Lecture 1 Introduction

Pers.	Case
Number
Singular	Plural	Dual
1st	Nom	ic	wē	wit
	Gen	min	ūre	uncer
	Dat	mē	ūs	unc
	Acc	mec/mē	ūsic	uncit
2nd	Nom	þu*	ζē*	ζit
	Gen	þin	ēower	incer
	Dat	þe	ēow*	inc
	Acc	þec/þe	ēowic	incit

Pers.	Case	Gender, Number
		M, Sg	F, Sg	N, Sg	Plural
3rd	Nom	hē*	hēo/hīo*	hit*	hēo/hīe*
	Gen	his	hire	his	hira
	Dat	him	hire	him	him
	Acc	hine	hīe	hit	hēo/hīe

Later the following changes happened to the personal pronouns (some of them are marked with * in the table above so that one can trace the connection easily):

1. 
   Gender
   

Gender is still preserved (he, she, it) in ModE but is often denied by scholars because it is expressed lexically and practically has nothing to do with grammar.

2. 
   Cases:
   
   • 
     In ME the Genitive Case turned into a new class of pronouns – Possessive Pronouns (e.g. ModE I (pers.) – mine (possess.); you – yours, he – his, she – her, etc.);
     
   • 
     The Dative and the Accusative Cases fell together and formed the Objective Case. Thus in ME there were only two cases left in the personal pronouns – Nominative and Objective (e.g. ModE I (Nom) – me (Obj); he – him, she – her, etc.).
     

3. 
   Number
   

Dual forms disappeared in ME. In NE the category of Number disappeared in the 2^nd person of the personal pronouns (see the explanation below).

4. 
   3^rd person
   

As far as in the Early ME many forms in the 3^rd person coincided phonetically and often caused confusion and difficulties in communication, the following changes occurred:

Pers.	Gender	OE	Early ME	Late ME	Comments
3rd	M, Sg	hē 	he 	he	preserved original form
	F, Sg	hēo/hīo 	he 	she	As far as it coincided with M, Sg and Plural forms, a new word was found – derived from the demonstrative pronoun sēo (F, Sg, Nom) – to distinguish the forms.
	N, Sg	hit 	hit 	it	preserved original form, lost initial [h]
	Plural	hēo/hīe 	he/hi 	they	As far as it coincided with M, Sg and F, Sg forms, a new word was found – a Scandinavian borrowing – to distinguish the forms.

5. 
   2^nd person
   

Pers.	Number	OE	ME	Comments	NE
2nd	Sg	þu 	thou	Fell out of use due to the French etiquette (it forbade impolite “thou” form, so it was replaced with the polite “ēow” form).	ēow (Pl, Dat)(you)
	Pl	ζē 	ye 	Coincided phonetically with wē  was dropped

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

Lecture 18
The Development of the Verb

See Lecture 14 for the categories of the Verb in OE.

Strong and Weak Verbs in Comparison

Basis for Comparison	Strong Verbs	Weak Verbs
Number	300	900
Type/Origin	Indo-European (reveals suppletivity)	Germanic (reveals dental suffix)
Formation of Past Tense forms	by changing the root-vowel (ablaut): sittan (Infinitive) – sæt (Past Indefinite) (verb “to sit”)	with the help of the dental suffix -t/-d: līcian (Infinitive) – līcode (Past Indefinite) (verb “to like”)
Formation of Participle2 forms	with the help of the suffix –en (+ sometimes root-vowel interchange): findan (Infinitive) – funden (Participle 2) (verb “to find”)	with the help of the dental suffix -t/-d: cēpan (Infinitive) – cēped (Participle 2) (verb “to keep”)
Derivation	Strong verbs were root-words/non-derivatives (i.e. they were not derived from some other words/roots but were the words/roots from which other words were derived)	Weak verbs were derivatives from nouns, adjectives, strong verbs: tellan (to tell) ← talu (a tale) fyllan (to fill) ← fyll (full) fandian (to find out) ← findan (to find)
Productivity	unproductive type (no new words employed this type of form-building)	productive type (new words that appeared employed this type of form-building)
Principle Forms	Infinitive Past Sg Past Pl Participle 2 wrītan – wrāt – writon – writen	Infinitive Past Participle 2 cēpan – cēpte – cēped
Classes	subdivided into 7 classes	subdivided into 3 classes

Strong Verbs and their Development

1. 
   As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.
   
2. 
   The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.
   

The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:

Class 1	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	wrītan	wrāt	writon	writen
ME	writen	wrot	writen	writen
NE	write	wrote		written

Class 3	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	findan	fand	fundon	funden
ME	finden	fand	founden	founden
NE	find	found		found

Class 6	Infinitive	Past Sg	Past Pl	Participle 2
OE	scacan	scoc	scōcon	scacen
ME	shaken	shook	shoken	shaken
NE	shake	shook		shaken

Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:

• 
  In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection  -en.
  
• 
  In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.
  
• 
  In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2)) the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.
  

In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.