1. The first Germanic consonant shift. Grimm's Law. Verner's Law. The shift of stress

8.Changes in the system of the adjectives in ME and NE.

The paradigm of the adjective in Middle English is simplified drastically. The endings become scarce. The category of gender is lost, for the nouns no longer have it. The adjective no longer agrees with the noun in case, the only remaining endings being- the plural form having the ending -e and the remains of the weak declension, the weak form (the one preceded by an article) -e:

young knihit / the younge kniht

younge knihtes / the younge knihtes

But some of the adjectives had the very ending -e as a result of levelling of the vowels at the end, and so such adjectives as grene were already unchangeable; in the plural the .strong and the weak forms also coincided.

The forms of the suffixes of the degrees of comparison were reduced lo -er, -est

glad - gladder – gladdest; greet - gretter - grettest

Some adjectives retained a mutated vowel they had had in Old English:

old - elder - eldest

long - lenger - lengest

strong - stregner -strengest

Some preserve former suppletivity, and their degrees of comparison look like this:

good - bettre - best

evil (bad) - werse - werst

muchel - more — most, mest

litel - lasse — lest

Some adjectives, especially of foreign origin, are found in a form that came into wider usage only later, that is, they may be associated with the adverb moore/most

Phonetic Changes in the Early New English Period

The changes in the sound system of the period were significant. The process of the levelling of endings continued, there were positional and assimilative changes of short vowels, and a significant change in the whole system of long vowels, called the Great Vowel Shift. During the period the process of simplification of consonant clusters and loss of consonants in certain positions continued. The changes were as follows: