The Decay of the Case System in the English Language

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2008:141

B A C H E L O R T H E S I S

The Decay of the Case System in the English Language

Åsa Tålig

Luleå University of Technology Bachelor thesis

English

Department of Language and Culture

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Abstract

The aim of this essay is to investigate when and why the English language changed from being an inflectional language to being an analytic one. The language spoken by the first Germanic people that settled on the British Isles had four cases, and quite a free word order, whereas Modern English has a very strict word order, and only traces of the Old English case system are left.

The method used has been to compare texts from five centuries (the 8^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, and 14^th centuries), and look at the case endings in nouns and in demonstrative and personal pronouns. Word order and the use of prepositions have also been studied.

The conclusions drawn in this essay are that the written language was very conservative until the Norman invasion in 1066. Traces of the decay of the case system may have been found in written sources before this, although not in the texts analysed in this essay. Here the change in the use of cases is only clearly evident when the Normans arrive and start writing the English language as they hear it.

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1. Introduction

Modern English is a highly analytic language, which means that there are few inflections and a strict word order. In the past, however, the structure of the English language was quite different. It was developed from the Proto-Indo-European language, which distinguished between eight cases.

In the days of Old English, that is, the English spoken approximately from the 5^th until the 12^th century, a difference was made between four cases: the nominative, the accusative, the genitive and the dative. The words were inflected differently according to what syntactic function they had in a sentence. With these inflections it was possible to tell which word was the subject and which was the object regardless of their position in the sentence. Thus, se cyning ofslog þa cyningan and þa cyningan ofslog se cyning both meant ‘the king killed the queen’ in Old English, whereas in Modern English the word order would give different meanings to the phrases.

In Modern English, adjectives have no case endings at all, but nouns still have a marker for the genitive, even though some researchers (e.g. Denison 1993:20) claim that it is no longer a question of case, since it is no longer governed by verbs or prepositions. According to Janda (1980, 1981), the English language has lost all of the genitive inflections, and the possessive -’s and -’ have developed from a construction with the possessive adjective his (the king-his crown – the king’s crown). This way of expressing possession became popular in the late Middle English period (Janda 1980:247). Pronouns have preserved most of the Old English case distinctions. There is still a difference between for example I (nominative), me (dative/accusative) and my/mine (genitive).

The history of the English language is usually divided into three periods: the Old English period from approximately 450 to 1150, the Middle English period from 1150 to 1500, and the Modern English period from about 1500. According to Malone ((1930), as quoted in Baugh (1959:190)), traces of the decay of the inflections have been found in manuscripts written as early as the 10^th century, and in the Middle English period, the inflections were greatly reduced. In the 1500s, the inflections had almost disappeared completely.

Throughout the text the following abbreviations are used:

S – Subject V– Verb

O – Object C – Complement

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1.1 Aim

The aim of this essay is to find out more precisely when the decay of the case inflections began, what caused it, and how it happened. The specific questions to be addressed are: Which case endings were the first ones to disappear? Did the word order become fixed before the inflections actually vanished from the language, or was the strict word order a result of the disappearance of the case inflections?

1.2 Method and material

The method used has been to compare texts from different periods and see how the language has changed regarding case inflections and word order. Since previous research has shown that most changes happened during the late Old English period and the early Middle English period, one text has been studied from the 10^th, the 11^th, and the 12^th centuries respectively. For comparison, one 8^th- century text and one 14^th-century text have been studied as well. Nouns and personal and demonstrative pronouns have been studied and compared, as well as word order. The function of prepositions has also been studied, since they became more frequent as the cases died out (Smith, 2005:97). Adjectives, however, have been excluded due to the limited space of this essay, even though they were also inflected according to the case system in the Old English period.

The texts that have been studied in this essay are prose texts. Poetry has been excluded, since poets tend to use language more freely, and did so already in Old English (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:63). Translations from Latin have not been excluded, however, even though the Latin syntax may have affected the texts. Although the texts chosen for this essay are all prose, they are not very similar neither in content nor in style. The analysis in this essay is not an exact comparison of the texts; that would only be possible with different versions of the same text. The purpose is merely to look at tendencies from the various centuries, and follow the progress of the English language regarding case inflections. It is also important to remember that changes in a language do not happen suddenly. Some authors welcome new trends and write in a style modern for their time, whereas others are old-fashioned and wish to conserve the old way of using their language. The authors of the texts used in this essay are not chosen for their style, or for being especially conservative or modern for their time. They are randomly chosen to represent the century in which they happened to live and write. To make sure that the observations in this essay are accurate, it would be necessary to analyse several texts from each century, but because of the limited space in this essay, that has not been possible.

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2. Background and previous research

Apparently, not much research of this kind has been done before. Texts from different periods have, of course, been studied, for example by Denison (1993) and Görlach (1997), but these books provide a larger context, and do not focus only on case inflections and word order. Also, authors of books on the history of English often draw a distinct line between Old and Middle English, or dedicate their books to one or the other, like Mitchell and Robinson (2001) and Mossé (1953). One book focuses especially on the loss of the case inflections, Case Marking and Reanalysis (Allen 1995), but from a more specific point of view than this essay.

2.1 Old English

Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who spoke Germanic languages, settled in England in the fifth century.

