The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 2 part 3 ppsx

Roger Lass

(b) Old English already showed a tendency towards dative/accusative

syncretism, normally in favour of the dative form. In Middle English

this trend continues in the masculine and feminine third-person singular.

The collapse of bine and him in a general object-case him begins early,

though bine remains as an alternative in southern texts into the

fourteenth century (Dan Michel has me bine anhongep 'one hangs him'

alongside and him halt 'and holds him'). This is a classic instance of the

distortion of history produced by the standardisation of a language:

from literary texts alone we would be justified in assuming that bine

'vanished' in the fourteenth century (and indeed this is true of the

literary standard). But a reflex of bine (in the form /an/, distinct from

him) survives even now in the south-west of England, though it is not

strictly differentiated as an accusative (see Wakelin 1972a: 113).

Feminine ace. sg. hi(e) and related forms survive in the south until the

late thirteenth century, but yield to hir{e) / her(e) afterwards. The dative/

accusative distinction is, however, maintained for neuters during most

of Middle English, and it is only later that him is dropped in the standard

for neuter indirect objects (in many non-standard dialects, especially in

the south-west, it still remains).

(c) The origin of she is one of the great unsolved puzzles of the history

of English. One early view is that it descends from the feminine

nominative singular article se'o, via syllabicity shift and palatalisation: i.e.

[seo] > [seo] > [sjo:] > [Jo:]. This would give the N scho and similar

forms, but not s(c)he: here the vowel would have to come from

somewhere else, presumably an analogical transfer from he. One

problem is that se'o appears to have died out rather earlier than one would

like, which makes it too archaic to accord with the surfacing of she. A

more likely account is what is sometimes called the ' Shetland Theory',

since it assumes a development parallel to that of Shetland < OScand.

Hjaltland, Shapinsay < Hjalpandisej, etc. The starting point is the

morphologically and chronologically preferable bed. Once again we

have syllabicity shift and vowel reduction, giving [heo] > [heo] >

[hjo:]. Then [hj-] > [c-], and [c-] > [/-], giving final [Jo:]. The

'syllabicity shift' (or at least the development /eo/ > /o:/) is attested

elsewhere (ce'osan > choose, not expected **cheese: see 2.2.1); and

[hj-] > [5-] is also reasonable, as in many modern dialects that have

[cu:-] in hue, human. Indeed Orm's fern. 3 sg. nom. %ho may well

represent either [hjo:] or [50:]. There are, however, a few snags: first,

chronological problems having to do with the /eo/ > /jo:/ develop￾ment in Scandinavian, which is supposed to have influenced the

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Phonology and morphology

English development. Second, while [hj] > [c] is reasonable, the

further putative development to [J] is only attested in a few (non￾English) place names.

In addition, the simplest phonological solution, a normal develop￾ment of the nucleus of he'o or se'o to /e:/, would make it impossible to

get the right initial consonant; for [h] to give [5 > J] requires a

following [j], and this can only come from the aberrant development to

/o:/, since it requires reduction of a desyllabified initial [e] in the

diphthong. So any solution that gets [J] from /eo/ also needs to

'correct' the resultant /o:/ (outside the north) to /e:/. This means an

analogical transfer of (probably) the /e:/ of he. All this in just one word.

So none of the available stories is satisfactory. The only certainty is

(a) that the northern scho type could have come easily from se'o, and less

easily from he'o; (b) that all existing accounts, whatever the phonology,

also require some morphological assistance to get the right vowel in she;

and (c) that a form probably in the ancestral line of she occurs in the east

midlands as early as the 1150s, i.e. the Peterborough Chronicle's sex. For

most of the Middle English period scho is restricted to the north, and sche

to the east midlands, while the south keeps the old heo or its descendants,

e.g. ho, hue, hi. Shoo /Ju:/, the natural descendant of scho, remains even

today in rural dialects in a small part of West Yorkshire, and hoo /(h)u:/

< he'o in the northwest midlands, particularly parts of Lancashire,

southwest Yorkshire, and scattered through Cheshire, Derbyshire and

northwest Staffordshire (Duncan 1972: 188f.).

(d) During the course of Middle English the genitives of the personal

pronouns were syntactically 'detached' from the pronoun paradigm,

and came to function rather as adjectives than as true case forms. They

could no longer occur as objects of verbs (as in OYifanda min 'try me'),

or as partitives {an hiora ' one of them') - the necessary translations

illustrate what has happened (cf. **try my, **one their(s)).

Eventually the genitives became exclusively noun attributes, i.e.

'possessive adjectives'; this amounts to a retention of only one of their

Old English functions - the type min sunu 'my son'. Morphologically

these were much like other adjectives (as indeed they were in Old

English in their adjectival function): pi. min-e leov-e sustren ' my dear

sisters' and the like.

Beginning in the north and northwest midlands in the late twelfth to

early thirteenth century, a new genitive type arose, with suffixed -(e)s, as

in jour{e)s, her{e)s, our(e)s, etc. These spread gradually southwards,

appearing in the southeast midlands in the later fourteenth century. The

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Roger Lass

new forms were used (as they still are) in constructions where the

possessed noun did not directly follow the genitive of the possessor: e.g.

