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Of mannes wit and his discrecioun. (Chaucer)
(‘For drunkenness is the burying (lit. “sepulture”) of man’s wit and his discretion.’)
In Early NE noun patterns began to include syntactic complexes:
predicative constructions with the Gerund and the Infinitive (see 541 ff). § 531. In ME and Early NE adjective patterns, as before, included a
variety of dependent components. Adjectives were commonly modified by adverbs, e. g.:
He was a verray parfit gentil knyght. (Chaucer)
(‘He was a very perfect noble knight.’)
The main difference from the preceding ages lay in the ways of connection between the adjective and the nouns or noun-pronouns used as dependent components of the pattern. In OE an adjective could take an object in the Dat. or Gen. case (with or without prepositions); in ME these objects were replaced by the Comm. case usually preceded by a preposition, e. g.: with face pale of hewe; so harde of his herte; amyable of port; unlyk to my dede;.. discreet in alle his wordes and dedes; so patient unto a man. (Chaucer) (‘with a pale face; hard-hearted; amiable in behaviour, unlike my deed; discreet in all his words and deeds; so patient to a man’).
Some adjectives, especially the most frequent ones, displayed great vacillation in the choice of prepositions. For instance, in the 14th c. fair and good occur with the prepositions of, in, to, at, by.
The adjective freely combined with the Infinitive since the earliest periods. Examples from Chaucer are: redy for to ryde ‘ready to ride’;
I am free to wedde ‘I am free to marry’; A manly man, to been an abbot able ‘a manly man, able to be an abbot’.
The use of adjectives with the -ing-form was more restricted; in later periods it increased steadily as the gerund and gerundial complexes began to replace the Infinitive in adjective phrases, e. g.; measurable in looking and in berunge (Chaucer) (‘moderate in appearance and behaviour’ (lit. “looking and bearing”)
But yet her portion is worth your taking notice, Master Aimwell. (Shirley, early 17thc.) The history of the verb pattern embraced a number of important changes and developments.
In some respects verb patterns became more uniform. In OE the verb could take various objects and adverbial modifiers expressed by the oblique cases of nouns. In ME the oblique cases were replaced by the Comm. case (or the Obj. case of pronouns), with — or without prepositions. Even though the inflectional -‘s-Gen. survived, it was no longer used in verb patterns (it occurred in attributive function only). The use of prepositions in verb patterns grew, and so did the number of transitive verbs which took an object without a preposition. The following quotations from Chaucer’s poems show the replacement of the oblique cases: by the Comm. case of nouns and the Obj. case of pronouns:
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke
(‘Who has helped them when they were ill’ — OE helpan took an object in the Dat. case)
And first to Cecilie, as I understonde,
He yaf that one
(‘And first he gave that one (rose) to Cecily’ — the objects correspond to the
OE Dat. and Ace. cases.) After her deeth ful ofte may she wayte. (‘She often
waited for death’ — the corresponding OE verb bidan governed the Gen.
case.)
Throughout ME and Early NE the use of prepositions displayed great fluctuation. Many verbs were used with a variety of prepositions until the age of prescriptive grammars and dictionaries, and some verbs
a long time after. During the NE period the size and complexity of verb patterns grew, as the verbs came to be extended by noun patterns of more complicated structure, by Infin. phrases and predicative constructions with diverse components. An important change took place in the patterns of numerous verbs termed “impersonal” or “quasi-impersonal”. These verbs indicated a state or feeling, e. g. OE lician ‘please’ (NE like), OE lystan ‘desire’, OE zescomian (NE shame),Early ME wanien, semen (NE want, seem). Originally most of these verbs took two objects: one — to indicate the person who experienced the state or feeling, the other — to show its cause, e. g. OE him ne hlyste nUnes metes ‘he did not want any food’; the cause, or object of the feeling could sometimes be shown by the subject of the sentence — in the Nom. case: wife a word wet ticodon ‘those words pleased that woman well’.
5.1. The Simple Sentence.
In the course of history the structure of the simple sentence in many respects became more orderly and more uniform. Yet, at the same time it grew complicated as the sentence came to include more extended and complex parts: longer attributive groups, diverse subjects and predicates and numerous predicative constructions (syntactic complexes).
In OE the ties between the words in the sentence were shown mainly by means of government and agreement, with the help of numerous inflections. In ME and Early NE, with most of the inflectional endings levelled or dropped, the relationships between the parts of the sentence were shown by their relative position, environment, semantic ties, prepositions, and by a more rigid syntactic structure.
Every place in the sentence came to be associated with a certain syntactic function: in the new structure of the sentence syntactic functions were determined by position, and no position could remain vacant. This is evidenced by the obligatory use of the subject. For instance, in OE the formal subject, expressed by the pronoun hit, was used only in some types of impersonal sentences, namely those indicating weather phenomena.
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