5. The Article

A new part of speech, the article, appears in Middle English. Even in Old English, when the case endings were sca'fce, and in some groups of nouns there were no longer distinctive markers of this or that case (for instance suna was the form of the Genitive and the Dative in Singular, and Nominative, Genitive and Accusative in the Plural), the demonstrative pronoun ȡet, helped to show case distinctions. So the Genitive Singular was dzes suna, Dative Singular ȡэm suna, Nominative Plural da suna, Genitive Plural dara suna, and Accusative Plural done suna. In fact, the pronoun was the real marker of the case of the noun. This, probably led to overuse of the demonstrative pronouns in Old English, and to weakening of their deictic function.

In Middle English this weakened form of the demonstrative pronoun which signalled only the definiteness of the noun, that is such as was already known or was mentioned before, was supplemented by the weakened form of the numeral an (one) and now was used to render the meaning of indefiniteness, a person or thing unknown or unmentioned. This part of speech contains only two words - the from reduced data and an, a from the numeral an.

6. Middle English Adjective

The paradigm of the adjective in Middle English is simplified drastically. The endings become scarce. The category of gender is lost, for the nouns no longer have it. The adjective no longer agrees with the noun in case, the only remaining endings being - the plural form having the ending -e and the remains of the weak declension, the weak form (the one preceded by an article) -e: young kniht /the younge kniht, younge knihtes/the younge knihtes.

But some of the adjectives had the very ending -e as a result of levelling of the vowels at the and, end so such adjectives as grene were already unchangeable; in the plural the strong and the weak forms also coincided.

The forms of the suffixes of the degrees of comparison were reduced to -er, -est.Some preserve former suppletivity, and their degrees of comparison look like this:

good - bettre - best evil (bad) - werse - werst muchel - more — most, mest;

litel - lasse – lest.

Some adjectives, especially of foreign origin, are found in a form that came into wider usage only later, that is, they may be associated with the adverb moore/most.

7. Middle English Verb

All types of verbs existing in Old English - strong, weak, preterite-present and irregular were preserved in Middle English. In each type we find changes due to phonetic developments of this period, but the proportional value of the weak ones is greater and continues to grow, and a tendency is already traced - that is, some of the former strong verbs are drifting in the direction of the weak ones. The drift was not a comprehensive one; there was even a reverse process, some of the former weak ones became strong.

The Old English prefix je- reduced to y-. Now it is mostly found in the second participle (in the Southern dialects). In most dialects it disappeared by the 14c, yet in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales we may find a considerable number of such uses.

Non-finite forms which in Old English comprised the infinitive and the two participles have changed in the direction from the nominal to verbal parts of speech. They are no longer declined, nor are they agreed with the nouns; gradually new verbal categories penetrate into their system, and nowadays we speak about the analytical forms of the non-finite forms (passive infinitive, perfect infinitive etc.)

A new non-finite form of the verb arises - the gerund. The infinitive loses the category of case and acquires a pre-infinitival particle to. It may still be used with what remained of the infinitival suffix (-an, -ian -> -en. -n) - to goon, to writen, to spenden, to maken - but the tendency to lose the final consonant is strong, and we find in Chaucer's works to seke alongside with to seken, to do with to doon, to make with to maken. This particle is not used when the infinitive stands after other (preterite-present in particular) verbs:

Participle I, having an active meaning and expressing a process of doing something, in Middle English changes its shape. Its suffix -ende turns into -inde and finally -ynge/-inge due to the processes of weakening of the final sounds and through intermixture with other dialectal forms. In the Old English there existed the form of the verbal noun with the suffix -ung (liornunge - learning) which also was shifting toward less distinct form –ynge/-inge.

Originally, the verbal noun was derived from transitive verbs, took an object in the genitive case (which in our times is replaced by of-phrase). But when phonetically it coincided with the participle, it began to behave more 11 eely, now and again taking the direct object. So from the verbal noun without an article but with a direct object we have a grammatical innovation - the < rerund. A typical case of such contamination in Russian is the notorious phrase оплачивайте за проезд in which two correct grammatical structures а чините за проезд and оплатите проезд are mixed.

Changes in all groups of verbs took place in Middle English. The changes in strong verbs were as follows. The number of the basic forms of the verb remained the same (four), but due to the reduction of endings and the fact that the length of the vowel became positional the form of the present participle of some verbs coincided with the form of the past plural, that is that here too we may find homonymy of forms:

class I writ en - wrot - writen - writen;

class II chesen - ches - chosen - chosen;

class III drinken - drank - dronken - dronken;

helpen - halp - holpen - holpen;

fighten - faught - foughten - foughten;

class IV beren - bar - beren/bar - boren;

class V geten - gat -geten/gat - geten;

class VI shaken - shok -shaken - shaken;

class VII knowen - knew - knewen -knowen

Some of the strong verbs may take the dental suffix for formation of their past form, thus becoming weak (gripen, crepen, eleven, wepen, spelen, walken, dreden, reden).

