Early Modern English grammar: morphology & morphological change

Main source Campbell's book on historical linguistics.

Sorry that I didn’t budget time well enough to have delivered this in person.

I hope that the conversion to html won’t have killed the hierarchy of points!

Several purposes

· to sketch a few facts about EModE morphology (but you will all be reading Crystal and Millward)

· to draw your attention to some resources (in ascending order of horror)

· Crystal

· Millward

· books on early modern English by Charles Barber, Manfred Gorlach

· the Cambridge History of the English Language volumes (particularly recommended!)

· for the obsessive: abstracts of articles found in the e-index “Linguistics & Language Behavior”

· to outline a common process of morphological change: analogical change

· will do this simultaneously

· to get you thinking about linguistic variation. If variants survive EModE, are they like:

· “They’ve got(ten) more interested now that she’s finished with spelling.” (UK/US)

· “graven images” (archaic, adjectival)

Distinguish “descriptive” and “prescriptive” grammar

· prescriptive (Crystal 366): subjective evaluation of one variety of a language as better and more correct than another

· the “better” variety is usually the formal, written variety presented in dictionaries, grammars

· prescriptivism at least partly responsible for eliminating variant forms of, e.g., strong verbs

· strong verbs (have vowel alternation), ex:

· steal; past tense I stole; past participle: I have stolen (the –en is historical)

· in EModE different forms could coexist, but the nonhistorical ones were eventually branded as incorrect

· Cap’n Cook, late 1760s: “to be stole”, “have been drove”; his editor substituted the correct forms “stolen” and “driven”

· descriptive (Crystal 366): objective, systematic description of “the patterns of usage which are found in all varieties of the language, whether they are socially prestigious or not”

· ask if anybody’s aware of consistently using grammar that they know is technically incorrect, and when they do!

· really common example: “I’m laying on the bed” (lay should have a direct object; it’s the “transitive” form)

· lexicographers now use corpora when compiling dictionaries

· if lots of people spell <judgement> with two <e>s or use flaunt to mean “flout”, should those forms go in the dictionary?

Division of “grammar”

· morphology (word form: noun plural –s, verb past tense –ed)

· syntax (word arrangement, order: use of do in questions)

· not for a while

Morphology of English a fairly short subject

· relatively few inflections

PRONOUNS have more forms

· number: big thing in EModE: implications of the eventual loss of thou

· OE second person singular form

· how does PDE cope with not distinguishing number in the second person?

· gender: which “person” distinguishes gender? 3rd

· are there any EModE 3sg forms that cause ambiguities?

· case: pronouns change shape to distinguish subject and object

· professor, but she/her

· are there any EModE changes that level or extend case distinctions?

· NOUNS

· some minor plural paradigms

· loanwords like cactus, -i

· to what extent are these productive?! Ask Zach!

· native: ox, goose, sheep

· healthy enough that the loanword moose entered the sheep class. Perceived analogy:

· similar meaning: denoted an animal

· not dissimilar sounds: long vowel

· most nouns mark plural, possession with –s

· apostrophe can be discussed in the context of disambiguiation

· it’s the “productive” plural marker

· some words ending in –s have had that –s removed to form new singulars: loanwords sherry, cherry, native word pea

· specific kind of analogical change: a kind of folk etymology called back formation

· people assume that a word has a morphological composition that it didn’t originally have (root + affix, usually) and remove that affix, creating a new word: back formation

· e.g., the assumed model was the class of regular plural nouns ending in -s

· another model is agent nouns in -er

· -er usually added to verbs to form an agent noun

· sometimes removed from nouns to form new verbs

· letch from lecher

· ADJECTIVES can mark comparative and superlative in two ways

· “periphrastic” strategy with more, most appeared in ME: most wonderful!

