Morphology

1. The Noun.

   1. Reduction of flexions.

   2. Middle English declension.

   3. The cases.

   4. The plural.

2. The Pronoun. New groups of pronouns.

3. The adjective.

   1. The declension.

   2. The degrees of comparison.

4. The article.

   1. Cases and prepositional groups.

   2. The category of state.

1. OE noun had a developed system of flexions that was subjected to reduction as a result of intermixture of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian dialects. Prof. Ilyish writes that Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian nouns had common roots but different endings. Therefore in their interaction attention was drawn to the root while the flexion was obscured. This served to weakening and reduction of the flexion. OE strong (vocalic) declension actually lost its subdivisions. All the vowel endings were reduced to ‘e’, that is why H. Sweet called Middle English the period of levelled endings. The OE a-stem became the leading productive type in Middle English, most others following it:

	Singular	Plural
Nom., Acc.	stone	stones
Gen.	stones	stone(es)
Dat.	ston(e)	stones

The process of reduction of endings was the fastest in Northern and Midland dialects, grammatical gender became indiscriminate in the 11-12 cc. The difference between the weak and strong declensions levelled. The characteristic weak declension suffix -n- disappeared. There were the two stable flexions: -es genitive singular, and -es plural for all cases. Finally -es began to denote plural for all nouns. The former Masculine ston “stone”, Neuter dor “door”, Feminine care in the 14 c. had forms:

	Singular			Plural
Nom., Dat., Acc.	ston	dor	care	stones	dores	cares
Gen.	stones	dores	cares	stones	dores	cares

So the system of cases was reduced to two cases. For root stem nouns the mutated form disappeared in the singular.

In the 11-12 cc.			In the 14 c.
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nom. Acc.	man	men	man	men
Gen.	mannes	manne/men	mannes	mennes
Dat.	manne/man	mannen/men	man	men

Some nouns retained plural with the zero flexion, e.g.: thing, yer, hors, shep, swin, der, winter, moneth, night.

Later on many of them accepted the -es ending for the plural. In the South reduction of endings was a much slower process. Grammatical gender was kept longer than in other dialects. The weak declension -en ending expressing the plural spread on to some nouns of other groups: e.g.

applen, sunnen	kine
brothren	shon
children	fon
oxen	sustren (Sc.)

Some of these forms have come up to our time, some are dialectal (shoen, kine), though most of them have -en replaced by -es.

2. Personal pronouns in Middle English were as follows:

		1st person	2nd person	3d person
Sing.	Nom. Obj.	I, ic me	thou thee	he him	he/she hir/her	hit/it hit/it
Pl.	Nom. Obj.	we us	ye yow		hi/they hem/them

“She” comes from OE demonstrative seo. In ME he (he), heo (she) and his (they) coincided and merged into “he”. That’s why Scandinavian “they” was borrowed, as well as “them” and “their”.

The dual forms disappeared. Dative and accusative forms merged into one – the objective case.

OE forms of the genitive case existed no more. They turned into possessive pronouns:

	1st person	2nd person	3d person
Sing.	min, mi	thin, thi	his	hir/her	his
Pl.	our	your	their

In Middle English some new groups of pronouns evolved besides the possessive pronouns. Those were: reflexive pronouns composed of personal pronouns in the objective case or possessive pronouns + “self”(Sng)/“selven”(Pl): himself, herself, themselven, myself, thyself, ourselven, yourselven.

The relative pronouns.

OE demonstrative ‘þxt’ gave rise to Middle English relative ‘that’; which joined subordinate clauses. In ME interrogative pronouns began to be used relatively in combination with ‘that’: when that, where that. E.g., The letter which that he brought. Later on ‘that’ in such combinations was dropped. ‘Who’ came into usage only in the 16 c.

Remnants of this old usage in NE are: so that, in order that. Some OE pronouns disappeared completely. E.g. Zehwa “each”, Zehwlic “every”.

The Scandinavian “same” came into usage. OE declined pronouns became unchangeable.