They drove the Celts away, an easy task since the Celts had been governed and protected by the Romans and, as a consequence, were not used to defend themselves (Baugh 1959:54). They fled into Wales and Cornwall, and the Anglo-Saxons destroyed the Roman cities. In the ninth century, Wessex became the ruling part of England, and the kings of Wessex started to call themselves kings of all the English (Baugh 1959:57). Due to this, most of the Old English texts preserved are in the West Saxon dialect. The English of today is, however, a mix of the different Germanic dialects with Norman-French and Latin influences. It belongs to the Low West Germanic branch of the Indo- European languages.

In the late 8^th century, the Vikings first began their invasions of England, where many of them settled during the following centuries. Old English and Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, were very similar, and the Vikings and the Anglo-Saxons probably did not experience great difficulties in understanding each other. Several Scandinavian loanwords were borrowed into Old English, for example, knife, sky, window, odd, ugly, smile and take (Barber [1993] 2000:133).

2.1.1 Nouns

Old English nouns and pronouns were divided into three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, and there were four cases: the nominative, the accusative, the genitive and the dative.

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The nominative was the case of the subject and the complement. It was also used as the case of address. The accusative was the case of the direct object, and it was also used to express duration of time and extent of space. The genitive was used to express possession, but it could also be used in various other expressions which today usually consist of of-constructions. The dative was the case of the indirect object, but it could also be used, for example, to express time, and in comparisons (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:105-106). The cases were also governed by certain verbs and prepositions. For example, the prepositions æfter, æt and for were always followed by the dative or the accusative (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:116). Figure 1 provides an overview of the declensions, in order that the reader can compare the examples given later in the text with the inflections showed.

2.1.2 Pronouns

Old English had two sets of demonstrative pronouns. Figure 2 below gives an overview of these two sets. The first set of demonstrative pronouns also worked as the definite article, and all the demonstrative pronouns were inflected for the same case as the noun they defined. Note that there was a fifth case, the instrumental, in the masculine and neuter singular. The instrumental was used to express the means or manner by which something is done, but was also used in expressions of time (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:106).

Figure 1: Table of the Old English noun declensions (adapted from the web page of the University of Virginia)

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The case function is probably most easily understood by a Modern English speaker in personal pronouns, since this word class has preserved the case distinctions quite well. Modern English still has a distinction between the nominative, the accusative/dative, and the genitive (i.e. I, me, my/mine). In Old English, there was a dual number in the first and second person, which is not preserved in Modern English. In Figure 3, an overview of the Old English personal pronouns is presented.

Figure 2: Table of the Old English demonstrative pronouns (adapted from the web page of the University of Virginia)

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2.1.3 Syntax

Word order was much freer in Old English than in later periods, since the inflections often showed, for example, which word was the subject and which was the object. However, word order was not completely random. As can be seen in Figure 1 above, the nominative and accusative forms were often identical. In some cases, the demonstrative pronoun when used as a definite article will tell which case is used, but not always. Adjectives can give a clue, since they were also inflected according to the case system, but there are not always adjectives present. Especially in the plural, some case inflections can be difficult to distinguish. On such occasions, word order was the only way to tell what is the subject and what is the object, and then the Anglo-Saxons usually placed the subject first (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:62). Pyles and Algeo (1993:129) argue that even though word order was less fixed than in Modern English, it was in general the same in Old English. “Old English declarative sentences tended to fall into the subject-verb-complement order usual in Modern English – for example, He wæs swiðe spedig man ‘He was a very successful man’” (Pyles

& Algeo 1993:129-130). In sentences that begin with, for example, þa ‘then, when’, the verb precedes the subject. In dependent clauses the verb comes last, whereas interrogative sentences follow a verb-subject-complement pattern (Pyles & Algeo 1993:130).

Figure 3: Table of the Old English personal pronouns (adapted from the web page of the University of Virginia)

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2.2 Middle English

In 1066, the Normans invaded England and William the Conqueror became the new king of the country. The Normans spoke French, and French became the prestige language in England. English spelling went through major changes, and French loanwords flooded the English language. These are the principal reasons why the Norman conquest is considered the beginning of Middle English.

However, the sudden new spelling conventions make the difference between Late Old English and Early Middle English seem more radical than it really was. The spoken language changed gradually, even though there were sudden changes in the written language.

Languages do not usually adopt the grammar of another language, but rather add new words to their vocabulary. At the time of the Norman conquest, the inflections had already begun changing. The grammatical gender was no longer marked, and the case endings that remained were not much used to distinguish the grammatical function of the words (Smith 2005:97). According to Baugh (1959:200) the grammatical changes that took place in the English language after the Norman conquest were not a direct result of the contact with the French language. Baugh (1959:200) claims that “the decay of inflections and the confusion of forms that constitute the really significant development in Middle English grammar are the result of the Norman conquest only in so far as that the event brought about conditions favorable to such changes”. He argues that since French became the prestige language, English would be spoken mainly by uneducated people, which made it easier for grammatical changes to happen, since nobody would correct the errors committed (Baugh 1959:200).

The Normans were obviously not directly responsible for the decay of the case inflections, but the Vikings might have had something to do with it. Old English and Old Norse were very similar languages, and the Vikings and the Old English speakers could easily understand each other.

