The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Middle English syntax 91have been as follows: (i) due to the loss of case forms and grammatical gender,the neuter relative pronoun æt came to be the most frequently used form; 2 (ii)æt came to be used as an invariant form, replacing all other case forms, i.e.like the particle e in Old English; (iii) æt replaced e because (a) e wasphonologically rather weak, (b) e also functioned as the new generalizeddefinite article, (c) æt was already used as a complementizer in other subordinateclauses. The replacement of e by æt may also explain why prepositionstranding, which in Old English was only usual with e relatives, spreadto at relatives in Middle English. Let us now turn to the relative clauses themselvesand the changes that have occurred in them.3.5.1 Relative clausesIn Middle English, the Old English relative system collapsed, due tothe gradual loss of the particle e and the replacement of the paradigm se, seo,æt by indeclinable that (in the earliest period in the South, also by e). Insome early Middle English texts, remnants of the se, seo, æt system are stillfound, often with analogical - rather than s-, but these are regular only inrewritings of Old English texts (cf. Allen 1977: 197 ff.), and are mainlySouthern. In the Northern Ormulum, for instance, at was the usual form.From the North, at rapidly spread to the other dialects, and in the thirteenthcentury at (also et) was the rule everywhere. The only exceptions wereSouth-Western and especially West Midlands texts, where Old English formswere preserved much longer due to the fact that the influence of the WestSaxon ‘Schriftsprache’ was still strong in some of the scriptoria.All this means that in the thirteenth century that stood practically alone asa relativizer. It was used in restrictive as well as non-restrictive clauses, withanimate as well as inanimate antecedents. That was also used in Old Englishand early Middle English when the antecedent was a clause (cf. Mustanoja1960: 190; this usage can still be found in early Modern English) but in thisusage it was gradually replaced in early Middle English by what and in lateMiddle English by which. This was presumably part of the development inwhich that became confined to restrictive clauses. The beginnings of this latterdevelopment can be seen in Middle English, but it took place mainly in laterperiods (cf. Mustanoja 1960: 196–7).2There are probably various reasons why the neuter æt form became used most frequently.All non-human antecedents could take æt, whereas human antecedentsstill had a choice between the masculine and feminine forms. Also æt was phonologicallymore distinctive than the masculine and feminine forms and the alternativee (see iii).