To cite some examples: Lass (1987: 23) gives as an example of variation the three different markers of relative clauses in Modern English - who/whom, that, and a zero marker, each of which has been stable since the 1500s, none of which have as yet caused change towards a definite resolution (eg, the zero marker as the only option), but any of which “could be taken up at any time for the basis of change” (23). As an example of systemic regulation, Smith (1996:46, 47) writes of analogical change moving further than is required by the system, which then reacts therapeutically. He writes of the success of the analogically produced those from these at a time when prescriptive norms had less power, as compared to the lack of success of youse (plural of ‘you’), which, although a useful distinction, has not gained any prestige as a standard form. The other mechanism is that of contact between languages, which denies language an ‘optimum position’ (Smith: 47) produced by constraint and therapeutic reaction. Contact, as I understand it, means that a language system is not closed - it receives new information and material, for example in loan words, from ‘outside’.
We are now in a position to make some conclusions about change in a language. The first refers to a guiding principle - that of uniformitarianism - which allows us to make statements about language change. This principle, while admitting that catastrophic events have affected and effected language change in major ways, assumes that change in the past is motivated by the same factors and mechanisms as change that occurs today, and that the origin of a language is not due to a single, uniterable event about which we cannot have any knowledge. In this, the theory of language change becomes related to evolutionary theory which assumes a similar concept. Language change then functions after an evolutionary fashion with three primary mechanisms initiating it being variation, systemic regulation and contact. Variation constitutes the ‘raw material’ for change. When one of these variants is ‘selected’, and a ‘systemic development’ follows, then language change may be said to have occurred (see Smith: 1996, 7).
A distinguishing factor between Old English and Modern English: morphology and the reduction of the case system.
In the following discussion of the Old English case system I will also compare aspects of the Old English system with the Modern German one. This is because, “Old English had morphology very similar to that of German today... For each individual are of inflectional morphology... the grammatical distinctions are a subset... of those drawn in German” (Hawkins: 1985, 12). On the basis of this statement and the comparison with the Old English and the Modern German cases systems I would like to present an hypothesis about a specific item where language change today may give us a clue about language change in Old English.
The case system refers to certain endings placed on determiners, adjectives and nouns most often in order to specify certain categories of the noun, eg, the function of the noun phrase within a sentence (its case), its gender and its number in Old English (cf. Lass: 1987: 146). In Old English, as in Modern German, nouns had three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), two numbers (singular and plural) and could ‘fall’ according to four cases (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative).
The gender of nouns was not ascribed naturally, but grammatically, that is, a noun’s grammatical gender did not necessarily have anything to do with its gender ‘in the real world’ - hence Old English wifmann (woman) has masculine gender whilst mægden (girl) has neuter gender (see Quirk: 1994, 19, 20). Compare Old English mægden with Modern German Mädchen (girl), which also has neuter gender. Modern English has no markings for gender any longer except in pronouns where it distinguishes, albeit on natural rather than grammatical gender lines (ie, the pronoun for woman is nowadays ‘she’, because the noun refers to a female person), between the three with she, he and it.
Case, signifying whether a noun phrase was, generally speaking, functioning as subject (nominative), possessive object (genitive), indirect object (dative) or direct object (accusative) modified Old English determiners, adjectives and nouns also. The only remnant of these which remains in Modern English is in the pronouns, a number of which have object forms and all of which have possessive forms (eg he, him, his), and in a possessive ‘s, derived from Old English masculine/neutered singular genitive, which may now be added to any noun which usually denotes possession (eg the woman’s daughter).
