Grammatical Change

Inflections

Loss of Old English inflections
They indicated the grammatical relationship between words.
Modern English uses syntax (word order/sentence structure) to indicate meaning.
Old/Middle English didn't rely on word order for meaning - the inflections showed the meaning.
Inflections can indicate:
- - tense e.g. -ed, -s
  - singular or plural
  - something belongs to the word
  - somehting is being done to or for the word
We still have some inflections - plural 's', tense endings etc. We just don't have as many as Old English had.

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Can be derivational or inflectional
Derivational - change the word class. e.g. love - lovely - lovingly (verb/noun - adjective - adverb)
Inflectional - change the tense but not the word class. e.g. run - running (present tense verb - present tense participle/gerund of the verb)
Most other inflections disappeared in the Middle Ages
Early Modern English still had some archaic inflections e.g. -th and -st verb endings.

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Use of the double negative is now considered to be incorrect grammar.
From 15th - 17th centuries the double negative was used to apply extra emphasis - whatever the double negative was being used for became twice as bad.

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'Whom' refers to the object in a clause.
e.g. The man whom I met yesterday. (You are the subject, the man is the object, so 'whom' is correct.)
'Whom' is often seen as excessively formal nowadays

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An infinitive is the base form of the verb. In English, they have 'to' before them. e.g. to love, to run, to play, to eat etc.
Latin infinitives are only one word e.g. 'to love' is 'amore'
You can't split that one word i.e. you can't split the infinitve.
Adverbs between the 'to' and 'love' are grammatically incorrect - but it is a habit which is becoming more acceptable.
Modern texts are more likely to have split infinitves than older texts.

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