Grammatical change (some
basics) exemplified with Early Modern English
Morphological
innovation
·
borrowing
·
sound
change
·
analogy
o extension
o levelling
Borrowing
·
radius,
radii
·
OE
ynog “enough”, plural ynog-e (and other inflections) ->
o ME enough, plural enow
·
OE
attributive mīn “my”: eyes, hands, feet -> with loss of /_n/
before a consonant,
o EmodE mine eyes but my
feet
·
often
creates differences within a set which may get leveled later
·
“The
process whereby elements within the morphological system, especially those in inflectional
paradigms or sets, tend to influence one another.”
·
look
for similarities of
o meaning: radius, octopus
both nouns, both “formal/classical”
o form: both end in –us
·
so,
by analogy, octopus has acquired an incorrect/unhistorical but very
healthy plural form, octopi
|
radius |
octopus |
|
radii |
… |
·
influence
of productive noun plural –s on other categories of nouns
o foreign: back-formation
of English hero from Gk. heros “hero”
o native: eventual replacement
of –en by –s in shooen, eyen
·
influence
of regular verbs (productive category) on irregular verbs
o regular verbs: fell,
past tense felled; shell, past tense shelled
o by analogy, irregular swell
has acquired regular form swelled (also an example of levelling;
see below)
§
swell
sounds like fell, shell
§
they’re
all verbs
§
regular
verbs are more common
·
older
form may survive: swollen
|
cat |
shoe |
heros -> hero |
|
cats |
shoen -> shoes |
hero+s > heros |
|
fell |
shell |
swell |
|
felled |
shelled |
swoll-> swelled |
Doesn’t
always work this way
·
“zero-plural”
nouns like sheep, deer
o attracted a loanword: moose
o and a native word: fish
(we keep fishes for different species)
§
extension
to words where “plural” could be redefined as “collective”?
·
“irregular”
verbs like ride, drive (rode, drove)
o formerly
regular dive, dived has acquired past tense dove
|
1
sheep |
deer |
moose |
fish |
|
5
sheep |
deer |
moose (not mooses or meese) |
fishes -> fish |
|
ride |
drive |
write |
dive |
|
rode |
drove |
wrote |
dived->dove |
Analogical
levelling regularizes
differences within a paradigm
o enough, enow -> enough
o mine eyes, my feet -> my eyes, my feet
o now my / mine
have a functional distinction
§
my book: attributive
§
that book is mine: predicative
|
enough |
enough |
|
enow |
enough |
|
mine eyes |
my
eyes |
|
my
feet |
my
feet |
Levelling
isn’t always complete
o
speak,
spake, spoken -> speak, spoke, spoken
o /o/ leveled from past
participle into past tense
Different
kinds of sets, e.g.
·
inflectional, paradigms of words and their grammatical forms
o e.g. nouns and their plurals
(cactus, cacti), verbs and their principal parts (ride, rode,
ridden; dive, dove, dived)
·
syntactic:
o e.g. SV(O) is the word order default for English
§
set
consists of an infinite number of sentences: I run, he eats worms
…
o SVO pattern might account
for
§
disappearance
of old impersonals: methinks -> I think
§
disappearance
of of with some objects: “to consider of”, “to judge of” -> consider, judge
·
“All
these bills were then referred to committees to consider of them”
·
“We
have not enough information to judge of the case”
o VO generalized to these?
Syntactic
change
o classify languages according
to order of SVO
o English is a VO language
o likely used to be an OV
language
o VO languages tend to share
other patterns of word order, e.g.
o prepositions before objects
(to there)
o genitives after their heads
(the roof of the house)
o changes in a language are
interrelated
o as English changed from
OV->VO, other changes happened too
o there are often relics left
over
o e.g. herein, hereafter
(preposition after the object)
o e.g. John’s book
(alongside the roof of the house)
§
older
way favoured by nouns “highest on the gender scale”
o example: going to
o Fred’s going to look
at his neighbours’ property assessments at City Hall.
§
verb
of motion?