The number of weak verbs grows significantly in Middle English, because practically all borrowed verbs and new verbs derived from other parts of speech become weak. The changes in the weak verbs were mainly phonetical. Some of them lost the sound -i- in the suffix in the infinitive: lufian – louen.

Class II lost its specific -ode ending due to the levelling of endings and turned into -ed. Class III retained only the verbs seƺƺen, libben, habben - seien, liven haven

In the 14c. in some weak verbs with a stem ending in l, n,ʃ and v the past suffix -d changed into -t; (leornian- leornode - lernte (to learn); felan - felde - feelen - felte (to feel)); hlsenan - hlsende - lenen - lente (to lean); wendan - wende - wenden - wente (to wend)).

Most Scandinavian borrowings are conjugated according to the weak type: callen, wanten, guessen (except take, thriven and flingen which have vowel interchange in the past tense and in the participle-probably due in their own origin and similarity in formation of the forms joined correspondingly class VI. I and III of the storing verbs. All the verbs of the French origin (with the exception of striven that joined class I of the strong verbs), became weak (we call them now regular).

Shall/sholde alongside with its modal meaning is widely used as an auxiliary of the future tense, future-in-the-past and as auxiliaries of the new analytical forms of the Subjunctive Mood.

Motan gradually loses the meaning of ability and possibility which is occasionally expressed by its present tense form moot, and is more and more used to express obligation. In the paradigm of the preterite-present verbs second person ending -est, the plural ending -en may be retained, but the tendency is not to use personal endings.

During this period there appear analytical forms of the verb. In Old English the only ways to make the forms of the verb were suffixes/vowel interchange/using another stem + inflections; in Middle English there arise the forms now very common in Present-day English but absent in Old English.

An analytical form must have a stable structural pattern different from the patterns of verb phrases; it must consist of an auxiliary (which itself might stand in an analytical form) and a non-finite form of the verb, which remains unchanged. Its meaning is not reduced to the sum total of the components (that is, if we take he will do it, it does not mean that he is willing to do it; he might resist the task all he can; the more so we can say about such sentences as close the window, or the child will catch cold).

In present day English the temporal paradigm of the verb contains two synthetic and one analytical form. This means that this form was absent in Old English, and this form is the Future tense.

Future time relevance was rendered by various supporting elements in the text; so in the adverbial clauses of time and condition it was self-evident, that with the insertion of a marker in the principal clause the action of the subordinate would invariably refer to the future as well (When he comes I want him to help me).

In sentences containing explicit indication of time by means of adverbs, etc. it was not a compulsory element; hence we have the following uses of the present instead of the future tomorrow we are writing a test. The use of such verbs as shall/ will referred the action to the future as such which was desirable but not yet realized, or obligatory. In Middle English these become the true auxiliaries for the future tense. Chaucer uses them freely:

The Present and the Past Perfect equally came into the Middle English, both using as auxiliary the verb to haven in the Present or the past tense + Participle II (with or without a prefix):

Aprille hath perced to the rote...

April has pierced to the root....

hem hath holpen...

has helped them.

With the verbs of motion, however, and intransitive verbs in general the perfect might still be used with the ben-auxiliary:

At night was come into that hostelrie wel nyne and twenty in a companie (at night into that hostel a company of twenty-nine has come).

Non-finite form of the verb, the infinitive, acquired this grammatical category too. Perfect infinitives are common in Chaucer's times, mainly as part of new analytical forms of the Subjunctive Mood.

The passive voice expressed by the combination ben + Participle II expressing a state as well as an action is widely used in Middle English. Unlike Old English where the form of the participle agreed in number with the subject of the sentence, in Middle English, where still the ending of the plural adjectives and participles was preserved in the Participle II, the lexical part of the analytical form is utterly unchangeable.

The category of voice was expressed also in the non-finite forms of the verb - passive infinitives are rather common in this period.

The future, the perfect and the passive form reflected different aspects of the action, and as soon as they came into the language they all could be used simultaneously, that is perfect forms might be used in active or passive voice, present as well as the future tense.

The category of mood retains the former subdivision into the indicative, the imperative and the subjunctive. While there is nothing new or nothing special about the indicative and the imperative mood - the first represented the action as real, the second expressed commands, requests etc., the forms of the subjunctive mood had some specificity which might be commented on.

The present tense of the subjunctive (we call it now Subjunctive I) renders the meanings of wishes (including curses). But very frequently this form of the Subjunctive was used to render the meaning of uncertainty.

The category of mood was also enriched by analytical formations wolde + inf and sholde + inf; the newly arisen form of the past perfect readily supplements the range of meanings of the old synthetic subjunctive:

The perfect and passive forms of the verb in the subjunctive mood were not a rare occasion.