Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree. The OE Gender, being a classifying feature (and not a grammatical category proper) disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. (Division into genders played a certain role in the decay of the OE declension system: in Late OE and Early ME nouns were grouped into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of stems.
In the 11th and 12th c. the gender of nouns was deprived of its main formal support the weakened and leveled endings of adjectives and adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender. Semantically gender was associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore: the formal grouping into genders was smoothly and naturally superseded by a semantic division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.
In Chaucer's time gender is a lexical category, like in ME: nouns are referred to as "he" and "she" if they denote human beings, e. g She wolde wepe, if that she saw a mous. Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde (Chaucer) "She" points here to a woman while "it" replaces the noun mous, which in OE was Fem. ('She would weep, if she saw a mouse caught in a trap, if it was dead or it bled.') (Sh.)
The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes in Early ME. The number of cases in the noun paradigm was reduced from four (distinguished in OE) to two in Late ME. The syncretism of cases was a slow process which went on step by step. As shown above even in OE the forms of the Nom. and Ace. were not distinguished in the pi, and in some classes they coincided also in the sg. In Early ME they fell together in both numbers.
In the strong declension the Dat. was sometimes marked by -e in the Southern dialects, though not in the North or in the Midlands; the form without the ending soon prevailed in all areas, and three OE cases, Nom., Acc. and Dat. fell together. Henceforth they can be called the Common case, as in present-day English.
Only the Gen. case was kept separate from the other forms, with more explicit formal distinctions in the singular than in the pi. In the 14th c. the ending -es of the Gen. sg had become almost universal, there being only several exceptions nouns which were preferably used in the uninflected form (names of relationships terminating in -r, some proper names, and some nouns in stereotyped phrases). In the pl the Gen. case had no special marker it was not distinguished from the Comm. case as the ending -(e)s through analogy, had extended to the Gen. either from the Comm. case pi or, perhaps, from the Gen. sg. This ending was generalised in the Northern dialects and in the Midlands (a survival of the OE Gen. pl form in -ena, ME -en(e), was used in Early ME only in the Southern districts). The formal distinction between cases in the pi was lost, except in the nouns which did not take -(e)s in the pl. Several nouns with a weak plural form in -en or with a vowel interchange, such as oxen and men, added the marker of the Gen. case -es to these forms: oxenes, mennes. In the 17th and 18th c. a new graphic marker of the Gen. case came into use: the apostrophe e. g. man's, children's: this device could be employed only in writing; in oral speech the forms remained homonymous.
The reduction in the number of cases was linked up with a change in the meanings and functions of the surviving forms. The Comm. case, which resulted from the fusion of three OE cases assumed all the functions of the former Nom., Acc., Dat. and also some functions of the Gen. The ME Comm. case had a very general meaning, which was made more specific by the context: prepositions, the meaning of the verb-predicate, the word order. With the help of these means it could express various meanings formerly belonging to different cases. The following passages taken from three translations of the Bible give a general idea of the transition; they show how the OE Gen. Dat. cases were replaced in ME, Early NE by prepositional phrases with the noun in the Comm. case. OE translation of the Gospels (10th c.) Eadige synd þa gastlican þearfan, forþam hyra ys heofena rice. (Gen.) Wyclifs translation (late 14th c. Blessed be the pore in spirit, for the kingdom in heuenes is heren. King James' Bible (17th c. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The replacement of the Dat. by prepositional phrases had been well prepared by its wide use in OE as a case commonly governed by prepositions.
The main function of the Ace, case to present the direct object was fulfilled in ME by the Comm. case; the noun was placed next to the verb, or else its relations with the predicate were apparent from the meaning of the transitive verb and the noun, e. g. He knew the tavernes well in every town. For catel hadde they ynogh and rente (Chaucer) ('He knew well the taverns in every town for they had enough wealth and income'.)
The history of the Gen. case requires special consideration. Though it survived as a distinct form, its use became more limited: unlike OE it could not be employed in the function of an object to a verb or to an adjective. In ME the Gen. case is used only attributively, to modify a noun, but even in this function it has a rival prepositional phrases, above all the phrases with the preposition of. The practice to express genitival relations by the of-phrase goes back to OE. It is not uncommon in Ælfric's writings (10th c). but its regular use instead of the inflectional Gen. does not become established until the 12th c. The use of the of-phrase grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th c. In some texts there appears a certain differentiation between the synonyms: the inflectional Gen. is preferred with animate nouns, while the of-phrase is more widely used with inanimate ones. Usage varies, as can be seen from the following examples from Chaucer: Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre ('He was very worthy in his lord's campaigns')
He had maad ful many a mariage of yonge wommen ('He made many marriages of young women') And specially, from every shires ende, Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende.
