6.2.1 The Subjunctive

It has been claimed that if a language has a subjunctive at all, then that subjunctive will at least be used to mark low certainty or weak desirability (Givón, Reference Givón2001: 313). Indeed, the OE subjunctive did just that, and some more. In main clauses the subjunctive typically signalled the desirability of a state of affairs, as in (5). This way, it contrasted with the indicative, which presented a state of affairs as factual.

1. (5) ne beon           hi              æfre manslagan ne manswican ne mansworan ne …

   not be[SUBJ] they ever murderers    nor traitors              nor perjurers        nor … (WHom.10a,11)

   ‘They may never be murderers or traitors or perjurers or …’

When combined with a second person subject, as in (6), the main clause subjunctive would offer a somewhat toned-down alternative to the imperative – the mood standardly used to issue commands.

1. (6) ne þu      huru        me fram þinum  bebodum            feor   adrife[SUBJ]

   not thou indeed me from thy            commandments far off-drive (PP5(A5)118.10)

   ‘do not indeed drive me far away from your commandments’

In dependent clauses, the subjunctive would associate with situations that are desirable, conjectural or hypothetical. For example, OE adverbial þæt-clauses would take an indicative to construe a situation as an automatic outcome (result), but a subjunctive to construe it as an intended goal (purpose) (Visser Reference Visser1963: 861). Compare the examples in (7).

1. 1. a Ic þæt gefremme … þæt ge min onsynn oft       sceawiað

      I      that perform               that you my face       often behold (Guth.A.B.715)

      ‘I will ensure that you will often see my face’

   2. b Ic sceal forð sprecan gen ymvbe Grendel … þæt ðu geare cunne..

      I must forth speak   again   about   Grendel … that you readily may-know … (Beo.2069)’

      ‘I must speak again about Grendel so that you may clearly know’

In all, the OE subjunctive was in general use and alternated meaningfully with the other OE moods in many contexts.

What then caused the subjunctive’s demise? Without a doubt, an important catalyst of change was the erosion of inflectional endings. Indicatives, imperatives and subjunctives increasingly coalesced formally, necessitating reliance on other forms to preserve functional contrasts. The exceptions may well prove the rule here, because where the subjunctive survived as an inflectionally distinct form, it would sometimes continue to be used. It is telling, for instance, that the OE first person adhortative, as in (8), was lost but main clause subjunctives in third person wishes continued in existence well into Modern English, as in (9). This is not all that surprising considering that the first person plural of the subjunctive inflection coalesced with the indicative (in the northern and midlands dialects, which became the standard form after the ME period), but the third person singular did not.

1. (8) Men þa leofestan, herigen[SUBJ]we nu þone ælmihtigan Drihten & lufien[SUBJ]

   Men the dearest, praise            we now the almighty    Lord      and love

   we hine

   we him (HomS.33(Först)199)

   ‘Beloved men, let us now praise the almighty Lord and let us love him.’

1. (9) Some heavenly power guide us Out of this fearful country (1610, Visser, Reference Visser1963: 797)

However, the loss of inflectional endings was probably not the only factor involved. While the OE subjunctive was clearly associated with modal meanings, the conjunction or matrix verb heading the subjunctive clause would often signal modality in its own right. In such cases, the subjunctive coded its modal meaning more or less redundantly, as in (10).

1. (10) Ne   bið    <his> lof       na  ðy  læsse,  ac  is wen           þæt hit sie þy  mare

   not  will-be his   praise  not the less,    but is likelihood that it   be the more (Bo.40.138.19)

   ‘his praise will not be the less, and it may, quite possibly, be greater’

Redundant contexts effectively rendered the subjunctive meaningless. Perhaps that is why even in OE some contexts saw competition between the subjunctive and indicative. For example, OE typically had the subjunctive in reported speech, but it occasionally allowed the indicative, as shown in (11), which has both moods in coordination.

1. (11) Wulfstan sæde þæt he gefore         of     Hæðum, þæt he wære          on Truso on

   Wulfstan said   that he went[SUBJ]  from  Hedeby, that  he was[SUBJ]  in  Druso in

   syfan dagum & nihtum, þæt þæt scip wæs         ealne weg yrnende under segle

   seven days   and nights   that  that ship was[IND]   all      way running  under sail (Or.1 1.16.21)

   ‘Wulfstan said that he departed from Hedeby, that he reached Drusno in seven days and nights, and that the ship was running under full sail all the way’

Even where the subjunctive retained its meaning, it lacked the capacity of expressing finer shades of modal meaning without the support of other modal expressions. Particularly in main clauses, where there was no matrix verb or conjunction to guide interpretation, this may well have fostered the grammaticalization of the modals, as in (12).