However, the two languages did not share the same case endings. When, for example, an Old Norse speaker said a word in Old English, he or she may have used an Old Norse inflection. For example, the Old English noun inwitgæst ‘guest’ might have been inflected like the Old Norse gestr. The words shared some inflections, but some of them were different. The genitive plural, for example, was inwitgæsta in Old English and gesta in Old Norse, but the accusative plural was inwitgæstas in Old English and gesti in Old Norse (Krause & Slocum 2007). An Old Norse speaker may have used the Old Norse inflection for the Old English word: *inwitgæsti. There must have been some confusion in the bilingual situations that arose (Barber [1993] 2000:157).

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The Vikings, however, cannot be considered fully responsible for the changes in the language either. The Old English language itself seems to have been predisposed to changing. Most Old English words were stressed on the first syllable, which meant that the last syllable, where the inflection would be, was unstressed. Unstressed vowels tend to be less clear than stressed ones, and

“the vowels of final syllables began to be reduced to a uniform sound as early as the tenth century”

(Pyles & Algeo 1993:106). Barber ([1993] 2000:157) explains: “the loss and weakening of unstressed syllables at the ends of words destroyed many of the distinctive inflections of Old English”. Words ending on -a, -u and -e all became -e. Words ending on -an, -on, -un and -um became -en, and later only -e was left. The endings -as and -es both became -es, and -aþ and -eþ both became -eþ (Barber [1993] 2000:157).

According to many researchers, the inflectional changes in the English language would have happened with or without the Norman invasion. Wikander (2006:234-235), on the other hand, claims that the contact with French greatly affected English grammar. He goes so far as claiming that English is partly a creole language, developed from the pidgin language that must have been used in the contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans. He states that the English language of today shows some of the characteristics that creole languages usually do, such as a strong reduction of the inflectional system, and the possibility of using the same word as a verb and a noun. Allen is of a completely different opinion: “In the South, at least, the loss of the case marking was a very orderly affair, which shows none of the abrupt simplification that we would expect of a pidgin or the creole which developed from it” (1995: 211).

2.2.1. Nouns

According to Barber ([1993] 2000:159), all four cases are still preserved in Early Middle English, but these are soon reduced to three forms. Some of the inflections merged together, and it was no longer possible to tell the difference between them. The nominative and accusative singular shared one inflection, there was one for the genitive singular, and all the plural endings fused together into one form. One example is the word eye, which also has the forms eyes (genitive singular) and eyen (plural). In the north, the genitive singular and the plural form were identical: eyes, which means that there were only two forms. Later this plural form spread to the south as well, and today the form with no ending and the s-form are the ones that remain. Today, there is, of course, a written difference between the genitive singular, the plural, and the genitive plural (for example eye’s, eyes

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and eyes’), and there are a few words that have a different plural form, but almost all the Modern English nouns are inflected as the word eye.

2.2.2. Pronouns

There were two sets of demonstrative pronouns in Old English (see Figure 2 above). The most common one, masculine se, developed into þe since the other inflections started with a þ, and later it became the Modern English definite article the (Pyles & Algeo 1993:114).

The second set of demonstratives had the neutre singular form þis, which developed into modern this. The plural form þas developed into those, and became confused with the first set of demonstratives. As a consequence, these developed as a new plural form of this in the Middle English period (Pyles & Algeo 1993:114).

Personal pronouns preserved the Old English case distinctions better than nouns, but the number of inflections was still reduced. The dual number had disappeared by the early thirteenth century (Denison 1993:20). In animate personal pronouns, the dative and accusative merged into one form, which remained, and still remains, different from the nominative form (Denison 1993:20). This is the reason why there is a distinction between he and him, while there is no such inflectional difference in nouns or the inanimate pronoun it. The second person singular beginning with th and the second person plural ye survived into Modern English (Pyles & Algeo 1993:117).

2.2.3. Syntax

The reduced case endings could no longer show the function of a word in a phrase, but it was, of course, still necessary to be able to make that distinction. A fixed word order became the solution, and during the Middle English period the SVO order became the norm (Barber [1993] 2000:161).

This word order was not a new invention, but in Old English it had been a “matter of stylistic choice” (Smith 2005:97). The custom of placing the subject first when case endings could not distinguish the subject from the object was, as mentioned in 2.1.3, used already in Old English.

Prepositions are used to a much higher degree in Middle English than in Old English (Smith 2005:97). In the Old English period, prepositions were often omitted since the case endings often expressed what in Modern English is expressed with a prepositional construction. One example is

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hungre acwelan ‘to die of hunger’, where the Modern English of hunger is expressed by the Old English genitive hungre (Barber [1993] 2000:161). Mustanoja (1969:348) claims that of is frequently used instead of the genitive inflection, and that to and for replace the use of the dative case inflection (as quoted by Denison 1993:21). “Dative marking was sporadically replaced from early Middle English onwards by the use of the preposition to, especially in the active” (Denison 1993:105). The increasing use of prepositions may also be a result of the translations from Latin into English. Translators may have wanted to replace Latin prepositions, like ab, de and ex, with separate words in their own language (Görlach 1997:96), and the French influence is probably also of importance.

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3. Presentation, analysis and discussion of the texts

¹

3.1 The eighth century: Cynewulf and Cyneheard²

The first text to be studied is called Cynewulf and Cyneheard. These are the entries for the years of 754 and 755 AD in the year-by-year record known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Even though the text is probably not written down as early as 755, it is quite an early text, and the decay of the case system has not yet begun.

