Middle English: the emergence of Standard English

3) 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)

Gramley, Stephan. The History of English: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2012, xxv, p. 105-108