Personal pronouns in OE changed in Gender (only in 3 sp) , Number, Case (4) , Person:

Distinctive features:

- 1 and 2 are build by suppliton

- there is homonymy of case forms in the paradigms of the 3 p.

Later the following changes happened to the personal pronouns

1. Lexical replacements: to avoid homonymy – diff. forms of p.p. were identical due to sound changes (masc - OE – hē > ME he, fem – OE hēo > ME he). By ME the feminine pr. Was replaced by she, sho, hui, he – she became dominant. (the origin – North) (affected only the nominative case-form)

· Replacement of ‘they’ – borrowed from Scandinavian. (previous coincided)

2. Cases: the 4 case system that existed in OE gave way to a 2 case system in ME and NE (Dat+Acc = Objective. Obj + Gen (had the same function) = Objective.) – Nom, Objective

3. Dual number disappeared in late OE.

4. By the 12c the 3^rd p. sg neuter lost the initial [h] of OE ‘hit’. In OE the Form ‘him’ survived for indirect object, ‘it’ was used for direct object. In LME the Acc. ‘it’ replaced ‘him’ to keep the neuter form distinct from the masc.

Thus in NE the category of Number disappeared in the 2^nd person of the personal pronouns.

Verbal system and changes in the verb conjugation in the history of English

The OE verbs were characterized by many peculiar features. They had synthetic forms and analytical forms were beginning to develop. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.

Gram. Categories:

1. Finite They had the following categories:

Tense – Present and Past (NB no Future! – future actions were expressed by the Present Tense forms);

Mood – Indicative, Imperative, Superlative;

Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;

Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

Morphological types – strong and weak, preterite present(12), anomalous (4)

Strong verbs – are formed by vowel gradation of the root vowel (IE) Principal parts: infinitive, past sing, past pl, past Participle – MnE irregular verbs

Weak verbs – are formed with the help of dental suffix –d, -t (Gmc) – principal parts: inf, past, past participle –MnE verbs

Preterite-Present Verbs

There were 12 of these verbs and most of them later turned into Modal Verbs.

Anomalous Verbs

They were irregular verbs that combined the features of the weak and strong verbs. There were 4 of them – willan (will), bēon (to be), ζān (to go), dōn (to do).

2. Non-finite:

Infinitive resembled the Noun and had the category of:

· Case – 2: Nominative (Nom) and Dative (Dat)

e.g. Nom beran (uninflected) – Dat to berenne (inflected, indicated direction or purpose);

Present Participles and Past participle - depended on the morph. Type of the verb. the Verb, the Noun and the Adjective

peculiarities of the verb conjugation

The system of conjugation of the OE verb is built up by 4 gram. Categories:

- person

- number

- tense

- mood

The distinctive features of V. conjungarion:

1) all forms of the verb were synthetic (gram. Ending, vowel gradation, v.grad+ending)

2) the person is distinguished only in the indicative singular, never in the plural or subjunctive

3) there are only 2 tenses in OE, past and present, with diff. forms for the Indicative and the Subjunctive.

The evolution of the verbal system in English is characterized by 2 opposite tendencies:

- the verb conjugation underwent simplifying changes due to the reduction of verbal endings

- the system became more complicated due to the growth of analytical forms and new categories.

In 11-12 c the vowels in unstressed syllables were weakened to –e – the number of inflections in the verb was reduced to –e, -st, -p, -en or to no inflections at all.

In the course of ME and ENE the inflectional system underwent further simplification:

1) the 1^st person quickly lost its inflections due to the reduction of the unstressed ending –e.

2) The 2 person sg lost it inflection –est as the pl. pronoun ye\you was extended to the sg

3) The inflections in the past –est for the 2sg and –en for the pl fell in the same way as the similar endings of the present tense.

4) the 3 person sg. In late OE the north had all singulars of the present indicative in –es and there was a southern drift of –es- form in the 3-person sg.

5) In the 16^th c the –s form was already the usual form in speech and it was used alongside with the old form in –eth

6) During the 16 and 17 c –eth is displaced in the standart language by –s. (restricted to writing.) In the pl there were dialectal variants: Nothern- (e)s, Midland – en, Southern – eth

7) It was Midland ending –en that was adopted by the London dialect, which later formed the basis of the national English language.