1. (12) Þa        ðe     bet       cunnon and magon.   sceolon gyman oðra        manna

   Those    who   better    can       and may         must      heed     of-other    men (ÆCHom.II,15 159.311)

   ‘those who have more abilities should take care of other men’

The rise of the modals probably dealt the subjunctive the final blow. By the end of the OE period, modals (often themselves in the subjunctive form) started appearing where earlier a subjunctive form would have sufficed, as in (13).

1. (13) Forþon    us is nydþearf, þæt þa mynstru      of     þære stowe moten         beon

   Therefore us is need         that the monasteries from that   place  must [SUBJ] be

   gecyrrede  to   oþre   stowe

   changed    to   other  place (GD.2(C)5.112.24)

   ‘it is necessary therefore that the monasteries will be moved from that place to another’

That the modals completely replaced the subjunctive is not true, however. Many subjunctive that-clauses were replaced by to-infinitives (Manabe, Reference Manabe1989; Los, Reference Los2005; see Section 8.2.1). And in some contexts verb forms that had lost their distinctive subjunctive endings simply continued functioning as indicatives, modality being coded elsewhere in the sentence anyway. Compare (14) to (10) above.

1. (14) it is probable that he then left them again (BNC)

By lModE and PDE the subjunctive has become a rare form, restricted to formal registers and very specific lexico-grammatical contexts. Even so, earlier grammarians who anticipated its complete disappearance have been proven wrong. The subjunctive is still attested in some formulaic wishes (far be it from us to interfere), and there is the past subjunctive form were in counterfactual conditions (if I were you). Finally, PDE has preserved the so-called mandative subjunctive following manipulative verbs (I strongly request that the Minister reconsider the case). Curiously, the latter has been making something of a comeback in American and Australian English, probably because it has acquired social prestige. The present-day state of the subjunctive, then, is aptly summarized in the words of Vaughan and Mulder (Reference Vaughan and Mulder2014: 487): ‘the subjunctive is alive and, if not kicking, it is at least wriggling a bit’. Compared to its use in OE, however, the subjunctive’s role in the grammar of PDE is negligible.

6.2.2 The Modals

When it comes to great controversies in the field of English historical linguistics, the development of the modals is hard to beat. Lightfoot (Reference Lightfoot1979) set the ball rolling with an encompassing theory, the upshot of which was that an entire grammar could undergo radical and abrupt change. The radical change in question was the introduction of a wholly new abstract syntactic category into the grammar of English. The category was AUX (for auxiliary) and its members were the modals. Because the event was sudden, Lightfoot could be quite precise about the timing: the watershed moment was sometime around 1600.

Lightfoot’s story is, briefly, as follows. In OE and ME the core modals willan ‘wish, want’, *sculan ‘be obliged to’, magan ‘be able’,*motan ‘be allowed’ and cunnan ‘know, be able to’ behaved more or less as any other verbs did. Lightfoot, accordingly, does not call these verbs modals yet but ‘pre-modals’. In the course of ME, the pre-modals were involved in a number of accidental and independent changes. Among other things, they lost the ability to take direct objects; their past-tense forms ceased to consistently signal past tense; and they failed to adopt to-infinitival complements as other verbs increasingly did. For example, OE *sculan in (15) still takes both a direct and indirect object – something its PDE counterpart shall stopped doing sometime after 1500.

1. (15) He cwæð þæt he sceolde   him hundteontig     mittan     hwætes

   ‘He said  that he owed     him [a] hundred    bushels   of-wheat’ (ÆHom.17,26)

As another example, ME might in (16a) still functions as a past tense of may, expressing past ability, but in (16b) it expresses a potentiality that holds at the time of speaking.

1. 1. a He was of grete elde, & myght not trauaile.

      ‘He was of great age and was unable to travel’ (Langtoft’s-Chron.p.3)

   2. b Come now, deth, I wile the calle, I wold þou myhtest myn herte cleue’

      ‘Come now death, I want to call you, I wish[ed] that you might cleave my heart’

      (Vernon-Ms,688)

These and other changes gradually dissociated the pre-modals from other verbs to the point that they were no longer recognizable as verbs at all, forcing speakers to assign them to a different syntactic class altogether. With this, the modals were born. Their birth was marked by another set of changes, yet these took place suddenly and simultaneously. The modals shed all their non-finite forms (infinitives, present participles and past participles) and they ceased to occur in combination. This must have happened sometime around 1600, after which time the forms in (17) had all become ungrammatical.

