The grammatical system of Middle English Plan

The grammatical system of Middle English

Plan 1 • Parts of speech 2 • Main trends of development 3 • The noun and the adjective 4 • The pronoun 5 • The verb 6 • Development of the gerund

Adjectives Verbs Adverbs Pronouns Conjunctions Prepositions Nouns

MAIN TRENDS OF DEVELOPMENT The dative and locative cases are replaced with prepositional constructions Most of the other case endings disappeared Forms of the definite article ("the") disappeared The dual grammatical number disappeared

NOUNS Singular strong nom/acc gen dat engel engles engle Plural strong nom/acc gen dat engles engle(n) weak namen weak namen(e) namen

ADJECTIVES Adjectives Strong adjectives Weak adjectives Plural nouns • these descriptive words come before the noun they modify: yong sone - young son • stand on their own before a noun, like the yong in yong sone. They often do not have a final -e (schwa sound) • come between the article the, the demonstratives or a possessive and the modified noun. Such adjectives have a final -e (schwa): the yonge man - the young man and his sweet breath • adjectives generally take -e, weak or strong (yonge sones, the yonge children - young sons, the young children)

PRONOUNS “I” is spelled i, ich, ih. The objective form is me. The possessive form myn, min may occur without the -n, but takes a final -e when used with plural nouns “You” is thou (older thu). The objective form is thee. The possessive thyn is sometimes written without the -n, but takes a final -e when used with a plural noun He, him, his - unchanged. She – sche. Hire rather than her and hir instead of hers. The third person singular neuter it - found in the older form hit, relates to the possessive his (not its!) We, us, and oure are easy to understand. In older texts, expect to find ure instead of oure “You” (plural) is ye, but we find you as an object and possessive case your “They” has they as a subject, but hem instead of them and hir for their

VERBS Person Conjugation pattern Strong verb Weak verb Present tense to be Present tense to have Present tense to want I singe bathede am have will Thou singest bathedest art hast wilt He/she/it singeth bathede is hath will We singen bathede ben haven wollen Ye singen bathede ben haven wollem They singen bathede ben haven wollen

VERBS Plural forms vary strongly by dialect. Using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural The past tense of weak verbs is formed by adding an -ed(e), -d(e) or -t(e) ending The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, together with prefixes: i-, y- and sometimes bi- Strong verbs, by contrast, form their past tense by changing their stem vowel as in Modern English

THE GERUND The gerund use comes from Middle English -ing Which is from Old English -ing, -ung These in turn are from Proto-Germanic -ingō, -ungō Which come from Proto-Indo-European -enkw- -ing is cognate with the -ing suffix of Dutch, West Frisian, and the North Germanic languages, and with German -ung

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