Grammar
Tenses
Present
Present Simple
Present Continuous
Present Perfect
Present Perfect Continuous
Past
Past Continuous
Past Perfect
Past Perfect Continuous
Past Simple
Future
Future Simple
Future Continuous
Future Perfect
Future Perfect Continuous
Passive and Active
Parts Of Speech
Nouns
Countable and uncountable nouns
Verbal nouns
Singular and Plural nouns
Proper nouns
Nouns gender
Nouns definition
Concrete nouns
Abstract nouns
Common nouns
Collective nouns
Definition Of Nouns
Verbs
Stative and dynamic verbs
Finite and nonfinite verbs
To be verbs
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Auxiliary verbs
Modal verbs
Regular and irregular verbs
Action verbs
Adverbs
Relative adverbs
Interrogative adverbs
Adverbs of time
Adverbs of place
Adverbs of reason
Adverbs of quantity
Adverbs of manner
Adverbs of frequency
Adverbs of affirmation
Adjectives
Quantitative adjective
Proper adjective
Possessive adjective
Numeral adjective
Interrogative adjective
Distributive adjective
Descriptive adjective
Demonstrative adjective
Pronouns
Subject pronoun
Relative pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun
Possessive pronoun
Personal pronoun
Interrogative pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
Emphatic pronoun
Distributive pronoun
Demonstrative pronoun
Pre Position
Preposition by function
Time preposition
Reason preposition
Possession preposition
Place preposition
Phrases preposition
Origin preposition
Measure preposition
Direction preposition
Contrast preposition
Agent preposition
Preposition by construction
Simple preposition
Phrase preposition
Double preposition
Compound preposition
Conjunctions
Subordinating conjunction
Correlative conjunction
Coordinating conjunction
Conjunctive adverbs
Interjections
Express calling interjection
Grammar Rules
Preference
Requests and offers
wishes
Be used to
Some and any
Could have done
Describing people
Giving advices
Possession
Comparative and superlative
Giving Reason
Making Suggestions
Apologizing
Forming questions
Since and for
Directions
Obligation
Adverbials
invitation
Articles
Imaginary condition
Zero conditional
First conditional
Second conditional
Third conditional
Reported speech
Linguistics
Phonetics
Phonology
Semantics
Pragmatics
Linguistics fields
Syntax
Morphology
Semantics
pragmatics
History
Writing
Grammar
Phonetics and Phonology
Reading Comprehension
Elementary
Intermediate
Advanced
Syntactic changes
المؤلف: George Yule
المصدر: The study of language
الجزء والصفحة: 232-17
5-3-2022
661
Syntactic changes
Some noticeable differences between the structure of sentences in Old and Modern English involve word order. In Old English texts, we find the Subject-Verb-Object order most common in Modern English, but we can also find a number of different orders that are no longer used. For example, the subject could follow the verb, as in ferde he (“he traveled”), and the object could be placed before the verb, as in he hine geseah (“he saw him”), or at the beginning of the sentence, as in him man ne sealde (“no man gave [any] to him”).
In the last example, the use of the negative also differs from Modern English, since the sequence *not gave (ne sealde) is no longer grammatical. A “double negative” construction was also possible, as in the following example, where both ne (“not”) and næfre (“never”) are used with the same verb. We would now say You never gave rather than *You not gave never.
However, the most sweeping change in the form of English sentences was the loss of a large number of inflectional suffixes from many parts of speech. Notice that, in the previous examples, the forms sealde (“he gave”) and sealdest (“you gave”) are differentiated by inflectional suffixes (-e, -est) that are no longer used in Modern English.
Nouns, adjectives, articles and pronouns all had different inflectional forms according to their grammatical function in the sentence.