1. 1. a [Infinitive]

      for he seyde manie tymis that ho so euer schuld dwelle at Paston schulde have nede to conne defende hymselfe. (Past.Let.I,p.27)

      ‘for he said many times that whosoever should live at Paston, would need to be able to defend himself’

   2. b [Present participle]

      And lo! a womman aȝen cam to hym, … a chaterere, and vagaunt of reste, vnpacient, ne mowende in the hous abide stille wih hir feet (Wyclif,Prov.vii.11)

      ‘And look, a woman again came to him, a chatterer, one who is ever restless, impatient, and unable (lit. not maying) to stay in the house and keep her feet still’

   3. c [Past participle]

      For wel may euery man wite · if god hadde wolde hym|selue, Sholde neuere Iudas ne iuwe · haue Ihesu don on Rode   (PiersPlowman(B-text)XV,258)

      ‘For every man may well know, if God had not wanted it himself, Judas or any other Jew would have gotten Jesus on the cross’

   4. d [Consecutive modals]

      … that our broder Reynawde be well mounted vpon bayarde, whiche shall maye bere vs all four at a nede' (Caxton,Four-Sons-of-Aymon,IX,222)

      ‘… [let’s do it so] that our brother Renard will be well mounted upon [the horse] Bayard, who will be able to carry all four of us if necessary’

According to Lightfoot, the simultaneous occurrence of the second round of changes provides evidence that some more fundamental change had taken place, situated at a deeper structural level of the grammar.

Unfortunately, there are quite a number of problems with Lightfoot’s story (see Plank, Reference Plank1984; Warner, Reference Warner1993; Fischer, Reference Fischer2007). Even in OE the modals showed deviant behaviour. More precisely, the modals resorted under the slightly bigger group of preterite-present verbs, including other OE verbs like witan ‘know’, durran ‘dare’, *þurfan ‘need’ or dugan ‘be good’. The group had already formed in Proto-Germanic, containing mostly verbs whose present tense had derived from Proto-Indo-European perfect forms – an unusual situation, as the Proto-Indo-European perfect was primarily the source of the Germanic strong past tense. Their ancestry explains their inflectional anomalies. Like strong past tenses, the OE preterite-present verbs had no distinct third person singular ending. They also tended to lack non-finite forms. These inflectional features already set the preterite-present verbs, including the modals, apart as a somewhat separate group of verbs in OE. Semantically, too, the preterite-present verbs had always been unusual in that they typically had stative meanings, whereas most verbs have dynamic meanings. Testimony to their status as a group is the fact that the preterite-present verbs analogically attracted new members, notably willan, and probably *motan and cunnan in Proto-Germanic times.

By treating them as ordinary verbs prior to 1600, Lightfoot’s account downplays the exceptional position the modals already had in OE. This calls at least for a reassessment of his story. On the one hand, it becomes rather doubtful whether the changes to the modals before 1600 were really accidental and independent, because the modals were already behaving more or less as a group and had always cherished un-verblike behaviour. On the other hand, the changes after 1600 were less dramatic and abrupt than Lightfoot makes them out to be. In light of their preterite-present ancestry, the non-finite forms that the modals lost had never been a very integral part of their paradigms to begin with. In fact, some of the modals (*motan, *sculan) never had any non-finite forms, and for the others most attested non-finite forms were ME innovations. That those innovations failed to catch on may well be due to the development of the semi-modals (see Section 6.1.3), most of which had and still have non-finite forms. Note here also that, contrary to what Lightfoot claims, some modals actually continued to combine with direct objects until quite late – with can until 1652, with will until 1862 according to Visser (Reference Visser1963: 557–58). All of this undermines both Lightfoot’s two-stage scenario and his claim of a radical and abrupt change.

The alternative picture that emerges is one of long-term incremental change. OE started out with a group of preterite-present verbs that were already somewhat exceptional, both formally and semantically. Some of the group’s core members had developed or were beginning to develop modal meanings, along the familiar pathways of semantic change (Traugott and Dasher, Reference Traugott and Dasher2002: 105–51). The grammaticalization process proceeded faster with some verbs than with others. *Sculan and *motan led, magan followed, cunnan and willan lagged behind (Denison, Reference Denison1993: 336). But, together, the changes redefined and reinforced the functional identity of the group, which increasingly crystallized around the marking of modal meaning. In turn, this changing group identity promoted further changes. Erstwhile members that failed to adopt modal meaning, such as durran ‘dare’ or witan ‘know’, disappeared or shifted to normal verb behaviour, while some other verbs that displayed modal-like meanings, such as need, were (half-heartedly) recruited into the group of modals. To be sure, neither the gradualness of change, nor the idiosyncrasies of the individual items involved should belie the magnitude of the overall development. Together with the rise of the auxiliaries have and be (see Sections 6.3.2 and 6.4) and of operator do (see Section 6.5), the emergence of the modals gave rise to a very distinct class of grammatical markers and at the same time established a new functional and syntactic position in the English finite clause.

