2. Development of new grammatical forms categories of the English verb

The growth of analytical forms of the verb is a common Germanic tendency. The beginning of these changes is dated in Late OE and in ME. The growth of compound forms from free verb phrases was a long and complicated process which extended over many hundred years.

A genuine analytical verb form must have a stable structural pattern different from the patterns of verb phrases; it must consist of several component parts: an auxiliary verb, sometimes two or three auxiliary verbs, e.g. NE would have been taken – which serve as a grammatical marker, and a non-finite form – infinitive or participle, which serves as a grammatical marker and expresses the lexical meaning of the form. The analytical form should be idiomatic: its meaning is not equivalent to the sum of meanings of the component parts.

Thus, analytical forms have the following six features:

1) an analytical form consists of two or more separate components: have come, was being done;

2) there is no syntactic bond between the components of an analytical form;

3) an auxiliary verb has maximum combinability, i.e. it combines with all or nearly all the verbs;

4) an auxiliary verb is completely devoid of any lexical meaning, it conveys only the grammatical meaning of person or number;

5) the second part of an analytical form (the Infinitive or Participle I, II) is a bearer of lexical meaning pertaining to this form;

6) the two parts together convey the grammatical meaning of tense and aspect.

2.1. Growth of the future tense forms

In OE there was no form of the Future tense. The category of tense consisted of two members: past and present. The present tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases consisting of the verbs sculan ‘shall’, willan ‘will’, maan ‘may’, cunnan ‘can’ and others, and the infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation, possibility.

In ME future actions could still be expressed with the help of the present tense, particularly with verbs of motion, but the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall + infinitive was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. The meaning of the modal verb shall changed, and though it could retain its modal meaning of necessity, but often weakened it to denote futurity. In Late ME texts shall was used both as a modal verb and as a Future tense auxiliary. Cf.: Me from the feend and fro his clawes kepe, That day that I shal drenchen in the depe. (Chaucer) ‘Save me from the fiend and his claws the day when I am drowned (or am doomed to get drowned) in the deep (sea)’.

Future happenings were also commonly expressed by ME willen + infinitive, but the meaning of volition in will must have been more obvious than the modal meaning of shall: A tale wol I telle (Chaucer) ‘I intend to tell a story’. The future event is shown here as depending upon the will or consent of the doer. The verb will was more frequent in popular ballads and in colloquial speech, which testifies to certain stylistic restrictions in the use of will in ME.

The modal meaning of the verb shall disappears much earlier than that of will. During ME the combination shall + infinitive undergoes complete grammatisation, with the auxiliary shall used for all the persons. Thus, in Late ME the analytical form of the future tense with the auxuiliary shall emerges. The verb will turns into an auxiliary of the future form in Early NE. In NE the two analytical forms denoting futurity exist side by side. At the beginning of this period the forms were used indiscriminately for all the three persons in the singular and plural, e.g. I will sooner have a beard grow in the palm of my hand, than he shall get one on his cheek. However, in the 17^th c. the auxiliary will comes to oust shall in the 2^nd and 3^rd persons singular and plural. In the 18^th c. the use of shall and will was normalized by grammatists and came to be the same as in Modern English. Development of the future forms in colloquial speech led to further spread of will to all the persons and the appearance of the contracted forms –‘ll, allegedly ascending to will.