4) Name the innovations of the late ME period in the pronominal system, in the system expressing verbal categories and in the word order.

Pronominal system

You singular

  • started to by used instead of thou
  • due to French influence (upper class and bureaucrats) x sg. vous more consistent
  • sg. you used for pagan deities x thou for Christian God
  • shift towards you = a sign of respect; sg. you used between equals x who uses though indicates his/her superiority → thou became more of an “insult”, you used more and more as a polite form

One

  • emergence in 15th century
  • influenced by French on x on appears only as a subject, while earliest forms of one were non-nominal case → French probably not that important
  • (gradual loss of indefinite man – similarity to man “man” and the problems of agreement and anaphoric references → more suitable candidates for indefinite references (you, they, we, people)

Relative pronouns

  • þat replaced by what (early ME) and by which (late ME)
  • that as non-restrictive probably began in ME, but were essential in ModE

Periphrastic structures

  • ME was the beginning of widespread phrasal/periphrastic structure
  • occurred already in OE, but the auxiliary status was hard to determine
  • two words (auxiliary have and also be combined with past participle) took over the function of a single word with and inflectional ending
  • affected the progressive, the modal auxiliaries in place of the subjunctive and periphrastic do

Word order

  • most prominent change was gradual move from accusative object before verb to accusative object after the verb (by 1500 98% of accusative objects are after verb)