6.2.3 The Semi-Modals

As if the modals were not enough, English went on to grammaticalize another set of modal auxiliaries, which are sometimes referred to as the ‘semi-modals’. The group is open-ended, but most will agree that it includes be able to, be going to, (have) got to, have to, need to and want to. The semi-modals developed not from the group of preterite-present verbs but mostly from ordinary main verbs combined with a to-infinitive. Formally, they are less distinctive than the modals, but functionally they do a very similar job expressing various shades of modal meaning. The examples in (18) illustrate two of the semi-modals – have to and want to – and some of their meanings. As is typical of modal expressions, many of the semi-modals developed complex polysemies within the modal domain.

1. 1. a [Strong necessity]

      Were things so bad between them that she just had to disappear? (BNC)

   2. b [Strong certainty]

      A shadow has to be cast by something (BNC)

   3. c [Strong desire]

      Look, can you give me another couple of hours? I want to try something. (BNC)

   4. d [Weak obligation]

      ‘Anyway, have you any news for me?’ ‘No, nothing of importance, except I think you want to keep an eye on Billy the welder.’ (BNC)

The semi-modals form a much less clearly defined group than the modals. On the one hand, the category of semi-modals has no sharp external boundaries. That is because the semi-modals mostly developed from constructions involving more or less normal verbs. As a result, some semi-modal constructions are barely distinguishable from constructions involving main verbs, except on semantic grounds. On the other hand, the category of semi-modals is internally very heterogeneous. Partly that is because the semi-modals developed at very different times. Partly it is because they developed from syntactically diverse sources. For instance, have to developed from a combination of have with a direct object followed by an adnominal to-infinitive – a construction that at least implied modal meanings (though not necessarily of necessity) as early as OE, as shown in (19) (cf. Fischer, Reference Fischer1994a, Reference Fischer, Toupin and Lowrey2015). In contrast, want to originated as a combination of want with a to-infinitival complement clause, whose first desiderative uses date only from the eighteenth century, as in (20) (Krug, Reference Krug2000). Need to, be going to and got to derived from yet other source constructions (for more on be going to, see Section 6.2.2).

1. (19) hæfst            ðu            æceras      to erigenne

   ‘Have       you       acres           to plow?’ (ÆGram.135.2)

1. (20) Cheats mingle the Flower or Seed among the Food of those whom they want to defraud. (1751, OED)

If we also consider other candidate members of the category, such as the modal expressions illustrated in (21), internal heterogeneity only increases.

1. 1. a I got to get batteries to go with it though (BNC)

   2. b The manufacturers are bound to have sent samples to other people, not just us. (BNC)

   3. c The hot drink was supposed to be tea but tasted awful. (BNC)

   4. d Someone had better go down and have a word… (BNC)

   5. e Don't cause any trouble and don't insist if they look like objecting. (BNC)

In this light, one may in fact wonder whether there really is such a thing as a category of semi-modals. Interestingly, however, some more or less consistent group identity seems to be emerging in PDE (Krug, Reference Krug2000: 238). It is striking that most semi-modals are formed with a to-infinitive. It is also striking that most have obtained phonetically reduced variants that are disyllabic and end in a schwa (sometimes with a conventionalized form in spelling, too):

This may be a coincidence or it may point to the existence of an emergent category of semi-modals. On the latter interpretation, the semi-modals, like the modals, may be caught up in a complex dynamic, involving grammaticalization at the level of individual expressions and analogical alignment to an emergent class.

6.3.1 The Future

PDE has no shortage of ways to express future meaning – witness the examples in (25).

1. 1. a The next guard arrives at 12.15. (BNC)

   2. b I have to go. My mother is leaving tonight. (BNC)

   3. c I've got some news for you. I'm about to sell the house… (BNC)

   4. d Whatever you advise I shall do my humble best to concur. (BNC)

   5. e Mrs Duncan will take you up to your rooms. (BNC)

   6. f You're going to become a poet, Shih Hammond. (BNC)

The PDE examples represent a historically layered system. The simple present with future reference in (25a) – though today much more restricted in use – is an OE inheritance, as shown in (26).

1. (26) Ic  arise   of      deaðe  on   ðæm    þriddan   dæge

   I   arise   from death  on  the     third      day (ÆCHom.I,10(259.27)

   ‘I will rise from the dead on the third day’

The use of a present tense to express future meaning is cross-linguistically widely attested (Dahl, Reference Dahl and Dahl2000). This makes sense, because situations holding at the time of speaking often in one way or another extend into the future – or conversely, future situations are often somehow prefigured at the time of speaking. The natural link between present and future at once explains the progressive with future meaning in (25b), whose emergence was a corollary of the rise of the progressive in lModE (see Section 6.4.1). In much the same way, the about-to future in (25c) developed from a construction expressing ongoing activity, as illustrated in (27).

