Grammatical Change

• Sentence types

• Sentence function

• Word classes

• Caluse types

• During the past few decades, the grammar of the English language has been fairly stable.

• It can be said that standardised English taught in schools has contributed to its stability.

• This stability does not therefore mean that grammar doesn't change at all in present-day, contemporary English.

• Perhaps it changes more slowly.

• Sometimes grammatical change is simply attributed to diversity or creativity.

• These quotes were taken from recent car adverts in TV:
  • 'Go fun yourself' - using a noun as a verb and use of manipulated taboo.
  • 'Drive confident' - should be an adverb ('confidently').
  • 'Weekend like no-one is watching' - synatx order is diiferent (weekend is usually at the end).

• Grammar rules exist, and these are frequently broken by users, both for rhetorical effect and in ordinary, everyday spoken language. 

• Despite being slow to change, by analysing the grammar of texts from different periods of the English language we notice distinctive grammatical differences have occured. 

• In the 18th and 19th centuries, vigorous attempts were made to 'fix' the rules of grammar.

• This helps to explain why grammar is more stable and less resistant to change than other elements of the language.

• Establishing an English grammar:
  • In the 18th century, vigorous attempts were made to 'fix' the rules of grammr due to the rise of the grammarians.
  • With the establishment of a standard form of English, with a lexicon and spelling system codified in the dictionary, attention turned to grammar rules.
  • One leading figure in the establishment of grammar rules was Robert Lowth (AO2) who grounded his grammatical rules in Latin.
  • Lowth believed an understanding of English grammar would assist learning the more rigorous rules of Latin grammar, an important classical language.

• The pronoun 'thou' should no longer be used.

• There should be differentiation between 'will' (promise) and 'shall' (fortell).

• There should be a differentiation among 'who and 'which', or 'that'. 

• There should be regularisation between 'who' and 'whom'.

• Prepositions should be 'before the noun to which they're applied'.

• The infinitive verb shouldn't be split.

• Multiple negation and multiple comparison is illegal.

• Predominantly change from ABOVE.
  • This is due to the sense of authority
  • Prescriptivist view

• This helps to explain why language is more stable and less resistant to change. 

• In OE an ME, the verb 'to do' was used with inflected endings: I doth, he dost.
• During ME, the 'do' was frequently used alongside a main lexical verb, often by poets and playwrights who wanted to add an extra syllable to their writing without affecting meaning.
• E.g. 'and soonest our best man with thee do go'.
• This usage reached its peak in the mid-16th century but then began to fall into decline so that it was becoming obsolete by the 18th century.
• It's current usage was established by the grammarians of the 18th century, thus illustrating change from above.
• It's current usage includes:
  • Negatives: she did not take it well.
  • Interrogatives: created by inverting the auxillary and subject - did she take it well?
  • Code Usage: avoiding repetition of a lexcial verb: she cried whilst watching the film but her friend did not. 
  • Emphasis: she did not find it very moving.
• So 'to do' can be described as holding NICE properties.
• We can see from this that grammar rules do in fact change.
  • They develop to suit social changes or to reflect social practices and acceptability and can simply be a matter of fashion - THE FUNCTIONAL THEORY.

• Inflection: a morpheme on the end of a word to indicate a grammatical relationship or category, e.g. many nouns in English add an 's' to indicate plurality.
• VERBS:

• NOUNS:

• ADEJCTIVES:

• E.g. in OE, the plural of 'hand' was 'handa'.
• E.g. in ME the plural of 'eye' was 'eyen'.

• One of the most significant LT changes in English has been its movement from a language whose grammatical meanings have been deteremined by word endings, towards a language where word order controls meaning.
• In OE, inflections would indicate whether a word was acting as a subject or an object in a clause.
• E.g. you'd be able to tell whether 'the queen' was carrying out the verb or receiving the verb's action by the ending used on the noun - cwen for the subject and cwene for the object.
• Present-day English mkaes use of word order to allocate these roles to words and phrases.
• With this shift towards syntax rather than morphology controlling meaning, English has also made less use of inflections.
• In EME, it would have been common to see inflections such as 'canst' and 'playeth' used on verbs but these have largely died out and we tend to use a more restricted set of inflections.

• OE = inflections indicate suject/object.
• PD = word order indicates subject/object.

• Unlike other personal pronouns, the second person is now limited to 'you' and 'yours'.
• However, this was not always the case; in ME, the second person pronoun distinguished between singular and plural forms.

SINGULAR:

• 'thou' (used in subject position) e.g. 'thou must go'.
• 'thee' (used in object position) e.g. 'given to thee'.

PLURAL:

• 'ye' (used in subject position) e.g. 'ye must go'.
• 'you' (used in object position) e.g. 'given to you'.

• From the 13th century onwards, possibly due to French influence, 'ye' and 'you' also came to be marked as polite forms.
• By the 16th century, 'thou/thee' and 'ye/you' were firmly linked to social distance (relationship) between users; 'thou' was used to those of a lower status or to express intimacy and 'ye/you' was used as a marker of respect and courtesy.
• In the scouse dialect, 'youse' still shows there is a distinction between singular and plural second person prounouns.

• Today, multiple negatives make us cringe and are considered incorrect, sloppy grammar.

• In the past, they were accepted.

• E.g. The Canterbury Tales was full of them; 'ther has no man nowher so vertuous'. 

• Using a negative word at the end of a positive sentence has become popular again in recent years, especially in America to express sarcasm.

• There have been few changes to grammar in recent years, but changes are still taking place.
• Maybe, the supposed errors of today are examples of language change in action (when people around us make mistakes).
• It could be the written language is undergoing a very similar process of informalisation; it has been apparent in speech for some time and written language is picking up some of the characteristics of informal spoken language. 

• The examples below show how a grammatical 'error' can develop when a sound becomes similar to another sound:
  • Must have - must've - must of
    
  • Should have - should've - should of
• That process could then establish a pattern:
  • Bored with - bored of
  • Fed up with - fed up of

• Referring to the car TV adverts, maybe we will begin to lose the -ly endings from adverbs.
• This could help to neaten and streamline the English language.