3.1.1. Nouns

As expected, there are examples of all four case declensions in Cynewulf and Cyneheard. For example, in þa ongeat se cyning þæt ‘then understood the king that’ (line 11), se cyning is in the nominative. In hie alle on þone Cyning wærun feohtende ‘they all against the king were fighting’

(line 13), þone Cyning is in the accusative. In þe mid þam cyninge ofslægene ‘that with the king were killed’ (line 28), þam cyninge is in the dative. The genitive is represented, for example, in þæs cyninges þegnas ‘the king’s warriors’. There are examples of words that are inflected identically in the nominative and the accusative, but where the case is shown by the definite article, like he ofslog þone aldormon ‘he slayed the nobleman’ (line 4), where aldormon could be either in the nominative or in the accusative, but þone is in the accusative and reveals the case of the noun.

3.1.2. Pronouns

One peculiar thing in this text is that proper names seem to have definite articles, like in se Cyneheard wæs þæs Sygebryhtes broþur^‘that Cyneheard was this Sigebryht’s brother’ (line 8). That is, however, not true. Demonstrative pronouns are used as definite articles, but in this case they are simply demonstrative pronouns, and the reason why they are used in front of these proper names is that they have been mentioned earlier in the text (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:106).

In Cantwara burg forbærn þy geare ‘Canterbury burnt up that year’ (line 2), þy is in the instrumental. Since the instrumental form exists only in the demonstrative pronouns singular, in the masculine and the neuter, the dative form is used in its place when there is no instrumental form

1 The texts are presented in a chronological order, and can be found in the Appendices of this essay.

2 Appendix 1

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(Mitchell & Robinson 2001:106). Geare is inflected in the dative, since there is no instrumental inflection for nouns.

3.1.3. Prepositions

The prepositions in this text all govern their particular cases: in æfter Hunferþe ‘after Hunferþ’ (line 1), Hunferþe is in the dative because of the preposition æfter, and in oþ he on þone æþling locude

‘until he on the prince looked’ (lines 11-12), þone æþling is in the accusative because of the preposition on. On required the accusative or the dative.³

What is of more importance to this essay is where the case inflections substitute the prepositions that would be used in Modern English. An example of that can be found in Miercna kyning ‘king of the Mercians’ (line 35), which would be an of-construction in Modern English. This is perhaps logical, since it is not impossible to imagine an expression such as ‘the Mercians’ king’, but there are other examples where the use of the genitive instead of an of-construction seems more far- fetched. In Her Cynewulf benam Sigebryht his rices ‘Here (on this year) Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of his kingdom’ (line 3), the genitive rices is found in the place of an of-construction that does not indicate possession. Another preposition that is often omitted in Old English is to, as in hine þær berad ‘him there rode up to’ (line 9), where hine in the dative substitutes the Modern English to him. Another example is & hie cuædon þæt þæt ilce hiera geferum geboden wære ‘And they said that the same to their companions offered was’ (line 27). Hiera geferum in the dative substitutes the prepositional construction to their companions.

3.1.4. Word order

There are examples of different word orders in this text. It is necessary to understand the case inflections and what function they have to be able to interpret the text properly. There are SVO phrases, such as Cyneheard onfeng biscepdome ‘Cyneheard received bishopric’ (line 1), which is the word order that later became the norm in the English language. However, biscepdome is still inflected in the accusative case, since word order did not have that kind of syntactic function yet.

There are also examples of SOV phrases, such as se Cynewulf oft miclum gefeohtum feaht

‘Cynewulf often great fights fought’ (line 6). There are OSV phrases, like hiene þa Cynewulf on

3 Not all the prepositions and the cases they govern will be discussed here; for a fuller presentation, see, for example, Mitchell & Robinson 2001:116-117.

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Andred adræfde ‘him then Cynewulf to Andred (=Andredesweald - a forest) drove out’ (lines 4-5), and VSO phrases, like & þa ongeat se cyning þæt ‘and then understood the king that’ (line 11).

SVO and SOV are, however, the most frequent word orders in this text. According to Pyles &

Algeo (1993:130), and as mentioned in 2.1.3, the verb usually comes last in a dependent clause.

This is true in examples like þæt him nænig mæg leofra nære ‘that him no kinsman dearer was (not)’ (line 25) and þæt þæt ilce hiera geferum geboden wære ‘that the same (to) their companions offered was’ (line 27).

3.1.5. Summary

This text contains all the main features of an Old English text. Words are inflected for all four cases, the word order is not so strict, even though most phrases begin with the subject. Case inflections are often used where a Modern English speaker or writer would use prepositions, and the prepositions that are used govern certain cases. No traces of decaying case inflections have been found in this text. As mentioned in the introduction, the earliest traces of this phenomenon have been found in 10^th-century manuscripts.

3.2. The tenth century: From Ælfric’s Colloquy⁴

This text was originally written in Latin by Ælfric (955 - 1010), a “dedicated scholar and gifted prose stylist who served as Abbot of Eysenham from 1005 until his death” (Mitchell & Robinson 2001:173). It is a dialogue between a teacher and his students, and it was used by monks and novices to learn Latin. According to McGillivray, another teacher later translated it into Old English. It is necessary to take this into consideration, because, naturally, it is possible that the fact that this text is a translation affects the word order and the use of prepositions.