1. (27) Þat þis fend namore me dere, Lord, y praye þe! For he is abouten me to traye

   ‘that this Fiend may harm me no more, I pray thee Lord, for he is plotting to betray me’ (1230, Alt.Leg.323–5)

The histories of the other three future markers – shall, will and be going to – are more complex. Will and shall belong to the class of modals discussed earlier (Section 1.2) and their future meanings developed from earlier modal meanings (Traugott, Reference Traugott1989). For shall, the future meaning probably developed from deontic obligation. In (28), for instance, the decree of providence spells out a necessary future. For will, several pathways are possible. Future meanings are often implied when the verb is used to mark intention, as in (29a), but they may also have developed from generic uses, as in (29b).

1. (28) Ðu   eart  eorþe,  and þu   scealt eft     to eorþan weorðan

   You are   earth   and you shall  again to earth    become (Blickl.Hom.l.123,9)

   ‘Dust you are, and to dust you will return’

1. 1. a Ne  þearf    nan man þæs    wænan, þæt hyne    ænig man mæge alysan fram

      not ought-to no  man of-that think    that him-self any man can    save    from

      helle wite gif he sylf nele           his synna betan   ær       his ende

      of-hell pain if he self not-will    his sins   repent before his end (HomS.6(Ass.14)49)

      ‘Nobody should think that anyone can save him from the pain of hell if he himself does not want to/will not repent of his sins before his death’

   2. b ælc   wyrt   &  ælc  wudu wile weaxan on þæm lande selest þe  him best gerist

      each plant and each tree    will  grow    on that   land   best   that him best suits (Bo.34.91.13)

      ‘Each plant and each tree will grow best in the land that suits it best’

The division of labour between future will and shall has been something of an issue ever since seventeenth and eighteenth-century grammarians saw the need to regulate usage. It is difficult to work out to what extent their prescriptive statements shaped, followed or simply misrepresented historical reality. The careful study by Fries (Reference Fries1927) shows that the prescriptive rules were and are part fictitious. Nevertheless his evidence suggests that they were not completely off the mark. The choice between will and shall to some extent depended on the person of the subject and the illocutionary force of the utterance. There has always been variation, however, and over time will gradually supplanted shall. In PDE future shall survives only with first-person subjects, and (for some speakers) in second-person interrogatives (Huddleston and Pullum, Reference Huddleston and Pullum2002: 195).

The history of the be-going-to future is a classic of the grammaticalization literature (Hopper and Traugott, Reference Hopper and Traugott2003: 1–3, 88–89). Verbs of motion commonly develop into tense markers and so did English go. It is generally assumed that be going initially expressed purposeful motion and would combine with a to-infinitive functioning as a purpose adjunct. Later, purpose meaning was lost, what was originally an implied future sense remained as coded meaning, and the whole sequence was rebracketed as an auxiliary-verb combination. A possible problem with this account is that future meaning is already the dominant sense in the very first generally accepted example of be going to, given in (30). If be going expressed purposeful motion here, one would not expect a passive to-infinitive (cf. Hopper and Traugott, Reference Hopper and Traugott2003: 89).

1. (30) Thys onhappy sowle … was goyng to be broughte into helle for the synne and onleful lustys of her body (1482, Monk-of-Evesham,43)

   ‘This unhappy soul was going to be brought into hell for the sins and unlawful lusts of her body’

Another open question is why it was be going to that developed into a future marker and not just go to, which was more common (Visser, Reference Visser1963: 1399–1400). These little mysteries notwithstanding, the later development of be going to is consistent with the assumed shift from purposeful motion to future. Hilpert (Reference Hilpert2008: 118–22) finds evidence of the hypothesized pathway in the verbs be going to combined with. At first, these were typically verbs denoting intentional actions, such as say, fight or give, but then collocational constraints were gradually loosened as be going to developed into a pure future marker.

6.3.2 The Perfect

Along with articles, periphrastic passives and various other grammatical constructions, periphrastic perfects are a defining feature of Standard Average European. Drinka (Reference Drinka2013) shows how periphrastic perfects developed historically across a large area of Europe, which she refers to as the ‘Charlemagne Sprachbund’. Perhaps because it sits at the periphery of this Sprachbund, English followed the European trend but with some peculiarities.

In PDE the perfect is expressed by have and a past participle, as in (31a). It is generally assumed that this construction must have developed from a pattern with lexical verb have, meaning ‘possess’, a direct object and a past participle that somehow modifies the direct object – in short, something analogous to (31b).

1. 1. a He has overshot the landing strip again. (BNC)

   2. b The museum also has a section devoted to the Harlem Renaissance (Google)

Curiously, examples that match the syntax of (31b) are not readily forthcoming in OE (Mitchell, Reference Mitchell1985: 293), even though examples that look like proper perfects are already attested, as shown in (32), where have clearly cannot mean ‘possess’.

