Development of New grammatical Categories .The Future Tense.

In Old English the verb had four categories: person, number, tense and mood.

In Middle English and New English there gradually developed three more grammatical categories – order, voice and aspect.

These grammatical categories used a new grammatical means for the formation, namely, analytical forms. These analytical forms developed from free word combinations of the Old English verbs habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive (or participle). The way of the formation of those analytical forms was the following:

In the free word combination habban, beon/wesan + an infinitive (or participle) the first element was gradually losing its lexical meaning, and the second – its grammatical one, thus tending to become notionally and grammatically inseparable, idiomatic.

The category of order was the oldest, formed already in Middle English from the Old English free combination habban + past participle.

Example: Hīe hæfdon hīera cyninз āworþēnne (They had already overthrown their king)

The same idea of order is sometimes still expressed with the help of the combination to be + participle II, going back to the Old English bēon + past participle:

This gentleman is happily arrived.

The category of voice appeared out of free combination of weorþan (beon) + past participle:

Example:

Old English: hē wēarþ ofslæз en (He was slain)

Middle English: engendered is the flour (The flower is generated [born])

The category of aspect was formed in Middle English on the basis of the free combination of bēn (beon) + present participle:

Example: Singinge hē was … al the dai (he was singing all the day)

In addition to that at the end of Middle English and the beginning New English two more subjunctive mood forms appeared making use of the analytical form building means:

- I/he should be present – to show events which are probable, though problematic

- I should be present

} – to show imaginary events, contrary to fact

I would be present

Here should and would are the subjunctive mood forms of the Old English sculan and willan.

The Future Tense.

In the OE language there was no form of the Future tense. The category of Tense consisted of two members: Past and Present. The Pres. tense could indicate both present and future actions, depending on the context. Alongside this form there existed other ways of presenting future happenings: modal phrases, consisting of the verbs sculan, willan, ma3an, cunnan and others (NE shall, will, may, can) and the Infinitive of the notional verb. In these phrases the meaning of futurity was combined with strong modal meanings of volition, obligation, and possibility.

In ME the use of modal phrases, especially with the verb shall, became increasingly common. Shall plus Inf. was now the principal means of indicating future actions in any context. (We may recall that the Pres. tense had to be accompanied by special time indicators in order to refer an action to the future.) Shall could retain its modal meaning of necessity, but often weakened it to such an extent that the phrase denoted “pure” futurity. (The meaning of futurity is often combined with that of modality, as a future action is a planned, potential action, which has not yet taken place.).

Future happenings were also commonly expressed by ME willen with an Inf., but the meaning of volition in will must have been more obvious than the modal meaning of shall:

It has been noticed that the verb will was more frequent in popular ballads and in colloquial speech, which testifies to certain stylistic restrictions in the use of will in ME.

In the age of Shakespeare the phrases with shall and will, as well as the Pres. tense of notional verbs, occurred in free variation; they can express “pure” futurity and add different shades of modal meanings. Phrases with shall and will outnumbered all the other ways of indicating futurity.

30. Interrogative and Negative forms with "do".

In The Early NE period developed negative and interrogative phraces with the auxiliary verb do. These forms are known in English grammars as the "periphrasis with do* or "do-periphrasis".

In the 16th and 17th c. the periphrasis with do was used in all types of sentences — negative, affirmative and interrogative; it freely interchanged with the simple forms, without do.

Towards the end of the 17th c. do was found mainly in negative statements and questions, while the simple forms were preferred in affirmative statements. Thus the do-periphrasis turned into analytical negative and interrogative forms of simple forms: Pres. and Past.

By that time the word order in the sentence had become fixed: the predicate of the sentence normally followed the subject. The use of do made it possible to adhere to this order in questions, for at least the notional part of the predicate could thus preserve its position after Ihe subject. In affirmative sentences “do” acquired an emphatic meaning (e.g. Did you really see him? – I did see him, I swear!).