3.2.1. Nouns

All four cases are still represented in this 10^th-century text, but there are a few words where it is not possible to tell for what case they are inflected. Hu begæst þu weorc þin? ‘How do you do your work?’ (‘How do you work your?’) (line 5) is one such example. Weorc is a strong neuter noun, which means that the nominative and accusative forms are identical. There is no article that can tell

4 Appendix 2

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the case. In this example, it is the inflection of the verb, and the fact that þu is in the nominative that show that þu is the subject of the phrase. Hig in Ic sceal fyllan binne oxena mid hig ‘I shall fill the mangers of the oxen with hay’ (lines 10-11) is another word that could be either in the nominative or the accusative, but since the preposition mid governs either the accusative or the dative (Mitchell

& Robinson 2001:117), here it is probably in the accusative.

One peculiarity in this text is the inflection of the word loc in ond ic agenlæde hie on hira loca

‘and I lead back them to their folds’ (line 13). According to McGillivray, loc is a strong neutre noun, and loca is the inflection for the accusative plural. However, the accusative plural of a strong neutre noun should be locu. Whether this is an exception to the rule, a step towards the confusion of the case inflections due to the weak pronunciation of unstressed vowels, or simply a misspelling is impossible to tell from the material at hand.

3.2.2. Pronouns

Pronouns are still inflected according to all four cases. There are many nominatives in this text, but the reason for this is that it consists of people talking about themselves, and asking each other questions, thus using many Ic:s and þu:s.

There are remarkably few definite articles. Pupil B says in line 6: þywende oxan to felda, ‘driving oxen to field’, not ‘driving the oxen to the field’. In line 10 he says: Ic sceal fyllan binne oxena, ‘I shall fill mangers of oxen’, not ‘the mangers’ and not ‘the oxen’. Whether this is a result of the text being a translation from Latin, or if it is a stylistic matter, or something completely different is not known to the present author. To find out the reason for the lack of definite articles, it would be necessary to study various texts and translations from Latin from the 10^th century.

3.2.3. Prepositions

In line 1, the teacher asks: Hwæt hæfst þu weorkes? ‘What kind of work do you do?’. Weorkes is in the genitive singular, and the sentence literally means ‘what do you have of work?’. This is a good example of how case inflections are used instead of prepositional constructions. For ege hlafordes mines ‘for fear of my lord’ (line 6) is also a construction with genitive instead of using the preposition of. Hlafordes and mines are both in the genitive. Ege is inflected in the dative, because of the preposition for, which governs this case, but the nominative and the dative of this noun are actually identical. Prepositions are more frequent in this text than in Cynewulf and Cyneheard, but

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there are no examples of prepositions replacing a case inflection. There is one of-construction, in Is þæs of þinum geferum? ‘is this (one) of your companions?’ (line 16), but this is not an example where a genitive would have been the expected case.

3.2.4. Word order

The word order is not fixed in this text. At least many different word orders are used, even though there are patterns that indicate that the word order is not completely random. SVO or SVC is the most common word order, like in Ic hæbbe sumne cnapan ‘I have some boys’ (line 8). The text contains questions that follow the VSO pattern suggested by Pyles and Algeo (1993:130) (see also chapter 2.1.3): Hæfst þu ænigne geferan? ‘Have you any companion?’ (line 7). In all of the questions the verb precedes the subject. There are CVS phrases like Micel gedeorf ys hit! ‘Much work is it!’ (line 10). This is probably meant to emphasize the object. The phrase is confirmed by the CSV phrase micel gedeorf hit is ‘much work it is’ (line 11). The word order does not show any tendencies to replace the use of the case inflections, since the words are still inflected for all the cases and several different word orders are found.

3.2.5. Summary

This text is quite simple, as it is intended for language students. The sentences are short and not too complicated, but all of the case inflections are still used, and the word order is not yet fixed. There are examples of words where it is impossible to tell for which case they are inflected because two or several cases look identical, but it is impossible to know how much an Old English speaker was confused by this. As Allen (1995:159-160) states, it is important to make a difference between form and function, and it is reasonable to believe that at the time when this text was written, the Old English speakers were so familiar with the pattern of the case marking, that occasional identical forms would not cause any confusion at all. The only example of a dubious inflection in this text is the word loc, that is loca in the accusative plural, but nothing suggests that it should be an example of the weakening of the case inflections. According to Barber ([1993] 2000:157) words ending on -a, -u and -e all became -e, not -a, as in loca, but Pyles and Algeo (1993:106) only mention unstressed syllables as being reduced to a “uniform sound” in the 10^th century. Thus, one possibility is that the final -u had began to sound like -a at the time this text was written, but there is no evidence of that, at least not in this text.

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3.3 The eleventh century: From The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1011⁵

Just like the eighth-century text Cynewulf and Cyneheard (see Appendix 1 and section 3.1) this text is from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but it is the entry for the year of 1011.

3.3.1 Nouns

The nouns are still inflected for all the cases, and there are no inflections that cannot be explained.

There are a few words that have an indeterminable inflection, but they do not show any signs of being weakened. Timan ‘time’ (line 74) for example, is a weak masculine noun (tima in the nominative singular), which means that timan could be either the accusative, genitive or dative singular, or the nominative or accusative plural (see Figure 1 in 2.1.1. above). However, the word still ends with -an, and not -en, which, according to Barber ([1993] 2000:157), was the ending that would substitute -an as well as -on and -un as the inflections were weakened. Likewise, unrædas

‘folly, foolish plan; crime, mischief, injury, plot, treachery’ (line 73) has kept its -as ending, and is not changed into -es.

