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Middle English Syntax

Middle English syntax saw many changes from Old English due to the loss of inflections. [1] Prepositions like "of" and "to" began to be used where genitive and dative cases had been expressed through inflection. [2] Word order became more fixed and direct. [3] As inflections disappeared, word position grew more important in conveying grammatical relationships.

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Дина Кыдыкенова
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117 views6 pages

Middle English Syntax

Middle English syntax saw many changes from Old English due to the loss of inflections. [1] Prepositions like "of" and "to" began to be used where genitive and dative cases had been expressed through inflection. [2] Word order became more fixed and direct. [3] As inflections disappeared, word position grew more important in conveying grammatical relationships.

Uploaded by

Дина Кыдыкенова
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Middle English

Syntax
Presented by: Медетбекова Дана, Омельченко Елена,
Омарова Акжан
In OE was all the
grammatical relations
«of» appeared to render the relations
between the words in a
expressed by the Genitive case: the
sentence were
droughte of March ».
expressed by means of
flections.

the Genitive case with


In ME most of the
the flexion «-es».
flections were gradually
being discarded and
superseded by
«to» appeared to render the
prepositions and
relations expressed the dative case:
prepositional phrases.
I telle it to child.
The order of words
The order of words in ME became
more fixed.

Sometimes the auxiliary


In most cases the order of words was verb was placed before the
direct. The indirect order was subject: So hadde I spoken
characteristic of interrogative sentences, with him.
in affirmative sentences the inverted
order of words was rather rare, it could
be found in separate sentences
especially in those beginning with an
adverb.
As many inflections were lost, position of a word in the sentence became
more important. Here is an illustration from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

Whan that Aprille with his schoures sote

The droughte of Marche hath perced to the rote

And bathed every veyne in swieh licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour…..


The use of the Subjunctive Mood

and stepen wollen till the


The characteristic feature sonne
of the Subjunctive Mood
form was the absence of
flections for any person.

‘and will sleep till the sun


shines’
In subordinate clauses the Subjunctive Mood
was usually used after the conjunctions till, if,
erk (before). nere thou our
brother,
So that I wiste I sholde you nat greve, sholdestou nat
I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde a
tale thryve

‘If I knew I should not grieve you ‘if you were not
would think that you should tell a our brother, you
tale’ would not
thrive’

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