The most important change in the system of strong verbs was the reduction in the number of stems from four to three, by removing the distinction between the two past tense stems. In OE these stems had the same gradation vowels only in Classes 6 and 7, but we should recall that the vast majority of English verbs which were weak had a single stem for all the past forms. These circumstances facilitated analogical leveling, which occurred largely in Late ME. Its direction depended on the dialect, and on the class of the verb.
In the Northern dialects the vowel of the Past sg tended to replace that of the Past pi; in the South and in the Midlands the distinction between the stems was preserved longer than in the North In the South and South-West the vowel of the Past sg was often replaced by that of the Past pt or of the Past Participle, especially if the 3rd and 4th sterns had the same root-vowel. Some classes of verbs showed preference for one or another of these ways.
Different directions of leveling can be exemplified by forms which were standardised in literary English: wrote, rose, rode are Past sg forms by origin (Class 1); bound, found are Past pl (Class 3a), spoke, got, bore (Classes 5, 4) took their root-vowel from Participle II. Since the 15th c a single stem was used as a base for all the forms of the Past Tense of the Indicative and Subjunctive Moods. 479. The tendency to reduce the number of stems continued in Early NE. At this stage it affected the distinction between the new Past tense stem and Participle II. Identical forms of these stems are found not only in the literary texts and private letters but even M books on English grammar: thus B.Jonson (1640) recommends beat and broke as correct forms of Participle II; Shakespeare uses sang and spoke both as Past tense forms and Participle II.
One of the most important events in the history of the strong verbs was their transition into weak. In ME, Early NE many strong verbs began to form their Past and Participle II with the help of the dental suffix instead of vowel gradation. Therefore the number of strong verbs decreased. In OE there were about three hundred strong verbs. Some of them dropped out of use owing to changes in the vocabulary, while most of the remaining verbs became weak. Out of 195 OE strong verbs, preserved in the language, only 67 have retained strong forms with root-vowel interchange roughly corresponding to the OE gradation series. By that time the weak verbs had lost all distinctions between the forms of the Past tense. The model of weak verbs with two 'basic forms, may have influenced the strong verbs. The changes in the formation of principal parts of strong verbs extended over a long period.
One of the instances of perfect with both auxiliaries is found in S. Pepy's Diary (late 17th c.): and My Lord Chesterfield had killed another gentlemen and was fled.
By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perfect forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories. An isolated instance of Perfect Continuous is found in Chaucer: We han ben waityng al this fortnight. ('We have been waiting all this fortnight.') Instances of Perfect Passive are more frequent:
O fy! for shame! they that han been brent Alias! can thei nat flee the fyres hete?
('For shame, they who have been burnt, alas, can they not escape the fire's heat?')
Perfect forms in the Pass. Voice, Pert. forms of the Subj. Mood, Future Perf. forms are common in Shakespeare: if she had been blessed....
('We hold to the Christian faith and believe (lit. "are believing") in Jesus Christ.')
In the 15th and 16th c. be plus Part. I was often confused with a synonymous phrase - be plus the preposition on (or its reduced form a) plus a verbal noun. By that time the Pres. Part. and the verbal noun had lost their formal differences: the Part. I was built with the help of -ing and the verbal noun had the word-building suffix -ing, which had ousted the equivalent OE suffix -ung.
She wyst not... whether she was a-wakyng or a-slepe. (Caxton) ('She did not know whether she was awake (was on waking) or asleep.') A Knyght ... had been on huntynge. (Malory) ('A knight had been hunting (lit. "on hunting").'
The prepositional phrase indicated a process, taking place at a certain period of time. It is believed that the meaning of process or an action of limited duration - which the Cont. forms acquired in Early NE - may have come from the prepositional phrase. Yet even in the 17th c. the semantic difference between the Cont. and non-Cont. forms is not always apparent, e.g.: The Earl of Wesmoreland, seven thousand strong, is marching hitherwards. (Sh)
What, my dear lady Disdain! Are you yet living? (Sh). Here the Cont. makes the statement more emotional, forceful.)
The non-Cont., simple form can indicate an action in progress which takes place before the eyes of the speaker (nowadays this use is typical of the Cont. form):
Enter Hamlet reading... Po1onius. What do you read, my lord?
It was not until the 18th c. that the Cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at that stage the Cont. and non-Cont. made up a new grammatical category - Aspect. The meaning of non-Cont. - Indef. - forms became more restricted, though the contrast was never as sharp as in the other categories: in some contexts the forms have remained synonymous and are even interchangeable to this day.
By that time the formal pattern of the Cont. as an analytical form was firmly established. The Cont. forms were used in all genres and dialects and could be built both from non-terminative verbs, as in OE, and from terminative verbs. They had extended to many parts of the verb system, being combined with other forms. Thus the Future Cont. is attested in the Northern texts since the end of the 13th c.; the first unambiguous instances of the Pert. Cont. are recorded in Late ME.
For many hundred years the Cont. forms were not used in the Pass. Voice. In Late ME the Active Voice of the Cont. form was sometimes used with a passive meaning:
My mighte and my mayne es all marrande. (York plays) ('My might and my power are all being destroyed.') (lit. "is destroying").
The Active form of the Cont. aspect was employed in the passive meaning until the 19th c. The earliest written evidence of the Pass. Cont. is found in a private letter of the 18th c.: ... a fellow whose uppermost upper grinder is being torn out by the roots...
The new Pass. form aroused the protest of many scholars. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, called it a "vicious" expression and recommended the active form as a better way of expressing the passive meaning. He thought that phrases like the book is now printing; the brass is forging had developed from the book is a-printing; the brass is a-forging; which meant 'is in the process of forging', and therefore possessed the meaning of the Pass. Even in the late 19th c. it was claimed that the house is being built was a clumsy construction which should be replaced by the house is building. But in spite of all these protests the Pass. Voice of the Cont. aspect continued to be used and eventually was recognised as correct.
The growth of the Cont. forms in the last two centuries is evidenced not only by its spread in the verb paradigm - the development of the Pass. forms in the Cont. Aspect - but also by its growing frequency and the loosening of lexical constraints. In the 19th and 20th c. the Cont. forms occur with verbs of diverse lexical meaning.
The uneven development of the Cont. forms, their temporary regress and recent progress, as well as multiple dialectal and lexical restrictions gave rise to numerous hypotheses about their origin and growth.
Some scholars attribute the appearance of the Cont. forms in English to foreign influence: Latin, French or Celtic. These theories, however, are not confirmed by facts.
Numerous instances of OE beon + Part. I were found in original OE texts, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicals. But the construction is rare in translations from Latin, for instance in Wyklif's translation of the Bible.
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