The reasons for the development of the articles

1. The morphological reason.

The loss of distinction between the strong and weak forms of the adjective which in OE expressed the meaning of indefiniteness and definiteness.

2. The syntactical reason.

The changing function of the word order.

After the loss of inflections the word order assumed a grammatical function (to show grammatical relations between words) and lost communicative functions (to present a new thing and to refer to a familiar thing are among them).

Morphological Classification of Verbs in me and ne

The subdivision of verbs into strong and weak is preserved with modifications in ME.

Changes in the classes of strong verbs in me

1) Some classes split into subclasses as a result of phonetic changes of stressed root vowels.

2) Some verbs of one class entered another class.

3) Some weak and loan-verbs joined the class of strong verbs:

OE hỹdan (NE hide), OE wærian (NE wear) and some others.

4) The majority of strong verbs (more than 100) passed into the group of weak verbs:

OE crēopan (NE creap), OE bacan (NE bake).

Due to these changes there were 6 classes of strong verbs left in ME instead of 7 in OE (the 7^th class broke up).

But the most important change was the reduction in the number of principal stems from 4 to 3 in LME. OE used ablaut to build 4 principal forms of strong verbs: I (Infinitive, Present, Part.I), II (Past Sg), III (Past Pl), IV (Part.II). In ME strong verbs tended to have the same vowel for both Past Sg and Pl. That vowel was generally traced back to the Past Sg form, but sometimes to the Past Pl or Part.II:

OE	I wrītan	II wrāt	III writon	IV writen
EME	written [i:]	wrote [O:]	writen [i]	writen [i]
ENE	I write	II wrote (the vowel - from form II)	III written

OE	I stelan	II stæl	III stǣlon	IV stolen
EME	stelen [ε:]	stal [O:]	stelen [ε:]	stolen [O:]
ENE	I steal	----	-----	II III stole stolen (the vowel - from form IV)

The development of weak verbs

…was in the direction of regularity and order in ME.

In OE weak verbs were classified into 3 classes and had 3 principal stems: I (Infinitive, Present, Part.I), II (Past Sg, Past Pl), III (Part.II). In ME the differences between the classes disappeared and there was only one class going back to the 2^nd class of the weak verbs:

OE	I -ian	II -ode	III -od
EME	-en	-ed(e)	-ed
LME	---	-ed

In LME the number of stems of the weak verbs was reduced from 3 to 2, as there was no distinction between the 2^nd and the 3^rd principal forms any more.

The productive dental form-building suffix –ed attracted to the group of the weak verbs all the newly-formed verbs and the majority of borrowed and originally strong verbs. In NE these verbs formed the group of standard (regular) verbs. So in NE the division of verbs into strong and weak disappeared and now we have a large group of regular and a small group (about 200 items) of irregular verbs.