§
purpose/future?
o depends on the possibility
of more than one analysis of a given construction
o doesn’t change its surface
modification
o but changes its “underlying
structure”
o can eventually occur with
complement verbs not possible with verbs of motion
§
It
is going to rain
§
You’re
going to like Bill
o to go about, to be about to
o “to be engaged in,” “to be
preparing”
§
1611:
“Why go ye about to kill me?”
§
1635:
“Cardinall Granvill … went about to set the English and the Netherlanders at
variance”
o future participle: “on the
point of, going”
§
“The
wounded soldier rests his head / About to die upon the dead.”
o considering
o present participle of verb:
“to contemplate mentally”
§
“Considering
his youth, we were surprised at his attainments”
·
we
is subject of the verb consider
o preposition: “in view of,
taking into consideration”
§
“The
evening was pleasant, and also warm, considering we were amongst Ice”
·
the evening is clearly not able to do any considering
o “the increase in the range
of a morpheme advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical
to a more grammatical status”
o often characterized by a
concurrent “weakening” of both the meaning and the phonetic form of the word
involved.”
o e.g. verb will
§
weakening
of meaning: “want” -> future
§
weakening
of form: ‘ll
o e.g. going to
§
lexical:
I’m going to the store
§
future/intention:
It’s gonna rain.
§
choice
of thou (old 2nd person singular) or you (old 2nd
person plural) in earlier English
o social factors in ME: you
high status, thou low status
o pragmatic factors in EmodE
§
you:
respect, formality, but also (if used unexpectedly or inappropriately)
emotional distance or coldness
§
thou:
condescension to social inferiors, but also marker of familiarity or intimacy
·
interested?
see
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~eng121-c/politenessin%20AME.htm
§
consider
factors like region, social stratification, gender
§
Nevalainen
& Raumolin-Brunberg have found that region is significant in the
spread of my and thy before vowels (vs mine and thine)
and third person verbal –s (vs –th)
o first northerners
o then Londoners
§
then
other factors start to become significant
o pragmatics: how language is influenced
by context, the relationship between speaker and hearer
o when would you say “the man
to whom I’m speaking”, when “the woman I’m speaking to”?
o when antennas, when antennae?
E.g.
“violation” of word order
o poetry: “This is the forest
primeval.”
o emphasis: “Your essays you
should proofread carefully.”
Campbell,
Lyle. Historical sociolinguistics: an introduction. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1999.
Fitzmaurice,
Susan. “Politeness in Early Modern English: the second person pronouns.”
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~eng121-c/politenessin%20AME.htm
Lehmann,
Winfred. Historical linguistics: an introduction. New York: Holt, 1962.
McMahon,
April M.S. Understanding language change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.
Nevalainen,
Terttu and Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. Historical sociolinguistics: language
change in Tudor and Stuart England. London, etc.: Longman, 2003.
Grammatical
differences reflect
o variation in Early Modern
English
o among different regional and
social varieties
o within individual varieties
Sample
example
o to a British person,
American “He’s gotten really good at that” stands out
o they don’t have gotten
In
British English, the paradigm for get has more leveling than in American
English
o in ME, was get-e(n), gat,
gotten
o by PDE, the o has
been leveled into the past tense,
o in British English, the –en
has disappeared
In
British English, have got has got two meanings
o
“have
acquired” (older, from eME, perfect of get)
o
“where
he thought to have gotten perpetual praise”
§ once you have acquired
something, you possess it
o
“possess”
(newer, after C16th)
o
Johnson’s
dictionary: “he has got a good estate does not always mean that he has
acquired, but barely that he possesses it. So we say the lady has got black
eyes, merely meaning that she has them.”
§ “The lady has got black
eyes” can’t mean “acquired”!
In
American English, have gotten has the “acquired” meaning
o “have acquired” or “become”
o They’ve gotten tickets
(“acquired”)
o Carol’s gotten fat
(“become”)
o “possess”
o They’ve got tickets
o Carol’s got short
legs
o modern humour (thanks to
Andrew M.)
o with coloured contact
lenses, one can now say that “Carol’s gotten blue eyes”
o