3.3.2 Pronouns

Determinative pronouns are still inflected in agreement with the nouns they determine. Not much seems to have changed in the pronouns, but there are, however, a few things that are slightly different regarding the pronouns in this text. The third person plural personal pronoun in the genitive hiora has been hira or hiera in the other texts examined, and the e is missing in hi, which has been hie, or hie in the two older texts (cf. also Figure 3 in 2.1.2. above). These differences do not actually cause any confusion of cases, and it might simply be a different way of spelling these words. However, it is not impossible that at least the spelling of the word hi is a result of the weakening of unstressed syllables.

3.3.3 Prepositions

Prepositions still govern the inflection of the following noun. For example, the preposition on in

5 Appendix 3

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Her on þissum geare ‘Here in this year’ (line 64) makes þissum geare inflect for the dative. Nothing implies that more prepositions are used than in the earlier texts studied here. On the contrary, gyrndon friðes ‘they wished for peace’ (line 65) is an example of a case inflection used instead of a prepositional construction that would be used in Modern English. Frið ‘peace’ is here inflected for the genitive. The word for the river Thames has, according to the OEME Dictionary (Old English Made Easy 2004), two Old English versions of its name: Temes, which is a strong female noun, and Temese, which is a weak female noun (see Figure 1 in 2.1.1. above for comparison). Temese is used in this text. If it is a genitive inflection of the strong Temes, and not the weak nominative Temese, be suþan Temese ‘south of Thames’ (line 70) is also a construction with a genitive case inflection where Modern English would use a preposition.

3.3.4 Word order

Different word orders are still represented in this text. There are VSO phrases like Here on þissum geare sende se cyning and his witan to þam here ‘Here in this year sent the king and his council to the army’ (lines 64-65), SOV phrases like wið þam ðe hi hiora hergunge geswicon ‘on condition that they from their plunder ceased’ (lines 65-66), and SVO phrases like Hi hæfdon þ^a oferg^an Eastengle ‘They had now overrun East-Anglia’ (line 66-67).

3.3.5 Summary

In the entry for 1011 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle there are no obvious changes towards Middle English. Nouns and pronouns are still inflected for all four cases, even though there are some differences regarding the spelling of some of the personal pronouns. There is, of course, a possibility that the omittance of the -e in hie is a result of the weakening of unstressed syllables, which is pointed out as one of the main reasons for the decay of the case system, but since it does not cause any confusion of cases, it is not evidence of the actual decay of the case endings.

Case endings are still used in instances where prepositional constructions would be used in Modern English, and the word order is still not fixed. The case inflections had definitely not lost their function by 1011, at least not to the author of this entry.

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3.4 The twelfth century: From Ancrene Wisse: Temptations⁶

Ancrene Wisse is a guide for nuns that was probably written in the last third of the 12^th century, even though the oldest manuscripts preserved are from between 1230 and 1250 (Mossé 1952:138).

This is the first text analysed in this essay that is written after the Norman conquest.

3.4.1 Nouns

The inflections of the nouns have begun to change. In fact, there are a couple of new nouns that are French loanwords, which have no inherited inflections at all. Examples are reisun, puint, medecine, cunfort and angoise. Some words are English, but they seem to be inflected to a lower degree than in the earlier texts. The feondes puffes ‘The enemy’s blasts’ (line 4), for example, is interesting because feondes and puffes both end with -es, even though feondes is clearly in the genitive and puffes seems to be in the nominative plural. If feond had followed the rules of case inflection, the nominative plural would have been feondas. Thus, this could be an example of the weakening of the final vowels that agrees with Barber’s ([1993] 2000:157) statement that final -as became -es.

Halinesse ‘holiness’ (line 14) and secnesse‘sickness’ (line 8) are words for which it is impossible to tell, at least from the material used in this essay, whether they are inflected or just spelled in a French way.

3.4.2 Pronouns

Pronouns have gone through some changes in this text. The has replaced se and seo as the definite article, and it is not inflected. Thet is found in swithe drede i thet puint ‘may fear in that point’

(lines 5-6), and it looks very similar to the Old English demonstrative neutre pronoun þæt (see Figure 2 in 2.1.2 above), but it is impossible to tell whether it is in the nominative or in the accusative, and the following puint gives no answer either. The personal pronoun ha is used for she instead of heo, but the dative inflection of the feminine third person singular personal pronoun hire is not different from the older texts. The masculine he is also unchanged, and it is inflected for the genitive his, which is identical with the Old English form, and for the dative him, which is also unchanged. There is also an example of the feminine demonstrative pronoun theos. The Old English þeos is the nominative form. That is interesting, since the word is preceded by the preposition to (lines 10-11), which means that a dative inflection would have been the expected choice.

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In the first phrase of the text, Ne wene nan of heh lif ^‘Let no one of high life expect’ (line 1), the preposition of is used instead of the genitive case. The same thing is true in the windes of fondunges

‘the winds of temptations’ (line 4). As mentioned in 3.4.2., the preposition to does not seem to govern the dative case anymore, since it is followed by the nominative pronoun theos (lines 10-11).

The preposition into is used in into anlich stude‘to a lonely place’ (lines 19-20). The nominative form of stude is studu in Old English, so this word is either inflected for the accusative or an example of a weakened unstressed syllable.

