the vocabulary were due to the differentiation of synonyms. The co-existence of synonyms did not necessarily result in the ousting of one by the other as shown in § 558. Both words — or even several words of close meaning — could survive with certain dif­ferences in stylistic connotations, combinability and other features. For instance OE nēah, nēar, nēara survived as ME neer, its ME synonyms were cloos and adjacent, their NE descendants and synonyms: near, close, adjacent, neighbouring. Another example: OE heard, ME hard, ferme, solide, NE hard, firm, solid, severe.

The development of new meanings in the existing words extended the vocabulary and led to the growth of polysemy and homonymy. For instance, OE cræft meant ‘science’, ‘skill’, ‘strength’; in ME and NE craft lost the meaning ‘science’ but acquired new meanings ‘group of skilled workers, guild’ and ‘vessel’; ME journee meant ‘day’s work’, sometimes ‘day’s march’, later ‘travel, journey’.

§ 560. The sources of new words are usually divided into internal and external. Internal ways of developing the vocabulary were produc­tive in all historical periods. Word-formation and semantic changes were equally prolific in the creation of new words and new meanings; they were exceptionally productive in the periods of rapid vocabulary growth, such as the Renaissance period.

The role of external sources in the extension of the English vocabu­lary is very considerable, perhaps far more so than in most other lan­guages. It is commonly acknowledged that one of the most drastic changes in the English vocabulary is the change in its etymological composi­tion. While the OE vocabulary was almost entirely Germanic and on the whole was highly resistant to borrowing, the language of later pe­riods absorbed foreign words by the hundred and even made use of for­eign word components in word formation. As a result the proportion of Germanic words in the English language has fallen; according to modern estimates the native Germanic element constitutes from 30 to 50% of the vocabulary; the other two thirds (or half) come from foreign sources, mainly Romance.

This does not mean, however, that the native element in English is insignificant or that over half of all the words are direct borrowings. The importance of the surviving native words is borne out by the fact that they belong to the most frequent layer of words, and that native components are widely used in word-building, in word phrases and phraseological units.[67] It should also be realised that the foreign origin of a morpheme does not mean that every word containing this morpheme is a borrowing. When the loan-words were assimilated by the language — which happened some time after their adoption — they could yield other words through word-formation or develop new meanings on Brit­ish soil; these new items are specifically English words and meanings and are, therefore, as “native” as the Germanic heritage. For instance, the foreign root pass (from French passer) is used in numerous composite verbs (“verb-adverb combinations”) like pass away, pass by, pass for, pass through, etc.; in phraseological units like pass by the name of, pass a remark, pass the ball; in derived and compound words, e.g. passer-by, passing, pass-book. All these words and phrases originated in the English language and cannot be treated as borrowings, though they contain the foreign component pass.

The influx of borrowings was directly dependent on the linguistic situation in the country, on the extent of bilingualism in the community, and on the position and role of the foreign language. The linguistic sit­uation in ME was most favourable for strong foreign influence — first Scandinavian then French. Foreign words were adopted in large num­bers in the succeeding periods as well and their sources became more diverse: English freely borrowed both from classical and modern sources though at no other time the immediate effect of the foreign impact was as manifest as in ME.

Scandinavian Influence on the Vocabulary (§ 561-566)

§ 561. The historical events which led to the contacts between OE and O Scand were described in Ch. V and X. The Scandinavian invasions had far-reaching linguistic consequences which became apparent mainly in ME; the greater part of lexical borrowings from O Scand were not recorded until the 13th c.

As mentioned before, the presence of the Scandinavians in the Eng­lish population is indicated by a large number of place-names in the northern and eastern areas (former Danelaʒu): most frequent are place- names with the Scandinavian components thorp ‘village’, toft ‘piece of land’, by from O Scand byr ‘village’, beck ‘rivulet’, ness ‘cape’, e.g. Troutbeck, Inverness, Woodthorp, Grimsby, Brimtoft.

The fusion of the English and of the Scandinavian settlers progressed rapidly; in many districts people became bilingual, which was an easy accomplishment since many of the commonest words in the two OG languages were very much alike.

Gradually the Scandinavian dialects were absorbed by English, leav­ing n profound impression on the vocabulary of the Northern English dialects.

In the beginning Scandinavian loan-words were dialectally restricted; they increased the range of language variation; later due to dialect mix­ture they penetrated into other parts of the language space, passed into London English and the national language. It is noteworthy that the number of Scandinavian loan-words in the Northern dialects has always been higher than in the Midlands and in the South. Probably in Early ME there were more Scandinavian words in current use than have sur­vived today. Some words died out or were retained only in the local dialects, e.g. kirk ‘church’, daʒ ‘dew’. The total number of Scandinavian borrowings in English is estimated at about 900 words; about 700 of them belong to Standard English.