('And especially from the end of every shire of England they went to Canterbury')
Various theories have been advanced to account for the restricted use of the Gen. case, particularly for the preference of the inflectional Gen. with "personal" nouns. It has been suggested that the tendency to use the inflectional Gen. with names of persons is a continuation of an old tradition pertaining to word order. It has been noticed that the original distinction between the use of the Gen. with different kind of nouns was not in form but in position. The Gen. of "personal" nouns was placed before the governing noun, while the Gen. of other nouns was placed after it. The post-positive Gen. was later replaced by the of-phrase with the result that the of-phrase came to be preferred with inanimate nouns and the inflectional Gen. with personal (animate) ones. Another theory attributes the wider use of the inflectional Gen. with animate nouns to the influence of a specific possessive construction containing a possessive pronoun: the painter'ys name, where 'ys is regarded as a shortened form of his "the painter his name". It is assumed that the frequent use of these phrases may have reinforced the inflectional Gen., which could take the ending -is, -ys alongside -es and thus resembled the phrase with the pronoun his, in which the initial [h] could be dropped.
It may be added that the semantic differentiation between the prepositional phrase and the s'-Gen. became more precise in the New period, each acquiring its own set of meanings, with only a few overlapping spheres. (It has been noticed, that in present-day English the frequency of the 's-Gen. is growing again at the expense of the of-phrase.)
The other grammatical category of the noun. Number proved to be the most stable of all the nominal categories. The noun preserved the formal distinction of two numbers through all the historical periods. Increased variation in Early ME did not obliterate number distinctions. On the contrary, it showed that more uniform markers of the pl spread by analogy to different morphological classes of nouns, and thus strengthened the formal differentiation of number. The pl forms in ME show obvious traces of numerous OE noun declensions. Some of these traces have survived in later periods. In Late ME the ending -es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the pl.
In Early NE it extended to, more nouns to the new words of the growing English vocabulary and to many words, which built their plural in a different way in ME or employed -es as one of the variant endings. The pi ending -es (as well as the ending -es of the Gen. case) underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables. The following examples show the development of the ME pl inflection -es in Early NE under different phonetic conditions.
The ME pl ending -en, used as a variant marker with some nouns (and as the main marker in the weak declension in the Southern dialects) lost its former productivity, so that in Standard ME it is found only in oxen, brethern, and children. (The two latter words originally did not belong to the weak declension: OE broðor, a-stem, built its plural by means of a root-vowel interchange; OE cild, took the ending -ru: cild—cildru; -en was added to the old forms of the pl in ME; both words have two markers of the pl.). The small group of ME nouns with homonymous forms of number (ME deer, hors, thing,) has been further reduced to three "exceptions" in ME: deer, sheep and swine. The group of former root-stems has survived only as exceptions: man, tooth and the like. Not all irregular forms in ME are traces of OE declensions; forms like data, nuclei, antennae have come from other languages together with the borrowed words.
It follows that the majority of English nouns have preserved and even reinforced the formal distinction of Number in the Comm. case. Meanwhile they have practically lost these distinctions in the Gen. case, for Gen. has a distinct form in the pi. only with nouns whose pl ending is not -es.
Despite the regular neutralisation of number distinctions in the Gen, case we can say that differentiation of Number in nouns has become More explicit and more precise. The functional load and the frequency of occurrence of the Comm. case are certainly much higher than those of the Gen.; therefore the regular formal distinction of Number in the Comm. case is more important than its neutralisation in the Gen. case.
The pronoun. Personal and Possessive Pronouns
Since personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, it might have been expected that their evolution would repeat the evolution of nouns-in reality it was in many respects different. The development of the same grammatical categories in nouns and pronouns was not alike. It differed in the rate and extent of changes, in the dates and geographical directions, though the morphology of pronouns, like the morphology of nouns, was simplified.
In Early ME the OE Fern. pronoun of the 3rd p. sg heo (related to all the other pronouns of the 3rd p. he, hit, hie} was replaced by a group of variants he, ho, see, sho, she: one of them she finally prevailed over the others. The new Fern. pronoun. Late ME she, is believed to have developed from the OE demonstrative pronoun of the Fern. gender seo (OE se, seo, ðæt, NE that). It was first recorded in the North Eastern regions and gradually extended to other areas.
