MAJOR CHANGES IN THE ADJECTIVES’ SYNTACTICAL AND FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM AT THE EDGE OF OLD AND MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIODS (THE RESEARCH BASED ON THE STUDIES OF MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE)

Abstract

The present article puts forward a thorough investigation into the issue of qualitative and quantitative changes which took place at the edge of Old and Middle English historical and cultural periods in the field of syntactical and functional paradigm inherent to adjectives, adjectival elements and adjectivederived units. The research aims at supplementing into the process of working out a new conception concerning role and functions of the adjective as a part of speech in archaic English written sources, as well as contrasting the results with conventional tendencies in nowadays’ Germanic linguistics. The research has been made, on the one hand, on the basis of the texts of “Anglo-Saxon Chronicles” put down after the Norman Conquest, on the other – on the basis of both ‘Ancren Riwle’ and the set of treatises on multifarious religious and moral issues, jointly known as ‘The Ayenbite of Inwyt’ (‘Remorse of Conscience’), collected, translated from French and recorded by Dan Michel of Northgate. Thus, the studies are based on authentic Middle English prose excerpts, whose basic syntactical peculiarities in the sphere of adjectival usage are being compared to those of Old English texts that have been under analysis in the previous works by the authors. A wide range of syntactical stylistic devices formed with the help of Old English adjectives is put under analysis. The research held has proved that Middle English prose is nearly devoid of adjectives. According to the type of text they are engaged in, either attributive or substantivized adjectives predominate there. Quite unexpectedly, predication appears to be one of the rarest phenomena observed. Syntactical stylistic models slowly cease to exist. Also, the adjectives’ usual paradigm appears to be utterly dependent on a text’s semantic specificity. Taking into the consideration all the phenomena observed we may conclude that while in Old English semantic and functional factors proved to be key determiners for adjectival usage, they tended to yield to the syntactical necessity as the language acquired its analytical features. Therefore, linguistic changes both in Middle English poetry and prose were determined merely by extralinguistic factors.