1. (32) Soð ic eow secge, ðæt an   is mid  eow  þe   me hæfð gesealdne.

   Truth I   you  say  that one is with you that me has   sold (HomS(Schaefer)19,29)

   ‘I tell you truly the one that has sold me is amongst you’

In other respects, however, the behaviour of have-perfects during OE fits with the hypothesized source construction. The typical OE have-perfect had a direct object, betraying the original status of have as a transitive verb. Moreover, as the glossed endings in (32) show, the past participle would sometimes agree with the object, indicating that the object once (or still) was its syntactic head, rather than its dependent. Only by the end of OE did have-perfects begin to appear with non-accusative objects (which must be dependent on the participle), as in (33a), or even without objects altogether, as in (33b).

1. 1. a bið       hit swutol … Ðætte on oðre wisan sint to manienne ða     ðe     gefandod

      Will-be it clear         that     in other way   are to instruct    those who explored

      habbað   ðara   flæsclicra synna[GEN],

      have       of-the fleshly     sins (CP.52.403.7)

      ‘It will be clear … that the ones who experienced the sins of the flesh have to be instructed in another way’

   2. b þin    folc       hæfð gesyngod

      ‘your people   have sinned’ (ÆHom.21 47)

As these examples show, the order of have, object and past participle varied in OE. The PDE word order of the have-perfect, with have immediately preceding the participle and any object following, was one of various possible orders. The PDE order was fixed only in the course of ME, bringing the have-perfect fully in line with the emergent [S V_aux V_lex O] template (see Section 6.5).

Like its continental neighbours, English not only developed a have-perfect but also a be-perfect, as in (34). Be appeared with intransitive verbs but, as (33b) shows, it always competed with have and was eventually driven into obsolescence.

1. (34) Þe folk þanked god echone, Þat þe dragun aweye was gone.

   ‘The people all thanked God that the dragon had gone away’(ME, Brunne, HC,p.58).

Another remarkable difference between English and other European languages is that the perfect actually remained a perfect – that is, a marker of past events with relevance to the present. It did not develop into a marker of pure past tense. Then again, such a change may still be on its way. Engel and Ritz (Reference Engel and Ritz2000) show perfects alternating with past tenses in colloquial Australian English story-telling. An example is (35). The function of such perfects is reminiscent of that of the historic present. The past tenses serve to set the scene, providing background, while the perfects are important for the story line, advancing the plot. Whether the pattern will spread beyond these contexts remains of course to be seen.

1. (35) … a guy in Mexico, he said … ‘I reckon we should go to the zoo, but we shouldn’t go there when it’s open, we should go there when it’s night time. …’ And so he’s jumped the fence with a few friends, and went over to the lion enclosure and he’s dropped his mobile phone into the lion enclosure. … Now the funny thing is … that he just jumped the fence, went into the lion enclosure to get his phone, he’s walked up to his phone and the phone has started ringing. … (Engel and Ritz, Reference Engel and Ritz2000: 134)

6.5.1 The Progressive

There are two chief constructions from which the progressive may have developed. One is the combination of beon/wesan ‘be’ and a present participle, as in (45). This construction, which is attested with remarkable frequency in some OE texts, syntactically resembles the PDE progressive. The OE construction itself may have emerged as a blend between three different syntactic structures: adjectival participles, as in (46a), adverbial participle clauses, as in (46b), and the now-obsolete use of the present participle as an agentive noun, as in (46c) (Nickel, Reference Nickel1967: 271–72).

1. (45) þa     ic     wæs       Dryhten    byddende  æt   neorxnawanges   geate,       þa

   when I      was        Lord         praying     at    of-paradise          gate          then

   ætywde  me Michael se    heahengel

   revealed me Michael the  archangel. (Nic(A)19.1.7)

   ‘When I was praying to the Lord at the gate of paradise, Michael the archangel revealed himself to me’

1. 1. a       Næs         him     cild      gemæne:     for þan ðe    elisabeð  wæs       untymende

      not-was    them   child    in-common because       Elizabeth was       unteeming (ÆCHom.I,25 379.7)

      ‘They did not have a child together because Elizabeth was barren’

   2. b Þa     wæron hydras        on ðam earde    waciende ofer  heora eowde

      then  were    shepherds  in that region  waking   over their  flock (ÆCHom.I,2 190.21)

      ‘There were shepherds then in that region watching their flock’

   3. c Ne   beswice eower   nan   oðerne on cypinge, forþon  God his  bið       wrecend.

