Morphological changes in the history of English (GROUP 2)

Can you name a significant morphological change that occurred during the Middle English period?

• Increased use of French syntax in sentences.

• Reduction of inflectional endings in nouns and verbs.

• Standardization of spelling across all dialects.

• Introduction of new Latin-based vocabulary.

What are inflectional morphemes, and how have they changed in English?

• Inflectional morphemes are unrelated to grammatical categories.

• Inflectional morphemes are grammatical units that modify words to express different grammatical categories, and they have simplified in English over time.

• They have become more complex in modern English.

• Inflectional morphemes are only used in nouns.

What are derivational morphemes, and how do they function in English?

• Derivational morphemes are inflections that do not alter the meaning of a word.

• Derivational morphemes are only used in verbs and have no effect on nouns.

• Derivational morphemes are affixes that modify the meaning or grammatical category of a base word in English.

• Derivational morphemes are always prefixes that cannot change a word's category.

What is the role of grammatical gender in the morphology of Present-Day English?

• Grammatical gender plays a minimal role in English morphology, mainly affecting pronouns and some nouns.

• Grammatical gender in English is similar to that in languages like Spanish and French.

• Grammatical gender has no impact on English pronouns or nouns.

• Grammatical gender is a dominant feature in English morphology, affecting all nouns.

How has the simplification of English morphology affected its syntax?

• Morphological simplification has no impact on syntax.

• The simplification of English morphology has led to a more fixed word order and increased reliance on auxiliary verbs and prepositions in syntax.

• It has resulted in a more complex sentence structure.

• English syntax has become more irregular and unpredictable.

The pronoun he...

• is a borrowing from Old Norse

• developed either from hēo or the demonstrative sēo

• was already used in Old English

• wasfirst used asthe default third person plural pronoun

Choose the incorrect answer. Regarding Old English pronouns...

• The dual distinction is only found for 1st and 2nd person pronouns

• There are gender distinctionsin the dative plural for 3rd person pronouns

• The accusative-dative distinction is not maintained in the 1st and 2nd sing./pl. person pronouns

• The nominative-accusative distinction is maintained in the 1st and 2nd sing./pl. person pronouns

What was the influence of French on the second personal pronouns in English?

• The pronouns were borrowed from French during the Middle English period.

• Because of French, the Old English pronoun þu was lost in English Middle.

• The T-V distinction in French influenced the reorganisation of the system in Middle English.

• There was no influence from French.

The plural morpheme that generalised in Middle English originally comes from which Old English paradigm?

• Strong masculine nouns

• Strong neuter nouns

• Weak nouns

• Athematic nouns

The change whereby grammatical gender was replaced by semantic gender started in the South and spread to the North.

• True

• False