31. What was the Nature of the Great Vowel Shift?

The causes of the GVS are subject to as much debate as the nature of the shift

itself.

Diensberg proposes that the GVS was prompted by the “massive intake of

Romance loanwords in Middle English and Early Modern English”.

Others connect the shift with the loss of unstressed [ə]. They note that as a

result of theis loss there arose a great number of monosyllabic words which

differed from each other by length/shortness of the vowel alone. As a result there

came a change in the quality of long vowels.

The values of the long vowels form the main difference between the pronunciation

of Middle English and Modern English, and the Great Vowel Shift is one of the

historical events marking the separation of Middle and Modern English.

32. Describe the main changes in grammar system in Modern English.

The grammatical structure of English has changed comparatively little since the

17th century. There have been a few minor changes in grammar:

• some irregular verbs have become regularized: spake>spoke

• 3rd singular present tense verb forms change: he doest/doth/does.

• the old 2nd singular pronoun forms, thou, thee, thy/thine, have been replaced

by: you, your.

• The Middle English plural was formerly /es/ in all cases. The vowel

dropped out except after sibilants.

• the -th of some verb forms became -s (loveth, love; hath, has). auxiliary

verbs also changed (he is risen, he has risen).

The period of modern English is said to have begun after the merger of

Anglo-Saxon and Norman French into a single language.

33. Changes in the categories of nouns and adjectives. What old forms of substantive plural survived in ModE? Changes and features of ModE noun system

1. Unification in the number expression: nearly all nouns have the same

plural ending; compare Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s usage: Chaucer – eyen, fōr;

Shakespeare – eyes, foes.

2. There remained some mutated plurals (man-men), a few -n plurals

(shoes/shoon, housen, eyen), some unmarked plurals (month, year, horse, fish).

3. There remained only two cases: nominative and genitive. There appeared

a noun + noun combination (unmarked genitives): mother tongue, lady slipper.

Grammatical gender dissapeared altogether.

Adjectives had lost all inflections except comparative (-er) and superlative

(-est) by the end of ME; use of more and most as intensifiers, mixing and

combination of more/most with endings -er/-est.

The strong -s plural form has survived into Modern English, while the weak –

n form is rare (oxen, children, brethren).

34. Describe the main changes in the ModE pronoun system.

1. Development of separate conjoint and absolute forms of possessive

pronouns (my/mine, etc);

2. Appearance of possessive it: his > it > its sometimes spelled it's;

3. 2nd person singular forms thou and thee disappeared in 17th c, the plural

forms (ye/you) prevailed for both singular and plural;

4. Nominative ye became you.

Early ModE personal pronouns:

	Nominative	Objective
Singular	Thou	thē (thee)
Plural	Yē	you