SVO/SVC is the most common word order in this text, but there are exceptions, such as To theos speketh the engel ‘To her speaks the angel’ (lines 10-11). Since theos is a nominative form and the word order is not SVO, the only indication that the engel is the subject and theos the object is the preposition to. There are also examples of SOV: thet me him heale ‘that one him heals’ (line 16). In the negative phrase Ne teleth hit i the Godspel ‘not says it in the Gospel’ (line 19), the verb precedes the subject. This coincides with Pyles and Algeo’s (1993:130) statement that the verb comes last in dependent clauses, whereas interrogative sentences follow a verb-subject-complement pattern.

3.4.5 Summary

The spelling has changed since the 11^th century, and it certainly looks more French now. The new spelling conventions and the French loanwords make the language look completely different. There are a few words that are English but look French, like halinesse and secnesse. It is not possible to say whether they are inflected according to the case system or simply spelled in a French way without further studies of these words in particular. It is evident, however, that the decay of the case inflections has begun. If the nouns are inflected at all, it is usually impossible to tell which case it is from the form. Pronouns are inflected to a higher degree than nouns, and there are also some changes in spelling. The personal pronouns are still inflected for the nominative, the dative and the genitive, but there are no examples of accusative in this text, and no instances where an accusative would have been the expected case. There are examples of of-constructions instead of the genitive inflection, but there is also one noun inflected in the genitive: feondes. The genitive form is, however, no longer distinguishable from the nominative or accusative masculine plural forms, and

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the function of the words feondes puffes is determined by the word order. SVO/SVC is now the normal word order, but there are exceptions. The reason for using the OVS word order is probably stylistic, to emphasize the object, and the SOV word order occurs in subordinate clauses only. VS is used in a negation.

3.5 The fourteenth century: From The English Language in 1385 by John of Trevisa⁷

3.5.1 Nouns

There are no obvious case endings for the nouns in this text; not even a genitive ending is to be found. In expressions with maner, for example maner people ‘manner of people’ (line 1) and maner speche ‘manner of languages’ (lines 9-10) , the lack of the genitive ending is slightly confusing, since no of-construction is used. Speche might be a weakened genitive form, but people is a French loan word. In manere of al oþer nacions, however, an of-construction is used. Furthermore, there is neither a genitive ending nor an of-construction in gentilmen children ‘gentlemen’s children’ (lines 20-21). One difficulty with Middle English is that the new French-influenced spelling conventions sometimes make it impossible to distinguish between an inflective ending -e and a French spelling -e. One example is maner/manere (c.f. lines 1 & 17). In this case it is likely that it is not a case inflection, but simply two ways of spelling the same word in the same text. If it had been an accusative ending, for example, it would have ended with an -e every time the word was in an objective position, and it does not. If that had been true, hy hadde fram þe begynnyng þre maner speche ‘they had from the beginning three manner of languages’ (lines 9-10) would require an inflection, but not þys manere was moche y-used ‘this manner was much used’ (line 26). Another possibility is that manere is the singular spelling and maner the plural one, but this is not supported by any of the sources used for this essay. Since Middle English spelling “[took] place in what often seems a sporadic and haphazard way” (Barber [1993] 2000:152), and since, for example, the word children is spelled in three different ways in this text (lines 16, 21 & 34), it does not seem too unlikely that the final -e in manere is simply a variation in spelling.

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3.5.2 Pronouns

Pronouns conserve more of the case inflections than nouns. Most of them are more or less unchanged; the differences are to a great extent due to the new spelling conventions such as hyt instead of hit, hy instead of hie, and hys instead of his (for comparison, see Figure 3 in 2.1.2.

above). Here instead of hira shows evidence of the weakening of final syllables, and could easily be confused with the Old English third person feminine singular genitive/dative hire, but it is unknown how hire has developed by this time, since there is no such word in this text. The definite article is þe, and it is not inflected. However, this change had already happened in text 4, even though the spelling was the in that text.

Prepositions do not seem to change the inflections of the nouns. There are several examples of constructions with of instead of the use of a genitive inflection, for example þe west syde of Wales

‘the west side of Wales’ (line 7) or people of Germania (line 12).There is also one example of the preposition to where in Old English the following word would probably have been in the dative:

lykne hamsylf to gentilmen ‘to resemble a gentleman’ (lines 23-24), but gentilmen is not inflected.

The word order in this text is SVO/SVC, and there are not even any stylistic exceptions to this rule.

It does not necessarily mean that the word order is completely fixed, since the text is very short and limited, but it gives an indication that it is quite fixed.

3.5.5 Summary

This text is quite easy to read for a Modern English speaker. There do not seem to be any traces at all of the case inflections in the nouns, but the constructions with maner might include a genitive plural form. The Old English genitive plural form was -a, which would have changed into -e when the unstressed syllables were weakened. The other “missing” genitive inflection, gentilmen children, is more difficult to explain. One possibility is that this is some kind of compound word and would mean something like ‘gentlemen-children’, that is, ‘noble children’.

The new spelling conventions make it difficult to distinguish weakened case inflections, which would be -e, from the French way of spelling, but because of the fixed word order, distinguishing

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the subject from the object is not a problem. The pronouns are still inflected, but they are spelled in a more modern way, and there is evidence of weakened unstressed syllables. Prepositions do no longer seem to govern the cases. At least, it is no longer possible to detect any case inflections following prepostitions. The of-construction is found where earlier scribes would have used the genitive inflection.

