3.8. Changes in the Grammatical System

3.8.1. Preliminary Remarks

One of the leading tendencies in the ME period was the gradual loss of synthetic ways of expressing the relations between words and the development of analytical means.

The loss of synthetic forms was especially manifest in the gradual reduction, levelling and loss of endings, a process closely connected with the fixation of word stress on the first or root syllable. The results of that process were already felt in OE, where one has to speak of zero endings in such forms as mån –men, ʒōd (sg) - ʒōd (pl), etc.

Some originally different case forms coincided even in OE, e.g. the nominative and the accusative of most declensions.

In the XI c. the levelling of endings grew much more intensive, which was partly due to Scandinavian influence.

Many originally different forms of the same word merged, e.g. OE scipe, scipu, scipa merged in ME shipe. OE sprecan, spræcon, sprecen merged in ME sp(r)ēken (speak)

It is quite comprehensible that the effect of such merging on the system of grammatical endings was devastating. Nevertheless, some of the old grammatical endings have survived to this day.

3.8.2. The Noun

3.8.2.1. Gender

By the end of the ME period gender as a grammatical category was lost with other distinctive features of noun declensions nearly everywhere. It came to be a purely lexical category, denoting division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females. There was already a mixture of masculine and neuter genders in Late OE: the neuter a-stems differed from the masculine a-stems only in the nominative and accusative plural. In all other cases they shared the same endings. Later the masculine and neuter genders began to mix with the feminine gender. With the reduction of endings to -e [ə] in OE n-stems the differentiation between masculine, which ended in –a, and neuter/feminine, which ended in –e, disappeared. Gender disintegration was partly due to the mixture of English and Scandinavian dialects. The gender of cognate words in both languages did not always coincide. Cf. OE steorra (masculine) –Osc stjarna (feminine) (star); OE bāt (masculine) – Osc beit (neuter) (boat); OE beorg (masculine) – Osc bjarg (neuter) (hill, mountain). The decay of gender distinctions was also due to a great influx of French loanwords, which had no formal signs of gender.

In Chaucer’s time, the OE grammatical gender was already lost. In the sentence «the yonge sonne hath in the Ram his halve course y-ronne» (Chaucer) the pronoun «his» points either to the masculine or neuter gender, while in OE sunne belonged to feminine (sēo sunne). In the following example «she» points to a woman, while «it» replaces the noun mous, which in OE was feminine: She wolde wepe, if that she saw a mous,

Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde (Chaucer)

3.8.2.2. Number

The noun preserved the distinction of two numbers, but their expression changed. With the loss of gender distinctions the ME plural ending -es (from OE -as of the nominative and accusative plural, a-stem, masculine) spread to most nouns of other stems. Moreover, there was a great difference between the OE ending-as and the ME -es: while the OE -as expressed number and case simultaneously (which is typical of inflexional languages), the ME -es expresses number alone and it is not connected with any notion of case.Thus, in ME the expression of number is separated from that of case.

At first, the plural ending -s spread in Northern dialects.

In the South, however, nouns retained the plural ending -en of the weak declension, e.g. oxen, eyen. The weak -en ending was even added to some nouns of other stems. Thus, the noun child (former -es-stem) acquired the plural form children instead of childre < OE cildru.The nouns of former r-stem also acquired the plural ending -en: brōther – brethren, doghter – doghtern, suster – sustren. The noun cow (former root-stem) got the plural form kine.

However, in Late ME the plural ending -es became predominant everywhere. The strengthening of -es may be partly attributed to its coincidence with the plural inflexion -s in Anglo-Norman.

Some nouns of the former a-stems, neuter gender in the long-stemmed variant preserved the uninflected forms, e.g. sheep, deer, swine, hors (horse).

Several nouns of the root-stems preserved different vowels in the singular and plural forms, e.g. man – men, foot – feet, tooth – teeth, woman – women, etc. Thus, mutation became a grammatical sign of the plural number.

What surprises the student of English is why nouns like man, foot or tooth did not conform to the general tendency and have preserved their peculiar way of forming the plural. Prof. A.I. Smirnitsky offers the following explanation: (1) these words are used very frequently, which usually impedes the influence of analogy. It is noteworthy that the greatest number of irregularities are found among the words, which are used most frequently, such as the verb to be, the personal pronouns, etc. (2) The difference between the singular and the plural of these nouns is not merely grammatical, but to some extent lexical too: the plural forms have an additional «collective meaning». Cf. R человек – люди. The same might be true with regard to the nouns sheep, deer, fish, etc.