Chaucer's myn hous ...or elks.. .jour-es, al this good is our-es.

In the south and parts of the midlands, the second genitive was

apparently formed on the model of possessives like min, pin, with -{e)n:

7,our-en, his-en - a type that still survives in some dialects both in England

and the USA. New forms oimin, pin were also created by deletion of final

-n, at first typically in sandhi before words beginning with a vowel or

/ h / (cf. the modern distribution of a, an). This pattern is common but

not obligatory; both the types mi/rend, min jrend occur.

(e) The entire third-person plural system has been replaced in the

standard by a Scandinavian paradigm; but the different case forms were

not uniformly replaced except in the north. The eventual merger pattern

is the same as for the singular: dative and accusative fall together, and

what remains is formally the historical dative (them < OScand. pei-m; cf.

hi-m).

Northern Middle English dialects generally show a full Scandinavian

paradigm from earliest times, with descendants of peir, peirra, peim

(nom., gen., obi.). The other dialects show a gradual southward

movement of the p- paradigm, the native h- type remaining longest

in the conservative south. In the northeast midland Ormulum, the

nominative is exclusively Pe^; the genitive is mostly pe^re, with a few

/6-forms; the oblique is hemm, with a few instances of pe$$m. This is the

basic pattern: nominative />-forms appear first, then the genitive, then

the oblique. So pei appears in London in the fourteenth century, and

Chaucer, typically for the period, has pei/her(e)/hem. London texts of the

fifteenth century vary between her(e) and their, and towards the end of

the century their begins to take over, and by Caxton's time is the only

form in common use. Them is the last: Chaucer and the next-generation

writers like Lydgate and Hoccleve use only hem, and Caxton has hem and

them, with hem predominating. By the beginning of the sixteenth

century the modern paradigm is fully established (Mustanoja 1960:

134f.; Wyld 1927: §§307, 312).

In summary, the late southeast midlands dialects show fairly stable

first-, second- and third-person singular paradigms:

(61)

singular

I2O

nom.

gen.

obi.

1

I

ml(n)

me

2

]>u

Masculine

he

his

him

3

Feminine

she

} her(e)

Neuter

(h)it

his

(h)it

Phonology and morphology

1 2

nom. we 36

Plural gen. our(es) 3our(es)

obi. us 30U

The third-person plural, on the other hand, has a gradual three-phase

development through the fifteenth century:

(62) I II III

Nominative f>ei )?ei yei

Genitive her(e) her(e) ~)?eir \?eir

Oblique hem hem hem ~ f>em

The only major changes in the pronoun system after this are the

development of a new neuter genitive singular its, and a drastic

remodelling of the second-person system (see vol. Ill, ch. 1).

2.9.1.4 Minor categories: interrogatives, indefinites, numerals

A number of categories show either pronoun- or adjective-like

behaviour (or both), but lack full independent paradigms, and have

simpler morphological histories than the true pronouns or adjectives.

These include interrogatives, numerals and so-called 'indefinite pro￾nouns' (a traditional catch-all including chiefly quantifiers like all, any,

each and the like).

1 Interrogatives. Old English had two main interrogatives, one of which

(hwa/hwset 'who/what') was a true pronoun, while the other (bwilc

'which') was either pronoun or adjective, depending on syntax (see

below). Hiva had two declensions, one primarily for reference to

humans (hence conflating masculine and feminine), and one for non￾humans (neuter). The paradigms and their Late Middle English

descendants were:

(63)

Nominative

Genitive

Dative

Accusative

Instrumental

Ok

Human

hwa

hwaes

1 English

Non-Human

hwast

—

hwaim/hwam — •}

hwone

—

hwaet I Oblique

hwy 1

Middle

Human

who

whos(e)

whom

English A

Non-Human

what

—

what

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Roger Lass

The old instrumental hwj, while pronominal in origin (= 'for

what?'), is syntactically adverbial, and in Middle English is an

indeclinable autonomous word. The others, with the expectable

syncretism of dative/accusative under dative (cf. bine/him > him) form

a coherent set parallel to the third-person singular masculine personal

pronoun {he/his/him), and have a similar history. OE hwilc 'which' was

declined like an adjective; in Early Middle English it retained the strong

adjectival endings, especially in the south, but later, like other adjectives,

developed a simple singular (0) vs plural (-«) declension (see 2.9.1.2).

Thus (Gower CA IV.1212f.) which-e sorwes vs which...prosperite. The

same pattern holds for whether < OE hwaipere 'which (of two)'.

The interrogatives in later times were used as relative pronouns

as well, and form the basis of the modern system; but this is more

appropriately treated along with the syntactic evolution of the relative

clause.

2 Indefinite pronouns. The Old English quantifiers {e)all 'all', an 'one',

eenig 'any', mznig 'many', xlc 'each', zgper 'either', etc. survived into

Middle English, and evolved much like adjectives, losing their

inflections early in the more advanced northern dialects, and retaining

fragmentary inflection further south. All keeps its endings longest, with

dative plural still distinguished in Kent in the fourteenth century {to all￾en 'to all'), and even Chaucer showing relics of a genitive plural {at our

all-er cost 'at the cost of all of us' < OE eal-ra).