      Not deceive of-you none other  in  trading, because God of-it will-be avenger (ThCap.1(Sauer)35.373.8)

      ‘No one of you should deceive another in business because God will avenge it’

The other putative source of the progressive is the combination of be with in or on followed by a gerund, as in (47). This second construction is marginally attested in OE but more common in ME. If it is to be a source of the PDE progressive, the construction must have somehow lost its preposition. That may have happened through phonetic reduction, as is suggested by the existence of what looks like an intermediary stage, with an a- prefixed to the -ing-form, as in (48).

1. (47) The kynge is gone on huntynge, certayne

   ‘The king has gone out hunting, for certain’ (Beves-of-Hamtoun,2051)

1. (48) John Cheynye is owt a hawkyng, as sone as he comyth home I shall delyver yowr letter

   ‘John Cheynye is out hawking, as soon as he comes home I will deliver your letter’

   (Stonor-Lett.287)

It is impossible – and probably pointless – to try to restrict the progressive’s ancestry to either one of these constructions. More likely, both contributed to its development (Kranich, Reference Kranich2010: 78–79). Importantly, however, in function neither the participial construction in (45) nor the gerundial construction in (47) behaved exactly like the PDE progressive. The OE participial construction, while sometimes allowing translation with a progressive (cf. (45)), often occurred in contexts where PDE would not use the progressive at all. For example, Killie (Reference Killie2008: 80) finds that it would sometimes have bounded meaning, viewing an event ‘as a whole’ and being used to rhetorical effect, to ‘mark peaks in a narrative’, as in (49).

1. (49) Her            cuom micel sciphere     on      Westwalas,     &       hie      to       anum

   In this year came great  ship-army   into    West-Wales    and    they

   gecierdon  &     wiþ     Ecgbryht    West seaxna  cyning     winnende    wæron

   turned        and   with     Ecgbryht      West Saxon   king         fighting       were (ChronA(Bately)835.1)

   ‘In this year a large (Viking) army arrived in western Wales and they turned to each and every one and fought with Egbert, the West-Saxon king’

The gerundial construction, by contrast, usually allowed translation by a PDE progressive but was largely restricted to ‘absentive’ contexts. It was used to say that someone is absent while engaged in some activity, typically an out-door one like hunting or fishing, as in (47)–(48).

Exactly when the progressive emerged as we know it today, in form as well as in function, is hard to tell. Petré (Reference Petré2015) shows that the crucial semantic change started in ME. At the beginning of the ME period, he finds, the progressive was usually fully stative. Its typical use at the time is illustrated in (50a), where it ascribes a stable quality to a non-agentive subject. In the course of the period, the progressive came to be increasingly used to present a situation as ongoing. Often it would appear in a subordinate clause to ‘frame’ the foregrounded event in the main clause, as in (50b). By the beginning of eModE, marking ongoingness had become the construction’s dominant function – as it still is today.

1. 1. a Now I wryte a sang of lufe, þat þou sal delyte in when þow ert lufand Jhesu Criste

      ‘Now I write a song of love, that you will delight in if you love Jesus Christ’(Rolle, Ego-Dormio,p.60)

   2. b Reynawde slewe the neuewe of kynge Charlemayne wyth a ches borde, as they were playnge togyder at the chesses

      ‘Reynard killed the nephew of king Charlemagne with a chess board as they were playing chess’ (S.ofAymon,ch.2)

But that is not the end of it. Throughout eModE and much of lModE, the progressive still failed to be used in contexts where it is obligatory today. Consider the examples from Shakespeare in (51), or the lModE examples in (52), which Denison (Reference Denison and Romaine1998: 143) judges ‘odd to my ears’. Such examples suggest a process of gradual obligatorification that continued well into the nineteenth century.

1. 1. a Why how now Captaine? what do you in this wise Company. (Tim. of Ath.II,1)

   2. b Por. Is Caesar yet gone to the Capitoll?—Sooth. Madam not yet, I go to take my stand, To see him passe on to the Capitoll (Jul.Caesar, II,2)

1. 1. a Now I will return to Fanny – it rains (1818, Denison Reference Denison and Romaine1998: 143)

   2. b How is Mr. Evelyn? How does he bear up against so sudden a reverse? (1840, ibid.)

Moreover, it was only in LModE that the progressive developed a formally marked passive, as in (53). Arguably, before that time, the progressive had not been fully integrated into the verbal paradigm of English.

1. (53) I scream as if I was being killed (1783, CLMET3.0)

Much as we saw in other changes, then, the development of the progressive has been a protracted affair, with neither an obvious starting point nor a clear point of completion.

What is remarkable, however, is that the English progressive has been so much more successful than semantically similar constructions in other Germanic languages. One wonders whether this might have some deeper system-internal cause. In other constructions, too, English is fond of construing processes as backgrounded states, often using verbal -ing-forms – for instance in absolute constructions (van de Pol and Petré, Reference Van de Pol and Petré2015: 220–23) or premodifying participles (De Smet and Vancaeyzele, Reference De Smet and Vancaeyzele2014: 152). Los (Reference Los2012: 41–42) suggests that this typifies English as an unbounded language, as opposed to its West Germanic sister languages. She goes on to raise the intriguing possibility that the unbounded character of PDE is a consequence of the loss of verb-second (see Chapter 9).