Number was likewise distinguished in Old English, that remnant of which remains in Modern English being the dominant paradigm of adding -s to nouns to indicate plural. As well as determiner and adjectival inflection indicating number, nouns could take a number of endings in Old English to signify plural, typical ones being -as (eg cyningas ‘kings’), -u (eg scipu ‘ships’), zero (eg land ‘lands’), -a from -u (eg tala ‘tales’) or -a (eg glofa ‘gloves’), -an (eg naman ‘names’) (see Quirk: 1994, 20 - 30). While it is true that not all Modern English plurals end in -s (eg feet, mice, data), the ones that do not are exceptions - either as left-over Old English mutations, eg, mice, feet, geese; or as foreign loan words, eg, cherubim (Hebrew), data (Latin) and don’t form part of a general pattern. This is in contrast to Modern German which also knows a number of typical plural allomorphs, eg, -e, -er, -n, -en, stem vowel mutation (svm) + -e, svm + er, svm alone, and zero marking are all common types seen in Modern German. While -s is also seen in Modern German, it is the exception added to foreign words such as Auto. Old English therefore has much in common in terms of grammatical morphology (not limited to case, gender and number alone) where Modern English has reduced these dramatically. I have given the paradigms for the determiner in (1.1) and (1.2):
Determiner inflexions in Old English
Determiner inflexions in Modern German
In comparing the two systems, we note many similarities, for example, similar endings across the board, with some exceptions (eg the dative plural), and a similar pattern (eg the lack of distinction between fem. sing. dat., and gen. and plural nom. and acc.). The paradigm for Modern English of all the above is simply the for the definite article and that (sing.)/these (plu.) for the demonstrative article. Hence Modern English has vastly reduced its endings. But what caused this change in Modern English? According to Smith (see 1996: 141 - 162 for this discussion), the system was already breaking down in the Old English period - endings were being obscured and distinctive markers were being lost. This breakdown can be seen in the Peterborough Chronicle Continuations (MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 636). Smith (147) lists the changes as:
“1 the obscuration and loss of inflectional endings
2 developments in the use of prepositions
3 changes in element order”.
The first is due to a shift towards fixed stress on the first syllable of a word which obscured the final syllable which had the inflectional marker. The third point is supported also by Hawkins (1986: 50) who notes that in a survey of texts from the twelfth century and the ninth century subject-verb-object word order had increased from 49% to 72%, with subject-object-verb order dropping from 31% to just 16%.
In relation to the second point, I would like to introduce my own example here, although only hypothetically so, as I don’t have the resources to provide proper proof for it. Having made comparisons with the Modern German and Old English inflectional systems, I draw the reader’s attention to a variation which is leading to a shift in Modern German - which seems to have happened in Old English at some stage also if point 2 above holds. Currently in Modern German, when denoting possession, speakers have the option of selecting between a ‘preposition (von) + dative case’ construction, or a genitive construction in almost all situations where the genitive historically has been the most productive. However its use is now definitely on the decline (Hawkins: 1985, 22), in favour of the constructive‘von + dative’. This construction is equivalent to the English possessive construction ‘...of the...’. Hence, the phrase ‘at the end of the day’ can be rendered in Modern German either with the genitive ‘an dem Ende des Tages’ or, like Modern English, ‘an dem Ende von dem Tag’. The reason the genitive is declining is similar to the reason the use of whom as an object pronoun is disappearing in Modern English - the genitive is seen as more formal and its usage is declining in colloquial speech because it has a formal ring to it. (Nonetheless idiomatic or stock phrases with the genitive remain used by all speakers, rather like the stock phrase ‘...many of whom’ in English.) A very similar change has already occurred in Modern Dutch where use of the genitive (which has exactly the same function and form as in Modern German) is now restricted to the most literary, officious and religious of texts and never appears - indeed as do none of the oblique case inflexions - in colloquial speech any longer. This change, completed hundreds of years ago in English, and a hundred years ago in Dutch now appears to have been triggered in German as well. In this change there appear the requisite linguistic variant and systemic regulation in that there is a choice between two construction and the realisation of a choice between a genitive and its alternative prepositional construction tends to be regulated by social status and usage. Is this one of the reasons that case endings were lost in Old English also? I cannot answer this for certain, but I would suggest, following the argument of this essay that it is a possibility.
Conclusion.
I have looked here briefly at some of the theory involved in language change, pointing out the principle of uniformitarianism which informs the theory, and touching on some of the mechanisms involved in language change. It appears that language is a dynamic system, constantly in a state of flux, always affected by outside factors, inexhaustible in terms of its future possibilities.
I have also compared one of the more obvious aspects in which Old English is distinguished from Modern English: that of the move from synthesis to analysis in language. In comparing the old English system with the Modern German system also, I have ventured my own example of what I believe to be a language change in progress, suggesting that perhaps a similar process could have affected the English language also.