3 Numerals. While ordinals {first, second, etc.) are simply adjectives, and

were generally treated in Old English as such, the cardinals {one, two,

etc.) were somewhat ambiguous, and the morphology was not uniform

for the whole series. Only 'one' to 'three' were regularly inflected (e.g.

twa 'two' had forms like twe'gen (masc. nom./acc), tweg{r)a (gen.), twsem

(dat.), etc.) The higher ordinals were not usually inflected when

prenominal {syx wintra 'six winters'), but could be when they stood

alone {fif menn 'five men' vs ic seofif-e 'I see five': cf. Quirk & Wrenn

1957: 37). In Middle English the inflections began to vanish early,

though in the south, especially in Kent, they remain to some extent into

the fourteenth century {Ayenbite of Inwit has to on-en 'to one' < an-um

masc. dat. sg.). Except for these sporadic retentions in conservative

areas, the numerals are treated as indeclinable words in Middle English;

possibly because for any numeral higher than 'one' there is no

possibility of a singular/plural or definite/indefinite opposition. Hence

1 2 2

Phonology and morphology

the commonest loci for adjective inflection are absent, and the numerals

fall away from the adjective paradigm faster than quantifiers or ordinary

adjectives.

2.9.2 The verb

2.9.2.1 Introduction: Old English conjugation

The histories of the noun and adjective (2.9.1.1-4) suggest that English

morphological evolution involves more than just simplification; there is

a certain 'directedness', favouring particular categories at the expense

of others. In the noun number expands or is retained at the expense of

gender and case; in the adjective inflection is reduced to a sin￾gular/plural opposition, and then lost. The verb shows a similar (if

longer-term) dominance pattern: of the potential inflectional categories

in Old English (tense, mood, person, number), it is tense that becomes

the single typifying inflection. Today there are only marginal ex￾ceptions : the present 3 sg. -{e)s on regular verbs, and a few recessive

'subjunctives', e.g. the was/were opposition (indicative if I was 'even

though in fact I was' vs counterfactual /// were 'I am not, but if...'), or

unmarked third-person singular verbs in complements like I insist that he

leave (now mainly US).

The evolution in both noun phrase and verb shows a characteristic

English (and to some extent Germanic - except for German and

Icelandic) tendency: a move away from the multiparameter inflection

typical of the older Indo-European languages to a restricted system with

one exclusive or dominant parameter per part of speech.

Old English marked two tenses (past vs present), three moods

(indicative vs imperative vs subjunctive), and three persons (first,

second, third). All traces of both dual and passive inflection had already

been lost in Northwest Germanic (only Gothic shows these). This

suggests an 'ideal' maximum of twenty-six distinct forms for each verb:

six each for present and past indicative and subjunctive (3 persons X 2

numbers), plus imperative singular and plural (only for second person).

In fact, the system is not that symmetrical: person is marked only in

the indicative singular. The inflectional categories for the Old English

verb, overall, are as shown in (64).

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Roger Lass

(64)

pre

ind. subj. imp. ind. subj. imp.

NUM. NUM. NUM. NUM. NUM.

sg

A. pi

A. sg. pi. sg

A. pi.

A A A

1 2 3

sg. pi. sg. pi. sg. pi.

PERSON

A

1 2 3

(I am counting only the finite forms as part of the verb paradigm

proper; for the infinitive, participles and gerund see 2.9.2.6.)

This should give a total of sixteen forms for each verb; but the

maximum is in fact only a little over 60 per cent of the expected yield:

no more than eleven finite forms for any verb. This is due to the relative

paucity of available inflectional material, which leads to massive

homophony within the paradigm. To illustrate with one strong and one

weak verb:

(65) Strong: Class I drifan ' drive'

drtf-e (pres. ind. 1 sg. pres. subj. 1-3 sg.); drif-st (pres. ind. 2 sg.);

drif-6 (pres. ind. 3 sg.); drif-ad (pres. ind. 1-3 pi., imp. pi.); drif-en

(pres. subj. 1-3 pi.); drtf (imp. sg.); draf (past ind. 1, 3 sg.); drif-e

(past subj. 1—3 sg. past ind. 2 sg.); drif-on (past ind. 1—3 pi.); drif-en

(past subj. 1-3 pi.)

Weak: Class I deman 'judge'

dem-e (pres. ind. 1 sg., pres. subj. 1-3 sg.); dem-est (pres. ind. 2

sg.); dem-ed (pres. ind. 3 sg.); dem-ad (pres. ind. 1-3 pi., imp. pi.);

dem-en (pres. subj. 1-3 pi.); dem (imp. sg.); dem-d-e (past ind. 1, 3

sg., past subj. 1-3 sg.); dem-d-est (past ind. 2 sg.); dem-d-on (past ind.

1-3 pi.); dem-d-en (past subj. 1-3 pi.)

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