The replacement of OE heo by ME she is a good illustration of the mechanism of linguistic change and of the interaction of intra- and extra linguistic factors. Increased dialectal divergence in Early ME supplied 'the "raw material" for the change in the shape of co-existing variants or parallels. Out of these variants the language preserved the unambiguous form she, probably to avoid an homonymy clash, since the descendant of OE heo ME he coincided with the Masc. pronoun he. The need to discriminate between the two pronouns was an internal factor which determined the selection. The choice could also be favored by external historical conditions, for in later ME many Northern and East Midland features were incorporated in the London dialect, which became the basis of literary English. It should be noted, however, that the replacement was not complete, as the other forms of OE heo were preserved: hire/her, used in ME as the Obj. case and as a Poss. pronoun is a form of OE heo but not of its new substitute she; hers was derived from the form hire/her.
About the same time in the course of ME another important lexical replacement took place: the OE pronoun of the 3rd p. pl hie was replaced by the Scand. loan-word they [ðei]. Like the pronoun she, it came from the North-Eastern areas and was adopted by the mixed London dialect. This time the replacement was more complete: they ousted the Nom. case, OE hie, while them and their (corning from the same Scand. loan) replaced the oblique case forms: OE hem and heora. The two sets of forms coming from they and hie occur side by side in Late ME texts, e. g.: That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke. ('Who has helped them when they were sick.') It is noteworthy that these two replacements broke up the genetic ties between the pronouns of the 3rd p.: in OE they were all obvious derivatives of one pronominal root with the initial [h]: he, heo, hit, hie. The Late ME (as well as the NE) pronouns of the 3rd p. are separate words with no genetic ties whatever: he, she, it, they (it is a direct descendant of OE hit with [h] lost).
One more replacement was made in the set of personal pronouns at a later date in the 17th or 18th c. Beginning with the 15th c. the pi forms of the 2nd p. ye, you, your were applied more and more generally to individuals. In Shakespeare's time the pi. forms of the 2nd p. were widely used as equivalents of thou, thee, thine. Later thou became obsolete in Standard English. (Nowadays thou is found only in poetry, in religious discourse and in some dialects.) Cf. the free interchange of you and thou in Shakespeare's sonnets. But if thou live, remember'd not to be. Die single, and thine image dies with thee. Or I shall live your epitaph to make. Or you survive when I in earth am rotten.
Personal and Possessive Pronouns in ME and Early NE
| Person | Singular | Plural | ||
| ME | Early NE | ME | Early NE | |
| 1st p.Nom.Obj. (from OEAcc. and Dat.)Poss. (from OE Gen.) | ich/Imemyn(e)/my | Imemy/mine | weusour(e)/ ours | weusour, ours |
| 2nd p.Nom.Obj. (from OEAcc. and Dat.)Poss. (from OE Gen.) | thou/thowtheethyn(e)/thy | thou/yethee/youthy/your/thine/yours | yeyouyour(e)/yours | you/yeyouyour, yours |
| 3rd p.Nom.Obj. (from OEAcc. and Dat.)Poss. (from OE Gen.) | M. F. N.he he/she hit/ithim hir(e)/ him/her ithis her(e) hishir | he, she, ithim, her, ithis,her,his/itshis, hers, his/its | hie/theyhem/themher(e)/their(e) | theythemtheir,theirs |
ME texts contain instances where the use of articles and other noun determiners does not correspond to modern rules, e. g. For hym was levere have at his beddes heed twenty bookes clad in blak or reed... / Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie. 'For he would rather have at the head of his bed twenty books bound in black or red than rich robes, or a fiddle, or a gay psaltery' (a musical instrument); Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre 'yet he had but little gold in the coffer (or: in his coffer)'.
It is believed that the growth of articles in Early ME was caused, or favored, by several internal linguistic factors. The development of the definite article is usually connected with the changes in the declension of adjectives, namely with the loss of distinctions between the strong and weak forms. Originally the weak forms of adjectives had a certain demonstrative meaning resembling that of the modern definite article. These forms were commonly used together with the demonstrative pronouns se, seo, ðæt. In contrast to weak forms, the strong forms of adjectives conveyed the meaning of "indefiniteness" which was later transferred to an, a numeral and indefinite pronoun. In case the nouns were used without adjectives or the weak and strong forms coincided, the form-words an and ðæt turned out to be the only means of expressing these meanings. The decay of adjective declensions speeded up their transition into articles. Another factor which may account for the more regular use of articles was the changing function of the word order. Relative freedom in the position of words in the OE sentence made it possible to use word order for communicative purposes, e. g. to present a new thing or to refer to a familiar thing already known to the listener. After the loss of inflections, the word order assumed a grammatical function, it showed the grammatical relations between words in the sentence; now the parts of the sentence, e. g. the subject or the objects, had their own fixed places. The communicative functions passed to the articles and their use became more regular. The growth of the articles is thus connected both with the changes in syntax and in morphology.