· variation in EModE: Millward’s exx are Shakespeare’s more bold and violentest

· inflections -er and –est native to OE: exx monosyllables older, oldest

· historically the inflections had caused mutation of the vowel before them (o to e from old to eldest)

· survives in a very few relics: elder, eldest

· restricted in meaning

· mostly subjected to levelling, analogical: forms reduced

· OE lang, leng-: from 2 to 1 -> long, longer, longest

· prompt them to cough up length and strength

· VERBS

· lexical verbs mark present 3 sg with –s

· I’m distinguishing these from modals (He will)

· OE marked it with –th

· Sidney’s poem “The nightingale” has convenient variation!

· originally regional: -s from the north

· by C16th, formality: prose, biblical stuff

· by C16th, lexical: -th hangs on longer with common verbs doth, hath

· phonological: -th hangs on longer with certain base-endings (washeth, teacheth)

· meter: -th gives poets an extra syllable (“Nightingale” set to a song)

· rhyme: -s rhymes with more things!

· prompt them to cough up plural nouns

· regular verbs like help mark past tense with –ed

· past tense and past participle have the same form

· past tense:

· “She bored her students.”

· past participle: combined with BE to form the passive in:

· “A tunnel was bored under the English Channel.”

· irregular verbs include

· “strong” verbs like speak, spoke, spoken

· don’t mark past with suffix (vs heard)

· have vowel alternation (ablaut)

Let’s look at some changes in the English verbs to see how they illustrate processes of analogy

· main model: “productive” class of regular verbs form past tense with ed

· “to those that have...”: regular verb class absorbs verbs from other sources

· tendency for old strong verbs to go weak, with the regular verbs as models

· levelling: reduces number of forms

help used to be strong (holpen was past participle!)

· almost always model for loanwords

· She illustrated the lecture with examples plundered from textbooks.

· but not all new/irregular verbs become regular

· EModE: past participle of verbs from Latin participle often –ate

· ...that children be catechised and educate in the knowledge of the grounds thereof (Gorlach 53/40)

· how the Latin participle in –at- tended to get adapted at first

· reinforced by native words whose roots ended in a t sometimes don’t have –ed

· The example was put on the board.

· They had cast their lot with a loser.

· the loanword strive came in strong: analogical extension (extends an alternating pattern to new forms that hadn’t undergone the alternation)

· analogy with model: strong verbs like drive, ride, rise

healthy old class (cf zero plurals like sheep)

· indeed, strong verbs old but common and not unhealthy!

· some strong verbs stay strong but get remodelled

· some strong verbs stay strong but level the number of forms

· via prescriptivism: EModE I have stole, I have stolen -> PDE I have stolen

· some regional variation between got and gotten (US has both)

· got “possess”: I’ve got brains

· gotten denotes less static concepts: “obtain”, “become”, “move”

· They’ve gotten a new boat

· They’s gotten interested recently

· He’s gotten off the chair

· sometimes archaic past participle survives as adjective:

· “graven image”

· OE stelan, stael, stolen: the past participle vowel eventually moved into the past, so that we now have only two vowels, steal, stole, stolen

· model?

· regular verbs have same form in past and past participle

· so do irregular weak verbs: hear, heard

· OE specan, spaec, specen “(infinitive, past sg., and past participle of speak” got its o by analogy with a very similar class, identical in infinitive, past, but NOT in the past participle

· OE stelan, stael, stolen (l or r: bear, tear, etc.)

· some weak verbs have gone strong: analogy with hardy class of strong verbs

· formerly weak: dig and stick

· modelled on strong verbs like drink, sing?

· why am I giving these ex? (short vowels)

· but same vowel levelled into both past forms

Review of some terms

· analogical levelling: reduces alternation within a paradigm

· help goes weak

· analogical extension: introduces alternation

· dig goes strong

· folk etymology: changing a form on the basis of imagined associations

· back formation: assuming that a word has a morphological composition that it didn’t originally have, usually a root + affixes, and removing the “affix” to make a new form

· sherry from sherris