3.6 Discussion

The 8^th-century text, Cynewulf and Cyneheard does not show any signs of the decay of the case system. In the 10^th-century text, there are examples where it is impossible to tell the case from the inflection only, since some forms are identical. However, these examples do not show any actual changes, and cannot be considered part of the decay of the case inflections. The only example of a dubious inflection in this text is the word loc, that is loca in the accusative plural, when it should have been locu. It is possible that this is a result of the beginning of the weakening of the unstressed syllables, but it cannot be confirmed by the material at hand. According to Barber ([1993]

2000:157), the weakening meant that the final syllable -u changed to -e.

In the 11^th-century text from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the personal pronoun hie is spelled h^{i It}. does not cause any confusion regarding cases, but the fact that the -e is omitted could be an indication of unstressed syllables being weakened, which is pointed out as one of the causes for the decay of the case inflections. The language in this text is, however, still highly inflectional. Nouns are inflected for all of the cases and the word order is not fixed.

In Ancrene Wisse, the text from the 12^th century, the case inflections have definitely begun to change. One clear example of a weakened unstressed syllable is the word feondes, which is inflected for the genitive. In Old English, the inflection would have been feondas. The definite article is not inflected according to its position in the phrase, and the seemingly nominative personal pronoun theos is used after the preposition to, where a dative would have been the expected case.

There are examples of different word orders, but SVO is the most common one. In this text, the language is more analytic than in the earlier ones. The case endings are not so easily distinguished, and word order or prepositions often tell the function of the words. However, there are still words

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that are inflected, for example feondes in the genitive. Nouns with the ending -e could be inflected, even though the inflection is weakened beyond recognition. Allen (1995: 159-160) stresses the importance of separating form from function when investigating the decay of the case system in the English language. She claims that the distinctions between the cases did not disappear when the case inflections were not distinguishable any more.

In the 14^th-century text, The English Language in 1385, there are no obvious case endings at all, and the word order is SVO/SVC. The language used in this text must be described as analytic. The personal pronouns are still inflected, but so they are in Modern English.

Unquestionable evidence of the decay of the case inflections is not found until in the fourth text, that is, the one from the 12^th century. This text is the first one studied in this essay that was written after the Norman invasion. By this time, the English language had gone though major changes in spelling. The new spelling makes it easier, in a way, to discover the weakened case inflections. The fresh spelling conventions allowed the scribes to write the words as they heard them, rather than following the Old English grammar rules, such as case endings. Whith the old way of writing, a scribe might have used the inflections, even if they were not pronounced in the spoken language.

The Old English scribes probably knew the grammatical rules of their mother tounge very well, and used the inflections correctly when writing, while the Middle English scribes were educated in the prestigious French language, and had not studied the grammar of Old English. However, the new way of spelling also makes it more difficult to discover any remaining inflections at all. The weakened syllables all turned into -e, eþ or -es, and Middle English was often spelled in a haphazard way (Barber [1993] 2000:152), which means that it can be difficult to tell the difference between an old case inflection and a simple French spelling or whim of the author.

Researchers do not agree on whether Modern English has preserved the genitive case or not. Janda (1980, 1981) suggests that the present day genitive marker is a reduced form of his, and that this is a late Middle English invention. In the 14^th-century text The English Language in 1385, there are no examples of such a construction, but there are no genitive inflections either, only of-constructions.

In the 12^th-century text, there are genitive inflections, while other inflections, if any, are not as evident. However, it is possible that the functions of the other cases are still present, even though they are no longer distinguishable because of the weakened syllables. The supposition that the genitive case was the last one to disappear, if it disappeared at all, cannot be validated by the material used for this essay. Rather, there seems to have been a general confusion after the

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weakening of the case endings, and then the use of case distinction disappeared, not one case at a time.

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4. Summary and conclusion

The aim of this essay was to find out more precisely when the decay of the case inflections began, what caused it, and how it happened. The specific questions were: Which case endings were the first ones to disappear? Did the word order become fixed before the inflections actually vanished from the language, or was the strict word order a result of the disappearance of the case inflections?

From the texts used in this essay, the written language seems to have been very conservative until the Norman invasion in 1066. In the earlier texts there are forms that coincide, but they do not cause any confusion regarding the function of the words. There are only possible traces of weakened unstressed syllables before the Norman invasion, and the word order is quite free in all of the texts, except the last one, from the 14^th century. The language of the 12^th-century text is more analytic than that of the earlier texts, but there are still different word orders and traces of case inflections left.

The encounter with the French language may not have been the cause of the weakening of the unstressed syllables, which seems to have been an inherent predisposition of the English language, but it may have been decisive to the decay of the actual system. English was no longer taught in the schools, and with no knowledge of the older grammar rules, the scribes cannot have been very familiar with the function of the cases.

The texts used in this essay provide a very limited view of the development of the English language. They are short, which makes it less likely that all of the case inflections that were in use at the time are represented. One text is chosen to represent an entire century, which means that dialectal variations are not considered, nor is it possible to tell whether the text is modern or old fashioned for its time.

The first traces of the decay of the case inflections, as mentioned in the introduction, have been found in texts written as early as the 10^th century. However, it must be remembered that Old English was not created from nothing. It was developed from the Proto-Indo-European language, which had eight cases. Thus, the decay of the case inflections had already begun when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes settled in England, and half of the Proto-Indo-European cases had, in fact, already disappeared.

The Decay of the Case System in the English Language

B A C H E L O R T H E S I S