3. The Adjective

In the system of adjectives endings were reduced remarkably fast: By 13 c. there were no gender endings. The necessity to agree with the noun in gender, case and number existed no more. The only case ending of strong and weak forms was the ‘-e’ ending.

E.g.:

Strong declension		Weak declension
Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
god	gode	gode	gode

Middle English degrees of comparison were formed by the suffixes -(e)r, -est, E.G. glad – gladder – gladdest. Some forms with i-mutation still existed, e.g.

old	elder	eldest
long	lenger	lengest
strong	strenger	strengest

But later analogous forms prevailed. Some adjectives retained suppletive forms, e.g.

god better best

evil werse werst

muchel more most

litel lasse lest

In Middle English combinations of the type: ‘more mery’ ‘more profitable’ came to existence. They are considered either analytical patterns or free combinations.

4. The Article

The definite article fell out of the group of demonstrative pronouns. OE demonstrative pronouns were no longer declined in Middle English. The difference between grammatical genders disappeared. ‘The’ completely lost its demonstrative power and became a formal indicator of the noun while ‘that’ was used only as a demonstrative pronoun.

The indefinite article ‘an/a’ originated from the unstressed variant of the numeral ‘ān’ in which the vowel shortened into ‘an’. When ‘an’ was followed by a noun beginning with a consonant ‘n’ was dropped. This usage has come up to our time.

OE case system disintegrated in ME. The former nominative, dative and accusative cases of nouns merged into the common case. The genitive case survived keeping the – ‘es’ ending. Nouns in the common case performed the functions of the subject, the predicative, a direct and indirect object, various kinds of the adverbial modifier: a Marchaunt was there ... /the subject/. He was an esy man to yeve penaunse... /a predicative, a direct object/. Of his array telle I no longer tale. /a prepositional object/. A Monk ther was, a fair for the maistrie... /an adverbial modifier of cause/.

The break-up of case system led to extensive development of prepositional groups which were to express various syntactic relations. Very typical were collocations with the preposition ‘of’, e.g.

Of twenty year of age he was.

Of his stature he was of evene lengthe.

But at that he mighte of his frendes ...

On bookes and his lernynge he it spente..

Occasionally the preposition ‘to’ undertook the meaning of the OE dative case: e.g. I shal it never telle to child ne wyf. The genitive case was often rendered by the preposition ‘of’ when used attributively and expressing a partitive meaning: e.g.

And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fertisly,

After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,

For Frenssh of Paris was to hir unknowe.

A fat swan loved he best of any roost.

Of smale houndes hadde she that she fedde...

As to pronouns, they kept two cases in Middle English – the nominative and objective case, the latter often combining with prepositions. E.g.

And busily gan for the souls preye,

Of hem that yaf him wher with to acoleye.

So hadde I spoken with hem everychon.

Middle English witnessed the appearance of statives which later in NE formed the category of state. Statives were built of two elements: the preposition ‘on’ levelled to the prefix ‘a’- and a noun. E.g. aflote, alyve, awepe, afered, aswowne, aslepe.

For he was yet in memorie and alyve.

The night is wasted and he felle aslepe.

VERBS

1. Strong verbs in Middle English.

2. Weak verbs in Middle English.

3. Conjugation.

4. Non-finite forms.

5. Preterite-present and irregular verbs.

6. Analytical forms.

1. Middle English strong verbs underwent changes caused by phonetic phenomena. The infinitive ending - ‘an’ and the plural preterite ending - ‘en’ levelled to - ‘en’. The classes of strong verbs in Middle English were as follows:

	Infinitive		Pret. Sing.	Pret. Pl.	Participle II
1	risen	“rise”	ros	risen	risen
2	chesen	“choose”	ches	chosen	chosen
3	binden	“bind”	bond	bounden	bounden
4	helpen kerven	“help” “carve”	halp carf	holpen corfen	holpen corfen
4	stelen teren	“steal” “tear”	stal tar	stelen teren	stolen toren
5	meten geten	“meet” “get”	mat gat	meten geten	meten geten
6	shaken drawen	“shake” “draw”	shok drew	shoken drowen	shaken drawen
7	fallen knowen	“fall” “know”	fel knew	fellen knewen	fallen knowen

Preterite plural and participle II coincided in 1^st through 5^th classes: the root-vowel of participle II influenced preterite plural. In the 4 and 5 classes the root-vowel of the singular began to penetrate into plural forms. This gave way to reduction of the number of basic forms to three. The process of simplification of Middle English strong verbs varied in different dialects: it was the slowest in the East Midland dialect. In the South, South-East and London root vowels of preterite singular and plural differed up to 15c., e.g. Chaucer did not use unified forms.

Quite a number of former strong verbs, more than 80, either disappeared or joined the weak type: e.g. 1 class gripen “grip” writhen “writhe”; 2 class crepen “creep”, lien “lie”; 3 class climben “climb”, delven “delve”; 4 class helen (dial.) “hide”; 5 class wayen “weigh”; 6 class heven “heave”; 7 class wepen “weep”, walken “walk”.

Some few verbs became strong: e.g. OE verb of the 1 class werian, Middle English weren “wear” by analogy with beran “bear” joined the 4 class: ringen “ring” and springen “spring” followed the pattern of the 3 class. But these cases were very rare. On the whole more than one third of OE strong verbs dropped out of usage. The tendency to replace individual single forms by more popular weak forms was very strong. The 1 class was most stable; as to the 2 and 5 classes their quantity was being reduced intensively, of borrowed verbs only few became strong: e.g. Sc. taken “take” joined the 4 class. Sc. flingen “fling” joined the 3 class.