Development of verbal categories in English

Any language is an ever-changing historical phenomenon. This applies to all aspects of language: grammar and vocabulary, phonetics and spelling. The main purpose of studying the history of the language is to explain the current stage of its existence, allowing a better understanding of its modern features.

Germanic languages were the languages of the synthetic system. The nominal parts of speech had categories of case, gender and number, verbal -time, mood, person and number.

The main ways of forming were the endings, as well as the alternation of vowels in the root of the word (especially in verbs) and in rare cases suppletivism - the formation of different forms of words from different roots. Grammatical categories of the English verb are the subject of numerous works of General and special character on the theory and history of the grammatical system of the English language. The article deals with the development of verbal categories from old English to new English.

The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that the study of the verb and verbal forms is particularly difficult in the study of a foreign language. Grammar of the old English period. The system of the verb. The verbal system of the old English language was represented by personal and non-personal forms of the verb, the difference between which was more significant than at present, since non-personal forms were not only conjugated, but also inclined, like the nominal parts of speech. The conjugation system of the old English verb included the categories of time, mood, number and face. The person category of the verb included the first, second, and third person forms. This difference was manifested only in the forms of the singular indicative mood. The number category was formed by the opposition of singular and plural forms. The category of time was represented by the forms of present and future time. The meaning of the future tense was expressed with the help of the present form in combination with a temporal adverb or a combination of a modal verb and an infinitive. The category of inclination included forms of indicative, imperative and indirect inclination. The latter was used to Express both unreal and problematic actions (for which two different moods are used in modern English), as well as instead of the indicative moods for the transmission of indirect speech. All categories used only synthetic indicators - flexions, root alternations, suffixes. All verbs of the old English language can be divided into groups depending on the grammatical means used in the formation of their foundations - vowel alternation in the root and suffixation. The so-called strong verbs used as the main means of expressing different grammatical categories the alternation of vowels in the root, or ablaut.

Grammatical endings were attached directly to the root-basis of the verb. Strong verbs are among the oldest verbs in the language. The so-called weak verbs are newer in time of their appearance in the language. They used suffixation as the main grammatical means of Foundation formation. This method of forming forms was the most productive, and it was used by newly formed or borrowed verbs, constantly expanding the number of weak verbs.

Weak verbs, unlike strong verbs, had a basic suffix before the grammatical ending, depending on which they can also be divided into several classes.

The composition of the categories. a) Larger number of categories in the system name, and less in the system of the verb, the absence in the old English verb morphological category of the assertion, negation (of the forms with do opposed to the forms without do). b) a Greater number of categorical forms included in nominal morphological categories, and a smaller number of categorical forms included in verbal morphological categories: compare, on the one hand, the four-five-legged old English declension system and the twolegged modern; on the other hand, let us compare the allocation of the old English category of time on the basis of the opposition of two times - present and past - and the allocation of the corresponding modern English category on the basis of the opposition of three times - present, past and future. C) Larger coverage of the morphological categories of the system name and less coverage of the morphological categories of the system of the verb: compare old English the category of number is common to all of the parts of speech system name, and the corresponding modern English the category inherent only to nouns and some pronouns; on the other hand, compare the old English category of the collateral, available only in the sacrament, and the modern category of the collateral that underlies the whole system of the verb. In other words, the old English language, unlike the modern one, was characterized by a more developed system of nominal categories and a relatively less developed system of verbal categories.

Changes in the verb system in the middle English and new English periods. In the system of the verb of the middle English language, as well as the old English, the following morphological classes are distinguished: strong (given, risen), weak (seggen, libben), preterito-presentation (witan, dowen, can, munen), irregular (beon, gãn) and suppletive verbs. The system of personal verbal forms are characterized by the following grammatical categories: the category of persons (1, 2, 3 (in units h)), the category of number (singular, plural.h), time

(present, past, future), mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), pledge (valid, passive) and type (temporal correlation). [3] the Basis and personal indicator (end) began to decrease in use and be reduced.

This happened in two ways: first, there was a weakening of unsatisfactory syllables, thus, the end of the vowel, just fell away, the consonant - remain in place, but without a reduced vowel, then began a similar alignment of all forms through the simplification of the paradigm. All forms of the verb at this stage of language development are "semisynthetic". In the history of the impersonal forms gradually lose their personal traits (elements of the system of declensions), getting in return verb (members of the conjugations). In the middle English period there is also a new non-personal form - gerund. In the middle English period the division of verbs into strong and weak is preserved.

In the new English period in the group of strong verbs changes occur. This is due to the division of the original classes into subclasses, the addition of verbs of one class to another, the transition of strong verbs in the group of weak and in rare cases Vice versa. The group of weak verbs is becoming more numerous, as it is replenished by borrowing and newly formed words.

In the late middle English - early new England period, the second and third forms of weak verbs become homonymous. In the new England period, due to various phonetic changes, two main groups of old English verbs - strong and weak - gave two main groups of modern verbs: regular and irregular, none of which comes directly from certain groups of old English verbs.

The main sources of irregular verbs were a few irregular verbs of the old English period, the majority of strong verbs, weak verbs of the first class, as well as verbs - Scandinavian borrowings. In addition to the old English categories of person, number, time, and mood, three more grammatical categories gradually emerged in the middle English and new English periods:

pledge, aspect, and temporal relatedness. New means - analytical forms-were used for their formation.

Analytical forms began to be used for the previous grammatical categories - time and mood. As for the species-temporal forms of the English verb in the middle English period, "completeness" still determined the choice of the perfect more than the duration of the action and that "precedence" of the situation in the past or in the present is not always present. The perfect of the present tense, along with the perfect of the past tense and the simple past, can be used in cases where there is a clear attachment of the action to the past, when the action is included in a number of other past actions and when it precedes another action in the past.

Historians note the fact that many of the old English means of indicating the completeness of the preceding by this time ceased to exist: many lexical units with this meaning were out of use, and the old English system of verbal prefixation collapsed. It is possible that their loss increased the role of the perfect as a more universal and grammatical means of expressing the completeness of the action and contributed to its dissemination. It can be noticed that during this period perfect forms have their own specific purpose to Express the previous action, correlated with the subsequent situation and not attached to any time point in the past.

The process of grammatization of modal combinations of the verbs sculan and willan with the infinitive, used as an additional means of transmitting the future action since the old English period, is extremely slow. The analytical form of the future time is formed only by the end of the early English period.

The grammatization of the perfect form is completed by the end of the middle English period. Syntactic constructions with the meaning of long-term action known since the old English period, in middle English are uncommon and perform a stylistic rather than grammatical function.

In the new England verb system the following morphological classes are distinguished: regular (skate), irregular (go, shine) and modal (can, may, must) verbs. The system of personal verbal forms are characterized by the following grammatical categories: the category of persons (1, 2, 3 (restricted)), the category of number (singular, plural), time (present, past, future), mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, conditional), pledge (valid, passive) and type (General, long (temporal correlation)).

On the basis of the study of the problem of development of verbal categories, the following conclusions can be drawn:

• -    in modern English the number of verbal categories has not increased compared to the old English, but at the same time developed those that were not previously defined as categories;

• -    modern English verbs have categories of person, number, time, mood, pledge and type. In the course of studying the literature, it became clear that linguists do not find agreement on the question of how many categories of the verb should be allocated in the old English language.