Historical development of English and Russian parts of speech Bukhinnik Juliya FL-42

General information about English part of speech In standard grammatical terms, we classify English words into the following categories, or parts of speech: Noun Verb Adverb Adjective Preposition Conjunction Numeral Pronoun

OLD ENGLISH Old English was a much more inflected language than contemporary English. It was characterized by: strong and weak verbs; a dual number for pronouns two different declensions of adjectives; four declensions of nouns; grammatical distinctions of gender; did not use the article

Old English - Adjective As well as the noun, the adjective can be declined in case, gender and number. One-syllable adjectives ("monosyllabic") have different declension than two- syllable ones ("disyllabic"). Singular. (narrow) Masc. Neut. Fem. Nominative nearu nearu nearu Genitive nearwes nearwes nearore Dativenearwum nearwum nearore Accusative nearone nearu nearwe Instrumental nearwe nearwe

Modern English - Adjective An adjective - is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjective's subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. syntacticmodifynoun pronounsubject We can not declined adjectives in case, gender or number.

Old English - Adjective Degrees of comparison: absolutive, comparative, superlative. eald (old) - ieldra - ieldest strong - strengra - strengest long - lengra - lengest geong (young) - gingra - gingest

Modern English - Adjective Degrees of comparison: positive, comparative, superlative. Rich - richer – the richest Big – bigger – the biggest Small – smaller – the smallest

Old English - Pronoun Pronouns were the only part of speech in Old English which preserved the dual number in declension. E.g. 1st person SingularPluralDual Nic, ícwéwit Gmínúreuncer Dméúsunc Amec, méúsic, úsuncit, unc

Old English - Verb Strong and Weak distinguished between seven classes (changing of vowels and consonants), each in conjugation and in the stem structure. Infinitive Past singular Past plural Participle II were conjugated in a simpler way than the strong ones, and did not use the ablaut interchanges of t he vowel stems. Weak verbs are divided into three classes which had only slight differences though. They did have the three forms - the infinitive, the past tense, the participle II.

Modern English – Verb Modern English makes a distinction between regular (changing into root – vowels and consonants) and irregular (- ed, - d) verbs. This distinction goes back to the Old English system of strong and weak verbs.

Modal Verbs in Modern and Old English (Present-Preterite) The main difference of verbs of this type in modern English is their expressing modality, i.e. possibility, obligation, necessity. They do not require the particle to before the infinitive which follows them. In Old English in general no verb requires this particle before the infinitive. In fact, this to before the infinitive form meant the preposition of direction.

Tenses in Old and Modern English Syntactically, the language had only two main tenses - the Present and the Past. No progressive (or Continuous) tenses were used, they were invented only in the Early Middle English period. Such complex tenses as modern Future in the Past, Future Perfect Continuous did not exist either. However, some analytic construction were in use, and first of all the perfective constructions. F.G.: Hie geweorc geworhten hæfdon (they have build a fortress - shows the exact Perfect tense, but at that time it was not the tense really, just a participle construction showing that the action has been done) Seldom you can also find such Past constructions, which later became the Past Perfect Tense.

Conclusion English through history was very progressive and active - the whole revolution happened with it in the 15th and the 16th centuries, not only taking into consideration the Great Vowel Shift, but also the major grammar changes. The result was the Modern, or New, English, which has practically no declension, lost genders, shortened words and forms, simplified the syntax.

Old church Slavonic Category: Old Church Slavonic nouns Old Church Slavonic words that refer to people, places, things, qualities or ideas. Old Church Slavonic nouns that are inflected to show grammatical relations other than the main form. E.g. Аблъко, братолюбьство, во ѥ водьство, бр ѣ м ѧ, въздрастъ, владъічьстви ѥ, бол ѣ знь

Category: Old Church Slavonic verbs Old Church Slavonic verbs: Old Church Slavonic words that indicate actions, occurrences or states. E.g. Любити, дъіхати, погрєбити, пити, ищєзн ѫ ти, глаголати.

Category: Old Church Slavonic adverbs: Old Church Slavonic adverbs words that modify clauses, sentences and other parts of phrases. E.g. Близъ, въскор ѣ, яко, вьчєра

Category: Old Church Slavonic conjunctions: Old Church Slavonic words that connect words, phrases or clauses together. E.g. ащє, да, и, или, къгда, ни

Category: Old Church Slavonic pronouns Old Church Slavonic words that refer to and substitute nouns. E.g. овъ, она, оно, онъ

Category: Old Church Slavonic prepositions: Old Church Slavonic words that limit nouns or pronouns, by indicating relationships with following phrases. E.g. мимо, мєждю, мєжд ѹ, подъ, при, пр ѣ дъ

One of the peculiarity of Russian language it is a morphemic stability. E.g. Russian root kaz. It means to point or to show. Noun : у к а з, с к а з к а Verb: у к а з а т ь, с к а з а т ь Adjective: с к а з о ч н ы й, etc.

Conclusion Languages developed and changed rapidly during the history. All communicative processes reflects on the language grammatical and phonetically form. Intercultural relationship brings a lot of new words and enrich a vocabulary. All these processes reduce the role of declension, case, number, constrict the number of existing tense forms, people trying to make own language easy for learning.