6.5.2 Verb Particles

OE had a large set of verbal prefixes. Deriving from Proto-Indo-European preverbs, these prefixes had grammaticalized into unstressed bound elements by the time they appeared in OE. This means they attached directly to the verbal stem and could not be separated from it. The meanings of the prefixes had been spatial in origin, but many had developed additional functions, mostly related to aspect. For example, the prefix þurh- clearly has a spatial meaning in þurhcreopan ‘creep through’ or þurhfleon ‘fly through’. But in verbs like þurhetan ‘eat through, eat out’ or þurhgeotan ‘pour over, fill, saturate’ it allows both a spatial and aspectual reading. In a verb like þurhlæran ‘persuade, lit. teach-through’ no spatial meaning is left – here, þurh- simply marks completeness or thoroughness (Brinton, Reference Brinton1988: 205). Some other common prefixes were a-, for-, forð-, ge-, of-, to- and ymb-. Of these, some still occurred in OE with predominantly spatial meanings, such as ymb- ‘around’ in ymbcirran ‘revolve round’ or ymbgurdan ‘gird about’, whereas others had highly abstract meanings, most notably the elusive ge- prefix, which among other things had grammaticalized into a marker of past participles in OE.

Most verbal prefixes appear to have been already on the decline in the OE period, and many disappeared almost completely after ME. The causes of their decline are undoubtedly complex – Brinton (Reference Brinton1988: 189) lists as many as eight factors from the literature, including Scandinavian influence, word-order change, advanced semantic bleaching, phonetic reduction in unstressed syllables and the ‘general analytic tendency of English’. Whether it was as another cause or as a consequence or both, the rise of verb particles was likely bound up in the process, too (see also Chapter 7).

Some of the English verb particles derive from the same Proto-Indo-European preverbs as the prefixes. They differ from the prefixes, however, in being free morphemes, separable from the verbal stem, and in being stressed elements. According to van Kemenade and Los (Reference Van Kemenade, Los, Booij and van Marle2003), they functioned as secondary predicates. Thus, in (54) forð is separated from the verbal stem by an intervening negative element ne, showing that forð is not a prefix here. It is positioned where an OE secondary predicate is expected to be positioned (preceding the verb in a finite subordinate clause, cf. Chapter 9), and it transparently denotes a resultant state of the verbal process. Some other common OE particles were (a)dun ‘down’, of ‘off’, onweg ‘away’, up ‘up’ and ut ‘out’.

1. (54) forðæm   hio  nanne  swetne    wæsðm     forð    ne     bringð

   because    she no         sweet     fruit        forth   not   brings (CP.45.341.22)

   ‘because it does not produce any sweet fruit’

Co-occurrence of prefixes and particles suggests that the particles were sometimes used to reinforce the bleached meanings of the prefixes, as in (55), where the particle of ‘away’ reinforces the prefix a- ‘away, out’.

1. (55) On  naman  þæs    ælmihtigan Godes ic  þe    ofslea    &     þe     þine   teþ     of

   In    name  of-the almighty    God    I  you  hit      and  you  your  teeth  away

   abeate

   down-beat (Med.1.1(deVriend)1.2)

   ‘In the name of the almighty God, I will strike you down and knock out your teeth’

Even so, the particles started going down the same path as the OE prefixes: they began to develop aspectual overtones. The particular semantic changes involved still constitute an underresearched area in the history of English, but at least for up a detailed picture is available from Denison (Reference Denison1985b). Compare up in (56a), where its meaning is spatial, to its use in (56b), where it highlights the telicity of the verbal process. Some examples of other particles with aspectually-laden meanings are given in (57).

1. 1. a Þa ahof Paulus up his heafod.

      ‘Then Paulus raised up his head’ (LS.32(Peter&Paul)303)

   2. b The grace of humanyte is not dreyed vp in the.

      ‘The grace of humanity has not dried up in you.’ (1484, OED)

1. 1. a You will hardly be quite at rest till you have talked yourself out to some friend (1764, OED)

   2. b The surest way to try the merit of any disputed notion is, to trace down the consequences such a notion has produced (1759–67, CLMET3.0)

   3. c Laughter, he read and believed, was a sign of good moral health, and he laughed on contentedly, till Lilia's marriage toppled contentment down for ever. (1905, CLMET3.0)

The result is a subsidiary aspectual system, with a broad range of markers, each of which interacts in specific ways with the lexical semantics of the verbal stems it combines with.